"IS IT IN THE BIBLE?"

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 135, 3 December 1875, Page 9

"IS IT IN THE BIBLE?"

When our Lord cured the the blind man by the use of spittle and clay, he showed us that the material is conducive to the spiritual ; that as a man is composed of matter and spirit, the U3O oi' material things is lawful in order that the souls of men may be saved. Respect, therefore, to material things, as to relics and holy pictures, is praiseworthy, and should never be confounded with -what modern Protestants understand by the term " worship," which they so frequently bandy in attacking the Catholic veneration of relics. We have just been reading- a passage in Trench's " English, Past and Present," in regard to the word "worship," which may be as interesting to the rhetorician as to the theologian : " There is another passage in one of our occasional services, which sometimes offends those who are unacquainted with the early uses of English words, and thus with the intention of the actual fivuners of that service — I mean the words in our marriage service : ' With my body I thee worship. 3 Clearly, in our modern sense of ' worship' this lsingurge would be unjustifiable. But 'worship 3 or ' wo?-thskip l ' meant ' honor ' in our early English, and to ' worship ' to honor, this meaning of ' worship ' still surviving in the title of ' your worship ' addressed to the magistrate on the bench. So little was it restrained of old to the honor -which man is bound to pay to God, that it was employed by Wicldif to express the honor which Grod will render to his faithful servants and friends. Thus our Lord's declaration, 'If any man serve me, him will my Father honor' in Wiclclif 's translation reads thus : *If any man serve me, my Father shall tvorshij) him.' "