And concerning illustration:--The greatest preachers, and the most effective, have been those who have shown the greatest mastery of this art. The writing of these words brings to our minds names sufficient to establish their truth. Who can forget the illustrations of C. H. Spurgeon; the illustrations of McLaren of Manchester, whose expositions of Scripture received illumination in this way at every turning of the path along which the preacher led us, happy and entranced? It has been pronounced by some a mistake to class D. L. Moody among the _great_ preachers. The answer will depend upon our definition of a great preacher. _We_ would support the inclusion and our reason lies here:--We heard the man in boyhood and so clear, by simplicity and aptness of language, of phrase and of illustration did he make his every contention, that we understood him from beginning to end. An example happily still with us has already been named in the earlier part of this chapter. Every preacher should hear the Rev. W. L. Watkinson, if he walk a score of miles to do it! But the art of illustration, excepting in those rare cases where a man brings to its learning a natural gift waiting only to be brought into use, is not easily acquired. Every preacher of experience will be prepared to testify that in attempting to illustrate it is not only easy to make mistakes but difficult to avoid making them at times. Sometimes an illustration, intended to light up a subject, rather takes away the thought of a congregation from that subject than otherwise. Sometimes, again, the illustration may be found to carry other suggestions than were intended. The lad, to whom the wisdom of early rising was sought to be illustrated by the good fortune of the early bird in securing the first worm, drew precisely the opposite moral, holding that the fate of the worm taught the wisdom of remaining in bed until a later hour. Then an illustration may be even less clear than the argument to be illustrated. We have heard scientific illustrations of this character, from which the hearer derived a supplementary dose of mystification rather than an elucidation of the problem with which he was already manfully grappling. An illustration may be too pathetic, and people may weep from the wrong cause, an event which often occurs in church. It is one thing to shed tears over a touching story and another to shed them from penitence. An illustration should not be more sublime than the lesson to be taught lest there follow a swift descent with loss of reverence by the way. There is a place for humour in the pulpit, if it be natural to the preacher and flow spontaneously, but a humorous illustration requires to be very carefully chosen, lest, instead of the healthy and holy laughter often so fatal to anger and meanness and pride, you have the guffaw in which blessing is lost in excess. Other reflections as to illustrations are