The organ question Author:William Ritchie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: is not necessarily a condition of union. Among our Independent brethren great diversity may be tolerated, for no one is responsible for what , another does; and ... more »in the Church of England, all sorts of hymns are allowed, and the service is conducted in all sorts of styles, from the richest ritualism to the baldest and tamest routine. On the Congregational system, every pastor with his people may take his own way, —one using instrumental music, and another condemning the use of it; and yet the harmony of any association they form among themselves may remain unbroken. This may or may not be a recommendation of that system. That is not now the question. It is enough to say that it is inconsistent with Pres- byterianism. Those Presbyterians who disapprove, on conscientious and scriptural grounds, of a particular mode of worship,—as, for instance, of the Organ,—cannot divest themselves of responsibility by merely excluding it from their own Congregations. They are bound to resist the introduction of it in all the other Congregations of the Church as well as in their own. Hence I would suggest, in the second place, the impossibility of the question, if it be once raised, being left to the decision of individual Kirk-sessions and Congregations. It is easy, of course, for those who are ready to sanction the use of instrumental music, or who reckon it a matter of indifference, to consent to its being left as an open question, on which Congregations may agree to differ from one another. But if there be any, as there undoubtedly are many in all the British Presbyterian Churches, who, rightly or wrongly, have come to entertain strong convictions against the lawfulness of the practice, it is impossible for them to acquiesce in the introduction of it, even in Congregations to which they do ...« less