EXTRACT

“… in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another, in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God”. It enters into the affections, because that is the character of hymns and spiritual songs. It is not so much knowledge written down like a sermon, but it is where the heart answers in its affections to the revelation of Christ; perhaps something that I have heard in a meeting, when Christ has been unfolded: it is the Holy Spirit raising up the affections in answer to the revelation of Christ. Then there is the expression of the heart that has received it in the affections of the new man, answering to this in the praise and adoration that it produces … the adoration of the heart that is drawn out towards the Person that has been revealed.

… It is a great thing to have developed affections. Some are much more demonstrative than others, but it is not merely this, but the development of the affections themselves within, by what is the Object of them. Still it comes to my mind that it is a great thing to have concentrated affections, Christ forming them, so that in having Him in our hearts, we may know what is in His; and what a blessing that is. I get at His heart, and know what is there, and that there is that personal affection there. And after all, He loves us personally; but He loves us perfectly in this, that whatever He enjoys He brings us into the enjoyment of. That chapter (John 17) is greatly the expression of it, as putting us in the same place as He is in Himself. But we must know Him to know what His love is; and it will suffice for ever. But this joy in His love, which is to us to be known unchangeable, is by the Holy Spirit.

J.N. Darby, from the Introduction to ‘Spiritual Songs’