VIII THE LAST MESSAGE TO THE CHURCH R. GORDON being dead yet speaketh. while he lived will listen, now that he is no more among us, to the last message which he can ever deliver to his brethren. What is the voice that breaks even the death silence? 1. He tells us that preaching is nothing if it be not the utterance of the mind of the Spirit, and that, therefore, we who speak must tarry long in the closet with the word, that he may unloose its seals and unveil our eyes to behold wondrous things out of his inspired book. 2. He tells us that prayer is the one vital element in all true worship, praying in the Holy Ghost, asking in Christ's name and by the power of the Spirit; the believer becoming the channel of a double intercession, the Holy Spirit interceding within by originating all true prayer, the ascended Christ interceding at God's own right hand, by receiving, perfecting, and transmitting all true prayer. 3. He tells us that praise, which is the element of worship apposite to prayer, needs a spiritual mind to appreciate and a spiritual frame to exercise it. Church music as a fine art simply, is an affront to God rather than an approach to him, for it assumes and presumes to set up an art standard in place of the beauty of holiness. There are two passages, respectively in the Epistles to the Ephesians' and the Colossians, which being combined, would read somewhat thus : "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, and be filled with the Spirit; speaking among yourselves, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts and making melody in your hearts to the Lord." Thus combined, we get a little world of suggestive teaching in this narrow compass. We are taught that the prerequisite to all holy service in song is two-fold rich indwelling of the word of God, and complete infilling of the Spirit; then our songs become a holy outpouring of a spiritual acquaintance with the word of God and the Spirit of God. Again, we are taught that the attraction of such song is found in the grace and melody of heart, which only God can detect or hear. But we are also taught a lesson, most unique and novel, that such song is a vehicle for mutual 1 Eph. 5: 19; Col. 3: 16. teaching, exhorting, admonishing. In other words, it is one way of preaching the gospel of salvation to sinners and of edification to saints. How blind we have been that we have never understood the value of holy song as a means of teaching, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, like the inspired Scripture, and of imparting wisdom, grace, strength, comfort, like the inspiring Spirit! Church music, purged of its secular corruptions and charged with the Spirit's life, might become spiritual food and drink, medicine and message, all at once; a feeder, healer, helper of souls. Is it that now? The dream and the dreamer are left to us only in memory. But was not God speaking to the whole church when, in the visions of the night, he stamped on Pastor Gordon's mind and heart the image of Christ coming to church? Let us judge ourselves, that we be not judged. Let us try our ways and turn again unto the Lord. Let us dare cease measuring ourselves by ourselves, and comparing ourselves among ourselves, and set up God's own standard of measurement and comparison. "And the Lord said unto me, thou? And I said, A plumbline. Then said the Lord, What seest Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of God is applying his standard to the work which men have builded, and its unhallowed and irregular construction is sadly evident. Who among us with the clearness of a divinely given vision, the courage of a divinely wrought conviction, will dare pull down what is not plumb and level by his standards, and rebuild according to the divine pattern? Blessed temple of God, indeed, to which the Master can come and find no need of the scourge of small cords. Blessed church of which he can say: "Thou hast kept my word, And hast not denied my name. |