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 (Continued from page 387.)
II. When we spoke of innovations we referred to instrumental music in the worship of God.
Against this novelty, now so generally introduced into the Presbyterian Church, we hereby lift up our earnest and united protest for several reasons.
1st—Because it is a great Scriptural principle
laid down in our Confession of Faith “that nothing is to be used in the worship of God but what has been prescribed by Him in His Word.” But the use of instruments in divine worship, under the Gospel dispensation, is nowhere prescribed or sanctioned in the New Testament. Every well-taught child in the Presbyterian Church knows that what is forbidden in the Second Commandment is “the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in His Word,” and the Larger Catechism pronounces such worship to be only “will-worship, and therefore wrong.” At the coming of Christ the whole of the Mosaic economy, including, of course, the Davidic institution, ended, and was merged into the Spiritual Kingdom of Christ, when things literal received their spiritual meaning, and so the whole Mosaic ritual was abolished. This is manifest from the words of the Apostle to the Colossians:—“Let no man judge you in respect to a new moon or holy day,” which, be it observed, were the only times when the use of instruments in God’s worship would be lawful. Then in the fifteenth chapter of Acts we read of the “falling” of “the tabernacle of David,” and Paul calls the observance of days, months, etc., “the beggarly elements of bondage,” thus showing that all Mosaic times were typical only and so came to an end, the Sabbath law being excepted and continuing the same, because it was not Mosaic, but existed from the Creation. Hence it follows, seeing all divine sanction of instruments in the worship of God ceased entirely at the introduction of Christianity, the New Testament contains no authority whatever for their use either direct or implied; and surely this ought to settle the question for all who profess to take the Gospel for their rule or guide in such matters. God is, therefore, not to be worshipped now “with men’s hands” or fingers in manipulating either the strings of a harp or the stops of an organ.
2nd—Further, organs are a grievous and unwarranted misapplication of the pecuniary resources of the Church of God.
They are often enormously expensive. The cost of the instrument itself, and the salary paid to the performer, make up together an extravagant sum, which ought to be laid out either on foreign missions, for the salvation of the perishing heathen, or else in assisting poor congregations at home to support ordinances, or in upholding some charitable institution. Mr. Spurgeon tells, in one of his printed discourses, that “seven of the leading Ritualist churches in London, in the year 1872, contributed among them only £13 7s. for the support of foreign missions.” And yet that one of their incumbents stated on another occasion, before a committee of his church, that the cost of his choir alone was £1000 sterling a year, “Oh, model church!” exclaims the good man, “with what wisdom has thou acted! Behold thou givest £2 for the salvation of the heathen and £1000 for a box of whistles with a set of singing men and singing women to make music withal! Theirs is a religion of sensuous gratification, not of winning souls to Christ. But if the world were indeed to be regenerated by organs it would be time for us to cease our ministry.” Choirs may be objectionable for more reasons than one, and many congregations have no choirs, but only a precentor, and sometimes a very poor one too. But in both cases we can at least have human voices to call forth our sympathies in a way which organs never did and never can do. And what says the great John Owen? “It is a well known fact in the history of religion that when the religious life is strong and communion with God and eternal realities vivid and close, the fine arts are neglected in worship; but when the souls of men have lost the vivid sense of the divine presence and the joy of fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, then there is a cry for pictures, statuary, and sensuous music to fill up the place left vacant by the receding presence of Jehovah.”
3rd—But again. The Saviour declares the time is now come
when those who would “worship the Father who is a Spirit, must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.” The true worshippers are themselves the only harps or organs to be employed in God’s service. We are “to sing with the understanding” and to “make melody in our hearts to the Lord.” But an organ has neither understanding nor heart—being only an insensate, unconscious machine, made up of timber, metal, and other like materials. And to enable us to appreciate, as we ought, the true worth of its performances in God’s service, we have only to think of Paul’s words when he describes what is utterly “worthless by calling it “sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” That instrumental music has its uses, however, we do not mean to dispute. It may serve several good purposes in common society, but none of these can extend to any part of God’s worship. Even an irrational animal, though endowed with the highest instinct, is wholly incapable of worshipping God; how much more is a dead insensate organ? Its advocates, however, call it only a “Help” in divine worship. But “does not help, in the performance of any action, imply its taking a part of that action?” which surely no dead instrument can do. We know that to many it would prove a hindrance rather than a help. But the organ has also sometimes been put on a level with the tuning fork. Well, we have no objection, only let it do just what the tuning fork does—that is, let it stop before the singing begins, and then its opponents will have far less ground of complaint.
4th—Again, the great majority of hearers are not qualified to join in instrumental music
without producing discord. This is acknowledged by some advocates of organs, and they say that in such a case those hearers ought to be silent. “But would it not be more seemly that the organ was silent?” True, if some were to raise their voices very high it might occasion a discord. But have not the friends of the organ also held it to be one of the excellencies of that instrument that it drowns the voice of discord, although in saying so they risk the admission that it may drown the voices of the worshippers as well? And so it would appear after all that to drown the human voice almost altogether is a help to devotion! In other words, the thunder peal of an organ is a help to the voice which it will not suffer to be heard at all except very faintly by the nearest ear! But “when a tornado or hurricane sweeps you helplessly before it or hurls you to the ground, would you say it was only helping you to walk or run?”
5th—Again, instrumental music in Christian churches is, comparatively speaking but a modern thing
—not older at furthest than the full establishment of Popery in what are called the dark ages. It had no place in the Apostolic Church, nor for centuries afterwards, and “even when introduced it had nothing accompanying it belonging to the Davidic ritual—as for example, no Levite, no variety of other instruments, no particular tunes, and no temple.” Some of these things perished with the first temple, and all the rest at the coming of Christ. As Popery advanced, however, and corruption after corruption found its way into the Church, organs began to be gradually and stealthily introduced. And here it will not do to say, as has been sometimes said, that for nearly seven centuries Christians were too poor to provide organs. Even under Pagan persecution Christians were often the majority in some of the towns and cities of the Roman Empire, so that they could warrantably say to the heathen around them—”We have left you nothing but the temples of your gods.” And when Christianity became established by Constantine, with a view mainly no doubt to serve his own political purposes, we may say Christianity then commanded the wealth of the Roman Empire, and if Christians wanted organs then could they not have got them? Most assuredly they could. But they were not generally wanted. “But without anything like direct ecclesiastical sanction they found their way little by little into the Church, just very much as they do to-day, step by step through the sensuous and innovating tendencies of the age.”
6th—Again, we object to organs in the church because they help to make Christian worship sensuous.
The Old Testament ritual altogether, according to the Apostle Paul, belonged only to the childhood of the Church. But such a ritual is now become unprofitable and vain, and is no better than a yoke and a bondage. But it appears that the pure spiritual ordinance of Christ is not sensuous enough to satisfy the cravings for sensational effect which distinguish Christians of the present day. This love of the sensuous shows the growing power and influence of the senses over the intellect. But the religion of Jesus has no place for “art and man’s device.” For what do we mean by sensuousness? What, but a taste and a relish and even a passion for what comes in through the eye and the ear, rather than what comes out from the heart by the voice and the lips. The very attempt to defend sensuous worship just proves of itself the necessity that exists for an honest and resolute protest against the tendency of our times.
7th—Once more, the introduction of instruments into churches has a manifest tendency to engender strife and division
in congregations and even in families. Those who bring in such devices are justly called innovators, because they are acting contrary to the fixed statutes and long established practice of the Christian Church, and, as we have already said, contrary to their own standards. Yet they dare not allege that such innovation is a duty, or that not to use instruments in divine worship can wound any conscience; whilst, on the other hand, they cannot but see that using them actually does wound the consciences of many of the most earnest and enlightened Christians. They can only say that instrumental music is expedient and they call it a help to devotion, although not a part of it. They are, therefore, on their own showing not bound by conscience either to practise it themselves or to press the use of it on others, and when they do the one or the other how can they clear themselves from the charge of disturbing the Church of God? Whereas the opponents of such novelties, on the other hand, “aim at no disturbing movements.” They merely resolve to stand firm to the old terms on which both parties originally became members of the Church. Instruments are recommended not on the ground of Scripture or of conscience, but of taste only as a means of intensifying religious feeling and emotion—just as if feeling and emotion were of themselves real devotion, or even necessarily led to it “The right emotion is that which comes from devotion, but true devotion never springs from mere emotion—”which may be, and most commonly is, no more than temporary excitement, a thing as evanescent as “the morning cloud and the early dew.” Moreover, is not “the Lord our God a jealous God, who as King and Head of His Church challenges it as His own inalienable right to regulate and prescribe whatever relates to His own worship? “In vain,” says He, “do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men!” In every approach to Him ought we not, therefore, to ask: “Is this or that according to the will of God?” We must take heed lest we “offer strange fire before the Lord,” and lest He meet us with the alarming question: “Who hath required this at your hand?” It is perilous to take a single step off the ground of divine precept and prescription. Take heed,” said the Lord to Moses, “that thou make all things according to the pattern shewn thee in the Mount.” And God is the same God still. We must take heed, therefore, that we intermeddle not with His royal prerogative whenever we are tempted to adopt, without His positive sanction, anything whatever, merely because it seems to us adapted to do good. This has long been one of the plausible but most baneful errors of the Man of Sin himself. It lies in fact at the root of that system of corrupt Christianity which the whole Protestant world unanimously rejects as anti-Christian, notwithstanding its fine pictures and images and its grand and impressive ceremonial—having “a show of wisdom,” but only “in will-worship”—unacceptable to God and fatal to all vital godliness. Adopt this principle but once and where shall we be able to fix its limits? Let human ingenuity, on any pretence whatever, once begin to meddle with the devotion of God’s Church and where will it stop? “Doubtless it was as much in mercy and loving kindness to us men as it was a jealous regard to His own glory that the only King and Head of the Church did, from the beginning, so carefully exclude from His Church every device and invention of man—setting upon every ordinance and every institution the stamp and seal of His own sovereign authority.” “Error in the Church is like the letting out of water, small and easily corrected at the first, but ever acquiring force and volume, until at length it breaks through all barriers and becomes fairly uncontrollable. Only admit one human device and soon another and another will follow.” “To the law and to the testimony.” If men “speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them.”
By divine appointment under the Old Testament ritual Psalms and musical instruments invariably went together; but what God thus joined together man is now putting asunder, and to please and conciliate the world a human is substituted instead of a divine Psalmody. And what a falling off is here. Psalms bear upon them a stamp of authority which hymns, be they ever so excellent, do not. They bind the conscience in a way which nothing human ever can do. If you use Hymns and exclude the Psalms entirely, and this is sure to be the result at last, we can warrantably affirm that you are guilty of despising an ordinance of God—whereas, if we confine ourselves exclusively to the use of Psalms, and refuse to make use of hymns at all, you know you cannot warrantably turn round and say of us that we are despising a divine ordinance. Finally, on this point, the advocate for Psalms, to the exclusion of all human compositions, is the only true and consistent advocate for union—union amongst all true Protestant denominations on earth; and how so? When Christians divide and break away from one another and from separate organisations it is well known they invariably adopt a hymn book containing something less or more of the grounds and reasons of their separation; and the New Hymnal clenches the schism, strengthening and perpetuating it. Whereas, if all Christians adopted God’s hymnal—the Book of Psalms—then schism would die, and sectarianism would have nothing comparatively to feed or foster it, and so division and mutual estrangement and alienation among God’s people must cease and give place to universal harmony and love. Certain it is if ever Christians are “to see eye to eye” they must all be brought to use God’s one book of devotion, the Psalms of David.
III. The only other innovation imported of late into the Presbyterian Church
which we notice at present, and against which we feel it our duty to testify, refers to certain modes of raising money for ecclesiastical purposes. These modes are varied according to circumstances, and, while the main object in them all is the same, viz., the raising of money, yet different names are given them, and they are somewhat differently conducted. We refer to church bazaars, socials, tea-meetings, soirees, etc., etc. These gatherings are held either in public halls or in the basements of churches; or, where neither of these exist, as generally happens in country places, in the churches themselves—that is in the same places where Christians assemble on the Lord’s day to worship God, to hear His Word preached, and from time to time where they sit down at a Communion table and “show the Lord’s death till He come.” Now, waving a good many minor considerations, we object to all such novelties in the Church of God, amongst others, for the two following reasons—1st Because they secularise the Church of Christ; and, 2nd, Because they corrupt and degrade the Christian ministry.
1st All such things have a manifest tendency to secularise the Church of Christ.
If money is needed, as doubtless it is, why not, after clearly describing the object in view, its nature and importance, appeal directly to the Christian love and liberality of the people—old and young? This course would at least be Apostolic, and Christian ministers could then say with Paul, “If we have ministered to you in spiritual things, is it any great matter if we should reap your carnal things?” and more especially when we have nothing selfish or personal in view! Every favourable response to such an appeal, however humble, would most certainly tend to strengthen Christian principle in the responding party, and his or her heart would be the better of it; whereas, approach the same persons with a mere carnal entertainment, whether in the form of food or of fun, and you deal with them on merely worldly principles; and so, in place of teaching them the holiness of giving for Christ’s sake, you only foster in them, and in yourself at the same time a low conformity with the world, and help to make both parties more worldly than before. The object we have in view may be ever so good in itself, but we must seek its attainment in a way which is right and good also, or else adopt the Romish principle, “that the end justifies the means,” and, as Scripture expresses it, “do evil that good may come.”
But, in the second place, we are persuaded that such things tend to corrupt and degrade the ministry.
In all those gatherings, of whatever name, it is always the minister who must preside, and who, with the help for the most part of his brother ministers, is expected to furnish the mental food best adapted to the taste of the audience, which, being chiefly made up of the young and light-hearted and most thoughtless of all the surrounding neighbourhood, it is an easy matter to guess what the character of the addresses must be. It is unnecessary to advert to the many startling and painful, yet well-attested reports circulated as to the nature of those addresses. One thing must be obvious from the nature of the case, viz., that the dignity, the sacredness, and the peculiar weight and influence of the ministerial office, cannot but suffer seriously on such occasions, that is, if they are going to be made, as it is commonly called, “a success;” or, in other words, if they are to replenish the congregational treasury.
To be popular on such occasions, the minister must lay aside altogether, for the time, the character of Christ’s Ambassador, and assume, in its stead, that of the harlequin or buffoon; and, by light jesting, witty puns, and mirth-awaking tales and anecdotes, and especially, if he has any talent that way, by putting forth his powers of mimicry with all its diverting tricks and gesticulations, no matter though it be at the expense of departed saints who were lately the salt of the earth. One is always quite safe and risks no libel suit in burlesquing the dead. By such means as these, we say he must elicit from his hearers thunders of applause, and keep them in a continual roar of merriment. But now we ask in all sobriety will not all this be damaging to his prospects of usefulness as a Christian minister? Will it not compromise the sanctity of his divine mission? Will not his light manner at the social or soiree go far to take off the edge of his sharpest and best chosen words in the pulpit and at the communion-table? In a word, we just ask can such lightness consist with the gravity of a bishop or overseer in the House of God? Or can it be thought in keeping with his ordination vows when solemnly set apart for the office of the ministry, by laying on of the hands of the Presbytery? We do not—we can not believe it. Therefore, we lift up our testimony against this most injurious innovation as no other than a prostitution of the ministerial office; and a device of the great Enemy to counteract, and if possible, to frustrate the very end and design of the Gospel ministry.
DONALD FRASER, Elder.
“If I should see the sin of shame on the one hand, and the pain of hell on the other, and must, of necessity, choose one, I would rather be thrust into hell without sin than go into heaven with sin.”—Anselm