Be Yourself | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · May 7, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 18.

Be Yourself.

To a correspondent who asks for aid in illustrating his sermons, the Christian Standard gives the following sound instruction:—

“To paste illustrations on sermons would be very much like putting a suit of clothes on the wooden blocks that stand in solemn array in front of our large city clothing stores—and, very often, they would be a much more awkward fit. We must not insist on David's fighting in Saul's armor. Let every man use the gifts that God has given him.

“Nor are we able to approve our correspondent's suggestion as to illustrations ready made and brought into the market for general sale, with the assurance that every preacher ought to have them. A preacher decked in borrowed plumes is a sorry sight in the pulpit, and is apt to prove either ridiculous or disgusting. Skeletons, prepared illustrations, and all other substitutes for brains and labor, are nuisances that ought to be abated. When a preacher becomes a mere parrot, repeating what he has been taught, and his preaching is largely mechanical, it would be more sensible, and more economical, if the church would buy a volume of ready-made sermons and employ a good elocutionist to read them to the congregation. No, no. Sermons, to be worth anything, must be forged out of the agonizing brain and heart-toils, and prayers, and tears, and life-experiences of the preacher. We want in the pulpit brains, heart, character—not a machine grinding out other men's sermons and illustrations. No preacher can thrive who consents to be a mere echo.

“But, it will be said, do any of us know anything we have not learned? No, nor in fact do we know anything we have learned, until we make it our own—until we incorporate it into our own life. All the material for sermons is given to us in the word of God, in the realms of nature, of art, and of human experience. But to take this material and work it up ourselves according to our own capacity, and in harmony with our own convictions, is a very different thing from going into the market and buying what others have wrought up, and placing that on exhibition as the best we can do. We are far from intimating that our correspondent either does or wishes to do anything of this last-mentioned kind; we have no such thought. But we mean to say that he is wishing for that which, though he suspects it not, would lay an embargo on all manly development, and land any one who tries it long in a pitiful imbecility.

“We believe that most preachers are capable of employing illustrations in their sermons, and that herein is an element of power not to be despised. It is worth much anxious study and persevering effort to attain to skill and effectiveness at this point. The preacher has a right to all the material offered to him in the Bible, in nature, in science, in art, in providence, and in society—even to the suggestions contained in the illustrations wrought out by others—only let him work up this material for himself, and fit it into his own sermons.

“One word more: don't overload your sermons with illustrations. One well-selected, skillfully used, may be sufficient in one sermon.”