There are some principles which underly all powerful preaching. These we would thrust into the front rank, that a true basis may be laid for the knowledge and use of divine truth. These principles have to do first of all with the art of Bible study.
There are three rules which cannot be too strongly emphasized: search, meditate, compare.
Search. The truths which stamp this Book as divine, putting between it and every other an impassable gulf, do not always lie on the surface like pebbles on the beach, to be easily picked up; but rather like gold or gems, in hidden veins or mines, to be dug up. No other book so rewards patient, untiring study. He who searches discovers, even in oft-trodden ground, what is surprisingly new, beautiful, valuable; and such discovery has no limit. The field is inexhaustible in wealth; exploration becomes explanation, with ever fresh disclosures of rich meaning.
Meditate. There is a study, akin to rumination, which yields results of singular richness. God bids the reader, like Joshua, “meditate therein day and night;” to be “like a tree, planted by the rivers of water,” with roots reaching down where they habitually drink up the celestial moisture. This is a study that demands time to make its deepest impression. He will be a “forgetful hearer” of the Word, or a superficial reader, who rests content with a hasty or casual glance. Into this mirror–the Perfect Law of Liberty–one must continue looking. Unlike the sensitive film in the camera, the mind takes few instantaneous impressions which prove lasting; it needs the time exposure and the fixing solution.
Compare. The Word of God is its own interpreter; one part corrects or confirms another. Often the Book is its own lexicon, defining its terms, and its own commentary, expounding its meaning. It reflects its Author’s unity, but it is a unity in diversity: unless there be careful comparison of its various teachings, the diversity is seen without the unity, so that, instead of all roads leading to one golden milestone, diversity seems divergence; what God meant as counterparts and correspondences appear as contradictions. But, when we search, meditate, and compare, what at first seemed blemishes become beauties, challenging further investigation, which in turn is repaid by new disclosures and revelations.
These three rules, however important, are not exhaustive. There are three others to be put beside them, which are, if possible, more vital to the best results: pray, believe, obey.
Pray. The devout frame is the secret of clear vision: “Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law!” This is a Temple of Truth of which the Builder holds the key, and unlocks only to the praying soul its secret chambers. The “princes of this world,” in their pride of worldly wisdom, stand without; while the little child who is self-distrustful and humbly seeks to be taught of the Spirit, goes within. Here we best “advance on our knees.” The arrogant pretentiousness of unsanctified learning, which levels the Word of God to the human plane, and assumes that there is in it no supernatural element, is, in the matter of Bible study, a sort of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which hath no forgiveness. Whatever else a preacher does in preparing for the pulpit, let him above all pray. Otherwise, like Elisha’s servant, who at first saw nothing, though the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire, he will remain blind to the highest verities. There is no clarifier for spiritual vision like prayer. It is God’s eye salve.
Believe. It is a unique law of spiritual life, that knowing is not the path to believing, but believing is the path to knowing. Faith is not so much the result, as the condition, of the highest knowledge. Disbelief and unbelief have a strange power of arresting spiritual intelligence and hindering spiritual instruction. Persisted in, they produce incapacity, putting fetters on the understanding.
God sent Isaiah to say to Ahaz, “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established” (Isa. 7:9). Here is a delicate play on words, difficult to convey by translation: “If ye will not confide, surely ye shall not abide.” The deep meaning is that if they would not believe, they would not be established in knowledge.
The mere scientist prides himself on his incredulity: he believes only what he scientifically knows, and laughs at Christian faith as credulity. But the docile disciple learns that only by implicitly trusting the Word of the Lord can he climb to the loftiest heights of certainty. Doubt dims the eye; distrust cramps and cripples the spirit. When a preacher begins to doubt, his pulpit loses its dynamic, and becomes destructive of faith, rather than constructive.
Obey. Nothing can be more important, even to the understanding of the truth, than to practice it. “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the teaching” (Jn. 7:17). Obedience is the great organ of spiritual revelation. Doing the will of God is the divine condition of spiritual light–of further illumination. Disobedience brings darkness, and is darkness. The preacher must himself practice what he preaches, otherwise spiritual vision will be dim, and, if the blind lead the blind, only the ditch is before both.
To translate into holy living what one is learning is the supreme secret of teaching the truth to others. The experimental element imparts strange authority and unction to testimony: it enables the preacher to speak as a witness–one who knows. Then it is that the tree, planted by the river of God, transmutes into sap the water of the living Word, and so makes possible the leaf, bloom, and fruit of abundant service.
In a word, from first to last, the true Bible student needs to keep in the presence of its Author, who is its only adequate Exegete, Commentator, Interpreter. None can explain His own Textbook like the Master Teacher Himself; and to be a docile pupil in His school is to acquire that spiritual learning which fits for spiritual teaching, and for which the best instruction of human schools can never be a substitute. Indeed, unsanctified scholarship rather makes the Cross of Christ of none effect.