This is in the same vein as my earlier post 'Did M'Cheyne really say...?'
This isn't an attempt to start a debate about instrumental music or Spurgeon's position on it - there are many quotes from his writings that make clear he was opposed to organs.
However there is a quote from Spurgeon about organs going round that I can't find a source for. It's been attributed to him for over 100 years - the earliest I can find is 1904 (pdf).
Some attribute it to his sermon 'Singing in the Ways of the Lord', but it isn't there. One website gives the source rather unhelpfully as '(Sermons in the Metropolitan Pulpit, London, 1861 pg. 218, 1870 pg. 353, 1881 pg. 474)' but it's not there.
The last paragraph of the quote IS from Spurgeon - on Psalm 42.4 in the Treasury of David. Perhaps the above quote has got mixed in with the genuine quote from Spurgeon?
In my Logos library I have all his sermons, the Treasury of David, his autobiography and a few other bits and pieces, but NOT the sword and trowel.
Maybe someone who has his complete works wouldn't mind doing a search and seeing if they can find it?
The quote is:
"We should like to see all the pipes of the organs in our Nonconformist places of worship either ripped open or compactly filled with concrete. The human voice is so transcendently superior to all that wind or strings can accomplish, that it is a shame to degrade its harmonies by association with blowing and scraping. It is not better music which we can get from organs and viols, but inferior sounds, which unsophisticated ears judge to be harsh and meaningless when compared with a melodious human voice. That the great Lord cares to be praised by bellows we very gravely question; we cannot see any connection between the glory of God and sounds produced by machinery. One broken note from a grateful heart must have more acceptable praise in it than all the wind which swept through whistling pipes. Instrumental music, with its flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of noise makers, was no doubt well suited to the worship of the golden image which Nebuchadnezzar, the king, had set up, and harps and trumpets served well the infant estate of the Church under the law, but in the Gospel's spiritual domain these may well be let go with all the other beggarly elements.
"What a degradation to supplant the intelligent song of the whole congregation by the theatrical prettiness of a quartette, the refined niceties of a choir, or the blowing of wind from inanimate bellows and pipes. We might as well pray by machinery as praise by it."
(From here, taken from a book that I don't have access to - but I'm dubious the book would have the reference either, seeing it conflates what are definitely two separate quotes, even if they're both by Spurgeon)
