Matthew Henry is known worldwide in our time as the author of his famous commentary on the Scriptures. But far less known in our day is the fact that Henry was an emblem of faithful fatherhood during his lifetime. Henry took his duties as a father seriously -- and it showed. One observer noted that the Henry household was like unto the ''gates of heaven'' where he and his wife governed all family life by the Word of God. As an English non-conformist pastor, Henry carried his passion for family discipleship into the pulpit. On April 16, 1704, he preached an abundantly practical sermon entitled, ''A Church in the House, A Sermon Concerning Family-Religion, '' as an encouragement to fathers to develop the spiritual life of their families in their homes. Henry exhorted that ''every house should be a little church.'' His point was not that the home should replace the church, but that the home should become a fountain of blessing for both the local church and the community at large.
Henry's well-known Exposition of the Old and New Testaments (1708-1710) is a commentary of a practical and devotional rather than of a critical kind, covering the whole of the Old Testament, and the Gospels and Acts in the New Testament. After the author's death, the work was finished by a number of ministers, and edited by George Burder and John Hughes in 1811. Not a work of textual criticism, its attempt at good sense, discrimination, its high moral tone and simple piety with practical application, combined with the well-sustained flow of its English style, made it one of the most popular works of its type. Matthew Henry's six volume Complete Commentary, originally published in 1706, provides an exhaustive verse by verse study of the Bible. His commentaries are still in use to this day.
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