years
of experience, can bear emphatic testimony to the value of another
way--that of magnifying the office of the Holy Spirit as the conductor
of the service, and of so withholding the pressure of human hands in
the assembly that the Spirit shall have the utmost freedom to move this
one to pray and that one to witness, this one to sing and that one "to
say amen at our giving of thanks," according to his own sovereign will.
Here we speak not theoretically but experimentally. The fervor and
spirituality and sweet naturalness of the latter method has been
demonstrated beyond a peradventure, and that too, after an extended
trial of both ways, the first in ignorance of a better way, with
constant labor and worry and fret, and the last with inexpressible ease
and comfort and spiritual refreshment. Honor the Holy Ghost as Master
of assemblies; study much the secret of surrender to him; cultivate a
quick ear for hearing his inward voice and a ready tongue {153} for
speaking his audible witness; be submissive to keep silence when he
forbids as well as to speak when he commands, and we shall learn how
much better is God's way of conducting the worship of his house than
man's way.[5]

(3) The service of song in the house of the Lord is another element of
worship whose relation to the Spirit needs to 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 p