Worship # 11

Worship: Its Priority, Principles, and Practice (continued)

12. In complete public worship there should be united public praise. That this was the custom among the first Christians, is evident from Paul's words to the Ephesians and Colossians, in which he commanded the use of "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). That was the custom so widely prevalent as to be a mark of the earliest Christians is simply matter of history. Pliny records that when they met they "used to sing a hymn to Christ as God". No one indeed can read the Old Testament and not discover the extremely prominent place which praise occupied in the temple service. What man in his senses can doubt that the "service of song" was meant to be highly esteemed under the New Testament? Praise has been truly called the flower of all devotion. It is the only part of our worship which will never die. Preaching and praying and reading shall one day be no longer needed. But praise shall go on for ever. A congregation which takes no part in praise, or leaves it all to be done by deputy through a choir, can be hardly thought in a satisfactory state.

13. Finally, in complete public worship there should be the regular use of the two sacraments which Christ appointed in his church. By baptism new members should be continually added to the congregation, and publicly enrolled in the list of professing Christians. By the Lord's Supper believers should be continually offered an opportunity of confessing their Master, and continually strengthened and refreshed, and put in remembrance of his sacrifice on the Cross. I believe, with every feeling of respect for Quakers and Plymouth Brethren, that no one who neglected these two sacraments would have been regarded as a Christian by Paul and Peter, James and John. No doubt, like every other good thing, they may be painfully misused and profaned by some, and superstitiously idolized by others. But after all there is no getting over the fact that baptism and the Lord's Supper were ordained by Christ himself as means of grace, and we cannot doubt he meant them to be reverently and duly used. A man who preferred to worship God for many years without ever receiving the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is a man, I am firmly persuaded, that would not have been thought in a right state in the days of the apostles.

I commend these 13 points to the serious attention of my readers, and invite them to consider them well. I can easily believe that I may have said things about them with which some Christians may not agree. I am not their judge. To their own Master they must stand or fall. I can only tell my readers, as an honest man, what appears to me the teaching of Holy Scripture. I do not for a moment say that no man will be saved who does not see public worship precisely with my eyes. I say nothing of the kind. But I do say that any regular system of public worship which does not give a place to the Sabbath, the ministry, preaching, prayers, Scripture-reading, praise, and the two sacraments, appears to me deficient and incomplete. If we attend a place of worship where any of these points is neglected, I think we suffer loss and damage. We may be doing well; but I think we might be doing better. To my mind these points of public worship appear to stand out plainly on the face of the New Testament; and I plainly say so.

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 12 - "Things to be Avoided in Public Worship)