When in a foreign land, amid the idolatries of Popery, we have felt just the same home-sickness for the house of the Lord which is here described; we have said, "Ziona, Ziona, our holy and beautiful house, when shall I see thee again? Thou church of the living God, my mother, my home, when shall I hear thy psalms and holy prayers, and once again behold the Lord in the midst of his people" David appears to have had a peculiarly tender remembrance of [the singing] of the pilgrims, and assuredly it is the most delightful part of worship and that which comes nearest to the adoration of heaven. What a degradation to supplant the intelligent song of the whole congregation by the theatrical prettiness of a quartett, the refined niceties of a choir, or the blowing off of wind from inanimate bellows and pipes! We might as well pray by machinery as praise by it.

Spurgeon preached to 20,000 people every Sunday for 20 years in the Metropolitan Baptist Tabernacle and never were mechanical instruments of music used in his services. When asked why, he quoted 1st Corinthians 14:15. "I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the understanding also; I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also." He then declared: "I would as soon pray to God with machinery as to sing to God with machinery."