The text presents to our notice two topics, first, The Duty of nations; and secondly, The Punishment by which the neglect of this duty will be avenged. The consideration of these may be subservient to the appreciation of our position and responsibilities as a church of Christ.
The estimate formed of the state of religion in the present day will, of course, entirely depend on the views we form of what true religion is, and on the standpoint we occupy when we examine the religious aspect of society. If we think of religion as embodied in the men who profess it, if we judge of it entirely by the attainments in the knowledge and experience of its living representatives, our estimate of its present state must not, we fear, be a very favourable one. As compared with the divines of other days, what dwarfs are those who represent the theological attainments of the present!
Messages from the Lord are always true and seasonable, whether his words are those of rebuke or those of comfort. In each case too, the authority of the message is divine, and should not therefore be challenged. And the tenor of the messenger’s feelings must be according to the words which he speaks in the name of the Lord to his own generation, which was in a sadly degenerate condition. Its spiritual state, and the kind of message which the Lord gave him to deliver, caused his being distinguished as “the weeping prophet.” In times of backsliding, all who speak in the Lord’s name, and according to His mind, must be like him. The view which they have of the times they live in, and the kind of message which the Lord directs them to deliver combine to make them sad. The woeful condition of things around them casts its dark shadow on their face, and causes the gloomy and austere aspect for which they are condemned by those whom the Lord constrains them to rebuke.
Beloved, you may remember, I have preached ten sermons upon the glorified condition of the saints in heaven. It is now in my thoughts to speak of the tormented condition of the damned in hell, that if the former sermons about glory have not gained your affections, this of hell might startle your consciences. Ministers, as having a mixed people, must mix their doctrine, somewhile with comfort and sometimes with terror. You have heard ten sermons upon the former text; you may haply hear so many more upon this subject.
First of all, then, on behalf of human hymns, it has been said, “We live now under a better and brighter dispensation than that of the Old Testament, therefore the inspired Psalms of David, and other Psalms in Holy Scripture, are insufficient.” But the question is not whether the dispensation under which we now live is better and brighter than that which preceded it, but whether, under this better and brighter dispensation, there is any security for better and brighter hymns than the Psalms of David, and whether there is a promise given to any man, or any body of men, of a richer unction of the Spirit—and not a richer unction only, but a specifically inspiring action of the Spirit, for the purpose of composing hymns for the public worship of God in the church than was given to him of whom it is written that, in his blessed swan song, he spoke as follows: “David, the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet Psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of the LORD spake by me, and his word was in my tongue” (2 Sam. 23:1). Is there any modern hymnologist in circumstances to say that? Dr. Adam must tell us who he is, before his argument from the greater brightness of the New Testament dispensation is of any worth, otherwise it is an argument, not only on behalf of hymns, but against the Book of Psalms.
Very little thought is given these days to the question of the propriety of using instrumental music in public worship services. It is not questioned. The fact that instrumental accompaniment was more or less unknown in Presbyterian Church in Scotland up to the end of the 19th Century comes as a surprise to people, as does the knowledge that the great Baptist preacher of the Victorian era, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, never used instrumental accompaniment in the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.
The grand doctrine, on which the leading principles thus expounded in the standards of our church proceed, is that which is adverted to by the apostles, while vindicating their resistance to civil authority, at the 31st verse of the passage of Scripture before us—the doctrine, namely, embodied in these words, “Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince.” That Jesus of Nazareth, whom the chief priests and rulers of Judea had slain and hanged on a tree was now seated at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens—all power, both in earth and heaven had been given to him—and having, in the exercise of that sovereign power, called the apostles and their successors in the ministry of the gospel to bear rule in his church, and to feed that flock which he had purchased with his own blood, no earthly ruler could interfere with them in the discharge of those functions which are proper and peculiar to their sacred office, without incurring the sin and danger, as Gamaliel expressed it, “of fighting against God.”
The Holy Scriptures stand unmoved, unaltered and unbroken throughout human history. Despite the mischief of Satan and the onslaught of a hostile world, the Word of God abides, like a bulwark impervious to crashing waves. At the hinge of history, God sent forth into the world his Son, who not only confirmed the law and prophets of the Old Testament but also established a New Testament in his blood. He has published the same to all nations through his apostles in the Greek Scriptures.
In the year 1644, a very interesting book was imprinted by Robert Bryson, and sold at his shop, at the sign of Iona, in Edinburgh, entitled, A Historie of the Church of Scotland. This book records a curious incident which occurred “a little before the death of George Wischard” (Wishart), the martyr. We give this incident as contrasting the shrewdness of a Scottish farmer with the duplicity of a Romish preacher who came selling relics for physical and spiritual healing.
The first article, published in the previous edition of The Master’s Trumpet, forces the consideration of the question as to the nature of divine fatherhood: What precisely is meant by fatherhood? And what does such a relationship entail for Adam? Robert Candlish claims that it is incumbent, not on himself, but on those who would affirm the primitive filial relation to “define exactly, or to describe particularly, the relation now in question.” However, he continues that “they are more inclined to deal in somewhat vague generalities.” Thomas Crawford retorts that this is an insufficient reason for Candlish to refrain from providing a definition, and furthermore, “Those who have hitherto affirmed the divine paternity as a natural relation, have never till now had any opponent to contend against.”
