The real problem with M’Cheyne’s plan isn’t that it encourages more Bible reading, a faster pace, a more serious diligence, nor that it comes with a checklist. The real problem is that the reader lacks in himself a passion for the Savior he meets in the text.

New year (re?)newed disciplines. That’s my current Sunday school series at church. You can imagine how many other pastors and churches the new year’s new energies to urge our people once more toward spiritual disciplines. In fact, you need not imagine; you may read one such example from Jon Gemmell on the Bible reading plan from Robert Murray M’Cheyne here on substack.

Now, I should state up front the enormity of my own bias in examining M’Cheyne. I am currently working on a ThM thesis on the preaching methodology of M’Cheyne, and I am a committed and multi-year subscriber to the M’Cheyne reading plan (and no, I don’t think that has yet gained me any awestruck gasps!). Most importantly, my father-in-law, the man whom I most admire in this world, and whose love for the Scriptures I most seek to emulate, is the one who recommended the reading plan to me. So I have both an academic and personal interest in mounting a defense.

Let me also briefly say that I appreciate much of what Jon has written in his piece. In one place, he even appeals to M’Cheyne himself, proposing that he might have even agreed were he alive today to see the current state of the church, and I think he may just be right! So while I use the term “defense,” I hope you dear readers and my brother Jon understand it in a playful sense. Jon wants to see people reading their Bibles, and to that M’Cheyne (and I!) would give a hearty, “Amen!”

What is the M’Cheyne Plan?

Before looking specifically at Jon’s argument, it’s worth examining the M’Cheyne plan itself. M’Cheyne titled the plan “Daily Bread: Being a Calendar for Reading Through the Word of God in a Year,” and created the plan for his congregation in Dundee. In presenting it, he wrote a letter to introduce and explain the plan to them:

MY DEAR FLOCK,—The approach of another year stirs up within me new desires for your salvation, and for the growth of those of you who are saved. “God is my record how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.” What the coming year is to bring forth, who can tell? There is plainly a weight lying on the spirits of all good men, and a looking for some strange work of judgment coming upon this land. There is need now to ask that solemn question: “If in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?”

Those believers will stand firmest who have no dependence upon self or upon creatures, but upon Jehovah our Righteousness. We must be driven more to our Bibles, and to the mercy-seat, if we are to stand in the evil day. Then we shall be able to say, like David, “The proud have had me greatly in derision, yet have I not declined from thy law.” “Princes have persecuted me without a cause, but my heart standeth in awe of thy word.”

It has long been in my mind to prepare a scheme of Scripture reading, in which as many as were made willing by God might agree, so that the whole Bible might be read once by you in the year, and all might be feeding in the same portion of the green pasture at the same time.

Robert Murray McCheyne and Andrew A. Bonar, Memoir and Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray McCheyne (Edinburgh; London: Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier, 1894), 560–561; henceforth, MAR.

Here you see M’Cheyne’s intention with the plan was to pastorally unify the reading of the congregation in Dundee. This would aid his own ministry to them, as his awareness of their recent reading would inform cross-references and applications in his sermons (as he notes in the plan’s benefits; see below). Indeed, they all might be “feeding in the same portion of the green pasture at the same time.” The plan shines brightest when employed with others.

In considering how his congregation would be best served to read their Bibles, he chose a scheme of four readings: two family readings and two private readings. These family readings highlight his emphasis upon family worship, and how the plan was to aid the whole of one’s house, rather than consolidating Bible reading for oneself alone. The private readings balanced this emphasis, as he firmly believed that one must read the Bible for oneself before doing so to aid others. In a letter to William Chalmers Burns (the man who filled the pulpit in Dundee during M’Cheyne’s trip to Palestine), he exhorted him to “read the Bible for your own growth first, then for your people” (MAR, 180).

The plan itself will take a reader through the entire Bible in a year, including twice through the Psalms and twice through the New Testament. Notably, it is not intended to be “completed.” Many newcomers to the M’Cheyne plan find it intriguing that he begins the year in Ezra and Acts; but for those who spent the previous year in M’Cheyne’s plan, they simply continue on from December 31st’s readings of 2 Chronicles and John’s Gospel.

Was M’Cheyne Wrong?

Back to Jon, who provocatively (if not cheekily) asserts M’Cheyne was wrong. He asks:

[W]as Robert Murray McCheyne right? Is he not just setting people on a trajectory towards guilt-laden defeat? Is reading 4 chapters at break-neck speed doing anything for you except encouraging you to legalistically skim the surface? This cannot be the optimal way to engage with the Bible, can it? Isn’t it time someone just torpedoed this age old practice that has failed more people than it has helped?

After reading this, I sat up straight. I’ll admit even to being urged by temptation toward offense.

I have benefited immensely from M’Cheyne’s plan, never feeling guilt from using it.

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