"Worship is the free offering of ourselves to God; ever renewed, because ever imperfect. Worship expresses the consciousness that we are His by right, yet have not duly passed into His hand; that the soul has no true rest but in Him, yet has wandered in strange flights until her wing is tired. 

It is at once the lowliest and loftiest attitude of our nature. Breaking into strains, now penitential, and now jubilant; this twofold aspect of devotion must ever have, pale with weeping, flushed with joy; deploring the past, trusting for the future; ashamed of what it is, kindled by what is meant to be; shadow behind, and light before." 

James Martineau.