to the will of God better than the telling of the story, which Mr.
Gilpin gives us in his Life, of his being called in to pray with a woman
whose boy was very ill. The good man asked that God would, if it were
his will, restore the dear child to life and health, when the mother
interrupted him, and said, "No, I cannot agree to such a prayer as that;
I cannot put it in that shape; it must be God's will to restore him. I
cannot bear that my child should die; pray that he may live whether it
is God's will or not." He answered, "Woman, I cannot pray that prayer,
but it is answered; your child will recover, but you will live to rue
the day that you made such a request." Twenty years after, there was a
woman carried away in a fainting fit from under a drop at Tyburn, for
her son had lived long enough to bring himself to the gallows by his
crimes. The mother's wicked prayer had been heard, and God had answered
it. So, if you want to prove the power of the gospel, do not go on
expending words to no purpose, but tell the stories of cases you have
met with that illustrate the truth you are enforcing, for such anecdotes
will convince your hearers as no other kind of reasoning can. I think
that is clear enough to every one of you.
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 sure the book is bad?" he
inquired; and again the reply was, "Yes." "Then why do you not seize the
Author of it if it is a bad book?" That was a fine piece of sarcasm at
those who had a hatred of the Scriptures, and yet professed to have love
to Christ. That is another good story of our friend the Irishman, who,
when he was asked by the priest what warrant an ignorant man such as he
was had for reading the Bible, said, "Truth, but I have a
search-warrant; for it says, 'Search the Scriptures; for in them ye
think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.'"
This story would not be amiss, I think, as a sort of ridiculous argument
showing what power the gospel ought to have over the human mind. Dr.
Moffat tells us of a certain Kaffir, who came to him one day, saying
that the New Testament, which the missionary had given him a week
before, had spoiled his dog. The man said that his dog had been a very
good hunting-dog, but that he had torn the Testament to pieces, and
eaten it up, and now he was quite spoiled. "Never mind," said Dr.
Moffat, "I will give you another Testament." "Oh!" said the man, "it is
not that that troubles me, I do not mind the dog spoiling the book, for
I could buy another; but the book has spoiled the dog." "How is that?"
inquired the missionary; and the Kaffir replied, "The dog will be of no
use to me now, because he has eaten the Word of God, and that will make
him love his enemies, so that he will be of no good for hunting." The
man supposed that not even a dog could receive the New Testament without
being sweetened in temper thereby; that is, in truth, what ought to be
the case with all who feed upon the gospel of Christ. I should not
hesitate to tell that story after Dr. Moffat, and I should, of course,
use it to show that, when a man has received the truth as it is in
Jesus, there ought to be a great change in him, and he ought never to be
of any use to his old master again.
When the priests were trying to pervert the natives of Tahiti to
Romanism, they had a fine picture which they hoped would convince the
people of the excellence of the Church of Rome. There were certain dead
logs of wood: whom were they to represent? They were the heretics, who
were to go into the fire. And who were these small branches of the
tree? They were the faithful. Who were the larger ones? They were the
priests. And who were the next? They were the cardinals. And who was the
trunk of the tree? Oh, that was the pope! And the root, whom did that
set forth? Oh, the root was Jesus Christ! So the poor natives said,
"Well, we do not know anything about the trunk or the branches; but we
have got the root, and we mean to stick to that, and not give it up." If
we have the root, if we have Christ, we may laugh to scorn all the
pretensions and delusions of men.
These stories may make us laugh, but they may also smite error right
through the heart, and lay it dead; and they may, therefore, lawfully be
used as weapons with which we may go forth to fight the Lord's battles.
* * * * *
Fifthly, another use of anecdotes and illustrations lies in the fact
that _they help the memory to grasp the truth_. There is a story
told--though I will not vouch for the truth of it--of a certain
countryman, who had been persuaded by some one that all Londoners were
thieves; and, therefore, on coming to London for the first time, he
tried to secure his watch by putting it into his waistcoat pocket, and
then covering it all over with fish-hooks. "Now," he thought, "if any
gentleman tries to get my watch, he will remember it." The story says
that, as he was walking along, he desired to know the time himself, and
put his own hand into his pocket, forgetting all about the fish-hooks.
The effect produced upon him can better be imagined than described. Now,
it seems to me that a sermon should always be like that countryman's
pocket, full of fish-hooks, so that, if anybody comes in to listen to
it, he will get some forget-me-not, some remembrancer, fastened in his
ear, and, it may be, in his heart and conscience. Let him drop in just
at the end of the discourse, there should be something at the close that
will strike and stick. As when we walk in our farmer friends' fields
there are certain burrs that are sure to cling to our clothes; and, rush
as we may, some of the relics of the fields remain upon our garments; so
there ought to be some burr in every sermon that will stick to those who
hear it.
What do you remember best in the discourses you heard years ago? I will
venture to say that it is some anecdote that the preacher related. It
may possibly be some pithy sentence; but it is more probable that it is
some striking story which was told in the course of the sermon. Rowland
Hill, a little while before he died, was visiting an old friend, who
said to him, "Mr. Hill, it is now sixty-five years since I first heard
you preach; but I remember your text, and a part of your sermon."
"Well," asked the preacher, "what part of the sermon do you recollect?"
His friend answered, "You said that some people, when they went to hear
a sermon, were very squeamish about the delivery of the preacher. Then
you said, 'Supposing you went to hear the will of one of your relatives
read, and you were expecting a legacy from him; you would hardly think
of criticizing the manner in which the lawyer read the will; but you
would be all attention to hear whether anything was left to you, and if
so, how much; and that is the way to hear the gospel.'" Now, the man
would not have recollected that for sixty-five years if Mr. Hill had not
put the matter in that illustrative form. If he had said, "Dear friends,
you must listen to the gospel for its own sake, and not merely for the
charms of the preacher's oratory, or those delightful soaring periods
which gratify your ears," if he had put it in the very pretty manner in
which some people can do the thing, I will be bound to say that the man
would have remembered it as long as a duck recollects the last time it
went into the water, and no longer; for it would have been so common to
have spoken in that way; but putting the truth in the striking manner
that he did, it was remembered for sixty-five years.
A gentleman related the following anecdote, which just answers the
purpose I have in view, so I will pass it on to you. He said: "When I
was a boy, I used to hear the story of a tailor who lived to a great
age, and became very wealthy, so that he was an object of envy to all
who knew him. His life, as all lives will, drew to a close; but before
he passed away, feeling some desire to benefit the members of his craft,
he gave out word that, on a certain day, he would be happy to
communicate to all the tailors of the neighborhood the secret by which
they might become wealthy. A great number of knights of the thimble
came, and while they waited in anxious silence to hear the important
revelation, he was raised up in his bed, and with his expiring breath
uttered this short sentence, _'Always put a knot in your thread_.'" That
is why I recommend you, brethren, to use anecdotes and illustrations,
because they put knots in the thread of your discourse. What is the use
of pulling the end of your thread through the material on which you are
working? Yet, has it not been the case with very many of the sermons to
which we have listened, or the discourses we have ourselves delivered?
The bulk of what we have heard has just gone through our minds without
leaving any lasting impression, and all we recollect is some anecdote
that was told by the preacher.
There is an authenticated case of a man being converted by a sermon
eighty-five years after he had heard it preached. Mr. Flavel, at the
close of a discourse, instead of pronouncing the usual benediction,
stood up, and said, "How can I dismiss you with a blessing, for many of
you are 'Anathema Maranatha,' because you love not the Lord Jesus
Christ?" A lad of fifteen heard that remarkable utterance; and
eighty-five years afterward, sitting under a hedge, the whole scene came
vividly before him as if it had been but the day before; and it pleased
God to bless Mr. Flavel's words to his conversion, and he lived three
years longer to bear good testimony that he had felt the power of the
truth in his heart.
* * * * *
Sixthly, anecdotes and illustrations are useful because _they frequently
arouse the feelings_. They will not do this, however, if you tell the
same stories over and over again ever so many times. I recollect, when I
first heard that wonderful story about "There is another man," I cried a
good deal over it. Poor soul, just rescued, half-dead, with only a few
rags on him, and yet he said, "There is another man," needing to be
saved. The second time I heard the story, I liked it, but I did not
think it was quite so new as at first; and the third time I heard it, I
thought that I never wanted to hear it again. I do not know how many
times I have heard it since; but I can always tell when it is coming
out. The brother draws himself up, and looks wonderfully solemn, and in
a sepulchral tone says, "There is another man," and I think to myself,
"Yes, and I wish there had not been," for I have heard that story till I
am sick and tired of it. Even a good anecdote may get so hackneyed that
there is no force in it, and no use in retailing it any longer.
Still, a live illustration is better for appealing to the feelings of an
audience than any amount of description could possibly be. What we want
in these times is not to listen to long prelections upon some dry
subject, but to hear something practical, something matter-of-fact, that
comes home to our every-day reasoning; and when we get this then our
hearts are soon stirred.
I have no doubt that the sight of a death-bed would move men much more
than that admirable work called "Drelincourt on Death," a book which, I
should think, nobody has ever been able to read through. There may have
been instances of persons who have attempted it; but I believe that,
long before they have reached the latter end, they have been in a state
of asphyxia or coma, and have been obliged to be rubbed with hot
flannels; and the book has had to be removed to a distance before they
could recover. If you have not read "Drelincourt on Death," I believe I
know what you have read--that is, the ghost story that is stitched in at
the end of the book. The work would not sell, the whole impression was
upon the shelves of the bookseller, when Defoe wrote the fiction
entitled, "A True Relation of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal, after her
Death, to Mrs. Bargrave," in which "Drelincourt on Death" is recommended
by the apparition as the best book on the subject. This story had not a
vestige or shadow of truth in it, it was all a piece of imagination; but
it was put in at the end of the book, and then the whole edition was
speedily cleared out, and more were wanted. It may be something like
that very often with your sermons; only you must tell the people of what
has actually occurred, and so you will retain their attention and reach
their hearts.
Many have been moved to self-sacrifice by the story of the Moravians in
South Africa who saw a large inclosed space of ground, in which there
were persons rotting away with leprosy, some without arms and some
without legs; and these Moravians could not preach to the poor lepers
without going in there themselves for life to rot with them, and they
did so. Two more of the same noble band of brethren sold themselves into
slavery in the West Indies, in order that they might be allowed to
preach to the slaves. When you can give such instances as these of
missionary disinterestedness and devotedness, it will do more to arouse
a spirit of enthusiasm for foreign missions than all your closely
reasoned arguments could possibly do.
Who has not heard and felt the force of the story of the two miners,
when the fuse was burning, and only one could escape, and the Christian
man cried out to his unconverted companion, "Escape for your life,
because, if you die, you are lost; but if I die, it is all right with
me; so you go."
The fool's plan, too, I have sometimes used as a striking illustration.
There was a little boat which got wrecked, and the man in it was trying
to swim to shore, but the current was too strong for him. After he had
been drowned an hour, a man said, "I could have saved him;" and when
they asked him how he could have saved him, he described a plan that
seemed to be most excellent and feasible, by which the man might, no
doubt, have been saved; but then, unfortunately, by that time he was
drowned! So, there are some who are always wise just too late, some who
may have to say to themselves, when such and such a one is gone the way
of all living, "What might I not have done for him if I had but taken
him in time?" Brethren, let that anecdote be a reminder to us all that
we should seek to be wise in winning souls before it is too late to
rescue them from everlasting destruction.
* * * * *
Seventhly, and lastly, anecdotes and illustrations are exceedingly
useful because _they catch the ear of the utterly careless_. Something
is wanted in every sermon for this class of people; and an anecdote is
well calculated to catch the ear of the thoughtless and the ungodly. We
really desire their salvation, and we would bait our trap in any way
possible by which we might catch them for Christ. We cannot expect our
young people to come and listen to learned doctrinal disquisitions that
are not at all embellished with anything that interests their immature
minds. Nay, even grown-up people, after the toils of the week, some of
them busy till early on the Sunday morning, cannot be expected to attend
to long prosaic discourses which are not broken by a single anecdote.
Oh, dear, dear, dear! How I do pity those unpractical brethren who do
not seem to know to whom they are preaching! "Ah," said a brother once,
"whenever I preach, I do not know where to look, and so I look up at the
ventilator!" Now, there is not anybody up in the ventilator; there
cannot be supposed to be anybody there, unless the angels of heaven are
listening there to hear the words of truth. A minister should not preach
_before_ the people, but he should preach right _at_ them; let him look
straight at them; if he can, let him search them through and through,
and take stock of them, as it were, and see what they are like, and then
suit his message to them.
I have often seen some poor fellow standing in the aisle at the
Tabernacle. Why, he looks just like a sparrow that has got into a church
and cannot get out again! He cannot make out what sort of service it is;
he begins to count how many people sit in the front row in the gallery,
and all kinds of ideas pass through his mind. Now I want to attract his
attention; how shall I do it? If I quote a text of Scripture, he may
not know what it means, and may not be interested in it. Shall I put a
bit of Latin into the sermon, or quote the original Hebrew or Greek of
my text? That will not do for such a man. What shall I do? Ah, I know a
story that will, I believe, just fit him! Out it comes, and the man does
not look up at the gallery any more; but he is wondering whatever the
preacher is at. Something is said that so exactly suits his case that he
begins to ask himself who has been telling the minister about him, and
he thinks, "Why, I know; my wife comes to hear this man sometimes, so
she has been telling him all about me!" Then he feels curious to hear
more, and while he is looking up at the preacher, and listening to the
truth that is being proclaimed, the first gleam of light on divine
things dawns upon him; but if we had kept on with our regular discourse,
and had not gone out of our way, what might have become of that man I
cannot tell. "They say I ramble," said Rowland Hill, in a sermon I have
been reading this afternoon; "they say I ramble, but it is because you
ramble, and I am obliged to ramble after you. They say I do not stick to
my subject; but, thank God, I always stick to my object, which is, the
winning of your souls, and bringing you to the cross of Jesus Christ!"
Mr. Bertram aptly illustrates the way in which men are engrossed in
worldly cares by telling the story of the captain of a whaling ship,
whom he tried to interest in the things of God, and who said, "It is no
use, sir; your conversation will not have any effect upon me. I cannot
hear what you are saying, or understand the subject you are talking
about. I left my home to try to catch whales; I have been a year and
nine months looking for whales, sir, and I have not caught a whale yet.
I have been plowing the deep in search of whales; when I go to bed I
dream of whales; and when I get up in the morning, I wonder if there
will be any whales caught that day; there is a whale in my heart, sir, a
whale in my brain, and it is of no use for you to talk to me about
anything else but whales." So, your people have their business in their
heads and in their hearts; they want to make a fortune and retire; or
else they have a family of children to bring up, and Susan must be
married, and John must be got into a situation, and it is no use for you
to talk to them about the things of God unless you can drive away the
whales that keep floundering and splashing about.
There is a merchant, perhaps, who has just thought of some bad bill; or
another has looked across the building and noticed a piece of ribbon of
a particular color, and he thinks, "Yes, I ought to have had a larger
stock of that kind of thing, I see that it is getting fashionable!" or
it may be that one of the hearers has caught sight of his neighbor, and
he thinks he must pay him a visit on the morrow; and so people's
thoughts are occupied with all sorts of subjects besides that of which
the preacher is speaking. You ask me how I know that this is the case.
Well, I know because I have been guilty of the same offense myself; I
find this occur when I am listening to another brother preaching. I do
not think, when I am preaching, that I get on very well; but sometimes,
when I go into the country, and take the morning and evening services,
and then hear some one else in the afternoon, I think, "Well, really,
when I was up there, I thought I was a stick: but _now_! I only wish I
had my turn again!" Now, this is very wrong, to let such thoughts come
into our minds; but, as we are all very apt to wander, the preacher
should carry anecdotes and illustrations into the pulpit, and use them
as nails to fasten the people's attention to the subject of his sermon.