For All the Saints

William Walsham How, 1864

“If Faith is real,” said the gentlest of English bishops, William Walsham How (1823-1897), “it must worship.  If worship is real, it must behold.  Neither is the eye anything without the voice, or the voice without the eye.  It follows that Prayer is the greatest reality of our lives.”
     And the highest form of prayer, said How, was praise, and by its nature praise is fittest for public worship, for a community of souls that come together to sing to God. Our sins are private, said he, as are our needs, but “all can utter the same voice of Praise.”  Think of praise as the creature’s sharing in the very life and the glory of God.  For praise is the purest form of gratitude, when we give thanks to God not for a certain gift or blessing or mercy, but for His simply being God: we revel, because He Is.
    Now, I would like, for our hymn today, to bind together three ideas.  When Jesus set a little child in the midst of his bickering disciples, and he said that whoever would be great…