The Voices
Matthew Henry
The Chester nonconformist who rose before dawn for ten years to write a whole-Bible commentary plain enough for a farming family to read at the table.
Short bio
Matthew Henry was born on October 18, 1662, at Broad Oak in Flintshire, on the Welsh border — a few months after the Act of Uniformity threw his father out of the Church of England. Philip Henry was one of roughly two thousand ministers ejected in 1662 for refusing to conform. He lost his living, kept preaching where he could, and taught his children at home. Matthew was a sickly boy who is said to have been reading Bible chapters aloud with comment at three years old. He grew up in a house where family worship happened twice a day and where nonconformity had a price attached to it. He studied under Thomas Doolittle at an academy for dissenters, then went to London in 1685 to read law at Gray's Inn — a sensible career for a man whose religion barred him from the universities. He gave it up. In 1687, at twenty-four, he was privately ordained and went to Chester as minister of a Presbyterian congregation. He stayed twenty-five years. He preached twice on Sunday, catechized the children, lectured on weeknights, visited constantly, and preached in the surrounding villages and in the county jail. The congregation grew to some hundreds of communicants and built a chapel in Crook Street. He began the commentary in November 1704. His method was ordinary and brutal: rise at four or five in the morning and write before the day's work, then take up the evening after it. He wrote for the family table — for a farmer reading aloud to his household, not for a scholar. The result is not technical. It is the text explained clause by clause and then pressed home, with a gift for the memorable line that has kept it quoted for three hundred years. In 1712 he moved, reluctantly, to a congregation at Mare Street, Hackney, in London. On June 22, 1714, riding back toward Hackney after preaching in Chester, he was thrown from his horse near Nantwich. He died that night at Tarporley, aged fifty-one. He had finished through the end of Acts. Thirteen fellow ministers completed Romans through Revelation from his notes and papers, and the whole *Exposition of the Old and New Testaments* was published in six volumes. It has never gone out of print. Its readers make the case for it better than any summary can. George Whitefield read it through four times, the last time on his knees. Spurgeon told his students in *Commenting and Commentaries* that every minister ought to read it entirely and carefully through at least once. John Wesley abridged it for his people. It sits on more shelves, in more languages, than any other commentary written in English. Sources: Matthew Henry, *An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments*; J. B. Williams, *Memoirs of the Life, Character and Writings of the Rev. Matthew Henry*; C. H. Spurgeon, *Commenting and Commentaries*; *Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry*, ed. Matthew Henry Lee.
Notable works
2 listed
| Title | Year | Description |
|---|---|---|
| An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments | 1710 | — |
| Directions for Daily Communion with God | 1712 | — |
Where to find them
Their words on MannaFest
14,170 quotes across 66 books
Where this voice speaks on the site — each quote links to the verse it was chosen for.
“He that thought he should have made his son a gentleman leaves him a beggar; he begets a son, and brings him up in the prospect of an estate, but, when he dies, leaves it under a charge of debt as much as it is worth, so that there is nothing in his hand. This…”
“But sad is our case if the soul return as it came, for we were born in sin, and if we die in sin, unsanctified, we had better never have been born; and that seems to be the case of the worldling here spoken of, for he is said to return in all points as he came…”
“And therefore he recommends to us the comfortable use of that which God has given us, with an eye to him that is the giver, as the best way both to answer the end of our having it and to obviate the mischiefs that commonly attend great estates,”
“This is our part of our worldly possession. God must have his part, the poor theirs, and our families theirs, but this is ours; it is all that falls to our lot out of them. (3.) That a heart to do thus is such a gift of God's grace as crowns all the gifts of h…”
“David, when he was perplexed, went into the sanctuary of God, Ps. lxxiii. Let our disappointments in the creature turn our eyes to the Creator; let us have recourse to the word of God's grace and consult that, to the throne of his grace and solicit that. In th…”
“If he does not answer all his desires and expectations, in the letter of them, yet he answers them with that which is more than equivalent, in the joy of his heart. A cheerful spirit is a great blessing; it makes the yoke of our employments easy and the burden…”
“As it is with the blood in the natural body, so it is with the wealth of the body politic, if, instead of circulating, it stagnates, it will be of ill consequence.”
“(3.) Yet they are given to many that do not make a good use of them, to many to whom God does not give wisdom and grace to take the comfort of them and serve God with them. The gifts of common providence are bestowed on many to whom are denied the gifts of a s…”
“He describes his folly in not taking the comfort of it; he has no power to eat of it, lets strangers devour it, is never filled with good, and at last has no burial,”
“He is still unsatisfied and uneasy. His hands are filled with riches, his barns filled, and his bags filled, but his soul is not filled with good, no, not with that good, for it is still craving more.”
“The preference which the preacher gives to an untimely birth before him: An untimely birth, a child that is carried from the womb to the grave, is better than he. Better is the fruit that drops from the tree before it is ripe than that which is left to hang on…”
“He that lives a thousand years goes to the same place with the child that does not live an hour, ch. iii. The grave is the place we shall all meet in. Whatever differences there may be in men's condition in this world, they must all die, are all under the same…”
“Those that have ever so much are still craving; let a man labour ever so much for his mouth, yet the appetite is not filled. Natural desires are still returning, still pressing; a man may be feasted to-day and yet hungry to-morrow. Worldly sinful desires are i…”
“Why, he is better beloved and more respected among his neighbours, and has a better interest than many a rich man that is griping and haughty. Why he has as much of the comfort of this life, has food and raiment, and is therewith content, and so is as truly ri…”
“This wandering of the desire is vanity and vexation of spirit. It is vanity at the best; if what is desired, be obtained, it proves not what we promised ourselves from it, but commonly the wandering desire is crossed and disappointed, and then it turns to vexa…”
“The soul is not filled, so the word is. When God gave Israel their request he sent leanness into their souls, Ps. cvi. He was a fool who, when his barns were full, said, Soul, take thine ease.”
“He concludes this discourse of the vanity of the creature with this plain inference from the whole, That it is folly to think of making up a happiness for ourselves in the things of this world,”
“The uses to be gathered from the house of mourning are, (1.) By way of information: That is the end of all men. It is the end of man as to this world, a final period to his state here; he shall return no more to his house. It is the end of all men; all have si…”
“The common proverb says, "An ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow;" but the preacher teaches us a contrary lesson: Sorrow is better than laughter, more agreeable to our present state, where we are daily sinning and suffering ourselves, more or less, and d…”
“"When the world smiles, rejoice in God, and praise him, and let the joy of the Lord be thy strength. " [2.] In a day of adversity (and that is but a day too) consider. Times of affliction are proper times for consideration, then God calls to consider ( Hag. i.…”
“There is a judgment to come, which will rectify this seeming irregularity, to the glory of God and the full satisfaction of all his people, and we must wait with patience till then. Wisdom will be of use both for caution to saints in their way, and for a check…”
“Wisdom will teach us how to conduct ourselves in reference to the sins and offences of others, which commonly contribute more than any thing else to the disturbance of our repose, which contract both guilt and grief. (1.) Wisdom teaches us not to expect that t…”
“In short, the best way to save ourselves from the vexation which the vanity of the world creates us is to keep our temper and to maintain a strict government of our passions. He laments his own iniquity, as that which was more vexatious than any of these vanit…”
“Those that are truly wise and good are taken under God's protection, and are safer there than if ten of the mightiest men in the city, men of the greatest power and interest, should undertake to secure them, and become their patrons.”
“He is here, more than any where in all this book, putting on the habit of a penitent. He reviews what he had been discoursing of already, and tells us that what he had said was what he knew and was well assured of, and what he resolved to stand by: All this ha…”