JH
Puritan Board Sophomore
So truly are perverse methods founded in an evil nature, and so prone are we to abuse the best principles, that, with the Bible in our hands, as a chosen study, we may slide into the old blunder of undigested and impertinent erudition. The text may be swallowed up of commentary. Indeed, we know not a field in which pedantic erudition careers with more flaunting display, than this of interpretation. Young clergymen there are, whose proudest toils consist in the constant consultation of a shelf of interpreters, chiefly German. We protest against this pretended auxiliary when it becomes a rival. The commentary, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad master. The state of mind produced by sitting in judgment to hear twenty or fifty different expounders give their opinions on a verse, is morbid in a high degree; and cases are occurring every year, of laboriously educated weaklings, rich in books, who are utterly destroyed for all usefulness by what may be called their polymathic repletion. No—more knowledge of Scripture is generally derived from direct study of the text, in the original, with grammar and lexicon, than from examining and comparing all the opposite opinions in Pool’s Synopsis, De Wette, or Bloomfield.
Again we say, commentaries must be used, and thankfully, but just as we use ladders, crutches, and spectacles; the exception, not the rule; the aid in emergency, not the habit every moment. There are times when what we most of all need is to open the eye to the direct rays of self-evidencing truth; and at such times every intervening human medium keeps out just so many rays from falling on the retina. Holy Scripture cannot make its true impression unless it be read in continuity; a whole epistle, a whole gospel, a whole prophecy at once; and with repetition of the process again and again; but this is altogether incompatible with the piecemeal mode of leaving the text every moment to converse with the annotator. The best posture for receiving light is not that of an umpire among contending interpreters. So far as the text is understood by us, our study of it is converse with positive truth. Suppose some errors are picked up, as they will be, in individual cases: these will be gradually corrected by the confluent light of many passages. The sum of truths will be incalculably greater than the sum of errors. The healthful body of truth will gradually extrude the portion of error, and cause it to slough off. The analogy of faith will more and more throw its light into dark places. All these effects will be just in proportion to the daily, diligent, continuous study of the pure text. Generally it will be found, that the more perusal of the text, the more acquisition of truth. And in application to the case of preachers, if we have learnt anything by the painful and mortifying experience of many years, it is, that of all preparatives for preaching, the best is the study of the original Scripture text. None is so suggestive of matter: none is so fruitful of illustration; and none is so certain to furnish natural and attractive methods of partition. If we did not know how many live in a practice diametrically opposed to it, we should almost blush to reiterate, what indeed comprehends all we are urging, that God’s truth is infinitely more important than good methods of finding it.
James W Alexander, Thoughts on Preaching (Solid Ground Christian Books), pp. 178-179
Again we say, commentaries must be used, and thankfully, but just as we use ladders, crutches, and spectacles; the exception, not the rule; the aid in emergency, not the habit every moment. There are times when what we most of all need is to open the eye to the direct rays of self-evidencing truth; and at such times every intervening human medium keeps out just so many rays from falling on the retina. Holy Scripture cannot make its true impression unless it be read in continuity; a whole epistle, a whole gospel, a whole prophecy at once; and with repetition of the process again and again; but this is altogether incompatible with the piecemeal mode of leaving the text every moment to converse with the annotator. The best posture for receiving light is not that of an umpire among contending interpreters. So far as the text is understood by us, our study of it is converse with positive truth. Suppose some errors are picked up, as they will be, in individual cases: these will be gradually corrected by the confluent light of many passages. The sum of truths will be incalculably greater than the sum of errors. The healthful body of truth will gradually extrude the portion of error, and cause it to slough off. The analogy of faith will more and more throw its light into dark places. All these effects will be just in proportion to the daily, diligent, continuous study of the pure text. Generally it will be found, that the more perusal of the text, the more acquisition of truth. And in application to the case of preachers, if we have learnt anything by the painful and mortifying experience of many years, it is, that of all preparatives for preaching, the best is the study of the original Scripture text. None is so suggestive of matter: none is so fruitful of illustration; and none is so certain to furnish natural and attractive methods of partition. If we did not know how many live in a practice diametrically opposed to it, we should almost blush to reiterate, what indeed comprehends all we are urging, that God’s truth is infinitely more important than good methods of finding it.
James W Alexander, Thoughts on Preaching (Solid Ground Christian Books), pp. 178-179