BY THE REV. HENRY BAZELY, B.C.L.
“Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord.”—EPH. v. 19.
“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.”—COL. iii. 16.
* A Sermon preached in St. Andrew’s Scottish Church, Philpot Street, Commercial Road, London, E., on 10th February, 1878.
I WISH to state to you, dear brethren, my reasons for the practice, which I have constantly followed since I became your minister, of choosing our songs of praise to Almighty God exclusively from the book of Psalms. I ought perhaps to have done this sooner, since you may have naturally desired a fuller statement than the statement I gave in a brief paper on Public Worship written for your inspection before I accepted this pastoral charge, of the reasons which compel me under a solemn sense of duty to God and to our Church, to abstain from the use of uninspired hymns in the public worship of the congregation.
At the time of the Reformation one of the important subjects of controversy discussed between the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformed Church was the rule of worship. The Roman Catholic Church adopted the principle, “Whatever Scripture does not forbid it allows” (Quod Scriptura non vetat, permittit); whereas, the Reformed Churches took as their principle, “Whatever Scripture does not command, it forbids” (Quod Scriptura non jubet, vetat). Observe the vast difference between these two principles. According to the Roman principle there is scope for the introduction of ten thousand rites and practices unknown in the days of the Apostles. The manner of worship is thus made dependent on the various and everchanging tastes of men, and their ideas of what is expedient and comely. The only uniformity possible is that which is enforced by the despotic government of the rulers of the Church for the time being. On the other hand, according to the principle of the Reformed Churches, the manner of worship is wholly regulated by the perfect wisdom of God, and an end is at once put to controversy. Does a church or a private individual desire to make an alteration in the accustomed manner of worship? it is incumbent on the church or the individual to bring forward the express warrant from God’s written Word. If no such warrant can be produced, the proposed change is ipso facto condemned; whereas, according to the Roman principle, a door is opened to an interminable controversy as to men’s tastes and notions of expediency. I do not now intend to enter upon the proof of the soundness of the Reformation principle, but let me simply remind you that it was received with hardly an exception by all the Reformed Churches. The Church of England, unhappily for her own prosperity, did not accept this principle and she is suffering to this day from internal disorders that threaten her very existence. The Church of Scotland, like the other Churches, accepted this principle in its integrity with the result that a clean sweep was made of every rite and practice for which no sanction could be found in the New Testament. The principle is asserted in the Confession of Faith, chap. xxi., sec. i., in the following words:—”The acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or”—mark this—”any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.” It is for us, if we accept the doctrine of the Confession (and surely every loyal member of our church does accept it), to inquire, with regard to this matter, whether the use of uninspired hymns is prescribed in Holy Scripture. If it is, then such hymns must be used; if not, then the use of such hymns is unlawful. The answer to the question need not detain us long. Our church, as we shall presently see has given a plain and decided reply.
But let us first look, independently of the formularies of our church, at two or three passages in the New Testament. The shortest text bearing on the subject is that which contains James’ exhortation to Christians who are cheerful in the enjoyment of the good gifts of our merciful God, “Is any merry? let him sing psalms.” To the same effect Paul exhorts the Ephesians and Colossian Christians in the passages, so like each other, which I read as my text. His phrase in both epistles is “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” I cannot doubt that many of the Apostle’s readers, who have not examined with a little care his meaning have come to the conclusion that uninspired hymns and spiritual songs are in these texts not barely permitted, but explicitly prescribed, by Paul. My brethren, there is not, I am persuaded, the slightest ground for the supposition that the Apostle refers here to uninspired poetry, or to any poems outside the canonical book of Psalms. The reference is simply to the different classes of poems contained in the Psalter, as is sufficiently clear from the fact that the three Greek words for “psalms, hymns, spiritual songs,” are just the words which are used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, which Paul employed to express the different Hebrew words occurring in the titles of the Psalms, and are rendered in our version by “psalm,” “song,” “praise,” and so forth. That this is the true significance of Paul’s phraseology is shown by the instructive circumstance that the praise sung by our Lord and His Apostles after the Last Supper—doubtless that portion of the Psalter which was entitled by the Jewish Church the Egyptian Hallel or Thanksgiving (Psalms cxiii.-cxviii), and customarily sung by them at the Passover—is designated by the Evangelists Matthew and Mark “a hymn”—“when they had sung an hymn, they went to the Mount of Olives.” A further proof is furnished by the epithet spiritual attached in the above texts to “songs,” which means according to its use in the New Testament that which comes directly from the Spirit of God. Moreover, there is no trace in the extant writings of the early Church of the use in Apostolic times of any uninspired hymns; and surely if such had been in use they would not all have perished.
Indeed, as late as the year 563, we find a decree made by the Council of Braga in the following terms:—“No poetical compositions are to be sung in the church except the Psalms of the Canonical Scriptures.” “There were still some churches, even in the 9th century which did not admit metrical hymns into their offices.” (Smith’s Dictionary of Christian Antiquities—Art. Hymn.)
That the Bible furnishes us with no warrant for the use of any songs in public worship but those contained in the Psalter, is not the private opinion of this or that individual; it is the deliberate judgment of the Church of Scotland, clearly expressed in her standards. In the Confession of Faith, chap. xxi., sec. 5, “singing of psalms” is the description given of one of the constituent parts of worship; and at the close of the Directory, in which document there are several references to the psalmody of the church, a paragraph contains the following words: “It is the duty of Christians to praise God publicly by singing of Psalms together in the congregation and also privately in the family.” There is not the most distant allusion in any of our Formularies, in the Confession, Catechism, or Directory, to uninspired hymns. Such hymns were absolutely unknown in our churches until the close of last century (i.e., the eighteenth). During the latter half of that century, when the unevangelical principles of so called Moderatism were dominant, and intrusions of unacceptable presentees into vacant parishes were driving many Christian people into secession, some hymns—five in number—were, in conjunction with sixty-seven Paraphrases of Scripture, “collected and prepared by a Committee of the General Assembly, in order to be sung in Churches.” Note the wording of this sentence, which stands on the title page of the Paraphrases. Very different is the wording of the title page of the Psalter: “The Psalms of David, in Metre; according to the version approved by the Church of Scotland, and appointed to be used in worship.” The Paraphrases and the five accompanying hymns never received formal ecclesiastical sanction; never, as was necessary to authorise their use, were they approved by a majority of Presbyteries, in terms of the Barrier Act. “Certain it is,” says Dr. John Cunningham in his History of the Church of Scotland, “there is no Act formally sanctioning them.” Those who used them did so by nothing more than the temporary sanction of the General Assembly. There is certainly, as has been sometimes pointed out, a difference between Paraphrases, i.e., loose renderings of passages of Holy Scripture, and such hymns as are original compositions. The former are not open to precisely the same objections as the latter. But it may, I think, be fairly argued that paraphrases are at least unnecessary; and with regard to the sixty-seven attached to our metrical Psalter, while in all of them undue liberties are taken with the inspired text, several are portions of the Bible that were not intended to be sung; so that we may be thankful our church was preserved from giving a formal sanction to this collection.
I have already given sufficient reason for the exclusive use of the Psalter in public worship, inasmuch as I have shown you that uninspired hymns can find no warrant from either precept or example in Holy Scripture, that they were not used in the purest days of the Reformed Church of Scotland, and that they have at no time—not even at the most unsatisfactory periods of our Church’s history—been constitutionally approved. I shall add a few more reasons in confirmation.
(1) The first and most weighty reason is the acknowledgment which we thereby make of the supremacy of Scripture.
We thus draw an unmistakable distinction between inspired and uninspired writings. We refuse to put on an apparent level with the words spoken and written by men under the supernatural influence of the Holy Ghost, any words, however true, however beautiful, for which such suggestion and guidance cannot be claimed. To add by way of supplement to the Psalter uninspired hymns—and much more, of course, to substitute these hymns for the Psalms—is really to disparage Holy Scripture as imperfect and insufficient for the needs of the Christian Church. Can we doubt, brethren, that if the Psalter were inadequate, as some venture to treat it, our blessed Lord would have guided His Apostles by His Spirit to draw up a new manual of praise for His Church? He has not done so; and we may surely infer the perfect adequacy of the Psalter, which He Himself and His Apostles used. Certainly there was never a time in the history of the Christian Church when it was more dangerous to disparage the perfection of Holy Scripture or to neglect the assertion of its supremacy, than now, when its specific distinction from all other writings, and its adequateness as the sole rule of doctrine and practice for Christians, are by very many denied.
(2) Secondly, I would insist on the use of the Psalter only in public worship, for the sake of the profitable and delightful familiarity with it which every member of the Church will thus readily attain.
No one can express how dear the Psalms have been to devout Christians in all ages, what sound instruction has been furnished by them, what strong encouragement, what real comfort, what unspeakable joy. They who have been best acquainted with the Psalms have valued them most highly. In the early Church there was a rule in some provinces that no one should be ordained until he could repeat the Psalms by heart. I could almost wish that this rule were revived in the Church of our own day. In the fifth century—so Jerome tells us—the poor husbandman was heard singing the Psalms as he walked behind his plough. Another writer of the same date exhorts the artizans to sing the Psalms in their shops. They were translated into Greek metrical verse that children might learn them in the schools, for as Augustine writes, the Psalms were specially intended for the delight of children and young men. I have often been greatly pleased in visiting our Scottish poor to discover the accurate knowledge of the Psalms possessed by aged people, who in their youth heard no other songs in the public worship of their Church. Now, alas, since other hymns have been introduced, this knowledge of the Psalms is no longer common; the children of this generation are far better acquainted with uninspired hymns, some perhaps good, many indifferent, and not a few containing positive error.
And lastly, another reason for the exclusive use of the Psalms in public worship is the danger of erroneous doctrines creeping in through uninspired hymns.
This is not an imaginary danger. Students of early church history know that the monstrous systems of the Gnostics, and the attractive heresy of the Arians which denied the perfect deity of Jesus Christ, and in the fourth century almost overspread the Church, were often covertly introduced, and then greatly helped forward and successfully propagated by the use of uninspired hymns, and in our own day the retrograde movement in the Church of England towards Romish doctrines and practices has been, as Evangelical ministers bitterly complain, largely promoted by the popular book entitled Hymns Ancient and Modern. Nor shall I conceal my conviction that the false doctrine which is spreading like a canker in the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, is not obscurely connected with the unscriptural innovations which have been made upon the purity of our worship.