submarines, and halfpenny papers with half-million circulations, cannot possibly have anything to learn from the benighted ages of the past. When he grows older, if he is really thoughtful, he will discover that in the things of faith the twentieth century has no special advantages for testing essential truth over earlier ages, and that in some respects-as in the distractions which hinder reposeful, devotional reading of the Bible, and calm meditation upon its teaching and upon the spiritual life—the century is distinctly handicapped. Our men of science may weigh and measure the stars and by spectroscopic analysis may discover the elements of their composition; they may count and measure the electrons in a gramme of radium; but that is no qualification-it has often proved a disqualification -for the estimation of the spiritual truth in the Bible and in the Christian faith. These things are "spiritually discerned." We must believe before we know—a complete reversal of the scientific order, and yet the effect has always followed the cause, and so the spiritual law is scientifically true. Men of science are never less scientific than when they dogmatize about the things of faith, and conversely it might be said that theologians are often never less theological than when they are trying to mix cheap science with their theology. The preacher will always remember that he is preaching to the mass and not to a select few, and his pulpit theology will be a theology that will reach and influence the mass. There is room for a few exceptional men whose mission will be to congregations of the intellectual élite, but the average congregation, even the average

middle-class congregation, requires a theology that deals simply and practically with the realities of religion, and which presents a gospel that can transform alike the man in the counting house, the man behind the counter' the man in the factory, the man at the plough, and the man or woman who has sunk almost out of human recognition-the drifting wreckage tossed about by the swirling currents of our social ocean. A theology that is always soaring into the immensities, that is more concerned to explain the universe and to define the being of God than to bind up the broken hearts and to sharply swing round the sinner, respectable or disreputable, and set him face to face with God, that loses itself in endless mazes of ingenious speculation about insoluble problems and unsearchable mysteries, is not a Bible theology or a practical pulpit theology. Let such theologians go back to the Bible and saturate themselves with its teaching and its spirit, let them study how the Bible writers, and how the Master Himself, presented their theology, and let them return to their pulpits and preach a Bible theology got at first hand, and they will find a new power has come into their preaching, and a new appetite has come to their congregation. The Bible, as ever, is the preacher's book. He must not water the "sincere milk of the Word," nor skim it of its cream.

CHAPTER V

EXEGESIS AND EXPOSITION

THE preacher, by regular and consecutive reading of the books of the Bible, taking them not in snippets but in large sections, will let the Bible literature make its immediate fresh impression upon his mind. He will get his texts and his subjects at first hand from the Bible, and will coin his own feeling and his own thought into his own words. It is a great advantage if he can read the Hebrew and Greek originals with fair facility. The genius and usages of the languages throw light on the interpretation to be put on many words and phrases. The Hebrew is a language of concrete words, free from metaphysical subtleties. To this fact we owe the realism of the presentations of thought and feeling about God in the Psalms and the prophets. The Semite conceived spiritual things in terms of the physical, and expressed his spiritual aspirations in language appropriate to the appetites and passions of the body. Failure to understand this has been the cause of much far-fetched exposition, and reading into the words and phrases of Hebrew writers of philosophical subtleties that never entered into their heads. Then the cadences of the Hebrew, the consonances and assonances of which Hebrew authors are fond, are themselves factors that

affect exposition. Many familiar phrases, dear to English hearts in the Authorised Version, apparently owe their origin to the Hebrew author's adoption of "apt alliteration's artful aid," and sometimes to his partiality for pious punning. Coming to the New Testament, much light is now being thrown on the kind of Greek employed by the New Testament authors. The theory of a special New Testament dialect, "New Testament Greek," has been demolished by Dr. Deissmann and Dr. Moulton, who have shown, from inscriptions on recently discovered stones, pottery, papyri and other materials that "New Testament Greek" is simply the idiomatic Hellenistic Greek of the common life of the period, and that many words, supposed to be coinages of the New Testament authors, were words in familiar use. But leaving the peculiarities of New Testament Greek, the fact that it is Greek at all has an important bearing on the exegesis and exposition of the New Testament writings. There never was a language so subtle and flexible as the Greek, and whose words were richer in long and varied and interesting associations. Many a delicate turn of construction and mode of expression and suggestive cadence is lost to the English reader. Then Paul, especially, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, are frequently using words that to the Greek reader, familiar with the classics and Hellenic history, philosophy and archæology, are rich in suggestion. "Schoolmaster," crown," "perfection," "mystery," "express image," "word" (Logos), "science" (gnosis), "fulness" (plerōma) are examples of such words.

Happily, though it is desirable, it is not essential that the preacher-expositor should be a facile reader of Hebrew or Greek, or even that he should be expert in history, archæology and critical learning. He will often feel, however, the need of expert help in clearing up obscurities, explaining allusions, and giving him the right point of view for the understanding of an author and a book; and here the commentator comes in as the expert exegete.

A word of counsel will perhaps be accepted as to the place of the commentator. He is to help the expositor, and not to dictate to him as his master. The preacher should invariably read a Bible book through more than once, taste the flavour of it, and form his own provisional opinion of it, before he consults the commentator. Before he reads the commentator's introduction, or his notes, the text of the book should be familiar to him; otherwise, the commentator is likely to impose his own views upon him, and so to bias him that he becomes incapable of judging for himself at all. From the point of view of preaching, it may well be more beneficial to read and judge independently, provided the reader has come under the spell of a book and been swept along by the spirit of it, even though there has been misunderstanding of certain passages, than to submit meekly and unresistingly to the views of the commentator, however supreme a master in his own line the commentator may be. No method of reading the Bible is less fruitful for expository purposes than that of slavish reading of a commentary-first, a verse, then a stop to read half a page of what the commentator has to say about it; then