The Ministry of the Spirit by A. J. Gordon (good fiction books to read .txt) 📕

be strongly emphasized. Spiritual singing has a divinely appointed place in the church of Christ. Church music, in the ordinary sense of that phrase, has no such place, but is a human invention which custom has, with many, unhappily elevated into an ordinance. We often quote the exhortation of the apostle: "Be filled with the Spirit," without marking the practical service with which this fullness stands immediately connected: "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord" (Eph. 5: 19). As immediately as prayer is connected with the Holy Ghost in this same epistle: "Praying at all seasons in the Spirit"; and our edification in the church: "Builded {154} together in the Spirit" (Eph. 2: 22, R. V.); and our spiritual energizing: "Strengthened with power through his Spirit" (Eph. 3: 16, R. V.); and our approach to God, "Access in one Spirit unto the Father" (2: 18, R. V.), so intimately is the worship of praise here connected with the Holy Ghost and made dependent on his power. Therefore it would seem too obvious to need arguing, that an unregenerate person is disqualified from ministering in the service of song in God's house. Scripturally this seems incontestable; and as to the teaching of experience, we should hardly know how to name any custom which has brought a sorer blight upon the life of the church, or a heavier repression upon its spiritual energy, than the habit, now so general, of introducing unsanctified, unconverted, and even notoriously worldly persons into the choirs of the churches.

Now the teaching of the text just cited is decisive, not only against such performers in choirs, but against the choirs themselves, if by the latter term is meant certain ones employed to dispense music for the delectation of the congregation. For observe how distinctly the mutual and inter-congregational character of Christian singing is here pointed out: "Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." The one feature of the worship of the church, which distinguishes it radically and totally from that of the {155} temple, is that it is mutual. Under the law there were priests and Levites to minister and people to be ministered to; under the gospel there is a universal spiritual priesthood, in which all minister and all are ministered to. Every act of service belonging to the Christian church is so described. There must be prayer, and the exhortation is, "Pray one for another" (James 5: 16). There must be confession, and the injunction is: "Confess your sins one to another" (James 5: 16, R. V.). There must be exhortation, and the command is: "Exhort one another" (Heb. 3: 13). There must be love, and we are enjoined to "love one another" (1 Peter 1: 22). There must be burden-bearing, and the exhortation is: "Bear ye one another's burdens" (Gal. 6: 2). There must be comforting, and the command is: "Wherefore comfort one another" (1 Thess. 4: 18). So with the worship of song. Its reciprocal character is emphasized, not only in the passage just quoted, but also in the Epistle to the Colossians: "Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Col. 3: 16). This is according to the clearly defined method of the Spirit in this dispensation. He establishes our fellowship with the Head of the church, and through him with one another. All blessing in the body is mutual, and the worship which is ordained to maintain and increase that blessing is likewise mutual.

{156}

As now the Spirit is the inspirer and director of the worship of God's church, he must have those who have been renewed and are indwelt by himself as the instruments through whom he acts; and by a teaching of Scripture too clear to be misunderstood all others are disqualified. How distinctly is this shown even in the types and symbols of the old dispensation. The holy anointing enjoined in Exodus for Aaron and his sons, is confessedly a type of the unction of the Holy Ghost. And mark the rigid and sacred limitations in its use: "And thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them that they may minister unto me in the priest's office. And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying: This shall be a holy anointing oil unto me throughout your generation. Upon man's flesh it shall not be poured; neither shall ye make any other like it, after the composition of it; it is holy, and shall be holy unto you; whosoever compoundeth any like it, or whoso putteth any of it upon a stranger, shall even be cut off from his people" (Exod. 30: 30-33).

Now, of these minute directions and prescribed transactions we may say confidently that "they happened unto them for ensamples and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world [ages] are come" (1 Cor. 10: 11). The three rigid prohibitions here named touch just the errors which are most characteristic of the present {157} generation. "Upon man's flesh it shall not be poured"; honoring the natural man, and exalting human nature into that place which belongs only to the regenerate. This is the error of those who believe in the universal sonship of the race, and call the carnal man divine. "Whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger." This is the sin of those who thrust into the ministry and service of the church persons who have never by the new birth through the Spirit been brought into the family of God, into the household of faith. "Whosoever compoundeth any like it." This is the artificial imitation of the Spirit's offices and ministration. Let the Christian reader pause and ponder well this last prohibition. In the story of the primitive church sample sins are given for our warning, as well as specimen graces for our emulation. One such sin, so subtle, so dangerous, and so constantly recurring in Christian history, having taken the name of its first author and being called "simony," has been handed down from generation to generation. "Because thou hast thought that the gift of God can be purchased with money" is the solemn indictment against one who had purposed to buy the power of the Holy Ghost. Many desire the gifts of the Spirit who little care for the Spirit himself. Divine music is greatly coveted. Why not, with our thousands of gold, buy this spiritual luxury? Bring the singing men and singing women from the {158} opera and from the concert hall; bid them compound a potion of sanctuary music, which shall entrance all ears and draw to the church those who could not be drawn thither by the plain attractions of the Cross. But what is the exhortation of Scripture? "By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name" (Heb. 13: 15). This kind of sacrifice costs—earnest prayer, deep communion, and the fullness of the Spirit; but no sum of gold, however large, is adequate for its purchase, nor can any musician's art, however ingenious, imitate it. Is there no approach to the sin of simony in those churches which spend thousands yearly in artistic music? And is not this attempted purchase of the Holy Ghost closely linked with the other sin of robbing God, considering how this lavish expenditure on artificial worship is almost always accompanied with meagre giving for the carrying out of the Great Commission? Our conclusion is, that the service of song has been committed to the church, and to the church alone, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Some of her number may be appointed to lead this service, if they themselves are under the leadership of the Spirit. But the church cannot commit this divine ministry to unsanctified hireling minstrels, without affront to the Spirit of God and serious peril to her own communion with God.

{159}

If again any object that we are setting up an exaggerated and impossible ideal, let the voice of experience be heard in evidence. Let pastors be called to testify of the added blessing and fervor which have come to their sanctuaries when this ideal has been approximately realized. Let history repeat its story of song driven in times of apostasy into some narrow stall of the church, and into the hands of a few trained monopolists of worship; and then, in eras of revival, of the bursting of the barriers and the people of God seizing once more their defrauded heritage and breaking forth, a great multitude, into "hallelujahs of the heart." The annals of the Lollards, and of the Lutherans, and of the Wesleyans, and of the Salvationists bear harmonious witness on this point, and are deeply instructive.

3. The Holy Spirit in the Missions of the Church. In the Gospels which contain the story of Christ's earthly life we have the record of the giving of the Great Commission: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." In the Acts, which contains the story of the life of the Spirit, we have the promise of the coming of the Executor of that Commission: "But ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1: 8, R. V.). Nowhere is the hand {160} of the Spirit more distinctly seen than in the origination and superintendence of missions. The field is the world, the sower is the disciple, and the seed is the word. The world can only be made accessible through the Spirit—"When he is come he will convict the world of sin"; the sower is energized only through the Spirit—"Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you"; and the seed is only made productive through the quickening of the Spirit—"He that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life" (Gal. 6: 8, R. V.). In the simple story of the primitive mission, as recorded in the thirteenth of Acts, we see how every step in the enterprise was originated and directed by the presiding Spirit. We observe this:

(1) In the selection of missionaries: "The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them" (13: 2).

(2) In their thrusting forth into the field: "So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed unto Seleucia" (13: 4).

(3) In empowering them to speak: "Then Saul, who also is called Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, said" (13: 9).

(4) In sustaining them in persecution: "And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost" (13: 52).

(5) In setting the Divine seal upon their {161} ministry among the Gentiles: "And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us" (15: 8).

(6) In counseling in difficult questions of missionary policy: "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us" (15: 28).

(7) In restraining the missionaries from entering into fields not yet appointed by the Lord: They "were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the gospel in Asia. . . They assayed to go into Bithynia but the Spirit suffered them not" (16: 6, 7).

Very striking is this record of the ever-present, unfailing, and minute direction of the Holy Ghost in all the steps of this divine enterprise. "But this was in apostolic days," it will be said. Yes; but the promise of the Spirit is that "He shall abide with you for the age." Unless the age has ended he is still here, and still in office, and still entrusted with the responsibility of carrying out that work which is dearest to the heart of our glorified Lord. Who can say that there is not need in these days of a return to primitive methods and of a resumption of the Church's primitive endowments? The Holy Spirit is not straitened in himself, but only in us. If the Church had faith to lean less on human wisdom, to trust less in prudential methods, to administer less by mechanical {162} rules, and to recognize once more the great fact that, having committed to her a supernatural work, she has appointed for her a supernatural power, who can doubt that the grinding and groaning of our cumbrous missionary machinery would be vastly lessened, and the