Reformed Presbyterian Minutes of Synod 1929

REFORMED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 43comes into ultimate things it will be more mindful of thesekeys that play best-the soul's deepest music." The late F. B.Meyer, "The new testament rises out of the Psalms." Daniel A.Poling, editor of the Christian Herald, "Israel came singing onits way and has set the world to singing. All of us," he adds,"Must acknowledge that Israel had a peculiar capacity for religion,a deep sensitiveness to the things and thoughts of Godsuch as characterized no other race. It is then significant forour religious life that Israel, distrusting other arts, gave itssoul so fully to the art of song."The late J. H. Jowett, "The Psalms are the handbook of theSoul. They reveal the essential man." John A Hutton, editorof the British Weekly, "The Psalms are a seismograph of theHistoric soul of man. They record as nowhere else the tremorsof the human heart." Pages of such deep insight into the intrinsicworth of the Psalms could thus be easily gathered together.Yet it stands in the day of their esteemed worth they arebut a little used manual of praise.Now it is not our purpose to probe this striking situation.It is ours rather to know that it is true, and to be warned by itthat even in those places such as our beloved Zion where thePsalms are so highly prized there may be the very forces atwork which have elsewhere shunted them aside. In the verymoment when logic has the throne, when argument seems thestrongest, when insight is the deepest, when conviction is thesincerest, let us take heed lest that, which is in our grip, shrivelsup and we be found emptyhanded. Indeed the Psalms havemost often been bowed out when theirs was the unusual obeisance.Remember! Argument was never stronger, praise wasnever higher, obeisance was never greater than in those dayswhen the United Presbyterian Church produced "The Psalms mWorship." Yet how short the years until that was gone whichseemed to be most tightly grasped. So was it in those dayswhen firstthe Psalms were bowed out in Reformation Times andin the days of the second great exit of Wesley's revival.How then to keep that which we seem to have becomes theparamount question. How best to hold what argument will notguarantee has pressed itself upon us as the Psalmody issue ofour church. Our answer, necessarily of a practical nature,would center itself around these three short, yet sturdy, words:"set," "stow," "sing.""SET"In using the word "set" with respect to the Psalms we useit in that sense of the word when we speak of a background, asetting. The "set," the background, is everything to each psalm,yet how slurred all this much of the time as the psalm is used.thatAndpraise. tion the instead psalm thisof reality the of Ourespeciallythey stopping Psalm fathers buried whole intowhenwith sensed the the psalm theonlyhearer this worship mere becameainpartwith their presentation service.ofslurred. so bringingthemuchpsalmBut of The ot the often theiswhole explana­contentssungkey times wasinto