Lectures to My Students, Series 3 (The Art of Illustration)

THE LIBRARY of VICTORIA UNIVERSITY Toronto UNION THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE TORONTO. THIRD SERIES OF LECTURES TO MY STUDENTS. The Art of Illustration: BEING ADDRESSES DELIVERED TO THE STUDENTS OF Pastors' College, METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE. BY C. H. SPURGEON, London: PASSMORE & ALABASTER, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS. THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE TORONTO. PASSMORE & ALABASTER, PASSMORE & SONS, PRINTERS, WHITECROSS STREET, LONDON, E.C. INTRODUCTORY NOTES. MR. SPURGEON, in his preface to the Second Series of Lectures to my Students, wrote: — "I seize the present opportunity to call attention to the second of my three books for students, for this is properly the third. I allude to the volume entitled, Commenting and Commentaries. It embodies the experience and information of a lifetime ; but, being very much occupied with a Catalogue of Commentaries, it cannot commend itself to popular tastes, and must be confined in its circulation to those who wish for information upon expository works. To my own surprise, it is in the tenth thousand,* but numbers of readers to whom it might be valuable have not yet seen it. As almost all the reviewers speak of it with much praise, I think it will be worth any young man's while to buy it before he gets far on in the formation of a library. It is on my heart, if life is spared, to issue six half-crown books for preachers ; the fourth, which is much of it prepared, will be occupied with The Art of Illustration, and I am anxious in no one instance to waste time and labour upon books which will not be read. Hence my reason for mentioning the Commenting book in this place. Life is short, and time is precious to a busy man. Whatever we do, we wish to make the most of." Accordingly, Mrs. Spurgeon thought that, after the publication of her dear husband's Commentary on the Gospel according to Matthew, — The Gospel of the Kingdom, that pathetically-precious volume that memorializes the author's transition from preaching the Gospel on earth to entering the Kingdom in heaven, — the first of his unfinished books to be completed must be the one to which he had himself given the title, The Art of Illustration, and for which he had so long carefully been gathering the materials. Hence the issue of the present work. Of the seven lectures included in this volume, the first two were revised and stereotyped during Mr. Spurgeon's lifetime. Three of the others were partially revised by him, before being re-delivered to a later company * Commenting and Commentaries is now (1897), in the fourteenth thousand. INTRODUCTORY NOTES. of students than those who heard them for the first time. The two remaining lectures are printed substantially as they appeared in the reporter's transcripts ; only such verbal corrections have been made as were absolutely necessary to ensure accuracy of statement so far as it could be ascertained. It was a providential arrangement that, just as the lecture on " The Science of Astronomy as a Source of Illustration " was being prepared for the press, a book entitled, The Voices of the Stars, by J. E. WALKER, M.A. (Elliot Stock), was received for review in The Sword and the Trowel. As the author of that very valuable volume has taken great pains " to verify, on the highest authority, the facts which are the basis of the theological and spiritual correspondences " pointed out in his work, we have been glad to avail ourselves of his figures, in certain instances, so as to bring the lecture down to date; and we gratefully acknowledge our indebtedness to Mr. Walker for this assistance. Of course, it is needless to say that this volume of lectures is not what Mr. Spurgeon would have made it had he been spared to see it published ; but, fully recognising that fact, every possible effort has been exerted to make the work as helpful as possible to those for whom it is specially intended. In the catalogue of books of anecdotes, illustrations, etc., the " etc." has been rather widely interpreted so as to include the Sword and Trowel reviews of all works of the kind that were likely to be useful to ministers, students, local preachers, Sunday-school teachers, and Christian workers generally. The notices of these illustrative volumes which appeared in " Mr. Spurgeon's Magazine" up to the time of his promotion to glory, were almost (if not quite) all written by himself; so that, with Lectures V. and VI., and Appendix A, readers will be able to see what the late Pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle judged to be the best books of this nature that had come before his notice. He was such a master of "The Art of Illustration" that his opinions on this subject have the added weight of long practical experience; and this will, doubtless, make them of great value to others. It was necessary to adopt some kind of order for the reviews ; and as any other arrangement would have seemed invidious, it was decided that the notices should be printed as they appeared, chronologically, in The Magazine. The published prices of the books are given for the benefit of purchasers ; and in the case of works which are now out of print, that fact is stated, to prevent disappointment to readers, and useless enquiries of publishers. It may be that books which are out of print can still be obtained of second-hand booksellers. Where the volumes have passed out of the hands of the original publishers, the names of the present publishers have been inserted, with the prices at which the books can now be bought. The issue of this volume will awaken, in the minds of the ministers educated in the Pastors' College, many memories of their beloved President." The happy Friday afternoons, when these and similar lectures were delivered to them, will never fade from the recollection of the highly-privileged band of brethren who had the honour of sitting at the feet of C. H. Spurgeon.