Lecture 2
On Commenting
Having introduced you to the commentators, I must now press upon
you one of the most practical uses of them, namely, your own public
commenting upon the Scriptures read during divine, service.
Preaching in the olden time consisted very much more of exposition
than it does now. I suppose that the sermons of the primitive
Christians were for the most part expositions of lengthy passages
of the Old Testament; and when copies of the gospels, and the
epistles of Paul had become accessible to the churches, the chief
work of the preacher would be to press home the apostolical
teachings by delivering an address, the back bone of which would be
a complete passage of Scripture: there would probably be but faint
traces of divisions, heads and points, such as we employ in modern
discoursing, but the teacher would follow the run of the passage
which was open before him, commenting as he read. I suppose this to
have been the case, because some of the early Christian modes of
worship were founded very much upon that of the synagogue. I say
some of the modes, since I suppose that as the Lord Jesus left his
disciples free from rubrics and liturgies, each church worshipped
according to the working of the free Spirit among them; one with
the open meeting of the Corinthians, and another with a presiding
minister, and a third with a mixture of the two methods. In the
synagogue, it was the rule of the Rabbis that never less than
twenty two verses of the law should be read at one time, and the
preaching consisted of notes upon a passage of that length. Such a
rule would be a mere superstition if we were slavishly bound by it,
but I could almost wish that the custom were reestablished, for the
present plan of preaching from short texts, together with the great
neglect of commenting publicly upon the word is very
unsatisfactory. We cannot expect to deliver much of the teaching of
Holy Scripture by picking out verse by verse, and holding these up
at random. The process resembles that of showing a house by
exhibiting separate bricks. It would be an astounding absurdity if
our friends used our private letters in this fashion, and
interpreted them by short sentences disconnected and taken away
from the context. Such expositors would make us out to say in every
letter all we ever thought of, and a great many things besides far
enough from our minds; while the real intent of our epistles would
probably escape attention. Nowadays since expository preaching is
not so common as it ought to be, there is the more necessity for
our commenting during the time of our reading the Scriptures. Since
topical preaching, hortatory preaching, experimental preaching, and
so on--all exceedingly useful in their way--have almost pushed
proper expository preaching out of place, there is the more need
that we should, when we read passages of Holy Writ, habitually give
running comments upon them.
I support my opinion with this reason, that the public reading
of the abstruser parts of Scripture is of exceedingly little use to
the majority of the people listening. I can recollect hearing in my
younger days long passages out of Daniel, which might have been
exceedingly instructive to me if I had obtained the remotest
conception of what they meant. Take again, parts of the prophecy of
Ezekiel, and ask yourselves what profit can arise from their
perusal by the illiterate, "unless some man shall guide them"? What
more edification can come from a chapter in English which is not
understood than from the same passage in Hebrew or Greek? The same
argument which enforces translation demands exposition. If but a
few explanatory words are thrown in by a judicious reader, it is
wonderful how luminous obscure portions may be made. Two or three
sentences will often reveal the drift of a whole chapter; the key
of a great difficulty may be presented to the hearer in half a
score words, and thus the public reading may be made abundantly
profitable. I once saw a school of blind children among the
charming ruins of York Abbey, and could not help pitying their
incapacity to enjoy so much beauty: how willingly would I have
opened their eyes! Are ignorant people wandering among the glories
of Scripture much less to be pitied? Who will refuse them the
light?
Abundant evidence has come before me that brief comments upon
Scripture in our ordinary services are most acceptable and
instructive to our people. I have often heard from working men, and
their wives, and from merchants and their families, that my own
expositions have been most helpful to them. They testify that when
they read the Bible at home in the family, the exposition makes it
doubly precious to them; and the chapter which they had
unprofitably read in course at family prayers, when they pursue it
the next time, recollecting what their minister has said upon it,
becomes a real delight to them. The mass of our hearers, in London
at least, do not, to any appreciable extent, read commentaries or
any other books which throw a light upon the Scriptures. They have
neither the money nor the time to do so, and if they are to be
instructed in the Word of God in things which they cannot find out
by mere experience, and are not likely to have explained to them by
their associates, they must get that instruction from us, or
nowhere else; nor do I see how we are to give them such spiritual
assistance except through the regular practice of exposition.
Besides, if you are in the habit of commenting, it will give you
an opportunity of saying many things which are not of sufficient
importance to become the theme of a whole sermon, and therefore
would probably remain unnoticed, to the great loss of the Lord's
people and others. It is astounding what a range of truth,
doctrinal, practical, and experimental, Holy Scripture brings
before us; and equally worthy of admiration is the forcible manner
in which that truth is advanced. Hints given in the way in which
the word of God offers them are always wise and opportune; as, for
instance, the rebukes which the word administers might have seemed
too severe had they been made by the pastor, unsustained by the
word and unsuggested by it, but arising out of the chapter they
cannot be resented. You can both censure sins and encourage virtues
by dilating upon the histories which you read in the inspired
records, whereas you might never have touched upon them had not the
chapter read brought the matter before you. If you want to make
full proof of your ministry, and to leave no single point of
revelation untouched, your easiest mode will be to comment upon
Scripture habitually. Without this much of the word will be utterly
unknown to many of your people. It is a very sad fact that they do
not read so much as they should at home; the ungodly, in England,
scarcely read the Bible at all; and if only that part which we
preach upon be expounded to them, how little of the Bible can they
ever know! If you will mark your Bibles with lines under the texts
from which you have spoken, as I have always done with an old copy
which I keep in my study, you will discover that in twelve or
fourteen years very little of the book has been gone through; a
very large proportion of it remains unmarked, like a field
unploughed. Try, then, by exposition to give your people a fair
view of the entire compass of revelation; take them as it were to
the top of Nebo, and show them the whole land from Dan to
Beersheba, and prove to them that everywhere it floweth with milk
and honey.
Earnestly do I advocate commenting. It is unfashionable in
England, though somewhat more usual beyond the Tweed. The practice
was hardly followed up anywhere in England a few years ago, and it
is very uncommon still. It may be pressed upon you for one other
reason, namely, that in order to execute it well, the commenting
minister will at first have to study twice as much as the mere
preacher, because he will be called upon to prepare both his
sermons and his expositions. As a rule, I spend much more time over
the exposition than over the discourse. Once start a sermon with a
great idea, and from that moment the discourse forms itself without
much labour to the preacher, for truth naturally consolidates and
crystallises itself around the main subject like sweet crystals
around a string hung up in syrup; but as for the exposition, you
must keep to the text, you must face the difficult points, and must
search into the mind of the Spirit rather than your own. You will
soon reveal your ignorance as an expositor if you do not study;
therefore diligent reading will be forced upon you. Anything which
compels the preacher to search the grand old Book is of immense
service to him. If any are jealous lest the labour should injure
their constitutions, let them remember that mental work up to a
certain point is most refreshing, and where the Bible is the theme
toil is delight. It is only when mental labour passes beyond the
bounds of common sense that the mind becomes enfeebled by it, and
this is not usually reached except by injudicious persons, or men
engaged on topics which are unrefreshing and disagreeable; but our
subject is a recreative one, and to young men like ourselves the
vigorous use of our faculties is a most healthy exercise. Classics
and mathematics may exhaust us, but not the volume of our Father's
grace, the charter of our joys, the treasure of our wealth.
A man to comment well should be able to read the Bible in the
original. Every minister should aim at a tolerable proficiency both
in the Hebrew and the Greek. These two languages will give hint a
library at a small expense, an inexhaustible thesaurus, a mine of
spiritual wealth. Really, the effort of acquiring a language is not
so prodigious that brethren of moderate abilities should so
frequently shrink from the attempt. A minister ought to attain
enough of these tongues to be at least able to make out a passage
by the aid of a lexicon, so as to be sure that he is not
misrepresenting the Spirit of God in his discoursings, but is, as
nearly as he can judge, giving forth what the Lord intended to
reveal by the language employed. Such knowledge would prevent his
founding doctrines upon expressions in our version when nothing at
all analogous is to be found in the inspired original. This has
been done by preachers time out of mind, and they have shouted over
an inference drawn from a shall, or an if gathered out of tim
translation, with as much assurance of infallibility and sense of
importance as if the same language had occurred in the words which
the Holy Ghost used. At such times, we have been reminded of the
story told by the late beloved Henry Craik, in his book on the
Hebrew language. At one time, the Latin Vulgate was so constantly
spoken of as the very word of God, that a Roman Catholic theologian
thus commented upon Ge 1:10 :--"The gathering together of the waters
called he seas." The Latin term for seas is Maria. On this ground,
the writer asks, "What is the gathering together of waters but the
accumulation of all the graces into one place, that is, into the
Virgin Mary (Maria)? But there is this distinction, that Maria (the
seas) has the (i) short, because that which the seas contain is
only of a transitory nature, while the gifts and graces of the
blessed Virgin (Maria) shall endure for ever." Such superlative
nonsense may be indulged in if we forget that translations cannot