DR. MACLAREN.
Illustration★★★A warning should be given against using illustrations that are too obvious. The illustration should aim, not only at directing a ray of light upon the truth, but at interesting the hearer, and if it is obvious and hackneyed, it is not likely to interest.
This does not mean that illustrations should not be drawn from the things and incidents of common life, for Jesus Himself drew His The Art of Sermon Illustration illustrations from the things that were familiar to the average man and woman among His hearers. It does mean, however, that the preacher should invest the commonplace with the dignity and romance that are given by showing their relation to spiritual truth—in other words, the preacher must be an artist in his use of illustrations.
An artist will paint a bit of common- place country landscape in such a way that everybody who sees his picture will wonder that they never saw in the bit of country the beauty and significance with which the artist has invested it. He will paint a portrait of some child whom nobody but its mother had ever dis- tinguished from a crowd of children, and when we see his picture we understand why Jesus took the children into His arms and blessed them.
He will paint some weather-worn old fisherman or farm labourer, or some grannie with withered cheeks and furrowed brow, and in his pictures of the man of the soil and the man of the sea we shall have symbols of the dignity of the toil that wrings from the soil and the sea its harvest for the food of man, and the picture of the grannie will touch and soften the heart of the spectator by its revelation of the soul of the woman who has faithfully done her duty in her day and generation, has worked unremit- tingly without complaint, has won the undying love of her children and her grandchildren, and at eventide it is light with her as calmly she awaits the summons to join those who have gone before her to the land of eternal re-union.
Everything in God’s world is divine if seen in “the light that never was on sea or land,” and the preacher will take the most commonplace General Principles of Illustration things as illustrations of spiritual truths, and the things will be glorified by the use he makes of them. The striking use that may be made of things that are essentially commonplace, but may be glorified by their association with spiritual truths, is shown in the following examples :-
The point
A warning against illustrations that are too obvious or hackneyed: though Jesus drew illustrations from ordinary daily life, the preacher must be an artist who invests the commonplace with spiritual dignity, just as a painter elevates a plain landscape into something arresting.