Experience in Christian preaching refers to the practical knowledge gained through living and spiritual trials, shaping wisdom and faith (Hebrews 5:14). Illustrations often portray experience as a guide for others, a clarifier of scripture, and a source of tested truth, contrasting it with uncertain experimentation. It underscores the value of learned lessons in the believer's journey toward maturity.
Marking dangers benefits future travelers, illustrating how experience aids others.
There was an Indian, who, whenever he reached a dangerous bog in the swamp, would put up a stake to mark the spot. By this means, he not only guarded his future movements, but furnished a warning to others who might pass that way. This is the benefit one generation derives from another.
Experience is true wisdom, illuminating only the path already traveled.
All is but lip-wisdom which wants experience. — Sidney. — To most men, experience is only like the stern-lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed. Coleridge.
Though experiences differ, all believers share common spiritual features.
The experiences of no two persons are precisely alike in every feature or in any one feature. No two have faces alike. All have faces, however, if they are human. No two have any one feature precisely the same; yet all have the same features. He who should have two mouths, or three eyes, or two noses, would be a monster, not a man. And he who should have no mouth or nose or eyes at all would be a deformed man at best. So, in religious experience, all have the same general experience, all have the same general features, though no two are exactly alike.
— W. E. Boardman
Experience can reveal the true meaning of a scripture previously not understood.
I well know now what it is to have preached from a text which I did not so much as understand till it was thoroughly opened to me by experience.
— Cecil
Experimentation leads to progress and improvement despite many failures.
Barbarism is marked by a state of society in which the tendency is downward, and civilization by the reverse. Experiment is found only with the latter: it is the herald of improvement. By this, Archimedes learned the power of the lever; Watt how to apply steam; and Morse how to make the lightning carry his messages. Many experiments fail; but the grand result is great gain to the arts and industries of the world.
Experience is certain; experiment is uncertain but serves future purposes.
Experience is that which has been tried; experiment is the thing to be tried: experience is certain, as it is a deduction from the past for the service of the present; the experiment is uncertain, and serves a future purpose: experience is an unerring guide, which no man can desert without falling into error; experiments may fail, or be superseded by others more perfect. G. Crabb.
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