Nor is it as a Bible teacher only, but also as a Bible preacher, that Dr. Gray holds a distinguished place in the current history of the Church. His expository sermons leave an impress not to be effaced. Presbyteries and ministerial associations are on record that they have stirred communities to their depths. Even secular editors, commonly unmoved by ordinary types of evangelism, have written: "Here is something new for the people, something fresh and suggestive for every active mind, which the business interests of the city cannot afford to neglect." The testimony of one pastor given at a meeting of the presbytery is practically that of scores of others throughout the country. He had attended a series of popular meetings conducted by Dr. Gray, and said: "I learned more during the few days I listened to Dr. Gray about the true character of preaching than I had learned in all my seminary course and my twenty years of ministry. Because of what I learned there of true expository preaching I shall hope to make the last years of my ministry the very best of all." We are glad that this book contains a practical application of all that the author has said and taught to the results which may be gathered from it in the pulpit. THE STORY OF THE CASE HOW TO MASTER THE ENGLISH BIBLE PART I THE STORY OF THE CASE [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 farm before he attempted to work it. How much upland and how much lowland? How much wood and how much pasture? Where should the orchard be laid out? Where plant my corn, oats, and potatoes? What plot is to be seeded down to grass? When he has mastered his farm he begins to get ready for results from it. Now there are many ways of studying the Bible, any one of which may be good enough in itself, but there is only one way to master it, as we shall see. And it is the Bible itself we are to master, not books about the Bible, nor yet "charts." I once listened to an earnest and cultivated young man delivering a lecture on Bible study, illustrated by a chart so long that when he unrolled and held one end of it above his head, as high as his arms could reach, the other curled up on the floor below the platform. As the auditor gazed upon its labyrinthian lines, circles, crosses and other things intended to illuminate it, and "gathered up the loins of his mind" to listen to the explanation following, it was with an inward sigh of gratitude that God had never put such a yoke upon us, "which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear."