The editors of the American Journal of Theology record with deep regret the death on January 2, 1910, of William Arnold Stevens, D.D., LL.D., Trevor professor of New Testament interpretation in the Rochester Theological Seminary, Rochester, N. Y. Professor Stevens was born in Granville, Ohio, February 5, 1839. He graduated from Denison University, at Granville, in 1862, and pursued further studies in Harvard University, the Newton Theological Institution, Rochester Theological Seminary, the University of Leipzig, and the University of Berlin. He was successively tutor and professor of the Greek language at Granville, whence he was called in 1877 to the professorship at Rochester which he occupied till his death. While professor of Greek at Granville he published an edition of the Orations of Lysias and, within the time of his Rochester professorship, a Commentary on the Epistles to the Thessalonians, and, in association with a former pupil, A Harmony of the Gospels for Historical Study. In 1883 he spent some months in travel and study in Palestine. By his fairness of mind, his exact scholarship, his breadth of sympathy with all good things, his skill and patience as a teacher, and his eminent Christian character he endeared himself to the successive generations of his students, and to those who had the privilege of association with him as colleague and friend. Professor Stevens had been associated with this Journal as co-operating editor since 1908. THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY Volume XIV JANUARY, 1910 Number 1 THE RELIGIOUS FUNCTION OF PUBLIC WORSHIP PRESIDENT WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE, D.D. LL.D. A wave of social consciousness is now sweeping over our land, and at the same time there is obviously a wave of recession from public worship. The tide of corporate endeavor is at the full, but the tide of corporate devotion mysteriously ebbs. Just when men are getting together as never before in congresses, conventions, federations, to consider every phase of educational and altruistic endeavor, just when women are meeting constantly in clubs and associations for study, for philanthropy, for civic betterment, precisely this is the time when both men and women show an increasing disinclination to assemble for the purpose of public worship. This disinclination exists not alone among the irreligious or immoral, it exists most obviously among the devout and the thoughtful-it exists among the readers of this Journal. Whatever the causes of this paradoxical situation, it is obvious that our ordinary public worship fails to meet the vital needs of the people. While the function of worship in the Middle Ages filled the people with an ecstasy of adoration, worship frequently seems to the modern man either a superfluity-“ the touching of one's cap to the commanding general before the soldier goes into battle" or a positive hindrance, the substitution of empty surviving forms in place of noble ethical passion and effective humanitarian endeavor. "The feeling," says Sir Oliver Lodge, "with which some go away from an average place of worship is too often a feeling of irritation and regret for wasted time." There is clearly I need of study of the psychology of worship. What is the object o worship, and what is necessary in order to attain that object? The word "worship"-if we may drop for a moment into the ofter deceptive region of etymology—has passed through various meanings Primarily of course it signified a state of worth. Next it came to mean an appreciation of worth, a sense of value, the state of emotion arising in one who beholds a worthful person. Then it came t mean the outward expression of such appreciation in words of esteen or honor. Then the word came to be set apart for religious uses, an to signify our appreciation of the worth or worthiness of God, ou emotional out-go toward him in praise and prayer. Finally, a the hardening and specializing process has continued, the word ha grown into a more technical meaning. Today it is applied to certai public acts performed by a religious assembly in consecrated build ings, acts having the order and sequence and symbolism of ritua and designed to express our collective appreciation of the worth fulness of God. A single passage in the Authorized Version shows us the wor "worship" in this process of transition. The guest invited to feast has sat down in the lowest place. Soon he is bidden to tal a higher place: "then shall thou have worship in the presence them that sit at meat with thee" (Luke 14:10). Evidently th means that the guest should win appreciation and esteem, and al should receive the outer marks of such esteem (R. V.: "glory") words of commendation or gestures of approval on the part of t assembled company. We, then, publicly worship God when vividly feel his greatness and goodness, and join with others in so collective expression of his majesty and moral value. The paradoxic situation of the church today is that never before was there so de a sense of moral values as now, never so great desire for collecti action, and yet never before so little inclination to join in expressi collective values in the ordered acts of public worship. The psychology of the crowd has been widely studied in rece years, and Le Bon's classical work has been the basis of much inves gation. The general laws observed in the behavior of crowds a the same whether the object of the crowd is political or social religious. The physical contiguity of men is merely the first step the formation of a "crowd" or a "congregation." We bring bodies together in a building only that we may then fuse minds and hearts in a spiritual unity. We ring bells or publish notices or take other means of calling an assembly, merely in order that after physical proximity is secured, we may more easily gather up the many desires in one collective aspiration, and weld the multitude of wills into a collective and dominating will. A true congregation is vastly more than an aggregation. The assembling of a multitude is useless if the individual units are to remain in isolated consciousness-like the clocks in a jewelers' window, each ticking busily and noisily regardless of the rest. A true assembly is rather like the electric clocks installed in a modern office building, each dial regulated constantly by the central clock on the first floor. The great question about any assembly is: Do these various intelligences unite in one great insight? Do these many wills fuse in yielding to any superior will? Do these human souls, full of various jangling desires and wandering impulses, melt into any one great desire, and throb with one great purpose? We know how the Crusades swept men as by a whirlwind into a wholly new realm of sacrifice, and the cry, "God wills it," burst from 10,000 throats at once. We know how the religious revival has fused multitudes into a unitary consciousness where individual pain and sorrow were quite forgotten. But the same phenomenon in lesser measure appears in every service of worship, unless the service is a failure as it frequently is. Merely to get men inside a church is useless. To seat them "by hundreds and by fifties" means nothing in itself. are present, but how many are united and fused in a true "crowd," with that escape from individual limitations, that immense receptivity, and that enormous power which a crowd may always develop. The question is not how many The characteristics of a crowd are: first, the partial submergence of the single consciousness in some greater consciousness; next, the obvious contagion of ideas and emotions; and last, the peculiar susceptibility of the assembly to suggestion from without. All these phenomena may well be studied in the narrative of Pentecost, in the ife of Francis of Assisi, and in the lives of Whitefield and Wesley and Finney. Such phenomena may be found in the experience of Beecher facing the mob at Liverpool and triumphing over mob-suspicion |