Ephesians 5:19

19. Speaking to yourselves Voicing to each other. For the Greek word for speaking includes any vocal utterance. There may be allusion here to the antiphonal or responsive music, in which different parts of the choir alternated. Such was the manner of the Hebrew choral worship, and was very early adopted by the Christian Church. So the philosopher Pliny, but a little later than when Paul wrote these words, in his letter quoted in our vol. i, p. 5, says that the early Christians sang “in concert,” that is, secum invicem, in turn among themselves, “a hymn of praise to Christ as God.”

Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs For the apostle will have a joyful Church, resounding with rich and glorious melodies. However ascetic in words, it shall be ever rejoicing in spirit. Gentilism is drunkenly obstreperous, but Christianity shall be spiritually melodious and triumphant.

Psalms The psalm was inherited by the Christian Church from her old Hebrew ancestry. By the derivation of the word it signifies a sacred poem to be chanted in accompaniment with an instrument. But during the period of churchly inspiration, when each one had an improvised psalm, (1 Corinthians 14:26,) the psalm lost the instrument.

Hymns The word is inherited from the pagan Church, so to speak, and signified a poem sung in honour of a god, or gods. These are among the earliest of recorded human compositions. The hymns of the Sanscrit Vedas, sung in honour of the gods who were personifications of the elements, are, some of them, probably as old as the time of Moses. Worship naturally runs its emotions into rhythm and tune, and so the apostolic Church early formed a body of hymnology.

Songs Literally, odes, derived from aeido, to sing, as our word song is derived from sing. Hence it is any metrical composition set to tune. All the jovial strains of the Gentile revellers could be called by this term; and St. Paul therefore specializes it by the adjective spiritual. If, then, a hymn and a spiritual song had any difference, it would be that the former signified a singing directly in honour to God, while the latter sang any phase of Christian feeling or experience. Perhaps the larger share of what are at the present day called hymns, would belong to the latter class of spiritual odes. And in the primitive Church, however the above three terms differed in origin and earlier meaning, they all ran into each other and retained but little distinction of application.