The Illustrative Use of Fiction

THE library of the preacher should be well stocked with works of imagination. If he reads the best novels, the best plays, the best poetry, always with an eye to the enrichment of his sermons, he will not only be cultivating his own imagination, but he will be con- tinually drawing treasure trove out of the imaginative creations of men and women who have studied human nature sympathetically, and have reproduced human nature in vivid transcripts in their works.

The common fault of the preacher is to devote his reading too exclu- sively to Biblical and theological works. He ought, of course, to spare no pains in making himself familiar with the text of the Bible, in getting an intelligent understanding of the meaning and messages of the Bible books, as they were written by men of their times to the men of their times, and as they convey Divine revelation to the men of all times. It is well that he should have a consistent and convincing theology rooted in the personality, the self-sacrificial life, the inspiring example, the teaching and the crown- ing sacrifice on Calvary of Him who is the summit and the completion of the revelation of the Old Testament, and the Light and the Life of the world.

But the preacher, if he is to touch the human heart, if he is to The Art of Sermon Illustration convey the messages of the Bible and the Gospel to the average man, must be also a keen and sympathetic student of human nature. He must know how to get into his sermons those touches of Nature that make the whole world kin. Any one man or woman is an epitome of the race. The joys and sorrows of one are the joys and sorrows of all.

All human hearts are in relationship to each other. The inspired novelist, the inspired dramatist, the inspired poet in his crea- tions, studies human life under all conditions and cir- cumstances, and gives us living pictures in which, so far as they are living, we recognise ourselves as we should or might be under similar circumstances and conditions. The popularity of novels and plays is due largely to this self-identification of the reader, or the spectator, with the characters who play their parts in the story or the drama.

We ourselves are the hero, the lover, and, though we would not admit it to anybody else, we are also the villain. The novelist, the drama- tist, and the poet present to us people of every class, of every temperament, of every country; but there is always the common human heart.

Their works are mirrors of human nature. Our own environment is a narrow one. We live and move in our own limited circle. The imaginative creators take us out of our circle and enlarge our experience of life.

They go deep down into the heart, and show us the comedies and the tragedies that are always working themselves out where good and evil are in conflict for the mastery of a soul. Of course there are novelists and novelists, dramatists and dramatists, poets and poets, and their pictures of The Illustrative Use of Fiction life are coloured by their own temperament and their own peculiar outlook on life; but these varieties of temperament and outlook only add to the human interest of the pictures, for the authors are revealing themselves as well as revealing the humanity they study and transcribe.

John Bunyan, in “The Pil- grim’s Progress” and “The Holy War,” is giving us dramas of the pilgrimage and the warfare of his own soul, but it is also the pilgrimage and the warfare of all other souls. Milton, in “Paradise Lost,” was painting in Adam and Eve not only our first parents, but all their sons and daughters.

They were novelist and dramatist as much as Walter Scott and Shakespeare. Every story and every play is really a drama, alle- gorical or realistic, of the human soul. The preacher who appreciates this and reads fiction, drama and poetry for revelations of the human heart will never lack illustrations, though, of course, he should be always himself a student of human life and always creating illustrations of his own out of what he finds in the human nature of the people among whom he lives and moves.

Such novels as those of George Eliot, in which charac- ters are created directly from life by a creator with a wonderful intuition of the workings of the human heart, and with a wonderful power of identifying herself sympathetically with the characters she creates, are rich treasure-houses of materials for illustration. Take “Adam Bede,” for instance: what a variety of human character and experience is brought before us in that story!

The man who believed in the gospel of work, The Art of Sermon Illustration simple-hearted, strong, with deep human affection; the weak-willed, hot-blooded Hetty Sorrel, more sinned against than sinning, the victim of passion driven like a dried leaf in an autumn gust to her doom; the young squire, as weak of will, who plays with fire, sins greatly and repents bitterly when it is too late; the inimitable Mrs. Poyser, sharp of tongue but kindly of heart, a model housewife, who rules with a strong hand, a type of the English home-maker who has made the English home the world over the symbol of domestic comfort-all these are more or less our- selves drawn by the brush of a master artist.

The preacher who reads such works gets an insight into human nature which will enable him to make his sermons intensely human, and he will draw from such studies illustrations that will go straight to the hearts of his hearers as reproductions and revelations of their own intimate experience. It is not only the classic creator of works of imagina- tion, however, who will supply the preacher with splendid and telling illustrations.

There are many transcribers of life who are none the less faithful transcribers because they are not endowed with genius of the first order. Any observant student of life who pictures what he has seen and felt in his studies of humanity is contributing to the illustrative resources of the pulpit. Novelists of to-day can often be drawn upon with profit, all the more so because their names and their works are familiar to men in the congregation, and because they are transcribing life in its various aspects and in various conditions of their The Illustrative Use of Fiction own time.

The use that may be made of imagina- tive literature in sermon illustration is shown in the examples that follow, some taken from sermons and some from recently published books.