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CHRISTIAN WORSHIP.

A DISCOURSE

DELIVERED AT THE

XtbiuitM o! fyt Unitarian Cjmrrjj,

IN WHEELING, VA.

ON THE EVENING OF THE 15 MAY, 1852,

BY

REV. GEORGE W. BURNAP, D. D.
Pastor of the First Independent Church x>f Baltimore!

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Baltimore:
PRINTED BY JOHN D. TOY.

1852.

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CHRISTIAN WORSHIP.

A DISCOURSE

DELIVERED AT THE

JeMtafirm uf fyi Unitarian Cfmrrfr,

IN WHEELING, VA.

ON THE EVENING OF THE 15 MAY, 1852,

REV. GEORGE W. BURNAP, p. D.
Pastor of the First Independent Church of Baltimore.

BALTIMORE:
PRINTED BY, JOHN D. TOY.
1852.

CHRISTIAN WORSHIP.

John xvi. 23, 24. — And in that day ye shall ask me nothing.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the
Father in my name, he will give it you.
We are assembled to dedicate this house to the
purposes of Christian Worship. To those by whose
zeal, enterprise and self-sacrifice it has been erected,
I offer my heartfelt congratulations. I can appreciate
the deep emotion with which you unite in the ser
vices of this evening. It celebrates the consummation
of a long cherished hope. It reduces to sober cer
tainty the satisfaction of one of the deepest wants of
the human soul, to have a house of prayer, a place
where we may worship God according to the dictates
of our own consciences, with none to molest or make
us afraid.
Worship is a universal necessity. The Pagan feels
it, when he goes into the temple of his idols and
bows down before a stock or a stone. The Savage
feels it, when he glides along the dark waters under
some lofty precipice, and feels his heart bowed by
the mysterious presence of the unknown God. The
Christian feels it, when he advances beyond the
farthest wave of population and begins a settlement
in the wilderness, and almost before he has hewn out

a habitation for himself, he begins to build a house for
God. David felt it, when God had given him rest on
every side and crowned his reign with large pros
perity; and he reflected that while he was surrounded
with splendor and luxury, the sacred ark and God's
holy altar, rested beneath the frail covering of a tent.
In the plenitude of his zeal, "he sware unto the
Lord, and vowed unto the mighty God of Jacob.
Surely I will not come unto the tabernacle of my
house, nor go up into my bed, I will not give sleep
to my eyes, nor slumber to my eyelids, until I find out
a place for the Lord, a habitation for the mighty God
of Jacob."
We all need a place where we may come, and in
silence and seclusion lift up our hearts to God. We
feel that we are made for something better than mere
worldliness and perpetual toil. We have an instinc
tive conviction that there is a Father of our spirits, as
well as a Former of our bodies. We would testify
by some outward act, that we are not unawed by that
Majesty which sits enthroned amid the splendors of
the universe, that we are not unobservant of that
Wisdom which guides the changes of this stupendous
world aright, — that our hearts are not untouched by
that Benignity, which malies all the riches of creation
the heritage of man. We desire sometimes to with
draw from the world, that by meditation and prayer
we may add strength to our faith, that by the inward
eye we may learn to see him who is invisible. There
are times when we would seek sanctuary from the
troubles of this life. They sometimes thicken over
us till they form a cloud so dark, as to shut out the

face of our heavenly Father. The afflictions of life
become a mystery too deep for our solution, until like
the Psalmist, we go to the sanctuary of God. There
light breaks in upon our darkened minds; there peace
comes over our troubled spirits, and we learn serenely
to trust to the kindness of that Father, whose chas
tisements we cannot comprehend.
But our spiritual wants are not all satisfied when
we have provided a house of prayer. We need,
likewise, instruction in sacred things. The temple
at Jerusalem, under the old dispensation, was a house
of prayer. As mind became developed, a want was
felt of religious instruction ; and synagogues were
built in every village. In the synagogue Jesus
began his mission as the "Light of the world," as
the teacher of mankind. When the Christian church
was organized, the two objects were combined in the
temples of Christian worship. Devotion and instruc
tion were united, and the successors of the Apostles
are the organ of bearing to heaven the prayers of the
saints and. dispensing the truths of the everlasting
Gospel. Thus all the spiritual wants of the soul are
satisfied, and all is done that can be to keep alive the
fire of piety on the altar of the heart, and to guide
the feet in the path of duty. Men do not judge amiss
when they estimate above all price the privilege of
Christian worship and instruction. They feel that it
is worth almost any sacrifice, and without it, life wants
one of its highest ornaments and richest consolations.
Our care to have a place of worship ceases not
with ourselves. It descends to those who are train
ing up with us, and who are to come after us. The

most powerful aid which the parent receives in edu
cating his children to virtue, piety and usefulness, is
in the weekly services of the sanctuary. Here the
divine doctrine drops as the rain and distils as the
dew, and here the Lord commands his blessing, even
life forever more. It is here in the temples of Chris
tian worship that the sure foundation is laid for pri
vate virtue and public prosperity, for the welfare of
families and the safety of nations. Here souls are
born anew into the kingdom of heaven, begotten by
that incorruptible seed, the word of God, which
liveth and abideth forever.
But there are probably some here present, who
may be disposed to call in question the doings of this
day, who may be disposed to ask us why we have
built this house. Was there not room enough in the
churches already built? Why not worship at the
altars already established? I bespeak your candid
attention, while I attempt in all plainness and sim
plicity to answer these questions.
We have built this church in order to establish in
it what we deem to be Christian worship. It is, as
we think, the worship of the one only living and true
God, in the name of Jesus Christ whom he has sent.
We have established this church because we believe
that there is but one Object of worship, one individual
Being in the universe, to whom it is lawful to pray.
In any other church in this city, we are called upon
to pray to more than one Object of worship. We
sometimes go to such churches. We have a sincere
respect for the piety and devotion we find there.
When they pray, as they do for the most part, to the

one Object of worship, the only living and true God,
we join heartily in their devotions. But when they
pray to the Virgin Mary, or to Christ, or to the Holy
Ghost, we cannot join them, our devotional feelings
are disturbed, our sensibilities are shocked, our edifi^
cation is obstructed.
Our Catholic brethren consider themselves justified
in praying to the Virgin Mary. Nay, they feel them
selves bound to do it. We do not doubt either their
sincerity or their conscientiousness. We do not
doubt even the fervor of their prayers, which they
daily pour out with full hearts to the mother of Christ,
whom they likewise call Jjie mother of God. They
plead for it the authority and the usage of the Catho
lic church for more than a thousand years. Thou
sands and millions of pious hearts had prayed to the
Virgin. Indeed, the custom was universal before the
Reformation. Not only are custom and authority pleaded for this
practice, but reason and sentiment are appealed to in
its defence. It is said, that God is too pure and
exalted a being to be approached by such sinners as
we. It is presumption in us, polluted as we are, to
address ourselves immediately to a holy God. How
can a Being of infinite perfection sympathize with us
in our weakness, our ignorance, our temptations?
But a mother's heart is all tenderness and compassion.
We fly to it with the fullest and most unlimited con
fidence. To all such reasoning we answer, that such wor
ship is plainly forbidden by the sacred Scriptures,
%hich are our supreme law of faith and practice.

8
The first and fundamental commandment of the
Jewish decalogue was, "Thou shalt have no other
gods before me. Thou shalt not bow down thyself
to them nor serve them." Christ recognized and
perpetuated the same fundamental principle in the
new dispensation. "Thou shalt worship the Lord
thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."
There is, and there can be, but one Object of wor
ship in the universe. Worship is founded oh the
nature of the Being or Person worshipped, and his
relations to the being who pays the worship. We
worship God because he is the Creator and Governor
of the universe. There is but one Creator and Gov
ernor of the universe. We worship God because he
is the Former of our bodies and the Father of our
spirits. We worship him because he is omniscient
and omnipresent; because we depend on him every
moment for life and breath and all things. He is able
to do for us any thing that we ask. No other being
possesses these attributes, or sustains these relations,
and therefore, in our judgment, it is not only irreli
gious, but absurd for us to pray to any other being.
W^th these convictions, we are virtually shut ojut of
the Catholic church by the very form of worship
which prevails there. We cannot say in the words
of Christ, "Our Father who art in heaven," and in
the next breath, "Hail Mary, mother of God."
Therefore we build a church in which we may wor
ship the only -living and true God, without any
admixture with the creatures which he has made.
For nearly the same reason, we are excluded from
the worship of the Episcopal church.* In their

printed form, which is used every Sunday, and in
which the whole congregation is supposed to join, we
find such an expression as this: "O God, the Holy
Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, have
mercy upon us miserable sinners." To our minds
such'a form of worship is wholly unauthorized. There
is no such God revealed to us in the Bible as God the
Holy Ghost. There is no such phrase to be found in
the whole compass of divine revelation. The very
language is a human invention, which had no exist
ence till ages after the Scriptures were completed.
"God the Holy Ghost," must be either the same
identical Being who is named in the same prayer as
" God the Father," or he is a different Being. If he
is the same, then it is the worship of the same God
under another name, and of course is a needless repe
tition. If it is another being, then we are expressly
forbidden to worship him by the prohibition, " Thou
shalt not have any other gods before me."
But the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Spirit, was known
to the writers both of the Old Testament and the
New ; yet there is no intimation, either in the Old
Testament or the New, that the Holy Ghost or the
Holy Spirit is an Object of prayer. There is no
recorded instance in the Bible, of any person, Jew or
Christian, worshipping the Holy Ghost. We have
many prayers of the saints of the Mosaic dispensation
recorded in the Bible, but never one instance of
prayer to the Holy Ghost. Christ often prayed, but
never to the Holy Ghost. He gave his disciples a
form of prayer, yet no mention was made in it of the
Holy Ghost. We have no record of any such form
2

10
of devotion until ages after the time of Christ and
his Apostles.
Not only so, we have abundant evidence that the
Holy Ghost is not only not an object of worship, but
not even a person. The Holy Ghost is synonymous
with the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God is
expressly said to bear the same relation to God,
which the spirit of man does to man. Says the
Apostle Paul, " What man knoweth the things of a
man, save the spirit of man which is in him, even so
the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of
God." Such being the case, we hold it to be presumptuous
for any man, or body of men, to draw up or adopt a
form of worship for which no scriptural example or
authority can be alleged. We say with the deepest
sincerity and the profoundest conviction, that it is in
violation of the letter and the spirit of the New Testa
ment, and has the effect to drive away from God's
altars those who wish to adhere to his holy word.
In the same form of prayer, which is intended to
be repeated by the whole congregation, we have the
following petition: "O holy, blessed and glorious
Trinity, three persons, and one God, have mercy
on us miserable sinners." How is it possible for any
human mind to join intelligently in such a petition as
this? To worship a being, he must form some idea
of that being. God has been pleased to reveal him
self to us under human analogies, as a person, in the
same sense that man is a person, as one intelligence,
one consciousness, one will. We know what unity
and personality are, from our own consciousness.

11
Each one of us conscious to himself of being one
person, one mind, 'one intelligence, one will. We
conceive of any other human being as having the
same individuality. We address ourselves to every
human being as possessing this individuality. All
language is constructed with reference to this unity
and individuality. We say, I, thou, he. There could
not be conceived a greater absurdity than to say of
any human being that he is three persons and one
man. God having represented himself as subsisting in
one person, and always speaking of himself as a per
son, all prayer was directed to him, under the light of
revelation as a person, and as one person. The
Psalms contain the devotions of the people of God
for many centuries. They are all addressed to God
as a person, and as one person. We have the form
of dedication, which was used by Solomon in the
consecration of the first temple built on earth for the
worship of the true God. And it commences, "O
Lord God of Israel, there is no God like unto thee,
in heaven above nor on earth beneath." By the use
of the pronoun thee, it is evident that Solomon con
ceived of God as subsisting in one person. So in the
New Testament. In that form of prayer which
Christ has given us, we are taught to say, "Our
Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come, thy will be done." Over and
over again in this short formula are we taught to pray
to God, not only as one being, but as one person, and
we are taught that God subsists in one person.

12
But in the form of worship to which I have
alluded, we are required to say, "O holy, blessed
and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God, have
mercy upon us miserable sinners." Not only is this
formula wholly unjustified by the Scriptures, but the
object of worship which it presents, is wholly incon
ceivable by the human mind. God in one person, we
can conceive of with nearly the same clearness that
we can conceive of man as one person. Indeed, we
have no difficulty, on that score, for we are expressly
told, that God has made man after his own image.
But when we are called upon to worship a Trinity,
three persons and one God, our thoughts are con
founded, our minds are plunged in total darkness.
The very idea is monstrous, and leads the thoughts
into utter confusion. This Trinity itself must be a
person, or we can hold no intercourse with it.
There follows then, the contradiction of worshipping
three persons in one person, or the impossibility of
worshipping one God in three persons. There have
been ages when the occurrence of such prayers as
these in the devotions of the Christian church would
cause no offence, for there were few who had learned
to analyze their own thoughts. Now, however, the
case is different. It is the privilege of this age to
understand what it reads, and the only way in which
any person, who has thought upon the subject, can
join in the prayers of the Episcopal church, is to pass
over in silence and mental reservation that portion of
the devotions addressed to the Trinity, three persons
and one God.

13
The projectors of this church felt themselves con
strained to devote a portion of their substance to this
enterprise, because there was no church in this city
in which, if they joined in the services, they would
not find themselves called upon to pray to Christ, or
to worship him as God. This they felt themselves
forbidden to do by the most emphatic prohibitions.
In the first place, they are forbidden to pray to Christ
by his oum express and explicit commandment. Not
long before he left the world, as if anticipating the
error into which his followers afterwards fell, he cau
tioned them on this very point. Here, if we may
credit all history, was the beginning of idolatry, the
deification of departed men. Men had been deified
and worshipped, although their bodies remained on
earth and their sepulchres were still seen among men.
Jesus was to come back from the tomb and ascend in
a bodily shape in the sight of men to heaven. He
was in some sense to be with his Apostles and his
church forever. He was, in his own words, to
ascend to his Father and their Father, to his God
and their God. And in that high state of exaltation,
were they not to be permitted to address themselves
to him, to pray to him ? O no ! Not one word of
prayer was to be breathed to him forever. " In that
day ye shall ask me nothing. Whatsoever ye shall
ask the Father, in my name, he will give it you."
And no prayer has ever been addressed to Christ
from that day to this, without a plain violation of this
most explicit and peremptory commandment.
Time would fail me to enumerate the various
modes in which ingenious and learned men have

14
attempted to evade or explain away the force of this
categorical prohibition. The most plausible has been
to affirm that the word which is rendered ask, means
to ask questions, to make enquiries. But that sub
terfuge is refuted before the sentence is brought to
a close. For the Saviour proceeds, " Whatsoever ye
shall ask the Father, in my name, he will give it
you." If it were asking questions of which the
Saviour was speaking, then the promise would have
been, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father, in my
name, he will tell you, or reveal to you. But it is,
" he will give it you," showing that it is not informa
tion, but benefits that they were to ask.
That we are right in this interpretation, appears
from what immediately follows. "At that day ye
shall ask in my name, and I say not unto you, that I
will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself
loveth you." The position which Christ here repre
sents himself to occupy, when he should be exalted
to heaven, is not to be an object of prayer, but to be
a suppliant himself, and to intercede, if it were neces
sary, for his disciples, which he had left on earth.
But he assured them, that such intercession would
not be necessary, for God loved them without inter
cession, and would therefore be ready to grant them
their reasonable requests.
Thus you perceive, that Christ first gives the
emphatic prohibition, " Ye shall not pray to me when
I am exalted to heaven," and then gives the reason
for it. " I shall not occupy the position of your God,
but of your intercessor with God. And such inter-

15
cession will not be necessary, for God himself loveth
you." This discourse ends in a prayer, which accumulates
reasons why we should not pray to Christ. In the
first place Christ prays to the Father as the only true
God, and speaks of himself wholly distinct from the
only true God. " And this is life eternal, that they
might know thee, the only true God and Jesus
Christ, whom thou hast sent." Here he carefully
distinguishes himself from the only true God, and he
himself prays to that only true God.
In the course of the same prayer, he denies to
himself those attributes which alone could'constitute
him a proper object of prayer. "And now / am no
more in the world, but these are in the world, and I
come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own
name those whom thou hast given me." Is this the
language of a being omnipresent and omnipotent, as
that being must be, who is a proper object of prayer?
Still stronger is another expression in the same
prayer. "Father, I will that they also whom thou
hast given me, be with me where I am." Does this
confinement to a definite locality, and this request
that his disciples may be with him, and all of course
at the disposal of another, correspond with the attri
butes of a being who is omnipresent, and is to be
addressed in prayer by thousands and thousands at
the same moment?
But this, it may be said, Christ spoke in and of his
human nature. It is confessed on all hands, that it
would be idolatry to worship Christ's human nature.
It is only his divine nature to which we praj.

16
But let us enter a Presbyterian church, and if we
join in the service, what are we called upon to do ?
We are called upon to pray to Christ as one of the
persons of the Trinity. And of what is that person
composed? We are told in the answer to the
twenty-first question of the Shorter Catechism, which
is the recognized standard of faith and worship in
that church, " The only Redeemer of God's elect is
the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of
God, became man, and so was and continueth to be
God and man, in two distinct natures, and one person
forever." Now how is it possible, if the human and divine
natures are so intimately united and go to constitute
the person of Christ, and that person is one of the
persons of the Trinity, to pray to that person without
praying to the human nature ?
That the human nature is made an object of wor
ship, we have abundance of evidence. In the hymns
of Watts, which are extensively used in all the ortho
dox churches, we have a representation of heaven,
scenic it is true, and poetic in its character, but carry
ing out the theological conceptions of the divines of
W estminster. x
" O for a sight, a pleasing sight,
Of our Almighty Father's throne :
There sits our Saviour crowned with light,
Clothed with a body like our own.
"Adoring saints around him stand,
And thrones and powers before him fall ;
The G-od shines gracious through the man,
And sheds sweet glories on them all."

17
How is it possible for the human mind to separate
the One from the other, even in thought, if the God
shines through the man ?
That the distinction is not made, that the man is
not separated from the God, but on the contrary, that
the mind fixes itself on the human relations, acts and
attributes of this composite person,' we have the evi
dence of the Episcopal liturgy. In that the wor
shipper is made to say : " By the mystery of thy
holy incarnation, — by thy holy nativity and circum
cision, — by thy baptism, fasting and temptation, — by
thine agony and bloody sweat, — by thy cross and pas
sion, — by thy precious death and burial, — by thy glori
ous resurrection and ascension, good Lord deliver us."
The circumcision of God ! No sane man can con
ceive such an idea. It must be the human nature
which the worshipper has in his mind, when he
utters such language as this.
When I hear these appalling words in a church, or
read them in a book in the middle of this nineteenth
century, I am overwhelmed with astonishment and
sadness. It sometimes seems to me, that the pagan
perversions of Christianity, which it suffered in pass
ing through the dark ages, had so transformed it, that
it became a positive corruption of the pure and sub
lime Monotheism of Moses and the prophets. What
a falling off from the simple teaching of Jesus Christ !
" God is a spirit, and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth." What a declen
sion from the apostolic doxologies! "Now unto the
king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be
honor and glory forever and ever. Amen." " The
3

18
blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and
Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling
in light to which no man can approach, whom no man
hath seen or can see, to whom be honor and power
everlasting. Amen."
In the place of this unauthorized worship of Christ
as God, we have raised up this church for the wor
ship of God, in the name of Christ. By doing so we
conceive that we conform most scrupulously to the
requisitions of the New Testament and to the com
mands of Christ himself. " In that day ye shall ask
me nothing, but whatsoever ye shall ask the Father,
in my name, he will give it you." By so doing we
avoid the error and the sin of Polytheism, the offer
ing up of petitions to more than one object of wor
ship. We put the proper distinction between the
only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.
We place Christ in the position which is claimed for
him in the New Testament, not as God, but as the
Mediator. "There is one God, and one Mediator
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." We
acknowledge his mediation, the relation he is made
to sustain to God on the one hand, and to man on the
other. We acknowledge our faith in his mission-
We acknowledge that through him, God has made
himself known to us as we never could have known
him in any other way. In his words and works we
see the Father. He comes near to us, and through
Christ, as it were, we hold communication with God.
He is God's incarnate Word. The Father dwelt in
him, as it were a tabernacle. He was one with the
Father, by the unity of agency. He was the shep-

19
herd of God's sheep. None could pluck them out
of his hands, because he acted for God. He was
one with the Father, by the unity of affection and
purpose, not of essence and consciousness, for he.
prayed that his disciples might be one as he and the
Father were.
By him we are thus brought near to God. " He
is the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man
cometh unto the Father but by him." We acknow-.
ledge him as the Ambassador of God's mercy. His
Gospel is the New Covenant of forgiveness, which he
sealed with his blood, in which God stipulates to par
don the sins of the penitent believer.
We acknowledge him as "the Resurrection and
the Life," as the Pledge and Surety of immortality to
man. He has made what was before a dim proba
bility to become to us an assured reality. " He has
abolished death and brought life and immortality to
light through the Gospel," so that we sorrow no lon
ger for the departed as those who mourn without
hope. When we worship God in the name of Christ, we
acknowledge his Lordship, that is his Divine author
ity. " To us there is one God, the Father, and one
Lord, Jesus Christ." He was exalted to that Lord
ship first by Divine endowment. "He whom God
hath sent speaketh the words of God, for God giveth
not the spirit by measure unto him." In the second
place, he is exalted to that Lordship, by the resurrec
tion from the dead. "'God hath made this same
Jesus, whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ."
By raising him from the dead, God gave his sanction

20
to all that he had taught in the name of God. This
is what we understand by the Oriental figure of being
raised by the resurrection to God's right hand. He
was made the representative of his authority. He is
made head over all things to the church. He is
exalted " above principalities and powers, and every
name that is named, not only in this world, but in
that which is to come." This is the lordship "to
which every knee shall bow, and which every tongue
shall confess, to the glory of God the Father."
When we thus honor Christ, we honor God who
sent him, because God commands us to honor him as
the representative of his authority. But were we to
worship Christ as God, we should dishonor God who
sent him, we should in fact dethrone God, treat him
as if he were a nonentity, and substitute the Mediator
in his place.
By thus honoring Christ as the Mediator, and pray
ing in his name, we are separated from the Deists on
the one hand, and the Trinitarians on the other. We
are separated from the Deists, with whom we are
studiously confounded, for they recognize no Media
tor, and believe in no revelation. We are separated
from the Trinitarians, inasmuch as they worship
Christ as God, while we do not.
In thus establishing the worship of God in the
name of Christ, we believe that we express the con
victions of a large and growing portion of the Chris
tian church, now connected with various denomina
tions. The strict doctrine of the Trinity is fast
becoming a dead letter. In this age, it is found, that
it will bear neither exposition nor defence. It is safe

21
only so long as it is made a matter of tradition, and is
handed down from generation to generation, unex
amined, in catechisms, litanies and doxologies. Its
most earnest opponents are often those who have
converted themselves from belief in it by attempt
ing its defence. There is a strong under-current of
learning and culture, which is bearing the human
mind away from this doctrine as a relic of other
times. One hundred years ago, it was common
for theologians to give long dialogues which took
place between the persons of the Trinity before the
creation of the world, and to state the terms of a cov
enant entered into by them as contracting parties for
the future redemption of the elect. Now the dogma,
in the hands of its ablest defenders, has faded out into
three distinctions in the divine nature.
We believe that the time has now come to discard
it altogether from Christian theology, or at least to
build churches in which it shall be omitted from
prayer and hymn, sermon and catechism. The cause
of faith demands it. The time has been when it was
comparatively harmless. It was passed over as a
mystery, to be believed without being understood.
The popular traditionary belief in Christianity was so
strong, that its details were not examined, and faith
was not staggered by mathematical contradictions,
logical inconsistencies, and metaphysical impossibili
ties. Or, if there was here and there an enquirer
who presumed to detect and expose them, there was
sufficient church authority to stigmatize the enquirer
as impious and suppress investigation as profane.

22
But times are now changed. The human mind
has become active. Enquirers have multiplied.
Doubt is now open. Unbelievers have increased till
their name is now legion. They are armed with vast
learning and mental acuteness. The advocates of
Christianity can be successful only by defending what
is defensible, and abandoning every thing that is
unsound. Nothing could benefit the cause of infidelity more
than to fasten upon the Bible the doctrine of a tri-
personal God, one person of which is Son to the
other, and yet as ancient as his Father, the three
persons of which each comprehend the whole of
Deity, no more and no less, and yet are diverse, the
one from the other. One of these persons is a com
pound being himself, being made up of a human soul,
which began to exist about eighteen hundred years
ago, and the Divine essence, which has existed from
all eternity.
The cause of piety demands that the worship of
three persons should be banished from the Christian
church. There can be but one person who sustains
to us the relation of God. Only one person can sus
tain to us the relation of Creator. That person is
denominated in the Scriptures of the Old Testament
Jehovah. The same person is our Preserver and
Benefactor, is every thing to us that God can be.
To him alone are due those sentiments in our hearts^
which are denominated piety. We cannot exercise
any sentiment of piety to Jesus Christ or the Holy
Ghost. The word piety does not apply to our rela-

23
tions to them. We are not commanded in the Scrip
tures to exercise piety towards them.
The word piety does not apply to our relation to
Christ, for the simple reason that he does not sustain
to us the relation of God. We cannot exercise
repentance towards Christ. We are not commanded
to do so. We are to exercise "repentance towards
God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." God is
our lawgiver, and he alone can forgive us. The faith
that we are to cherish towards Christ, is not as God,
the original lawgiver, but as the Sent of God, as his
delegate and representative. We are commanded to
love Christ, not because he is our God, but because
he lived and taught, and suffered and died, to bring
us to God, and God is the Being whom we must ulti
mately thank for what Christ has done for us.
Prayer is the chief means of the increase of piety.
Our hearts are kindled to devotion, when we contem
plate one Infinite and All-perfect Father of the uni
verse, whose wisdom devised and whose power cre
ated this mighty system of things. We conceive of
him as the Father of our spirits, the changeless
source of spiritual being, from which we came and to
which we tend, and we can worship him with the
profoundest gratitude, and look up to him with
unbounded confidence. But we are incapable of
holding intercourse with a tri-personal God. We
cannot even conceive of the possibility of his exist
ence. Our minds are distracted, our faith is con
founded, and devotion itself becomes the source of
mental discord and contradiction, instead of the cause
of tranquility, peace and consolation. We know not

24
what we worship until we worship God as one per
son, one mind, one intelligence, one God and Father
of all.
For these causes, we solemnly dedicate this house
to the worship of the only living and true God, in
the name of Jesus Christ. We acknowledge him as
the only proper Object of religious homage. We
deny that it can be lawfully paid to any other. We
acknowledge him as the God of Abraham, and the
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of the
prophets, the God whom Christ worshipped, and to
whom he taught his followers to pray, to whom he
ascended after his resurrection, and whom he called
his Father, and our Father, his God and our God.
We dedicate it to him, because he is the only
Being and the only Person who sustains the relation
of God to us ; because it is in him we live and move
and have our being. All that we are he has made
us, all that we have he has given us, all that we can
ever hope to receive must come from his infinite ful
ness. We dedicate it to that Being to whom our
Saviour taught us to pray as our Father in heaven,
because we have no assurance that any other being
or person can hear us or answer our prayers, and
because it would be a derogation from his sole Deity
and Infinite Majesty to pray to any other object.
We dedicate it in the name of Jesus Christ,
because we would acknowledge before God and
before the world, our faith in Jesus Christ as the
only Mediator between God and men, as the Mes
siah, the Anointed One, whom God filled with his
wisdom and clothed with his power, and endowed

25
with every attribute which was necessary to consti
tute him the all-sufficient Saviour of the world. We
consecrate this church to the teaching of his most
holy Gospel, as our sufficient rule of faith and prac
tice, hoping that thus " he of God may be made unto
us wisdom, righteousness and sanctification."
On this altar may the fire of true devotion be kin
dled, and never suffered to go out. From this sanc
tuary may the sacrifice of prayer come up acceptably
before God. Here, from pure lips, may that word of
God go forth which never returneth to him void.
Here may there be planted that tree of life whose
leaves are for the healing of the nation. Here may
it be known that the fountain of living water is
opened by the living verdure of true piety which
shall spring up and spread around it. Here, with a
true zeal and holy purpose, may parents consecrate
their children to God. Here, with reverent, penitent
and obedient hearts, may the followers of Christ sur
round the emblems of his dying love, and grow into
his likeness, while they meditate upon his teaching,
his sufferings and his death.
Here may successive generations come up from the
toil and dust of this world to sit with Christ in hea
venly places, and lift their thoughts and aspirations
to the celestial mansions, and as slow revolving years
undermine the foundation of this earthly tabernacle,
fix their hearts and their hopes on that better habita
tion, that house of God not made with hands eternal
in the heavens. Amen.

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