The Early Church

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     Within the individual Worship-assemblies, the creative impulses were stimulated to the highest degree. The conduct of worship was not restricted to the few; it was open to the many. Each member was encouraged and, it would seem, expected to take part. "When you meet together, each contributes something -- a song of praise, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, an interpretation."... Common men rose to their best -- rose even beyond the best they had hitherto disclosed; and the contributions they made to the worship were, we may well believe, of no common order. The thought of the church must have been vastly enriched, and its development greatly accelerated, through the enlistment into its service of so many different minds -- minds which, for the most part, were working at their fullest stretch under the impulses of the Spirit of God. --A. B. Macdonald in Christian Worship in the Primitive Church.