12 August 2025

Our own Scottish tradition has certainly made a distinctive response to the invitation to sing a new song. We still sing the hymns of the Celtic Church written by St. Patrick and St. Columba. And the metrical psalms which have turned out to be the most lasting gift of devotion from the Scottish Reformation.

‘Sing from deep feeling in the heart!’ wrote John Calvin in his great Institutes. This amazing two volume foundation stone of Reformed theology provides us with a deeper understanding of what we are doing when we come together to sing psalms, hymns and sacred songs.

Firstly, it’s an opportunity for the Church to glorify God together with one voice and one mouth. Secondly, it’s an opportunity for each member  to ‘receive the confession of his brother’s faith and be invited and incited to imitate it!’ In other words, our singing not only unites but strengthens us in our corporate faith.

In the eighteenth century, choirs were introduced into the Kirk. In the nineteenth century, it was the organ. In the twentieth century, the hymnary was enriched by supplement galore! In the twenty-first, we have a fourth edition of the hymnary and last year, another supplement!

Although our liturgy has been rudely described as ‘a hymn sandwich’, I think it appropriate. All our worship begins and ends with the praise of God and everything we think and say and do should be permeated by his praise. As the Scottish hymn-writer and Free Church minister, Horatius Bonar, puts it:

Fill Thou our life, O Lord our God,

In every part with praise,

That our whole being may proclaim

Thy blessing and Thy ways.