ontinual
_dropping through_ of water from the roof, which makes every thing
within uncomfortable.

Our Lord's parable of the ten virgins (Matt. 25:1-13) requires for its
illustration a knowledge of the oriental customs connected with
marriage: the transaction recorded by Luke, where a woman came behind
Jesus as he reclined at the table, washed his feet with her tears, and
wiped them with her hair (Luke 7:37, 38), and the position of John when
at the last supper he leaned on Jesus' bosom (John 13:23, 25), cannot be
made intelligible without a knowledge of the reclining posture in which
meals were then taken: one familiar only with the use of glass or
earthen bottles cannot comprehend the force of our Lord's maxim
respecting the necessity of putting new wine into new bottles (Matt.
9:17), till he is informed that oriental bottles are made of leather. We
might go on multiplying illustrations indefinitely, but the above must
suffice. We may affirm, without fear of contradiction, that the study of
the Holy Scriptures has contributed more than all other causes to the
diffusion among the masses of the community of a knowledge of ancient
history and antiquities. To say that a congregation has a thorough
knowledge of the Bible is equivalent to affirming that it has an
enlarged acquaintance with the ancient world in its spirit as well as in
its outward institutions and forms.

7. That the interpreter may make a wise and effective use of all the
helps that have been enumerated, he needs especially that sound and
practical judgment which is called in ordinary discourse _good sense_.
Investigations respecting the meaning of terms, inquiries concerning the
scope, reasonings from the context, the comparison of parallel passages,
the use of ancient history, chronology, and archaeology--that any one or
all of these processes combined may lead to valuable results they must
be under the guidance of that sound judgment and practical tact by which
the interpreter is enabled to seize the true meaning of his author and
unfold it with accuracy, or is at least kept from far-fetched and
fanciful expositions where the author's real sense is involved in
obscurity.

(1.) This quality of sound judgment will preserve the interpreter from
_inept_ expositions for which a plausible reason many be assigned.

Thus, when the Saviour says to Martha, who "was cumbered about much
serving:" "One thing is needful," these words have been interpreted to
mean