be verbally inspired, and that to the original is the last
appeal.
Fail not to be expert in the use of your Concordance. Every day
I live I thank God more and more for that poor half crazy Alexander
Cruden. Of course you have read his life, which is prefixed to the
concordance; it exhibits him as a man of diseased mind, once or
twice the inmate of a lunatic asylum, but yet for all that
successfully devoting his energies to producing a work of
absolutely priceless value, which never has been improved upon, and
probably never will be; a volume which must ever yield the greatest
possible assistance to a Christian minister, being as necessary to
him as a plane to the carpenter, or a plough to the husbandman. Be
sure you buy a genuine unabridged Cruden, and none of the modern
substitutes; good as they may be at the price, they are a delusion
and a snare to ministers, and should never be tolerated in the
manse library. To consider cheapness in purchasing a concordance is
folly. You need only one: have none but the best. At the head of
each notable word, Cruden gives you its meaning, and very often all
its particular shades of meaning, so that he even helps you in
sermonising. When you have read his headings, by following out the
concordance, you will observe connections in which the word occurs,
which most advantageously and correctly fix its meaning. Thus will
the word of God be its own key. A good textuary is a good
theologian; be then well skilled in using Cruden.
I make but small account of most reference Bibles; they would be
very useful if they were good for anything; but it is extremely
easy to bring out a reference Bible which has verbal and apparent
references, and nothing more. You will often turn to a reference,
and will have to say, "Well, it is a reference, certainly, in a
way, for it contains the same word, but there is no reference in
the sense that the one text will explain the other." The useful
reference cuts the diamond with a diamond, comparing spiritual
things with spiritual; it is a thought reference, and not a word
reference. If you meet with a really valuable reference Bible, it
will be to you what I once heard a countryman call "a reverence
Bible", for it will lead you to prize more and more the sacred
volume. The best reference Bible is a thoroughly good concordance.
Get the best, keep it always on the table, use it hourly, and you
will have found your best companion.
Need I after my previous lectures commend to you the judicious
reading of commentaries! These are called "dead men's brains" by
certain knowing people, who claim to give us nothing in their
sermons but what they pretend the Lord reveals direct to
themselves. Yet these men are by no means original, and often their
supposed inspiration is but borrowed wit. They get a peep at Gill
on the sly. The remarks which they give forth as the Spirit's mind
are very inferior in all respects to what they affect to despise,
namely, the mind of good and learned men. A batch of poems was sent
me some time ago for The Sword and the Trowel, which were written
by a person claiming to be under the immediate influence of the
Holy Spirit. He informed me that he was passive, and that what was
enclosed was written under the direct physical and mental influence
of the Spirit upon his mind and hand. My bookshelves can show many
poems as much superior to these pretended inspirations as angels
are to blue bottles; the miserable doggerel bore on its face the
evidence of imposture. So when I listen to the senseless twaddle of
certain wise gentlemen who are always boasting that they alone are
ministers of the Spirit, I am ashamed of their pretensions and of
them. No, my dear friends, you may take it, as a rule that the
Spirit of God does not usually do for us what we can do for
ourselves, and that if religious knowledge is printed in a book,
and we can read it, there is no necessity for the Holy Ghost to
make a fresh revelation of it to us in order to screen our
laziness. Read, then, the admirable commentaries which I have
already introduced to you. Yet be sure you use your own minds too,
or the expounding will lack interest. Here I call to mind two wells
in the courtyard of the Doge's palace at Venice, upon which I
looked with much interest. One is filled artificially by water
brought in barges from a distance, and few care for its insipid
contents; the other is a refreshing natural well, cool and
delicious, and the people contend for every drop of it. Freshness,
naturalness, life, will always attract, whereas mere borrowed
learning is flat and insipid. Mr. Cecil says his plan was, when he
laid a hold of a Scripture, to pray over it, and get his own
thoughts on it, and then, after he had so done, to take up the
ablest divines who wrote upon the subject, and see what their
thoughts were. If you do not think and think much, you will become
slaves and mere copyists. The exercise of your own mind is most
healthful to you, and by perseverance, with divine help, you may
expect to get at the meaning of every understandable passage. So to
rely upon your own abilities as to be unwilling to learn from
others is clearly folly; so to study others as not to judge for
yourself is imbecility.
What should be the manner of your public commenting? One rule
should be always to point out very carefully wherever a word bears
a special sense; for rest assured in Holy Scripture the same word
does not always mean the same thing. The Bible is a Book meant for
human beings, and therefore it is written in human language; and in
human language the same word may signify two or three things. For
instance, "a pear fell from the tree"; "a man fell into drunken
habits". There the meaning of the second word, "fell", is evidently
different from the first, since it is not literal, but
metaphorical. Again, "the cabman mounted the box"; "the child was
pleased with his Christmas box"; "his lordship is staying at his
shooting box". In each case there is the same word, but who does
not see that there is a great difference of meaning? So it is in
the word of God. You must explain the difference between a word
used in a peculiar sense, and the ordinary meaning of the word, and
thus you will prevent your people falling into mistakes. If people
will say that the same word in Scripture always means the same
thing, as I have heard some assert publicly, they will make
nonsense of the word of God, and fall into error through their own
irrational maxims. To set up canons of interpretation for the Book
of God which would be absurd if applied to other writings is
egregious folly: it has a show of accuracy, but inevitably leads to
confusion.
The obvious literal meaning of a Scripture is not always the
true one, and ignorant persons are apt enough to fall into the most
singular misconceptions--a judicious remark from the pulpit will be
of signal service. Many persons have accustomed themselves to
misunderstand certain texts; they have heard wrong interpretations
in their youth, and will never know better unless the correct
meaning be indicated to them.
We must make sure in our public expositions that obscure and
involved sentences are explained. To overleap difficulties, and
only expound what is already clear, is to make commenting
ridiculous. When we speak of obscure sentences, we mean such as are
mostly to be found in the prophets, and are rendered dark through
the translation, or the Orientalism of their structure, or through
their intrinsic weight of meaning. Involved sentences most abound
in the writings of Paul, whose luxuriant mind was not to be
restrained to any one line of argument. He begins a sentence, and
does not finish it perhaps until eight verses further on, and all
the interstices between the commencement and the end of the
sentence are packed full of compressed truth, which it is not
always easy to separate from the general argument. Hints consisting
of but two or three words will let your hearers know where the
reasoning breaks off, and where it is taken up again. In many
poetical parts of the Old Testament the speakers change; as in
Solomen's Song, which is mostly a dialogue. Here perfect nonsense
is often made by reading the passage as if it were all spoke, by
the same person. In Isaiah the strain often varies most suddenly,
and while one verse is addressed to the Jews, the next may be
spoken to the Messiah or to the Gentiles. Is it not always well to
notify this to the congregation? If the chapters and verses had
been divided with a little common sense, this might be of less
importance, but as our version is so clumsily chopped into
fragments, the preacher must insert the proper paragraphs and
divisions as he reads aloud. In fine, your business is to make the
word plain. In Lombardy I observed great heaps of huge stones in
the fields, which had been gathered out from the soil by diligent
hands to make room for the crops; your duty is to "gather out the
stones", and leave the fruitful field of Scripture for your people
to till. There are Orientalisms, metaphors, peculiar expressions,
idioms, and other verbal memorabilia which arise from the Bible
having been written in the East; all these you will do well to
explain. To this end be diligent students of Oriental life. Let the
geography of Palestine, its natural history, its fauna and its
flora, be as familiar to you as those of your own native village.
Then as you read you will interpret the word, and your flock will
be fed thereby.
The chief part of your commenting, however, should consist in
applying the truth to the hearts of your hearers, for he who merely
comprehends the meaning of the letter without understanding how it
bears upon the hearts and consciences of men, is like a man who
causes the bellows of an organ to be blown, and then fails to place
his fingers on the keys; it is of little service to supply men with
information unless we urge upon them the practical inferences
therefrom. Look, my brethren, straight down into the secret
chambers of the human soul, and let fall the divine teaching
through the window, and thus light will be carried to the heart and
conscience. Make remarks suitable to the occasion, and applicable
to the cases of those present. Show how a truth which was first
heard in the days of David is still forcible and pertinent in these
modern times, and you will thus endear the Scriptures to the minds
of your people, who prize your remarks much more than you imagine.
Clean the grand old pictures of the divine masters; hang them up in
new frames; fix them on the walls of your people's memories, and
their well instructed hearts shall bless you.
Is a caution needed amongst intelligent men? Yes, it must be
given. Be sure to avoid prosiness. Avoid it everywhere, but
especially in this. Do not be long in your notes. If you are
supremely gifted do not be long; people do not appreciate too much
of a good thing; and if your comments are only second rate, why,
then be shorter still, for men soon weary of inferior talking. Very
little time in the service can be afforded for reading the lessons;
do not rob the prayer and the sermon for the sake of commenting.
This robbing Peter to pay Paul is senseless. Do not repeat
commonplace things which must have occurred even to a Sunday School
child. Do not remind your hearers of what they could not possibly