A godly writer over 200 years ago lamented the lack of the actual presence of God355 in Christian Assemblies with these words: By this process the Church steadily ceased to be a testimony to the existence, presence, and working of the living and true God. Less and less often did unbelievers coming into the Assembly, and beholding in the spirit and unity and conscience-searching power of the worship, the evidences of His presence and control, exclaim: God is among you indeed. 356 God was worshipped, but as absent; and presently the beauteous divine simplicity of the first days had been materialized into the lifeless magnificence of Roman ritual.
