We feel sure that many who read these lines will be much surprised to learn that several centuries of church history elapsed before the introduction of musical instruments. The apologists for music in the church have been hard put to find any mention of such an innovation during the first seven centuries of church history. An elaborate attempt has been made to enlist Clement of Alexandria as the first witness in favor of instrumental music in the church. Clement was a Greek theologian who taught in Alexandria and was prominent in church affairs from circa 192 A.D. up till his death circa 215 A.D. We here quote from Kurfees, Instrumental Music in the Worship, pp. 125-134:
“Joseph Bingham, the eminent author of ‘Antiquities of the Christian Church,’ unhesitatingly says: ‘Clement rather argues that instrumental music, the lute and the harp, of which he speaks, was not in use in the public churches’ (Antiquities, Vol. 2, p. 485).
“But this is not all. . . . Some eminent scholars are pronounced in the conviction that the passage now under review is, beyond all doubt, an interpolation. . . . Johann Caspor Suicer, a noted Latin writer of the seventeenth century . . . makes certain quotations from Clement among which is the following: ‘Superfluous music is to be rejected because it breaks and variously affects the mind.’ . . . Suicer draws this pointed conclusion: ‘Nothing therefore has Clement written which would favor organs and their present-day use even the least, yea, directly the contrary.’
“It is simply impossible to interpret Clement in support of instrumental music in Christian worship without involving him in unaccountable self-contradiction.”
Next in order of supposed witnesses summoned in favor of instrumental music in the church is Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, 340-397 A.D. But Mr. Kurfees, who has made such an exhaustive study of the matter, states:
“We only make the point here that the evidence thus far adduced in support of the claim is not only not conclusive, but points decidedly to the conclusion that Ambrose at any rate, never introduced it. In fact, the McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia says: ‘Neither Ambrose, nor Basil, nor Chrysostom in the noble ecomiums which they severally pronounced upon music, made any mention of instrumental music’ [Vol. 6, p. 759, Art. Music]” (Kurfees, pp. 123-124).
Mr. Kurfees next quotes from several authorities on music and church customs. He first cites Dr. Ritter, Director of the School of Music at Vassar College, in his History of Music, p. 144:
“We have no real knowledge of the exact character of the music which formed a part of the religious devotion of the first Christian congregation. It was, however, purely vocal. Instrumental music was excluded at first, as having been used by the Romans at their depraved festivities; and everything reminding them of heathen worship could not be endured by the new religionists.”
Edward Dickinson, Professor of the History of Music, in the Conservatory of Music, Oberlin College, quotes from John Chrysostom, Antiochene Doctor of the church, greatest of the Greek fathers, who lived from 347(?)407. He says:
“David formerly sang in psalms; also we sing today with him; he had a lyre with lifeless strings; the church has a lyre with living strings. Our tongues are the strings of the lyre, with a different tone, indeed, but with a more accordant piety” (p. 145).
Professor Dickinson remarks also concerning St. Augustine, 354-430, who was bishop at Hippo Regis in North Africa:
“He adjured believers not to turn their hearts to theatrical instruments. The religious guides of the early Christians felt that there would be an incongruity . . . in the use of . . . instrumental sound in their . . . worship. . . . The pure vocal utterance was the more proper expression of their faith” (Music in the History of the Western Church, pp. 54-55).
At this point we may raise the query, If all the testimony of the early church fathers is against the use of instruments in the church, then just when did the change in attitude toward the introduction of instruments take place? The American Cyclopedia states:
“Pope Vitalion is related to have first introduced organs into some of the churches of western Europe about 670 A.D.; but the earliest trustworthy account is that of the one sent as a present by the Greek emperor Constantine Copronymus to Pepin, king of the Franks, in 775?” (Vol. 12, p. 688).
Pepin, in turn, presented the organ to the Church of St. Corneille at Compiegne (New International Encyclopedia, Vol. 13, p. 446).
McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia says:
“But students of ecclesiastical archaeology are generally agreed that instrumental music was not used in churches till a much later date [than Pope Vitalion in 660 A.D.]; for Thos. Aquinas [famous Italian theologian; 1225-1274 A.D.], 1250 A.D., has these remarkable words: ‘Our church does not use musical instruments, as harps and psalteries, to praise God withal, that she may not seem to Judaize.’ From this passage we are surely warranted in concluding that there was no ecclesiastical use of organs in the time of Aquinas. It is alleged that Marinus Sanutus, who lived about 1290 was the first that brought the use of wind organs into churches” (Vol. 8, p. 739).
The Concise Cyclopedia of Religious Knowledge under the article “Organ,” on page 683, states:
“At the Reformation they [organs] were discarded, being considered the vilest remnants of Popery.”
It may come as a surprise to many of the readers of this article to learn that the Eastern Orthodox Church, which according to the World Almanac for 1955 numbers 125,000,000 members, never has, at any time in its history of 1800 years, introduced instrumental music.
John Bingham, author of Antiquities of the Christian Church, a scholar of the Church of England, remarks:
“Nor was it [the organ] ever received into the Greek churches, there being no mention of an organ in all their liturgies, ancient, or modern” (Words, Vol. 2, pp. 482-484, London Ed.).
McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia states:
“Never has either the organ or any other instrument been employed in public worship in Eastern churches, nor is mention of instrumental music found in all their liturgies, ancient or modern” (Vol. 8, pp. 739).
Professor John Gibardeau, in his work on Music in the Church, written while he was Professor in Columbia Theological Seminary, South Carolina, a Presbyterian, remarks:
“It has thus been proved by an appeal to historical facts, that the church, although lapsing more and more into defection from the truth and into a corruption of apostolic practice, had no instrumental music for twelve hundred years [he means it did not become general during this period], and that the Calvinistic Reformed Church ejected it from its services as an element of Popery, even the Church of England having come very nigh to its extrusion [exclusion] from her worship. The historical argument, therefore, combines with the scriptural . . . to raise a solemn and powerful protest against its employment by the Presbyterian Church. It is heresy in the sphere of worship” (p. 179).
Adam Clark, the Methodist commentator, says:
“I believe that the use of such instruments of music in the Christian church, is without the sanction and against the will of God; that they are subversive of the spirit of true devotion. . . . I never knew them productive of any good in the worship of God. Music, as a science, I esteem and admire; but instruments of music in the house of God I abominate and abhor” (Vol. 4, p. 686).
John Wesley, the best known of all Methodist ministers, was opposed to the use of instruments in the church (ibid., above). John Calvin, the great reformer, in his commentary on Psalm 33, says:
“Musical instruments in celebrating the praises of God would be no more suitable than the burning of incense, the lighting up of lamps, and the restoration of the other shadows of the law.”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the noted Baptist minister of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, England, used no musical instruments in his services. See Girardeau, Instrumental Music in the Church (p. 176).
Alexander Campbell, 1788-1866, founder of the “Disciples of Christ,” was strong in his rejection of musical instruments in the church (Kurfees, p. 210). The year after Mr. Campbell died, one of his prominent followers, Dr. H. Christopher, made a stirring appeal against the use of instruments in the church. He said, in part:
“I cannot, therefore, see in all my horizon one fact, argument, reason, or plea that can justify us in using musical instruments in the worship of the church. . . . It is an innovation on apostolic practice. . . . Let us learn from the experience of others and be content with what God has ordained, and suffer instrumental music and all its concomitants to remain where they were born, amid the corruptions of an apostate church” (Lord’s Quarterly, Oct. 1867, pp. 365-368).
In view of all the evidence cited as to the absence of music in the first seven hundred years of church history, in view of the stormy opposition it had to encounter during the next seven hundred years, and in view of the pious opposition to it well on into the nineteenth century, may we not justly conclude that the history of the church of God on earth is overwhelmingly opposed to the introduction of musical instruments into the worship and testimony of the church?