The Project Gutenberg EBook of How To Master The English Bible, by James Gray

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Title: How To Master The English Bible An Experience, A Method, A Result, An Illustration

Author: James Gray

Release Date: January 23, 2013 [EBook #41900]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO MASTER THE ENGLISH BIBLE ***

Produced by Benjamin Klein

HOW TO MASTER THE ENGLISH BIBLE

HOW TO MASTER THE ENGLISH BIBLE

AN EXPERIENCE, A METHOD

A RESULT, AN ILLUSTRATION

BY

REV. JAMES M. GRAY, D.D.

MINISTER IN THE REFORMED EPISCOPAL CHURCH

AUTHOR OF "SYNTHETIC BIBLE STUDIES"

"THE ANTIDOTE TO CHRISTIAN SCIENCE"

"PRIMERS OF THE FAITH" ETC. ETC.

EDINBURGH AND LONDON

OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER

1907

TABLE OF CONTENTS

     I. The Story of the Case
    II. Explanation of the Method
   III. The Plan at Work
    IV. Results in the Pulpit
     V. Expository Outlines

NOTE BY THE PUBLISHERS OF THE BRITISH EDITION

The success of the author's book, Synthetic Bible Studies, has been such that it is a pleasure to us to introduce this little book to British Bible students.

NOTE BY THE PUBLISHERS OF THE AMERICAN EDITION

The author of this book requires no introduction to the Bible-loving people of our time. A time it is of unusual quickening in the study of God's Word along spiritual and evangelical lines, toward which, as the editor of a leading newspaper has said, no one man has contributed more than Rev. James M. Gray, D.D.

"He knows what is in the Book," says the Christian Endeavour World, "and when he sounds the clear, strong notes of God's love, of victory over sin, of the believer's assurance, it is no wonder that thousands of young people wax as enthusiastic over the Bible as others do over athletics or art."

The interdenominational Bible classes which he has carried on, and to which his work directly and indirectly has given rise, are the largest and in other respects the most remarkable known. His work has revolutionised the method of teaching in some Sunday schools; it has put life into dead prayer-meetings; in not a few instances it has materially helped to solve the problem of the second service on the Lord's day; it has been a boon to many pastors in the labours of study and pulpit, whose gratitude is outspoken; it has contributed to the efficiency of foreign missionary workers, whose testimony has come from the uttermost parts of the earth; and it has reacted beneficially on the instruction given in the English Bible in some of our home academies, smaller colleges and seminaries. The secret of these results is given in this book.

Nor is it as a Bible teacher only, but also as a Bible preacher, that Dr. Gray holds a distinguished place in the current history of the Church. His expository sermons leave an impress not to be effaced. Presbyteries and ministerial associations are on record that they have stirred communities to their depths. Even secular editors, commonly unmoved by ordinary types of evangelism, have written: "Here is something new for the people, something fresh and suggestive for every active mind, which the business interests of the city cannot afford to neglect." The testimony of one pastor given at a meeting of the presbytery is practically that of scores of others throughout the country. He had attended a series of popular meetings conducted by Dr. Gray, and said: "I learned more during the few days I listened to Dr. Gray about the true character of preaching than I had learned in all my seminary course and my twenty years of ministry. Because of what I learned there of true expository preaching I shall hope to make the last years of my ministry the very best of all."

We are glad that this book contains a practical application of all that the author has said and taught to the results which may be gathered from it in the pulpit.

THE STORY OF THE CASE

HOW TO MASTER THE ENGLISH BIBLE

PART I

THE STORY OF THE CASE

[Sidenote: The Bible like a Farm]

How to master the English Bible! High-sounding title that, but does it mean what it says? It is not how to study it, but how to master it; for there is a sense in which the Bible must be mastered before it can be studied, and it is the failure to see this which accounts for other failures on the part of many earnest would-be Bible students. I suppose it is something like a farm; for although never a farmer myself, I have always imagined a farmer should know his farm before he attempted to work it. How much upland and how much lowland? How much wood and how much pasture? Where should the orchard be laid out? Where plant my corn, oats, and potatoes? What plot is to be seeded down to grass? When he has mastered his farm he begins to get ready for results from it.

Now there are many ways of studying the Bible, any one of which may be good enough in itself, but there is only one way to master it, as we shall see. And it is the Bible itself we are to master, not books about the Bible, nor yet "charts." I once listened to an earnest and cultivated young man delivering a lecture on Bible study, illustrated by a chart so long that when he unrolled and held one end of it above his head, as high as his arms could reach, the other curled up on the floor below the platform. As the auditor gazed upon its labyrinthian lines, circles, crosses and other things intended to illuminate it, and "gathered up the loins of his mind" to listen to the explanation following, it was with an inward sigh of gratitude that God had never put such a yoke upon us, "which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear."

[Sidenote: The Vernacular and Bible Tongues]

And it is the English Bible we are thinking about, the Bible in the vernacular, the tongue most of us best understand. One is grateful to have studied Hebrew and Greek, just to be able to tell others who have not that they do not require either to hearken to our Heavenly Father's voice. He has an advantage as a scholar who can utilise the original tongues; but the Bible was not given to scholars, but to the people, and "hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born" (Acts 2:8). It is not at all inconsistent to add that he who masters the English Bible is possessed of the strongest inducement to study it in Hebrew and Greek.

That which follows grows largely out of the writer's personal experience. For the first eight or ten years of my ministry I did not know my English Bible as I should have known it, a fact to which my own spiritual life and the character of my pulpit ministrations bore depressing witness.