Reformed Theology in Windsor, Essex County, and Chatham-Kent County..
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"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness
in your hearts to God"
-- Apostle Paul in Col. 3:16
"Wherefore though we look far and wide we will find no better songs nor songs more suitable to that purpose than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit
made and imparted to him. Thus, singing them we may be sure that our words come from God just as if He were to sing in us for His own exaltation."
-- John Calvin in the Preface to the Geneva Psalter of 1543
"The main subjects of these songs were the glorious things of the Gospel, as is evident by the interpretation that is often put upon them, and the use that is made of them, in the New Testament. For, there is no one
book of the Old Testament that is so often quoted in the New as the Book of Psalms. Here Christ is spoken of in multitudes of songs."
-- Johnathan Edwards
"It is the duty of Christians to praise God publickly, by singing of psalms together in the congregation, and also privately in the family. In singing of psalms, the voice is to be tunably and gravely ordered; but the chief
care must be to sing with understanding, and with grace in the heart, making melody unto the Lord"
-- The Westminster Directory for Public Worship
"To know and love the psalms was the mark of the Protestant."
-- James Hastings Nichols in Corporate Worship in the Reformed Tradition p.40
"As the staple of private and family as well as of the services of the church, the psalms became known to many by heart. No other book of the Old Testament, at least, could rival the psalms in the affections
and knowledge of the Reformed laymen. Ministers frequently preached from the Psalms also; the psalter was the only Old Testament book on which Calvin preached on Sundays."
-- James Hastings Nichols in
Corporate Worship in the Reformed Tradition p.38
"The Psalms, Calvin said, are a vital textbook of the human soul, the central text in Biblical psychology. As such, the Psalms give expression to all the experiences of
the Christian life; they give words to our pains, joys, afflictions, despair, and by giving language to out experience they bring those experiences under description,
make them knowable as our Father's loving care for us.
The Psalms are also a textbook of prayer, frequently employing language that is unnerving in its vehemance. Psalms indicate that an overwhelming desire for justice should
animate our prayers, that we should express our disappointments with honesty, that prayer is not 'quiet time' but a time of wrestling and passion. Contemporary hymnology,
by contrast, gives us words for a small segment of our experience, the happy, fluffy, light experiences of life. If we are trained in prayer by contemporary praise
choruses, when we face the pains and tests of life, we will lack the vocabulary to name them."
Singing the Psalms makes the Biblical story and Biblical language part of us, knits it into the fabric of our flesh"
-- Peter Leithart in Against Christianity, p.67
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