DESPITE the fact that the late Rev. James S. Sinclair and the late Rev. D. Beaton wrote able and informative articles in our magazine, and the latter booklets and pamphlets on the subject of uninspired hymns and instrumental music in the worship of God’s House, one meets, from time to time, with people, of whom better things might be expected, who ask what, after all, is the harm in such so-called “aids” to the praise of the sanctuary. Recently, Rev. John Macqueen also wrote an excellent article in our magazine showing clearly and definitely, on the incontrovertible evidence of church history, that the New Testament worship, in this connection, was modelled on the Tabernacle worship of the Old Testament, in contradistinction to the worship of the Temple. There was neither uninspired hymn-singing nor musical accompaniment in the worship of the Tabernacle, and with the end of the ceremonial worship and sacrifices of the Temple went instrumental music, as surely as the bulls, goats, heifers, rams, and pigeons, or doves, never again to be revived on Divine authority. Uninspired hymns and instrumental music had no place in Apostolic New Testament worship, and, therefore, there is no Divine authority for their use in worship under the New Testament dispensation, and when God will build again Zion at the Millennium, the worship will be entirely based on Apostolic New Testament authority. Why, then, accumulate in the professing church what will have to be thrown out at the Millennium, apart altogether from the carnal presumption of adding, unauthoritatively, what God does not require at our hands, but the opposite? Why sing, in professedly evangelical churches, the hymns composed by John Henry Newman, when he was on his way to the darkness of Popery?
The present writer wrote an article in an evangelical magazine in 1934, in which it was stated, on the authority of some of our Reformers, that uninspired hymns of mere human composition, in the worship of God, were the most subtle means, by way of back-door entrance, that Satan ever invented to introduce corrupting destructive heresies into the professing Christian Church. A clear instance and proof of this is found in an excellent book on church history and doctrine in the Presbyterian Church in the United States, written in the early half of the nineteenth century. It is from the library of the late worthy Rev. Donald Beaton, and he himself valued it highly as the work of a learned, cultured, and pious minister of the Gospel, who displayed outstanding impartiality in his learned discussion of the subject. I have, consequently, concluded it would be for the spiritual good and instruction of the readers of our magazine to read this account of the corrupting destructive influence of uninspired hymns in worship, and that it will serve as a warning to conscientious readers.
The learned theological historian writes as follows, relative to the introduction of heresies into the orthodox evangelical churches in the northern parts of the United States at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. This is typical of the introduction of uninspired hymns into the worship of God in every age and clime:—”Corruption in doctrine generally precedes a decay of practical religion; and the latter generally accelerates the growth of the former. About the time that Yale College was first suspected of favouring Arminianism, the character of Dr. Isaac Watts became known in Boston, and the Northern Churches. This gentleman was born in Southampton, England, 1674, and had acquired considerable reputation as a poet and a metaphysician. He had published his Imitations of the Psalms of David, designed for the purposes of devotion, and they had been introduced into several Churches in Britain. Rev. Dr. Coleman, when in England, formed an intimate acquaintance with him, and after his return to America, corresponded with him. Until that time the old version of the Psalms of David had been used exclusively in the Congregational Churches of New England. Dr. Coleman considered the Bible Psalms as the best and only manual of praise; yet now he proposed to introduce into his congregation some of the psalms only and verses of Watts’ Imitations, and that, where Watts had omitted some passages from the psalms that did not agree with his well-known Sabellian and Arian views, they should be supplied; for he says:—’I judge it best for us to have the whole book of Psalms in its order as we now have it’; though he was not averse to the use of other portions of Scripture when versified for that purpose. What vacillation on his part, and what subtle manoeuvring on the part of Satan to corrupt the pure Scriptural worship of God! What manipulating of sacred things!
“In the introduction of Watts’ Imitations he was very cautious, and selected with great care those portions of it which he considered as translations of the original. As to the use of mere human compositions, however orthodox or evangelical, the Doctor says: ‘My opinion is, that in the book of Psalms and in several other parts of Holy Scripture, versified, there is full provision made for the collection of a holy Psalmody, for the use of the Church through all ages, in the public and private worship of God.’ Our answer is that there is full provision for this purpose in the book of Psalms, without any other part of Holy Scripture either versified or paraphrased. The metrical psalms are a full provision for all time. Hence it appears that Dr. Coleman would not have introduced the whole of Scriptures when versified, into Divine worship, but only the poetic portions of it, and that he would have excluded entirely all merely human compositions. He wished a smoother version than the old, ‘though,’ as his biographer says, ‘he was far from despising and speaking reproachfully of it as some have.’ Yet, with all his caution, Dr. Coleman was setting open the flood-gates of corrupting and destructive error, which generations of Americans may not see the end of, in this nation.
“With the psalms of Dr. Isaac Watts, his other writings were introduced into New England. Men who had been accustomed to sing only Divinely inspired Psalms, when they began to sing those of Watts’ would naturally attach something like the notion of inspiration to his character, as thousands have since done, who assert that he was as much inspired as David. The same has been often said concerning other well-known and popular hymn-writers. Hence they would be ready to embrace any opinion, or doctrinal statement, which they found in his writings. Dr. Watts, as already indicated, was a Sabellian, and an Arian. He maintained that there was but one person in the Godhead, who was represented as acting in the capacities of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that the human soul of Christ existed before all worlds, and created them. Yet this was the man, through Dr. Coleman, who was instrumental in introducing very fallible, defective, and doctrinally destructive uninspired hymns, as substitutes for the God-breathed and infallible book of Psalms, into the churches of New England.
“Dr. Jonathan Edwards viewed his (Watts’) scheme in this light. ‘According to what seems to be Dr. Watts’ scheme, the Son of God is no distinct person from the Father. So far as He is a Divine person, He is the same with the Father. So that in the Covenant of Redemption, the Father covenants with Himself, and He takes satisfaction of Himself—but how does this confound our minds, instead of helping our ideas’! Such is the light in which Dr. Jonathan Edwards viewed Watts’ opinions. Watts, in his Imitation of the second Psalms, leaves out the words, ‘Thou art My Son, this day I have begotten Thee,’ because the doctrine embodied in them, cuts across his Sabellian and Arian heresies. Thus the advocates of false opinions, while making a loud profession of evangelical orthodoxy, do not hesitate to take away from the Word of God, in spite of Divine warning (Rev. xxii. 18-19), in order impiously, daringly, and presumptuously, to disseminate their destructive undermining heresies and errors. It is true, that by others these deliberately omitted words have been introduced, but as Watts left them out, we perceive how he thought. Perhaps no one cause was more efficient in opening the way for the Northern heresies, than the subtle undermining influence of Dr. Watts’ name.”—Rev. James R. Willson, M.A.
In view of the fact that the foregoing account of the evil influence of Dr. Watts’ uninspired hymns, as introduced into the New England Churches of that day, as substitutes for the inspired psalms of the Holy Spirit, is but typical of their fruitfully evil influence generally, in every age and clime, is it not surpassing strange how otherwise professedly evangelical people, could ever be so imposed upon, by Satan and his human agency, as to consent to the substitution, in the worship of God, of very fallible, humanly composed, uninspired hymns, in the place of the inspired, infallible, Psalmody of the Holy Spirit? How is it that even in our own day, and in our own land, professing Presbyterians, belonging to evangelically orthodox psalm-singing churches, can go, on Sabbath nights, after leaving their own services, to hymn-singing and organ-playing denominations, with a different system of church government? They may regard themselves as far superior to, and more enlightened than, their godly parents and grandparents, but there is something lamentably far wrong somewhere.