For Spiritual Worship
The true aim of a church— Congregational singing— " The Service of Song"— Extracts from sermons on the worship of the church—The consummation of this reform
AS the reforms which reclaimed this church extended over JTjl. many years, we shall be obliged to treat them in order as they were suggested and consummated. The idea of a church which must be first developed is that of a hospital. It is properly, to use the old English phrase, a " cure " for souls. This conception, so alien to the early hfe of Clarendon Street, was one of the best fruits of the Moody meetings of '77, held in the immediate vicinity. The entrance of reformed drunkards, and of all types of publicans and sinners, into membership opened the way for a progressive democratization culminating in the free-church system. Again, with the agitation for world-wide missions the next most important function of a local church began to be emphasized; namely, that of entrepot and recruiting-station for the collection of munition and the enlistment of recruits for foreign service. How well the duties along this line came to be fulfilled we shall see further on. The reform which claimed the earliest attention of the new pastor, however, was in the worship of the church. For these changes he prayed and worked incessantly. During fifteen years preconceived opinions and prejudices stood out against his patient efforts; then they gave way, to his great joy and to the general satisfaction.
H Adoniram Jl'bsoN GOkbON-
For long years Dr. Gordon's unwavering advocacy of coft» gregational music seemed to his people an unaccountable eccentricity-, the One hobby from which he never would dismount. ^' Is it not necessary," they used to say, " for the success of any well-ordered church that the choir should be of the most select and well-trained sort? " The outside world, so ran their theory, must be drawn inside the church walls by the sound of voluntary and anthem. When within, the preacher has his opportunity. Why should a sportsman throw away his decoy-ducks? Why should a pastor attempt to operate without the aids which his people furnish freely for the furtherance of his work?
Such was the argument, with all the collateral pleas for high musical standards in a church of its rank. It was forgotten that the only condition which the new minister had made in accepting this charge was the disuse of what he called the ice-chest, i.e., the quartet gallery, and the substitution of hearty singing by the whole congregation for the delegated worship there carried on.
In these days of substantial hymnaries, not to speak of the endlessly issued gospel hymns—hymns which in the morning spring up and flourish, and in the evening are cut down and wither — congregational singing seems a perfectly natural institution. A generation ago, however, the prevailing hymnbooks were of such a dry, jejune, characterless description that the wonder is men and women ever sang at all. It was an era of lugubrious tunes, of which " China," " Devizes," and " Kentucky " are fairly representative. Lowell Mason still ruled with autocratic sway over church collections. The obvious thing, accordingly, for any one who wanted to encourage general participation in worship was, first of all, to furnish an acceptable, thoroughly modern collection of hymns and tunes. This Gordon attempted to do. The "Service of Song," which he edited with much labor and evident taste,
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became for many years a standard hymnal for Baptist churches, and was the text-book from which he first taught his own people to sing.
The next thing was to instruct his people in their plain duties in the worship of the church. This was done admirably in a series of sermons. The whole subject in all its features — singing, responsive reading, giving, and "the ministry of silence"— was discussed with acuteness and fervid scripturalness. To give an idea of his purpose, and of his conception of what a service should be in a church with the New Testament motive, the following extracts from these sermons are introduced
" We are of the conviction that we have been tending entirely in the direction of ritualism (in its essential error of substituting priest for people) in allowing our praise to be rendered vicariously by quartet choirs, and our praying to be done largely for us by the minister instead of joining in it ourselves....
" There are two classes of offenders in this matter of the worship of song: those who, having a good voice, do not sing with the heart, and those who, having a good heart, do not sing with the voice; and the latter is not the least culpable. For one who loves God and adores Jesus Christ to sit silent when their praises are sung, keeping time to the melody only with the muffled beating of the heart, ought to be considered almost an affront to the Most High....
" How the expression, ' sacrifice of praise,' strikes at the
idea of mere self-indulgence in the service of song! How it
stamps with the brand of sacrilege our modern habit of regaling our ears with choice dainties of musical performance, and calling it worship! To whom was the sacrifice offered of old, to the people or to God? I need not answer the question. To whom is the sacrifice of praise presented in many of our modern sanctuaries? To the people, if the truth is told. It is fitted up to satisfy their taste, the incense of its melody wafted toward their ears. It finds its end in ministering to their pleasure. They sit down and listen to it exactly as though its whole aim were their delectation....
" God would not have been pleased if the Israelite had gone to his neighbor's flock for a lamb because, forsooth, he might find one there that was whiter and more comely. And neither will Christ be pleased now if we borrow another's voice to utter our praises for his redeeming love, however exquisite and beautiful that voice may be. The offering must be taken out of the flock which he purchased with his own blood. Let us offer the sacrifice of praise; that is, the fruit of our lips....
" You have noticed the fountains on the Common, with the water running so noiselessly through iron lips, which can neither taste its sweetness nor be refreshed by its coolness. And every Lord's day, in some of our churches, the most limpid strains of melody flow through lips that are just as oblivious to their import and just as unaffected by their sentiment as those lips of iron. How many times are the words, ' Come, Holy Spirit,' sung with no sense of longing for the blessed Comforter, with no apprehension of his holy mission, with no belief, indeed, in his divine personality! And what more direct and obvious method of violating the commandment, ' Grieve not the Holy Spirit,' is possible than this?...
" Men, like coals, kindle best in the mass. Each serves as a radiator to throw heat upon his neighbor, and so the zeal of the whole is quickly raised. But let each worshiper be only a dull absorbent of the warmth that is thrown upon him from Scripture, sermon, prayer, and hymn, and the preacher will find it a very onerous task to get the people into a devotional frame. Now singing is a means of spiritual radiation; truth and love and fervor are easily contagious when it is the medium of intercourse. What minister cannot feel the difference
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in the touch of a congregation that has risen just before the sermon and poured itself out in an inspiring and hearty hymn of praise, from that of a religious audience that has been quietly sitting and listening to a musical performance? There is a kind of spiritual elasticity in the former case which gives the preacher's words back to him in a responsive echo very different from that dull thud which comes from dropping a sermon into a listless and silent company of hearers....
" To know by subtle intuition when you pray that faithful souls are pressing round you, to second your desires and swell the volume of your intercessions, is a blessed thing; but to be assured of this by the audible response of a multitude of voices is wonderfully strengthening. Yet from the unhappy custom— a custom that bears the stamp of an easy undevoutness— into which worshipers have so largely fallen, of listening to the public supplications instead of joining in them, how often is the minister compelled to say to himself, after struggling in the pangs of unattended prayer, ' I have trodden the wine-press alone; and of the people there was none with me'! ...
" Hear the summons to prayer which is given in the Epistle to the Hebrews: ' Brethren, let us draw near.' ... It is not, ' Let me draw near in your behalf, as your minister and mouthpiece;' but, 'Let us draw near.' Of course the summons ought to be the same to-day, since the priesthood of believers in Christ is an unchangeable priesthood. Now, if the people simply sit still in their places during this exercise, without a single change of attitude, without a gesture of reverence, without an utterance of the voice, without a single according ' Amen ' at the end, do they not look more like Jews waiting without than like purged Christian worshipers entering in before the throne of grace? And when the pastor stands up alone without a sound or token of attendance with him on the part of the flock, and shuts his eyes and so draws the cur-
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tain between himself and the congregation, and enters into solitude while he pleads with God— the first salutation that greets him on his return being the subdued strains of the organ— does he not look too much like the high priest entering within the veil, and ministering by himself till the tinkling of the sacred bells announces his return to the waiting congregation?...
" Whether it be true or not physically, as has been asserted, that the striking and collision of sounds in the atmosphere can generate electricity, the spiritual fact is unquestionable. There is a marvelous magnetism in the blending and colliding of a multitude of voices in a great congregation. Nothing can compare with it as an incitement to religious enthusiasm nothing can take its place as a means of stirring and maintaining a universal interest in public services. Now concerted reading is the simplest form of vocal worship. Some may complain that they have not the voice for singing, and others that they have not the training to follow the simplest melody of music; but none but the dumb or utterly unlettered can say that they cannot join in the audible reading of the Psalms. Here, then, is an exercise, scriptural and primitive in its character, that can enlist every worshiper, that can draw in every voice in the assembly to swell and deepen the current of devotion....
" I know all that can be said of the danger of formality in our Lord's day worship; but formality belongs no more to thoughtless utterance than to thoughtless repression, to vain repetition than to vain silence. Indeed, the constant peril of non-participation in religious worship is that indecorous inattention, that worst kind of formalism, may become habitual....
" We have never been more sensibly impressed than by a half-hour's still meditation around the table of the Lord. There are not only thoughts in us too deep for utterance, but
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thoughts which are repressed and drowned by another's utterance. 'To everything there is a season,' says the Preacher, ' and a time to every purpose under heaven '— 'a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.' So then, while we are seeking for ministers who have a great gift for speaking, commend us also to those of whom it can be said, as of a famous Frenchman, that they have a great talent for silence. Even in the ordinance of worship, which is especially for preaching and prayer, we have often wished that we could make greater use of the ministry of silence. But the organ and choir are great, and they have prevailed. We have no sooner uttered our ' Amen ' than there comes a response; it may be from the organ, or from the quartet, but we confess it always seems intrusive and distracting. It takes the thoughts away from what has been said, appeals to our musical taste, if we have any, setting us either to admiring or criticizing, or, if we have no music in our souls, makes us impatient. 'A response'? Yes; but we were praying to God, and wanted a moment of stillness to see if we could not hear a response from the throne. We had been shutting our eyes that we might thereby the more completely shut ourselves in with God; we had been turning our ears away from earth's distracting noises that we might open them to the Lord, and were saying, ' Speak, Lord for thy servant heareth;' and before we have had time to hear the divine voice in our soul, the vox hum ana stop has broken in upon us, and music, with its voluptuous swell, has rushed into the place where we were carrying on the sacrifice of praise.
" A full minute of silence after prayer, of absolute congregational stillness—we have enjoyed it in one or two churches where we have worshiped, and have never forgotten the impression. ' Be still, and know that I am God.' When shall we learn that God is not in the wind of an organ-bellows, or in the fire of exciting halleluiahs, but in the still, small voice?
8o ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON
And then, after the sermon, is apt to come another burst of violence against the kingdom of silence. If perchance the Spirit has helped us to make a serious impression upon our hearers, we wish so much that we could send them away with nothing to disturb that impression. But alas! who has not heard it? The organ with all its stops breaks out, like many bulls of Bashan. The seed of the Word has been sown, but cannot be let alone. A wild flock of quavers burst their cage in the organ-loft, and, like birds of the air, alight upon the
hearers to catch away that which was sown in the heart. Who
that has been present does not remember the gracious silence with which the sermon in Mr, Spurgeon's tabernacle closes? The people go away with the word of warning and exhortation and hope as the last sound that fell upon their hearts. They march out to the muffled beatings of a conscience accusing or else excusing, not to the tripping music of an organ. Oh, the power of silence!"
The fruits of this teaching were not yet. The preacher had turned the dry turf over, and thrown the seed of better things into the furrow. But years of instruction and of waiting passed before the important change in church worship which he sought was consummated. For years music committees met and jangled and voted money and received meekly the gratuitous criticisms of the church community. Quartet succeeded quartet like the passing birds of passing seasons. Gradually, however, opinions changed, and the pastor's plan became the people's policy. If one who had known the church in the seventies should enter it in the nineties, what a transformation in its worship he would observe! What a volume of sound
in the singing! How it fills the nooks and corners of the
church, as the full, swollen tide fills with its back-water the creeks and inlets of the coast! All are singing now, heartily, as unto the Lord, with an interested, worshipful spontaneity, very different from the lassitude of the old time, when to sit still
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on the cushions and listen to trios from Mendelssohn or to the performance of fugues and contrapuntal etudes on the organ was the ideal of worship. God is not praised by the stagnant pool. But here the floods have lifted up their voice, and the languid congregational singing, with its omission of half the stanzas of the hymn, is now a thing of the past. To hear the counterpart of such singing you must go to the Lutheran churches of Prussia or Saxony, and listen to the common people as they sing the chorals of Paul Gerhardt.