Go, Read the Book, Repeat the Stories Old

Robert Sempill, The Sempill Ballates (1872 ed.), p. 32:

Quhair is the wittis wont to reule Scotland?
Go, reid the buik, repeit the storyis auld.

Horatius Bonar, Catechisms of the Scottish Reformation, pp. x-xiv:

Christianity, say many among us, is a life, not a dogma; and they reckon this the enunciation of a great and unappreciated truth. It is, however, a mere truism, or it is an unmeaning antithesis, or it is an absolute falsehood. It sounds oracular and great; it is only pompous.

Christianity is both a life and a dogma; quite as much the one as the other.

But it is a dogma before it is a life; it cannot be the latter till it has been the former. It is out of the dogma that the life emerges; not the dogma out of the life; and the importance that is attached in Scripture to knowledge, -- right knowledge, -- should make us cautious in disparaging doctrine, as if it were harmless when wrong, and impotent or uninfluential when right....

...Creeds, they say, are dungeons for the old; catechisms are fetters for the young; and doctrine in general, at least if precise and defined, is inconsistent with liberty of thought and expansion of intellect....
...
Now, disguise it as we may, truth is dogma. Let men sneer at catechisms and creeds, as bondage and shackles, let them call them skeletons, or bones, or something more offensive still, these formularies are meant to be compilations of truth. In so far as they can be shewn to contain error, let them be amended or flung aside; but in so far as they embody truth, let them be accepted and honoured as most helpful to the Christian life; not simply sustaining it, but also giving it stability and force; preventing its being weakened or injured by change, caprise, love of novelty, or individual self-will.

The Bible is a book of dogmas and facts; these two parts making up the one book, as soul and body make up the one man. The facts are the visible embodiment of the dogmas, the dogmas the spiritual interpretation of the facts. Religious life or piety is the result or product of these; -- the effect produced upon man by the right knowledge and use of these. Faith transfers them from the exterior region of our being to the interior; and, thus transferred, they issue in religious life, -- life comprehending both the inner spirituality and the outer walk. To oppose life and dogma to each other, is not so much to depreciate creeds as to misunderstand the Bible, and to represent life and the Bible as antagonistic to each other.

Happy 200th Birthday, Andrew Bonar

Andrew Alexander Bonar, Free Church of Scotland minister, was born 200 years ago today on May 29, 1810. The younger brother of Horatius Bonar, they shared convictions regarding premillennial eschatology, the conversion of the Jews, revivalism, and other such matters. Andrew was a close friend of Robert Murray M'Cheyne, and wrote a biography of M'Cheyne a year after his death. Bonar also published an edition of the Letters of Samuel Rutherford, commentaries on Leviticus and the Psalms (which bears witness to that saying of Augustine, quoted by Bonar, that "the voice of Christ and his Church was well-nigh the only voice to be heard in the Psalms"), and other works, as well as a diary which was posthumously edited and published by his daughter Marjory. He was a great man of prayer, who felt that he had not prayed enough. Among the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, he is worthy to be remembered on this bicentennial birthday.

Songs of Zion

It is well known that singing impresses lyrics upon the heart. The Scottish Patriot Andrew Fletcher once wrote (An Account of a Conversation concerning a right regulation of Governments for the common good of Mankind (1704)) that "I knew a very wise man so much of Sir Christophers sentiment, that he believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation." What a blessing, then, when God's statutes are sung, in the Psalms (Ps. 119.54), and are thereby laid to heart (Ps. 119.11). In singing the Psalms, with understanding (Ps. 47.9) and grace in the heart (Col. 3.16), one is laying up a great treasure indeed (Matt. 6.21). The beauty of Psalm-singing cannot be overstated. The single best and most comprehensive introductory resource today for learning and practicing psalmody is Crown & Covenant Publications, which includes such tools as a DVD designed to teach children to both sing psalms and sign them using American Sign Language.



As a memorization tool, Puritan Thomas Doolittle acknowledged likewise that singing was part of the catechist's arsenal for equipping young minds.

The Prefatory Catechism Enlarged:

For if thofe that cannot read, can learn a Ballad, or a merry Song, by hearing it often faid, may they not alfo fo learn their Catechifm if they will? Yes.

Attempts have been made in previous centuries to versify the Westminster Shorter Catechism for this very purpose. Horatius Bonar, in his Scottish Catechisms of the Reformation, includes an early Metrical Catechism attributed to the Wedderburns. Post-Westminster, in 1769, Ebenezer Dayton published A Concise, Poetical Body of Divinity Published in Three Separate Parts, Each a Pamphlet: Being the shorter catechism first agreed upon by the rev'd Assembly of divines, sitting at Westminster; wherein each question is turn'd into a divine hymn, in the form of a question and answer; and fitted to several metres, and suitable to be sung in families and private meetings of societies; for the instruction of persons of all ages and capacities, to whom they are dedicated, with a view of promoting Christian knowledge, Godly devotion and real piety. Below are some additional examples relating to the first question and answer (see William Carruthers, The Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, pp. 66-67):

Robert Smith, The Assembly's Shorter Catechism in Metre (1729):

The chief and highest end of man
Is God to glorify,
Keep His commandments, and enjoy
Him to eternity.

M.G. Campbell, A Catechism in Rhyme on the basis of the Shorter Catechism:

What is our chief and highest end?
To serve on earth a heavenly Friend,
And, by redeeming time, to spend
Eternity with God.

Hymns suited to each question of the Assembly's Shorter Catechism (1808):

Why was I form'd with reason? Why
Above the brutal herd?
Reason itself will back reply,
To glorify the Lord.

James Fisher, The Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, in verse (1824):

Man's chiefest end and bliss supreme,
Most noble and all sweet employ,
In heart, in life, by every scheme,
Is God to praise and him enjoy.

In more recent times, some such as Bruce Benedict, as well as Tim and Lori McCracken, and Shawn Hare's Westminster Shorter Catechism Singing Project, have set some questions and answers to music. Holly Dutton has done so for the entire Shorter Catechism. I close this post with a sample from Bruce Benedict, commending song as a way of laying up a great treasure in the heart indeed.