W K Tweedie
What does the Lord Jesus mean to teach by this parable? We have here some more of the words of Him who knew all the counsel of God, and what are we to learn while He again opens up the mind of the Father to man?
The first thing is that the first labourers were hired at so much for the day, to begin from the early morning. About nine o’clock others went into the vineyard, and were to get “whatsoever is right”. At noon, and at three in the afternoon, other labourers were sent into the vineyard, and the bargain with them also was that they were to receive “whatsoever is right” for their labour – that at least. About the eleventh hour, moreover, that is just one hour before the end of the day, still others were sent to work, and the bargain with them also was that they should receive “whatsoever is right”.
Now, hitherto everything is easy to be understood. The difficulty begins when the hour of payment comes – when they who had begun to work at six o’clock in the morning and they who had not entered the vineyard till five
1Taken, slightly edited, from Tweedie’s book, Parables of Our Lord, published in 1865. This article is based on Matthew 20:1-15. This is the last article in the series.
in the afternoon were all paid alike. Such conduct does seem strange. At first sight we scarcely wonder though some of the workmen murmured. It seems rather unjust, at least capricious, that those who have borne the scorching sun, and toiled through the weary hours, should get no more than those whose labour had been a pastime rather than a toil – a single hour of work in the cool of the evening,
How then do we explain this? The householder here mentioned is our Father who is in heaven. “There is no unrighteousness with Him”, and how are we to understand the present case?
It teaches, first, that not one of all God’s servants shall get less than justice. Everyone will get his due. Just as the men who began work the earliest got every farthing which they were promised, so God will give unto all according as their works shall be. Perfect equity will preside over all His decrees, and not one of all the children of men will be able to say, “I have been defrauded of one jot or one tittle of my due”. Some may get more than their due; none will get less.
But this parable also shows that, while all get their due, some get more. Equity reigns, but grace reigns also. The labourers who entered at different hours throughout the day got more than they could claim as a right. The householder was not only just — he was generous. He chose to manifest his bounty, and liberally rewarded them. And so the great Householder may bless the children of men beyond all that they can ask or think. He may open His hand and satisfy every want. All will then get their due at least, while some may get far more. God is sovereign, and surely He may do what He will with his own.
But next, some murmured because they did not get more than they had agreed to take. Because their employer chose to be generous, they appear to have thought that he was unjust. They complained against the householder, and challenged his procedure as not fair. In like manner some men murmur because the great God bestows His favours according to His own good pleasure, and not according to human plans. But “friend, I do thee no wrong. Didst thou not agree with me for a penny? . . . Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own?” These questions settle all disputes. They are indeed unanswerable, and he must be both unreasonable and wicked who would say, “God may not do what He will with His own”, or, “God is bound to do to all men alike”. “I claim more than is due.”
There is a hoary-headed man. He has gone home to glory after three score years and ten of suffering here below. There is another. He was called away amid the activities of life, and while yet in the prime of his manhood and vigour. And there is a little child born but to die. He also is snatched away
from this heritage of woe to one of cloudless joy and perfect blessing. They are all assembled in their Father’s house on high. Now, will any of these grudge the happiness of the rest? They are all saved, and shall the hoary-headed saint complain of the steep and upward path by which he climbed to glory, whereas the little one went home at a bound? Ah no, God’s will is now supreme to them, and it would be the same even here, could we comprehend the good ways of God as we shall do hereafter.
In Persia, we may add, the same practice as this parable describes continues to our times, and a traveller there has told that in the market-place at Hamadan, he saw the usage vividly illustrated, in labourers waiting from hour to hour with their implements of toil, ready to commence when hired. It is well for us to be ready to enter upon the right path as soon as we are called, and always to remember that the Judge of all the earth will do right.
Instrumental Music1
John Kennedy
The Committee appointed by the last General Assembly of the Free Church to consider the question of the propriety of introducing the use of instrumental music in the service of praise, have arrived, after ten months’ deliberations, at three conclusions: 1. That it is not unscriptural – or, that it is scriptural – to sanction the innovation; 2. That it is not unconstitutional or ecclesiastically illegal to give liberty to congregations, when virtually unanimous, to adopt the use of sounding brass, or tinkling cymbals, or a “kist of whistles”, in conducting the praises of the sanctuary; 3. That it is expedient to grant liberty to Free Church congregations at once to have instruments if, with virtual unanimity, they so incline.
- I know not on what grounds they base their first conclusion. But having made, to some extent, an independent study of the question, I am anxious to state the conclusion to which I myself have come, and the grounds on which I am prepared to support it. I do so now because it is not likely that the tenor of the Committee’s report can be known before the Assembly meets; and I am anxious to furnish before then what I can in the way of aid to those who are interested in the question – in attaining acquaintance with the information to be derived from Scripture on the subject.
1A response, dated 31 March 1883, by the then Free Church minister of Dingwall to the moves being made in his denomination to introduce instrumental music. It shows why, on scriptural grounds, there is no place for instrumental music in public worship in any age of the Church.
I can conceive three grades of opinion regarding the relation in which the question of instrumental music stands to Scripture. Some may hold it to be scriptural to use instrumental music in the service of praise, contenting themselves with referring to the use of it in the service of the temple under the Old Testament dispensation. Others may hold it to be not unscriptural, meaning that if it is not directly sanctioned as an adjunct of praise in New Testament times, it is not forbidden, and may therefore be introduced. Others still may hold that the use of it is anti-scriptural, as a thing forbidden by the Word of God. Among these last am I, and I now state the grounds on which I hold that opinion.
The grounds are these two: (1.) That the use of it was, by divine appointment, introduced into the symbolic service of the temple. (2.) That, in the directory given in New Testament Scripture for New Testament worship, it is not only omitted but excluded.
(1.) It must at once be conceded that instrumental music was used in the temple service. But, as to the mode of its introduction and as to the authority for the use of it, there is a division of opinion. There are some who insist that the use of it was introduced by David, merely because he himself was a great musician and judged that the use of instruments would make the service of praise more impressive, and that God sanctioned the introduction though He did not originate it. From this baseless assumption an argument is drawn in favour of the adoption of instrumental music now. Even supposing, they say, that the Lord did not propose the rise of instrumental music in New Testament service, may He not be expected to do as He did before, in sanctioning the introduction of it by those who desire it?
There are others who think that the introduction of instrumental music into the temple service was suggested to David by God, that it became part of the stated ritual according to divine authority as surely as the ordering of sacrifice; and that as all the temple service was typical, this was so, as all besides; and that it was therefore one of the “carnal ordinances” which were to continue only to “the time of reformation”. The proof of this latter position is not difficult; it is furnished by those pages of the Old Testament Scriptures which refer to the introduction of the use of instrumental music and to the relation in which it stands to David and to God.
In 2 Samuel 22:1, David is declared to be “the sweet Psalmist of Israel”. This designation indicates his position in relation to the service of praise in the temple and belonged to him as that of the lawgiver of Israel belonged to Moses. The connection of David with the temple service of praise is in 2 Chronicles 23:18 placed on the same footing of authority as the connection of Moses with the service of sacrifice: “Jehoiadah appointed the offices of
the house of the Lord by the hand of the priests the Levites, whom David had distributed in the house of the Lord, to offer the burnt offerings of the Lord, as it is written in the law of Moses, with rejoicing and with singing, as it was ordained by David”. And it is evident from 1 Chronicles 28:12-13 that David ordained the “rejoicing and singing” as an accompaniment of the sacrificial work under divine guidance. For it is there declared that “David gave to Solomon . . . the pattern of all that he had by the spirit for the courses of the priests and the Levites, and for all the work of the service of the house of the Lord, and for all the vessels of service in the house of the Lord”.
If he had “by the spirit” a pattern according to which he arranged the courses of the priests and Levites, that pattern extended to the appointment of a course of Levites for the use of instrumental music. This, with all besides, connected with the temple service, “the Lord”, said David, “made me understand in writing by His hand upon me”. And the very instruments, to be employed by these, are repeatedly declared to be “of God”, as surely as they are said to be “of David” (1 Chr 16:42, 2 Chr 7:6). There is therefore no reason to doubt that the use of instrumental music was ordained by David according to the command, and under the direction of, God.
But it is quite as evident that it was introduced into the temple service as a part of its symbolical ritual. We cannot wonder that, in the immediate view of the erection of the temple by David the King, whose son the Messiah was promised to be, there should have been appointed by God, and given to Israel, a pronounced form of praise and thanksgiving. Appended to sacrificing there, we might expect a special service of praise, the matter of which, in the “everlasting kingdom” of Messiah “the Prince of Peace”, was to find its fullest illustration in the reign of him by whom the temple was to be built.
Can we wonder then that Messiah’s first crowned ancestor, who was also to be His type, should have been appointed the Psalmist of Israel and should have been honoured to provide both for the building of the temple and for the service to be conducted in it? But he received authority from God to act in this matter only in connection with the service of the temple. Therefore we find that only Levites were appointed to the service of praising by the use of instruments, and their work was, according to that appointment, associated with the sacrificial service of the priests. This form of praise was to accompany the offering of sacrifice according to the law of Moses. It was therefore part of the symbolic ritual which embraced all temple service, and therefore formed one of the “carnal ordinances” which were to continue only “till the time of reformation”. This, with all types and shadows besides, was done away in Christ. As well, therefore, introduce into the worship of the New Testament the shedding and the sprinkling of blood, and the burning of slain
victims on an altar, as the use of instrumental music in the service of praise.
Let no one venture to say that the use of a musical instrument is a matter of no moment. It was introduced for a temporary purpose by a special revelation from God, and ought not thereafter to be regarded as a matter of indifference. And the more certain we are of its having been divinely appointed as a symbol and “till the time of reformation“, the more guilty they appear who, after that time has passed and God has laid it aside, attempt to find for it a place in the worship of the New Testament Church.
There is no force in the objection that instrumental music was occasionally used before the temple was built, and specially that it was used by David himself before he received the pattern of the temple and of its service from God. This was quite as true, yea more abundantly true, of sacrifice, and yet there can be no warrant for going back to the antediluvian and patriarchal instances of offering sacrifice to justify the slaying of victims now. No more can the occasional use of instrumental music, before its authorised introduction into the temple service, furnish any warrant for the use of it now. Both the occasional sacrifice and the occasional musical performance had a symbolical meaning, and without this neither had ever found a place in the ritual of the temple worship. The previous use of it by David in connection with worship, associated it with the ark of the covenant and with sacrifice, and thus made it such that it cannot be a precedent which may be followed in New Testament times. And David’s way of responding to the musical performance, on the occasion of bringing up the ark, must be adopted along with the use of an instrument if we are to follow the example then set. We can have no right to introduce the organ without the accompaniment of the dance, if the use of musical instruments by David, before its authorised introduction into the temple service, is the precedent by which we are to be guided.
Thus, the more certain it is that instrumental music was part of the temple service, and that its introduction was by divine appointment, the more manifestly illegitimate is the attempt to introduce it into the service of praise in the New Testament Church.
(2.) What says the New Testament Scripture on the subject of instrumental music? Is there anything there which seems to be in favour of it? Or is there any principle there laid down with which it would be utterly inconsistent, or according to which it may be regarded as legitimate? And what instruction may be derived from all these which is relevant to the subject?
There have been a few adventurous enough to affirm that there are some things in the New Testament Scripture that seem to favour the introduction of instrumental music. And the two somethings are: [1.] That there is a word used to describe the exercise of praise which means to play on a musical
instrument! The word referred to occurs in Ephesians 5:19, and is rendered “making melody”, and that this is a legitimate translation is evident, for if the literal rendering were adopted, we would have to read the passage thus: playing on an instrument “in your heart to the Lord”. That sane men should use an argument of this kind is sufficient proof of the desperation of the cause which they advocate – if the men are sane who have recourse to a thing like this, that must be more than can be said of what they desire to establish. [2.] The second something is that, in the Apocalypse, some of the inhabitants of heaven are described as “harpers harping with their harps”. If I had not indubitable proof of the fact, I could not believe that any minister of any Church in Christendom could use this as an argument for the use of instrumental music in the Church on earth. But so it is; and what more can be needed to show that there can be nothing found in the New Testament to justify the insane clamour for organs.
The truth is that these passages teach this, and only this: that in the New Testament Church on earth there should be a service of praise, having in it the spiritual import of the symbolical service of the temple, and that this spirituality of praise shall be perfectly realized in heaven.
- Is there any principle laid down in New Testament Scripture with which the use of instrumental music would be utterly inconsistent, or according to which it may be regarded as legitimate? It is to me utterly inconceivable how anyone can pretend to find there any general principle enunciated or implied which admits of the introduction of instrumental music. Someone, in trying to find an argument in favour of this innovation, after resolving to do what he could to secure its adoption, laid down the principle as one that could admit of no dispute regarding its validity, that as the Lord should be served in the best possible way, the use of aught that tended to make the musical performance in the service of praise more perfect was perfectly legitimate.
But this principle was found among the cobwebs of his own brain and not in the record of the New Testament. If the service of praise were an altogether heartless and graceless thing, if it consisted entirely in what reached the ears of men, one could quite understand that there was an approach to common sense in the statement and application of such a principle. But if the service of praise be rendered to God, and rendered from grace in the heart, then it is manifest that all that tends to distract attention from the state of the heart, and to interfere with the aim of pleasing God, is a hindrance rather than a help. Will anyone say it is to perfect or increase his ability to render service that would be acceptable to God that he seeks the help of an organ, or that he can accept “the kist of whistles” as an answer to his cry for help to praise the Lord? And yet this is the one general principle which can be stated as
bearing favourably on the use of organs. But where is there one syllable in New Testament Scripture of direction to take help from whistles and bellows in the worship of God, or any principle stated according to which this would be legitimate?
But there is a principle, laid down in the New Testament Scripture, with which the use of instrumental music in the worship of God is altogether inconsistent – the spirituality of the New Testament dispensation. The whole Old Testament ritual is declared to consist of “carnal ordinances imposed on them” of old, “until the time of reformation”. In its spirituality the New Testament form of worship must present a contrast. Indeed, it is in the mode of worship that the great revolution was to be effected. All that merely constituted shadow was to pass away, because He who was “the truth and the life” had come and had finished the work given Him to do. But all was shadow that was symbolic or typical in the former mode of worship, and was therefore utterly done away in Christ. Nothing but the spiritual import of the temple service was to remain; the whole form or mode of it passed utterly away. Can it be disputed that this was the result of the death of Christ and can there, without reproach being cast on Him and exception being taken to the work which He finished, be a retention or restoration of aught of what it was His design to displace, by His glorious self and by the ministration of the Spirit and by worship “in spirit and in truth”?
- What instruction may be derived from all that is relevant to this subject in the New Testament Scripture? Of course it is in New Testament Scripture we must find the directory for New Testament worship. The worship regarding which minute instructions were given in Old Testament Scripture was that of the temple, which was throughout symbolic or typical and which was therefore entirely displaced. For the new worship, with its spiritual simplicity, we must therefore have a new directory. This can only be given us in the inspired record. It is there, and only there, that there is any authoritative guidance in worship. The Lord is not less careful now than of old, as to how His service is to be performed.
True, we may not expect the same prominence, and extent and minuteness of instruction regarding the mode of conducting service as of old. In those days the teaching was done by the service, and was addressed to the eye rather than to the ear. The typical character of the worship involved this, and therefore there must be the most minute directions given as to how it is to be conducted. Hence the large portion of the Old Testament Scripture covered with the rules of the service, as well as with the specification of the structure in which the service was to be performed. All this was the preaching of the gospel to the men of old and contained a symbolic representation of the spirit-
ual attainments and exercise of the saints. They were taught through the eye how alone a sinner can be justified, and shown how the justified must be the saints of God. A ritual with so ample and gracious a design must be most minutely indicated. It represented the God of Israel and His Lamb; it told how he could be the God of salvation, it instructed His people as to how they could be justified, and it directed them how, as saints, they should walk in the fear of the Lord.
Let us not therefore approach to think that there is too much in the Old Testament regarding the way in which tabernacle or temple service was to be conducted. Under the New Testament dispensation there is to be no preaching in the mode of conducting worship. The teaching is all done by the word. Epistles after Gospels, one Gospel after another, and one Epistle after another, we have for the instruction of the Church; but in these we have, amidst much spiritual doctrine, sufficient direction as to the simple worship of New Testament times.
As to the service of praise, we are taught with sufficient distinctness, and in repeated declarations, that it was to be singing. Again and again this is plainly indicated. This the simple form of expressing praise in the New Testament Church, according to New Testament Scripture. Regarding this there need be no dubiety – “he may run that readeth” this. What words can be more explicit than these: “By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name?” If any man asks the question, What is the sacrifice of praise in New Testament times? the plain answer of inspired Scripture is, “the fruit of our lips”. And this really settles the whole question. The Lord hath spoken, and how distinctly! And this should be enough to every Christian man and to every Christian Church.
This plain directory is in exact accordance with the example of the Lord, who by His Spirit gave it to His Church. We know that He by His presence countenanced, and by His voice took part, in a service of praise. Though His fellowship in the song is matter of inference, His presence, while His disciples sang, is directly stated. Such is the example of our Lord, confirming His instruction, and, putting both together, surely we have in these enough to assure us that the practice of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland for three centuries, in conducting the service of praise, was well founded and cannot be abandoned without our turning aside from both the precept and example of Him whom we profess to be our King
With the example of their Master, accorded the practice of the Apostles. This no one can deny. If they were sent “two and two”, one of them was not appointed to be a musical performer. They had, in the Word of God, the gift
of speech, the grace of God in their hearts, and their Master’s gracious presence, and water, bread, and wine – all that was required in any place and at any time, for performing the whole work of the ministry to which they were appointed.
And with the example of Christ and with the practice of His apostles accorded the mode in which the service of praise was conducted in the early Christian Church. There were among the Jewish converts some who wished to continue the rite of circumcision and to “observe days, and months, and times, and years,” but no one among them, so far as we can know, proposed either the continuance of sacrifice or of instrumental music. Both these had been so connected, and had been carried on so exclusively by the officials of the Jewish Church, that the idea of continuing either, or of resuscitating the one without the other, seems never to have been entertained.
It required a course of decline extending over centuries to produce the corruption out of which the desire for instrumental music could spring up in the Church. It arose like a fungus, which is propagated out of decay. It was the influence of the social festival and of the concert and of the theatre, introduced through unfaithful discipline into the Church and allowed to spread its blighting chill throughout it, which procured the decay that furnished the soil out of which this carnality in worship sprung. The practice thus introduced continued till another “time of reformation” came – the Reformation from Popery. No thoroughly-reformed Church adopted the use of instrumental music. Some so-called reformed Churches, which retained some of the doctrine and government and ritual of the Roman Church, retained the use of organs, but they did so only because they were but half reformed. Thus was it with the Church of England. How could she, with her bishops and archbishops, and baptismal regeneration and saint’s days, and surplices and altars, be without her organs? This was a natural appendage to all that carnal stuff which she carried into her new position. The instruments and the altars must go together, as they did of old.
But no sound of an organ was heard for three centuries in the Reformed Church in Scotland, nor in any other Church in Christendom that deserved that name, till a process of decline had commenced. What would, in the best days of the Church of Scotland, have been thought of the proposal to introduce organs into her places of worship? What would Knox, Henderson, Melville, Guthrie, Rutherford, Gillespie, Dickson, John Love, Andrew Thompson, Thomas Chalmers, William Cunningham, James Buchanan, John Duncan, Robert Candlish have done, if such a proposal had been mooted in their days? Grant liberty to congregations to have organs, if they so inclined? As soon, said the last of these, and he spoke for all the others, allow the slaying
and offering of sacrifices in our Churches. No, it required a very different class of men to make and to countenance such a proposal – men to make it, who desire the aesthetic rather than the spiritual, and men to countenance it who are guided by policy rather than the Word of God, who are ambitious of pleasing men that they may lead them, rather than anxious to please God that they may not cease to walk in the light of His face.