Augustine, the greatest of the church fathers, said that no one can sing anything worthy of God unless he has received it from God. John Calvin quoted those words with warm approval. The conclusion has sometimes been drawn that these noted churchmen must have favored the practically exclusive use of the Book of Psalms for song in public worship. Whatever their position on that score may have been, it seems to me that the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premise. Any song, the content of which is based upon Holy Scripture, whether or not it seeks to employ the precise phraseology of the Bible, may be said to have been received from God. In other words, Augustine’s dictum may be interpreted so as to leave room for theologically sound hymns as well as the Psalms.

I remember the time when the Christian Reformed Church was a “Psalm-singing” church; that is, when it sang only the 150 Psalms with the occasional exception of one of some eleven “Gezangen,” which constituted a sort of appendix to the Psalms. The time came when the church tended toward the use of more hymns. One argument adduced for their introduction into public worship was the fact of progressive revelation. It was indeed a strong argument. I have never heard or seen it refuted.

Why should the church of the new dispensation be restricted in its song to the language of the Old Testament and be virtually kept from employing the language of God’s fuller revelation in the New Testament? Granted that many of the Psalms are Messianic and that, in a sense, the whole Old Testament is Christ-centered, what could be more proper than that the church of the new dispensation should in its song make use also of the more obviously Christ-centered New Testament? I do not hesitate to register as my considered opinion that the New Testament church which fails to reckon in its song with New Testament revelation does not sing to the glory of God to the extent to which it could and should.

Yet that is not the entire picture. It has quite another aspect. One can hardly deny that most of the Psalms are more theocentric in content than are most of the hymns. This is not at all to say that theocentric hymns are non-existent. “Te Deum Laudamus,” “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and dozens of other hymns are explicitly theocentric. But that does not alter the fact that by and large the Psalms are more theocentric than are the hymns which the greater part of the Christian church is wont to sing.

Many hymns are Christian-centered rather than Christ-centered and God-centered, but the Psalms simply excel in theocentricity. And since God is the Alpha and the Omega of public worship, song in public worship must be emphatically of Him, through Him, and unto Him. Therefore I think the neglect of the Psalms in our churches would constitute a serious retrogression.

To sum up, in order that God may be properly glorified in corporate worship, the church should sing neither the Psalms alone, nor only hymns, but both.

I shall proceed to enumerate a number of principles for glorifying God by song in His church.

1. In Order that God may be Glorified, Every Song Sung in His Worship must have Theological Content⤒🔗

When saying that, I am perhaps in danger of being misunderstood. I do not mean to assert that God cannot possibly be glorified by a so-called secular song. Some years ago I knew a seminary student with an excellent singing voice who had, as he said, “consecrated” his voice. What he meant was that he had promised God to sing only specifically Christian songs. And so, when his fellow-students sang “The Girl I Left Behind,” he would maintain a discreet silence. It seemed to me that he went to an extreme. I rather think that it is as well possible to sing certain — not all — secular songs to the glory of God as to drink a cup of coffee to His glory. Scripture rather explicitly demands the latter and by implication leaves room for the former. Did not Jennie Lind, the Swedish nightingale, say: “I sing to the glory of God”?

However, it may not be forgotten that our focus is on Church Music. We are concerned with song in the gatherings of Christ’s church for worship. And, let it be said again, in such gatherings everything must center about God, and His glory must be sought, not mediately but immediately, not indirectly but directly. Therefore in that context there is room only for songs with concrete, specific theological content, and none whatever for such a ditty as “Brighten the Corner Where You Are.”

2. In Order that God may be Glorified, Every Song Sung in His Worship must have Sound Theological Content←⤒🔗

There is true theology and there is false theology, and much false theology parades as true. Therefore the Christian church must in its song, as indeed in all its utterances, be on its guard against theology falsely so called.

False theology distorts God’s self-revelation, corrupts God’s description of Himself, and thus caricatures God. True theology accepts God’s revelation of Himself, receives Him as He truly is, thinks His thoughts after Him, and thus glorifies Him.

In the interest of concreteness, let me name an instance of patently false theology in an exceedingly popular hymn:

On a hill far away
Stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suff ’ring and shame;
And I love that old cross,
Where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain,
So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross
And exchange it some day for a crown.

Do you ask what is wrong? Obviously the last line. All that goes before concerns the cross of Christ, but now suddenly the cross of the Christian comes into view and is shockingly identified with Christ’s cross. That is heresy. Between the two there is a world of difference. On His cross Christ bore the curse which was due to God’s elect. Because He bore their curse, their cross must have a quite different meaning. They will indeed one day exchange their cross for a crown, but not the Saviour’s cross.

3. In Order that God may be Glorified, Everything Connected with Song in His Worship must be Beautiful←⤒🔗

When affirming the importance of beauty in worship one must make allowances. Under certain adverse circumstances a congregation might worship God in a tumble-down barn and truly glorify Him. A person with a raucous voice might sing one of the songs of Zion from the heart and, in doing so, glorify God. But the reason for such allowances lies in the imperfections of our present sin-ridden existence. Ideally, everything in public worship must be beautiful. Realistically, everything in the worship of God must be as beautiful as is possible.

We do not yet possess anything like a full-blown Christian aesthetic, but the statement of certain basic principles of such an aesthetic may even now be attempted. Beauty, instead of being a matter of taste concerning which there is no disputing, has an objective standard. As God is the standard of truth and of goodness, He is also the standard of beauty. Beauty is the manifestation or reflection of divine holiness. Therefore Scripture often speaks in one breath of God’s holiness and His glory. The seraphs sing: “Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6:3). It follows that the holy service of the holy God by His holy church must excel in beauty. God must be worshipped in the beauty of holiness (Psalm 96:6-9).

In sacred song both the music and the accompaniment must be beautiful. Indeed the words most certainly must be beautiful. Let me again be concrete. Some of our Presbyterian friends insist not only on the exclusive use of the Psalms in congregational singing, but also on the closest possible approximation of the metrical versions of the Psalms to the Hebrew original. In consequence they sometimes resort to phraseology which is anything but beautiful. In my estimation the following stanza from Psalm 118

Blessed be the Lord, who is to us
Of our salvation God;
Who of our burdens day by day
Himself doth bear the load

defies certain divinely given laws of aesthetics for human language and, therefore, in that respect is not well calculated for the glorification of God.

4. In Order that God may be Glorified by Song in Public Worship, the Congregation must Participate Intelligently←⤒🔗

One of the great principles that distinguishes Protestant from Roman Catholic public worship is insistence on intelligent worship. Only intelligent worship qualifies as worship in spirit and in truth, and only with such worship is God pleased.

The question has often been asked whether there is room in a service of corporate worship for song by a restricted number of persons; for instance, a choir, a quartet, or a soloist. It may interest you that in his famous Pastoral Theology, James M. Hoppin of Yale condemned this practice on the ground that the purpose of song in public worship is not to please the trained ear, nor to give variety and attractiveness to the service, but to be the medium of the conscious devotion of the people.

Some Reformed writers condemn the practice on a somewhat different ground. They say that, since a service of corporate worship is a gathering of God and His people, either God or the congregation as a whole must speak in each part of such worship. While agreeing most heartily with this premise as well as Hoppin’s, I am not convinced that the conclusion drawn is a necessary one. It rather seems to me that, when a limited number of persons sing in a service of worship, it is possible for the whole congregation to sing along with them, not audibly to be sure, yet from the heart. But the point to be stressed strongly in this connection is that in such an instance those who do sing audibly are in sacred duty bound so to sing that the congregation knows precisely what is being sung and therefore can participate intelligently.

5. In Order that God may be Glorified by Song in Public Worship, those who Participate must do so Sincerely←⤒🔗

So often in our singing we, like the Pharisees of old, draw nigh to God with our mouths and honor Him with our lips but keep our hearts far from Him. We do that when we sing familiar songs with never a thought of what we sing or when our thoughts are occupied by the music of what we sing to the exclusion of the words. We do it when we sing to be heard and, we hope, praised of men rather than to glorify God. May God be merciful to us sinners.

There are churches which employ professional singers as leaders of song without regard to the theological views of these singers, without so much as inquiring whether they are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the door is flung wide open to hypocrisy in worship, which in the sight of God can only be an abomination.

And, let me add, may our richly talented singers never yield to the temptation of accepting positions of leadership in song in Modernist churches, no matter how fashionable those churches may be. For Modernism is not Christianity. It is a false religion. Of such churches it is written: “What agreement hath the temple of God with idols?” and “Come ye out from among them” (2 Corinthians 6:16-17).

In conclusion, I would call attention to an interesting emphasis of God’s Word. Scripture does not tell us a great deal about the activities of the redeemed in glory, but it does speak repeatedly of their praising God in song. Could the reason be that in praise — together with prayer — God’s people glorify their Creator and Redeemer most directly? All that we do on earth must be done to His glory, but in much we glorify Him indirectly. In nothing do we glorify Him more directly than in prayer and praise. In heaven the saints adore Him thus “day and night.” Let us anticipate that perfect service of our God by now singing, albeit imperfectly, to His glory in His church, the portal of heaven.