06.12. Chapter 12: The Sermon Illustration

Chapter 12 THE SERMON ILLUSTRATION THE ILLUSTRATION is so important an element in sermonizing as to deserve separate, and somewhat full, treatment. There are few men whose choice of words is so picturesque as to make possible effective speech apart from illustration. This being true, the accumulation or gathering of illustrations becomes a minister’s obligation, if not indeed a primary element in his preparation. On the method of gathering and arrangement, subject to call, of illustration, we refer the reader to our volume on Pastoral Problems and the chapter on “Conserving Material for Sermonizing.”

However, in discussing this fundamental of sermonizing I propound three questions: (1) What is an Illustration? (2) What are its Sources? (3) What are its Uses?

WHAT IS AN ILLUSTRATION? The illustration defined!

It would be a bit difficult to bethink and state a better definition than is given in the volume On The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons by John A. Broadus, my own instructor in homiletics in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“To illustrate, according to etymology, is to throw light (or lustre) upon a subject.”

Lucidity is an absolute necessity in preaching. When people say of a preacher that he is dull and uninteresting, they mean to say that his expressions are not luminous; and so, are not illuminating. There are rare men whose very choice of words is so succinct and yet adequate that illustration is not absolutely needful to their style. Among such I have already mentioned O. P. Gifford, the notable Baptist preacher of yesterday, as an example; and of the radio commentators of the day, Upton Close is another master of diction, whose sentences are of themselves sufficiently scintillating. However, since such speakers are exceptional, the use of illustrations is essential to the success of ninety-nine out of a hundred ministers. The illustration appreciated! The average audience, if it grows a bit listless under the sound of a sermon, is quickened in interest the moment an illustration is introduced; and, since there is no possibility of producing results in the minds and hearts of men apart from interest, the employment of the illustration is a prime element of success. As fox hunters thrill to the voice of hounds when by their louder and more rapid barking they indicate that the trail has become fresher and hotter, so an audience responds to a vivid illustration of truth with awakened interest. Its use, therefore, is not only in clarifying thought but in engaging attention. The illustration demanded!

One of the finest sentences to be found in the Broadus volume is: “Illustration is a psychological necessity.”

There are said to be exceptions to all rules, but we doubt that this statement admits of any exception. An observant writer says of Mr. Spurgeon’s tabernacle services that commonly dispensed with choir, quartettes, solos and other musical attraction, “the sacred program was not destitute of music on that account, since Mr. Spurgeon’s voice was in itself so charmingly musical as to provide a substitute.” So in those instances where ministers are popular without the employment of illustrations, we are persuaded that their words are so picturesque and their sentences so scintillating as to become substitutes. So the statement stands: “The illustration is a psychological necessity!”

WHAT ARE THE SOURCES?

Here we find a field that is practically illimitable. The utmost one can do, therefore, is to select and present certain sources of supreme importance. Among the many, five are of such magnitude that to ignore any one of them would appear unpardonable.

Observation is a prolific source of illustration! In this matter our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was a master. His parables were commonly the products of observation. When he wanted to show the fate of truth as dispensed to the public, he did it by the parable of the sower—an observation in agriculture (Matthew 13:3-9). When he wanted to convict men of barrenness in spirituality, he accomplished it by the parable of a fruitless fig tree, which after pruning, fertilizing and cultivating, if it still failed, was to be cut down. (Luke 13:6-9).

Since the world is large and the ways of men varied and even devious, there is every existing opportunity of observation, deducing illustration from their conduct. A minister could do no better than to study and copy the Christ in the matter.

History is an inexhaustible fountain! When I speak of history, I refer to both the secular and the sacred—the uninspired records of something like seven thousand years, and the inspired record known as the Bible, covering a kindred period. When one attempts to estimate interesting incidents of life, faithfully recorded in the realm of human behavior, he realizes we have employed the word “inexhaustible” with occasion. Thousands of orators through this period of millenniums have recalled these incidents and employed them to point truth, and yet have scarcely touched the surface of this unfathomable fountain. To give concrete instances, let me employ just a few effective illustrations drawn from history.

First, from the secular world! I was present when, in the early nineties, the Baptist Young People’s Union of America was born. We were assembled in the Second Baptist Church, Chicago, for the purpose of formulating and projecting that movement. Henry Mabie, secretary of the Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, was our outstanding spokesman. He was depicting the end of the age as presented by prophecy. He took full note of the deepening darkness and consequent social, economic and even religious depressions; and then to remind his auditors that the darkest hour of night often precedes the approaching dawn, he drew the following incident from history. He said:

“It was the battle of Sodowa, fought on July 3, 1861. That morning Von Moltke had saluted Prince William, saying, “ ‘This day, your highness, we’ll not only win this battle, but we will bring this inglorious war to a glorious end!’

“At noon however, the prospect was exactly the opposite. Prince Frederick Charles’ corps was withering under the hottest fire of the century, and his discouraged men were fast reeling to defeat. In the early afternoon the retreating forces heard a strange cry ringing through the ragged ranks. Stopping in their retreat to catch the words, they heard, thrice repeated, “ ‘The crown Prince has arrived with reinforcements! The crown Prince has arrived with reinforcements! The crown Prince has arrived with reinforcements!’

“That good news enheartened! Every man stopped in his tracks, faced the foe with fresh courage and hope; and before sundown, they swept the enemy to oblivion and the cry was ‘On to Vienna. The war is ended!’” Then, Dr. Mabie magnificently applied that history incident to the present discouraged state of the church, assuring them that shortly our crowned Prince will come from Heaven itself, with the reinforcement of saints and angels, and sweep the Adversary to oblivion. It thrilled the great audience!

Second, turn now to sacred history, and see the Lord Jesus Himself draw upon its pages for illustration. When He wanted them to know the meaning of his own crucifixion and the healing power of the cross, He reminded them of the serpent in the wilderness which was lifted up when God’s people were dying from the venom in their veins, and He told them, as a look at that uplifted serpent was instant relief and perfect healing, so would the look of faith at the crucified Christ accomplish soul-delivery (See Numbers 21:8-9 and John 3:14-15). From these sources of secular and sacred history the minister may draw ad libitum. When it is remembered that biography is also history and that its personality makes the most potent of all appeals, the enormity of this fountain is felt! In fact, secular history is so abundant in instances of spiritual application that Christ Himself resorted to that source for illustration.

Witness his call to repentance upon the part of all men by citing the case of the eighteen who were caught in the crumbling of the “Tower of Siloam.” “Think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:4-5). So the commonest event may point the most colossal truth.

Science is an unlimited repository! When one remembers the multitudinous discoveries that have been made in this realm, it is but natural that every moral truth should find among them arrow-heads in abundance. If Antony of Padua pointed his lessons from the habits of animals; Whately his from zoology; and James Hamilton, from botany, it is also internationally-known that Harry Rimmer of our day has drawn upon the various departments of modern science for illustrations that have brought to his published works readers from many nations! As his many volumes abound in these, I will not attempt an enumeration! But I advise your reading his little booklet on “Flying Worms” in illustration of the new birth, or regeneration. The late A. J. Gordon of Boston, a notable Bible teacher of yesterday, has magnificently illustrated the metamorphosis that will be accomplished in our bodies when, by resurrection, they are changed from ‘vile bodies’ to ‘glorious bodies,’ by reminding us of the scientific truth that coal—the black sooty stuff that stains our fingers when lifted to the fires—and the diamond, the beautiful jewel with which the queens of earth bedeck themselves, are the same in substance. They are both carbon; but coal is carbon in humiliation, and the diamond is carbon in glory. What an apt figure, then, of the change to be wrought in the bodies of our humiliation, when, by the alchemy of God’s grace, in the resurrection, they are perfected “in glory.”

Literature and art are prime contributors!

Here again we enter a vast field. An adequate reason for broad reading on the preacher’s part is that he may become acquainted with this rich storehouse of material. No discovery of gold mine or even diamond field ever compared, in true riches, with what every minister has, subject to his call in the illustrative wealth of literature and art. If one desires, he may push himself back to the days of Josephus, Livy, Plato and others of the ancients; but, far this side of those worth? he will find marvelous wealth in the writings of Dickens, Hawthorne, Scott, Victor Hugo, George Eliot, Marie Corelli and others too numerous to mention, whose books abound in reports of conduct and descriptions of character that point moral and spiritual truth. Without attempting here to cite instances from each, suffice it to say that it would be difficult to surpass the truth that Christ died for me with any illustration that would exceed the words placed on the lips of Barabbas by Marie Corelli, or point the moral sufferings that must come to any minister who has indulged himself in secret sin that would surpass the description of the silent grief of Dimmesdale in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter; or the final judgment that will fall on ingratitude that is illustrated in the fate of Tito Melome, dying at the hands of his outraged foster father, as recorded in Beckford’s Vathek, or the character effect of admiring greatness and longing for its embodied appearance, as illustrated in the life of Ernest in Hawthorne’s “Great Stone Face.” But we desist, since there is no end to this wealth of illustration in literature.

Art is almost equally prolific! What preacher, privileged a day in the Louvre of Paris, or in the great galleries of London or Florence, would not find himself freshly stocked by his studies of famous paintings and sculpture. Laocoon, caught in the coils of multiplied serpents, with heads ready to strike venom into his veins, is a wonderful illustration of what sin can do in strangling and poisoning life itself.

I shall never forget the veritable thrill that came to my own soul when Gunsaulus of Chicago, addressing a brilliant company of men and women at the close of a great banquet, on occasion of the opening of the then new Chicago University said,

“In the Memorial Chapel at Florence, Italy, I saw the last work of Michael Angelo. It was his attempt to reproduce, in stone, the person of Lorenzo the Magnificent. From toe to neck it was a finished work—and the form was worthy of the name, Magnificent; but just as he had entered upon bringing out the features of the face and giving shape to the head, the tools fell from the nerveless grasp, and he went to his bed, never to rise for work again.

“As I looked at that unfinished form, perfect from toe to neck, but studied the unhewn block set for the creation of face and head, out of which there stared but the hideous spectre of intended features, I said in my secret soul,

“ ‘This is the lesson I learn—that one may be magnificent in bodily form, but unless the higher mental and spiritual powers are enthroned, he remains but the burlesque of a man.’ ” The character depicted in the features of the twelve men who sat about the table with Christ at “The Last Supper” the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, have been appealed to again and again to illustrate the evidence of character in facial expression as found in the fidelity of John, the apostle nearest Jesus, and also that of Judas, the hypocrite and deceiver, while the sinner’s rejection of Jesus was never better illustrated than by the masterpiece where Christ is sadly knocking at a fast-closed door, overgrown with vines, indicating years of indifference. But we desist again, because here we are in an unlimited land.

Imagination is a magic creator of illustration! At this point one can well forget the ancients and even men of medieval times. Our own day developed a master in this realm not exceeded in past centuries. I speak of Paul Rader —that strange, comet-like minister. He appeared suddenly; blazed brilliantly; was gone quickly. At his first opportunity, he packed First Baptist Church, Minneapolis. From that experience he went to be the pastor of the Moody Church, Chicago; thence to the presidency of the Christian Alliance, and finally to the business of tabernacle building. As an orator he was scarcely equalled, and his imagination, as a creator of illustrations of spiritual truth, knew no competitor. In his repeated visits to my pulpit in Minneapolis, I heard him scores of times and rarely a sermon that was not so adorned. These illustrations were often extensive, in some instances requiring as much as thirty minutes for their elaboration and application.

We cite a single instance as a sample. He said,

“I imagine myself the owner of a section of land, covered with timber; the great trees characterizing it have never been touched by edge of axe or teeth of saw. A newspaper reporter, learning of my possession, writes it up, paying tribute to the magnificence of my forest. A few nights later, after ten o’clock in the evening, I respond to the door bell, and am saluted by Herr Professor, from the forestry department of a great university. He introduces himself by saying, ‘Mr. Rader, I have just read the newspaper report of your magnificent timber possession, and I called to look your forest over.’

“I respond by saying, ‘Thank you; come around at ten in the morning, and I will show it to you.’

“Imagine my surprise at his response, ‘Thank you, but I shall be busy tomorrow; I should like to see it tonight, now that I am here.’

“ ‘Well,’ I answered, ‘you are welcome but how you can see it in the dark is a conundrum to me!’

“ ‘Oh sir, I have provided for all that—I have brought my pocket light with me!’

“Taking the little thing from his coat, he presses the bulb, shining it in my face, saying, ‘You see, sir, I am prepared to investigate it now.’

“ ‘Well, you are welcome, if you think you can see it in that light. It begins just back of the house here.’

“Whereupon the professor departed and walked until he bumped into a tree and logically concluded he had arrived. Taking out his pocket lamp, he shined it on the limbs overhead and made his first note upon the forest: ‘Lots of crooked rafters over-head!’

“Studying the tree into which he bumped, he pulled from it a piece of bark, rubbed it to pieces in the palm of his hand, and then made a second observation: ‘Too brittle for use as lumber!’

“Noting at his feet a limb tom from the tree by the passing storm of yesterday, he picked it up and excitedly recorded his third observation: ‘Green and growing without attachment to the ground, without roots.’

“As he threw it back to earth, he frightened a rabbit sitting near the base of the big tree, and as the creature jumped away, he got a glimpse of it from his little light, and recorded his fourth point: ‘Spontaneous life, springing right out of the ground!’

“As he shuffled his feet, he observed that he was walking on a carpet of leaves, and so recorded his fifth: ‘Lots of rubbish under foot.’ Smiling with satisfaction, he said, ‘I can make quite a book on these five chapters,’ and then departed to write a textbook on forestry.”

“Now,” said Rader, “what’s the trouble with his investigation? Manifestly the small and insufficient light in which he pursued his studies. That forest can never be comprehended or properly interpreted until it is seen in the light of the sun—the great luminary that generated its seed, developed its great trees, and gave to it the growth of centuries.”

“So,” said Rader, “the man who attempts to interpret the Bible in the candlelight of his own reason, instead of studying it in the light of the Holy Spirit, its Creator, is equally deficient!”

Second only to Rader stands the Rev. James McGinlay as a master in this art!

However, this word of caution to ministers! Don’t imagine because the geniuses of the profession can create and employ illustrations with powerful effect, that any novice or mediocrity can accomplish the same. The measure of success attained here is marked by individual ability, and the preacher of smaller proportions may find himself merely weighted by the attempt to go forth in Saul’s armor. Remember a sling and a stone in the hands of the lad were more effective than the iron encasement and hefty sword of Saul.

Each minister must move within the realm of his individual competence. To imagine one’s self a Spurgeon when, like Pharaoh, he is “but a noise” is to become more nearly a laughing stock than a leader.

WHAT ARE ITS SPECIAL USES?

Surely among the major ends to be accomplished are these: To clarify and enforce thought.

Beyond question, an illustration, if worthy of employment, not only lightens, but enlightens. By analogous reasoning it makes more plain the idea being set forth than would a mere statement of fact. In consequence, it gives edge to argument, and is, itself, commonly an explanation. To accept the suggestion of Broadus, it should not be the mere tying on of worn and faded flowers, but a beautiful blossoming of the subject under consideration. To attract and hold attention.

Here we need add little more to what has already been stated. Beecher in his Yale lectures argued for the illustration as a method of introducing variety and accomplishing rest in the mind. By this he did not mean mental quiescence, but rather mental quickening. To persuade to action. The truth is that a sermon that does not eventuate in both decision and action is a signal failure. We are all familiar with the question addressed to the man who emerged from the church door at the close of the morning service, “Is the sermon done?” To which one sensibly replied, “No, the sermon is only delivered; it remains to be ‘done’!” On that very account the most effective of all illustrations used in sermonic discourse should be the final one. It should, by deliberate choice and emotional character, be exactly such as to send the hearers forth determined to enter upon the course prescribed by the preacher. Scores of times within the sixty-three years of my ministry have I put in literally hours searching for that last illustration, knowing full well that upon its employment might depend not only the power of the sermon but the destiny of immortal souls.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bryan, D. C. The Art of Illustrating Sermons (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1938).

Webb, Aquilla. One Thousand and One Illustrations for Pulpit and Platform (New York: Harper & Bros., 1929).