Gibson Public Worship II.

CHAPTER II.

Praise.

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In a former chapter we adverted to the one way of acceptable access to God, whether in personal duty or in private or public worship—viz., through the efficacy of the atoning and sanctifying blood of the Lamb. Hence Paul says, through Him “we both (Jews and Gentiles) have access by one spirit unto the Father.” Confining ourselves to the question, Wherewithal, or how shall men come before God in the public social worship of the sanctuary? we laid down and fixed, on grounds of Scripture and reason, the great principle declared in the Confession of Faith of the Westminster Divines, adopted by the multitude of sound Presbyterians throughout the world, who are, indeed, the largest body of Protestants in Christendom—viz., that God is not to be worshipped by any imaginations or devices of men, “NOR IN ANY OTHER WAY NOT PRESCRIBED IN THE HOLY SCRIPTURE.”

Having illustrated and defended this great principle, we showed that it is and has been the only security of Christian and religious liberty—the only protection from burdensome and superstitious rituals, whether imposed by ecclesiastical or civil authority—by kings, or priests, or people. It is important to notice that all these parties have been guilty of such imposition, as the prophet of old, as well as the facts and history of the Church of Christ, inform us, and later times

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declare. Thus says Jeremiah: “A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means: and the people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?” The same prophet said also: “Lo, they have rejected the Word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them?” History reads the same lesson.

And thus says Bacon: “The master of superstition is the people, and in all superstition wise men follow fools, and arguments are fitted to prosper in a reversed order. The causes of superstition are—pleasing and sensual rites and ceremonies; excess of outward and pharisaical holiness; over great reverence of traditions, which cannot but load the Church; the stratagems of prelates for their own ambition; the following too much of good intentions, which openeth the gates to conceits and novelties; the taking an aim at divine matters by human, which cannot but breed mixture of imaginations.” These are noble statements, verified by all history; and never did men at any time require to ponder them more carefully than at the present moment, when the almost universal shout, even in the Christian Church, in all its denominations, and in their varied aspects, whether superstitious, æsthetic, or sensational, is, “The people will have it so.” In this respect is it verified in too many cases that “wise men follow fools;” and, in point of fact, in too many churches and congregations it is neither the “wise men” nor the godly men, but the bustling and the fickle, the sentimental and the musical, that are regulating the solemnities of the public worship of God. It is not, What saith “the Holy Scripture?” But rather is there a plain defiance to the command of Paul, who, in all matters of “will-worship,” says, “Touch not, taste not, handle not,” “which

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things have a show of wisdom in will-worship and humility.” To this course of procedure apply all those cases in the Old Testament, where God severely punished unauthorised interferences in His worship, even in the cases of kings and others, some of whom were otherwise good men, and who did, as men would now suppose, no moral wrong in the matter of their interference; as in the cases of Saul, Uzziah, and Uzzah. In the case of Saul, Samuel, we have seen, laid down the principle as applicable to every age, and in all times and circumstances: “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” This principle applies to everything, whether old or new, which men introduce into the worship of God. Whether it can be called an innovation, or a thing of four thousand years’ standing, if it is not actually authorised, nay, commanded, or, as the Westminster Confession of Faith expresses it, “prescribed in the Holy Scripture,” it is at men’s peril if they introduce it. The Westminster Larger Catechism calls it a “sin.”

We do not forget that the said Confession, in laying down the rule of faith, and excluding all traditions of men, adds, “that there are some things concerning the worship of God and government of the Church common to human actions and societies which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.” It is plain that the “circumstances” here referred to are not things belonging to the essence of divine worship, but to matters of mere outward order, such as time, place, external accommodation, and the like, but that even in these respect is to be had to the “general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.”

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We now proceed to apply the great general principle formerly expounded and illustrated, and now briefly re-stated, to some of the special parts of Divine worship previously enumerated.

The first of these, if not in importance, yet viewed in relation to God and the end of creation, viz., to give glory to God, is PRAISE. How is praise in the public worship of God, that being now our subject of inquiry, to be offered to the Most High?

The great question now raised on this subject is not if we are to worship God, either in private or in the public sanctuary, by singing His praise. There have been mystics, monks, and others, who have thought it their duty and their lofty privilege to indulge in solitary and ecstatic, and, as they thought, seraphic contemplation, freed from all external or social distraction. The Papists, in the spirit of their system, who make the priest their substitute and vicar, as the Pope claims to be the vicar of Jesus Christ, devolve their public prayers and praises on the priests, and that, too, in an unknown tongue, and thus require not the power of reading for this end, either in their own or in any other language. Nothing gave them deeper offence, nor more excited their violent and persecuting rage in France and other places at the time of the Reformation, than the singing in their mother tongue, by the Protestants, in their places of worship or religious meetings, of the Psalms of David. Even in Protestant England, upwards of two hundred years ago, a controversy was raised on this point, Whether it was lawful to sing psalms, or the praises of God at all in the sanctuary?—and Dr James Hamilton seems to make use of this fact as an indirect way of answering all who have any conscientious

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objections to the use of human hymns in the public worship of God; as if, because he says these men were “conscientious” (though, of course, fanatical), others, who object to human hymns in the public worship of God, may be equally “conscientious” and equally fanatical; and we suppose the inference must be, that we have no scriptural rule on the subject; at least, he certainly gives none. Addressing his people in one of three lectures, subsequently printed in an article in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, and since printed separately and widely circulated gratuitously in the pamphlet form, he says—

“Perhaps you are not aware that there was ever any body of Christians, besides the Friends or Quakers, who objected to singing altogether; but two hundred years ago there was no singing, nor music of any sort, in the Baptist churches of England. You would be apt to think it must have been a cold and comfortless service; but the good men were conscientious. They had paid far more for their principles than we are ever likely to do,” etc.

Dr Hamilton then describes the way in which they answered all Scriptural arguments against them, and then continues—

“Nor will it do to denounce these men as pragmatical fanatics, or narrow-minded pretenders. No doubt they were men of strong convictions and unyielding temper, but they were sincere. For a Christian to offer any oblation in the church which Christ had not expressly authorised, they believed was as presumptuous and as impious as it would have been for a Jew to come before the Lord with swine’s flesh. . . . They were in earnest. They had something to say for themselves. On the ground which they occupied, they believed themselves impregnable; and we incline to think that they were. We doubt if their arguments have ever yet been refuted. . . . Their arguments were not easily answered, but their scruples have disappeared. Many of the good men never were convinced, and never gave in; and when, in the leading church in Southwark, after twenty years of argument and effort, Benjamin Keach established singing, a minority withdrew and took refuge, if not in a silent church, at least in a songless sanctuary.”

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Dr Hamilton, in a note B., gives some historical notices of this controversy, as raised and maintained by sundry parties on both sides, as early as 1691, onwards to 1708. But what all that has to do with the question, “What is to be sung in the public worship of God?”—except to turn the views of those who may be admitted to be “conscientious” in maintaining the principle, that whatever it is, it must have the authority and command of God, into ridicule, and place them in the same category with these “conscientious” and “sincere,” but manifestly fanatical Baptists of those times—we cannot discover. Surely he does not mean that when men are “conscientious” and “sincere,” you have no right to determine whether they are right or wrong, and can apply no Scripture test to settle the question. Such a principle would sanction monkery, Mormonism, or any ism on earth; nay, the murders of St Dominic and Ravaillac, and the work of Guy Fawkes, and thousands of others—even all the delusions and atrocities of sincere heathenism. We are not so uncharitable as to affirm that those who practised them were not “sincere.” But neither are we so blind or so sceptical as to affirm, that therefore they were innocent in the sight of God in violating every principle of religion, and practising in its name the most horrid enormities. That we have no Scripture rule to determine our own conduct will not be affirmed, or to entitle us to condemn in theirs what is not according to the Word of God and the “prescription of the Holy Scripture.” It will not be maintained that those who reason from Scripture on this question are no better than conscientious fanatics. We cannot examine the specific statements of the above strange quotation. But if the passages of Scripture, which our author has quoted from the parties opposed

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to the Baptist non-psalm singers, have not convinced any of the duty of publicly singing the praises of God, perhaps we might recommend to them a little book printed some fifty or sixty years earlier than those to which Dr Hamilton refers in his note. It contains much that is truly admirable, and meets and answers, with point and acuteness, and Scripture proof, not only the “conscientious” and “sincere” persons of these times, but the conceits and arguments of others, whether alleged to be from Scripture, history, or advancing taste and civilisation. We may have occasion to refer to this little book further on in the course of this discussion. We may here remark that we shall be surprised if any one, after reading it, will concur with Dr Hamilton in saying of these “sincere,” non-singing Baptists, “We doubt if their arguments have ever yet been refuted.” The title of the little book in question is the following:— “Singing of Psalms, the Duty of Christians under the New Testament; or, a Vindication of that Gospel Ordinance. In Five Sermons upon Eph. v. 19; wherein are asserted and cleared, 1. That we must Sing; 2. What we must Sing; 3. How we must Sing; 4. Why we must Sing. By T. F., Minister of the Gospel in Exon. James v. 13, ‘Is any merry, let him sing psalms.’ Psalm xlvii. 7, ‘For God is the king of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding.’ London, etc., 1653.”

Before dismissing this point, we cannot help asking, What does our author mean to establish by the statement immediately following the above quotation from his first lecture?—

“But influences were at work far mightier than Benjamin Keach, or any human advocate of psalm singing. There is such a thing as sanctified good sense. ‘Not the wisdom of this world,’ but the wisdom of a better; that fulness of light which

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comes sooner or later to the single eye—that moral invigoration which, by elevating the spiritual stature, enlarges the theological horizon—and partly the result of English sense, softening good men’s crotchets, partly the result of the great awakening of which Whitfield and Wesley were the instruments, and which left no church uninfluenced, the closed lips were opened, and roofs unaccustomed to the voice of psalms resounded with God’s praise; and could the good men who sighed over the diluted worship of their day, and the return to Hebrew rags as signs of departing spirituality, could they rejoin their descendants in Southwark, and resume their membership in the self-same church now worshipping in Park Street or the Metropolitan Tabernacle, they would find neither Popery in the pews nor Judaism in the pulpit; and peradventure as they come into the assembly, and, from four thousand voices, heard ‘All people,’ or its companion version, ‘From all that dwell beneath the skies,’ they might catch the contagion, and confessing of a truth that God is there—even Isaac Marlow might join the singers. In the same way, and on a kindred principle—[the italics are ours]—there are still some Presbyterians who think that in the worship of the great congregation, although there ought to be singing, nothing should be sung except the Old Testament Psalms.”

Passing over this off-hand way of grouping all parties into one common category of sincere but fanatical, we ask, Does Dr Hamilton mean to teach that, as this question cannot be determined on the one side or the other by Benjamin Keach, or by any other mere human authority, that then we have no other resource but “good sense,” or “the fulness of light, which comes sooner or later to the single eye—that moral invigoration which, by elevating the spiritual stature, enlarges the theological horizon”—and that “English sense,” and Whitfield and Wesleyan revivals, are surer guides than the question, “What saith the Scripture?” Is it meant, after all, that the “spiritual stature” of the men of England in the present day is higher than that of those of 1653–96? Or are we to be referred to the internal light of Quakerism, or the shifting human reason of some men, or of all the men

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of the generation in which we may happen to live, as our guide in regard to the great questions, How, or why, or what, we must sing in the praises of God in the public worship of Jehovah in the sanctuary? Though Dr Hamilton “meant it not so,” yet undoubtedly his words seem to teach, and do teach, that men, and times and seasons, and “English sense,” and not the written Word of God—in other words, that the inspirations of the inner consciousness of the Theodore Parkers and Morells, and the dictates of civilisation and progress, are to be our guides in matters of such solemn moment. Though with those who advocate and hold such a theory, Scripture reasoning on the subject may be of little avail; yet amid difficulties, and in the face of all ridicule, and all fancies, and all opposition, we must always hold and teach that “we have a sure word of prophecy to which we do well to take heed.” We maintain that “the word of the Lord endureth for ever—whether men will hear, or whether they will forbear.” Has either “English sense,” or the “awakening” of Whitfield and Wesley, destroyed the influence of your Cardinal Wisemans, your Doctors Manning or Pusey? We speak not of their “moral invigoration,” or their “spiritual stature,” though we would not like to say of such a man as Dr Pusey, that he has neither “morality” nor “spirituality,” though sadly perverted by his position, and by the principles which allow him to take other rules of faith and conduct than “the Holy Scripture.” For high intellect, high cultivation and scholarship, high æsthetic taste, such men are certainly surpassed by few—and whither, then, would this strange statement upon which we are commenting lead? Will any man tell us how, with such a view, any one can confute these men, or

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even logically or scripturally refuse to follow them? But we trust “we have not so learned Christ,” and rejoice that we are reduced to no such straits either of logic or of religion, and that we have the sure Word of prophecy “for our guide.” We are thus earnest on this matter, because if these statements of Dr Hamilton satisfy the reason and conscience of his congregation, to whom they were addressed, and receive the sympathy of Presbyterian congregations in England, we are not surprised at the following words in the Preface to the “PSALTER and HYMN-BOOK” of the English Presbyterian Church:—

“Secondly. It has been considered desirable that the collection (521 in number) should embrace a large number of hymns and spiritual songs—a number much larger than might be held to be sufficient for the wants of any single congregation. Much diversity in habits of thought and feeling, and great variety of taste, exist in every Christian community, and it is right that in a book of praise, designed for general use, fitting expression should be found for all.” Of course the same reason will vindicate the 1000 of the Independents, and the 3000 of our American brethren; but it is rather too much for fellow-mortals to judge for them all. It is, to say the least, verging on the theory of the rationalistic party in the Church of England, that a national church should satisfy the cravings and views of all parties in the nation.

We shall see in the sequel that the compilers of the “Scottish Hymnal” proceed on this strange view of a National Church Hymnal.

What, then, does Holy Scripture teach as to the great duty of praising God, and especially how and with what?

It is one benefit in this question, that those with whom

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we have now to do, admit that we may not only publicly sing the praises of God, but that we may sing the Psalms of David. Some exceptional and modified statements we may have to notice, when we come to the question of the propriety or impropriety of human hymns, ABOUT spiritual things in the worship of God. Meantime we rejoice in such statements as the following, forming the first two sentences of Dr Hamilton’s first lecture:—

“Of devotional manuals, there is none to compare with the Psalter. It is at once the best of hymn-books, and the best of prayer-books.”

Why we should seek a better if we wanted a hymn-book, when we have the “best,” or another prayer-book, which we presume Dr Hamilton does not wish, when we have the best already, we are not illogical enough to discover. It may doubtless be our misfortune, but so it is, and all his subsequent reasonings can never make anything of human device better than the “best.” But that there may be no mistake, Dr Hamilton says again, p. 4, 5:—

“And what we said at the beginning we now repeat. If the best of prayer-books, this Hebrew Psalter is also the best of hymn-books. Of all devotion, whether sung or spoken, it is the model; at once the sublimest and the safest; at once the most exalted and most sober. It is the only entire book in the Bible which God has given expressly to aid and guide the worship of man; and whilst some of its strains come down to the cradle, others ascend to a height of Scriptural communion, when for a higher note a seraph’s voice would be needed, and angels take up the chorus. And whilst adapted to every capacity, in its range of experience it includes any case, from the depths of penitential remorse to the fullest and most exulting realisation of God’s friendship. And if the most comprehensive of manuals, let it not be forgotten that it is withal the most catholic. No sect refuses it, and none can monopolise it. The Episcopalian chants it in his cathedral, and the Nonconformist in his chapel; the Quaker reads it in his closet, and its antiphonies re-echo in

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the imperial sanctuaries of Moscow and Vienna; and just as the hunted Covenanters sang it on the hills of Scotland two hundred years ago, the Jew still sings it in the synagogues of London. Its pages have often been blotted with the tears of those whom others deemed hard and cold, and whom they treated with suspicion or contempt. Its words have gone up to God mingled with the sighs, or scarcely uttered in the heart-broken anguish of those whom Pharisees called sinners, of those whom Christians denounced as heretics or infidels, but who loved God and truth above all things else. Surely it is holy ground. We cannot pray the Psalms without realising in a very special manner the communion of saints, the oneness of the church militant and the church triumphant. We cannot pray the Psalms without having our hearts opened, our affections enlarged, our thoughts drawn heavenward. He who can pray the best is nearest to God, knows most of the Spirit of Christ, is ripest for heaven.”—Perowne on the Psalms.

“Such are our views regarding the Psalter. For both praise and prayer for the worship of God, whether sung or spoken, we believe that it is not only the best model, but that it contains the best materials.”

We cannot help feeling that such splendid eulogiums on the Book of Psalms, by those who supplant their use by human hymns, are, to say the least, both surprising and incongruous. Had Dr Hamilton written nothing else than this on the subject, we could not have conceived it possible that he could have been an advocate for human hymns, and even yet we cannot comprehend the constitution of mind that permits any man thus to write and conclude, and yet not only to be instrumental in virtually superseding these grand Psalms by an overwhelming multitude of human hymns, but to be an eloquent advocate for the propriety of doing so.

We do not stay to inquire what Dr Hamilton means by adding, in the same page, “Some Presbyterians still hold that nothing should be sung except the Old Testament Psalms.” Does he not know that Episcopalians, as well

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as “some Presbyterians,” not only have held, but have very generally acted on the same principle? We have, in the course of our lives, both at home and abroad, attended for months English Episcopal churches, where no other Protestant worship could be found, and we never once heard anything sung but the Psalms of David. Anything else is a modern innovation in the Church of England. But letting that point pass at present, we go on to say—We have quoted with great satisfaction these most eloquent and beautiful passages, both original and quoted, by Dr Hamilton. But after saying Amen to them, we are perfectly incapable of sympathising with the easy and yet somewhat constrained terms with which they are immediately followed—“But whilst we are free to sing it!” What? “free” to sing the “best,” both in “model” and “materials!” and which all Christians, in all the world, have sung, and do sing!

We would say with such a belief, not “But whilst we feel free to sing it,” but we feel free to sing nothing else, at least nothing human. Who entitles any one to serve God with his own—nay, with what he deems inferior or worse, while God has given the “best,” and a book of the “best?” or as some others express it, to give to the Psalms of David the royal place in their praises of God; but they presume to set on the same throne the songs, not of Zion, but of men who may or may not have been even good or Christian men. We doubt not but it was such things as these that made the pious Romaine write in the strong terms which follow. We regret we cannot quote the whole passage. It indicates that the revived piety of the English Church in last century was not confined to the followers of Whitfield or of Wesley only, and that the duty of singing only

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the Psalms of David, and the danger of setting them aside, were ideas not confined, as Dr Hamilton writes, to “conscientious” Presbyterians alone, but shared in by the most pious men of the Church of England:—

“In the time of Justin Martyr, instrumental music being now abolished, he highly commends singing with the voice, ‘because,’ says he, ‘psalms, with organs and cymbals, are fitter to please children than to instruct the Church.’ In the third century we hear much of psalm singing. Arius was complained of as a perverter of this ordinance; St Augustine makes it a high crime in certain heretics that they sung hymns composed by human wit. The sense in which the Church of Christ understood this subject has been, till late years, always one and uniform; now we leave the ancient beaten path. But why?—have we found a better? How came we to be wiser than the prophets? than Christ, than His apostles, than the whole Church of God? They, with one consent, have sung psalms in every age. Here I leave the reader to his own reflections. There is one plain inference to be made from hence; none can easily mistake it. May he see it in his judgment, and follow it in his practice!

“What! say some, is it unlawful to sing human compositions in the Church? How can that be? Why, they sing them at such a place, and such a place; great men and good men—ay, and lively ministers, too, sing them. Will you set up your judgment against theirs? It is an odious thing to speak of one’s self, except it be to magnify the grace of God. What is my private judgment? I set it up against nobody in indifferent things. I wish to yield to every man’s infirmity, for I want the same indulgence myself. But, in the present case, the Scripture, which is the only rule of judgment, has not left the matter indifferent. God has given us a large collection of hymns, and has commanded them to be sung in the Church, and has promised His blessing to the singing of them. No respect here must be paid to names or authorities, though they be the greatest on earth, because no one can dispense with the command of God, and no one, by his wit, can compose hymns to be compared with the Psalms of God. I want a name for that man who should pretend that he could make better hymns than the Holy Ghost. His collection is large enough; it wants no addition. It is perfect as its Author, and not capable of any improvement. Why, in such a case, would any man in the world take it into his head to sit down and write hymns for the use of the Church? It is

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just the same as if he was to write a new Bible, not only better than the old, but so much better, that the old may be thrown aside. What a blasphemous attempt! and yet our hymn-mongers, inadvertently, I hope, have come very near to this blasphemy; for they shut out the Psalms, introduce their own verses into the Church, sing them with great delight, and, as they fancy, with great profit; although the whole practice be in direct opposition to the command of God, and, therefore, they cannot possibly be accompanied with the blessing of God.”

But the question recurs, Have we any Scripture authority for human hymns in the public worship of the sanctuary?

We shall endeavour to give the answer, if not in the words, at least as nearly so as our space and time will allow, of those who take the affirmative in the question, merely premising that we do not conceal that we cannot see the scriptural authority for human hymns in the public worship of God, and calling upon our readers to notice the true state of the question—1. It is not, whether it is lawful for individuals to sing hymns of their own composition for their own edification, or for individuals to sing the hymns of other men who did the same; nor is it whether individuals—such as Prince Albert, an old Earl of Derby, or Dr Cunningham*—have been edified on their death-beds, yea, even converted, by hymns of human composition. We are under no necessity of taking the negative in such questions, more than if the questions were about sermons in similar circumstances. 2. The question is not, whether it is lawful to turn into verse a prose portion of the Word of God, and sing it, either publicly or privately. But whether, believing, as Dr Hamilton, we have seen, does, as well as others who advocate the use of human hymns in the public worship of God, that the Psalms of David are divine, and

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* See Dr Hamilton’s Lectures.

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the “best of hymn-books,” and that “of devotional manuals there is none to be compared with the Psalter,” we have any scriptural warrant for setting it aside, either in whole or in part, or substituting for it, or overlaying it with hundreds, nay, thousands of human hymns, in the public worship of God?

Perhaps these questions may be best answered by examining the arguments of those who take the affirmative, as all must do who, either in theory or practice, defend and sanction the use of human hymns in the public worship of God.