“Spiritual worship is performed with a unitedness of heart. The heart is not only now and then with God, but ‘united to fear’ or worship ‘His name,’ (Psalm 86:11).
A spiritual duty must have the engagement of the Spirit, and the thoughts tied up to the spiritual object. The union of all the parts of the heart together with the body is the life of the body, and the moral union of our hearts is the life of any duty.
A heart quickly flitting from God makes not God his treasure; he slights the worship, and therein affronts the object of worship.
All our thoughts ought to be ravished with God, bound up in Him as in a bundle of life.
But when we start from Him to gaze after every feather, and run after every bubble, we disown a full and affecting excellency, and a satisfying sweetness in Him.”
–Stephen Charnock, “On Spiritual Worship,” in The Existence and Attributes of God, in The Works of Stephen Charnock, Vol. 1 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1681/2010), 1: 301.
