(3) The service of song in the house of the Lord is another element of worship whose relation to the Spirit needs to be strongly emphasized. Spiritual singing has a divinely appointed place in the church of Christ. Church music, in the ordinary sense of that phrase, has no such place, but is a human invention which custom has, with many, unhappily elevated into an ordinance. We often quote the exhortation of the apostle: "Be filled with the Spirit," without marking the practical service with which this fullness stands immediately connected: "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord" (Eph. 5: 19). As immediately as prayer is connected with the Holy Ghost in this same epistle: "Praying at all seasons _in the Spirit_"; and our edification in the church: "Builded {154} together _in the Spirit_" (Eph. 2: 22, R. V.); and our spiritual energizing: "Strengthened with power _through his Spirit_" (Eph. 3: 16, R. V.); and our approach to God, "Access _in one Spirit_ unto the Father" (2: 18, R. V.), so intimately is the worship of praise here connected with the Holy Ghost and made dependent on his power. Therefore it would seem too obvious to need arguing, that an unregenerate person is disqualified from ministering in the service of song in God's house. Scripturally this seems incontestable; and as to the teaching of experience, we should hardly know how to name any custom which has brought a sorer blight upon the life of the church, or a heavier repression upon its spiritual energy, than the habit, now so general, of introducing unsanctified, unconverted, and even notoriously worldly persons into the choirs of the churches.