The Art of Illustration

The Art of Illustration by C.H. Spurgeon

C.H. Spurgeon's The Art of Illustration opens by developing an extended metaphor, borrowed from Thomas Fuller, comparing illustrations in sermons to windows in a house: reasons are pillars, but similitudes are the windows that let in light. Spurgeon argues that metaphors and parables brighten abstract doctrine, following the example of Christ, who taught the common people through similitudes rather than obscure language, and he contrasts this clarity with preachers who cultivate deliberate obscurity. Illustrations also make preaching pleasurable rather than prosy, add ornament as a secondary virtue to a sermon's structural soundness, and refresh drowsy congregations like an open window admitting air. He cautions, however, that illustrations are not the strength of a sermon and must not be too numerous, too showy, or allowed to overshadow the doctrine they serve; they should grow naturally from the subject rather than being artificially inserted, be drawn preferably from familiar, homely sources rather than far-fetched erudition, avoid anything coarse or indelicate, and never be confused or mixed (he gives several comic examples of muddled metaphors from various preachers and public figures). He defends the use of anecdotes specifically, against clergy who consider storytelling undignified, citing Luther and George Herbert on preaching plainly to reach ordinary people. Spurgeon then surveys great preachers from the Reformation onward as models of illustrative preaching: Hugh Latimer (with sample anecdotes about a friar and about Saint Anthony and a cobbler), Jeremy Taylor (noted for classical allusions, with stories about Menedemus and Diogenes), and several Puritans — Thomas Brooks, Thomas Adams, William Gurnall, John Flavel, George Swinnock, and Thomas Watson — each illustrated with sample anecdotes from their works (Mr. Welch weeping, Philip the Second's submissive silence, Queen Elizabeth envying a milkmaid, the hedgehog and the conies, and others). He notes the barrenness of the subsequent Queen Anne period, then praises George Whitefield and the Revival preachers, and finally D. L. Moody, quoting several of his anecdotes (the idiot's mother, the surgeon and patient, the soldier's roll-call). The lecture then enumerates seven uses of anecdotes and illustrations: they interest the mind and secure attention; they make preaching vivid and lifelike (illustrated with stories of Matthew Wilks, "Father Taylor" and his whisky barrel, and Whitefield's blind-man illustration startling Lord Chesterfield); they explain doctrines to dull understandings (the boy praying in the hayloft, Corporal Trim on the fifth commandment, the woman washing wool); they provide a form of reasoning convincing to illogical minds, through accumulated instances (answered prayer, a father's neglect of a dying child's soul); they appeal to human nature and sometimes to the sense of the ludicrous (the Kaffir's dog that ate the Testament, the tree allegory used by priests to natives of Tahiti); they aid memory (Rowland Hill's sixty-five-year-remembered illustration, Flavel's convert of eighty-five years later); they arouse the feelings (Moravian missionaries among lepers, the two miners and the burning fuse); and they catch the ear of the careless (the whaling captain obsessed with whales, Paxton Hood's image of hammering in nails). Finally, Spurgeon addresses where to find illustrations — current events and newspapers, local and general history, natural history, and everyday domestic observation — urging students to keep commonplace-books, study authors rich in illustration such as Gurnall and Matthew Henry, and practice making illustrations deliberately. He introduces a further planned lecture on astronomy as a source of illustration, working through the sun, planets, moons, comets, and stars, drawing spiritual lessons from each: Mercury's nearness to the sun as a figure for closeness to Christ, Venus's phases, the earth's imperceptible motion as an image of gradual sanctification, Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings, the mathematical discovery of Neptune, and the comets' thin, transient brilliance contrasted with the steady light of fixed stars.

By C.H. Spurgeon · First published 1894 · Genre: Homiletics, Rhetoric, Instructional/Educational · 5 chapters · 53,414 words

First lines

The topic now before us is the use of illustrations in our sermons. Perhaps we shall best subserve our purpose by working out an illustration in the present address; for there is no better way of teaching the art of pottery than by making a pot. Quaint Thomas Fuller says, "Reasons are the pillars of the fabric of a sermon; but similitudes are the windows which give the best lights. " The comparison is happy and suggestive, and we will build up our discourse under its direction.

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sermon illustrations · homiletics · preaching · metaphor · anecdotes · parables · sermon composition · religious instruction · doctrine · Gospel · pastoral theology · rhetoric

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