PICTORIAL PREACHING

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 10, 1881

PICTORIAL PREACHING.

"Efforts are being made," says the Chicago Standard, "to bring 'illustrated sermons' into general acceptance. By this are meant pictorial or panoramic discourses, making the pulpit a place for scenic display. A periodical has recently been started in the East with the object of introducing more extensively this form of preaching. One or two agents have been abroad with outfits for the exhibition of the plan; and the testimony of several pastors, who have found their experiments in this line successful, is put forward. It is proposed to illustrate Bible themes by means of pictorial representations, which, hung upon the walls behind the preacher, constitute the starting-point and basis of his remarks. Of this style of pulpit instruction, it was President Hitchcock who said: 'Before the close of this century, pictures will be as much used in the preaching of sermons as manuscripts.'"

While it is universally admitted that the use of illustrations has been a great help in impressing Bible truths upon the minds of children and youth in the Sabbath-school, it is quite a question whether this mode of preaching will not with more mature minds be obstructive of thought rather than helpful to it. Should the plan be generally adopted, which is rather doubtful, its mere novelty might give it temporary popularity, but the final result would be a discontinuance of the use of all such helps both in the church school and the pulpit.