§ 123. The Worship of God in Spirit and in Truth.

Christ thus showed that the worship at Jerusalem was only preferred in view of the salvation that was to come forth there, and that the superiority would cease at the time of its coming forth. He had, then, to describe that higher era before which the question in dispute between Jews and Samaritans would wholly cease: “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him: God is Spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” To the worship of God as previously conceived—the sensuous, external worship, confined to special times and a fixed place—Christ opposes a worship limited by neither, but proceeding from the Spirit, and embracing the whole being. The true worship of God, as Spirit, can only spring from Divine affinities in the Spirit.

And such worship can only be “Worship in the Truth;” the two are inseparable; the Truth must be taken up into the life of the Spirit before it can utter spiritual worship—Truth, the Divine element of life, the link that binds the world of spirits to God, their original. As worship in spirit is opposed to that which is confined wholly, or chiefly, to isolated outward acts, so worship in the Truth is opposed to that which 183adheres to sensuous types and images that only veil the truth, And this true spiritual worship can only flow from those who are in communion of life with God, as Father.

Christ used the words, “the time cometh, and is now,” because the true, spiritual worship was realized, in its perfection, in himself; and because he had planted seeds in the hearts of his disciples, from which it was to develope itself in them, and through them m all mankind.