16 ON THE IMPROVEMENT OP PSALMODY. was stronger than death ? Are not our souls possessed with a vaeiety of divine affections, when we behold him who is our chief beloved hanging on the cursed tree, with the load of all our sins upon him, and giving up his soul to the sword of divine justice in the stead of rebels and enemies ? And must these affections be confined only to our own bosoms, or never break forth but in Jewish language, and words which were not made to express the devotion of the gospel ? . The heaven and the hell that we are acquainted with by the discovery of God our Saviour, give us a more distinct knowledge of the future and eternal state, than all the former revelations of God to men : Life and immortality is brought to light by the gospel ; we are taught to look far into the invisible world, and take a prospect of the last awful scene of things : We see the graves opening, and the dead arising at the voice of the archangel, and the sounding of the trump of God : We behold the Judge on his tribunal, and we hear the dreadful and the delightful sentences of decision that shall pass on all the sons and daughters of Adam ; we are assured, that the saints shall " arise to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we be for ever with the Lord :" The apostle bids us, " Exhort or comfort one another with these words ;" 1 'I'hess. iv. 17, 18. Now when the same apostle requires that " the word of Christ must dwell richly in us in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and spiritual songs ;" can we think he restrains us only to the Psalms of David, which speak very little of all these glories or terrors, and that in very obscure terms and dark hints of prophecy ? Or shall it be supposed, that we must ad- monish one another of the old Jewish affairs and ceremonies in verse, and make melody with those weak and beggarly elements, and the yoke of bondage, and yet never dare to speak of the wonders of new discovery except in the plain and simple language of prose ? Perhaps it will be replied here, that there are some scriptu- ral hymns in the book of Revelation that describe the affairs of the New Testament, the death and kingdom of our Lord Jesus, and these are lawful to be sung in a christian church ; I am glad that our friends of a different opinion will submit to sing any thing that belongs to the gospel ;' I rejoice that the bible hath any such pieces of christian psalmody in it, lest every thing that is evange- lical should be utterly excluded from this worship, by those who will sing nothing but what is inspired ; but how seldom are these gospel-songs used among our churches ? How little respect is paid to them in comparison of the Jewish psalms ? How little mention would ever be made of them, if it were not" to defend the patrons of Jewish psalmody from the gross absurdity of an entire return to judaism in this part of worship ? But give me leave also to add, that these christian hymns are but very short,
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