Illustrations and Applications
Sunday-school teachers often make the mistake of confounding "lesson
illustrations" with "practical applications." A lesson illustration is
a picture of the truth you are studying as exemplified in spheres of
life foreign to your scholars; practical application pictures the
truth in their own lives. In other words, a practical application is
an illustration that the scholars can practice. The point I want to
make is, that the practical application should be used, in our own
precious half-hour, not to the exclusion of the lesson illustration,
but largely predominating over it.
For instance, if you were discussing the great cloud of invisible
witnesses that compass us about, you might illustrate the truth by the
famous story of Napoleon's speech to the troops in Egypt, "From yonder
pyramids, my men, forty centuries look down upon us"; but, if you have
not time for both, a practical application would be far better: "John,
who is one of this great cloud of witnesses that is most tenderly and
anxiously watching your life?" "My father." "And who, Harry, is among
your invisible guardians?" "My mother." That is more forcible than
"forty centuries."
Again, one of the finest illustrations of devotion to principle is
afforded by the conversion to the Baptist faith of one of our first
American foreign missionaries, the immortal Judson, who, at the
bidding of conscience and conviction, cast loose in mid-ocean from the
only missionary society in America, and his only assured support. That
is magnificent, but it is only an illustration, one needing to be
translated into terms of child life thus: "Suppose you are in a school
examination, and your neighbor on one side hands you a bit of folded
paper to pass to your neighbor on the other side, and you are pretty
sure it is to help him cheat in the examination, and suppose the whole
school will think you mean and stuck up if you refuse to pass the
paper, what are you going to do?" That is a test of devotion to
principle such as the child is likely to meet.
To be sure, there are illustrations which come so close to average
circumstances that they are also applications. For instance, to take
another great missionary, William Carey, his boyish fall from the tree
he was climbing, with the result of breaking his leg, and, on
recovery, his immediate set-to at the same tree again; his saying that
his business was preaching the gospel, but that he cobbled shoes "to
pay expenses"; his bidding the Christians left at home to "hold the
ropes while he went down,"--all these are very practical
illustrations, quite within the children's sphere, since it is well
for them also to have grit even about tree-climbing, since they are to
hold their ordinary duties subordinate to their spiritual life, and
since they have missionary money to spend and missionary prayers to
make. If, however, I were teaching the passage in the Acts that
relates how the disciples had all things in common, though I might
tell about the splendid carrying out of that principle in Carey's
Serampore brotherhood, yet, if I had time for only the one, I should
certainly prefer a practical application of the text to the sharing of
apples and the lending of bicycles.
It is helpful to a boy, of course, if he would cultivate patience, to
have before his eyes the picture of that cave looking out over
Scottish hills and heather, and of the spider at the cave's mouth
teaching its beautiful lesson to the Bruce within; but the picture
remains only a picture unless the spider of the boy's imagination is
taught to run lines connecting every point of the picture with his
geography lesson and his garden weeding. Far too many war stories are
told in our Sunday-schools. They do not build up very rapidly the
Christian soldier. Far too many illustrations are drawn from what is
wrongly called the distinctive "heroic age" of the world. Not thus is
the Christian hero furnished for his nineteenth-century toils.
A similar remark is to be made regarding illustrations from science.
They must not be permitted to detract from or exclude the practical
application. If we are teaching our boys and girls how all things work
together for good to those that love God, we may use the illustration of
the rainbow, explaining that it is on the very raindrops of the storm
itself that God paints his wonderful symbol of hope and trust. That is
poetical and true, but the lesson remains as misty as the rainbow itself
unless you go on to show your scholars how the lame boy among them gets
more time for study on account of his lameness, how the boy who has been
sick has learned far more than he knew before about the love of his dear
ones and about the great Physician, how the boy who has had to leave
school and go to work is none the less getting a priceless schooling in
patience and determination and energy and faithfulness.
Many of these practical illustrations you may by questions draw out
from the boys themselves. "Blessed are the peacemakers." Call for
stories of boyish quarrels settled by some boy Solon. That is better
than telling about the Massachusetts boards of arbitration in strikes.
"My cup runneth over." Draw out a list of their own boyish blessings,
which are more to them than those of any saint or psalmist.
But especially this practical application, to be successful, must be
the work of a consecrated imagination. A Sunday-school teacher must
think himself into the lives of others. "Bear ye one another's
burdens." Now don't rake up from your encyclopedias the story of St.
Christopher, beautiful as it is, and try to twist it into an
illustration of the text. No. Ask the bright scholar what he does to
help his duller friends understand the knotty problems at school. Ask
the merry boys what they do when mother is tired amusing the baby. Ask
the selfish boy what a lad that greatly wanted a new sled could do to
help his father bear his burden of poverty.
To get these applications you have had to "put yourself in his place,"
to picture to your mind your scholars' joys and sorrows, desires and
disappointments, hopes and fears, labor and play. And in the process,
and as its result, have come two rewards that no thumbing of
dictionaries of biography, and manuals of mythology, and encyclopedias
of illustrations, could ever give. You have come closer to the lives
of your scholars, and you have drawn those lives closer to the
present, practical Christ.