OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER 1907      I. The Story of the Case     II. Explanation of the Method    III. The Plan at Work     IV. Results in the Pulpit      V. Expository Outlines...

The success of the author's book, Synthetic Bible Studies , has been such that it is a pleasure to us to introduce this little book to British Bible students....

The author of this book requires no introduction to the Bible-loving people of our time. A time it is of unusual quickening in the study of God's Word along spiritual and evangelical lines, toward which, as the editor of a leading newspaper has said, no one man has contributed more than Rev. James M. Gray, D.D. "He knows what is in the Book," says the Christian Endeavour World, "and when he sounds the clear, strong notes of God's love, of victory over sin, of the believer's assurance, it is no w

[Sidenote: The Bible like a Farm] How to master the English Bible! High-sounding title that, but does it mean what it says? It is not how to study it, but how to master it; for there is a sense in which the Bible must be mastered before it can be studied, and it is the failure to see this which accounts for other failures on the part of many earnest would-be Bible students. I suppose it is something like a farm; for although never a farmer myself, I have always imagined a farmer should know his

The contents of the preceding pages may be said to be preliminary to the definition or description of what the synthetic study of the Bible is; for by that name the method to be described has come to be called. The word "synthesis" suggests the opposite idea to the word "analysis." When we analyse a subject we take it apart and consider it in its various elements, but when we "synthesise" it, so to speak, we put it together and consider it as a whole. Now the synthetic study of the Bible means,

[Sidenote: Begin at the Beginning] There are certain simple rules to be observed in the synthetic study of the Bible if we want to master it, and the first is to begin to study it where God began to write it, i.e. at the book of Genesis. The newer criticism would dispute this statement about the primary authorship of Genesis, but the best answer to the objection is to try the plan. As Dr. Smith says in his The Integrity of Scripture : "Inherent in revelation there is a self-witness. The latest p

In the preceding pages the consideration of the lay reader has been in the foreground, though the ministry has not been out of mind. But in what follows the writer ventures to address his brethren of the ministry, especially his younger brethren, most particularly. In vain we seek to interest the people in Bible study in any permanent or general way except as they are stimulated thereto by the instruction and example of their ministers. [Sidenote: A Vitiated Taste] There must be even more than a

Our concluding chapter has been reserved for one or two "sample" expository outlines that may prove helpful as suggestions to inexperienced beginners. The first is drawn from the author's own store, and the second is that of Pastor F. E. Marsh, of Sunderland, England, which has come under the author's observation and affords a good illustration of another variety of the species. [Sidenote: How Obtained] The principle on which the first-named was obtained was that explained in the previous chapte