The Evangelist's Discovery

An evangelist says: “I was sent to a certain home to stay while I was holding meetings in the local Church. There was a daughter, a girl of about seventeen, in the family. She sang con- stantly at her work. She was bright and merry.

I thought she must be the happiest girl I had ever met. She became a Christian during my meetings. One day she confessed to me that in the period when I heard her merriment and singing continually in the home, three times she was on the verge of committing suicide.

She escaped doing so by the closest of margins.” Keep a sharp distinction in your thinking, preaching, teaching and all your Christian service, between laughter and joy. 2. Do not take laughing as approval of what you say, neces- sarily.

The average American audience laughs easily. Yet prac- tically the whole congregation may disapprove of what the speaker has said. When a Christian worker tells a humorous incident and the audience, or the class or the person laughs, do not take it for granted that they approve either of you or of what you have said.

Many times the reaction from the laughing that a speaker has caused is for the audience as a whole to utterly reject the man as an influence in their life. Christian workers in general lose more hear- ers through the humorous illustrations they use than through any other kind. 3. It is a calamity for a Christian worker to become known 1li 112 THE ILLUSTRATION chiefly for his humor, to be known merely as a humorist.

It is a distinct loss for a minister to indulge too much in the humorous in the pulpit. This can best be seen by the fact that this law holds good even in other realms. Take for instance the political world.