Value of Forms of Prayer and Praise
S. Cox, D. D. Mark 14:26 And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives. One of the commonest objections to the constant use of stated forms of common prayer is, that at times they must inevitably jar upon our feelings, compelling us, for example, to take words of joy and praise on our lips when our hearts are full of grief, or to utter penitent confessions of sin and imploring cries for mercy when our hearts are dancing with mirth and joy. But if we mark the conduct of our Lord and His disciples, we cannot say that even this objection is final or fatal. He and they were about to part. He was on His way to the agony of Gethsemane and the shame of the cross. Their hearts, despite His comforting words, were heavy with foreboding and grief. Yet they sang the Hallel, used the common form of praise, before they went out, — He to die for the sins of the world, and they to lose all hope in Him as the Saviour of Israel. No Divine command, nothing but the custom of the Feast, enjoined this form upon them; yet they do not cast it aside. And this "hymn" was no dirge, no slow and measured cadence, no plaintive lament, but a joyous song of exultation. Must not these tones of irrepressible hope, of joyous and exultant trust, have jarred on the hearts of men who were passing lute a great darkness in which all the lights of life and hope and joy were to be eclipsed? If our Lord could look through the darkness and see the joy set before Him, the disciples could not. Yet they too joined in this joyous hymn before they went out into the darkest night the world has ever known. With their example before us, we cannot fairly argue that settled forms of worship are to be condemned simply because they jar on the reigning emotion of the moment. We must rather infer that, in His wisdom, God will not leave us to be the prey of any unbalanced emotion; that, when our hearts are most fearful, He calls on us to put our trust in Him; that when they are saddest He reminds us that, if we have made Him our chief good, our chief good is still with us, whatever we may have lost, and that we may still rejoice in Him, though all other joy has departed from us. And when He bids us trust in Him in every night of loss and fear, and even to be glad in Him however sorrowful our souls may be, — O how comforting and welcome the command should be! for it is nothing less than an assurance that He sees the gain which is to spring from our loss; it is nothing short of a pledge that He will turn our sorrow into joy. (S. Cox, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives. WEB: When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.