ILLUSTRATIONS
The life of Jesus and his teaching supply the incentive for these: our own experiences and those of other men and women the material. Jesus's use of the facts of local geography and history, of local life and custom, to press home his teaching, has already been touched upon, and we can judge for ourselves how poorer his message would have been without his sowers and seeds and lost coins and lamps set on lamp-stands. The light of these parables shines brightly still, and still we can teach from them.

But we can teach also, by example and anecdote, from the circumstances of our own day. We do it unintentionally in the proverbs we repeat: clouds with silver edges, elusive birds twittering in bushes, a basketful of eggs dropped to the total impoverishment of the owner, burning boats preventing retreat: all these figure in our ordinary speech, with a power dimmed by constant repetition. But the heritage of such figures is being constantly renewed, and it is probably in miniatures of this kind that the best work with illustrations is done. Too elaborate an analogy makes demands on the patience of the audience which are too heavy, and tends to take to itself the importance which lies in the application of it 23. Jesus's parables were all short: even where they occupy half a chapter they need only have taken two or three minutes to relate, 'and they were intended to lead those who were of the right mind to come and learn from him their import.

There is no doubt of the value of pictures. It is exploited when we hold lantern lectures (whose popularity seems, nevertheless, to lie rather in their appeal in advertisements than in their greater attractiveness when presented). It is used when we place charts of Daniel's image,2a or maps of Europe, before the eyes of our listeners. But we are concerned now with verbal illustrations, and it is wonderful what interest can be aroused and sustained by transforming a tame reading of words (interesting in themselves only to those who know what lies behind) into vivid but restrained word-pictures of the events related.24 A sense of proportion must guide us again.

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The author fell into that trap seriously once. A lecture on " War and the Christian " was worked out as an elaborate parable in which the mythical land of Ruritania, divided by the Styx river, afforded livelihood to "Right Stygians " and "Left Stygians," ''owning allegiance to the same Lord, yet fighting among themselves for his property. The allegory was detailed "and precise, but at, the end almost more complicated than the life it was meant to depict. The virtue of the treatment, which partly redeemed it, is that of gaining agreement on a subject where the listener does not feel himself affected, and then pointing the moral at his own experience.
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We have no right to embroider the narratives until their meaning is lost in the frills of our literary fancywork; but we have warrant for reasonable re-telling of stories of a bygone age in terms familiar to our own. Some of the Bible's simple stories with a profound doctrinal message lend themselves readily to such treatment: Cain and Abel, 25 Noah's building of the Ark on dry land, 26 Abraham's call from Ur27 and his readiness to sacrifice Isaac, 28 to take only a few examples from the Book of Genesis.

The illustration is the ideal means of winning conviction without exciting prejudice. How could David have been brought to condemn himself as outright as he did29 save by the " hypothetical case " of the poor man with the one ewe lamb? Analogy assuredly provides no proof, but if our audience can be induced to consent to a parallel case, drawn from history or imagination, where they are not concerned, how heavily is their conscience burdened when we observe, " Which things are an allegory . . .! "30 The over-elaborate example already mentioned (see footnote page 78) had as its object the acceptance of certain principles for the mythical state of Ruritania which must not be discarded in our own real world, and the object, at least, was good.

One guiding principle must never be violated. We proceed from the known to the unknown, the granted to the disputed. Our allegories must detail what the audience can grasp from its own knowledge, and proceed thence to the heavenly meaning. We must draw our examples from the common fund of experience-sowers sowing and children playing in the market places31, as Jesus did. Our experts will not therefore use their specialized knowledge, in technical matters which the audience cannot be expected to grasp, to elucidate spiritual matters which are far better comprehended without such help. Jeans did not use the vast spaces of the universe to explain what flies would look like in St. Paul's Cathedral, but the reverse.