From “Public Worship – Considered & Enforced” by Joseph Kinghorn:
“The public worship of God has a great tendency to keep up in our minds, a sense of his character and of our situation.
Every part of it suggests that God is great and that we should be lowly before him; that he is holy, but that we are full of sin and imperfection; that he is the great fountain of all good and that we are dependent on him for the blessings of providence and the more important blessings of grace. At all times these things are acknowledged. They are the first principles of true religion. From which of them can we withhold our assent? Which of them ought we not daily to feel and acknowledge?
“How often has even the presence of our fellow Christians impressed us with a sense of God’s greatness and condescension and of our own unworthiness in his sight? When we have recollected that our adorations were in company with those of others, who perhaps bowed at the divine throne with a deeper humility—that our praises were joined with those of others, who perhaps felt more gratitude than we—that our petitions for mercies were the same as those of others, who might pray with more earnestness or more faith than ourselves—that God knows every character and lets not even a sigh escape his notice, and that we altogether—the largest assembly of worshippers that could be found either in earth or heaven—the whole universe itself and all therein are nothing before him – how much have these thoughts tended to fill our minds with a sense of his glory!”
