THE HIGHER USES OF THE IMAGINATION.

"Another parable put He forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto • • •" — Matt. xiii. 24.

"All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake He not unto them." — Matt. xiii. 34.

A conspicuous feature in the teaching of Jesus was the extent to which He dealt in parables. Sometimes those parables were very brief. He would take some little incident with which everybody was familiar, and turn it into a figure to shadow forth the idea He wished to convey. At other times He would frame a story, and hold attention riveted as He described the doings or experiences of the persons brought into view; and He did this in a style so graphic and simple that everything seemed to live and move before people’s eyes.

In these stories there was always some hidden meaning wrapped up which He meant those listening to Him to find out and apply for themselves. The lesson He desired to teach might be rather unpalatable; or it might seem too tame if presented in bare, prosaic words. And so He sought to flash it on the mind in the form of a picture which His hearers could carry with them, and think over, until its deeper suggestions dawned upon them and they felt its force.

Now, what was all this but an appeal to the imagination? It was an effort to work on that remarkable gift the human soul has — the gift of seeing in things visible and tangible the hints and emblems of things that are higher. It is through this gift of imagination that we are able to rise above the dull surroundings of life, and form conceptions of what is grand and inspiring. It is by the gift of imagination that we can make what we actually know the means of realising and rendering clear to ourselves the vague ideas we are dimly straining to grasp.

Some have asserted in recent years that this is a vanishing gift — that the power of imagination is on the wane in the present generation. Whether that be the case or not, one thing at least is patent — that many are inclined to speak disparagingly of the influence of the imagination. They think that to give it much play unfits a person for the practical demands of life. It renders the mind impatient of the matter-of-fact details of work-a-day existence. And not a few are particularly afraid of the effect of imagination in religion. It makes visionaries and dreamy sentimentalists, they declare. It carries people away from the simple realities of the faith, and tempts them to indulge in vagaries and fancies of their own invention.

Yet here is the fact staring us in the face that Jesus devoted a large part of His teaching to the wakening up of the imagination; and He was neither a sentimentalist nor a visionary, but seriously practical. He drew striking analogies and told tales of moving interest which set the imagination to work. He wanted to fill men’s minds with pictures drawn from the natural course of things, pictures which might rouse them to think of likenesses and correspondences to other things that did not appear on the surface. Obviously, He placed great confidence in the power of the imagination to enlarge the range of men’s perceptions, and to lift them to heights of thought and feeling which they could not otherwise reach.

There can be no doubt that imagination is a divinely given endowment of the soul, designed to serve divinely-appointed ends; and this clearly was Jesus’ conviction. It may be prostituted, turned to ends that are unworthy, as any other endowment may be. Nevertheless it has its higher uses in the wise purpose of God, and when earnestly employed for those higher uses it is sure to prove an inestimable good.

1. The Power of Visualizing.

One important use of the imagination is to hold stirring scenes of life before the mind in a way that shall be vivid and arresting. This probably is the simplest form in which the imagination can be exercised. When we read or hear an account of any notable action, we have all of us a certain power to call up the vision of it in our mental eye. We can so conceive the persons, the places, and the deeds done, that the whole scene becomes living to us. We seem to see it; we catch the spirit of it: the impression of its heroism, high faith, or self-devotion darts upon us and thrills us.

This is one of the benefits which imagination enables us to derive from books of travel, from books of biography and history. It enriches the chambers of our thought with pictures of daring or nobleness, of generosity or sacrifice, of resolute struggle against oppression and wrong; and it makes these pictures living, full of interest, and full also of uplifting suggestions that stimulate our better feelings. Thus we can see Savonarola mounting the scaffold and calmly facing the crowd he had laboured to lead to righteousness and God; and our hearts throb as we feel the spell of his courageous fidelity. We can see Luther, baited and brow-beaten by the assembled magnates at Worms, yet calmly declaring his refusal to recant; and our pulse beats fast as we mark his unflinching steadfastness. We can see Mungo Park, in his hour of despair, bending over the tuft of moss in the lone African wilds, and drawing from it the assurance that a divine care was guarding him still; and a fresh breath of hope swells our own bosom. It is as if we had been there, spectators on the spot, witnesses of the whole transaction.

Such is the power which imagination supplies. And it is a power worth cultivating. Provided we withhold its exercise from everything low or coarse, and deliberately engage it on what is elevating and pure, it can be of immense service in numberless ways. It is an unspeakable help, for instance, when we bring its influence to bear on the events and incidents of the Gospel narrative. What a new zest we find in the life and doings of the Lord Jesus when we call up before the mind’s view the varied scenes of which that narrative tells! It is the imagination that enables us to do this. It enables us to picture to ourselves the very figure of the Master as He spoke and acted and moved about amongst men. We visualise the description. The quiet hills of Galilee and the busy lake-shore, the tree-shaded streets of Jericho, the wooded slopes of Olivet, the crowded temple-courts of Jerusalem, the tragic cross on Calvary, — all rise clear to our mental gaze as we read the sacred story; and the gracious Form of Jesus stands out vivid to us as if we actually looked upon His face. And thus the Person of the Lord grows real to our apprehension. We feel the wonder and the beauty of His actions. We enter into their spirit and purpose. He becomes to us a living Presence, wooing and touching our hearts. And it is by the aid of imagination that this inspiring effect is wrought.

2. The Grasping of the Spiritual.

A second use of the imagination is to give shape and colour to great spiritual truths. It has often been said that everything in life is double. As Shelley has expressed it,—

"Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one another’s being mingle."

And that is veritably true. Everything that is visible and material bears in it a correspondence or resemblance to something else in a more mysterious realm of being. In all that the senses perceive going on around us there are hidden symbols and images of things which the senses cannot grasp. What is seen does not stand by itself, nor does it exist for itself; — it is always the type or sign of something that is not seen and higher than itself. Hence the world is crammed full of analogies, emblematic figures, that shadow forth invisible realities, too grand to be put into plain ordinary speech.

And to discover these analogies, to lay hold of them and keep them before the mind, is the function of the imagination. It is a splendid thing to grasp a great truth or a noble thought, and to be able to link it on to some palpable circumstance in life with which you are familiar. Then the palpable, familiar circumstance becomes to you the image or symbol of that great thought or truth. It gives it body and form and colour, and makes the thought or truth itself more intensely vivid to your heart and feeling. When, for example, the Psalmist caught hold of the idea of the divine faithful guidance and guardianship in the events of his experience, what an enormous help to his inward comfort it must have been when he found he could link on that idea to the homely incidents of the shepherd’s calling which he knew so well, and say, "The Lord is my Shepherd!" Henceforth he could never see the herdsman on the hills, leading his flock, without having the reality of the divine care made more clear and comprehensible to his soul.

That is but one illustration among many of the power of the imagination to seize upon comparisons and analogies drawn from earthly things and scenes, and so give body and colour to high truths which otherwise would be vague and dim. It was to kindle the imagination and assist it in doing this that Jesus dealt in parables so largely. ** Earth," as one of the poets has said, "is the shadow of heaven," and imagination is granted that we may use it to find in the sights and occurrences of earth the figures and pictures of heavenly ideas, which are true for all time and vital to our happiness.

3. The Redeeming of the Commonplace.

This leads on to a third use of the imagination, and that is — to irradiate the commonplace with the glow of lofty meanings. Wordsworth speaks of the power of the poet to illumine the common affairs of life by the magical gift he possesses. He can

                                     "Add the gleam.

The light that never was on sea or land,"

to brighten up the most prosaic sights and objects around him. And we have all a little of the poet in us, because we all have a little of the same magical gift of imagination. And this gift may be turned to priceless service if we bring the sacred revelations of religion to bear upon its exercise. For those revelations convey the assurance of a real divine purpose working itself out in the common round of every one’s tasks and cares, a divine purpose even in the most monotonous daily grind. And to grasp that conception, and realise that in your hum-drum circumstances and duties you have some end to fulfil worth God’s placing you there — to grasp that, and hold it steadily in your mind, sheds a radiance on your lot and on your honest efforts which is marvellously brightening. It lights up your commonplace toil and struggle with high and wondrous meanings. It connects the flat routine of your days with the vast scheme of the Almighty. It is like a halo of sacredness thrown round your life.

Yield your imagination to the Spirit’s quickening touch, and you will see the halo. Try to see it; and when it flashes on you, never lose sight of it; keep it in view steady and clear. And in many a despondent hour, when your way is dull and dark, the gleam of some divine end you are serving will light up the drudgery of your lot, and revive and strengthen your heart.

4. The Vision of the Ideal.

A fourth use of the imagination is to spur the mind by the vision of attainments not yet reached. For imagination has a remarkable capacity for stretching away from the present to the future, from the actual to the ideal. It is through the exercise of the imagination that a man conceives to himself the advancement in his position, the extension of his business, the improvement of his methods and machinery, the increase of his knowledge and culture, which may be possible for him, and minister to his success. In the silent chambers within he sketches and paints it, until he sees it all shining before his mental eye. And as he sees it, his ambition is whetted; and unless he be a mere builder of castles in the air, he rouses his will and energies to work forward, as far as he can, towards realising what he sees. Imagination has furnished him with the vision of an ideal, and that spurs him on.

But imagination may be used to stir the mind by the charm of a far higher vision. It may be used to picture the nobleness of a brave, devoted, Christ-like life. That was what the Apostle meant when he prayed on behalf of the Ephesians that "Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith" (Eph. iii. 17). He was thinking of the image of Christ kept gleaming before their inward gaze, to draw them onwards to close resemblance to the Saviour’s beauty and grace.

And there is a great secret here — the secret of making the best of life and its precious possibilities. To have the mind’s eye filled with a vision of the good and brave things we may do, the lofty aims for which we may strive, the self-denying battle we may fight for Christ and conscience’ sake — how that kindles aspiration and sets the soul straining towards purer heights and better things I Let a man cherish every such vision when it flashes upon him; let his imagination seize it and hold it floating before his view; then he will have the grandest of all ideals to give his life its true bent, and to urge him on to the nobleness and spiritual worth which Christ lived and suffered to help him to reach.