The Roll-Call.—A soldier lay on his dying couch during our last war, and they heard him say, "Here!" They asked him what he wanted, and he put up his hand and said, "Hush! They are calling the roll of heaven, and I am answering to my name." And presently he whispered, "Here!" and he was gone.
I will weary you no longer. You may safely do what the most useful of men have done before you. Copy them not only in their use of illustration, but in their wisely keeping it in subservience to their design. They were not story-tellers, but preachers of the gospel; they did not aim at the entertainment of the people, but at their conversion. Never did they go out of their way to drag in a telling bit which they had been saving up for display, and never could any one say of their illustrations that they were
Windows that exclude the light,
And passages that lead to nothing.
Keep you the due proportion of things lest I do worse than lose my labor, by becoming the cause of your presenting to the people strings of anecdotes instead of sound doctrines, for that would be as evil a thing as if you offered to hungry men flowers instead of bread, and gave to the naked gauze of gossamer instead of woolen cloth.
[LECTURE III.]
THE USES OF ANECDOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
The uses of anecdotes and illustrations are manifold; but we may reduce them to seven, so far as our present purposes are concerned, not for a moment imagining that this will be a complete list.
We use them, first, to interest the mind and secure the attention of our hearers. We cannot endure a sleepy audience. To us, a slumbering man is no man. Sydney Smith observed that, although Eve was taken out of the side of Adam while he was asleep, it was not possible to remove sin from men's hearts in that manner. We do not agree with Hodge, the hedger and ditcher, who remarked to a Christian man with whom he was talking, "I loikes Sunday, I does; I loikes Sunday." "And what makes you like Sunday?" "Cause, you see, it's a day of rest: I goes down to the old church, I gets into a pew, and puts my legs up, and I thinks o' nothin'." It is to be feared that in town as well as in country this thinking of nothing is a very usual thing. But your regard for the sacred day, and the ministry to which you are called, and the worshiping assembly, will not allow you to give your people the chance of thinking of nothing. You want to arouse every faculty in them to receive the Word of God, that it may be a blessing to them.