Make His Praise Glorious, by Roy Mohon, published by Truthzone, paperback, 91 pages, £6.00, obtainable from the F P Bookroom.
This book is intended as “a defence of the Book of Psalms as the God-given manual of praise in response to The Praises of God in Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs by Dr Kenneth Dix”. Pastor Dix was attempting to justify the use of uninspired hymns in public worship; Mr Mohon rightly disagrees. He emphasises the validity of the Regulative Principle – that nothing should form part of public worship unless it is commanded in the Word of God. This principle is brought out in Answer 51 of The Shorter Catechism: “The Second Commandment forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in His Word“. As Dr Dix denies the authority of this principle, his arguments are flawed from the start.
Naturally Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16, both of which refer to “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”, are important in this discussion. Mr Mohon’s conclusion is that “the biblical and historical evidence points decisively to the fact that the understanding of hymning and hymns at the time that Paul was writing (AD 60-63) was not of uninspired compositions but overwhelmingly they are applied to the Biblical Psalter”. God has given the Psalter to the Church to use in His worship; we therefore have no right to go beyond it.
Objectors such as Dr Dix suggest that the Psalms lack the language of redemption, but as Mr Mohon shows at some length, the Book of Psalms takes in a large number of biblical doctrines, including “the Redeemer and His saving work”. Mr Mohon takes issue with Dr Dix’s Appendix, where he states that “words and phrases not in the AV . . . have been added in the
Psalter to produce a metrical form”. But Mr Mohon points out that the comparison should not be with an English translation but with the original Hebrew. He takes up some of Dr Dix’s examples and shows that these verses are indeed appropriate translations of the Hebrew.
Mr Mohon’s book, besides being an effective answer to Dr Dix’s work, is in its own right a useful addition to the literature on this important subject.