_WORSHIP THE BEST OUTLET AND REMEDY FOR EXCITEMENT.
THE CONNEXION BETWEEN WORSHIP AND CONDUCT._
"Is any among you suffering? let him pray. Is any cheerful? let him
sing praise."--ST. JAMES v. 13.
The subject of this verse was probably suggested by that of the
preceding one. Oaths are not a right way of expressing one's feelings,
however strong they may be, and of whatever kind they may be. There
is, however, no need to stifle such feelings, or to pretend to the
world that we have no emotions. In this respect, as in many others,
Christianity has no sympathy with the precepts of Stoicism or
Cynicism. It is not only innocent, but prudent, to seek an outlet for
excited feelings; the right and wrong of the matter lie in the _kind_
of outlet which we allow ourselves. Language of some kind, and in most
cases articulate language, is the natural instrument for expressing
and giving vent to our feelings. But we need some strong safeguard, or
the consequences of freely giving expression to our emotions in speech
will be calamitous. This safeguard is clearly indicated by the rules
here laid down by St. James. Let the expression of strongly excited
feelings be an act of _worship_; then we shall have an outlet for them
which is not likely to involve us in harmful results. By the very act
in which we exhibit our emotions we protect ourselves from the evil
which they might produce. The very mode of expressing them moderates
them, and serves as an antidote to their capacity for evil. Prayer and
praise, or (in one word) worship, according to St. James, is the
Christian remedy for "allaying or carrying off the fever of the mind."
In all cases in which the mind is greatly agitated, whether painfully
or pleasantly, whether by sorrow, anger, regret, or by joy, pleasure,
hope,--the wise thing to do is to take refuge in an act of worship.
Mental excitement is neither right nor wrong, any more than physical
hunger or thirst. Everything depends on the method of expressing the
one or gratifying the other. It will be easy in both cases to indulge
a legitimate craving in such a way as to turn a natural and healthy
symptom into a disease. Neither a heated mind nor a heated body can
without danger be kept heated, or treated as if they were at their
normal temperature. The advice of St. James is that in all cases in
which our minds are agitated by strong emotion we should turn to Him
who gave us minds capable of feeling such emotion; we should cease to
make ourselves our own centre, and turn our thoughts from the causes
of our excitement to Him who is the unmoved Cause of all movement and
rest.
We need not tie ourselves to the distribution of prayer and praise
expressed in the text. It is the most natural and most generally
useful distribution; but it is not the only one, and perhaps it is not
the highest. The precept will hold good with equal truth if we
transpose the two conclusions: "Is any among you suffering? let him
sing praise. Is any cheerful? let him pray." "In _everything_ give
thanks," says St. Paul; which involves our frequently giving thanks in
suffering. This was what Job, to whom St. James has just directed his
readers, did in his trouble. He "fell upon the ground and worshipped:
and he said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I
return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed
be the name of the Lord" (i. 20, 21). And the Psalmist teaches much
the same lesson as St. Paul: "I will bless the Lord _at all times_;
His praise shall continually be in my mouth" (xxxiv. 1). But if praise
is as suitable as prayer for suffering, prayer is as suitable as
praise for cheerfulness. He who is cheerful has indeed great reason to
bless and praise God. He has a priceless gift, which is a blessing to
himself and to all around him, a gift which makes life brighter to the
whole circle in which he moves. We most of us take far too little
pains to cultivate it, to retain it when it has been granted to us, to
regain it when we have lost it or thrown it away. Yet cheerfulness has
its dangers. The light-hearted are apt to be light-headed, and to be
free from care leads to being free from carefulness. The cheerful may
easily lose sobriety, and be found off their guard. The remedy is
prayer. Prayer steadies without dimming the bright flame of
cheerfulness; and just as thanksgiving sweetens sorrow, so
supplication sanctifies joy. "Is any suffering? let him sing praise.
Is any cheerful? let him pray."
But there is another advantage in making religious worship, whether
public or private, the outlet for our emotions. It secures a real
connexion between worship and life. Missionaries tell us that this is
a frequent difficulty in their work. It is a hard enough thing to win
converts from heathenism; but it is perhaps still harder to teach the
newly converted that the worship of God has any bearing whatever upon
their conduct. This idea is quite strange to them, and utterly alien
to their whole mode of thought. They have never been taught anything
of the kind before. They have been accustomed to regard the worship of
the gods as a series of acts which must be religiously performed in
order to win the favour of the deities, or at least to avert their
wrath. But it has never occurred to them, nor have their priests
impressed upon them, that their lives must be in accordance with their
worship, or that the one has any connexion with the other, any more
than the colour of their clothes with the amount that they eat and
drink. From this it follows that when the idolater has been induced to
substitute the worship of God for the worship of idols, there still
remains an immense amount to be done. The convert has still to be
taught that there can no longer be this divorce of religion from
conduct, but that prayer and praise must go hand in hand with work and
life.
Converts from heathenism are by no means the only persons who are in
need of this lesson. We all of us require to be reminded of it. All of
us are apt to draw far too strong a line of distinction between Church
and home, between Sunday and week-day, between the time that we spend
on our knees and that which we spend in work and recreation. Not,
alas! that we are too scrupulous about allowing worldly thoughts to
invade sacred times and places, but that we are very jealous about
allowing thoughts of God and of His service to mingle with our
business and our pleasures, or at least take no pains to bring about
and keep up any such mingling. Our worship is often profaned by being
shared with the world; our work is rarely consecrated by being shared
with God.
What St. James recommends here is a remedy for this. There can be no
wall of partition between conduct and religion if our feelings of joy
and sorrow, of elation and despondency, of hope and fear, of love and
dislike, are daily and hourly finding expression in praise and prayer.
Our emotions will thus become instruments for moving us towards God.
So much of life is filled with either vexation or pleasure, that one
who has learned to carry out the directions here given of turning
suffering into prayer, and cheerfulness into praise, will have gone a
long way towards realizing the Apostolic command, "Pray without
ceasing." As Calvin well observes, St. James "means that there is no
time in which God does not invite us to Himself. For afflictions ought
to stimulate us to pray; prosperity supplies us with an occasion to
praise God. But such is the perverseness of men, that they cannot
rejoice without forgetting God, and when afflicted they are
disheartened and driven to despair. We ought, then, to keep within due
bounds, so that the joy which usually makes us forget God may induce
us to set forth the goodness of God, and that our sorrow may teach us
to pray."
The word used by St. James for "to sing praise" (ψάλλειν) is worthy
of notice. It is the source of the word "psalm." Originally it meant
simply to _touch_, especially to _make to vibrate_ by touching; whence
it came to be used of playing on stringed instruments. Next it came to
mean to _sing to the harp_; and finally to sing, whether with or
without a stringed accompaniment. This is its signification in the New
Testament (Rom. xv. 9; 1 Cor. xiv. 15; Eph. v. 19);--to sing praise to
God. St. James, therefore, regards music as a natural and reasonable
mode of expressing joyous feelings; and few will care to dispute that
it is so; and it is evident that he is thinking chiefly, if not
exclusively, of the joyous Christian singing by himself, rather than
of his joining in psalms and hymns in the public worship of the
congregation. A portion of Hooker's noble vindication of music as a
part of religious worship may here with advantage be quoted.
"Touching musical harmony, whether by instrument or by voice, it being
but of high and low in sounds a due proportionable disposition, such,
notwithstanding, is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath
in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have been
thereby induced to think that the soul itself, by nature, is or hath
in it harmony. A thing which delighteth all ages and beseemeth all
states; a thing as seasonable in grief as in joy; as decent being
added unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity, as being used
when men most sequester themselves from action. The reason hereof is
an admirable facility which music hath to express and represent to the
mind, more inwardly than any other sensible mean, the very standing,
rising, and falling, the very steps and inflexions every way, the
turns and varieties of all passions whereunto the mind is subject;
yea, so to imitate them that whether it resemble unto us the same
state wherein our minds already are, or a clean contrary, we are not
more contentedly by the one confirmed, than changed and led away by
the other.... So that although we lay altogether aside the
consideration of ditty or matter, the very harmony of sounds being
framed in due sort, and carried from the ear to the spiritual
faculties of our souls, is by a native puissance and efficacy greatly
available to bring to a perfect temper whatsoever is there troubled,
apt as well to quicken the spirits as to allay that which is too
eager, sovereign against melancholy and despair, forcible to draw
forth tears of devotion if the mind be such as can yield them, able
both to move and to moderate all affections.
"The Prophet David having therefore singular knowledge, not in poetry
alone, but in music also, judged them both to be things most necessary
for the house of God, left behind him to that purpose a number of
Divinely indited poems, and was farther the author of adding unto
poetry melody both vocal and instrumental, for the raising up of men's
hearts, and the sweetening of their affections towards God. In which
considerations the Church of Christ doth likewise at this present day
retain it as an ornament to God's service, and an help to our own
devotion. They which, under pretence of the Law ceremonial abrogated,
require the abrogation of instrumental music, approving nevertheless
the use of vocal melody to remain, must show some reason wherefore the
one should be thought a legal ceremony, and not the other" (_Eccles.
Pol._, V. xxxviii. 1, 2).
It hardly needs to be stated that it is not necessary to be able to
sing in order to observe this precept of St. James. The "singing and
making melody with our hearts to the Lord" of which St. Paul writes to
the Ephesians (v. 19) is all that is necessary; "giving thanks always
for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the
Father." The lifting up of the heart is enough, without the lifting up
of the voice; and if the voice be lifted up also, it is of little
account, either to the soul or to God, whether its tones be musical,
always provided that he who thus offers praise is alone, and not in
the congregation. Those who have no music in their voices, and yet
persist in joining aloud in the singing of public service, are wanting
in charity. In order to gratify themselves, they disturb the devotions
of others. And that principle applies to many other things in public
worship, especially to details of ritual other than those which are
generally observed. There would be much less difficulty about such
things if each member of the congregation were to ask, "By doing this,
or by refusing to do it, am I likely to distract my neighbours in
their worship?" Ought not the answer to that question to be conclusive
as regards turning or not turning to the East at the creed, bowing or
not bowing the head at the _Gloria Patri_, and the like? We come to
church to be calmed, sobered, soothed, not to be fretted and vexed.
Let us take care that our own behaviour is such as not to irritate
others. By our self-will we may be creating or augmenting mental
excitement, which, as St. James tells us, worship, whether public or
private, ought to cure.