I think this must suffice to represent the men of the Puritanic period, who added to their profound theology and varied learning a zeal to be understood, and a skill in setting forth truth by the help of everyday occurrences. The age which followed them was barren of spiritual life, and was afflicted by a race of rhetorical divines, whose words had little connection with the Word of life. The scanty thought of the Queen Anne dignitaries needed no aid of metaphor or parable: there was nothing to explain to the people; the utmost endeavor of these divines was to hide the nakedness of their discourses with the fig-leaves of Latinized verbiage. Living preaching was gone, spiritual life was gone, and consequently a pulpit was set up which had no voice for the common people; no voice, indeed, for anybody except the mere formalist, who is content if decorum be observed and respectability maintained. Of course, our notion of making truth clear by stories did not suit the dignified death of the period, and it was only when the dry bones began to be stirred that the popular method was again brought to the front.
The illustrious George Whitefield stands, with Wesley, at the head of that noble army who led the Revival of the last century. It is not at this present any part of my plan to speak of his matchless eloquence, unquenchable earnestness, and incessant labor; but it is quite according to the run of my lecture to remind you of his own saying, “I use market language.” He employed pure, good, flowing English; but he was as simple as if he spoke to children. Although by no means abounding in illustration, yet he always employed it when needed, and he narrated incidents with great power of action and emphasis. His stories were so told that they thrilled the people: they saw as well as heard, for each word had its proper gesture. One reason why he could be understood at so great a distance was the fact that the eye helped the ear. As specimens of his anecdotes I have selected two, which follow:
The Two Chaplains
You cannot do without the grace of God when you come to die. There was a nobleman that kept a deistical chaplain and his lady a Christian one. When he was dying he says to his chaplain, “I liked you very well when I was in health, but it is my lady’s chaplain I must have when I am sick.”
Never Satisfied
My dear hearers, there is not a single soul of you all that is satisfied in your station. Is not the language of your hearts when apprentices. We think we shall do very well when journeymen; when journeymen, that we shall do very well when masters; when single, that we shall do well when married? And, to be sure, you think you shall do well when you keep a carriage. I have heard of one who began low. He first wanted a house; then, says he, “I want two, then four, then six.” And when he had them he said, “I think I want nothing else.” “Yes,” says his friend, “you will soon want another thing; that is a hearse-and-six to carry you to your grave.” And that made him tremble.
Fearing that the quotation of any more examples might prove tedious, I would only remind you that such men as Berridge, Rowland Hill, Matthew Wilks, Christmas Evans, William Jay, and others who have but lately departed from us, owed much of their attractiveness to the way in which they aroused their audiences, and flashed truth into their faces by well-chosen anecdotes. Time calls upon me to have done, and how can I come to a better close than by mentioning one living man, who, above all others, has in two continents stirred the masses of the people? I refer to D. L. Moody. This admirable brother has a great aversion to the printing of his sermons; and well he may have, for he is incessantly preaching, and has no time allowed him for the preparation of fresh discourses; and therefore it would be great unwisdom on his part to print at once those addresses with which he is working through a campaign. We hope, however, that when he has done with a sermon he will never suffer it to die out, but give it to the church and to the world through the press. Our esteemed brother has a lively, telling style, and he thinks it wise frequently to fasten a nail with the hammer of anecdote. Here are three extracts from the little book entitled Arrows and Anecdotes by D. L. Moody.
The Idiot’s Mother
I know a mother who has an idiot child. For it she gave up all society—almost everything—and devoted her whole life to it. “And now,” said she, “for fourteen years I have tended it and loved it, and it does not even know me. Oh, it is breaking my heart!” Oh, how the Lord must say this of hundreds here! Jesus comes here, and goes from seat to seat asking if there is a place for him. Oh, will not some of you take him into your hearts?
Surgeon and Patient
When I was in Belfast I knew a doctor who had a friend, a leading surgeon there, and he told me that the surgeon’s custom was, before performing any operation, to say to
