The Art of IllustrationSpurgeon, C. H. (Charles Haddon)
Religion
The Art of Illustration
Spurgeon, C. H. (Charles Haddon)
Homiletical illustrations; Preaching
The effect of the sun upon vegetation can be observed among the flowers
in your own garden. Notice how they turn to him whenever they can; the
sunflower, for instance, follows the sun's course as if he were himself
the sun's son, and lovingly looked up to his father's face. He is very
much like a sun in appearance, and I think that is because he is so
fond of turning to the sun. The innumerable leaves of a clover field
bend toward the sun; and all plants, more or less, pay deference to the
sunlight to which they are so deeply indebted. Even the plants in the
hothouse, you can observe, do not grow in that direction you would
expect them to do if they wanted warmth, that is, toward the stovepipe,
whence the heat comes, nor even to the spot where most air is admitted;
but they will always, if they possibly can, send out their branches and
their flowers toward the sun. That is how we ought to grow toward the
Sun of Righteousness; it is for our soul's health that we should turn
our faces toward the Sun, as Daniel prayed with his windows open toward
Jerusalem. Where Jesus is, there is our Sun; toward him let us
constantly incline our whole being.
Not very long ago I met with the following remarkable instance of the
power of rays of light transmitted from the sun: some divers were
working at Plymouth Breakwater; they were down in the diving-bell,
thirty feet below the surface of the water; but a convex glass, in the
upper part of the bell, concentrated the sun's rays full upon them, and
burned their caps. As I read this story, I thought it was a capital
illustration of the power there is in the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Some of our hearers are fully thirty feet under the waters of
sin, if they are not even deeper down than that; but, by the grace of
God, we will yet make them feel the blessed burning power of the truths
we preach, even if we do not succeed in setting them all on fire with
this powerful glass. Perhaps, when you were a boy, you had a
burning-glass, and when you were out with a friend who did not know what
you had in your pocket, while he was sitting very quietly by your side,
you took out your glass, and held it for a few seconds over the back of
his hand until he felt something rather hot just there. I like the man
who, in preaching, concentrates the rays of the gospel on a sinner till
he burns him. Do not scatter the beams of light; you can turn the glass
so as to diffuse the rays instead of concentrating them; but the best
way of preaching is to focus Jesus Christ, the Sun of Righteousness,
right on a sinner's heart. It is the best way in the world to get at
him; and if he is thirty feet under the water, this burning-glass will
enable you to reach him; only mind that you do not use your own candle
instead of the Sun, for that will not answer the same purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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