ave suffered
awhile, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you," he causes the
whole matter to be indelibly impressed on their minds by the very
mechanical comparison of Perfection, Establishment, Strengthening, and
Settling to four sparkling jewels set in the jet-black foil of past
suffering. This is just that kind of illustration which his audience
craves. It matters not whether he meets this audience through a vague or a
transparent medium, provided the vagueness or the transparency be common
both to the speaker and his hearers. Nothing, for instance, could have
better accomplished the end designed, yet nothing could be more vague,
than such an appeal as the following:--"Have ye never on your bed dreamed
a dream, when your thoughts roamed at large and a bit was taken from your
imagination, when, stretching all your wings, _your soul floated through
the Infinite, grouping strange and marvellous things together, so that the
dream rolled on in something like supernatural splendor_? But, on a
sudden, you were awakened, and you have regretted hours afterwards that
the dream was never concluded. _And what is a Christian, if he does not
arrive at perfection, but an unfinished dream?_" Now there is nothing more
universal among the most unintellectual of the children of earth than just
this sort of mystical reverie, thus grand and thus inconclusive, where the
mind, moved, perhaps, to this enthusiastic rapture by that infusion of
animal force which comes from a hearty dinner, remaining always just in
the same place, seems to wheel away, it knows not whither, but seemingly,
and as it flatters itself, into the regions of the Infinite. Really there
is no mental movement at all,--nothing but an outgoing through the myriad
channels of animal sensibility; yet there is always associated, in such
minds, with reveries like these a spiritual elevation approaching to
inspiration. "Oh," think they, "if the dream might only be completed,
_that_ would be the consummation of a divinely spiritual being!" On this
association Spurgeon founds a comparison, which, though utterly false when
analyzed, is yet no less effective as illustrating the particular idea
which he wishes to convey. Such associations, where he cannot correct
them, it is the business of the popular preacher to inherit as if they
were his own, and to build upon as if they were gospel truths.

Spurgeon, again, is continually indulging in the most startling
suppositions, a