William Garden Blaikie Books: A Guide to All 5 and Where to Start
CommentaryBible StudyBiographyChurch History
William Garden Blaikie (1820–1899) was a Free Church of Scotland pastor and a professor at New College, Edinburgh. He wrote a good deal, from Bible histories for young people to a famous life of David Livingstone. TheWay Library has five of his books, all free to read: three volumes of The Expositor's Bible, on Joshua, First Samuel and Second Samuel, his short biography of Thomas Chalmers, and Saving Knowledge, a plain guide to the way of salvation that he wrote with Thomas Guthrie. For his life story, see who was William Garden Blaikie.
This guide tells you what's in each one and where to begin.
Where to start
Start with The First Book of Samuel. It has the best variety of Blaikie's gifts: warm chapters on Hannah's prayer, sober ones on Saul's slow ruin, and a beautiful chapter on David and Jonathan. Then go straight on to Second Samuel, which finishes the story of David.
Choose by what you need:
- To study or teach the life of David: First and Second Samuel, read in order.
- To study the conquest of Canaan: Joshua.
- For Scottish church history or a short Christian biography: Thomas Chalmers.
- For a clear explanation of the gospel, or a book to give a young person: Saving Knowledge.
How the Expositor's Bible volumes work
The Expositor's Bible was a series of commentaries for preachers and general readers, published in the late 1800s, with a different scholar on each book of the Bible. Alexander Maclaren wrote the Psalms, Marcus Dods wrote Genesis, and Blaikie wrote Joshua and both books of Samuel.
These aren't verse-by-verse notes. Each chapter takes a passage, tells the story clearly, deals briefly with any hard question, and then draws out the lessons for faith and conduct. They read like a set of sermons that follow the Bible in order. You can read them straight through, or turn to the chapter on the passage you're studying.
All the prayer that God answers is prayer that God has inspired.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, National Deliverance—the Philistines Subdued
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel
Thirty-six chapters that follow First Samuel from Hannah's trouble to Saul's death on Mount Gilboa. Blaikie sees Samuel as the hinge of Israel's history:
Samuel was the last of the judges, and in a sense the first of the prophets.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, Hannah’s Trial and Trust
The first chapters are about prayer: Hannah pouring out her soul at Shiloh, and later Samuel praying for Israel at Mizpeh. A long middle section traces Saul, a man with every advantage who would not let God's will rule him. The last third follows young David, from Goliath through his years as a fugitive. The chapter on David and Jonathan is one of the best things Blaikie wrote, and the chapters on Samuel's call and Saul's final rejection are worth reading on their own.
Read The First Book of Samuel.
The Expositor's Bible: The Second Book of Samuel
Thirty-three chapters on the reign of David. The first part shows David's rise: his lament for Saul and Jonathan, the reign at Hebron, the capture of Jerusalem, the bringing up of the ark and God's covenant promise to his house. Chapters on his kindness to Mephibosheth and to Hanun show his generous heart.
Then comes the turning point: David and Uriah, Nathan's rebuke and David's penitence and chastisement, where Blaikie walks through Psalm 51. The rest traces the long sorrow in David's family: Amnon, Absalom's revolt, the flight from Jerusalem, Absalom's death and David's grief. A closing chapter reviews both books of Samuel together.
Blaikie is honest about David's sin and tender about his repentance. On how sin blinds us, he wrote:
Nothing blinds men so much to the real character of a sin as the fact that it is their own.
The Expositor's Bible: The Second Book of Samuel, David and Nathan
Read The Second Book of Samuel.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua
Thirty-three chapters that follow Joshua from his early years as Moses' servant to his last charge to Israel. Blaikie covers the crossing of the Jordan, Jericho, Rahab, Achan's hidden sin, the trick of the Gibeonites and the great battles. Unlike many writers, he doesn't skip the chapters on dividing the land. He finds gold in them: the faith of Caleb, the cities of refuge as a picture of Christ, and God's faithfulness to every promise.
A theme that runs through the whole book is partnership with God. God gives the land, but Israel has to go in and take it:
It is God’s part to give orders, it is your part to execute them, and it is God’s part to strengthen you so to do.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, Joshua's Call
Good chapters to start with are Achan's Trespass, The Inheritance of Caleb, The Cities of Refuge and No Failure of God's Promise, which has wise counsel on unanswered prayer.
Thomas Chalmers
A short life of Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), written in 1896 for the Famous Scots Series. Blaikie had studied under Chalmers, worked on his plans for parish care of the poor, and later held one of the theology chairs at New College that replaced Chalmers's own, so he writes as a grateful pupil.
The book follows Chalmers in six stages: his boyhood in Anstruther and student years; the country parish of Kilmany, where the brilliant young minister who loved mathematics was converted; his famous Glasgow ministry and his scheme to care for the poor of St. John's parish without a poor-rate; his professorships at St. Andrews and Edinburgh; and his leadership of the Free Church from the Disruption of 1843 to his death. Blaikie describes the change at Kilmany like this:
The will of God now became an imperative rule to him, and every energy was bent towards bringing his own heart and life into conformity to it.
Thomas Chalmers
It reads in an evening or two. For more on Chalmers and his own writings, see who was Thomas Chalmers and our guide to Thomas Chalmers' books.
Saving Knowledge: Addressed to Young Men
A short book written by Blaikie and his fellow Free Church minister Thomas Guthrie, who divided the chapters between them. It was published in 1870 for young men, and it sets out the way of salvation in order: God's verdict on man and His sentence on sin, the evil of sin, man's inability to save himself, God's gift of His Son, the Saviour's person and work, justification, faith, the new life of the Spirit, holiness, and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Each chapter ends with a direct appeal to the reader.
The book opens by calling Christianity "a grand scheme of restoration," not an ornament for the comfortable. The chapter on faith is a fine short explanation of how faith joins a sinner to Christ:
It is obvious at a glance that Faith is the pivot on which the whole system of divine truth turns.
Saving Knowledge: Addressed to Young Men, Faith
A note on this edition: the chapter titles in the reader's table of contents are out of step in the first few chapters. The first section holds God's Verdict on Man, and sections two to five each carry the title of the chapter before them, so the section headed "Man's Inability to Save Himself" is really God's Gift to Man. From The Saviour's Person on, the titles are right. The text has some scattered misread words from the original scan.
Why read Blaikie today
Blaikie is a steady, practical guide. He trusts the Bible's history, he takes sin seriously, and he always points to the grace of God in Christ. His Samuel volumes in particular are among the most helpful older books on the life of David. Begin with First Samuel, and keep our collection of William Garden Blaikie quotes nearby for his best lines. All five books are on the William Garden Blaikie author page.