Christian Worship Is Not a Kind of Educated Magic

     By A. W. Tozer
 

     Which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus,
      and have no confidence in the flesh.     Philippians 3:3
 

       A belief in magic and superstition was thought by the
     late Sir James G. Frazer to be the only truly universal
     faith, being accepted as it is in some form by all the
     peoples of the world.

       The temptation to attribute supernatural powers, or
     at least moral qualities, to inanimate objects is one
     almost impossible to resist.  It is as if the human mind
     wanted to have it so, and I am not sure but it does. Sin
     has done strange things to us!

        Let it be said, then, that true Christian experience is
     direct knowledge of God.  It is intimate fellowship
     between two personalities.  God and the individual
     believer.  The grounds of fellowship are mental, moral
     and spiritual, and these are precisely what material
     objects do not and cannot possess.

        The union of the human soul with God in Christ
     establishes a personal relationship which cannot in any
     way be affected by material substances.  The Church by
     pronouncing certain objects sacred, and attributing
     power to them, has turned from the pure freedom of the
     gospel to a kind of educated magic, far from New
     Testament truth and gravely injurious to the souls of men.

        Our Lord swept aside material objects as having no
     spiritual significance, and placed the worship of God in
     the spirit, where it properly belongs.  Our responsibility
     is to God and our fellowship is with Him.  The Christian
     can simply have nothing to do with magic or superstition!

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    Yours in Christ,
     Paul N. F.