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The Meaning of Worship
By Horace Holley
The purpose of the Bahá’í House of Worship
[Page 2]
Copyright 1953
By the National Spiritual Assembly of the
Bahá’ís of the United States
Printed in the United States
BAHA’I PUBLISHING COMMITTEE
110 Linden Avenue
Wilmette, Illinois
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The Meaning Of Worship
By HORACE HOLLEY
The act or worship is the supreme achievement of man in this world. All noble deeds, all useful deeds, proceed from this act. For by worship is meant the attainment of that true humility which recognizes a higher Power and submits the soul to its pure influence.
It is through worship that men release their spiritual qualities and become organically unified beings. Through worship men rise to awareness of their divinely created nature, grow conscious of the purpose of their existence and attain to a new life in a Kingdom beyond space and time.
The term “worship” has however been applied to many different attitudes and aims.
Among primitive and childish peoples worship can be appeal for help in meeting an entirely personal need. They pray for health and strength, for material benefits, for good fortune in their affairs. In this condition God is the supplier of personal wants. What God may will for them or expect from them is unknown and ignored. Such personal supplication can be entirely sincere, but it subjects the higher Will to the lower, the Creator to the created, and measures the Ocean by the cup. God and Nature are perceived as two parents, and what one parent withholds the other is implored to bestow.
The tribal concept of God as its own exclusive Father and
Protector has inevitably conditioned public worship. Public
worship through the ages has been associated with the particular
and exclusive conception of God evolved within a
people by its own dominant religion or by its contending
faiths. It has assumed that the community or group is a larger
social personality of unique value, and therefore the divine
response to worship would be directed to the benefit of this [Page 4]
social personality through its own traditional channels of
culture and understanding. Public worship has recognized
the existence of God, but a God primarily concerned with the
welfare of that group, a welfare which the group itself has
defined.
In times of general distress the divisions between adjoining groups may be weakened or temporarily broken down. In anguish the people feel a mutual dependence and at least a temporary bond. The solution of their common problem, the alleviation of their general woe, eventually restore the influence of those institutions primarily concerned with the maintenance of boundaries and divisions. The God of humanity has been only occasionally glimpsed through the clamor of an interminable struggle for existence.
The essence of worship, personal or public, is a humility so profound that prayer and supplication carry no sense of special privilege but rather a willingness to know and to obey the divine Will.
Not until the soul of man becomes imbued with the emanations of the Holy Spirit can it soar above self and enter a purer world where God is supreme. That is why, wherever the Holy Spirit finds entrance into human souls, they attain an identity of being and of destiny, even though as personalities they stand apart by reason of their race, their class, their nation or their creed. That is why, when the Holy Spirit has not found entrance, the groups of worshipers, if we could observe them, would be seen to pray for and expect incompatible and irreconcilable responses from the one Creator of humankind.
What confers humility? Under what condition does the Holy Spirit enter the heart and imbue it with new life and light?
Conceptions of God which groups formulate by the operation
of human powers—these are not God the Creator, the[Page 5]
Lord, but images projected from within upon the screen of
conscious self-awareness. Their power to impress individuals
derives from the power of the institution which sponsors the
concept and from the opposition of other concepts evolved by
competitive groups. In reality there is no real distinction between
worship of an image fashioned by hands and worship
of an idea wrought by the mind. It is not within human power
to capture and contain the Omniscient, the Omnipotent God.
Mass illusions may persist for centuries, but all man-centered
psychic indoctrination comes to an appointed end.
For God is not comprehended. In His infinite mercy and for His eternal purpose He reveals Himself to man. The action is from the higher Power.
Religion begins, and worship is inspired, when the Prophet sent from God is recognized, revered and obeyed by human beings. Through Him they are offered the grace of God. He creates the spiritual Kingdom which is the home of the souls of men.
This supreme mystery of existence has been made clear in the Bahá’í Sacred Writings. “Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth therein, (God), through the direct operation of His unconstrained and sovereign Will, chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity to know Him and to love Him—a capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of creation. . . .
“These energies with which the Day-Star of Divine bounty
and Source of heavenly guidance hath endowed the reality of
man lie, however, latent within him, even as the flame is
hidden within the candle and the rays of light are potentially
present in the lamp. The radiance of these energies may be
obscured by worldly desires even as the light of the sun can
be concealed beneath the dust and dross which cover the
mirror. Neither the candle nor the lamp can be lighted
through their own unaided efforts, nor can it ever be possible[Page 6]
for the mirror to free itself from its dross. It is clear and evident
that until a fire is kindled the lamp will never be ignited,
and unless the dross is blotted out from the face of the mirror
it can never represent the image of the sun nor reflect its light
and glory.”
“He who is everlastingly hidden from the eyes of men can never be known except through His Manifestation. . . .
“As a token of His mercy . . . and ‘as a proof of His loving-kindness, He hath manifested unto men the Day-Stars of‘ His divine guidance, the Symbols of His divine unity, and hath ordained the knowledge of these sanctified Beings to be identical with the knowledge of His own Self. Whoso recognizeth them hath recognized God. . . . Every one of them is the Way of God that connecteth this world with the realms above, and the Standard of His Truth unto every one in the kingdoms of earth and heaven. They are the Manifestations of God amidst men, the evidences of His Truth, and the signs of His glory."
Human history itself is the arena in which this mighty drama, the intervention of God in the life of man, has been visibly and publicly played.
Though we have not seen the whole design, but only portions of it, the historic evidence is complete and irrefutable that faith is inspired in men from a higher Power, that faith is born at times of most complete moral and social crisis, and that the foundation of human civilization is a revealed religion. Reborn from the life of nature to the life of the spirit, the followers of the Prophet have demonstrated the power of faith to establish a new society upon the ruins of an order fallen into decay.
Though a decadent society confers its powers, its authorities and its forms of prestige upon worldly leaders committed to the maintenance of tradition, it has never been able to prevent the ultimate victory of the new and higher vision of the purpose of human existence.
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The condition of humility, in which human personality
receives spiritual reinforcement, exercises decisive influence
in this world. No power nor combination of powers compares
to its effect. Its operation created a new society inspired by
Moses, a new society inspired by Christ, and a new society
inspired by Muhammad.
As this humility lessens, the capacity for civilization becomes weakened. Eventually the condition of crisis returns, and the cycle of the dispensation has run its course.
The experience, however, is not repetition but a progressive evolution in man's being and in his social order. The attitude that the later Prophet founds a religion essentially different to and in opposition with the former religion has been the source of all human division, and the ultimate cause of strife.
The principle of progressive revelation as expounded in the Bahá’í teachings proceeds from the unity of the Prophets in their mission and purpose. “Beware, O believers in the Unity of God, lest ye be tempted to make any distinction between any of the Manifestations of His Cause, or to discriminate against the signs that have accompanied their Revelation. This indeed is the true meaning of Divine Unity. . . . Whoso maketh the slightest possible difference between their persons, their words, their messages, their acts and manners, hath indeed disbelieved in God, hath repudiated His signs, and betrayed the Cause of His Messengers.”
These are strong words. They are words which could not be used in any previous age. During the era of isolation cultures developed separately. Men lived in localized communities which gave a particular stamp to moral and religious truths. Humanity did not inhabit one earth and one world, but races and peoples dwelt each in its own area and found its own way to survive. Differences of language, of custom, of color made each people alien to the others.
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The teachings of Bahá’u’lláh are strong words because a
mighty power is needed to open our eyes to the sudden and
unexpected destruction of all the conditions which made for
separateness and division in the past. Religion today must be
spiritual preparation for life in a unified, an interdependent
world. It is too late to appeal to a partisan, tribal God. i
The Bahá’í Temple was conceived and has been constructed for worship of a Supreme Being independent of our notions of race, nation, class or creed— the Deity progressively revealed, the Lord of human destiny. That is why its services of worship offer selections from the various Sacred Writings and not from sectarian literature. Nothing is permitted which might obscure the universality of Divine Revelation. Until we become humble for the sake of the God of humanity we cannot accept nor deal with our fellow men in the spirit of unity, justice and truth.
The real crisis of our age is here: that people substitute political and economic formulas for divine laws, and deal with competitive social organizations rather than with mankind.
True worship leads to the discovery of the spiritual self and its dependence upon the grace of God. True worship leads to the discovery of mankind. Men who unite on the level of worship can and must unite in the realms of feeling, thought and action.
To foster and cherish in human hearts the passion for worship of the common Father who has revealed His will and purpose for humanity in every age; to strengthen the resolve that peace and justice can be established on earth as in heaven -— this is why, in the heart of the American continent a majestic "edifice has been built by the followers of Bahá’u’lláh, a House of Worship dedicated to the Glory of God.
Address delivered at
Bahá’í Centenary Public Meeting
New Trier High School, Winnefka. Illinois May I, 1953