How to Master the English Bible

How to Master the English Bible written in 1904 by James Gray is a “How To” book from a man who knew his Bible.  Yet the method he offers is very ordinary.  It is simply to read a book of the Bible, and then read it again, and again, and again until you have mastered it.  This little book is Gray’s account of how he learnt this method and how the plan works in practice.  It’s definitely worth taking an afternoon out to read it or alternatively grab a Bible and start reading Genesis again and again until you’ve mastered it.

Download my notes as a pdf

The Story of the Case

There is a sense in which the Bible must be mastered before it can be studied.

One is grateful to have studied Hebrew and Greek, just to be able to tell others who have not that they do not require either to hearken to our Heavenly Father’s voice.

This method of studying the Bible was learnt from a layman that Gray met at some conference or convention.  The layman told Gray that he had gone into the country to spend the Sabbath with his family on one occasion, taking with him a pocket copy of Ephesians, and in the afternoon, going out into the woods and lying down under a tree, he began to read it; he read it through at a single reading, and finding his interest aroused, read it through again in the same way, and, his interest increasing, again and again.  I think he added that he read it some twelve or fifteen times, “and when i arose to go into the house,” said he, “I was in possession of Ephesians, or better yet, it was in possession of me, and i had been ‘lifted up to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus’ in an experimental sense in which that had not been true in me before, and will never cease to be true in me again.”

To master book after book is to fill the mind with the great thoughts of God.

So Gray says that he “read Genesis through in the English at a single reading, and then repeated the process again and again until the book in its great outlines had practically become mine.  Then i took up Exodus in the same way, Leviticus, Numbers, and practically all the other books of the Old and New Testaments to Revelation, with the exception of Proverbs, the Psalms and one or two others which do not lend themselves readily to that plan of reading, and indeed do not require it to their understanding and mastery.”

The plan was to read and reread each book by itself and in its order, as though there were no other in existence, until it had become a part of the very being.

Was the task tedious and long?  No more than was Jacob’s when he served Laban for his daughter Rachel.

The Explanation of the Method

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.

The synthetic study of the Bible means, as nearly as possible, the study of the Bible as a whole, and each book of the Bible as a whole, and as seen in its relation to the other books.

The synthetic study of the Bible, it may be said in a word, is an attempt to put it together rather than to take it apart.

Give people to see for themselves what the Bible is in the large, and then they will have a desire to see it in detail.

The Plan at Work

Six rules for mastering the Bible:

1. Read the book where God began to write it (at the book of Genesis).

2. Read the book.

It is not asked that it be studied in the ordinary sense, or memorised, or even sought to be understood at first; but simply read.  They will read books about the Bible almost without limit, but to read the books of the Bible itself is another matter.

3. Read the book continuously.

This means the reading of the book uninfluenced by its divisions into chapters and verses, and the reading of the book in this way at a single sitting.

Why read the books in a single sitting?  Many of the books of the Bible have a single thread running through the whole – a pivotal idea around which all the subsidiary ones revolve – and to catch this thread, to seize upon this idea, is absolutely necessary to unravel or break up the whole in its essential parts.

4. Read the book repeatedly.

A book is not to be laid aside for any other succeeding book of the Bible until the mastery is assured.

5. Read the book independently.

A faithful reading of the various books on an independent basis will secure a working outline, and this should be carried with one in his mind, and on his notebook, as he proceeds from book to book, until the work is done.

6. Read the book prayerfully.

Since the Bible is a supernatural book, it can be studied or mastered only by supernatural aid.  “The Bible without the Holy Spirit is a sundial by moonlight.”

Results in the Pulpit

Pastors should make expository preaching the staple of their pulpit ministrations.  That is a close interpretation, or running commentary on the text, followed by a practical application.

John Chrysostom said that “If any one assiduously attend public worship, even without reading the Bible at home, but carefully hearkening here, he will find a single year sufficient to give him an intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures.”

A biblical preacher comes, in time, to make a biblical church, and should that not be the aim of every minster?

Every church should be more or less truly a Bible Training school, and the pastor the head of it.  Gray writes that “I, myself, have seen large congregations held from week to week in city churches, where the chief attraction was the exposition of the Bible text.”

Expository Outlines

Of course it is almost vital to the best results of expository preaching that the people bring their Bibles to church; and use them more or less in following their minister.  Bring their Bibles and read the text.

It is especially confusing and wearisome to a congregation to be turning pages backward, and then forward, and then backward again, and will not be relished as an innovation.  Row with the tide.

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