333 Sermon Illustrations on Consequences of Sin

A distinguished merchant, who for twenty years did a vast amount of business, remarked to Dr. Edwards, "Had it not been for the sabbath, I have no doubt I should have been a maniac long ago." This was mentioned in a company of merchants, when one remarked, "That is the case exactly with Mr. —. He was one of our greatest importers. He used to say, that the sabbath was the best day in the week to plan successful voyages; showing that his mind had no sabbath. He has been in the insane-hospital for years, and will probably die there." Many men are there, or in the maniac's grave, because they had no sabbath. They broke a law of Nature, and of Nature's God, and found "the way of the transgressor to be hard." Such cases are so numerous, that a writer remarks, "We never knew a man work seven days in a week who did not kill himself or kill his mind."

O sin! how hast thou cursed us! Thou hast thrown up a barrier between ourselves and God. With thy chilling breath, thou hast extinguished the light of our household joys; thou hast unstrung our harp, and filled the air with discordant cries; thou hast unsheathed the sword, and bathed it in human blood; thou hast dug every grave in the bosom of the fair earth; but for thee, we should not have known the name of widow or orphan, tear and sigh, sorrow and death; but for thee, our hearts had been untorn by a pang, and our joy pure as the ecstasies of heaven.

— Dr. J. Parker

When Nicephorus Phoeas had built a strong wall about his palace for his own security, in the night-time, he heard a voice crying to him, "O emperor! though thou build thy wall as high as the clouds, yet, if sin be within, it will overthrow all."

How often does it happen in the history of these wilful sinners of the flesh, that, after a while, all things seem to smile upon them and prosper them according to their heart's desires! Are they mad for gold?—gold seems to roll in upon them. Are they mad for pleasure?—their seductive arts are successful, and victims come readily to their lure. Are they mad for drink?—those around them, kindred, friends, cease to strive with them, and give it up as hopeless. Shame, too, abandons them: they may wallow in beer or gin, nobody cares. It is very wonderful to see how often, if a man is bent on an end which is not God's end, God gives it him, and it becomes his curse. God does not curse us. He leaves us to ourselves: that is curse enough; and from that curse what arm can save us! We will have it, and we shall have it. We leap through all the barriers which he has raised around us to limit us; yea, though they be rings of blazing fire, we will through them and indulge our lust; and, in a moment, he sweeps them all out of our path: perhaps roses spring to beguile where flames so lately flamed to warn. J. B. Brown.

The hydra of fable had nine heads, the middle one of which was immortal. The monster ravaged the country of Argos. Hercules went forth to destroy him. He struck off the hydra's heads; but, as often as he did it, in place of each grew two new ones. At length, he succeeded in burning away the heads of the hydra, and in burying the immortal head under a huge rock.

If you cut a gash in a man's head, you may heal it; but you can never rub out, nor wash out, nor cut out, the scar. It may be a witness against you in his corpse: still it may be covered by the coffin, or hidden in the grave; but then it is not till decomposition shall take place, that it shall entirely disappear. But, if you smite a soul, the scar remains: no coffin or grave shall hide it; no revolution, not even the upturning of the physical universe, shall obliterate it; no fire, not even the eternal furnaces of hell, shall burn it out. Dr. Thomson.

If but one sin be unrepented of, the man continues still a bond-slave of hell. By one little hole, a ship will sink into the bottom of the sea. The stab of a penknife to the heart will as well destroy a man as all the daggers that killed Caesar in the senate-house. The soul will be strangled with one cord of vanity as well as with all the cart-ropes of iniquity: only the more sins, the more plagues and fiercer flames in hell; but he that lives and dies impenitent in one, it will be his destruction. One dram of poison will despatch a man, and one reigning sin will bring him to endless misery. R. Bolton

The consul Q. S. Carpio had taken the city of Toulouse by an act of more than common perfidy and treachery, and possessed himself of the immense hoards of wealth stored in the temples of the Gaulish deities. From this day forth, he was so hunted by calamity, all extremist evils and disasters, all shame and dishonor, fell so thick on himself and all who were his, and were so traced up by the moral instinct of mankind to this accursed thing which he had made his own, that any wicked gains fatal to their possessor acquired this name; and of such a one it would be said, "He has gold of Toulouse." Trench.

There is an Australian missile called the boomerang, which is thrown so as to describe singular curves, and fall at last at the feet of the thrower. Sin is a kind of boomerang, which goes off into space curiously, but turns again upon its author, and with tenfold force strikes the guilty soul that launched it.

It is the Trojan horse: it hath sword and famine and pestilence in the belly of it. Sin is a coal, that not only blacks, but burns. Sin creates all our troubles: it puts gravel into our bread, wormwood in our cup. Sin rots the name, consumes the estate, buries relations. Sin shoots the flying roll of God's curses into a family and kingdom (Zech. v. 4). It is reported of Pho-cas, having built a wall of mighty strength about his city, there was a voice heard, "Sin is in the city, and that will throw down the wall." T. Watson.

This slander is compared to poison: "the tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison." The deadliest poisons are those for which no test is known. There are poisons so destructive, that a single drop insinuated into the veins produces death in three seconds; and yet no chemical science can separate that virus from the contaminated blood, and show the metallic particles of poison glittering palpably, and say, "Behold! it is there." F. W. Robertson.

Baldur the Good, one of the gods of Northern mythology, received premonitions of approaching death. To guard against this fate, his mother, Frigga, exacted an oath from fire and water, from all the metals, from stones, trees, diseases, beasts, birds, reptiles, and poisons, that none of them should harm her son. The other gods now regarded Baldur as immortal, and amused themselves by hurling darts or stones at him, while others struck at him with their swords and battle-axes; but all this harmed him not. Then one of the gods cut a sprig of mistletoe, which appeared harmless compared to the missiles he had already withstood, and hurled it at him. It pierced him through and through, and Baldur fell down lifeless. His mother laid all things that she considered dangers to her son's life under oath to do him no harm; but the mistletoe, insignificant and feeble, she passed by. Many a man who would have resisted great crimes or dangers has been pierced through, and fallen, by some little thing.

Suppose a luxuriant harvest shooting into perfection, waving in the wind, ripening in the sun, and flattering the fond hope of the husbandman by the fair promise of abundance. Should you see this hope blasted, and the whole produce of the fields destroyed by a universal blight or an overwhelming tempest, you would weep over the desolation, and turn with horror from the scene. Suppose a community cemented by friendship, inspired by patriotism, obedient to the laws, rising in opulence, in dignity, in character. Again: suppose it divided by suspicion, irritated by parties, distracted by violence, its cities depopulated, its fields drenched with the blood of their inhabitants, and anarchy and civil discord completing its destruction. Were you witness of this mournful tragedy, were you spectators of these acts of violence, did you behold this "wide-spread ruin," what language could describe the agitation of your feelings? But what are these when compared to the destruction of man? What can so affect our feelings as the soul of man in ruins?—this fair temple of God broken down by vice, and made the abode of every frightful monster and detestable abomination; this efflux of the divinity, sinking into depravity and wretchedness and infamy, till it is swept by the bosom of destruction, and driven by an avenging God into the pit of everlasting misery! R. Watson

One day, the master of Lukman, an Eastern fabulist, said to him, "Go into such a field, and sow barley." Lukman sowed oats instead. At the time of harvest, his master went to the place, and, seeing the green oats springing up, asked him, "Did I not tell you to sow barley here? Why, then, have you sown oats?" He answered, "I sowed oats in the hope that barley would grow up." His master said, "What foolish idea is this? Have you ever heard of the like?" Lukman replied, "You yourself are constantly sowing in the field of the world the seeds of evil, and yet expect to reap in the resurrection-day the fruits of virtue. Therefore I thought, also, I might get barley by sowing oats." The master was abashed at the reply, and set Lukman free.

"What does Satan pay you for swearing?" asked one gentleman of another. "He don't pay me any thing," was the reply. "Well, you work cheap,—to lay aside the character of a gentleman; to inflict so much pain on your friends and civil people; to suffer; and, lastly, to risk your own precious soul, and for nothing,—you certainly do work cheap, very cheap indeed."

A Burmese potter, says the legend, became envious of the prosperity of a washerman, and, to ruin him, induced the king to order him to wash one of his black elephants white, that he might be lord of the white elephant. The washerman replied, that, by the rules of his art, he must have a vessel large enough to wash him in. The king ordered the potter to make such a vessel. When made, it was crushed by the first step of the elephant in it. Many trials failed; and the potter was ruined by the very scheme he had intended should crush his enemy.

Slander is like the Greek fire in ancient warfare, which burned unquenched beneath the water; or like the weeds, which, when you have extirpated them in one place, are sprouting forth vigorously in another spot at the distance of many hundred yards. F. W. Robertson.

The heathen philosopher Xanthus, expecting some friends to dine with him, ordered his servant Æsop to provide the best things the market could supply. Tongues only were provided; and these the cook was ordered to serve up with different sauces. Course after course was supplied, each consisting of tongue. "Did I not order you," said Xanthus in a violent passion, "to buy the best victuals the market afforded?"—"And have I not obeyed your orders?" said Æsop. "Is there any thing better than a tongue? Is not the tongue the bond of civil society, the organ of truth and reason, and the instrument of our praise and adoration of the gods?" Xanthus ordered him to go again to the market on the morrow, and buy the worst things he could find. Æsop went, and again he purchased tongues, which the cook was ordered to serve as before. "What! tongues again?" exclaimed Xanthus. "Most certainly," rejoined Æsop, "the tongue is surely the worst thing in the world. It is the instrument of all strife and contention, the inventor of lawsuits, and the source of division and wars: it is the organ of error, of lies, calumny and blasphemies."

I saw a terrible fire some time ago, or, rather, I saw the reflection of it in the sky: the heavens were crimsoned with it. It burned a large manufactory to the ground; and the firemen had hard work to save the buildings which surrounded it. They poured streams of water on it from fifteen engines; but it licked it up, and would have its course till the walls gave way. That terrible fire was kindled by a farthing rushlight. Some years ago, I saw the black ashes of what the night before was a splendid farm-yard, with bay-ricks, corn-stacks, stables, and cow-sheds; and lying about upon them were the carcasses of a number of miserable horses and bullocks, which had perished in the flames. All that was done by a lucifer match. In America, the Indians strike a spark from a flint and steel, and set fire to the dry grass; and the flames spread and spread, until they sweep like a roaring torrent over prairies as large as England, and men and cattle have to flee for their lives. "Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindlet!" and the tongue is a fire. A few rash treads will set a family, a neighborhood, a nation, by the ears: they often have done so. Half the law-suits and half the wars have been brought about by the tongue. Husband and wife have separated forever, children have forsaken their homes, bosom-friends have become bitter foes, — all on account of fiery arrows shot by this powerful little member.

The bullet that sent death to Pres. Lincoln was a trifling affair, yet it sent mourning into every civilized nation of the globe. A broken rail is insignificant, yet close by it sits Death in greedy anticipation of a bloody feast. A word, a look, an act, a single neglect, may make a life, mar a fortune, ruin a good name, kindle war, or overthrow an empire.

The way of vice is as the entrance to a pit: it is easy to go down, but difficult to return. As an old stain is not easily removed, so habitual vices are not easily overcome. The most dangerous vice is that which most resembles virtue, as the most deceiving devil is an angel of light.

Emilins, giving a reason for putting away his wife, said, "Where this shoe pincheth me none but myself know." God also knows; and he says, "The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt."

"Rebekah, I am a lost man. You opposed our family worship and my secret prayer. You drew me away into temptation, and to neglect every religious duty. I believe my fate is sealed. Rebekah, you are the cause of my everlasting ruin." Terrible in eternity will be the re-union of those who helped each other on the downward road, partners in impiety, and wedded for perdition. Cuyler.

You may tame the wild beast; the conflagration of the American forest will cease when all the timber and the dry wood is consumed: but you cannot arrest the progress of that cruel word which you uttered carelessly yesterday or this morning.

— F. W. Robertson

On an extreme cold night, shivering by the stove in a grog-shop in Cincinnati, sat a young man about twenty-five years of age, (although he appeared much older,) who was evidently the victim of a depraved appetite. His eye, though swollen and bloodshot, had not entirely lost the power of its expression, and a careful observer could discover that he once possessed a bright intellect and a commanding genius. He gazed on vacancy, reflecting perhaps upon the misery he had brought upon himself and relatives, in consequence of his dissipation. He was thinly clad, and seemed to be laboring under some horrible sensation.

Those who came and went, looked with disgust upon him, and then passed on. At length, one entered who was acquainted with him, and after looking at him for a moment, turned upon his heel and said to the bar-tender:

"Brown, why do you let such loafers as that sit here, to the annoyance of respectable people?" This last speaker, whom we will call Somers, was also a young man, respectably clad, and belonged to the same mechanical business, as did the one whom he was pleased to term "loafer." He was a moderate drinker, the other a drunkard! The bar-tender replied:

"I have told him a number of times to keep away from the place, and am determined that if he comes here again drunk, I will send him, head and heels, into the street."

This rebuke cut poor William H—, (for that was his name,) to the very quick. He was not so drunk but that he could see and understand—nor had rum entirely obliterated that manly pride which once burned brightly within his bosom. Although he was degraded,

'—he had one virtue left;

That true shoot which precept doth inculcate,

And keep the root and trunk alive,—

One virtue—Manhood!"

He rose and left the place to go—he knew not whither. * * * *

Two years passed away, and William H— had become a Washingtonian, and a highly respectable member of society—surrounded by innumerable friends, who placed the most implicit confidence in his integrity as a man and a citizen, and was doing a prosperous business. One morning, as he took up the daily paper, his eye fell upon that department devoted to "Coroner's inquests"—and, to his utter astonishment and grief, he read that George Somers had died on the previous day at the Alms House from the effects of intemperance!