In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of understanding the reason for the gospel and the need for conversion. He states that many people in the world suffer from spiritual amnesia and do not know their purpose in life. The preacher introduces the topic of worship and expresses his belief that this series will be one of his best. He reads from Psalm 45, highlighting the majesty and blessings of the king. The preacher also acknowledges his own uncertainty about the purpose of his life but encourages the audience to seek understanding and meaning in their existence.

On my snowiest, nicest Sunday night of the year, we begin a series which I believe will be probably the best that I have ever given here, comparing myself with myself, not with somebody else but with myself. And I want to read a passage which will be a kind of a general text. It is the 45th Psalm, or at least part of it. Psalm 45. My heart is indicting a good matter. I speak of the things which I have made touching the King. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Then, after that preface, he says, then addressing the King, Thou art fairer than the children of men. Grace is poured forth by thy lips. Therefore God hath blessed thee forever. Gird thy sword upon my thigh, O Most Mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness and righteousness. Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things, and arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies, whereby the people fall unto thee. Then he addresses him as God. He had addressed him as King, now he addresses him as God. Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever. The scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter. Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness. Therefore, God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. All thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cashew out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad. Kings' daughters are among thine honorable women. Upon thy right hand did stand the Queen in gold of Ophir. Hearken, O daughter, and consider and incline thine ear. Forget also thine own people and thy father's house. So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty, for he is thy Lord, worship thou him. Verse 11 will be the verse which I'll sort of lay down as a background. So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty, the desire of God is toward his people, and he is thy Lord. Therefore, worship thou him. Now, I am down in front of that big building, I think they call it City Hall, which has some benches out in front. I'm waiting on a man there, and he and I are going to a meeting. As I sit quietly waiting and looking at the people go by, an interesting-looking young man comes over and occupies the bench alongside of me. I notice that he is friendly, but a little puzzled. He looks at me inquiringly, as if he were wanting to address me. I smile, and he smiles back, and I say to him, Do we know each other? No, he said, I think not. Well, is there anything I could do for you? Well, maybe, he said, I don't know really. I seem to be in a kind of a jam. I said, well, I'll say, what's the trouble? Well, he said, something happened. He said, I dimly remember that it seemed like several days ago I tripped and fell somewhere here in the city, and I bumped my head, and it's terribly sore still. And an odd thing now is, I can't remember anything beyond that bump. When I woke up, I'd been robbed, my wallet was gone, my papers, I have nothing to identify me, and I don't know who I am. I think he's teasing me. And I say, now wait, you don't know who you are? What's your name? And he says, you'll think I'm foolish, but I don't know. Where do you live? And he says, now again, you won't believe me, but I don't know where I live. Are you married? He said, I can't remember. Do you have children? Do you have family in the home, any relatives? He said, I probably have, but I can't recall. He said, I know nobody. Well, I say, where are you from? He said, I don't know where I'm from. I must be either Canadian or American or English. He said, I've been thinking hard these two or three days that I'm evidently of that side, but I don't know where I'm from. And by that time I'm disturbed. And I say, now wait, why are you in Toronto? Well, he says, that's the thing. I don't know why I'm here in the city. What do you do? And he says, I don't know what I do. I can't recall. And I have no wallet, no papers, no identification. I only know I'm getting terribly tired. I've been wandering the streets, and you're the friendly looking, and I came over, but I don't know that you can help me. I don't know who I am. I don't know my name. I don't know any of friends that I might have. I simply have a blank. And it dates back to when I took that terrible fall and bumped my head there on the concrete. He said, it's just everything is gone, and I don't know where I came from nor why I'm here. And I said, now try to think a little bit. Do you live in Toronto? Are you from Montreal, Vancouver, maybe across the border, maybe you're from Chicago, New York? He said, I wish I could tell you, but I simply don't know. It's headache, he said. I can't think. I can't recall a thing. I can remember everything back to that, but I can't remember anything beyond it. Now, that man has what is called amnesia. That can affect you mildly, or that can affect you totally, so that you do not know anything at all about your past, or it'll affect you only in certain areas. That is a reality. That's not nonsense or foolishness. That happens, and people do find themselves. They wake up out of a shock and find themselves completely without memory. They don't know where they came from, or who they are, or what their name is. And if their friend walks up, they don't know him. Let's go a little further with our story. About the time I'm about to give the fellow up, a distinguished-looking gentleman comes down the sidewalk. He has a little goatee, and his collar turned about, gait's ajar, collar on. And he turns idly and looks toward the bench where we sit, and suddenly lets out a delighted yell, and rushes over, calls my newfound friend by his name, grabs hold of him, shakes his hand, and says, Where have you been? Well, he said, Pardon me, sir, but you evidently know me, but I don't know you. What? You don't know me? Why, man, we came here three days ago. Don't you know we're the Philharmonic Orchestra? I'm the leader, and you're the violinist, and we were to do several violin concertos, or concerti, if you like the Italian back there, two days, two nights ago. And you didn't show up, and I didn't know you weren't there. And when the time came for the violin to come in, no violin, it was humiliating to me. We've been searching the city for you. So he says, That's who I am, and that's why I'm in Toronto. I'm here at the, call it down here, the King Center, and we're here to give concerts, yes. And I'm the featured violin soloist, and we're doing Bach and Beethoven, and I didn't know it. No, you didn't know it, evidently, but that's come on with me. Well, he said, I thank you, but I can't take your word for it. I don't know whether I can play a violin or not. I don't know you, and I don't know what city this is. I don't know anything. Well, now that sounds rather silly, but that's going on all the time. The police are having this kind of trouble, and doctors and psychiatrists are working with this all the time. Gets into the newspaper sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. No more did I make up that story, which is not a made-up story, really, it could happen and does. Because I wanted to tell you something, that there was a man one time by the name of Adam, and he had a fall, and he got a terrible bump, and his wife had a fall too, and she got a terrible bump. And when they shook the fog out of their eyes and looked at each other, he didn't know where he was, nor where he'd come from, and she didn't know who she was, nor where she'd come from. And they didn't know why they were here, they didn't know what they were here for, and they didn't know their own names, they didn't know their relatives, if they had any. They didn't know the purpose for their existence. They simply tried to shake the fog out, but it wouldn't shake. They didn't know why they were born, and they didn't know where they were precisely, and they didn't know why they were here, and they didn't know what they were born to do. So they took hand in hand, as Milton said, and through the valley made their solitary way. Now that, my brothers and sisters, is exactly where we are. That's where the city of Toronto is tonight, and that is where the North American continent is tonight. That's where the Asiatics and the Negroes and the Arabs and the Anglo-Saxons and the Germans and the English, that's where we are, from pole to pole and from river to the end of the earth. We have a strange amnesia. We got a bump, and now we don't know why we were created, we don't know why we're here. And I say to my imaginary friend, Can I do anything for you? He said, I'm hungry and I'm cold and I need to sleep. I need three things. I need food, I need a warm shelter, and I need a bed to sleep in. I need these three things. But I say to him, these are your immediate appetites, immediate needs. But what is your big, important need? Until his friend walked up, the concert director, he didn't know why he was in the city. He didn't know what he had come to do. And that's exactly where we find the human race. We're here, and outside of our immediate appetites, we don't know why we're here. You say to the young fellow, he's just out of high school or maybe just out of college, and you say, Good morning, Bob, good morning. And you sit him down and get to talking with him. And why are you here, Bob? Well, a certain appetite, a certain immediate appetite. I want to get married, I'd like to make money, and I'd like to travel. Certain immediate appetites, I want to fulfill them, and so I'm going to live for the fulfillment of these immediate appetites. But listen, Bob, those are short-sighted things. You'll do them and then you'll get old and die, but what's the big overriding purpose of your life? And he says, I don't know whether I have any. But wait a minute, now, you're telling me you don't know why you were born? He laughs embarrassedly and says, No, I don't know why I was born. I only know that I came to myself and found I was, and I went to school and I am here, but I have no memory of any past and I have no expectation of any future. I don't know why I'm here. I don't know what I was born for. My brothers and sisters, let me tell you, that's what's the matter with the world today everywhere, anywhere from the universities to the coal mines. We don't know why we're here. We have spiritual amnesia. We don't know what our purpose in life is. We don't know why we were created at all. We don't know what we were sent to do. We don't know why we exist. But we try to get by somehow. We travel, we play golf, we drive cars, we eat, we sleep, we rest, we look at beautiful things, and they're all short-sighted. They're all imperfect and contingent. They don't lead all the way out. No man can stand and say, I stand here knowing why I was born. I stand here knowing what I'm here for. I stand here and look up and know why I came into the world and what I've got to do and why God ever made me in the first place. Well, now, my brothers and sisters, I want to tell you that the Bible is the book that tells us. It tells us that that bump we got that gave us amnesia was called the fall of man. It tells us that when God created us, he made us for a purpose, and we were created for a purpose. You know, the Shorter Catechism asks the question, What is the chief end of man? And it furnishes the answer. There wouldn't be any answer. If it didn't come from the Bible, furnish the answer. What is the chief end of man? That is, what are you here for, Bob? What's your chief end? Well, what's your purpose for being? And he shakes his head until he's fed the answer out of the book. And the book says to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Worship, that's the chief end of man. Now, that's my thesis for all these coming weeks, and if you don't like that and if that's not interesting at all, then I can't expect you to come and hear me. But if you want to hear this developed on through, then I'd like to have you come and I'd like to have you tell others, because I want to deliver my soul as a prophet of God to the people of Toronto for the next few weeks, and to tell them why they're created and why they're here. Not to the satisfaction of a needed appetite only, but to something bigger and grander and more eternal, and it is that we might worship God and enjoy him forever. Now, you see, that's why we were created. God never does anything without a purpose. God is intelligent because intellect is an attribute of the deity, and everything God does, he does with a purpose. And so he never acts without an intelligent purpose. Nothing in the world is without meaning, even if we don't see the meaning. I confess that I murk a little sometimes, as we all are at these student uprisings. A lot of young fellows and girls, not dry behind their ears yet, decide they know how to run the world better than the older people who have gone through the fire. And so they stage demonstrations. They stage one demonstration that kept Eisenhower out of Japan. They staged another demonstration that overthrew the Korean man, what was named Sigmund Henry. And they are constantly staging demonstrations. What are they demonstrating for? Well, apart from the fact that they are just full of ginger and have to get rid of it, that's the natural part. But as far as any purpose is concerned, they are staging demonstrations because they are mad. They are mad at themselves, they are mad at the world, they are mad at everybody because they don't know why they are here. They suddenly wake up to consciousness and intelligent life and they say, wait a minute, look, look, look at me, what am I here for? Somebody says, why are you here? To get married and bear a family. Oh, very well, but what will they be here for? Well, they'll be here to get married and bear a family. What will they be here for? I demand an answer, why am I here? Nobody knows. And so the students get angry. They say, well, I'm surely not here simply to be cannon fodder. I'm not here simply to be blown up. I'm not here simply to pay taxes. Surely that's not the chief end of man. I am not here just in order that I might eat because my dog eats and the horse over there eats. I'm not here that I might breed the cat breed in the alley. I am not here. These are short range things. There must be something bigger, but they don't know what. And so they get mad and stage demonstrations and utter curses against us older folks who didn't tell them why they were born. But God tells us why we were born. He says, now this is why. I started to say, when I interrupted myself, that one of the most interesting poems that I've ever seen was written by a Mohammedan Sufi back in, oh, sorry, I mentioned it. I don't remember what century it was, but a long time ago, maybe 14th, 15th century. Omar Khayyam was his name, and Fitzgerald translated 101 of his quatrains into English, along with the New Testament and Emerson and Wordsworth. That was my early education. Well, he says in one of these quatrains, into this universe and why not knowing nor whence like water willy-nilly flowing, and out of it like wind along the waist, whither I know not, whither willy-nilly going. He doesn't know where he came from, he's like the wind that blows, he's like the water that flows, and he doesn't know where he's going. Then he says that he's in the universe and doesn't know why. And that great sense of sadness is over all that long poem. I don't recommend you bother reading it, there's lots of other finer things. But at least I liked it a long time ago, and it saddened me because this great mathematician, this great astronomer, this great Sufi, with his tremendous poetic soul, mourned the fact that he didn't know why he was born, didn't know why he had come into the world. But I could have said to him, now wait a minute, my heart's indicting a good matter, I speak of the things touching the King. I know why I came into the world, hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear. So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty, for he is thy Lord, and worship thou him. And I could have taken him further over in the psalms, where the scripture says, O come and let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. I could have gone on and said to him, O sing unto Jehovah a new song, sing unto the Lord all the earth, sing unto the Lord, bless his name, show forth his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all the people, for Jehovah is great and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. Honor and majesty are before him, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Give unto the Lord the glory, do unto his name, bring an offering, and come unto his courts. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, fear thou before him all the earth. Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad, and the sea roar in the fulness thereof. Let the fields be joyful, and the woods rejoice before the Lord, for he cometh to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth. There is a call to worship, as they say in some churches. It is the sound of the voice of worship. Here is why we were born. We were born in order that we might forever worship God, that we might enjoy him forever, that we might glorify him forever, and that we might, above all creatures, know and admire and love and adore the Triune God. Are you sorry you were born, or are you glad? Are you sorry you are a Christian, or are you glad? If you are not a Christian, would you like to be a Christian? For this is the purpose of redemption, not to save us from hell only, that's secondary. But it is that we might be saved unto the worship of God. We read that they worship God day and night in the temple, and they are never silent, saying, Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory. If what I have said up to now is true, then I want you to compare this with the average run-of-the-mind church, even evangelical church. Where there seems to be a great love of everything but this. This, my brother, was why you were born. But it says, what is a revival? And the answer is, a revival is a sudden intensification of the worship of God. That's a revival. But what is it when the Holy Ghost came at Pentecost? Why did they, when the Spirit came at Pentecost, break out into ecstatic language? It was because they were worshiping for the first time rightly. Worship leaped out of their hearts, and God calls his people to be worshipers of the Most High God. Now, I say that nothing in the world is without a meaning. Science looks after meanings and seeks to discover the meaning of things. Their relation to each other and their interaction with each other and their effect upon each other, that's I have nothing against science, as I've said before. I'm not up here to ignorantly shout down my nose at scientists. Let them play with their toys and I'll take the benefit of it while I'm here. I'll take anything that comes along, thank God for it. But their relation deals only with short-term affairs. You have a cure for heart disease, and I wish they would get a cure for heart disease. I've lost so many good friends by sudden heart attacks. I don't want that. I don't like to have my friends suddenly topple over. Maybe they may be in another state and they don't know where I am, and they're buried when I come back home. I've had that happen. I don't want that to happen. I wish we could get a cure for that business. I don't like cancer either. My father died of cancer of the cheek, and I don't like cancer. I don't like polio. I've seen some dear people crippled and twisted with that terrible polio. I don't like those things, and I'm glad that science is making some headway toward doing something against them. And I believe they are, and if we live and the Lord carries for a few more decades, I believe the time will be when nobody will be dying of heart attacks. When I was a kid back on the farm in the state of Pennsylvania a few years ago, we used to have epidemics, or what we call smallpox. I don't know the technical doctor name for it, but that's what we called it. And it would go through the neighborhood and it would just kill people right and left. And the ones it didn't kill, it would pock. Their faces would get pocked, and afterward they were always just pocked like Swiss cheese, only finer pocks. And all over they had them. And if he made it, and if he lived, he would pock for the rest of his life. Now, you never hear of it anymore. You had diphtheria. My wife had diphtheria and almost died. Her mother dragged her through it the best she could. But diphtheria used to pounce down on the little kid, and it would choke to death in his mother's arms, bloom in the face, and die for want of oxygen with a choked-up throat. They called that diphtheria, a terrible thing. No diphtheria anymore. I suppose it breaks out here, but it isn't long until it's gone. Nobody dies of it much. They cured it, and so I'm glad for anything they can do. But listen to me now. If you save a man when he's a baby from diphtheria, save him when he gets in his teens from smallpox, save him when he's in his 20s from polio, save him when he's in his 50s from a heart attack, and keep him right on until he's 90, and he still doesn't know why he's here, what has he gained? What's it all about? If he doesn't know why he's here and doesn't know his purpose, all you're doing is simply perpetuating the life of a mud turtle, that's all. He's just a turtle with two legs in place of four and no shell and no tail, but he's still nothing beyond a common mud turtle, because he doesn't know what it's all about. You say to him, but what are you living for? I'm just living because it's the best alternative to dying that I can think of. But what else now? What are you around for? I don't know if I am around. Oh, I've reared a family, Ma and I. We've reared a family. We had nine children and we've got 37 grandchildren now, and I say to him, well, what are they here for? And he says, I don't know, but I do know they're not going to die of smallpox, they're not going to die of diphtheria, and the probabilities are very strong they won't get polio and will die heart attack. And I say, now that's wonderful and good and that'll keep you around until you'll be cutter up the ground, nobody will know what to do with you, and your friends will all be dead, and the lips that you have pressed in their bloom will long ago, and the names will be long ago, be growing graven on the tomb, and you'll be a lonely old man under the sky. But what are you, where are you going, why are you here? And he says, I don't know why I'm here and I don't know where I'm going. When Roosevelt was financing everybody and everything except Canada with money, he never asked for any, but they did all around. He was handing it out as if he owned it, and I was paying it, I and a few others, and they told this story about him. They said, Roosevelt is like Columbus. I said, why? They said, Columbus went out not knowing where he was going, when he got there he didn't know where he'd been and where he was, and when he got back he didn't know where he'd been, and he did it all with other people's money. So they said, this is the way Roosevelt operated. And here's the way we do it. We don't know where we are, and we don't know where we've been, and we don't know why we're here, and we don't know where we're going, and we do the whole thing on borrowed time and borrowed money, and borrowed strength and then die. Science can't help you there. Science can keep you alive a while longer so you'll have longer to think it over, but it'll never give you the answer. But you know, there's a kind of people that I associated myself with when I was 17 years old, a kind of people, and they're not scientists, although some of them might be. They're plain people. I like to call them plain people. And they're the Christians. They're the Saints and the Mystics and the Brethren and the people of God, and they've got a simpler and more beautiful view of the world than the scientists have. Their view of the world is this. They say, now wait a minute, maybe we're not as bright as you are, but we know something that you don't know. If I were to walk over here on the campus of Toronto University with everybody there, a doctor of this and that, and I didn't know nearly as much as they knew, if I met one of them out here lost and didn't know where he was, I'd know more than he did on that one thing, wouldn't I? If I met him out here between here and Vineland, where I'm going towards the morning to preach to the men tonight, if I met him and he drove up and spoke to me in a very cultured manner and said, Where am I? I said, You're between Hamilton and Vineland on number so-and-so. Thank you, he said. I could smile to myself and say, I haven't studied in Germany and I haven't got all his degrees, but I knew more than he did about one thing. I knew where he was, and he didn't know. So we Christians say, well, maybe you've got it on us on some things. I've never been able to understand the fourth dimension. I quit even trying it years ago. But I knew something that Einstein didn't know. I know who I am here. I belong to that company of plain people who believe a book called the Bible. That company says, God in the beginning made the heaven and earth and all things that are therein. God in the beginning made man in his own image and blew into him the breath of life and said to man, Now live in my presence and worship me, that is your chief end, and increase and multiply and fill the earth with worshipers, fill the earth with men and women who shall worship me in the beauty of holiness. That's why you're here. Now, maybe I don't know all Einstein knows, but I know that much he didn't know. So I don't walk around with my head down looking sad because somebody has written more books or knows more, has been to school longer, because I do have a little secret. And that secret is, I can answer the question, what is the chief end of man? I can tell you why I was born. I can tell you why I'm here. I can tell you my everlasting duty while the ages rose. It will be to worship God in the beauty of holiness and to enjoy him forever. And these plain people say that God created the flowers to be beautiful so that man might enjoy them. They say that God created the birds to sing, but you know, the scientist wouldn't be caught dead admitting that. Nah, he says, that's nothing to that. God didn't create the birds to sing. You know how a bird sings? It's only the male that sings. And the male sings in order to attract the females so that he can have a nest and some little ones. That's just simply a biological deal. That's all. Okay, well, why couldn't he just squeak or groom or gargle or something? Why did he have to sing like a harp? Well, God made him to sing. If I were a male bird and wanted to attract a female, I could turn handsprings or anything, you know. But why do they sing so beautifully? Because the God who made them is the musician of the universe. He's the composer of the cosmos. And he made and put a harp in their little throats and put some feathers around them and said, now go sing. And they've been singing ever since. The scientist says it isn't so, but my heart tells me it is so, and the Bible declares it so. God made the trees to bear fruit, and the scientist shrugs his shoulders again and says, there you go, you Christians, you're a helpless bunch. The trees bear fruit, not for you. Their bear fruit is the seed, so there'll be more fruit. And I say, now hold on a minute here, now, Professor. Why is it necessary to have a tree bear fruit if there's nothing for the fruit to bless or help or anything? God made the fruit and said, now eat of anything you want, we'll help yourself. And then God made the beasts of the field to clothe mankind. When you catch a sheep and throw him down on his side and shear him, wash his wool and dye it and send it in and make you a nice sweater to keep you warm in the sweet storm, that's why God made the sheep. He made it so you could have it, to have wool, like God made a silkworm, a humble little silkworm, a little Japanese silkworm, if you like. Why did God make that silkworm to feed on mulberry leaves? In order that they might spin their cocoon and then man might unravel it and make silk. I like silk myself. I got a tie from down in Hawthorne, Nevada from an old friend of mine that says, all silk. I don't know, I kind of like them. I'm not exactly what you'd call ten blessed men, but I like them better than to do these synthetic things rolled out of a vat somewhere. This came off a worm's back. But anyhow, God made the worm, and the worm made the web, and the web was unraveled and unraveled back into a tie. So I believe in this. That's so much easier and more delightful to believe what God says about it. The Lord and his prophets and the apostles all say the same thing. God made us to worship him. That's our purpose. A silkworm was made to make silk. A bird was made to sing, and a sheep to bear mint and wool, and everything has its purpose. But God said, I'm making man in my image, and man is to be above all other creatures. Man is to be above the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea. Man is even to be above the angels in heaven, finally. He is to enter my presence, and there, unashamed, he is to worship me and look on my face while the ages roll. That is why man was created, and that's man's chief end. Apart from that, we have no more idea why we're here than that poor man I pictured sitting down here on a bench in front of the city hall. He doesn't know why he was here, and yet he was the chief violinist and could play the great concertos of the music literature of the world, but he didn't know it. He didn't know why he was here. His violin was somewhere gathering dust, and he was walking the streets lost. So it is with the world now. God gave you not a violin but a harp and placed it in your own heart, and when you had that fall, you forgot about it and lost it, and your children and your parents before you and your grandchildren after you, until Jesus Christ finds us and retunes our harp and says to us, Now, here's why you were born. You are the chief violinist of the orchestra of glory, and God made you in order that you might stand up there and charm the listening universe as you sing praises unto Jesus Christ the Lord. Well, that's why we were made in his image. I have said this, and I'm glad I got confirmation on this. My son in California wrote and said that I think I have a book that you'll really like. He said, Did you ever hear of Edward Taylor? I said, No, I never heard of Edward Taylor. Well, he said he was a congregational Puritan preacher who lived in the 15th century and wrote. He was an Englishman who went to the United States when he was 25, and he became a poet equal to Dunn and Herbert. I said, I'd like to see it. He said, Well, the things have been lying buried in Yale University. He brought it up. So I got it and sent it, had it sent from Yale University, big book, $10. I thought, Well, here's one more. I don't like Herbert, and I don't like Vaughn, and I don't like Dunn. Maybe I won't like this fellow. But I opened it up and began to read. Oh, my soul, I would have been warmed and blessed by reading this and praying as I read. For this man sees what the other poets didn't see, this theologian, and his poems are chiefly meditations before communion. He would have communion and he would write himself a long poem before communion, getting ready. And among the other things that he said, this was one of them. He said, O God, thy Godhead has married my manhood and made it thy bride. And he said, I dwell in thee, and thee in me, and we're one. And then he looked at the Father and pointed to Jesus and said, There is thou and I. That awful, awful statement, there is thou and I. Jesus is God and man. He's Godhead and manhood, he's thou and I. It was a Calvinist preacher who said this, if you please. And I'm going to have to take that back. I wrote something in the Alliance-Whitmer that got over into England, and I said that as a rule, Calvinists weren't mystics. And they wrote letters until the editor of the Life of Faith had to stop them. He said, No more of this now. We've had enough. All over England and over into Scotland they were arguing about my saying that there weren't any Calvinists who were mystics. I thought there weren't. But bless my soul, here is this man, Edward Taylor, a Congregationalist preacher, and he's as much a mystic as Madame Guillaume, but as much a theologian as John Knox. And he taught that God made man to worship him. And because we're made in his image, we have more strings on our hearts than anybody else. O, could I speak the matchless worth! O, could I sound the glorious forth that in my Savior shine! I'd soar and touch the heavenly strings, and vie with Gabriel while he sings in notes almost divine. Isaac Watts was an English preacher, and one of the greatest of his kind, as it is today. He wrote a lot of great hymns on the Psalms. He wrote one that went like this, I'll praise my Maker while I have breath, and when my voice is lost in death, praise shall employ my noble powers. My days of praise shall ne'er be past, till life and breath and being last, or immortality endures. Well, John Wesley got a hold of that, and John Wesley said, now that's a great hymn, all right, but it's wrong in one spot and I'm going to change it. Not very many people ever would have the effrontery to change Isaac Watts, but Wesley felt he was capable of it, and I think he was. So when he says, My days of praise shall ne'er be past, while life and breath and being last, Wesley said, No. Don't say, My days of praise shall ne'er be past, while life and breath and being last, because my days of praise are going to continue after and stop breathing. So he said, Let's put it like this. My days of praise shall ne'er be past, while life and thought and being last. You can think after you've stopped breathing, brother, and that's the glory and wonder of it all. We don't come to an end. Our dear sister, Mrs. Perry, they sat and watched her and she stopped breathing quietly, and that was the end. But she didn't stop thinking and she didn't stop praising. Keep that in mind, because when they lower her tomorrow into the hard, cold, frozen ground, there will be nothing down there but an old tabernacle. Life and thought and being are still with God, and she is still able to think. So her days of praise shall not be past, while life and thought and being last. Not life and breath. If you can stop breathing, you know that's not the worst thing that can happen to you, brother. Stop breathing. It will get you out of a lot of trouble, just stop breathing. Moses went up on the mountain, where was it? Pisgah. He just lay down and stopped breathing, he wasn't sick. One of the things sick about him was his eye wasn't dim, he wore no glasses, his strength was just as mighty as it had been before. But God said, I want you, so he went up and laid down and stopped breathing. That's not the worst thing that can happen to you. But I would say if you stop thinking before you stop breathing, you've had it. A lot of people have stopped thinking, or never started, but they're still breathing by instinct. That glorious light, and that glorious home, we have been praising long after we stopped breathing down here. When Wesley was dying, he was an Armenian, you know. When Wesley was dying, he was trying to sing, but his voice was gone, he was 87, I think, or 83 or 87 or something. He traveled around 25,000 miles around the earth on a horseback, and he preached three and four and five times a day, and founded a great church, and the eye was finished. They gathered around his bed and heard him trying to sing, this Armenian. And what do you suppose he was singing? He was singing an old Calvinist song. I'll praise my Maker while I've breathed. That's why I can't get all the things about one side or the other. If Isaac Wright, the Calvinist, could write it, and John Wesley, an Armenian, could sing it, and they could both meet and hug each other in the glory, why should I allow anybody to get me down this side alley into a dark hole and hide in a barrel and say, I don't know which I am, don't bother me, I don't care which I am. I was made to worship God, and I was redeemed that I might worship God, and that's why we're here, my brothers. That's why we invite you to be converted, not that you might have peace of mind, not that you might be a better businessman. You will be a better businessman, and you will have peace of mind, but you were created to worship, and when you fell, you were redeemed for worship. This is it. But we've lost it, as I shall show how we've lost it, why we've lost it, and what kind of worship there is, and the right and the wrong kind, and how to recapture the art of worship. This I'll deal with over the days of Sunday nights ahead. Now, I want you to join me reverently in singing 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. Now, always keep one thing in mind. I am presenting here the reason for the gospel. I'm presenting the reason you ought to get converted if you're not converted. I'm presenting the reason, and if this is not the true background for evangelism, then I don't know my Bible. I'm giving you the reason. I'm telling you why you ought to be a Christian. So if any of you who aren't converted want to be, see the pastor, see me, speak to any elder at the door, anybody you know, come and ask for a prayer, call up and ask for an engagement. But for this Sunday night, I will deal with this transcendent subject, worship. Now, I want you to join us in singing, the fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature. 1, 2, 3.