Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible

Matthew Henry (1662–1714), a nonconformist pastor at Chester, began his Exposition of the Old and New Testaments in 1704 and published it in six volumes between 1706 and 1721. He lived to finish only through the Acts of the Apostles. The sixth volume, Romans through Revelation, was completed after his death by fellow ministers working from his notes and from the memories of those who had heard him preach. The SwordSearcher module records who wrote what:

• Romans: John Evans
• 1 Corinthians: Simon Browne
• 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians: Daniel Mayo
• Galatians: Joshua Bayes
• Ephesians: Samuel Rosewell
• Philippians and Colossians: William Harris
• 1 and 2 Timothy: Benjamin Andrews Atkinson
• Titus and Philemon: Jeremiah Smith
• Hebrews and Revelation: William Tong
• James: S. Wright
• 1 Peter: Zec. Merrill
• 2 Peter: Joseph Hill
• 1, 2, and 3 John: John Reynolds of Shrewsbury
• Jude: John Billingsley

Henry's method is to print a paragraph of Scripture and then expound it, drawing out observations in numbered order and turning each one toward the heart. He is not a critical commentator and does not pretend to be. He is a Puritan pastor teaching his people to read the Bible for themselves, and his exposition is full of the memorable, balanced sentences that preachers have been borrowing for three hundred years. His summary of Psalm 23 begins, "Many of David's psalms are full of complaints, but this is full of comforts, and the expressions of delight in God's great goodness and dependence upon him," and the exposition opens this way:

From three very comfortable premises David, in this psalm, draws three very comfortable conclusions, and teaches us to do so too. We are saved by hope, and that hope will not make us ashamed, because it is well grounded. It is the duty of Christians to encourage themselves in the Lord their God; and we are here directed to take that encouragement both from the relation wherein he stands to us and from the experience we have had of his goodness according to that relation.

Spurgeon's advice to his students was blunt: "Every minister ought to read it entirely and carefully through once at least."

This module, labeled MHWBC, is the complete, unabridged commentary. Because Henry expounds by paragraph, SwordSearcher attaches the exposition to the section it covers and gives every other verse in that section a link to it, so from any verse in the Bible you are one click from Henry's comments on it. Each chapter also opens with his summary of its contents. For a shorter version of the same work, see Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, which is also in the library. Readers who enjoy Henry will also want to know Matthew Poole, whom Spurgeon ranked beside him.