Scottish Paraphrases – The Second Collection (1775-1781)
In 1775, the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr informed the General Assembly that there were several ministers and congregations who wanted to use the collection of forty-five Paraphrases that had been compiled in 1745 and the Synod requested that they be allowed to use them. A committee was formed to consider the matter. In 1778 the committee informed the Assembly that a large collection of Paraphrases had been compiled. Although the Assembly gave the committee permission to print the collection and send it for review to Presbyteries, the committee did not do so and continued to work on their assignment. Eventually in 1781, the committee completed its labours.
The Assembly passed an Act in connection with this collection of sixty-seven Paraphrases and five hymns. Among its concerns were the following: [Having received the Report of the Committee,] ‘Which being considered by the General Assembly and they having deliberated thereupon, the Assembly appoints these Translations and Paraphrases to be transmitted to the several Presbyteries of the Church, in order that they may report their opinion concerning them to the ensuing General Assembly; and in the meantime, allows this Collection of sacred Poems to be used in Public Worship in congregations where the minister finds it for edification. The General Assembly renews the appointment of their Committee, with powers to judge of any corrections or alterations of these Poems that may be suggested, previous to the transmission of the same, and with directions to cause a proper number of copies, with such corrections as they approve, to be printed for the consideration of Presbyteries and for public use.’
This is the only legislation of Paraphrases ever passed for allowing their use in public worship. It allowed their use for a period defined as ‘in the meantime’ which was to last until the next General Assembly when the re-appointed Committee would report on action taken on any comments received from Presbyteries. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, given the disinterest shown previously by Presbyteries in introducing the Paraphrases into public worship, the committee never gave in another report.
The outcome is that the use of Paraphrases after ‘the meantime’ was over has not been legislated for by a General Assembly. Nevertheless, Paraphrases continued to be used in public worship in some congregations.
As far as I can see with regard to the Scottish paraphrases, there are three areas that need clarification. One is their legitimacy according to church law, which basically comes down to the simple question, Do we have authority to sing them? That question is not a statement of approval or disapproval of paraphrases. It is based on the necessity of having Assembly approval for the elements we use in worship, and I don’t think such approval exists with regard to paraphrases. If someone can show me that such approval exists, then that question is answered.
Second, we do not have a definition of a paraphrase. Most would say it is a metrical version of a Bible passage. Yet there are many songs in the current paraphrases which do not meet that description (for example, what passage is ‘O God of Bethel’ based on? I think I know the incident that may have suggested it). So what kind of song do people have in mind when asking for paraphrases?
Third, what authority do we have for turning prose passages into paraphrases? I can understand the argument that we should sing other Bible songs in public worship as well as psalms (although I don’t agree with it). But I am not aware of any indication that we should turn prose into paraphrases.
Scottish Paraphrases – The First Collection (1751-1755)
Before 1750, the term ‘paraphrases’ was used of metrical versions of the psalms. Metrical versions of other scripture passages were known as Scriptural Songs. Around 1750, the term was used to describe these passages and was no longer used of the psalms.
In 1741, a request was made to the General Assembly ‘that it be recommended to some fit persons to turn some passages of the Old and New Testament into metre to be used in Churches as well as in private families.’ This request was passed on to the Commission, but it did nothing about it.
The 1742 Assembly received a similar request from the Presbytery of Dundee and decided to appoint a committee of nineteen ministers to consider the matter and report their findings. This committee failed to report at either the 1743 or 1744 Assemblies. The 1744 Assembly enlarged the committee and appointed Patrick Cumming as its convener (he was minister of the Old Church, Edinburgh, and Professor of Church History in Edinburgh University).
This enlarged committee returned the following year (1745) with a collection of forty-five paraphrases. Immediately the collection was sent to a Revision Committee who approved it on the following day, and recommended that it should be sent down to Presbyteries for approval. with the additional requirement that a failure to respond would be taken as a sign of approval. There was opposition to the recommendation, with the outcome that it was agreed that the collection should be sent to Presbyteries merely for their opinion and comments.
In 1746, only a few Presbyteries had responded; the same happened in 1747 and 1748. An explanation was given at the 1749 Assembly for the slow response: many Presbyteries had lost their copies because of the recent troubles connected to the Jacobite rebellion. The Assembly ordered a reprint which was sent out in July 1750, but again in 1751 only a few Presbyteries replied. The 1751 Assembly, however, recommended that the Paraphrases could be used by families. Even by 1755, thirty-two Presbyteries had failed to respond.
The attempt to introduce paraphrases had been going on for fourteen years, yet it failed despite repeated attempts of the General Assembly to get Presbyteries to recommend the collection. Some aspects are clear. One is that the Assembly had a sufficiently large group that demanded a prolonged attempt to introduce paraphrases; the other is that the majority of Presbyteries had no interest in introducing paraphrases. The only success that the pro-paraphrases group had was that the collection had been recommended by the Assembly for use in families.
Spiritual Songs
The Old Scottish Psalter of 1565 only contained psalms. Additional songs were added in later editions and the edition of 1634 contained fourteen extra songs (they were entitled The Ten Commandments, A Prayer, The Lord’s Prayer, Veni Creator, The Song of Simeon, The XII Articles of Christian Belief, The Humble Suit of a Sinner, The Lamentation of a Sinner, The Complaint of a Sinner, The Song of the Blessed Virgin Mary, The Lamentation, The Song of Moses, A Thanksgiving after Receiving the Lord’s Supper, and A Spiritual Song).
In 1647, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland discussed Rous’ Psalms (which had been recommended by the Westminster Assembly) and authorised a revision of them. The same Assembly asked Zachary Boyd, a minister and author of several volumes of Scriptural Songs, to translate the other Scriptural Songs in metre, after which he should report his work to the Commission of Assembly which would arrange for his translations to be sent down to Presbyteries for consideration before the next General Assembly.
By the 1648 General Assembly, the revised text of Rous’ Psalms was ready to send to Presbyteries. The same could not be said of Boyd’s work on the additional songs. John Adamson and Thomas Crawford were asked to revise Boyd’s labours, which indicates that the Assembly was not content with Boyd’s work or else the Assembly had not received any revised versions from him.
In addition to Boyd, two other men had been asked by the General Assembly to paraphrase songs from the Old and New Testaments. David Leitch from Ellon was working on some in 1648 in Edinburgh and Robert Lowrie was working on some in 1650. Neither man submitted any of their work to the General Assembly.
In 1649, the General Assembly decided that the Commission should revise and issue the new Psalter in 1650, without waiting for the revised Scriptural Songs. It is possible that the General Assembly intended to include these Songs in subsequent Psalters. Whether it did or not, it did not have the opportunity because it was disolved in 1653 and did not meet again until 1690.
In 1695, the General Assembly again raised the issue of revising Scripture Songs but nothing appears to have been done. Ten years later, in 1705, the General Assembly raised the matter again, asking ‘their Commission to revise the book called Scriptural Songs in order to be prepared for public use and report to the next Assembly’. This Assembly appointed two committees and over the next three years various reports and Acts sending the Songs down to Presbyteries for consideration were passed.
In 1708, the following Act was passed on 27th April: ‘The General Assembly do Instruct and Appoint their Commission maturely to consider the printed version of the Scripture Songs, with the remarks of the Presbyteries thereupon: And after Examination thereof, they are hereby Authorised and Impowered to conclude and establish that version, and to publish and emit it for the publick use of the Church, as was formerly done on the like occasion, and when our version of the Psalms was published in the year 1649.’
Despite taking steps to get Presbyteries involved in the process, only two Presbyteries (Ross and Kirkcudbright) sent in their remarks by the following March. The Commission in March therefore decided not to make any ‘further procedure in this matter at this time, until the remarks of other presbyteries were also brought in.’ This is the last reference to Scriptural Songs in the records of the General Assembly or in the records of the Commissions of Assembly.
It looks as if the barrier to including such Songs in the Psalter was the refusal of the vast majority of Presbyteries to heed the Acts of Assembly requiring them to review the revised Scriptural Songs. Possible reasons are (1) they could not be bothered, an unlikely reason; (2) they preferred the unrevised versions, also an unlikely reason; (3) they did not want them re-introduced in public worship, a likely reason and one for which they were prepared to ignore the Assembly’s intentions.
Instrumental Music and Individual Congregations
Rev. John M’Ewan was minister of John Knox Free Church in Edinburgh. In 1883, concerned about attempts to introduce instrumental music into the public worship of the Free Church of Scotland, he authored a pamphlet in which he listed several arguments against the introduction. George Smeaton provided a preface, and after summarising the historical practice in Scotland, he wrote: ‘With these views I fully concur, and deeply would I deplore the disturbance of the unity, peace and spiritual prosperity of the Church, by the introduction of new elements in worship, which are not in keeping with the genius of Scottish Presbyterianism.’ One of the arguments discussed by M’Ewan was the claim that each congregation in a Presbyterian church has liberty to decide for itself the elements of public worship.
Now, one of the leading features in our Presbyterian Constitution is that which refers to uniformity as well as purity of worship. All Free Church office-bearers, as we have seen, are bound, on their admission to office, to maintain, observe, and defend the purity of worship as presently practised in this Church. When, therefore, a congregation asks permission to change the character of that worship, they should be reminded that they are simply asking that the Free Church should change her constitution, in so far as uniformity of worship is concerned, and adopt the theory of Independency, and that the request cannot be granted without the abandonment of one of her fundamental principles. When we speak of uniformity, we do not mean absolute uniformity in every minute detail. This is not possible, and has never been demanded; but uniformity is demanded in so far as the great outstanding features of that Presbyterianism is concerned, which has been practised for three hundred years. To introduce into such a worship instrumental music, and still profess to maintain the uniformity of worship as presently practised in this Church, appears to us a gross delusion and an abuse of language. Besides, the theory of Presbyterianism is, that in the constant fluctuation that is ever going on in a population like ours, our people should find, in going from one place to another, and from one church to another, the same form of worship in substance, to that with which they have been accustomed. They have a right, as members of our Church, to expect this, and the Church has no right, unless she change her Constitution, to deprive them of this right, while even the Constitution itself cannot be changed, without the consent of those who are parties to the contract. It is on this ground, that all members of the Church have a right to object, when individual congregations claim liberty to introduce serious changes into the worship of the Church.
The late Dr. Candlish may surely be regarded as a highly competent authority on any question bearing on the Constitution of the Church, and on the question we are now discussing, here is his deliverance. After making the supposition that a Presbyterian Church might come to the conclusion that the question be left an open one, and that kirk-sessions and congregations should be allowed to exercise their discretion in regard to it, he adds: ‘It is manifest, however, that this is a conclusion which could satisfy none but those who either approve of instrumental music, or reckon it a matter of indifference. All who are conscientiously opposed to it – who regard it as inexpedient and unlawful, unauthorised, and unscriptural – must feel themselves bound, as Presbyterians, to do their utmost against a proposal to have it even tolerated. In their own judgment it is an act of will worship; and there is no plea of conscience on the other side to which they might be bound to let their own judgment defer.’ Again he says: ‘It is enough to say that it is inconsistent with Presbyterianism. Those Presbyterians who disapprove on conscientious and scriptural grounds of a particular mode of worship – as, for instance, of the organ – cannot divest themselves of responsibility by merely excluding it from their own congregations. They are bound to resist the introduction of it in all the congregations of the Church, as well as in their own.’ There is much more to the same purpose that might have been quoted. Surely Dr. Candlish knew the meaning of Presbyterianism.
But there is more to be said on this plea of congregational liberty. We are prepared to show that this liberty which they crave, if granted, would involve an interference with the just liberty of others. Let us suppose that the liberty to employ organs were granted, what would be the consequence? There are hundreds of ministers and thousands of the people in the Free Church who are opposed on conscientious and scriptural grounds, to the use of instrumental music in public worship. See how it would bear on these people, in the first place, and on ministers, in the second place.
In the event of these people coming to, or dwelling in, large cities or towns, they might in that case find some church where they could worship God in comfort according to the good old way; but suppose they come to live, or happen to reside in a rural parish or small town where there is only one Free Church, and where the proposed innovation has been adopted; what are such persons to do? Are they to leave the Free Church, and that, perhaps, when other Presbyterian Churches are equally guilty of a departure from the old established forms of worship? Or are they to attend a church where their conscientious convictions of what is right in the sight of God are rudely trampled upon? This is a case of conscience of a most delicate kind. There is a peculiarity about this innovation which does not apply to others. Whatever attitude might be adopted by others, and whether I approved of it or not, would not deprive me following my own way, under a sense of duty, but the use of an organ would. Has any church a right so to change the form of worship, without either the plea of conscience or Scripture, as to place any of her members in such a position? We trow not. Here under the guise of the sacred name of liberty, the greatest interference would take place with the just liberty of others.
Then, secondly, the condition of ministers who are opposed to the proposed innovation would still be worse, and the same thing is true of licentiates of the Church. At present, in accordance with the law of the Church, all ministers and licentiates of the Church are eligible to be called to any vacant congregation, and any congregation in the Church has the right, when vacant, to call any such minister or licentiate. But grant the liberty craved, and let instrumental music be introduced: while the same liberty would theoretically remain, practically it would be gone. The congregation which had adopted the innovation, would be necessarily restricted, when vacant, to call only such ministers as were favourable to the innovation, as they would never dream of calling a man whose first step would be to silence the instrument; and thus practically, all ministers and probationers who on principle were opposed to the innovation, would be deprived of a right and privilege which they at present enjoy. Has the Church a right to pass an act which would involve such results as these?
But even this is not all. Suppose the innovation sanctioned and acted upon by several congregations, say in a Presbytery like Edinburgh or Glasgow, and the duty of officiating on certain occasions is laid upon a minister who objects on principle to the innovation, what is such a minister to do? He would probably refuse, and if the Presbytery resolved to insist on obedience, which, of course, they ought to do, if the command is a legitimate one, you would have the strange spectacle presented of a minister made the subject of discipline, and it may be of suspension from office, technically on the ground of contumacy, but in reality on the ground of standing by his ordination vows, which bind him to adhere and conform himself to the purity of worship so practised by the Church when these vows were undertaken. Has a church the right, I do not say to put such discipline as we have indicated in force, but has she the right to pass a law by which it could, by possibility, be put in force? Again we say No, without a change of the constitution. The problem, it will thus be seen, is not so beautifully simple as our friends suppose, when they innocently only ask for congregational liberty in this matter. It is a liberty which, if granted, would impose fetters and restrictions on those who, on grounds of conscience, cannot approve of the change. It would be far more honest and straightforward to give up our Presbyterianism and become Independents, where congregations, under responsibility to Christ alone, might regulate their own affairs.
Lecture by Andrew Thomson on Psalm 116:1-9
There are two motives which should constrain us to love God. In the first place, God has, in his nature and character, all those qualities which are naturally fitted to awaken this sentiment in our hearts. And, in the second place, these amiable qualities have been exhibited in promoting our welfare; and from a principle of our moral constitution, ‘we love him, because he first loved us.’ It is to the latter motive that the Psalmist here refers. ‘I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.’ David had asked the interposition of God’s mercy in his behalf. It had been granted to him according to the desire and petition of his heart. And in the benefits which he received, he not only saw goodness manifested as an attribute of Deity, but he felt it in his own personal experience, as goodness of which he was the object, and as constituting an urgent and irresistible claim on his reciprocal affection. There arose therefore, in his breast, and there was cherished there, the gratitude and love which he owed to his heavenly Father; and in simple language he acknowledges and records at once the feelings of which he was conscious, and the consideration by which they had been excited.
The experience of the Psalmist, on this point, must be more or less the experience of every true Christian. Every true Christian habitually lifts up to God the voice of supplication – praying for the various blessings, temporal and spiritual, which his circumstances require. Every true Christian, praying ‘with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit’, has the promise of divine faithfulness that he shall receive according to his need. And every true Christian labouring to fulfil the first and great commandment, will meditate on the manifold tokens of kindness which God has shown him in answer to his applications at a throne of grace, and yield to the native influence of that kindness, by cherishing a still more cordial, and still more devoted attachment to the giver of all his mercies.
My friends, if you are real Christians, it is one of your leading characteristics that you continually look to God as the fountain of all good, and that while you regularly ask from him in his own appointed way what is necessary for your well-being in the ordinary course of life, you ask from him with particular emphasis and importunateness those benefits which are of the highest general importance, and those which are most suited to your special and unexpected exigencies. And I am sure that having done so, you can bear your personal testimony to the truth of that declaration which God has addressed to every member of his church, ‘Call upon me, and I will answer you.’ It has been your privilege and your happiness to find that he provides for the temporal wants of his people with wisdom and liberality; that he communicates in still richer abundance the blessings after which their souls are hungering and thirsting; that he gives them grace and glory, and withholds from them no good thing which is essential to their comfort, their improvement, their salvation. You may have had your seasons of mental dejection and distress; and you may have been sometimes ready to cry out, ‘Hath the Lord forgotten to be gracious, and will he be favourable no more?’ But say, my believing brethren, if when the Spirit carried you to the mercy seat, and with the faith which rests on the merits of your heavenly intercessor you there poured forth the petitions of your hearts, these petitions were not answered by God’s appearing in mercy as a sun to enlighten you in the midst of your darkness, and as a shield to protect you from all the dangers by which you were afraid of being overwhelmed? And when you have been weighed down with worldly cares and afflictions, and the whole scene of human life perhaps put on the garb of melancholy and of woe, and you have still had recourse to prayer, have not you felt your sorrowful spirits visited with consolation; and though it may be that the bitter cup is still pressed to your lips, have not you been taught that it is the hand of your heavenly Father which gives you this cup to drink, and have you not learnt that it is in faithfulness and in compassion that he has mingled it for you, and have not you been enabled even to ‘rejoice in the midst of your tribulations’? Has not this been in one degree or another your comfortable experience? Has not such experience constrained you more and more to love God who thus hears you when you cry to him, and delivers you out of your distresses, and makes it ‘good for you that you have been afflicted’, and causes you to be ‘glad in the light of his countenance’? And is not this the language by which you at once express your gratitude, and encourage it, ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.’
But the Psalmist not only declares his love to God on account of God’s goodness and mercy to him in answer to his prayers, he adds, ‘Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.’ And this is precisely what all the people of God will do in similar circumstances. If God has graciously condescended to grant us deliverance and the other blessings that we implored from him, there is, in the first place, laid upon us an obligation to be thankful which we shall never be able to exhaust; and, in the next place, there is suggested to us a powerful encouragement to persevere in our supplications, to which a regard to our own welfare will determine us to yield. When we think of our personal unworthiness of any of the least token of God’s mercy; when we think of our just obnoxiousness to his displeasure on account of our manifold and aggravated provocations; and when we recollect, that notwithstanding all this we have been invited to the throne of his grace, and have been allowed to make our requests known to him, and have received what was necessary to support, and comfort, and bless us, can we ever cease to ‘sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and to declare his works with rejoicing’? Supposing that we were left to go mourning all the remainder of our earthly pilgrimage, still the remembrance of what we have already experienced of ‘the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living’, and the hope which that experienced goodness has taught us to repose in his continued favour, will not only cheer us as we travel through the wilderness, but will call forth all our powers and affections to bless and to magnify his holy name. And the last breath that we draw will whisper the beginning of that song of praise which we are to sing to our redeeming God, when we enter upon the unmingled and eternal joys of the promised land.
But we will not only celebrate the praises of God so long as we live, on account of his merciful answer to our prayers; having received such an answer, we shall feel encouraged to pray to him in every succeeding emergency of our spiritual career. There is no period when we can expect to be exempt from those necessities which require the interposition of divine aid and the communication of divine bounty; and we may lay our account with being sometimes placed in those circumstances of peculiar trial, danger or distress, which demand the peculiar supplies of Almighty grace to uphold and to save us; and our only resource in such cases is to be found in earnest, believing, unwearied prayer. And how much must we be animated to engage in that exercise, not only by the promises held out to us in the Word of God, but by the fulfilment of these promises which have actually taken place in the history of our own lives! He who heard and answered us from his holy hill when we formerly petitioned him, will not fail to hear and answer us on every future occasion that we cast ourselves upon his compassion and his power. He has emphatically taught us by his past kindness, to apply to him and to trust in him, amid all the coming difficulties and hardships of our Christian journey. And we will but ill understand and ill improve the lesson, if it does not serve to keep alive in us an active spirit of prayer and supplication, and if it does not make us ‘go boldly to the throne of grace’, and ask with confidence that we may receive with freeness, mercy and grace, and every needful blessing.
Having stated, in general, God’s mercy to him, and the general effect which it produced upon his sentiments and conduct, the Psalmist proceeds to take a more particular view of God’s gracious dealings with him, and of the impressions which these made upon him, both as to his present feelings and his resolutions for the future. ‘The sorrows of death compassed me,’ says he, ‘the pains of hell got hold upon me; I found trouble and sorrow.’ He was menaced with death. It was not some bodily distemper which might be easily and speedily removed. It was not some ordinary calamity which ordinary fortitude would enable him to endure. It was a distemper which seemed to be mortal – it was a calamity which threatened to prove fatal. The prospect of dissolution was before him; and there was something more alarming still – something after death which made him shrink back from it as his worst enemy, and which filled him with trouble and sorrow.
It is truly a fearful thing to die; to go from the place of hope to the place of unalterable retribution; to leave this world, in which, amidst all its sinfulness, we are still permitted to hear the voice of divine mercy, and to pass into that untried scene where we must encounter all the perils of a righteous judgment, and have our doom irrevocably and everlastingly fixed. It is the prerogative of faith, indeed, to convert the king of terrors into a messenger of peace – to shed a cheering light along the dark valley and to realise in the most holy judge a most compassionate Saviour. But even in those whose belief has been heretofore strong, and lively, and influential, and who have often said, under the impressions of its elevating power, ‘O death where is thy sting, O grave where is thy victory? To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain’ – even in them, there may be misgivings at the last hour, and terrible apprehensions of a coming tribunal, and a coming eternity. They may be visited with the compunctions of guilt; and thinking of all their transgressions and all their aggravations, they may be agitated with the terrors of the Lord, and feel as it were the punishment of hell beginning in their souls. Melancholy and distressing is their situation. It is not indeed to be compared with the situation of those who are not only thus afraid to die, but who have reason to be thus afraid; who have sinned, and never repented; who have been offered a Saviour, but have not believed in him; who are called to give in their account, but have made no preparation for such a dread reckoning; and who either are not aware of their danger, or try to banish it from their thoughts; or, roused to a sense of it, breathe nothing but the language of despair. The situation of the believer whose heart is fearful of dying, is not indeed for a moment to be compared with that of the careless and hardened, or the awakened and hopeless sinner. Still, however, it is one of severe suffering; and he is frequently heard to express the mental anguish which afflicts him. But then there is a refuge for him. To that refuge he flees. He looks to God as a God rich in mercy. He relies upon the mediator of the new covenant. He calls upon him whose ‘ear is open to his cry’, and finds relief by committing himself to him in the earnestness and the confidence of prayer; ‘then called I upon the name of the Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.’
This prayer is short and simple, but it is the prayer of the heart and the prayer of faith, and cannot fail to succeed. He who prefers it, asks the deliverance of the soul; its deliverance from the guilt of sin, which would leave it under the sentence of condemnation; and its deliverance from the pollution of sin, which would disqualify it for the kingdom of heaven. And he does not merely ask it as if it were a matter of indifference whether he obtained it or not. He asks it as a blessing of the highest – of infinite importance; as a blessing without which he must be undone; as a blessing with which his happiness is secure and complete. ‘O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.’ Then again he appeals to God as a God of mercy and of grace. ‘Gracious is the Lord, yea our God is merciful.’ He knows and feels, that were God to deal justly with him, instead of obtaining deliverance, he should receive condemnation; and therefore he relies upon his mercy. He refers to that as the source of all his expectations; and laying aside as presumptuous and vain every claim on the ground of personal deserving, he looks and applies to the free and unmerited grace of him whose memorial it is, that he possesses this endearing attribute, and that he delights in the exercise of it.
But the believer does not rest satisfied with the conviction of God’s mercy, and with resting his hopes upon that as if it were the only perfection in God’s character. He entertains more worthy and consistent notions on the subject. He regards God, not as his own corrupt nature would perversely wish him to be; but as he really is, and as he has been pleased to reveal himself to sinners. He regards him as no less holy than he is merciful. ‘Gracious is the Lord, and righteous.’ And this leads him not merely to glorify and do homage to the character of God, by ascribing to it all its native excellence, but to attend to that provision which the high and holy One has made for the consistent and effectual manifestation of his love to guilty men. He contemplates the gospel scheme; he sees there the arrangement which supreme wisdom has contrived for reconciling the bestowal of mercy with the demands of justice; and he seeks for the deliverance of his soul in the way which has been divinely appointed – through faith in the atonement and mediation of Jesus Christ, which is God’s instituted method for a sinner’s justification.
Nor does the believer rest even here. He knows that while he must depend entirely upon the merit of Christ as the procuring cause, and upon the mercy of God as the originating cause of his deliverance, still it is not in any spirit that he feels himself entitled to ask for that boon. He does not conceive it to be enough that he makes use of the mere words and phrases of a petition, or that he makes a verbal reference, however decided and orthodox, in that petition, to the work of the Redeemer. He knows that in all this, in order to its being of any weight, there must be ‘simplicity and godly sincerity’; for it is only ‘the simple’ that the Lord ‘preserves’. And therefore he studies to be ‘without guile’ before God, to have a single eye to what God requires of him, as well as to what he is asking from God; and conscious of being without wisdom and without strength himself, he casts himself entirely and unreservedly on the divine protection.
Now, the consequence of such an application to God, is the attainment of that support and deliverance which were implored. ‘I was brought low, and the Lord helped me.’ I was brought so low, I was so beset with danger and so overwhelmed with fear, I was in such a miserable and hopeless state, that not only was there no help for me in man, but I was almost despairing of help from God. And yet he has disappointed all my fears, he has scattered all mine enemies, he has ‘taken me out of the fearful pit and out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock and established my goings.’ As a poor, destitute, and wretched man, ‘I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me out of all my distresses.’ I was cast down, but he raised me up: the waves and billows of adversity were threatening to swallow me up; but he made ‘the overflowing of the proud waters to pass by,’ and brought me to the shore of safety and of peace. His everlasting arm has rescued me from the jaws of destruction, and now ‘I fear no evil.’ ‘Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.’
If our souls are properly affected they will be perpetually seeking rest – a rest in which they can delight themselves, and on whose permanence they can count with certainty. And this rest is nowhere to be found but in the bounty and favour of the Lord. ‘The depth saith, it is not in me, and the sea, it is not in me. It can not be gotten for gold.’ All the wealth of the world cannot purchase it. The soul has wants which no human beneficence can supply. It has diseases which no human skill can heal. It has desires which no human power can satisfy. It has sorrows which no human sympathies can charm away. And if left to the resources of created being, it is indeed ‘weary and heavy laden’, and can repose neither in what it has, nor in what it expects to attain. This is the case in some measure with every worldling; who, though not aware, perhaps, of the cause, or not inclined to have it removed, yet feels that in all his most eager pursuits, and in all his choicest pleasures, there is little else than ‘vanity and vexation of spirit’. But it is more especially the case with the believer, who views things in the light of reason, and in the light of Scripture, and in the light of eternity; who sees in the very best and highest of earthly enjoyments nothing that is worthy of an immortal mind – nothing that accommodates itself to the necessities of a guilty conscience or of a depraved heart – nothing that can make affliction light, death comfortable, and futurity blessed; and who would, therefore, regard a sentence dooming him to seek and to find his happiness in these, as a sentence dooming him to an utter exclusion from the rest which he is so anxious to obtain, and to the continued endurance of that misery out of which he is so anxious to escape. But, blessed be God, while he feels that ‘this is not his rest’, he knows where to find it. He ‘arises and departs out of the land which is polluted,’ and he goes into the land in which the dominion of sin is destroyed, and in which he can lie down on ‘the green pastures’, and walk beside ‘the still waters’ of divine grace. He sees the ocean of a worldly and unsanctified life to be without an island on which he may dwell securely, and without a twig even on which for one moment he may plant his foot; and, therefore, he returns to the ark of safety and of peace. He takes the good and ever-living God for his portion; and in the riches of his bounty he finds all that can give ‘rest to his soul’, amidst his most numerous troubles and his most aggravated sorrows. There is no evil in his existing condition, and no evil that he can anticipate, from which he is not emancipated, or under which he is not upheld and comforted, by that merciful and mighty being to whom he has surrendered himself in faith and in well-doing.
The Psalmist here gives an enumeration of the blessings which he experienced from the bountiful dealing of the Lord. There is first, the deliverance of the ‘soul from death’. ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die.’ And having sinned, we are justly and necessarily condemned to die. But as it is impossible to describe, or even to conceive, all the horrors of that punishment which we have incurred by our transgression of God’s law, so proportionally awful must be the convictions of the awakened sinner who has in any measure realised these in his imagination, and is conscious of deserving them, and is impressed with the apprehension of suffering them. But if, in the midst of all these dangers, and all this anguish, we have ‘fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us’, and have put our trust in God’s mercy as exhibited in the mediation of Jesus, it is the assurance of him ‘who cannot lie’, that our guilt is remitted, that we obtain reconciliation, that we become partakers of an ‘eternal redemption’. And what can be wanting to give us rest from the agitations of guilt, when we hear that great and gracious being whose wrath we had incurred, saying to us, ‘son, daughter, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee?’ Surely this declaration, so full of mercy and so full of meaning, must impart to us that ‘peace of mind which passeth understanding’, and fill us with ‘a joy that is unspeakable and full of glory’.
But, besides delivering our souls from death, the Lord also in his bounty delivers our ‘eyes from tears’. In this sinful world, there is no complete exemption from evil that is either promised to us, or that can be experienced by us. It abounds in causes of mourning, to the operation of which we must be subjected in common with all the children of mortality, and there are some by which we are peculiarly affected as the disciples of a holy and crucified Redeemer. But though we are exposed to these, and must often endure them in all their variety, and in all their weight, still being reconciled to God through Christ, and consequently interested in all the promises of the well-ordered covenant, we have wherewithal to comfort our hearts in the darkest and most distressful hour. No affliction befalls us which is not accompanied with its appropriate consolation. Even our heaviest calamities are represented and brought home to us as expressions of God’s paternal love. And in the gloomiest vale of sorrow, we are permitted to lift up the eye of hope to that region of unclouded sky and undisturbed repose which is reserved for the faithful; and to consider what we suffer now as a preparation for that blessed period longed for, though not distant, by all the afflicted followers of Christ, when God shall translate them into his unsuffering kingdom, and shall ‘wipe away all tears from their eyes’. With this prospect before us, secured to us by the word of promise, and brought near by that ‘faith which is the evidence of things not seen’, we may not only ‘possess our souls in patience’, but even ‘rejoice in our tribulations’.
And while God delivers our souls from death, and our eyes from tears, he also delivers our ‘feet from falling’. If we are true believers, sensible of our obligations to God, and desirous of final admission into heaven, we must be perpetually concerned to maintain ‘a conscience void of offence’, and to be ‘holy in all manner of conversation’. And, aware of the numberless temptations that surround us, and of our own weakness and inability to resist and overcome them, the fear of falling a prey to them must frequently harass and distress us. But here also a bountiful God has provided rest for us. We are assured by him that his ‘grace will be sufficient for us, and that his strength will be perfected in our weakness’; that the divine Spirit is to be given us for our guidance and sanctification; that Christ has vanquished our spiritual foes, and that believing in him, his victory becomes ours. And having such an assurance, what reason have we not merely to exclude all despondency as to our perseverance, but even to go on our Christian way rejoicing, humble indeed under a sense of our manifold dangers and deficiencies, but yet animated by the encouraging truth, that we are ‘strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might,’ that even in the wilderness we shall have ‘rest from our enemies’, and that by a course of cheerful and universal obedience, we shall be maturing our meetness for enjoying that sinless, and perfect, and eternal ‘rest which remains’ above ‘for the people of God’!
Now, what is the practical result of this experience? What was it with the Psalmist? And what should it be with us? ’I will walk before the Lord,’ says David, ‘in the land of the living.’ This was his resolution, this was his endeavour; and it must be ours. We must act with a spirit of confidence in his wisdom and goodness; with unfeigned submission to his authority, with ‘a single eye to his glory’, with the blessed hope of seeing him in heaven. And especially we must act as it becomes those who have experienced so much of his loving kindness, recognising in this a powerful motive for being more active and zealous in his service, more anxious in promoting his honour among our fellowmen, and more careful to embrace every opportunity that is offered of showing to the souls and bodies of others that mercy which we have received from him.
And there must be no delay, no remissness, no indolence in the great duty of walking before the Lord. ‘I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.’ O my friends, life is short. We are now in the land of living men: we shall ere long be immured in the darkness and the silence of the tomb. Let us ‘work the works of God, therefore, while it is day; the night cometh’ soon, and it may come unexpectedly, ‘when no man can work.’ ‘Whatever our hand findeth to do,’ whether it be an exercise of faith in the Redeemer, or whether it be an act of repentance towards our offended Maker, or whether it be an application by prayer at the foot-stool of mercy, or whether it be a deed of justice and reparation to some one that we have wronged, or whether it be a work of piety and beneficence in behalf of the victims of disease and poverty – whatever our hand findeth to do, let us do it with our might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither we are going.
Psalmodies of the Scottish Reformation
This extract is taken from David Hay Fleming’s book, The Reformation in Scotland.
Vital importance was attached to preaching and prayer, but praise, though regarded as profitable, was not deemed absolutely necessary in the services of the sanctuary. ‘In some churcheis,’ says the Book of Discipline, ‘Psalmes may be convenientlie sung, in utheris, perchance, thay cannot.’ (1) Nevertheless, it declares that men, women, and children should be exhorted ‘to exercise thame selvis in the Psalmes, that when the churche convenith, and dois sing, thai may be the more abill togither with commoun heart and voice to prayse God.’ (2) As it had even been questioned whether singing might be used in a Reformed Church, it is shown, in the preface to the Order of Geneva (1556), that God’s Word approves of it, and that antiquity bears witness to it, and this statement is made –
‘ As musike or singinge is naturall unto us, and therfore every man deliteth therein; so our mercifull God setteth before our eyes, how we may rejoyce and singe to the glorie of his name, recreation of our spirites, and profit of our selves. But as ther is no gift of God so precious or excellent that Satan hath not after a sort drawen to himself and corrupt, so hath he most impudentlye abused this notable gifte of singinge, chieflye by the Papistes his ministers, in disfiguring it, partly by strange language, that cannot edifie, and partly by a curious wanton sort, hyringe men to tickle the eares and flatter the phantasies.’(3)
Not only was the curious singing which tickled the ear, and flattered the fancy, condemned; but in one of the rubrics it is said, ‘The people singe a Psalme all together, in a playne tune.’(4) Every rubric which refers to singing, refers to the singing of a Psalm; and in the preface it is said –
‘There are no songes more meete than the Psalmes of the prophet David, which the Holy Ghoste hath framed to the same use, and commended to the Churche, as conteininge the effect of the whole Scriptures.’(5)
The first edition of the Order of Geneva (1556) contains ‘one and fiftie Psalmes of David in Englishe metre‘. The 1561 edition contains eighty-seven; and the 1564-65 edition, the whole hundred and fifty.(6) The Psalms indeed formed such an important part of the Book of Common Order that the general assembly, in December 1564, in prescribing its use, refers to it as the Psalm Book –
‘It was ordained, that everie minister, exhorter and reader sall have one of the Psalme Bookes, latelie printed in Edinburgh, and use the order contained therein in prayers, marriage, and ministration of the sacraments.’(7)
One or two editions, however, seem to have been issued without the Psalms.(8) It may have been one of these, or a copy which had lost the Psalms, which was reprinted two centuries ago in The Phenix, and which the editor characterised as ‘a grave demure piece, without either responses or Psalms, or hymns, without fringe or philactery; but terribly fortify’d and pallisado’d with texts of Scripture.’(9) Each of the fifty-one Psalms in the 1556 edition was provided with a tune; to the eighty-seven Psalms of the 1561 edition there were sixty tunes; and to the completed Psalter of 1564-65 there were a hundred and five tunes.(10) So anxious were the Reformers to provide psalmody for the people, that, in 1562, the general assembly resolved to lend Lekprevik, the printer, 200 Scots, ‘to help to buy irons, ink, and paper, and to fie craftisman,’ for printing the Psalms.(11) The version completed in 1564-65 held the field in Scotland, until superseded by the present version in 1650.
In the 1556 edition there is a metrical version of the ten commandments; in the 1561 edition there were also three metrical versions of the Lord’s Prayer, and one version of the Song of Simeon. These were passages of Scripture more or less paraphrased, which Dr. Begg would have distinguished from mere human hymns; but in the completed version of 1564-65 they were all left out.
Very few copies of the early editions have survived. Of an edition of the Psalms possibly printed in 1567 only one leaf remains, so far as known. The front is the title-page, and on the back there are sixteen lines in metre. The first four form a short prayer, and so do the last four. The intermediate eight form a doxology. A rubric at the top reads: ‘Sing thir four veirs efter everie Psalme as followis.’ Over the doxology is this rubric: ‘And gif ye pleis to sing this Gloria Patri.’ It has been doubted whether this edition was ever really printed. The existing leaf is the last leaf of the concluding half-sheet of the earliest known edition of The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, and it has been suggested that the leaf was utilised in this way to serve as an advertisement of a forthcoming or projected edition of the Psalter.(12)
An edition dated 1571, without name of printer or place of printing, but which was probably printed in Geneva, has three spiritual songs – (1) The ten commandments, beginning ‘Hark, Israel,’ which version in the English Psalter has the initial ‘N.’ (2) ‘Nunc Dimittis,’ as in the English Psalter. (3) The Lord’s Prayer, a version which in some of the English Psalters is also marked ‘N,’ and which begins ‘Our Father which in Heaven art, Lord hallowed be thy name.’(13)
The 1575 edition of the Psalm Book contains the following spiritual songs : ‘The Lord’s Prayer, the X Commandments with the prayer following them, and the Second Lamentation: also Veni Creator, separate from the others.’ It also contains a ‘conclusion’, or doxology, for the 148th Psalm.(14) There is no doxology in any of the earlier known editions, save in the doubtful one of 1567.
In the 1587 edition (printed by Vautrollier, at London) this doxology again appears, and the number of spiritual songs is increased to ten; and these ten are reproduced in the 1594 edition (printed by Schilders, in Middleburg) ; and also in the 1595 edition (Edinburgh, Henrie Charteris). This 1595 edition is said to be the first which contains a set of metrical doxologies, one for each form of metre.(15) As regards the spiritual songs and doxologies, the subsequent editions are not uniform.(16) It is uncertain whether these additions were ever authorised by the general assembly, or whether the spiritual songs were intended to be used in public worship. No one has ever been able to produce satisfactory evidence of such sanction or use; and it is a significant fact that while the completed Scottish Psalter of 1564-65 was largely indebted to the English Psalter of 1562, it does not contain a single hymn, although there were about a score in that English Psalter which might have been borrowed.(17)
The volume best known as The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, though exceedingly popular, was never formally approved by the Church; and, indeed, hardly could have been, for several things in it are inconsistent with the teaching of the Book of Discipline.(18) If modern hymn-books are to be taken as the standard, some of its items, so far as sense and substance are concerned, are well worthy of being used in public worship; but others would probably be rejected by the most ardent of modern hymn-singers. Few, it may be presumed, would now care to sing in worship such an one as this, although the sentiment is good and the language vigorous –
God send everie priest ane wyfe,
And everie nunne ane man,
That thay mycht leve that haly lyfe,
As first the Kirk began.(19)
Neither in the Book of Common Order, nor in the Book of Discipline, nor in the Confession of Faith, is there any direct reference to instrumental music. The reason probably is that there were comparatively few organs in the English Church in Edward the Sixth’s time, and fewer still in Scotland before the Reformation. From several casual contemporary record references it appears that the few which were in Scotland were cast out of the churches; and apparently there was no desire to have them restored. The Dean of Guild of Edinburgh, in 1560-61, in his accounts, acknowledges to have received 6 for ‘three belleces of the orgains,” which he had sold, and a much bigger sum for a silver cross and two chalices.(20) In 1574 the Regent Morton ordered the organs to be removed from the church at Aberdeen and disposed of for the benefit of the poor.(21)
Several spiritual songs by Alexander Hume, minister of Logie, were printed in 1599. In one of them these lines occur
Blis thou my work, be my support,
My teacher, and my guyde,
Then sall my mouth thy praise report
Through all the world so wide.
Even on my jolie lute, by night,
And trimling trible string,
I sall with all my minde and might
Thy glorie gladlie sing.(22)
He was a musician as well as a poet; and his latter-will shows that he possessed a ‘luit’ and an ‘uther musicall instrument’;(23) but, nevertheless, he did not approve of instrumental music in public worship, for among the corruptions of the Church of England, he specially mentions organs.(24) Their use was also condemned by such men as Calderwood and Rutherfurd.(25) Indeed, it is only within the last half-century that, in Scotland, instrumental music in God’s worship has come to be regarded as compatible with Presbyterianism and evangelical preaching.
(1) Laing’s Knox, ii. 238.
(2) Ibid. ii. 241, 242.
(3) Ibid, iv. 164, 165.
(4) Ibid. iv. 182.
(5) Ibid. iv. 165.
(6) Laing’s Knox, iv. 166, 206; vi. 285, 290. In David Laing’s opinion it was highly probable that the 1564 edition was not completed till the early part of 1565. He only knew of one copy (the one in Corpus Christi College, Oxford) dated 1564, but all the copies dated 1565 have 1564 on the title-page of the Catechism (ibid. vi. 279, 280).
(7) Booke of the Universall Kirk, i. 54.
(8) Laing’s Knox, iv. 154, 156.
(9) The Phenix, ii. p. viii.
(10) Livingston’s Scottish Metrical Psalter, pp. 13, 41, 42.
(11) Bannatyne Miscellany, ii. 232. David Laing refers this to December 1561 instead of December 1562 (Baillie’s Letters, iii. 526).
(12) See Mitchell’s Gude and Godlie Ballatis, Scottish Text Society, p. lxxx., and the facsimile of this leaf. Dr. Mitchell was inclined to think that the complete Psalter had been printed, and had been bound up with The Gude and Godlie Ballatis. To me this seems improbable for two reasons. Had the Psalter and the Ballatis been bound up together as one book, surely the Psalter would have received the place of honour; and if the Psalter had been completed, or intended to be completed, it is not likely that the title-page would have been printed on the concluding leaf of a half-sheet.
(13) A copy of this very rare edition is in the library of Mr. William Cowan, Edinburgh, who has given me the above information concerning it.
(14) Livingston’s Scottish Metrical Psalter, p. 13.
(15) Ibid. p. 14; and appendix, p. iv. The 1595 edition is different from all other editions in having ‘a remarkable series of prayers in the Scottish dialect,’ one being appended to each Psalm, and ‘agreing with the mening thairof.’
(16) Ibid. p. 34; and appendix, p. ix.
(17) Ibid. pp. 13, 28.
(18) Such as Christmas carols.
(19) Mitchell’s Gude and Godlie Ballatis, p. 188.
(20) Edinburgh Dean of Guild’s Accounts, 1552-1567, pp. 117, 118.
(21) Register of Privy Council, ii. 391.
(22) Hume’s Hymns and Sacred Songs, Bannatyne Club, pp. 5, 6.
(23) Scott’s Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticance, ii. 735.
(24) Hume’s Hymns and Sacred Songs, app. p. 13.
(25) In contrasting Presbytery with Prelacy, Calderwood says: ‘The Pastor loveth no music in the house of God but such as edifieth, and stoppeth his ears at instrumental music, as serving for the pedagogy of the untoward Jews under the law, and being figurative of that spiritual joy whereunto our hearts should be opened under the Gospel. The Prelate loveth carnal and curious singing to the ear, more than the spiritual melody of the Gospel, and therefore would have antiphony and organs in the cathedral kirks, upon no greater reason than other shadows of the law of Moses; or lesser instruments, as lutes, citherns, or pipes, might be used in other kirks’ (The Pastor and Prelate, 1843, p. 4). Rutherfurd asks: ‘Who can say that the grace of joy in the Holy Ghost, wrought by the droning of organs, and the holinesse taught by surplice, is a work of the Spirit merited by Christ as our High Priest?’ And he avers that ‘altars, organs, Jewish ephods, or surplice, masse-cloaths, and Romish crossing, bowing to altars, images, are badges of Jewish and Popish religion’ (The Divine Right of Church-Government, 1646, pp. 136, 143). Very miscellaneous music seems to have suited the mass (infra, p. 440 n.).
