Unconverted Choirs - Dwight Lyman Moody

Paul tells us not to speak in an unknown tongue, and if we have choirs who are singing in an unknown tongue, why is not that just as great an abomination? I have been in churches where they have had a choir, who would rise and sing, and sing, and it seemed as if they sung five or ten minutes, and I could not understand one solitary word they sung, and all the while the people were looking around carelessly. There are, perhaps, a select few, very fond of fine music, and they want to bring the opera right into the church, and so they have opera music in the church, and the people, who are drowsy and sleepy, don’t take part in the singing. They hire ungodly men, unconverted men, and these men will sometimes get the Sunday paper, and get back in the organ loft, and the moment the minister begins his sermon, they will take out their papers and read them all the while that the minister is preaching. The organist, provided he does not go out for a walk if he happens to keep awake, will read his paper, or perhaps, a novel, while the minister is preaching; and the minister wonders why God don’t revive His work; he wonders why he is losing his hold on the congregation; he wonders why people don’t come crowding into the church; why people are running after the world instead of coming into the church. The trouble is that we have let down the standard; we have grieved the Spirit of God. One movement of God’s power is worth more than all our artificial power, and what the Church of God wants today is to get down in the dust of humiliation and confession of sin, and go out and be separated from the world; and then see if we do not have power with God and with man.