1. In the Lord’s Prayer Adoration is the subject of the first petition. “Our Father, which art in heaven; hallowed be Thy name.” In Adoration the soul comes to God sensible of His love, majesty, holiness, and infinite greatness; feeling, and seeking more fully to feel, the awe, reverence, and holy affection due to His great name; it transcends admiration and wonder; it is a blending of love with the fervent desire that all the world should know and magnify the glory of the Lord. A poet’s frenzy or a scientist’s noble enthusiasm may fall far short of this; for to the fullest tide of feeling and the highest reach of reason, adoration adds something partaking of personal allegiance. Not in petition or intercession, not in confession or thanksgiving, is found the highest altitudes of worship, but in adoration and consecration. Its act is self-surrender to the King, and its language, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name”.
Adoration lives not as a separate thing, comes not always to definite expression, but is present in all reverent invocation of God, and flows like a permanent undercurrent in all true prayer. It is often felt when unvoiced, and should make itself heard in all audible prayer as an undertone.
Adoration is the greatest thing in man. Reason is great, calculation is great, imagination and analysis, fused together and compacted year after year by patient thought, present a picture of greatness to which every intellect does homage. But adoration is greater than all. It is when man, in the fullness of all his powers, passes outside himself, passes into the Presence-Chamber of the Great King, and there casts his crown before the throne and worships Him that liveth for ever and ever—it is then that man’s greatness reaches its highest point. Self-emptying, self-losing, self-prostrating, is the loftiest outcome of human energies. “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give the praise.” [Note: H. M. Butler, Belief in Christ, 34]
William Law has this very pertinent word in his Devout Life: “When you begin your petitions use such various expressions of the attributes of God as may make you most sensible of the greatness and power of the Divine nature”. And then William Law gives various examples, which, I am bound to say, would not be helpful to me, as they would imprison my spirit in a coat of mail. But I want to emphasize and commend the principle of it, which is, that our fellowship should begin with the primary elements of adoration and praise. [Note: J. H. Jowett, The Silver Lining, 147.]
Begin, therefore, in words like these: “O Being of all beings, Fountain of all light and glory, gracious Father of men and angels, whose universal Spirit is everywhere present giving life and light and joy to all angels in heaven and all creatures upon earth,” etc. For these representations of the Divine attributes, which show us, in some degree, the Majesty and Greatness of God, are an excellent means of raising our hearts into lively acts of worship and adoration. What is the reason that most people are so much affected with this petition in the burial service of our church: “Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death”? It is because the joining together so many great expressions gives such a description of the greatness of the Divine Majesty as naturally affects every sensible mind. [Note: William Law, A Serious Call.]
2. Adoration is to be distinguished from Worship, from Praise, from Thanksgiving, and from Admiration.
(1) Adoration differs from worship as being somewhat narrower in its idea and also somewhat more intense. Worship covers the whole range of devotional duty, including its outward order and observances. Adoration takes us, as it were, to the heart and sanctuary of worship. It concentrates and lifts the thought, till it is supremely occupied with those relations between the worshipper and the Worshipped which bring the worshipper spiritually to his knees, bowing his face to the earth, and filling his consciousness full of a sense of the greatness and glory of the Worshipped, and of the worshipper’s total dependence upon Him. True, all worship involves in its idea, more or less, the call to revere and to submit. But to adoration that attitude is, in effect, its whole idea.
There is in the heart of every true worshipper a profound sense of humility and self-abasement. Pride, self-righteousness, and self-sufficingness have their source in ignorance of God. The angels of heaven hide their faces in His presence and cast their crowns before His throne, and thus say in effect, “We are not worthy to behold Thy glory; all that we are and have cometh from Thy love; our existence, happiness, dignity, and immortality we owe to Thee.” The knowledge of Him and the vision of His glory should produce the same effects in our minds. [Note: T. Jones, The Divine Order, 79.]
(2) Praise is not usually spoken of as prayer, since its expression is always associated with music; but the heart’s desire, of which psalm and song are but the utterance, is truly communion with the Eternal. In one respect also praise joins adoration in a contrast over against all other acts of devotion. In confession, petition, and thanksgiving, the worshipper’s attitude is that of human need, consciousness of self mingling with the thought of God; but in adoration and in praise it is otherwise; here no thought of self remains, but the spirit soaring on glad wing to God dwells in rapture on His all-glorious perfections; sense of self is lost in that divinest joy a human heart can know. Praise addressed to God in name and memory of Jesus Christ rises inevitably into adoration. Isaiah, transported by faith into the inner sanctuary, was rapt into the worship of the seraphim, and joined in spirit in the unending adoration of the Triune God —“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth; the whole earth is full of thy glory”. The herald angels poured forth upon the plains of Bethlehem the song of heaven, “Glory to God in the highest”; and our sad earth heard, and was comforted.
Angels, help us to adore Him;
Ye behold Him face to face!
But even these bright intelligences are unable to show forth all His praise.
No doubt the angels think themselves as insufficient for the praises of the Lord as we do. [Note: John Livingstone’s Diary, 14 December, 1634 (Wodrow Society).]
It is reported of John Janeway that often in the hour of secret prayer he scarcely knew whether he were “in the body, or out of the body”. Tersteegen said to some friends who had gathered round him, “I sit here and talk with you, but within is the eternal adoration, unceasing and undisturbed”. Wodrow relates that on one occasion Mr. Carstairs was invited to take part in communion services at Calder, near Glasgow. He was wonderfully assisted, and had “a strange gale through all the sermon”. His hearers were affected in an unusual degree: glory seemed to fill the house. A Christian man that had been at the table, and was obliged to come out of the church, pressing to get in again, could not succeed for some time, but stood without the door, wrapt up in the thoughts of that glory that was in the house, for nearly half-an-hour, and could think of nothing else. [Note: D. M. McIntyre, The Hidden, Life of Prayer, 97.]
(3) Thanksgiving is that department of prayer which makes grateful recognition of the fact that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights”. Although not enjoined explicitly in the Lord’s Prayer it is present there as an atmosphere, and indeed, as such, should permeate all worship. The very petition, “Give us this day our daily bread,” recognizes God as the All-Giver to whom man must look for blessing, and to whom, by all the worthy instincts of his nature, he is taught to return thanksgiving. Not merely like the flowers, unconsciously exhaling the incense-sweetness of a fragrant life; but, because man is more than a flower, he is enjoined by Scripture as well as prompted by intelligence to give glad utterance to his gratitude.
It is a selfish doctrine which altogether confounds thanksgiving and praise. The “Exhortation” distinguishes the two. To render thanks for the great benefits received at His hands: that is thanksgiving. To set forth His most worthy praise; to tell, that is, what He is in Himself: that is adoration. [Note: C. J. Vaughan, Revelation, 156.]
Although, in devotion, we neither can nor ought to be always drawing the line with the precision of a dogmatic treatise, it is practically important to distinguish between adoration and thanksgiving. In adoration we contemplate, as in the Proper Preface for Trinity Sunday, the glory and the goodness of God in themselves. Adoration, “the speech not of aliens but of sons,” is the homage due to Him from His created, redeemed, and sanctified children. In thanksgiving, His glory and His goodness are regarded as revealed in His mercies, whether general or particular, bestowed upon our race and ourselves. The two strains are blended in the opening sentence of the Magnificat:—
“
My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour”.
[Note: A. J. Worlledge, Prayer, 215.]
(4) Adoration is more than admiration. The early Christian Church did not content herself with “admiring” Jesus Christ. She adored Him. She approached His glorious Person with that very tribute of prayer, of self-prostration, of self-surrender by which all serious Theists, whether Christian or non-Christian, are accustomed to express their felt relationship as creatures to the Almighty Creator. For as yet it was not supposed that a higher and truer knowledge of the Infinite God would lead man to abandon the sense and the expression of complete dependence upon Him and of unmeasured indebtedness to Him, which befits a reasonable creature whom God has made, and whom God owns and can dispose of, when such a creature is dealing with God. As yet it was not imagined that this bearing would or could be exchanged for the more easy demeanour of an equal, or of one deeming himself scarcely less than an equal, who is intelligently appreciating the existence of a remarkably wise and powerful Being, entitled by His activities to a very large share of speculative attention. The Church simply adored God; and she adored Jesus Christ, as believing Him to be God. Nor did she destroy the significance of this act by conceiving that admiration differs from adoration only in degree, that a sincere admiration is practically equivalent to adoration, that adoration after all is only admiration raised to the height of an enthusiasm.
Contrasting the Christian belief in a God who can work miracles with the “scientific” belief in a God who is the slave of “law,” Mr. Lecky remarks that the former “predisposes us most to prayer,” the latter to “reverence and admiration”. Here the antithesis between “reverence” and “prayer” seems to imply that the latter word is used in the narrow sense of petition for specific blessings, instead of in the wider sense which embraces the whole compass of the soul’s devotional activity, and, among other things, adoration. Still, if Mr. Lecky had meant to include under “reverence” anything higher than we yield to the highest forms of human greatness, he would scarcely have coupled it with “admiration”. [Note: H. P. Liddon, The Divinity of our Lord, 367.]
3. The element of adoration in worship has been frequently criticised. We offer to God, it is said, what we would not offer to a man. But we must look at prayer from the human rather than from the Divine side. Whether God needs such praise is one question, and whether man needs to offer it is quite another. There are moments of warmth and enthusiasm in which we do not hesitate to express to our friends our praise of them, moments when we cannot restrain ourselves, but have to give utterance to our feeling towards them; and this is not flattery, but only the natural outpouring of our love and appreciation. So it is in prayer. It is one of the ways by which man climbs upward; and when in his love and adoration he utters his praise to God, that praise is not meant to influence God; it influences the man himself; it helps to keep before him, to fix in his mind and heart, the object of his devotion.
Why does God want so much to be praised? A good man does not at all want to be praised; a good man dislikes it if he is too much praised, especially to his face. Why does God want to be praised? Why is the whole of religion said to be praising God? Why, for instance, in the Ordination prayer is it said, “He [Christ] gathered together a great flock in all parts of the world to set forth the eternal praise of Thy holy Name”? — one of the most beautiful sentences in the Ordination Service.
I can remember when I was a young man that this was a real difficulty to me. I could not understand why it was. It seemed almost selfishness on the part of God to want so much praise. In order to answer that, I want you to call to mind a picture which seems to me one of the most inspired ever painted. You have probably seen it, or seen representations of it. It is called “The Triumph of Love”. It is one of Watts’ pictures, and it represents a slim and beautiful figure trampling upon apparently dead bodies, with outstretched hands and upturned face to God. I ask myself, what is the meaning of that picture? Here, clearly, is a figure in praise. Love has triumphed, and Love praises. Is God a selfish God who simply craves for congratulations? See what the painter-poet meant. What he pictured was this: pure love struggling down here against all its foes, with vice and drink and gambling and malice and hatred, all against it. Love finds the battle very hard, beset on all sides, almost trampled down, just as you see today some good man almost trampled down by the forces against him; or some man almost sneered out of his religion in the City office; or a boy laughed at for being firm, who almost gives up his religion altogether; or a reformer in London trying to get rid of drink, gambling, vice, profligacy, who goes down sometimes under the organized force against him. But Love is struggling like that always, and just when Love is almost conquered, Love finds a power come down from Heaven and enter into him, finds new strength put into him, finds hope in his heart, finds his faith burning again, finds a strength not his own as he grapples with those enemies against which he fights, and at last, to his intense relief and to his glorious triumph, he conquers in a strength which is not his own. These foes of the human race have gone under his feet, and he knows that something is tingling in his veins which is not his own: a will not his own has grasped his; a heart not his own has warmed his; he hears in his ears a voice not his own, and he is all triumph, and he looks up and he praises.
Is that selfishness on the part of God? Why, God has been in the thick of the battle; God came down on the Cross, and bore the worst for love—God was the Love who was slain. It is, then, for our sake we have to praise, and not for God’s sake. God wants His child to love Him; He wants His child’s response as any father does, but it is for our sake that He wants us to praise. [Note: A. F. Winnington Ingram, The Love of the Trinity, 319.]
I read lately in an atheistic tract a sentence to this effect: “Why should the omnipotent God be so weak as to be flattered by the praise of His creatures?” He is not flattered; He is gratified. He is unconscious of any benefit to Himself; but He sees a symptom of development in His children. He feels that His solitude is broken, that kindred spirits have arisen to share His nature. What a man praises either in God or his brother is an indication of the height which he has himself attained. He may be far behind in life. But his praise is the measure of him. It predicts his coming glory. It tells what he will be tomorrow. It is the primrose of his year. The cold may be still around him; his environment may be yet barren and bare. But the primrose—the putting forth of his admiration—shows that summer is on the way, and that ere long the land will be laden with fruits and flowers. That is why the heart of the heavenly Father rejoices in the creature’s praise. It is a sign that His child is growing—growing into sympathy with a Father’s mind, growing into fellowship with a Father’s heart. God’s joy in praise is a paternal joy. [Note: G. Matheson, Bests by the River, 324.]
It is interesting to notice that even in Comte’s religion of humanity prayer had an important place. Every day had its saint, and the prayer consisted in the repetition of the virtues of the saint and the desire that they might be fulfilled in the life of the worshipper. There was no response from the saint who was thus worshipped, but there was believed to be an inspiring effect upon the worshipper. [Note: G. Everett, Theism and the Christian Faith, 462.]
Dr. A. J. Gordon describes the impression made upon his mind by intercourse with Joseph Rabinowitz, whom Dr. Delitzsch considered the most remarkable Jewish convert since Saul of Tarsus: “We shall not soon forget the radiance that would come into his face as he expounded the Messianic psalms at our morning or evening worship, and how, as here and there he caught a glimpse of the suffering or glorified Christ, he would suddenly lift his hands and his eyes to heaven in a burst of adoration, exclaiming with Thomas, after he had seen the nail-prints, ‘My Lord, and my God! ’ ” [Note: D. M. McIntyre, The Hidden Life of Prayer, 98.]
4. Adoration is real prayer; if we say—
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty,
God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity!
or if we say—
O Jesus, King most wonderful,
Thou Conqueror renowned,
Thou Sweetness most ineffable,
In whom all joys are found,
this is real prayer, although we ask for nothing. It is real prayer although, if we were to start to analyze all the expressions used, we might find ourselves in the very thick of intellectual perplexity. It is real prayer, because, if we use those words with sincerity and in reverence and soul-sensitiveness to God, we cannot fail to experience such pure emotions and such Godward aspirations as serve to establish and develop in us that spiritual attitude towards God through which, though it may be only in terms of love and not in terms of understanding, we realize the relation between our soul and Him. In such adoration we bring our soul into the ineffable light of God’s presence; we do not seek actively to understand Him, but passively we let our soul lie in His sight; in quiet and lowly ways we anticipate that ecstasy of which Faber sang—
Father of Jesus, love’s Reward!
What rapture will it be,
Prostrate before Thy Throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee!
We come into the Divine presence and let the light shine on us, and Divine influences play upon us; we rest in the Lord. That is real prayer; it fulfils the prime function of prayer; it brings us closer to God; it opens avenues to the inflowing of His life; and such prayer is answered.
Just as the free playing of the sunlight upon a garment cleanses it from lurking impurity; just as the summer sun kisses the apples in the orchard until they blush for very gladness; so is our adoration of Him who is the eternal Light of light answered in the purity, the beauty, and the joy which the sense of His over-shadowing presence and the suffering of His all-embracing influence give to our lives. [Note: E. W. Lewis, Some Views of Modern. Theology, 41.]
This is the prerogative of song, that it not only furnishes a medium for the expression of feeling, but awakens the very feeling of which it is the expression; and the poet, for the moment, is the master of the memory, the hope, the confidence, and the imagination of multitudes, bearing them away upon the tide of his verse to regions of enterprise, of courage, and of faith, which they could never have reached by the lonely prompting of their own thoughts. This is pre-eminently the power of sacred song. When we sing together the strains of a divine poet, whose heart has been touched by the fire that kindles the muse of seraphs, we are in immediate communion with the Spirit of Jesus: and the psalm, the hymn, or the spiritual song does not end in a momentary delectation of the fancy; it quickens our faith to hear others chant the assurance of theirs; it fortifies our courage to assume the victory of others; it permanently raises the tone of our life to dwell in thought even for a few moments with the societies and choirs of the upper sanctuary.
Triumphant host! they never cease
To laud and magnify
The Triune God of holiness,
Whose glory fills the sky;
Whose glory to this earth extends,
When God Himself imparts,
And the whole Trinity descends
Into our faithful hearts. [Note: E. E. Jenkins, Life and Christ, 292.]
5. Adoration is the expression of two emotions—confidence and fear. Separately these emotions are incomplete; they seem even contradictory. They are blended in perfect harmony in God as seen in the face of Jesus Christ, and in that adoration which recognizes the love that gave and the holiness that required the Son to death.
I read, the other day, two Boston sonnets, entitled “Trust,” and making of the crystalline window of one of the deepest human experiences an opening through which to look into the sky behind the sky:—
I know that thou art true, and strong and pure;
My forehead on thy palm I fall asleep,
My sentinels with thee no vigils keep,
Though elsewhere never without watch secure.
How restful is thy palm! I life endure,
These stranger souls whose veils I shyly sweep,
These doubts what secrets hide within the deep
Because aglow within the vast obscure.
Thy hand is whitest light! My Peace art thou,
My firm green isle within a troubled sea;
And lying here and looking upward now
I ask, if thou art this, what God must be—
If thus I rest within thy goodness, how
In goodness of the Infinite degree?
But there are lightnings wherever there is love, for character cannot have one side without having two sides—we cannot love good and not abhor evil; and so the second sonnet, equally true to trust, contrasts with the first:—
This crystal soul of thine, were it outspread,
Until the drop should fill the universe,
How in it might the angels’ wings immerse,
And wake and sleep the living and the dead;
Bereaved eyes bathe; rest Doubt its tossing head;
Swim the vast worlds; dissolve Guilt’s icy curse;
And sightless, if but loyal, each disperse
Fear by full trust, and, by devotion, dread.
And yet these perfect eyes in which mine sleep
Would not be sweet were not their lightning deep;
In softest skies the swiftest firebolts dwell;
Thine eyes mix dew and flame, and both are well.
If thus I fear this soul, O God, how Thee,
Both Love’s and Lightning’s full Infinity? [Note: Joseph Cook, Monday Lectures, 1: 58.]
