REV. JOHN MACNEILL AND THE PSALMS.
WE observe from the columns of a northern newspaper that Rev. John Macneill, during his recent campaign in Stornoway, has been indulging in characteristically strong language regarding a reference to him in a recent issue of the Magazine. Mr. Macneill is quite entitled to reply to any criticisms that may be passed upon his preaching or his evangelistic methods in general; but he is not entitled, for the sake of the effect produced, to distort the critic’s language, and attribute to him words and charges which he never penned. He charges him, in the present case, with saying that “John Macneill depends entirely on his own preaching, on something in himself, to excite and charm the people.” Now, we have our own ideas as to what Mr. Macneill depends on “to excite and charm the people;” but we ask anyone to examine for himself the paragraph to which reference is made, and see whether by any fair and valid method of interpretation the words used can be made to bear the construction put upon them. The critic’s strictures were based upon a description given in The British Weekly by one of John Macneill’s own friends, who was doing a bit of special pleading for his style of preaching, and who would hardly be expected to do him injustice. In that description it was admitted that the work of the Spirit was kept in the background, and on this fact the comment was founded which, in spite of John Macneill’s indignant protest, we here take the liberty of repeating. “For lack of this element (the sovereign power of the Spirit), Mr. Macneill’s evangelistic labours, however eloquent and forcible otherwise, must be pronounced dangerous and misleading.” The whole matter shows that although Mr. Macneill professes, to use his own language, to be “so much accustomed to praise” that he takes criticism “like mustard with beef,” he is thinking less, when smarting under the sting of the truth, of the beef than of the mustard.
During the course of his mission, as reported in this same newspaper, Mr. Macneill takes us into his confidence a little. He gives us an inkling of what constitutes at least one end of his present tour through the Highlands. “I want,” he said, “to get in the thin end of the wedge to destroy this virtual idolatry.” It was about the exclusive use of the Psalms in public worship he was speaking when he made this reference to idolatry. Highlanders are idolising God’s word, says John Macneill, and although he adds that they would hunt their own minister into the harbour for suggesting it, he is not afraid to set the truth before them, and to show up their idols. We wonder how many Psalms does John Macneill sing in public worship during the year, when he doesn’t happen to be touring through the Highlands. We question if he ever sings one; and the difference between him and his Stornoway hearers, in this matter of professed idolatry, is that while they idolise the Word of God, John Macneill idolises the word of man. But does not this avowed intention of driving in the thin end of the wedge cast a rather lurid light on the attentions that have recently been lavished on the Highlands by Free Church Evangelists of all kinds? Is it not fruitful of suggestions as to multifarious endeavours to divorce our deluded countrymen from their idolatry? Might not the convention held at Inverness “for the deepening of spiritual life” be an attempt at suppressing idolatry too, and is it not a fair inference that Dr. Whyte’s coquetting with northern congregations during the past few months had the same iconoclastic ends in view? May we whisper it that even the big collection for the Highlands and Islands, made in Freec St. George’s a week or two ago, is perhaps a thicker part of the wedge whose thin end is being so valiantly inserted by John Macneill? And what more likely than that the ultimate end of all this campaign against idolatry is to bring about a peaceful and harmonious union between our Highland congregations thus liberated, and others who have cast their idols to the moles and the bats long ago? Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, said the Roman poet of yore: I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts with them.
But how does Mr. Macneill proceed to demolish our idols? He asserts that in our exclusive adherence to the Psalms we “have not a leg to stand upon;” and he proceeds to state his reasons why we should in the matter of public praise extend our affections to hymns. These reasons are doubtless meant for arguments; and John Macneill evidently thought they were cogent arguments too: for he wound up one of them with a triumphant “Now for you!” as if to say, “What think ye of your dagon now, when you see him shivered there on the floor in a thousand atoms? That’s demolition for you!” But were we not convinced that in this Highland crusade we see a deliberate attempt to win over our northern friends to those lax and dangerous views regarding doctrine and worship which they have hitherto resisted with comparative success, we should consider John Macneill’s views on the question of praise too weak for serious comment. They are simply childish, but they are just the sort of thing that is used for argument by the advocates of uninspired hymns, and flourished before the eyes of those whom they deride as narrow minded and bigoted with a “Now for you!” which is meant to be an end of all controversy. “As well might you say that in prayer and preaching God will accept nothing but his own inspired Word.” This is the first argument. We have heard it long ago. Many a day since it first saw the light, and many a day since it has been so effectively demolished that we thought it would never be resurrected again. Does John Macneill seriously mean to say that the cases are parallel? Does he see no difference in this respect between prayer and praise? Is there no difference in the nature of them? John Macneill can, in the nature of things, compose his new prayer, but can he compose his new song? Let him try; and if his singing is to be as free as his praying, we think there will be a somewhat effective stop put to this present campaign of his through the Highlands. Does he not know that there is Scripture warrant for free prayer; but can he show us one example in the Word of God of a congregation singing anything but the words of inspiration? Does he not know that the Spirit is promised specifically as a Spirit of prayer to assist us in the free expression of our wants, but where is there mention of the Spirit as a Spirit of song? Christ has indeed promised to sing praise in the midst of the congregation; but we ask will the words used by the Son of God be human words or divine? Will they be words that He has given to us, or will they be words that we must give to Him?
“And the first line of the very first Psalm is wrong”—this is the second argument. It is not new either. We have heard it, too, long ago, and each time we have heard it our wonder has increased that any reflecting mind could ever repeat such childish rubbish. “The first line of the first Psalm is wrong,” says John Macneill, “because no man in the world hath perfect blessedness.” But stop a little. Does the Psalm say that any man in the world hath perfect blessedness, does it? Or does it say that the man who walketh not astray and fulfils all the conditions which it goes on to enumerate is perfectly blessed—which? Would it not be worth John Macneill’s while to look at our metrical version again, and see whether it is such an utterly weak thing as he thinks it? The Psalm, we need not point out to anyone who seriously looks at it, describes an ideal condition, and does not say that that ideal is ever actually attained in practice. It speaks of perfect blessedness, but it is a perfect blessedness which is suspended upon the fulfilment of certain conditions; and if John Macneill will show us the man who perfectly fulfils these conditions we shall undertake to show him a man who is perfectly blessed. Is it to the translation of our Psalms in metre that he takes objection in this first line? Perhaps it is. “David,” he goes on to say, “never said that at all. David said—Blessed is the man who walketh not and sitteth not,” &c. But, as a matter of fact, David said neither the one nor the other. David penned the Hebrew words of which these two renderings are slightly different translations, and the question is which of the two approaches nearer the spirit of the original. The words literally translated are, “O, the blessedness of the man!” and there are greater authorities than either John Macneill or we who affirm that this use of the plural, combined with the fact that it is used in an exclamation, points to the complete or perfect blessedness of the man described.
Since we are on the question of the Psalms we may quote this paragraph, written some thirty years ago, by one who knew, as few knew it, the sweetness of singing the praises of the Triune Jehovah in the words inspired by Himself for that end. It lifts us into a somewhat loftier reign than that in which we were when considering the words of John Macneill. “The Psalms are unshackled from time altogether. They are the Holy Spirit’s expression for mental action and spiritual emotion transpiring in a realm above all outward dispensation—the realm of immediate fellowship with God through that Messiah who instructed the two travellers to Emmaus in the things contained in the Psalms concerning Himself. The first Psalm celebrates eternal moral distinctions, and might have been sung by Abraham and Isaac and Jacob long ere the Old Testament dispensation began. The second psalm presents the permanent relations of men and of kingdoms and their kings to God’s Anointed One, whom we see inaugurated on His Holy Hill of Zion, and endowed with a universal dominion over all powers that be. And what the first two Psalms thus present to us; on the one hand, the everlasting moral distinctions considered in themselves and utterly invariable under all dispensation whatever; and on the other hand, the introduction of God’s grace and God’s Christ into God’s government, and the bearings thereof on the same moral distinctions in the suppression of moral evil and the securing of the triumph of moral good; what the first two Psalms thus present to us of materials and considerations unshackled from time and temporal dispensation, and rising above and comprehending all time and all circumstances, the entire Book of Psalms presents only more abundantly and more variously. They do indeed sometimes present history to us, in its bearings on devotion and ascription of praise to God; but even that is done to unshackle church history from time altogether, to make it in fact live for ever, the present and everlasting heritage of the Church. “They passed through the flood on foot; there did we rejoice in him.”—(Hugh Martin, D.D.)
A. S.