by A.W. Tozer
One of the commonest expressions heard in the public worship service is the leader's directive, "Sing the first, second and last verses;" or, "Omit the third verse, please."
Now, we'll overlook the fact that the director obviously means stanza and not verse. We are all so prone to inaccuracies of speech that it does not become any of us to be too hard on the rest of us, though it would seem that any man who accepts a position that places him before the public should inform himself on matters with which that position requires that he be familiar.
I suppose it is not of vast importance that the third stanza is so often omitted in the singing of a hymn, but just for the record let it be said that the worshipers are deprived of the blessing of the hymn by that omission if, as is often true, the hymn develops a great Christian truth in sermonic outline. To omit a stanza is to lose one link in a golden chain and greatly to reduce the value of the whole hymn.
The significant thing, however, is not what the omission actually does, but what it suggests, viz., a nervous impatience and a desire to get the service over with. We are, for instance, singing "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." We long to forget the big noisy world and let our hearts go out in reverent worship of that Prince of Glory who died for us, but our sad sweet longing is killed in the bud by the brisk, unemotional voice of the director ordering us to "omit the third verse" We wonder vaguely whether the brother is hungry or has to catch an early train or just why he is so anxious to get through with the hymn. Since all standard hymns have been edited to delete inferior stanzas and since any stanza of the average hymn can be sung in less than one minute ("When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" clocks at thirty seconds to the stanza, normal tempo!) and since many of our best hymns have already been shortened as much as good taste will allow, we are forced to conclude that the habit of omitting the third stanza reveals religious boredom, pure and simple, and it would do our souls good if we would admit it.
If it were only in our hymn singing that this spirit were found I would probably not have brought the matter up at all, but I find it in pretty near every department of the religious life. Not the doing of evil deeds only but the omission of good deeds weakens the soul and invites the judgments of God. The same worldly, impatient spirit that shortens a hymn also shortens our prayer time and reduces the amount we give to the Lord's work, as well as the number of services we attend each week.
There is always danger that God may intend to speak to us at a gathering of the saints, and we thwart the loving purposes of God for us by not being present at the time of visitation. A wise old deacon said to the young Evan Roberts, "Now, lad, be sure to attend every prayer meeting. God may want to bless you sometime and you will miss it because you are not present. Remember Thomas and what he missed because he wasn't there." Evan never forgot that exhortation. He never missed a prayer meeting from that day on. And it is significant that it was in a prayer meeting that God touched Evan Roberts and the great Welsh revival began.
There have been devotional writers (for example, some of the so-called mystic" theologians) who held that sin is at bottom a negation, an absence of something, a no-thing, and that its destructive power lies right there. God, they said, is the Something, the positive Entity, and evil is the repudiation of God, the denial in thought and deed of the Eternal Something that we know to be the Lord God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. This would appear to be too rarefied, too one-sided a concept to account for sin as the Bible and the world know it. Yet there is more than a modicum of truth in it. How much of evil is omission! "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins" (James 4:17).
It may be that sins of omission are the worst sins of all. Dr. R.A. Torrey said that if the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all our hearts, the greatest sin is to fail to love Him. If Torrey was correct, then the darkest sin in the world is a negation, a no-thing, something men do not do. Finney preached great sermons on the sins of omission. Every Christian has felt the sharp sting of conscience over deeds not done, and sometimes the sense of guilt is greater than for wrongs committed.
The moral man who boasts that he has never lied or cheated or harmed his fellow man may be in for a shock in the day of judgment. Not to have done a positive good is to have done evil. Not to be where we should have been is as bad as to be where we should not be. To be absent when the Lord distributes His blessings may easily prove to be a real tragedy. Not to pray when we should pray is like failing to open a letter full of good news. The loss is too great to estimate.
Let's sing the third stanza.
( Article taken from The Price of Neglect, Chapter 34 )
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