Anecdotes are useful, also, because they often appeal very forcibly to human nature. In order to rebuke those who profane the Sabbath, tell the story of the gentleman who had seven sovereigns, and who met with a poor fellow, to whom he gave six out of the seven, and then the wicked wretch turned round and robbed him of the seventh. How clearly that sets forth the ingratitude of our sinful race in depriving God of that one day out of the seven which he has set apart for his own service! This story appeals to nature, too. Two or three boys come round one of their companions, and they say to him, “Let us go and get some cherries out of your father’s garden.” “No,” he replies, “I cannot steal, and my father does not wish those cherries to be picked.” “Oh, but then your father is so kind, and he never beats you!” “Ah, I know that is true!” answers the boy, “and that is the very reason why I would not steal his cherries.” This would show that the grace and goodness of God do not lead his children to licentiousness; but, on the contrary, they restrain them from sin. This story, also, appeals to human nature, and shows that the fathers of the church are not always to be depended upon as fountains of authority. A nobleman had heard of a certain very old man, who lived in a village, and he sought out and found him, and ascertained that he was seventy years of age. He was talking with him, supposing him to be the oldest inhabitant, when the man said, “Oh, no, sir, I am not the oldest; I am not the father of the village; there is an older one—my father—who is still alive.” So, I have heard of some who have said that they turned away from “the fathers” of the church to the very old fathers, that is, away from what are commonly called “the patristic fathers,” back to the apostles, who are the true fathers and grandfathers of the Christian Church.
Sometimes anecdotes have force in them on account of their appealing to the sense of the ludicrous. Of course, I must be very careful here, for it is a sort of tradition of the fathers that it is wrong to laugh on Sundays. The eleventh commandment is, that we are to love one another, and then, according to some people, the twelfth is, “Thou shalt pull a long face on Sunday.” I must confess that I would rather hear people laugh than I would see them asleep in the house of God; and I would rather get the truth into them through the medium of ridicule than I would have the truth neglected, or leave the people to perish through lack of reception of the truth. I do believe in my heart that there may be as much holiness in a laugh as in a cry; and that, sometimes, to laugh is the better thing of the two, for I may weep, and be murmuring, and repining, and thinking all sorts of bitter thoughts against God; while, at another time, I may laugh the laugh of sarcasm against sin, and so evince a holy earnestness in the defense of the truth. I do not know why ridicule is to be given up to Satan as a weapon to be used against us, and not to be employed by us as a weapon against him. I will venture to affirm that the Reformation owed almost as much to the sense of the ridiculous in human nature as to anything else, and that those humorous squibs and caricatures that were issued by the friends of Luther, did more to open the eyes of Germany to the abominations of the priesthood than the more solid and ponderous arguments against Romanism. I know no reason why we should not, on suitable occasions, try the same style of reasoning. “It is a dangerous weapon,” it will be said, “and many men will cut their fingers with it.” Well, that is their own lookout; but I do not know why we should be so particular about their cutting their fingers, if they can, at the same time, cut the throat of sin, and do serious damage to the great adversary of souls.
Here is a story that I should not mind telling on a Sunday for the benefit of certain people who are good at hearing sermons and attending prayer-meetings, but who are very bad hands at business. They never work on Sundays because they never work on any day of the week; they forget that part of the commandment which says, “Six days shalt thou labor,” which is just as binding as the other part, “The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.” To these people who never labor because they are so heavenly-minded, I would tell the story of a certain monk, who entered a monastery, but who would not work in the fields, or the garden, or at making clothes, or anything else, because, as he told the superior, he was a spiritually-minded monk. He wondered, when the dinner-hour approached, that there came to him no summons from the refectory. So he went down to the prior, and said, “Don’t the brethren eat here? Are you not going to have any dinner?” The prior said, “We do, because we are carnal; but you are so spiritual that you do not work, and therefore you do not require to eat; that is why we did not call you. The law of this monastery is, that if any man will not work, neither shall he eat.”
That is a good story of the boy in Italy who had his Testament seized, and who said to the gendarme, “Why do you seize this book? Is it a bad book?” “Yes,” was the answer. “Are you
