In January 1996, Iain H. Murray gave an address at The Bethlehem Conference for Pastors (Minneappolis, U. S. A.) entitled ‘The Preacher and Books.’ The excerpt below is from a section in which Rev. Murray asks how a preacher is to determine which books (and particularly commentaries in this case) he should devote time to reading:<\/p>\n
Books which have little or no \u2018unction\u2019 about them are generally of little use to us as preachers.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Of course I do not state this as a universal rule. We do not expect to find unction in biblical dictionaries and encyclopedias, for example, yet they may be very helpful and valuable. But a truly good book usually has a sanctifying influence. It does more for us than give us information. We are stirred up, made prayerful and given an increased longing to be better Christians and better servants of Christ. It is quite clear that not a few of the most eminent preachers of the past used and recommended this \u2018unction test\u2019. Whitefield, for instance, applied it to Bunyan. He thought that Bunyan and the persecuted Puritans knew what it was to speak and write \u2018under the cross\u2019 and believed that \u2018the spirit of Christ and of glory\u2019 rested on them and their work:<\/p>\n They in an especial manner wrote and preached as men having authority. Though dead, by their writings they yet speak: a peculiar unction attends them to this very hour . . . without pretending to a spirit of prophecy, we may venture to affirm, that they will live and flourish, when more modern performances, of a contrary cast, notwithstanding their gaudy and tinsell trappings, will languish and die in the esteem of those whose understandings are opened to discern what comes nearest to the scripture standard.1<\/a><\/sup>The Works of George Whitefield<\/em>, vol. 4 (London, 1771), pp. 306\u20137.<\/span><\/p>\n Spurgeon applied the same test to commentaries. In the 1880s one of the most prestigious of all new works of exposition was The Pulpit Commentary which ran into a series of large volumes. These were generally orthodox in content but they did not satisfy Spurgeon, the preacher. When the second volume on John\u2019s Gospel appeared in 1888, with exposition by a Reverend Reynolds and homiletics by a Professor Croskery, Spurgeon had this to say in his review:<\/p>\n