The Art of Illustration

have sometimes told anecdotes in the pulpit, and very delicate and particular people have expressed their regret and horror that I should say such things; but when I have found that God has blessed some of the illustrations I have used, I have often thought of the story of the man with a halberd, who was attacked by a nobleman’s dog, and, of course, in defending himself, he killed the animal. The nobleman was very angry, and asked the man how he dared to kill the dog; and the man replied that if he had not killed it the dog would have bitten him and torn him in pieces. “Well,” said the nobleman, “but you should not have struck it on the head with the halberd; why did you not hit it with the handle?” “My lord,” answered the man, “so I would if it had tried to bite me with its tail.” So, when I have to deal with sin, some people say, “Why don’t you address it delicately? Why don’t you speak to it in courtly language?” And I answer, “So I would if it would bite me with its tail; but as long as ever I find that it deals roughly with me, I will deal roughly with it; and any kind of weapon that will help to slay the monster, I shall not find unfitted to my hand.”

We cannot afford in these days to lose any opportunity of getting hold of the public ear. We must use every occasion that comes in our way, and every tool that is likely to help us in our work; and we must rouse up all our faculties, and put forth all our energies, if that by any means we may get the people to heed that which they are so slow to regard, the great story of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. We shall need to read much, and to study hard, or else we shall not be able to influence our day and generation for good. I believe that the greatest industry is necessary to make a thoroughly efficient preacher, and the best natural ability, too; and it is my firm conviction that, when you have the best natural ability, you must supplement it with the greatest imaginable industry, if you are really to do much service for God among this crooked and perverse generation.

The fool in Scotland who got into the pulpit before the preacher arrived was requested by the minister to come down. “Nay, nay,” answered the man, “you come up, too, for it will take both of us to move this stiff-necked generation.” It will certainly take all the wisdom that we can obtain to move the people among whom our lot is cast; and if we do not use every lawful means of interesting the minds of our hearers, we shall find that they will be like a certain other congregation, in which the people were all asleep except one poor idiot. The minister woke them up, and tried to reprove them by saying, “There, you were all asleep except poor Jock the idiot;” but his rebuke was cut short by Jock, who exclaimed, “And if I had not been an idiot, I should have been asleep too.”

I will leave the moral of that well-known story to speak for itself, and will pass on to my second point, which is, that the use of anecdotes and illustrations renders our preaching lifelike and vivid. This is a most important matter. Of all things that we have to avoid, one of the most essential is that of giving our people the idea, when we are preaching, that we are acting a part. Everything theatrical in the pulpit, either in tone, manner, or anything else, I loathe from my very soul. Just go into the pulpit and talk to the people as you would in the kitchen, or the drawing-room, and say what you have to tell them in your ordinary tone of voice. Let me conjure you, by everything that is good, to throw away all stilted styles of speech, and anything approaching affectation. Nothing can succeed with the masses except naturalness and simplicity. Why, some ministers cannot even give out a hymn in a natural manner! “Let us sing to the praise and glory of God” (spoken in the tone that is sometimes heard in churches or chapels)⁠—who would ever think of speaking like that at the tea-table? “I shall be greatly obliged if you will kindly give me another cup of tea” (spoken in the same unnatural way)⁠—you would never think of giving any tea to a man who talked like that; and if we preach in that stupid style, the people will not believe what we say; they will think it is our business, our occupation, and that we are doing the whole thing in a professional manner. We must shake off professionalism of every kind, as Paul shook off the viper into the fire; and we must speak as God has ordained that we should speak, and not by any strange, out-of-the-way, newfangled method of pulpit oratory.

Our Lord’s teaching was amazingly lifelike and vivid; it was the setting out of truth before the eye, not as a flat picture, but as in a stereoscope, making it stand up, with all its lines and angles of beauty in lifelike reality. That was a fine living sermon when he took a little child, and set him in the midst of the disciples; and that was another powerful discourse when he preached about abstaining from carking cares, and stooped down and plucked a lily (as I suppose he did) and said, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.” I can readily suppose that some ravens were flying just over his head, and that he pointed to them, and said, “Consider the ravens; for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and