7 Sermon Illustrations on Divine Presence

Lafayette, the great man who was the friend of Washington, tells us that he was once shut up in a little room in a gloomy prison for a great while. In the door of his little cell was a very small hole cut. At that hole, a soldier was placed day and night to watch him. All he could see was, the soldier’s eye; but that eye was always there. Day and night, every moment when he looked up, he always saw that eye. “Oh!” he said, “it was dreadful.”

As the heavens stand unshored and unsupported, save by the Word of God, so stands the man of God. Remember how Luther realized this; and when they said that Duke George would oppose him, he said, "If it rained Duke Georges, I would not care, so long as I have God with me."

Here are wood, brass, my hand--any material things. Here are light, electricity, a magnet--things that we all have something to do with. Now let us ask the scientific people to look at them, weigh them, test them, analyze them, describe them--what will they report? Well, part of their report will be this: There is one thing without which all these other things are impossible, without which there could be no wood, no metal, no light, no electric current; and that thing is called ether. This ether is like nothing you have at hand. It is not solid, nor liquid, nor a gas. It does not weigh anything, nor does it move. It is not alive, nor is it capable of division. Yet it is everywhere. It is in the wood, in the brass, in the air. It fills what we call empty space. It is the road by which light travels. It is the medium of electricity. It is the home of magnetism. Well, when the scientist tells us this we can but gasp. It is nothing that we know, yet without it all we know would break down. It can not be seen, nor handled, nor heard, yet without it we could neither see, nor handle, nor hear. It is utterly beyond belief, so strange a bunch of contradictories it is; and yet if we assume it to be real, then and then only can all the things of life which we do know be properly explained.

If in the natural world we follow out carefully all that is before us, if we explore our narrow strip of experience thoroughly, we come to a region getting more and more remote. Send a traveler from Hampstead--he comes back to tell us of India or the Arctic Ocean. Send a scientist out into this world of matter and force, of wood and stone and electricity, and he comes back to tell us of the incredible wonders of the unseen world, of the fathomless mysteries of the ether.

If this is so with material things, how much more is it likely to be so with moral and spiritual things? If it be true of earthly things, how much more of heavenly things? If the findings of science are puzzling, contradictory, mysterious, will the findings of theology--the science of God--be simple and mere common sense? If when we have to do with wood and stones we stand amazed before the doctrine of ether, is it surprizing that when we have to do with Christ and His cross, God and His redemption, we come also to the wonderful teaching, not only of the divinity of Jesus, but of His preexistence from eternity with God? So, then, because the doctrine is marvelous, unheard of, difficult to grasp, do not, therefore, pass it by as incredible.

— NEWTON H. MARSHALL

The Sleeping Buddha is one of the famous temples of China. A long avenue of large trees, with a stone pavement passageway, leads up to its entrance. Before it is an imposing gateway of colored tiles. But the pride of its interior is the wonderful figure of Buddha. A monster it is! Gross, indeed, must have been the mind which conceived it. There, lying on his side, with calm face, closed eyes, and head resting upon his hand, is a gilded wooden figure thirty feet long. It is well proportioned. His left arm is resting upon his body, and his bare feet are placed one upon the other. This Buddha is sleeping upon a Chinese _K’ang_. Standing about him are twelve crowned and beautifully drest images, and in front are the symbols of sacrifices for burning incense. But Buddha is asleep!

Contrast this with the conception of the God who never “slumbers nor sleeps.” (Text.)