HAVE you noticed in your large acquaintance with Christian hymnology, the fewness of hymns addressed to the Father to be found in most of modern hymn books? What does this suggest but the great lack of “the Spirit of adoption" in Christian poets and in religious communities?
And yet, if we study Rom. 8, where true Christian position and state are characteristically laid down, we shall find that the presence and operation of the Holy Ghost are essential to the production of spiritual liberty and the experimental realization of filial relationship.
The apostle John also says: " Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, and these things write we unto you that your joy may be full." " True worshippers shall worship the Father." The Father-and-the-Son truth of John give s a higher manifestation of God, and leads into nearer relationship and deeper spiritual enjoyment than the unfoldings of God's counseled wisdom for Christ's glory and " our glory" of St. Paul; for the former puts us into relationship with God in His nature (and God is love), the latter with God in His thoughts, purposes, and operations. Both are, beyond all expression, glorious, and in combination give us God fully revealed: for "God is light"—this is His character—and " God is love"this is His nature.
But what I mean to convey is that we have few hymns in the full flow of the worshipping gladness of happy children in the conscious enjoyment of a known spiritual relationship with the Father—His children, too, not merely by eternal relationship, but by spiritual birth. “See what love the Father hath given us that we should be be called the children of God... Beloved now are we the children of God." (Tecna not huioi, for it is nature here: not dignity as in Rom. 8:1414For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. (Romans 8:14)).
That there is not probably a dozen of good hymns purely and throughout addressed to the Father in the English language tells how little Christians have known their relationship or bowed their knees " to the Father" (Eph. 3:1414For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, (Ephesians 3:14)), and how very far off is the, worship of the great majority of the redeemed saints of God, although " the Only Begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared Him."
Nothing more fully exposes the deficiency of Christian thought and the lack of Christian experience in its fullness of Scriptural intelligence than the hymn-books of the professing Church. The exact forms as well as the essence of Judaism have had their comprehensive and magnificent embodiment in the Hebrew Psalter; but Christianity in its depths and fullness, its form and expression, has never yet had a similarly adequate embodiment and representation in the Christian books of praise of any or all of the Churches.
And I might add that the practice so common in many places of singing the Hebrew Psalter (though perfect in its place) as if it could give full expression to Christian worship tells the sad tale that they who do so do not experimentally know what true Christianity is, or what it is to " worship the Father in Spirit and in truth."
"But," some will say, "how much unity in worship it would have produced had the Christian, like the Jew, had an inspired book of praise." To such we would say the Christian and the Church have that which is better than a book of praise, for in having the abiding Comforter-the ever-present Spirit-they have the well of living water. We have Christ, our life, and the Holy Spirit as a divine power for enjoying Him, and having fellowship with the Father and " through Him (Christ) we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father," and the Holy Spirit fuses all hearts in one and enables a whole assembly to worship, in spiritual-not mechanical—unity in compositions which the Spirit gives (Eph. 5:1919Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; (Ephesians 5:19)), " Singing and making melody in our heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
The Holy Ghost revealing Christ is both the power o Christian worship and the producer of the materials of Christian praise, if not in the sense of divine inspiration, yet in that of spiritual guidance, intelligent knowledge of God's mind, and devotional expression of the worshipper's delight in his nature, character, and love as well as the riches of His grace and glory in Christ. The saints in Christianity are trusted as full-grown men—not babes and minors like the Jews—and hence we have no inspired volume of Christian hymns made for us in the Christian Scriptures. Christians " worship by the Spirit of God" (Phil. 3:33For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. (Philippians 3:3)).