This morning, we come to the matter of speaking in the meetings. We have said before that the meeting God desires is one in which all the believers can speak. The focus of a meeting is its speaking. In a meeting, if there is speaking which is proper, good, living, and rich, the meeting will be proper.
Christianity has degraded to today’s fallen condition because few people are able to speak the Lord’s word in the meetings. At the time of the worship service, only the pastor who has been trained in speaking speaks. All the rest just listen in silence. This is because they cannot speak and have nothing to say. This is the situation of the worship service in all of Christianity. In the Lord’s recovery, our meetings in general have also fallen into the same condition of not speaking. We only have a little speaking in the bread-breaking meeting. Actually, that cannot be considered as speaking the Lord’s word; there are merely some prayers and praises. Yet to everyone’s feeling, the most enjoyable and the best meeting is this bread-breaking meeting. This is because in the bread-breaking meeting everyone practices speaking some words of praise. When everyone speaks, the meeting is certainly attractive. In the early days, the words of praise spoken by the brothers and sisters in the bread-breaking meetings were quite simple. Yet the meetings were still very enjoyable. But after a while, the words of praise became monotonous; and eventually, no one had much feeling about those words anymore. By 1961, we added some new songs and published some messages on God’s economy. After that, the praises in the bread-breaking meeting had more depth of content and the meeting became more enjoyable. For example, Hymns, #203, verse 3 says:
Once Thou wast the only grain, Lord,
Falling to the earth to die,
That thru death and resurrection
Thou in life may multiply.
We were brought forth in Thy nature
And the many grains became;
As one loaf we all are blended,
All Thy fulness to proclaim.
Singing and speaking the above words in the bread-breaking meeting truly touches the burden and feeling in our spirit. It makes the meeting more enjoyable and more nourishing.
I would like to speak briefly concerning our hymnal. The first stage began over sixty years ago when we were raised up by the Lord. The hymnals used by Christianity at that time were not suitable for the saints’ use in the Lord’s recovery. We read of the hymnals published by the Brethren during their golden age. Brother Nee borrowed the table of contents of their hymnals as the basic structure for ours and added two more topics related to the spiritual warfare and the subjective experience of the cross. These were compiled into a hymnal. This hymnal begins with praises to the Father for our worship of the Father. There was also the appreciation of the Lord for our remembrance of the Lord. This rendered great help to the bread-breaking meetings. At that time, our hymnal only had one hundred eighty-three hymns and we used it until we came to Taiwan. In 1949, the young people’s work began in Taiwan. We felt that the one hundred eighty-three hymns were not adequate, so we published a second volume of our hymnal. By 1961, we began to see God’s economy. I wrote eighty-five hymns which became the so-called “Supplement of 85 Hymns.” They were all related to God’s economy and included such hymns as “Thou Art All My Life, Lord,” “O Glorious Christ, Savior Mine,” and “The Spirit Begets the Spirit, The Spirit Worships the Spirit” [not available in English]. In 1967, after I finished the compilation of the English hymnal in America, I returned to Taiwan and combined the two volumes of the Chinese hymnal, the “Supplement of 85 Hymns,” and the gospel songs into a single volume. In addition, I added two hundred more hymns. The result is the Chinese hymnal that we are using today.
When this new hymnal was published, the brothers and sisters did not know how to appreciate it very much. As a result, when they broke bread to remember the Lord, they still selected the old hymns that they were accustomed to. Because we published many messages to promote God’s economy, the brothers and sisters were gradually brought into this new flow during the last twenty years. They began to love these hymns. For example, Hymns, #203 says:
In the bosom of the Father,
Ere the ages had begun,
Thou wast in the Father’s glory,
God’s unique begotten Son.
When to us the Father gave Thee,
Thou in person wast the same,
All the fulness of the Father
In the Spirit to proclaim.
By Thy death and resurrection,
Thou wast made God’s firstborn Son;
By Thy life to us imparting,
Was Thy duplication done.
We, in Thee regenerated,
Many sons to God became;
Truly as Thy many brethren,
We are as Thyself the same.
Just singing the above hymn will bring us into God’s economy. If you go back to the hymns written by the Brethren, they will no longer be that enjoyable. Take, for example, Hymns, #226:
For the bread and for the wine,
For the pledge that seals Him mine,
For the words of love divine,
We give Thee thanks, O Lord.
This is a very good hymn among the Brethren for the remembrance of the Lord. Brother Nee’s translation into Chinese was also excellent. But the content of the hymn is merely a gratitude and remembrance concerning the Lord’s death, sacrifice, and the shedding of His blood. It does not have much to do with God’s economy. Their knowledge and experience of the Lord’s word during that period only went that far. Accordingly, their feelings expressed in their hymns went only that deep. Among their hymns or books you cannot find anything like:
O glorious Christ, Savior mine,
Thou art truly radiance divine,
God infinite, in eternity,
Yet man in time, finite to be.
(Hymns, #501)
Because they did not have this kind of knowledge nor this kind of feeling, they could not have this kind of expression.