V. It will be to your advantage to pray for us.—1. It will prepare your minds for hearing us. 2. This will make us useful to you.

VI. Your prayers will make us more useful to others.

Ver. 27. The Public Reading of the Scriptures.

I. To debar the Lord’s people from acquainting themselves with Scripture is a great sin.—Scripture should be translated into the native tongue of every nation where Christ has a Church, that people may read it, hear it, and be acquainted with it. They ought diligently to improve all helps to acquaint them with the mind of God revealed in Scripture and look upon their doing so as a duty of greatest importance and weight.

II. Ministers and Church guides should see that the people of their charge be acquainted with Scripture.—Should invite them to read it in secret and in their families, and use their influence that children of both sexes be trained up at schools to read the Lord’s words distinctly in their own native language.

III. Scripture should be publicly read to God’s people assembled together for His worship.—Even though not immediately expounded and applied, the reading of God’s Word allows it to speak for itself and impress its own Divine authority.—Fergusson.


Transcriber’s Notes

THE SECOND EPISTLE