Now these elements of success Spurgeon has in an eminent degree.  He deals not simply with realities of the grossest sort, but with those which are forever present to common humanity; he seeks to move men to religious feelings through precisely the same means that they are daily moved by, the same things which daily excite whatever of thought is transacted in their cramped-up world of mind.  This is particularly evident in the material structure upon which his sermons proceed.

Preaching from the text, “But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have 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.