THE present Editor of the Free Presbyterian Magazine has written very instructive articles in the pages of the Magazine many years ago on the above subject. In fact, most of the older ministers of the Church wrote in defence of the same subject. These excellent articles are to be found in the Magazines of the Church from the very beginning of the history of the F.P. Church. The rising generation have need of being constantly reminded and instructed as those that went before us were by the ministers of the Church, elders and missionaries that have passed on to their eternal rest—for very few are now left with us of those who stood so faithful and true to the Word, when the “men of night” failed to resist the flood of infidelity that overwhelmed millions of men and women as happened so literally in the days of Noah. This flood has not receded yet!
Is the Bible sufficient for us to worship God in our private and public approaches to the divine Majesty through Jesus Christ our Lord? Are we authorised to call to our aid in worshipping God, man-made altars, wooden instruments of music, man-made hymns, to worship the Most High God? Is the Bible a complete, divinely-inspired manual for that purpose? If so, how dare men add to or take from what God completed for our good? If the Bible is not sufficient, who is sufficient among men to tell us what other helps we should add to the divine testimony to complete the Manual of praise? We say at once without the least fear or hesitation that that man, as a mere man, was not born among men from the day Adam fell in the Garden of Eden! We know full well what the Pope of Rome would say to our attitude on this point. Were the Psalms inspired by the Holy Spirit? We know that Psalms were used in the Church of God from the dawn of the history of the Bible. The Church in the wilderness sang Psalms, see Exodus, chapter 15. Prophets, seers, the Lord Jesus and His disciples, martyrs, and people from all extant records sang Psalms for thousands of years. Who authorised that man-made hymns should be used in the worship of God? In the Gaelic language, we have as beautiful, spiritual and Scriptural as the pen of an Englishman or German ever wrote—Gaelic songs or hymns, some set to lovely music, but who in his normal senses would use them in the public worship of God instead of the songs of the Holy Spirit in the book of Psalms!
First, Adam sinned, and then like a madman ran away to hide among the trees of the garden. Once a people depart from the Bible to man-made hymns, and to the bellowing of an Organ Cardinal, Newman’s hymns will please the carnal ear of the carnal-minded worshipper in the professed Protestant congregation. We hold that the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is absolutely sufficient for us to worship God without additions, subtractions or man-made hymns, whether composed in English, Gaelic, French, German or Latin. Our friends of the “hymns” may challenge us, and ask, “Who authorised us to turn the Psalms from prose to metre?” We may reply by asking another question: “Who authorised the translators of the English Bible to turn the Hebrew songs of the book of Psalms into prose?” If fault is found with us for having the Psalms in metre the charge must be laid at a higher door than ours! If the Jews were to change the Psalms from their original setting they could not sing, nor chant the sacred songs. Why? The Psalms were delivered to them in the metre form. If we translate them into our own metre form, wherein do we err? If our fathers erred in translating the Psalms into the metric form, they equally erred in translating a chapter or verse of the whole Bible!
The fact of the matter is the Book of Psalms can be translated into any language (by competent scholars), for the Holy Spirit adapted the Psalms to suit, for the praise of God to all nations under the heavens of the Lord. The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland has stood firm on the exclusive use of the Metrical Psalms in the public worship of God—at home, in our Missions in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia, and in the city of London, England. Our people are not thereby debarred in any way from using (for their personal instruction and spiritual profit) the Scriptural writings of the godly, whether in prose, song, hymn or verse.
The Majesty of heaven must be worshipped by His own Word in praise, preaching and prayer. Men, and angels are excluded!
We noticed in the March issue of the Gospel Standard, the Editor reviews a booklet entitled, “The Exclusive Use of Psalms in Public Worship.” With the merits or otherwise of that booklet we are not on this occasion considering. We do, however, take strong exception to the Editor’s remarks in his review, when he says: “While we value the inspired Psalms of David and others, we cannot follow the argument for the exclusive use of a paraphrase of them in the public worship. Our own hymns, though uninspired, are mostly paraphrases of Scripture truth, and we believe have been made a great blessing to many worshippers.” While we do not charge the worthy Editor of the Gospel Standard of a deliberate attempt at subtle sophistry, we would warn him that on the face of his own review and admission, his attitude as far as the book of Psalms is concerned is utterly out of place! We have made it abundantly clear in the foregoing that the metrical version of the Psalms is not a paraphrase of the sacred Word of God; but a faithful translation, which a man with a very moderate knowledge of the Hebrew Psalms should know. It is a loss and often aggravates mere differences of opinion the want of knowledge of the languages in which the blessed Bible was originally written. Our saintly divines and reformers were very learned men which added to the clearness of their conclusions that the book of Psalms was given to the Church of God for His praise in the public assembly of His people, and that Papal Hymns, songs, and paraphrasing of the Word of God had to be excluded with all the rest of the dregs of Romanism! The Psalms in metre are an exact reproduction of the original, with certain words transposed solely for the sake of rhythm. To state that the uninspired hymns of Hart, Gadsby, Kent, Toplady and others, however evangelically expressed the human sentiment may be, are equal to the Metrical Version of the book of Psalms is like saying that the evangelical sermons of the conservative divines of the Reformed Church are on par with the inspired Scripture! Dangerous theology that! We are assured that the evangelical sermons of the divines of the past have been blessed to the Lord’s people of these Islands and in many parts of the world. Yet, no one would dare to place them on equality with the Word of God. Neither should hymns be set on equality with the metrical version of the Psalms—no more, say, than putting the same premium on Dr. John Owen in his excellent discourses on the “Person of Christ,” and the gospel according to John. Human hymns of any kind, by any author, saint or sinner, have no place, warrant or authority in the worship of God. After our Lord’s glorious resurrection we read that He expounded what was written concerning Himself in “Moses, Prophets, and the Psalms,” which should be sufficient evidence for us to the end of time to debar from the worship of God what is of man’s invention, whether in hymns, songs and “Scriptural paraphrasing” of mere human sentiment. “To the law and to the testimony!” The recent controversy in the English Churchman on the subject shews clearly the hymns have been made a fertile means of introducing heresies and disastrous errors into the Protestant Churches in Europe and America. Unscrupulous men by the subtle manipulation of words to change hymns (as given originally by their authors to the world) into heretical doctrines, by which errors were introduced into the public worship of God. No hymn writer could say: “To the chief Musician on Neginoth, a Psalm, or song.” Or: “To the chief Musician, a Psalm of David, the servant of the Lord, who spake unto the Lord, the words of this song in the day the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul.” That is the introduction to Psalm xviii. Some will say: “Surely the titles of the Psalms are not inspired?” But they are inspired every one of them. What about the Psalms without these titles, or even the name of the writer given? What about them? The Holy Spirit is their author, with titles, and without titles, whether the name of an author is given or not. The writers were not their authors, like the hymn writers. Do we not read of Psalms, songs and hymns in the Bible? Yes, we do. Is that not sufficient justification to make use of “hymns” in the public praise of the Most High? There is an infinite difference between the “hymns” of the Holy Spirit and the mere production of even of good men.
When, then, were hymns first introduced into the Church? The ancient Greeks had hymns and songs which they sang to their gods long before the Christian era, and so had the Romans. The Jews, or rather Hebrews, had their sacred songs, hymns and Psalms given them by divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The first of these and the most ancient of them all is the song of Miriam inspired by the Holy Spirit on the borders of the Red Sea. Miriam, in this respect, being a type of the Church of God to the end of time, was given the place of honour for the expression of their praise and thankfulness in her magnificent song. Our Lord and His disciples, after the institution of the Supper, “sang an hymn,” which was the great Hallel—Ps. cxv.—cxviii., sang at all times on this occasion in the Hebrew Church. The heathen had no Psalms, but they had hymns, and plenty of them. Homer wrote hymns to the gods. We read that Orpheus was a priest-musician to his gods! Clemens Alexandrinus tells us that the chief part of the worship of the Egyptians consisted in singing hymns to their gods. Herodotus tells us that Homer got great credit for composing hymns to the gods. So we see that the heathen had their hymns many hundreds of years before man-made hymns appeared in the Christian Church. What have the hymnologists against the lovely translation of the book of Psalms from its still more excellent Hebrew Song into English prose?
The friends of the Bible find no fault with that, and rightly so; when we translate the Psalms from the Hebrew language to Gaelic or English metre they not only find fault with us, but place on equality their own hymns to our metrical version of the Psalms! Is that not extremely childish? Well, a child must be allowed to grow out of his childish ways.
It is our duty and privilege to bear with the child, and allow the child to grow out of his childish ways. The Psalms never grow old. They are always fresh, green, and heavenly. The best of hymns grow old, stale, weak, common-place; as if it were the more they are used the taste dies away! The Book of Psalms is thousands of years in use, and the fact of the matter is the taste sweetens by age. The sweet wine of heaven is always new, because it flows from the eternal fountain of the everlasting covenant of grace. We know that many of our people have deep Christian regard for many of those who see no harm in hymn-singing in the public worship of God. Their Christian regard must not come in between their consciences and the dearest friend on earth where the Word of God is concerned.
We believe that our friends of the Gospel Standard will use the most evangelical “hymns” that they judge to be in accordance with the truth of God, and free from Arminian sentimental errors. Many of the hymns used to-day are full of error, human deceit, carnal un-Scriptural notions, ruinous to poor sinners. Let our people adhere faithfully to the inspired Psalms in our translated prose, and Metrical Version in the public and private worship of God. Keep away and free from a compromising attitude where a jot or tittle of the Word of God is concerned. We have read the history of hymns, by heathens and Christians, for and against their use, and our candid conclusion is that the “Psalms of David are sufficient for our use.”—J. MacLeod, Greenock.