Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 35:139 (Jul 1878)
Article: Illustrated Sermons, Or Truth Addressed To The Eye
Author: W. B. Brown

BSac 35:139 (July 1878) p. 552

Illustrated Sermons, Or Truth Addressed To The Eye

Rev. W. B. Brown

While conceding that the Lockean philosophy, which claims that knowledge is communicated to the mind only through the senses, is unfounded in fact, we must yet concede that very much of what impresses our mental faculties comes to us from sensation. And we must further concede that the eye and the ear are the most important of all the avenues to the soul. Through these gateways a vast proportion of what we learn and feel, of what moves and moulds us, finds entrance. It is not necessary that we should put the eye and ear into comparison for the purpose of deciding their relative importance; for both are well nigh indispensable. Take either from society, and civilization could not survive. Yet if one or the other must be dispensed with, it were better that we should be deprived of hearing than of sight.

I have felt for years, and more and more as the years have passed on, that it was not only possible, but most desirable, that the eye should be addressed more directly and extensively than it has been in the preaching of the gospel. We have contented ourselves with speaking to the ear alone, when we should have addressed the eye as well. We know how much of interest is imparted to a discourse from seeing the speaker and noting his attitude and gesture. Half the effect, sometimes more, comes of this. If, now, the very truth that is spoken to the ears of men could, at the same time, be represented with equal or greater clearness to their natural vision, an impression of double intensity would be produced. The attention would be riveted, and the truth, seen with a twofold vividness, would be impressed on the

BSac 35:139 (July 1878) p. 553

mind with a twofold power. Two reflectors, having a common focus, intensify the light.

Almost any subject suitable for popular pulpit discourse is susceptible of definite and forcible pictorial illustration; so that the field, instead of being narrowed to a few special topics, is as broad as the world. Even the abstract problems of mathematics and of astronomy are made clear to the mind by means of linear drawing. No professor would undertake to teach these sciences without his diagrams and charts. Indeed, without these he could not comprehend the subject himself, much less teach others. In geography maps are indispensable, and in all the natural sciences pictures of various sorts are of great advantage. Indeed, printing itself and all written language are no more than visible symbols addressed to the eye. If, now, in physical and mathematical science, and in the science of language, pictorial representation is of such conceded value, we should reasonably infer that in the department of moral truth it should hold an equall...