The Reformed Presbyterian Church Position on the Book of Psalms for Public Worship

Reformed Presbyterians do not use hymns of human composition in the service of divine worship. They believe that God has given to His Church the matter of  praise in the Book of Psalms, and has never delegated  to any uninspired man the authority to substitute hummer for divine matter of praise. The Psalms of the Bible were used in the temple and synagogue worship and it would have been considered a corruption of the worship to substitute any thing else. Christ and the Apostles used the Psalms in divine worship under the present dispensation, and on the night of the institution of the eucharistic feast they sang a part of the Great Hallel, a portion of the six Psalms from the one hundred and thirteenth to the one hundred and eighteenth inclusive. Hymns, or human compositions, were unknown in the Christian Church until several centuries after Christ. It is a remarkable fact that the periods in which Hymns were introduced were generally those characterized by defection and spiritual ignorance. The Presbyterian Church never introduced human compositions into worship until she made defection from the attainments of the Second Reformation, and in some parts of the world this Church still clings to the Songs of Zion. For the reasons that God has not delegated to an uninspired person the right to introduced into His worship that which is already provided ; that Christ and the New Testament Church sanction the use of the songs of the Bible ; that many of the hymns are untrue, frivolous and sectarian, the Reformed Presbyterian Church use exclusively the one hundred and fifty Psalms of the Bible in divine worship, and they have always found them beautifully adapted and truly comforting in all the circumstances of the Church, and preeminently so because they are the words of God to all His people.

History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America by W. Melancthon (William Melancthon), 1856 -1909. P.59

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Tags: American Covenanters, Exclusive Psalmody, Reformed Presbyterian Church