“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young
child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him.” (Matthew 2:11)
They fell down. They did not sit up, as if nothing great was before them; or on the foolish supposition that the body has no relation to the soul, and that while the soul is cleaving unto the dust before the Majesty of God, there is no reason why the body should not lounge and loll on a chair in a posture of easy, if not of studied, indifference. They fell down and worshipped; the outward act corresponding to, and being dictated by, the inward self-protestation, just as the Hebrew word for adoration implies the prostration of the adoring soul. Say you that this prostration was only oriental? Was it not rather profoundly human, and should we not do well to note it? Ah! brethren, methinks we have much to learn of these Eastern sages; we who, like them, come into the presence of the King of kings, but who, unlike them, think it perhaps proof of a high spirituality to behave before Him as we should not think of behaving in the presence of our earthly superiors. Do we murmur that “God looks not at the bowed head or at the bent knee, but at the heart”? No doubt he does look at the heart; but the question is whether it is possible for the heart to be engaged in worship while the posture of the body suggests irreverent sloth. Burke has shown, what must be apparent to every man of reflection and sense, between the postures of the body and the emotions of the soul there is an intimate correspondence. You cannot, as a matter of physical fact, feel a sinner’s self-abasement before the Sanctity of God, while you stretch yourself out in a chair with your arms crossed, and your eyes gazing listlessly at any object that may meet them. Doubtless the old and the weak may worship without prostrations, to which their bodies are no longer equal. For the young and strong to attempt this is to trifle not merely with the language of Scripture but with the laws of our composite nature. Be sure, brethren, that irreverence is not a note of spirituality. Reverence is the true language of faith, which sees God and adores Him. Irreverence is the symptom of unbelief or indifference. When the soul’s eye is closed to the Magnificence of God, the outward actions of worship are barely endured or contemptuously rejected as though they were lifeless forms.Revd Dr. H. P. Liddon, "The guidance of the Star," sermon preached at St Paul's Cathedral on the First Sunday after the Epiphany, January 8, 1871.
