Reasons of Protest against Innovations Introduced into the Public Worship of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. By the late Donald Fraser, Nairn, East Williams, Ontario, and other Office-bearers and Members of the Presbyterian Church. 1882
WE, whose names are hereunto adhibited, being office-bearers, members, and adherents of the Presbyterian Church, professing as we do to be Christ’s witnesses, and, therefore, deeply interested in the purity, peace, and prosperity of His kingdom, feel it to be our duty, in this manner, to record our united testimony against certain things which we believed to be unwarranted and sinful innovations, introduced into the said Presbyterian Church in these latter times. We are indeed aware that by many, yea, by the great majority, of professing Christians, these changes are looked upon as real improvements and signs of progress, instead of being, as we believe, evidences of declension and decay. But we need not wonder at such widespread blindness and error of judgment in the present day as if it were something new and unprecedented in the Church of God. For thus saith “He who hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars,” to the Church of Sardis, “I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest and art dead;” and to the Church of Laodicea, “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So, then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, I counsel thee,” etc., etc.
Sincerely believing that our Presbyterian Church, in common with most other Protestant denominations, bears too much resemblance to those just referred to, we do hereby enter our most solemn protest against that lamentable conformity to the world, and that woefully mistaken policy which appears to actuate her rulers; when they vainly seek to conciliate worldly-minded people, whether old or young, and to win them over to the religion of Christ by such means as are not authorised or warranted by the Word of God. Whereas, in the face of all such time-serving carnal policy, Christ, the King and Head of the Church, distinctly affirms, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and far from encouraging that course of perilous compromise with the world, which is so marked a feature of the present age, He issues the peremptory command, “Come out from among them, my people, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you and will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and my daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”
When we speak of unwarranted innovations introduced into the Presbyterian Church, with the view of conciliating the favour and friendship of worldly-minded professors, we refer more especially—
I. To uninspired hymns.
II. To instrumental music.
III. To unscriptural methods of raising money.
I. The use of uninspired hymns in the praise of God instead of that Book of inspired Psalms which was given to the Church by her divine Head, and by Him appointed to be sung in all the assemblies of His people from the days of David down to our Lord’s second coming.
For the Church of Christ is but one and the same Church under both the Old and New Testament dispensations.
As, in drawing up this Testimony and Protest, originality forms no part of our object, we may here observe that we avail ourselves freely of the best treatises on the subject within our reach which have been published on either side of the Atlantic. Such quotations we shall mark in the usual way, viz., by inverted commas.
1st—It is objected against the Psalms that they are “dark and hard to be understood.”
To this it may be replied, “So are many other parts of the Old Testament, and even of the New.” But the very excellency of the Psalms goes far to account for this. “Their depth of matter and meaning, their spirituality, their sublimity, and their transcendent loftiness of devotion, do certainly raise them above the comprehension of ordinary christians.” It is a fact, however, which objectors would do well to note, that young christians, whose attainments are as yet low, derive more edification from reading other books than the Bible, and can really enjoy them more, whereas, afterwards, the higher they rise in gracious experience, the higher is their esteem for the pure Word of God, until at length every human production becomes comparatively insipid and dry. “Now, as it can assuredly have no good effect to promote in the public mind a preference of other books to the Bible, so neither can good effects arise from promoting in the public taste a preference for other compositions”—no matter how beautiful or excellent—”to those divine Psalms which the Holy Spirit himself has inspired.” On this point Dr. Horsely says that, “Of all the Books of the Old Testament the Book of Psalms is the most universally read, and yet, perhaps, as little understood as any; not, however, from any extraordinary obscurity in them—for of all the prophetical parts of Scripture they are certainly the most perspicuous and plain—but it is greatly owing to some dulness of the faculties of the natural man upon spiritual subjects.” And then he adds, “There is not a page of the book in which the pious reader will not find his Saviour, if he reads with a view of finding Him.” The judicious Thomas Scott speaks very much in the same strain. Now, if the case be so, it must follow that those who cannot find Christ in the Psalms must be persons who do not concern themselves very much about finding Him anywhere.
2nd—Again, in this connection it has been objected that the Psalms “are unsuited to the capacities of little children.”
But surely they are not more so than the rest of the Bible. And must we, then, have, not only a child’s Psalm book, but a child’s Bible?” But if the Psalms be unsuitable now, assuredly they were so when God gave them to the Church. And yet “there is no evidence that the children of the Jews or of the Apostolic Church,” or even of our own Presbyterian forefathers, “were comparatively deficient in their religious knowledge,” or in that respect a whit behind the hymn-singing children of the present day. No, nor are they now. They seem to have lost nothing by the want of the little religious song books at present so much in vogue; but rather, on the contrary, “their minds seem strengthened by their early familiarity with the infinitely superior songs of the Lord.”
3rd—Again, there are some who are not ashamed or afraid to declaim against the unchristian spirit, as they express it, of some of the Psalms.
Such declamation would be consistent enough coming from the lips of persons denying the inspiration of the Scriptures, or from those who condemn the Bible as a bad book; but it is hard to understand how such objections can be offered, “or even thought of,” by any one who believes that the Psalms are part of the inspired Word of God. It is more like the language of blasphemy or downright infidelity. No doubt but the 69th and 109th Psalms are those especially pointed at by such objectors. But these Psalms refer to Judas Iscariot, the traitor, and are both of them quoted by the apostle in Acts, 1st chap.; and Peter speaks of them both as “Scripture” which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, who was guide to them that took Jesus. “Our Lord Himself used these very Psalms. Indeed they are His language. For it is He who speaks of the traitor in terms of such fearful but righteous denunciation, which some have been bold enough to denominate unchristian.” “Surely such objectors betray either great ignorance or a total want of sympathy with the suffering Saviour and the Father who sent Him. A truly loyal subject will seek the safety and stability of his Sovereign’s throne, even were his doing so to involve the destruction of his Sovereign’s enemies. How much more ought this to be true of a leal-hearted subject of the King of kings!” Some have stigmatised the Psalms referred to as “cursing Psalms.” But it can easily be shown that the imprecations for “divine punishment, either in them or in other Psalms, do not proceed from any vindictive disposition in the Psalmist,” for they are uttered not on personal grounds at all, but from loyalty to Christ and sympathy with His justice and holiness. To be satisfied of this just look at facts. “Will anyone impute a malicious or vindictive spirit to the man who found his mortal foe in a cave, yet refused to put forth his hand against him, although urged to do so by his best friends? Or shall we ascribe cruelty or revenge to the man who, on finding his way under night into his enemy’s camp, finds that enemy and all round him buried in sleep, and yet neither injures him himself nor suffers another to do so?” No—most assuredly. But we affirm it to be one of the real and God-like excellencies of the Psalms, whatever modern sentimentists may say on this subject—that they celebrate the awful justice of God, that righteous Lawgiver and Judge, “to whom alone vengeance belongeth.” Yes. His awful justice in vindicating His own truth, His own people, and the righteous claims of His own beloved Son—and that by visiting as they deserve the malignant enemies of the cause, of the person, and of the throne of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Whoever, therefore, thinks that he discovers cruelty or revenge, or any other anti-christian principle or passion in the book of Psalms, must either deny that it is inspired by God, or else admit that he has entirely misunderstood its spirit, its language, and its whole tendency.” If God be its author it is impossible it can contain anything not consistent with the divine character. And how it can come to pass that otherwise much esteemed Christian brethren can cast a slur upon the wisdom and goodness of God, who inspired the Psalms and gave them to His Church, by supplanting them with mere human compositions, would be a thing to us totally incomprehensible if we did not bear in mind the history of past declensions in the Church of God, on the one hand, and on the other the exceeding deceitfulness of sin in the human heart.
Without dwelling longer on this point, we may observe that an argument in favour of hymns has been taken from the alleged fact that at the present time many in the Christian Church possess the gift of song in a very eminent degree—implying, of course, that this gift may be used in providing songs for the Church of God. But the same gift doubtless existed in Old Testament times, and yet none but such as were especially called and inspired of God were employed in composing songs for such a purpose. In Apostolic times no doubt there were poets, but we never hear of any one of them undertaking to make hymns, and not one hymn can now be traced to those times; yet, surely it was not for want of persons capable of making them. No doubt Paul could have done it. If the mere fact of possessing poetical gifts conferred the right to make songs for the Church of God, who would be warranted to refuse singing them? Let the writer of hymns, therefore, first of all produce a divine warrant and authority. Gifts without express warrant are not sufficient. On the same principle any private member of the Church may possess the gift of speech in a high degree; but is he entitled on that account to mount into the pulpit and perform the functions of an ordained minister? It is not enough to possess the gift. There must be also a divine warrant to employ that gift for this specific purpose in the house of God. And as of speech so of song. Whatever may be a man’s gifts, the first question is, Where is his warrant for making songs for the Church of God? We shall only add here that no Church as yet has ever been able to frame a hymn book acceptable to all its members and one at the same time of a permanent character. No, and we venture to affirm never will. “Change, change, perpetual change, has hitherto ever been, and must ever be inscribed on every vain effort to obtain better songs than those of the Bible.”
Here we must quote the pious Romaine, author of the “Life, Walk and Triumph of Faith,” an English clergyman of last century. His words indicate that the revived piety of the English Church in his day was not confined to the followers of Whitfield or of Wesley only, and particularly that the duty of singing only the Psalms of David, and the danger of setting them aside, were ideas not confined to conscientious Presbyterians alone, but shared in by the most pious men of the Church of England. “In the third century,” says Romaine, “we hear much of Psalm singing, and 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? Better than Christ, than His apostles, than the whole Church of God? They, with one consent, have sung Psalms in every age.” Again, “What! say some, is it unlawful to sing human compositions in the Church? How can that be? Why, they sing them in such a place and such a place. Great men, and good men, aye, 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 things indifferent. 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 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.” Let us wind up this part of our subject by a summary of answers to other arguments for the use of hymns, and to objections to the use of Psalms in divine worship, from a work by Dr. Gibson :—
1. ‘It is objected that the singing of human compositions is not forbidden in the Word of God.’
Ans.—Neither are we forbidden to observe seven sacraments. The absence of divine appointment in such a case amounts to direct prohibition.
2. ‘Good men have composed hymns to be used in divine worship, and good men also sing such hymns.’
Ans.—1st—The best of men are liable to do things which will dishonour God and injure the Church. 2nd—There are also many good men who would not dare either to compose a song to be sung in divine worship, or to offer up to God a song composed by man.
3. ‘Those using hymns are at this moment more numerous than those using the Psalm Book.’
Ans.—1st—It was not always so, and the time may come when it will cease to be so. 2nd—The multitude are not always right; nor hitherto have they commonly been right in matters of faith and religious practice.
4. ‘But we are allowed to compose our own prayers; why not also our own songs of praise.’
Ans.—1st—Right or wrong, it is undeniable that most worshippers neither do or can compose their own songs of praise. 2nd—God has given us a book of Psalms, but no book of prayers. He has also promised a Spirit of Prayer, but not a Spirit of Psalmody. 3rd—In prayer we express our own wants, but in praise we declare God’s glory, and even though we can frame a form of words for the former purpose it does not follow that we are equally able to compose one for the latter purpose. 4th—Besides our wants are always changing, and therefore our prayers must vary, whereas God’s glory is ever the same, and therefore the same collection of songs will serve for His praise from age to age.
5. ‘But there is authority,’ it is alleged, ‘in the New Testament for singing songs of human composition, for we are told that Christ and His disciples sang a hymn.’
Ans.—1st—Let it be proved that this hymn sung was not one or more of the Psalms of David. The best commentators think it was the great Hallel, which consisted of the 113th to the 118th Psalm inclusive. Besides, surely Christ was better qualified and had a better right to compose hymns than any mere man on earth.
6. ‘It is argued by some that Paul enjoins the use of uninspired Psalmody when he says to the Colossians ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.’
Some explain the word of Christ here to mean either the whole Bible or the New Testament, and therefore allege that the Apostle here enjoins the use of songs drawn from the whole Bible or from the New Testament in particular. Ans.—1st—Let it be proved that the clause, ‘Word of Christ’ has either of the meanings alleged, and not simply the principles of the gospel. 2nd—Let it also be proved that the Apostle does here enjoin upon the Church to compose songs, drawing the matter of them from what he calls the word of Christ.
7. Others reason ‘from the use of the three terms Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.’
But, 1st—Any inspired Psalm, according to the aspect in which it is viewed, may be called a Psalm, hymn or spiritual song. Such a use of language is not uncommon in the Scriptures, e.g., the expression ‘forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin.’ 2nd—If these three terms (Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs) do really point out three distinct kinds of devotional poetry, then let it be proved that the Psalm Book does not comprise songs of these three different kinds. The Jews did apply the terms Psalms, hymns and songs indiscriminately to the Psalm Book, according to their own historians, Philo and Josephus, and probably Paul and the primitive Christians may have done the same. Besides, in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament in use in the days of Paul, some of the Psalms are termed a Psalm, some an ode or song, and some alleluia, a Hebrew word, which, when used as a noun, is just equivalent to hymn. Is it not probable then that the apostle alludes to these three terms as titles of different Psalms?
8. ‘It is inferred from 1 Cor. xiv. 20 that the Corinthians brought into their assemblies Psalms composed by themselves under a supernatural impulse of the Spirit, and of course not contained in the Book of Psalms.
But let it be proved that those Psalms, by the unseasonable reading or repeating of which they disturbed their assemblies, were really composed by themselves, under the influence of the Spirit, and not rather selected from the Psalms of David.’
9. It is alleged that the Psalms are not adapted to New Testament worship.
Ans.—1st—God never changes, and of course His praise is always the same. 2nd—The Spirit of God was better able, in the days of David, to prepare songs suited to New Testament worship than mere men are now. 3rd—The Psalms everywhere speak most clearly of Christ, and His mediatorial work and kingdom and glory, and are often and largely quoted by the apostles to illustrate the way of salvation. 4th—The Psalms make much less reference to the peculiarities of the old dispensation than some books of the New Testament—for example, the Epistle to the Hebrews. 5th—We have no book of Psalms in the New Testament, and no command to prepare one.
10. ‘It is objected that the Psalms are not sufficiently copious to furnish a complete system of Psalmody.’
But, 1st—God is no more glorious now than He was in Old Testament times, and if the Psalms were sufficient then for showing forth His praise they are still sufficient. 2nd—It is too much for any man to take upon himself to decide how large a system of Psalmody ought to be. 3rd—But the Psalm Book does really contain a much greater abundance and variety of matter than all the hymns which were ever composed by men.
11. Once more it is alleged ‘we have no good metrical translation of the Psalms.’
But, 1st—Let those who think so improve some of the best versions now in use, or else make a better one. Surely it is easier to make a good version of God’s Psalms than to compose better Psalms than God has made. 2nd—It is better to sing an imperfect translation of God’s Psalms than to sing the very best of man’s making. But, 3rd—We have a good metrical version of the Psalms. In our Scottish version, it is true, there are some blemishes. It has some uncouth expressions, and some words now obsolete, and in some cases its versification is far from smooth, but for the most part both its expression and versification are very good, and those best able to judge affirm that its fidelity to the original Hebrew is not much if at all inferior to that of the prose version of the Psalms in our English Bible.
II. To instrumental music.
(To be continued.)