Nevin on Instruments as Typical
James Dodson
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WAS THE USE OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS TYPICAL?
The advocates of the use of musical instruments in Christian worship imagine they have made a strong point when they deny that there was anything typical in their use under the former dispensation, and we are sometimes asked, with an air of triumph, as if the question were wholly unanswerable, Of what was it or could it be typical or symbolical? Here we find Professor Wallace vigorously dogmatic, as is his wont, and repeatedly in the course of his pamphlet recurring to it. “It is evident,” he assures us, p. 10, “that such a service contains in it nothing of the nature of type or symbol.” Praise and thanksgiving “are not symbols; they cannot prefigure anything more excellent.” Again, at p. 15, “prayer is neither type nor ceremony, although offered in the temple.” We might quote quite a number of simple allegations to the same purport. The reference to prayer might surely have suggested a little caution. We might say of it, as we said before of praise, that it is too apt to degenerate into mere ceremony, but we take the statement as descriptive of what it is in its own proper nature and when presented as it ought always to be. Now it is no doubt true generally that prayer, considered apart from the time, mode, and circumstances in which ‘the offering up of our desires to God’ is made, is neither typical nor symbolical. But the Professor’s statement, in the connection in which it stands, is only a half truth, and every one knows that a half truth is often a great deal more deceptive than a whole untruth. That the Jewish priest, when engaged officially in interceding for the chosen people, was rendering a typical service, prefiguring the intercession of the Great High Priest of our profession, who that has given even one intelligent and believing perusal to Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews can have a moment’s hesitation in admitting? If this was so in respect to prayer, may we not be prepared to see that it might not be altogether different in respect to the kindred service of praise, as rendered in the Temple of old?
Type and symbol, as the terms are usually employed by accurate thinkers in the interpretation of Scripture, do not signify precisely the same thing, but are to be distinguished the one from the other. A type had reference to the future—to Christ, His Person, or work, or to His Church under the new dispensation, or in the glorified state. A symbol has reference to the present, or time generally. It may have a reference to the past, and then it becomes a memorial. These might be conjoined one with another in one and the same act or thing, the ideas not being incompatible. Without entering upon any detailed analysis of the distinction, it may be fully as well understood by illustration. In the paschal sacrifice we see a combination of all the three. In it there was a memorial of the exodus from Egypt, a remarkable type of the Saviour, while
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the feasting upon the sacrifice was symbolic of the manner in which the blessings of redemption come to be partaken of, through faith, by the saints in all ages of the Church’s history. The sacrificial rites, indeed, contained much important symbolical as well as typical instruction, and hence the study of them is still well calculated to promote edification. When the offerer laid his hands on the head of the victim, this symbolized the imputation of the sinner’s guilt to the Saviour. The death of the victim was a type of the vicarious death of Christ, at the same time that it was symbolic of the desert of sin. The sprinkling of the blood was an emblem of the purifying effect upon the conscience of the blood of Jesus, that is, the doctrine of His atonement accepted by faith, when the redemption wrought out by Christ is applied by the Holy Spirit. The burning of the flesh upon the altar typified the sufferings of the Great Substitute: the fire that consumed it was a type of the wrath of God due to sin poured out upon Him in our room and stead, while it also symbolized the faith, love, and zeal that should animate the worshipper. The whole was symbolic of unreserved self-dedication to the service of Jehovah. And thus we find Paul exhorting the Romans, “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
Now, as the sacrifice offered on the altar of burnt-offering was thus both typical and symbolical—as the burning of the incense by the priest on the golden altar was a type of the acceptance of Christ’s once offering up of Himself as a propitiation in which God even the Father ‘smelled a sweet savour,’ while it also symbolized the acceptance through Him of ‘the prayers of saints’ in every age, and of their other spiritual services rendered in faith—as the official prayers of the priest typified the intercession of our glorified Advocate, while they were symbolic of the services of the spiritual priesthood in all ages—what is to hinder us to understand that the service of praise, as rendered in the Temple by officials taken from the sacred tribe to whom it was restricted, and as rendered in immediate conjunction with those other sacrificial and ceremonial rites, had in it a typical and symbolic element? It typified the glory that was to accrue to Godhead from the work of Immanuel the Divine Mediator, even as He Himself prayed, while yet on earth, “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.” The Temple itself might be taken as a type of the Church under the Christian dispensation, and the praises officially rendered within its precincts as typical of the more enlightened and in this sense more spiritual praises offered up by Christians. It was also to some extent, as is generally admitted, a type of heaven, and its official praises, typical of those praises ‘pure and perfect’ which shall be eternally offered in the
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glorified state. The official was at the same time symbolic of that spiritual service done to the Great Object of worship in glorifying Him in body and spirit which are His, whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do. The use of the musical instruments, in particular, symbolized the consecration of all the capabilities, energies, talents, resources that God has bestowed upon us to Him. This view, it will be seen, is by no means incompatible with the idea of the officials in the Temple and those of the people who joined more or less in the official services, combining, individually and socially, the spiritual element with the typical and symbolic—for the whole people of Israel were, as the “chosen” people, representative or symbolic of God’s elect. This was required of them, and there was nothing to hinder, but everything to favour it. The typical and symbolic element indeed may be clear to us now, but we cannot suppose it would be very much so, if at all, under that darker dispensation. The true worshipper then would have his thoughts occupied with the spiritual. But how shall we distinguish what was spiritual, and therefore of permanent obligation, from what was temporary? Easily, so far as musical instruments are concerned. In the New Testament we find prayer and the singing of praise expressly enjoined as of permanent obligation, and such exercises exemplified by Christ and His apostles. This can never be said with truth of the use of musical instruments in worship, as we shall proceed to show by and bye. Meanwhile, we may bestow a passing glance on a circumstance that seems to have puzzled Professor Wallace not a little, though he vainly tries to extract an argument from it.
“Great questionings arose,” he tells us, among the first Christians, “about circumcision, about eating meats or herbs, and observance of days, but no one appears ever to have seen any ground for difference of judgment upon the subject of instrumental music.” This he pronounces “unaccountable,” p. 23, on either of two suppositions, one of which is “that instruments were generally regarded as lawful”—precisely his own supposition, and the very inference he forthwith proceeds to draw. Not very consistent reasoning, we must say. Unaccountable it certainly is, on the ground he has assumed; but, on the ground we have exhibited, namely, that instruments were used in divine worship only in the Temple, and in close connection with sacrificial rites, the circumstance presents no difficulty. The first Christians, in this case, would no more think of the use of instruments as lawful or “retaining its high place in immortal vigour of obligation,” than they would think of perpetuating animal sacrifices. “The disciples,” we are told, “after the ascension of the Lord, ‘were continually in the temple praising and blessing God,’ that is, attending upon the service of song, when the sacrifice of the altar could no longer
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be regarded as lawful.” The explanation is utterly untenable. The original word employed by the evangelist (Luke ii. 53) is not naos, the central building, but hieron, the whole sacred inclosure. These two terms are never confounded in the New Testament, or used interchangeably, although the mere English reader who finds them both rendered temple is not furnished with the means of perceiving the distinction. There were many courts and places about the central building, all constituting the hieron. “Praising and blessing God” does not necessarily imply singing praise, nor do we believe it has such meaning in this place. The Professor had surely forgotten here his own very questionable comment on Heb. xiii. 15, only the second page before, where he seems actually to exclude from the apostle’s meaning the singing of praise as constituting any part of that “sacrifice” which we are enjoined to offer to God continually. If Luke’s expression means that the disciples attended upon the Temple service of song as “retaining its high place in immortal vigour of obligation,” (!) then it must mean that they attended also upon the Temple service of sacrifice as retaining a permanent obligation, since the two were uniformly conjoined in the Temple worship.