Ruminations and Ramifications: This is our duty

Thursday, March 29, 2007

It is the duty of all Christians dilligently to search the scriptures, and it is the office of ministers to guide and assist them therein. How useful soever this book of books is in itself, it will be of no use to us if we do not acquiant ourselves with it, by reading it daily, and meditating upon it, that we may understand the mind of God in it, and may apply what we understand to ourselves for our direction, rebuke, and comfort, as there is occasion.
It concerns us to be ready in the scriptures, and to make ourselves so by constant reading and careful observation, and especially by earnest prayer to God for the promised gift of the Holy Ghost, whose office it is to bring things to our remembrance which Christ hath said to us (John 14:26), that thus we may have some good word or other at hand for our use in our addresses to God and in our converse with men, in our resistance of Satan and in communiing with our own hearts, and may be able, with the good householder, to bring out of this treasury things new and old, for the entertainment and edification both of ourselves and others.
The letter, either of law or gospel, profits little without the Spirit.
As ministers would hardly be believed without Bibles to back them, so Bibles would hardly be understood without ministers to explain them; but if, having both, we perish in ignorance and unbelief, our blood will be upon our own head.

Taken from the Preface to the first volume of the Matthew Henry Commentary on the Whole Bible.