Where In The Bible Will I Find:
Are Songbooks And Mechanical Music An Innovation?
The use of songbooks in the worship service, and the
use of mechanical instruments of music therein, fall into two entirely
different categories. Songbooks and singing (singing being an authorized act)
is co-ordinate, they are of the same rank or order. Songs are essential
to singing; singing is commanded, "...singing and making melody in your
heart to the Lord" (Eph. 5:19); “...teaching and admonishing one
another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your
hearts to the Lord” (Col. 3:16).
It is therefore impossible to discharge our obligation to
these commandments without psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. A collection of
these, whether written on sheets of paper or in tablet form, constitute a psalm
book, a hymnbook, a songbook. Mechanical instruments of music and singing are
not of the same rank, or order; it is necessary to have a song in order to have
singing; singing is enjoined; there, songs are essential; it is, however not
necessary to have a mechanical instrument to sing; the instrument is not coordinate
to singing.
Actually, the mechanical music instrument injects a
foreign element into the worship - playing. One does not sing by playing;
thus the playing becomes an addition and an innovation. All biblical scholars
admit that the Greek word "Psallo," translates "make music"
in Ephesians 5:19, includes the idea of an instrument. In tracing its history
through the centuries we find that it once signified the twanging of a
bowstring, later, the twitching of a carpenter's line, and the later, the
touching of the strings of an instrument; and, finally, in the New Testament,
to sing.
"Psallo," make melody, accompanies the
singing. But, what, under the New Testament, is the instrument that is
commanded. The apostle Paul settled that question once and for all. He says we
are to sing unto the Lord and make melody, "Psallo," with the heart -
not with the fingers, not with the plectrum, but with the heart; and,
therefore, the heart is the instrument that accompanies the singing.
Lexical evidence of the
highest type show that the word “psallo,” in the New Testament means simply to
sing. The forty-seven scholars who gave to the English speaking world the most
influential translation ever published, the King James Version of the Bible,
excluded the idea of a literal mechanical instrument, rendered the word
"psallo," make melody. Nearly three hundred years later, the one
hundred scholars who gave the world the Revised Version, generally conceded to
be the most accurate translation into the English tongue ever made, saw no
reason to dissent from their illustrious predecessors. It must be remembered
the most of these scholars belonged to churches which use mechanical
instruments; and yet when they rely upon their scholarship, they translated
"psallo" to sing to make melody in our hearts.
