Daily Inspiration Quote by Matthew Henry

The line is almost indecently sensory for a clergyman: faith rendered as taste, not thesis. Henry’s image works because it smuggles devotion past the intellect and straight into appetite. “Rolls it under his tongue” is slow, private, bodily; it’s what you do with something you don’t want to swallow too quickly because the savor is the point. In a Protestant culture that often prized discipline and doctrinal clarity, Henry gives the reader permission to linger. The Christian life here isn’t just obedience; it’s relish.

The specific intent is pastoral and diagnostic. Henry is sketching a person who doesn’t treat Scripture (or a spiritual truth) as information to file away or ammunition for argument, but as something to be enjoyed and internalized. The “sweet morsel” is a compact theology: God’s promises are not merely true, they are desirable. It’s also a gentle rebuke to the spiritually impatient - the kind of believer who “gets through” a passage and moves on. Henry is praising meditative reading, the old practice of chewing the Word until it becomes part of you.

Subtextually, the metaphor implies temptation’s twin: if the mouth can indulge gossip, slander, or vanity, it can also train itself toward holiness. Pleasure isn’t the enemy; misdirected pleasure is. Context matters: Henry’s era loved biblical language that collapses the gap between text and body (“Taste and see…”). His choice of the tongue turns devotion into a kind of cultivated craving - not ecstatic spectacle, but disciplined delight.