While the world knows Matthew Henry best for his time-enduring
Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, the cultivation of personal
piety in himself and others was the great business of his practical
life; and his treatises on the godly life, while little known today, are
among the finest ever written. Rich in and alert to the things of the
spirit, they reveal, as so impressively shown in this volume, a
spiritual mind of preeminent degree in the full and deliberate worship
of God. The author here pleads with us to avail ourselves of the
""ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,"" and to apply this precious and
comely grace in all our contacts in everyday living. No message could be
more practical or fitting for this age, when the world, more than ever,
is too much with us. This is a deep and tender, altogether winsome plea.
Would you know the nature, excellence, and application of this meekness
and quietness? Come then with the author to Him who said, "". . . learn
of me, for I am meek and lowly."" And all the world will see and know
that we have been with Jesus. Living and dying, let us be found among
the ""quiet in the land."" We all wish to see quiet families, and quiet
churches, and quiet neighborhoods, and quiet nations; and it will be so
if there be quiet hearts; and not otherwise. Matthew Henry (1662-1714)
was an English nonconformist clergyman.
