Preaching out of the overflow

Introduction

PREACHING means conversation.

‘The Sermon on the Mount” was not a sermon in any formal sense. Jesus designated his words there as ‘‘these sayings of mine.”

The radio is more and more forcing us back to the original meaning of homiletics. Old-fashioned pulpit oratory will not go over the radio. It will ‘blast’? a microphone. The quiet, earnest eloquence of facts is the only oratory which will succeed these days. Science has forced that.

Men who preach to the hearts of people will succeed in reaching their minds. Successful oratory does not make its primary appeal to the minds of men, but to the hearts of men. Facts—yes; and intelligence—but no aloofness of intellectual pride. This separates the preacher from men. It must not be forgotten that of Jesus it was said, ‘‘The common people heard him gladly.”

It must not be forgotten that the common people heard Jesus gladly because they understood every word that he said. There was no abstract metaphysical background to the preaching of Jesus and no theology to confuse them. His was the direct, forceful, inescapable challenge of a life, a plan, a program, some goals, and across. They are as far removed from so-called scholasticism as the North

Star is removed from its reflection in the sea. Too much of our preaching is dulled and dimmed by the shadow of a dead scholasticism.

This book about preaching is the flowering of a quarter of a century of trying it out in a wide variety of churches and cities; a scope of geography which has reached from the Atlantic to the Pacific; in war and peace; in small church and large church; in industrial sections and agricultural sections.

I do not want to call this a book on Homiletics, or the Science of Preaching. Rather I want it to be looked upon as a book of enthusiasm about the business and pleasure of preaching.

These thoughts about preaching I have had in my heart for many years, but the interesting task of talking for a year with a group of students about preaching has brought these ideas into this form.

I am sure that my readers will forgive me for not placing the credits for quotations at the bottom of each page, as is the usual academic tradition; thus focusing the eye and the mind on a star and a credit at the bottom of the page. Instead of that I clear the following pages of stumblingblocks to the eye and proceed to thank the following authorsand publishers for brief quotations from their books:

To Edna St. Vincent Millay for the quotation in Chapter I from her book ‘“‘Renascence,’”’ published by. Harper and Brothers.

To Dr. James Black, for permission to quote from ‘‘The Mystery of Preaching,’ published by the Fleming H. Revell Company.

INTRODUCTION 9

To Will Rogers for permission to quote one of his syndicated articles in Chapter II.

To the Methodist Book Concern for permission to quote several sentences in Chapter II from Bishop William A. Quayle.

To Gamaliel Bradford for permission to quote from his book “Life and I,’’ which is published by the Houghton Mifflin Company; and to the Methodist Book Concern for permission to quote the entire third chapter, which was originally published in ‘‘ Effective Preaching.”’

To Dr. David Smith for a single line from his book ‘‘The Art of Preaching,’’ which is published by Doubleday, Doran and Company.

To Vachel Lindsay and his publishers, the Macmillan Company, for permission to quote a four-line verse in Chapter V.

To Dr. Black in this same chapter for permission to quote a paragraph from ‘‘The Mystery of Preaching.”

To the publishers of the works of John Burroughs, the Houghe ton Mifflin Company, for permission to quote ‘‘ Waiting.”’ To Boni and Liveright for permission to quote the last para-

graph in Chapter V from ‘The Son of Man.”’

To Ian Maclaren’s publishers, the Methodist Book Concern, for permission to quote in Chapter VII from ‘‘ The Cure of Souls.”’

To Dr. Ozora S. Davis and the Chicago University Press for permission to quote a few lines in Chapter VIII from ‘‘ Religious Thought in the Last Quarter Century.”’

To Dr. Halford Luccock for permission to quote a paragraph of dialogue in Chapter VIII.

To the late Dr. John Kelman for permission to quote from ‘‘Prophets of Yesterday’’ in Chapter [X.

To Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick and Harper’s Magazine ‘foe permission to quote a few lines from one of his articles in Chapter XII.

To Bishop Francis J. McConnell and his publishers, the Methodist Book Concern, for permission to quote in Chapter XII from his new book on Dr. Borden Parker Bowne.

To Alfred Noyes and his publishers, the Frederick Stokes Company, for permission to quote a few lines from ‘‘Some Aspects of Modern Poetry”’ in Chapter XIV.

To Dr. Charles R. Brown and his publishers for permission to quote from ‘‘The Art of Preaching’ in Chapter XV.

To Sylvester Horne for permission to quote a few lines from “‘The Romance of Preaching,’’ which is published by the Fleming H. Revell Company.

To Vachel Lindsay, John Drinkwater, Ernest Poole, and Lorado Taft for permission to quote single lines and couplets in Chapter XVI.

To Corra Harris and the publishers of ‘‘ My Book and Heart,” Harper and Brothers, for permission to quote one line in

_ Chapter XVII.

To Strickland Gillilan and his publishers, Forbes and Company, for permission to quote the poem in Chapter XVIII from his book ‘Including You and Me.”’

To Dr. Halford Luccock for permission to take quotations from his book ‘‘ Preaching Values in the New Testament,”’ published by the Methodist Book Concern. Also to Dr. Charles R. Brown for permission to take the final quotations in Chapter XVIII from ‘‘The Making of a Minister,”’ published by the Century Company.

All of the additional Biblical quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Contents

EN TRODUCTION 00) UCT Be Ee Matta f7 CHAPTER I. PREACHING OUT OF THE OVERFLOW... 13 II. DEVELOPING THE HomiILeTic MIND... 29 III]. THE OBJECTIVES OF THE SERMON..... 44 _ IV. THE Tests oF A,GREAT SERMON..... 37 V.THE OverFLow oF ‘THE HIDDEN WEARS Bae Oe es Te UDR ENO rn Pm Rs eneea ar aity 69 VI. ASSEMBLING AND TRANSFORMING RAW PRODUCTS ‘FOR |PREACHING ¢0)/)6).%". 79 VII. THE Impact oF A Compact SERMON.. 89 VIII. VARIETY IN THE VEHICLES OF PREACH- TIN Gree hee afc tale Oia BAU (eked ROC OR 103 XY SIMPLICITY: INGE REACHING eh aves 120 OL RIMING APH Et GUMBO dy Sapo ma rie eee ey 130 XI. CREATING THR ATMOSPHERE.......... 139 XII. REACHING THE PEOPLE IN PREACH- ENG COA aR RG Pe AND oat Rie Ons: gar ab yf 148 XIII. ‘Tue INNER EARNESTNESS’’ OF PREACH- ENG ne Mirae er seu etnci ary, Wherry una aaa ae ean 160 XIV. RESERVE POWER IN PREACHING...... 170 XV. THE POWER OF PREACHING TO-Day...181 XVI. OUT OF THE OVERFLOW OF GREAT BOOKS near norm ntois ae laa err wig 195 XVII. PREACHING THROUGH NATURE....... 206 XVIII. THe BisLeE THE BASIS OF GREAT

Chapter I Preaching Out Of The Overflow

WHEN I was outlining this first chapter on “Preaching Out of the Overflow,” my train was passing through one of the oil fields of Kansas.

On both sides of the track were forests of oil derricks. The heavy odor of oil penetrated the Pullman car. It had a pleasdnt tang.

As I looked at those oil wells scattered everywhere, I remembered that there are three types of oil wells: dry holes, wells that have to be pumped, and wells that overflow. They overflow out of the abundance that is stored away, down deep in the earth’s subconscious self, as it were.

So there are three kinds of preachers and three types of preaching: There is the preaching that corresponds to the dry hole (that type is so proverbial that when we want a perfect figure for dryness we too often say, “‘as dry asasermon’’). Then there is the type of a preacher who has to pump himself, to strain, to battle and sweat and worry himself, and his family, each week into misery over a sermon. Thirdly, there is the man who preaches out of the overflow.

In ‘‘'The Mystery of Preaching’’ Dr. Black says: ““A minister is continually giving out each week, -even if it be only in ‘penny packets’; and there must be some method of refilling the coffer. Real joy in preaching depends on our having more ideas and suggestions for preaching than we can ever use; and this fine joy, akin to elation, only comes when our minds and our notebooks are crammed full. The best preaching is always the natural overflow of a ripe mind and the expression of a growing experience. A good sermon is never worked up, but worked out.”

Too many preacher-libraries, preacher-minds, preacher-lives, and sermons are like Old Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard:

‘‘And when she went there The cupboard was bare, And so the poor dog had none.”

Somewhere I heard of an Eastern proverb which says, ‘“You can only take out of a pot what you have put into it,’’ which is an echo of a more poetical quotation from Milton’s “Lycidas”:

‘The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed.”

All of this is by way of introduction to an outline of the various types of “‘overflow’’ out of which a preacher ought to be able to preach.

I. SERMONS COME OUT OF THE OVEFRLOW OF PHYSICAL ENERGY

Bishop Edwin Holt Hughes called my attention a few years ago to the fact that too many preachers go until they are about forty years of age and then slump. They go like twentieth-century trains, breaking all records for speed and enthusiasm. Then they suddenly drop out of sight and begin the down grade with almost as much speed as they came up the hill.

He attributes that to the fact that they go on their physical energy up to about forty; and then, having depended on that alone, and not having stored up any other mental or spiritual overflow, they have “shot their wad”’ and are through.

When I say that a man ought to preach out of the overflow of physical energies, I do not mean that he ought to limit his overflow even in youth to that merely. We all know that the physical man, the overflow of physical powers, begins to decline close to forty. Ty Cobb, Jack Dempsey, Tris Speaker, and the other famous athletes are through—are called ‘‘old men”’ in athletics—when they are about forty. That is a clear demonstration that the physical overflow must be backed up by something else. Yet, nevertheless, I put the physical overflow in this chapter as an essential thing.

There is nothing more contagious than a physically prepossessing preacher standing up in a pulpit well-dressed, slim-waisted, broad-shouldered, overflowing with physical energy. That overflow pours itself out into the sickly, pasty, anzemic, sluggish, unfit, the slow-moving, the lethargic lives of the individuals of a congregation and lifts them up, and out of themselves, into the realms of health and sunshine and hope.

The truly great preachers of all times have been men of overflowing physical energies—with few exceptions—namely, Wesley, Savonarola, Cromwell (lay-preacher), Luther, Knox, Moody, ‘Billy’ Sunday, Phillips Brooks, S. Parkes Cadman, etc.

It is true also in pastoral work. The supremely healthy preacher goes out among his shut-ins, his sick, and his discouraged, and he literally lifts them out and up with his overflow of health and happiness. He becomes a healer in a very real sense, just as Jesus was. He goes into a sick room and leaves a flood of health and sunshine behind him. He walks along the street and ‘‘changes the climate’ of a gloomy,rainy day in a store or a business office. He actually performs miracles and cures. JI am more and more coming to feel that it was out of the abundant overflow of his perfect physical life that Jesus lifted men up out of despondency, doubt—and even death—with his energy.

Into such a conception of the ministry comes the necessity for regular living, regular exercise, regular sleep and plenty of it, moderate eating, and plenty of fresh air.

“That day is not lost which is spent in the hunt,” says the old Arabian precept. That legend comes from a land and a tradition which believe that every day is numbered and that life cannot be extended beyond the allotted number of days. Yet even there is the belief that no day is lost to the preacher when it is spent on the golf links, at the swimming beach, on a tramp through the woods, or in witatever way he likes to take his recreation or his exercise. Regular exercise, enjoyable exercise—not the mechanical kind that you take each morning to the beat of the radio, and hate and dread; but exercise which is play and which gives joy—is that type which builds up an overflow out of which a preacher preaches successfully, and heals and cures and lifts.

Eight hours of sleep, without fail; making it up as it is missed; insisting upon that much as sternly as you insist upon the virtue of your wife; battling for it as one battles for God; sticking to that régime as one sticks to truth: that is a Divine duty—as much so as the devotional hour at the dawn of day. One of the most terrible sins of the modern ministry is the sin of ill health caused by hectic living, undersleeping; poisoned body and mind, resulting in irritation, quick temper, arrogancy, and often quarreling with loved ones and officials. Half of the divorces, half of the quarreling, half of the despondencies of life would be done away with if people kept their bodies free from fatigue poisons. How much is this a sacred duty to the preacher, who is supposedly a leader of people!

This overflow of health isa mountain-like asset in the pulpit, it is the asset of a mighty river flowing _ through a desert to make that desert blossom as 2 the rose in its curative effects in parish work among the sick, the lonely, the despondent, the troubled; it is “‘the rectitude and patience of the cliff’ to a minister in his relations with his officials, his women, and his problems; it is the serenity of a garden; it is the abundance of an overflowing well in all of his relations with people in pulpit and home.

Let us preach out of the overflow of physical energies; let us cure, let us heal, let us raise men from the dead! That is our duty and our privilege.

II. SERMONS COME OUT OF THE OVERFLOW OF IDEAS

A physically perfect young preacher had a long ministry between the years of thirty and forty ina certain city on the Atlantic seaboard. He was handsome, he was clever, he liked people, he went about doing good. He was an Apolloto look upon, and his smile would captivate the bitterest enemy.

But it was perfectly apparent, every time one heard him preach, that he was, as one man put it, “sucking his sermons out of his thumb.” It is a figure of infantile relegation—but it is effective. One day a good friend said to that young man—a young man who boasted that he got his sermons out on Saturday night after midnight and on Sunday afternoon: ‘‘ You'll either get something into your head or you are through in five years, boy! Up to this time you have been carried forward on your looks, your physique, your geniality, your friendliness, and your personal charm. But that fades in time, and you had better be storing up something in your head!”

I am watching to see whether that boy heeds his friend’s advice. I hope he will, for I love him. I doubt if he will.

I have read a good many books about preaching, and nearly all of them carry the general idea that every preacher ought to be reading so widely and experiencing life so grandly that he feels that, if he lived to be a hundred years old, he could never catch up with the ideas for sermons and illustrations which flow out of his mind.

There will be no ‘“‘hand-to-mouth”’ feeling of existence if the preacher is reading at least a “‘book a week’’—and it ought to be more. Many men, including busy President Roosevelt, Bishop William A. Quayle, and a score of others, have read a book a day.

“The average preacher out this way doesn’t read a book a month,”’ said a mid-Western preacher tome by way of criticism of my statement that I read a book a day.

I was ungodly and worldly enough to reply to that statement: ‘‘ That is exactly why he is the average preacher. That is exactly why he would be the average doctor if he were a doctor, or the average lawyer if he were a lawyer, or the average parent! _ And he will remain the AVERAGE preacher to the end of his days if he is not reading more than a book a month.”

Books bulge back the world’s horizons! ©

Books build ladders of light to the skies!

Books shake the soul of the world awake!

Books are spot-lights on the lives of those who preach!

Books are the keys that unlock the kingdoms of the earth to the preacher and, in turn, to his coneregation!

Congregations are made up these days ofcollege graduates, and they will not long continue to listen to preachers who give them nothing from Sunday to Sunday. That is the chief reason why congregations are small. There is nothing there for them: ‘‘The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed.”

No man long survives in the great pulpits of the nation who is not reading prolifically. I know the truly great preachers of this nation—all of them, from coast to coast—personally. I say here, without exception, that every one of them reads voraciously. I have seen the traveling bags of men like Dr. Robert Freeman, Dr. Merton S. Rice, Dr. Burris Jenkins, Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, Dr. Charles Jefferson, Dr. Halford Luccock, Dr. Charles R. Brown, Dr. Lynn Harold Hough, Bishop Francis J. McConnell, Bishop Edwin Holt Hughes, and Bishop William F. McDowell literally stuffed with books. They read on trains, they read in the early morning hours, they read at night in bed, they read on ship

PREACHING OUT OF THE OVERFLOW a | decks, they read, read, read, as if life depended upon it. They read because they like to read, and they read because they want to feed the sheep the next Sunday morning and evening.

They read because they want to preach out of the overflow of ideas.

III. SeERmMons CoME OuT OF THE OVERFLOW OF LIFE’S EXPERIENCES

A preacher said to me once: “‘I never lose a chance to go through a General Electric laboratory, a glove manufacturing company, a stove works, a glass factory, amotion picture studio, a steel mill. I never lose a chance to see back-stage, a baseball game, a football game, or a crowd on election night. I never lose a chance to go to Europe or to go to the seashore. I never miss an opportunity to go toa fire or watch a parade, or hear a symphony.”’

“Why?” I asked him.

“Tt is all grist to my mill,’”’ he replied in a somewhat antiquated figure of speech, but not an antiquated idea.

So Bishop William A. Quayle manufactured his sermons—out of the abundance of his life-experiences.

Traveling, visiting, feeling, thinking, going, and coming are a part of life’s experiences. Newspaper plants, candy plants, coal mines, schoolhouses, gymnasiums, kindergartens, and rose gardens are all a part of life’s experiences.

The student on the cattle ship going to Europe and the Holy Land is having a university experience getting ready for an overflow ministry. The young preacher who gets to the Holy Land early in his ministry instead of going as the crowning event of his ministry is the preacher who will preach out of the overflow.

Every experience of life, every visit to a hospital, every time one sees a major operation in a clinic, every time one visits an insane asylum or a college chapel, one enriches life, one increases the overflow.

A man ought to preach out of the overflow of the past week’s experiences, even as Will Rogers says, ‘All I know is what I read in the newspapers.’ Out of the overflow of current experiences much of his sermon ought to come. Every sermon ought to have something gleaned from the overflow of the past week’s experiences—aye, even out of the overflow of Sunday morning’s experiences. No preacher ought to go into the pulpit on Sunday morning without having read the morning newspapers so that he may link world events and the happenings of the day and the night before with his theme. There ought to be a feeling on the part of each congregation that there is more where that came from.

When Mr. S. S. McClure dealt with Robert Louis Stevenson he used to apologize for changing his manuscript, for depleting it and cutting it down. Stevenson always replied: “Do what you please with it. There is more where that came from.”

Robert Louis Stevenson was preaching out of the overflow of ideas and experiences.

I like the preacher who goes to school every summer in Europe, the Holy Land, Mexico, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, California, Glacier National Park; through New England in a Ford or a Lincoln; to the Great Lakes, to Roosevelt Dam, the Painted Desert, or the Petrified Forest. We ought to go to school on every vacation.

Sam Jones once stopped me on the street of a little West Virginia town when I was under ten years of age and asked me the way to the camp ground where he was to speak that afternoon. I told him. Then he asked me what time it was, and I pointed to the town clock. Then he asked me where a certain man lived, andI told him. Then he said to me something that I have never forgotten: “Boy, I’m going to school to you this morning! Thanks!”

So we ought to be going to school to somebody or somewhere every day, so that we may be preaching out of the overflow of experience.

IV. Sermons CoME OUT OF THE OVERFLOW OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Conversion, rebirth, regeneration, a ‘“‘religious experience” are fountains ever overflowing. It isa geyser, a Roosevelt dam, ever overflowing with the water of life which always causes the desert to blossom with green grass and flowers and grain;

and it is a power plant developing out of the overflow of that experience.

Not only is the validity of a ‘‘religious experience” attested to by religious history and the New Testament, but it is attested to by the great writers of all times. Tolstoy gives us ‘‘The Resurrection’ with its story of the conversion of a young lawyer. Dostoevsky gives us ‘‘Crime and Punishment,”’ Masefield gives us ‘‘The Everlasting Mercy,” Hawthorne gives us ‘“‘The Scarlet Letter,’”’ James gives us ‘‘Varieties of Religious Experience,’’ Begbie gives us ‘‘Twice-Born Men.”’

Not only do the novelists and poets attest to the validity of this ‘‘religious experience,’’ but every great psychologist of note attests to its reality and validity:

“Reality, reality, Lord Jesus Christ, thou art to me.”

The early Church preachers had and needed little else to talk about. That was their one text, their one sermonic idea, their one theme; a definite religious experience!

They met in the catacombs, in the dark cellars, in the secret places, to talk about and preach about and to testify to what? Answer: ‘Religious experience!”’ |

They would have been stone-dumb if they had not had a religious experience to talk about. The very stones would have cried out if they had not talked about it.

The Church itself was born in the upper room because of a “‘religious experience.”’

Just as Phillips Brooks said that he had a thousand sermons but only one text, “‘I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” so the early Church leaders and preachers had many sermons but only one theme; that of a “‘religious experience.”

Paul is a good witness to the validity and the reality of a ‘‘religious experience.”

Then come the psychologists with their testimony: The Coes, the Jameses, the Overstreets, the Hadfields, the Baudouins.

Comes Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, with his ‘‘Cosmic Consciousness,’’ which is a mass of material to prove that no truly great genius from Buddha to Christ, Dante to Whitman, Emerson to Thoreau, but discovered and found birth for his genius in a great overflowing religious experience, which brought about a ‘‘Cosmic Consciousness,’’ a sense of oneness with God and the eternal forces.

Certainly if this is true of poets, prophets, inventors, dramatists, essayists, Luthers, Pauls, Christ, it ought to be true of preachers; that out of the divine and the sublime overflow of a real religious experience they preach!

Then shall they be able to sing with feeling and with power, the reportorial instinct burning in them:

“*T love to tell the story, Of unseen things above,

Of Jesus and his glory, Of Jesus and his love!”’

I doubt if a man has a divine commission to preach if he has not had a definite religious experience of some unassailable, some impregnable, some definite type, through the overflow of which his life and his ministry are washed, and cleansed, and enriched, and out of the overflow of which he preaches.

V. S—RMONS COME OUT OF AN OVERFLOW OF LOVE

_ With the religious experience behind one’s ministry, there is the concomitant of love pouring forth all the time. Out of this overflow of love comes a great ministry and a great eloquence. Phillips Brooks had it in a remarkable degree—this overflow of love.

The minister who has that overflow of love will not be able to see with dry eyes a tired woman on a street car going home from work; he will not be able to see a scrubwoman go into a building in a cityat night that he will not interest himself in her problem, and that her problem will not haunt him day and night, particularly when he is writing and preaching sermons. A father in overalls going home to his family from the day’s toil will tug at his heart until he sits down beside him on the street car and talks with him. And that talk will find reflection in his Sunday sermons. The boy orator on his great contest night will bring a rise of sympathy to this man, and the prize fighter battling for a living, a Babe Ruth smashing out the home-run that wins the crucial game, the college half-back running the length of the field for a touch-down, a pregnant woman, a girl whose lover has deserted her, a girl in a circus on the high trapeze surpassing herself to amuse the public; the harlot on the street, the beggar at his door, the six-day bicycle racer in the moment of his hallucinations, the rebellious, stubborn high school boy or girl, the timid, shy child; the inarticulate man or woman, the Italian garbage collector, the newsboy, the washerwoman, the merchant, the thief, the blind, the maimed and halt; all of these will find in the overflow of the real minister’s love a sense of sympathy and understanding which will make them friends. Out of this overflow of love, out of this sympathy with humanity, will come a feeling something akin to that expressed in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ‘‘Renascence:”’

‘“‘All sin was of my sinning, all Atoning mine, and mine the gall Of all regret. Mine was the weight Of every brooded wrong, the hate That stood behind each envious thrust; Mine every greed, mine every lust. And all the while for every grief, Each suffering, I craved relief With individual desire— Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire About a thousand people crawl; Perished with each—then mourned for all!

A man was starving in Capri;

I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,

And knew his hunger as my own.

I saw at sea a great fog bank

Between two ships that struck and sank; A thousand screams the heavens smote, And every scream tore through my throat. No hurt I did not feel, no death

That was not mine; mine each last breath That, crying, met an answering cry

From the compassion that was I. F All suffering mine, and mine its rod:

Mine pity like the pity of God.”

Out of such an overflow of love, of pity, of compassion comes the great preaching of a superb ministry.

Chapter II Developing The Homiletic Mind

ONE day in the city of Detroit a member of my Church persuaded the barber of the Detroit Athletic Club to come and hear me preach.

Curious to know the barber’s reaction to the sermon and service the next morning, he went into the shop and said, ‘Well, what did you think of the sermon last night?”

‘‘It was a fine sermon; but that preacher certainly has the funniest head of hair I ever saw on a man.”

I stood on the brink of Niagara one day and heard a group of tourists discuss the falls. One was an engineer, and he waschiefly interested in his thoughts of the possible power-development of Niagara Falls; what had been done and what could still be done with that vast reservoir of electrical power. One was an artist, and he was interested in the colors of the water, green, blue, purple, and white, which swept over that immense brink. One was a poet, and he was dreaming great epics and lyrics out of that mystical waterfall; and Indian legends were sweeping through his creative mind. Onewas a preacher, and he was thinking of Niagara Falls in terms of sermon illustrations, in terms of life, in terms of | preaching. (29)