THE topical method of Bible study means a study of the Bible by subjects. To engage in this method you will need the following books:
(1) Either Strong's or Young's Concordance; (2) Smith's Bible Dictionary; (3) some topical text-book, Johnson's for instance.
By this method of study, you will learn how to make your own Bible readings; how to prepare truth fresh from the Bible to teach to others. Take some subject such as Faith, Grace, Truth, Life, or Death and look them up in these reference books, getting all your scriptures together, arranging them, classifying them, rearranging them, grouping them, and regrouping them, and so after a few hours' study of this kind, you will have a splendid Bible reading, prepared on the subject in hand. Save it. Some time when you are re-studying that same subject, revise it, improve it, and thus preserve the fruits of your Bible studies. They will be useful to you some day when you wish to refer to them.
Let us take for instance, the subject of Death, and associated with death, would be "die," "dead," "grave," etc. Turning to our concordance, we gather an interesting collection of scriptures; then we can arrange into a Bible-reading. I will select some on the subject of death, and while space will not permit them to be quoted here, I will give references, and the reader can group them together into a Bible-reading.
Each Sabbath afternoon, as you take up your Bible to study, instead of reading it merely in a desultory sort of fashion, take pencil and paper, and dig out truth on some special subject. Here is a list of subjects that might be studied to great profit; and you can think of many more:
Conversion, Repentance, Justification, Forgiveness, Grace, Holy Spirit, End of the World, Angels, Prayer, the Overcomer, etc.
After having studied out one of these subjects in this way, it will be impressed upon your mind, so as always to be available for use when dealing with others, and unfolding the Bible to those who are searching for truth.
To do original study along this line, do not search for texts to prove merely points you already have in mind, but get together all you can in the Bible on that subject; then, by classifying, and arranging and studying them, you will learn new truths which the Bible teaches on that topic, and new views will come to you of the old truths. In this way you will be able to find out more and more what the Bible teaches.