THE UNION REVIEW.

ART. I.-ENGLISH IGNORANCE OF WORSHIP. WHEN the Conference of Theologians recommended in the recent volume of Essays on Re-Union shall be held, it will be found that a large amount of the misunderstanding between England and Rome has arisen from misconception (principally on our side) of the meaning and nature of the term Worship. It is a word that has been used in a loose and indefinite sense until it popularly even includes the idea of instruction in religion. Most people would think they had "attended public worship" if they had been to hear a sermon, even if it were an University sermon, or an open-air preaching. We talk of the "place of worship" of sects, Quakers and the like, who have no worship at all, and there are probably scarcely half-adozen members of the English Church who do not fancy that praying to God is worshipping Him. Then, when they find that which is their highest service to the Supreme Being, and their most exalted notion of that which is His due, given by foreign Catholics to the Saints, how can they escape from the conviction that the Saints are receiving honour due to God alone, and are placed in a position which He alone can occupy? From this primary misconception of worship the ordinary Englishman sees no difference between the Ora pro nobis, (which he would not hesitate to say to our Lord Himself), and the wildest act of adoration which the foreigner's misconception of the same word has impelled him to address to our Lady. In the Englishman's eyes, it is all idolatry together, and from his point of view, justly so. The fault lies in the degraded and degrading nature of his point of view. His God is practically a man, instead of a God Incarnate. He nominally prays to God the Father, but when he realises to himself the Being that is the object of his worship, he thinks of our Lord, 1868.

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