hought 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 a