THE BIBLE
It is impossible to pretend that any one method of study is ideal for every person. It would be equally unwise to hold that our own method is beyond improvement even for ourselves. The first of these considerations makes the writer diffident in offering the suggestions he makes here; the second will make the reader indulgent as he examines them. In the main, they are intended for those readers who are on the threshold of their preaching career, understanding preaching in its widest sense, but with perhaps a particular relevance to the needs of the public speaker. They are designed to keep before us the object of our study: we are to be " workmen that need not to be ashamed '1 with a special emphasis on the word " workmen," and this requires a warning against two opposing errors.

The first is the impulse to get on with our preaching, and leave the study to other people. Natural eloquence, a commendable straining at the leash, or simple laziness can all lead to the same result. It is fatally easy to acquire a limited repertoire of lecture themes, from our own short study of the Bible or, worse still, from others', and to be content with that. " The Truth is simple," we say convincingly to ourselves, " and easy to be understood by the unlettered. Let us present the Gospel in facts as few and plain as possible, remembering that 'Not many wise men after the flesh are called.' "2 Now, without denying the truth of some of those statements, we know that the argument is specious. There is always a way of treating any subject better than we treated it last, and if we are satisfied with the little we know, we shall not learn that better way. The natural outcome of this spiritual indolence is either a dreary succession of constant repetitions of stale and hackneyed discourses (whose changing titles are their only originality), or an unsubstantial, windy eloquence which betrays the speaker's abstinence from solid food. It is not " wisdom after the flesh " we seek, and the wisdom which is from above can only be had for the seeking.

The second is the inclination to get on with our learning, and leave the preaching to others. Scriptural gluttony is possible (though certainly rarer than scriptural malnutrition), in which the student delights himself in the feast of fat things before him, and uses none of it to feed the starving multitude. The preacher must study, but the student must preach. We need to strike a nice balance between our efforts to learn and our efforts to teach.

The warning given, it has to be recognized that there are brethren with a particular aptitude for the effective presentation of a message, and a smaller inclination for study; and, there are students who recognize their limited resource for public preaching. Neither should presume upon his limitations, but very fruitful co-operation between the two is possible. The writer knows how often he has picked the; brains of brethren more studious than he, and they have been glad to have their resources used.

All of us, notwithstanding this distinction, must seek to acquire the utmost familiarity and facility with the Word. This is the basis of our message. If we study nothing else we must study this. However our occupations and responsibilities limit our scope in other learning, no circumstances whatever can be allowed to interfere with our Bible learning. We cannot pretend to approach the Book with an open mind. We come to its pages (at this stage) as Christadelphians, and as prospective Christadelphian preachers. Certain passages, certain lines of evidence, are already well established in our minds, and nothing is more natural than to turn to one or two standard works on the Bible which are honoured in our midst, and find a substantial course of lectures half-shaped before us. And few things are more dangerous. We must learn first to see the Bible whole before we begin to look for texts and proofs, or we lay ourselves open to all manner of evils, to wrenching of meanings, to ignoring of context, to expositions which are puerile. Moreover, we enter into bondage to the opinions of others, and cease to be servants of the Word.

The Bible Companion is a household commodity of the Household of faith, to our incalculable good. " Salvation depends on the assimilation of the mind to the divine ideals . . ."3 and there is no surer method (having regard to our human frailty) of ensuring continual assimilation to those ideals, than systematically to present them-and present them all-before our minds. With the peculiar temptation which comes to preachers to concentrate upon the matter in hand, nothing is more necessary than the discipline of seeing the whole counsel of God, whatever their preoccupations. Those of us who have neglected that discipline for a while have come to know the barrenness which sooner or later ensues. There is, moreover, great gain to our consciousness of fellowship in the knowledge that all of us are daily directed to the same thoughts, and the preacher needs to be reminded that he is one with his fellows.

But the Bible Companion is not enough. It suffers, indeed, from certain limitations. Chapter headings become barriers to our learning because the next chapter is deferred until tomorrow, and our first extension should be to take all the books of suitable length, and read them whole at a sitting. Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Lamentations and most of the minor prophets; Galatians, Ephesians and all the rest of Paul's Epistles up to Philemon; the Epistles of Peter, James, John and Jude : all these are short enough to be read in this way many times. But there are few of the others which cannot occasionally be read in the same way. Leviticus and Numbers, perhaps, from the complexity of their material, Psalms, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the longer historical books, from their length, Proverbs from the disconnected nature of its contents, the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles are the only exceptions we ought reasonably to allow.

At this stage we can begin to fit the various books of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament, into their historical setting: the period from the Creation to the journey of Israel's young nation into Egypt is covered by Genesis; from the tribulation in Egypt to the borders of the promised land in the remaining books of Moses; the time of conquest and consolidation under the Judges in the books from Joshua to Ruth and the early chapters of I Samuel; the age of the kings and the divided kingdom in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles (1 Chronicles, including a formal summary of the earlier periods), in the poetical and wisdom books from Psalms to the Song of Songs, and in the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habbakkuk, Zephaniah ; the time of the Exile and the Return in Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel and the remaining Minor Prophets.

Our next task is to prepare a synopsis of the material in each of the books. Some few of them, particularly the Psalms, do not lend themselves easily to this treatment, but it is straightforward enough in the Old Testament up to Esther and the New up to Acts, and eminently practicable in most of the prophetic books and the Epistles of Paul.

Two opposing objections need to be met here. The student may already be putting the book down with the reflection: " This is mere plasticine modelling for infants. A work on preaching should offer manlier stuff than this "; while the non-student will be complaining: " Aren't you going a long way about it? What has all this to do with the simple message of the gospel? " Each is the answer to the other. To the student we reply, " Your fellow, at least, has not done this before. You need, not so much help in how to study, as a sense of proportion. This, this familiarity with the Bible teaching as it is, is the groundwork of our message whatever else we know. We cannot go on and leave this unlaid." To the non-student we say, " We know you can give some adequate lectures by shorter methods than this, and, with our own record behind us, we cannot tell you to stop until you have carried it out. But unless you do some such constructive seeking you will quickly become a mere echo of other men's voices, a flogger of a few pet verses, a, doctrinaire picker-up of texts."

We need this background before we attempt more detailed analytical study. One of the tragedies of present school methods in the higher forms is that impressionable minds are taught to dissect the Scriptures into allegedly contradictory fragments before they learn what they are about. It would be a similar misfortune if we came to look on the Word as a reservoir of proof-texts before we heard it speak whole for itself. It is only error and apostasy which need to select appropriate passages and censor the rest. Our glory is that the Bible, seen whole, establishes our message, and therefore we should be glad to see the message unfold in the Word's own way.