SOME people, even in our own Church, appear to think that the position of the Free Church with respect to worship is simply a matter of preference; however, we hope to show that it is a matter of Scriptural principle.

Let us first consider:-

The Bible Teaching Concerning the Worship of God

The Scriptures definitely teach that all men are required to worship God; that man has been created a reasonable, responsible creature, and that as such it is his bounden duty to worship God, his Maker. His fall into sin by no means discharged him from this duty. The most careless and godless are consequently as much under obligation to worship God as either you or I. If they fail to do so they must bear the consequences.

The Scriptures also definitely show that it is God's prerogative to prescribe what worship He requires of man. The general idea is that the form of worship is left to the choice of the individual worshipper, but this idea receives no support from the Word of God.

The worship of God in its various parts is prescribed in great detail and governed with great strictness in the Old Testament. These parts were: sacrifice, ritual and instrumental music.

In the New Testament we find the worship of the Old Testament repealed in favour of a more spiritual order, the essential parts of which consisted of: the reading and exposition of the Word of God, the singing of Scripture praises and prayer.

We shall now briefly address ourselves to:

Public Worship in its Historical Aspect

The early Christian Church was in its form of worship modelled upon the synagogue. The ritualistic worship of the Ceremonial Law was continued after the death of Christ right on until the year 70, when the Romans under Titus sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. Since then sacrifice has ceased from among the Jews, and they know nothing but the worship of the synagogue. Ceremonial worship was confined to the Temple, but the worship of the synagogue obtained throughout Jewry.

To this worship, the worship of the early Christian Church approximated very closely - man-inspired hymns and instrumental music were entirely unknown. Not until the fourth century were hymns of human composition received into the church, and for this the Arian heretics were responsible. By their means they sought to popularise in the church their own heretical doctrines.

Once the church got on to the down-grade it was only a question of time till there should be a further departure from the simplicity of the worship of the early church. At Rome the church became popular and inftuential, and then, in time, corrupt. She made it her deliberate policy to take over and Christianise various aspects of contemporary heathen religious life - hence the observance of Christmas and Easter, the two great festivals of a paganism which was largely based upon sun worship. Instrumental music was introduced upon a wholesale scale into the public services of the church, accompanied by an elaborate ritual which has formed the basis of the sensuous worship of Romanism.

The direct fruit of all this was the darkness of the Middle Ages, when the blight of the Papacy wholly obscured the light of the Gospel throughout what was known as Christendom. Then, in the unwinding of the gracious purposes of the Lord of Providence and Grace, came the glorious Reformation, and an era of Gospel quickening which in the records of history has never been surpassed. The Reformers sought to go back to the original purity of the church in New Testament times, and, in Scotland especially, this process was thorough. Then was initiated the axiom which ever since has governed the Reformed conception of public worship - that nothing is to be introduced save what is warranted from the New Testament Scriptures. Instrumental music, ritual and all human articles of praise were therefore unceremoniously swept out of the church.

Today, this principle is recoanised by few, but, apart from the Roman Church, there was a time when in Scotland it obtained universally, and in England also it largely prevailed. The breakaway from it came much earlier in England than in Scotland. Controversy, needless to say, was aroused, and among the champions for Scriptural purity of worship, none could take precedence of the Rev. Wm. Romaine, an eminent servant of God, whose labours were greatly acknowledged in his London charge in the 17th century. In his valuable treatise on this subject, he laid his finger upon the pulse-beat of the issue by asking the question:- "Dare anyone think he can write a better hymn than the Holy Ghost?" The whole question at issue was, Shall we approach God with what He Himself has provided for His worship, or with the unsolicited and unwarranted offerings of men? To that question there could only be the one answer.

As a church we stand in this matter exactly where stood the Scottish Reformers, and, although we recognise that in our day we form a very small company and have little influence in the land, yet we remember that out position was once the position occupied by the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, England, Australia and America and we realise that what was true and Scriptural in a former generation is true and Scriptural still. Truth is not affected by time. It is for those who have forsaken that Scriptural position to justify their action. This, so far as I know, they have never even attempted to do.

We shall now concider:

The Importance of the Question

Many think it all a matter of little importance, but a little thought upon the nature of worship, which requires the highest activity of which the spirit and intelligence of man are capable, must convince us of the folly of such an idea; must convince us, too, that no conceivable subject can be of more importance.

That God considers it a matter of the utmost moment is revealed very strikingly in Scripture.

First of all, we have the rejection of the worship of Cain. Why was Cain's worship rejected? From the human point of view, the worship of Cain was just as fitting as that of Abel. Abel was a shepherd, and therefore it was fitting that he should come before God with a firstling of his flocf. But it was also fitting, we would think, that Cain, the tiller of the soil, should come with an offering of first-fruits. Why, then, was Abel's offering accepted and Cain's rejected? There can be only one reason - because God was not to be worshipped without a sacrifice. Even then the Scriptural axiom held good - without the shedding of blood there could be no remission of sins.

The same lesson was taught Israel in the punishment of the sons of Aaron. They approached the Lord with "strange fire" in their censers, i.e., the incense used by them was not compounded according to the strict letter of the Ceremonial Law. For their temerity they were instantly punished with death.

Why should such severity be exercised in what appeared to be a comparatively small matter? Because Israel must be taught that there must be no trifling with the terms of the Ceremonial Law in any of its details, lest its typology, as representing Christ and His redemptive work, be destroyed.

Surely th principle still remains that there must be no trifling with what God has ordained as neeessary in His own worship.

When we come to the New Testament, we find the Ceremonial Law rescinded by Divine authority. It had served its day. All signified by it had been fulfilled in the life and death of Christ, and now that the substance had come there was no more need of the shadow. This is the main burden of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Over and above all, we have the terms of the Second Commandment, which tells us how God is to be worshipped. In the light of all these considerations one must be driven to the conclusion, no matter how neglectful the generation, that this is a matter of paramount importance.

The re-introduction of instrumental worship into public worship is, therefore, to bring back into the church what God has displaced, and thus to accuse Him of error. With instrumental music has come ritual, different indeed in type to that of the Old Testament, but, still, regarded as an essential element in public worship. Sacrifice, the third element of Old Testament worship, would undoubtedly be revived were it not for its stark inconvenience, but bloodless offerings are quite a feature in modern worship. To bring back into the church what God has removed is not only to insinuate that God has been mistaken in what He has done, but casts gross dishonour upon the atoning work of Christ, as though it had not achieved what is typified by the removal of the ceremonial worship of the Old Testament.

Anyone who considers this a matter of little importance reveals very clearly that he has given very little thought to it.

Some make a distinction as between worship and doctrine. Doctrine, they say, is the great matter; purity of worship is secondary as compared with it. But in so saying, they seem to be quite blind to the fact that Scriptural worship is as much a doctrine of the Word of God as anything else that is taught therein, as, for example, the doctrine of the Atonement. They make a difference where there is none.

Again, let us ask, is this a matter of little importance?

The Question of Hymns

The word "hymns" is undoubtedly used in the New Testament, and for some this seems to settle the question of the legality of their use in the public worship of God. But they forget that "psalms, hymns and spiritual songs" (Eph. 5. 19; Col. 3: 16) is but a translation of certain Greek words which by no means imply that these hymns and spiritual songs are of human composition. In actual fact, uninspired hymns in those early times mere unknown in public worship.

That the term "hymn" in the New Testament applies only to Divinely-Inspired articles of praise can easily be proved. In Matt. 26: 30 and Mark 14: 26, we read that at the close of the Passover, and ere they proceeded out to the Mount of Olives, Christ and His disciples sung a hymn. From Jewish sources we learn that the hymn which is sung at the close of the Passover is known as the "Hallel," and consists of that section of the Book of Psalms beginning at Psalm 113 and ending at Psalm 118. This proves conclusively that Eph. 5: 19 and Col. 3: 16 cannot be quoted as a warrant for the use of hymns of human composition in the public worship of God.

Hymns indeed have their own use. Many of them represent the outpourings of devout souls as they soared upwards upon the wings of sanctified affections through the bright sunshine of intimate communion with God. As a matter of fact, they ought to be used much more than they are - in private, at the fireside, and in the Christian social circle - but to bring them into the public worship of God is to give them a place which they were never meant to serve.

A perfect manual of praise has been given us in the Book of Psalms. This manual was not repealed with the worship of the Ceremonial Law. Had it been so, God would have provided a new manual for use in His New Testament Church. But no such manual has been forthcoming, and hence we are driven to the conclusion that the Most High still desires that this same manual of praise should serve as the medium of our praises under the New Testament, as under the Old. To introduce human hymns into the public worship of God is not only to infer the insufficiency of the Psalms as a medium of praise, but to intrude recklessly into the realm of His authority in the name of the authority of the creature. In Presbyterian worship at any rate, every hymn sung is at the expense of a Psalm displaced - man's composition honoured and God's dishonoured.

As we have already seen, hymns were first introduced into the Church in the interests of heresy, and, since then, they have frequently been made to serve the same ends among the unthinking. The leaders of the Tractarian Movement in the Church of England attached great importance to this method of propagating their tenets, and in this today they are still followed by the Anglo-Catholics. In Scotland, the wholesale introduction of hymn-singing into public worship had as its almost immediate consequence the incoming of a flood of Arminian doctrine into the hitherto Calvinistic Free Church.

How readily hymns may be used to propagate heresy may be seen from the following lines taken from two very popular hymns:--

and

"Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes."

In both quotations, the concept and sentiments are distinctly Romish. The only processions which march headed by a huge crucifix are those of Rome, and these are the Christian soldiers of the hymn. The Romish practice of holding a crucifix before the gaze of the dying is undoubtedly alluded to in the second quotation.

The Psalms of David are inspired by the Holy Spirit, the hymns of popular public worship are, many of them, the work of men of dubious spiritual worth, some of them Romish perverts, some not even professing to be Christian. Are the hymns of such men, may we ask, to be preferred to the hymns which God Himself has given us?

Now, finally, we come to-

Our Testimony as a Church

With the exception of two small Reformed Presbyterian congregations in Victoria, we of the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia, popularly known as the Free Presbyterian Church of Australia, stand alone in all this Commonwealth as protagonists of the ancient Scottish Reformation testimony, both with respect to worship and doctrine. Our numbers are small, our influence today is of little account, but undoubtedly it would be a tragedy were our witness in this land to be wholly extinguished.

Whatever may be said against us, the Scripturalness of our position can never be questioned, and whatever is Scriptural honours God. Moreover, purity of worship conserves purity of doctrine. False teaching will never be tolerated in a church which will never have anything but Scriptural purity in her worship.

But what troubles me is the future. Not because I question the suitability of our message and worship to the future, but because I am dubious as to what will be the response of our present young people when the time comes for them to take over from the fathers; and that time now manifestly cannot be far away. The ranks of those who have faithfully contended for what we believe to be nothing less than the Truth of God are rapidly being depleted. Do our young people realise the tremendous responsibility that is theirs? Are they ready to respond to the call when it comes? When I notice the extent to which the religious reading of most of our more earnest young people is Arminian in character, and the extent to which they are taken up with movements which are initiated by bodies of Arminian outlook, I feel very much disturbed. Should their sympathies be Arminian, how can we expect them to step forward when the time comes to receive our Calvinistic witness from out our hands?

A dreadful complacency has settled down upon our people, combined with an utter inability to realise that matters have reached a crisis. For the most part they have not the slightest conception of the seriousness of the situation nor of the value of the witness of their Church. To these things they must be aroused, and aroused immediately, or it will be too late, and the light of our testimony will be swallowed up in the surrounding darkness. This is the task which faces our ministers, both at home and in this land, and the time of opportunity is but short. Should they fail to discharge this task, the next generation will see the disappearance of the Reformed witness from the land.

Our hope and prayer, however, is that it will not be so. God has not preserved a witness throughout these years of declension for naught, and we believe that when He at length graciously revives Zion, the scattered lights that could only feebly illuminate the widespread gloom shall blaze up again with a wondrous glory, and shall be a praise throughout the earth. The old witness shall then come into its own. May the Lord hasten that day!