Care in Preparing this Work.

In preparing this work there has been no sparing of time, labor, or expense. While we have carefully avoided all conceits, quibblings, and useless refinements, and have studied to present only that which was useful, helpful, and practical, we have endeavored to put into the work the results of careful investigation and studious research. Besides theological treatises and works of reference, a full line of commentaries has been used. In some few cases, where the sections have been simple, from thirty to fifty commentaries have been consulted; but in the vast majority of sections between eighty and one hundred commentaries have been searched and sifted. To these painstaking labors of the junior editor, there has been added the results of the wider researches of the senior editor, effected during a half century of continuous Bible study and teaching. We have not aimed to produce a commentary for the textual critic, the theologian, or the professor; but a plain and simple work for all reader's of God's word.