The Public Worship of God: Its Authority and Modes, Hymns and Hymn Books.
James Dodson
1869-James Gibson.-This work is a vigorous 19th-century defense of exclusive psalmody and a polemic against the introduction of human-composed hymns and instrumental music into the public worship of God, written from a strict Scottish Presbyterian perspective. Grounded in the regulative principle of worship—that only what is “prescribed in Holy Scripture” is lawful in God’s worship—the author argues that the Book of Psalms alone is divinely authorized for Christian praise, while human hymns are sectarian, doctrinally unreliable, and inferior in poetic majesty. The text examines the Scriptural, historical, and constitutional arguments against innovations in worship, reviews contemporary hymnals of various churches finding them wanting in taste and theological soundness, and warns that admitting hymns or organs opens an unstoppable path toward ritualism and Romanism. Originally appearing as a series of papers during the worship controversies roiling the Free Church of Scotland and other Presbyterian bodies in the 1860s, it stands as a thorough expression of the conservative position that the church’s praise should remain solely the Spirit-inspired songs of Scripture.
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