James Hastings' Great Texts of the Bible

James Hastings (1852–1922), the Scottish Presbyterian minister who founded The Expository Times and edited the Dictionary of the Bible, spent the last years of his life on The Great Texts of the Bible, published in twenty volumes by T. & T. Clark of Edinburgh and Charles Scribner's Sons of New York between 1910 and 1914. It is not a verse-by-verse commentary. Hastings chose more than five hundred of the best-known and most preached verses of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, and gave each one a full study of its own.

The preface explains the plan:

There is, first, a short introduction to each text, bringing it into relation with its context, and giving the circumstances which led to its utterance. Its contents are, next, arranged in order, so that the leading thought or thoughts may be made prominent, and each subordinate topic may receive its proper place and value. Then comes an exposition of the contents of the text, expressed in good modern English, and illustrated throughout. Thus the preacher is not supplied with a ready-made sermon, but with materials for a sermon.

Each study runs to several pages and is packed with quotations, poetry, and illustrations gathered from a great range of writers. On Psalm 23:1, under the heading "A Personal Providence," the study opens this way:

Perhaps no single lay in the Psalter has taken such a hold of the imagination and the heart of believers as the 23rd Psalm. None can estimate its influence on the Church of God throughout the past, whether on her spiritual life generally or in the case of particular individuals. The sorrowful have been cheered by it; the troubled have been led into peace; the prisoner has sung it in his dungeon and felt himself a captive no more; the pilgrim has been gladdened by it as he wandered in the wilderness, in a solitary way, and found no city to dwell in; the fainting soul has been refreshed by it, and enabled to mount up as on eagles' wings.

In SwordSearcher the twenty volumes are presented as one commentary module, with each study attached to the verse it treats. There are 558 studies, drawn from fifty-six books of the Bible; the Psalms, John, and Romans are the most heavily represented. Since the coverage is selective, the commentary panel's next and previous entry buttons are a good way to browse what is there.

Hastings quotes writers of every school, from Puritans to the liberal preachers of his own generation, so this is a work to be read with discernment. For a preacher or teacher looking for a way into a familiar text it is a rich source. It sits naturally beside the Biblical Illustrator and the Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary, which serve a similar purpose.