54 Sermon Illustrations on Faith in God's Promises

See PRODIGY, A.

PREDICTION, FALSE

Mr. James A. Briggs cites a paragraph from the Boston _Courier_ of June 27, 1827, then edited by Joseph T. Buckingham, one of the ablest and most liberal of New England editors. It was but sixty-two years ago that he thus spoke of the projected railroad from Boston to Albany:

Alcibiades, or some other great man of antiquity, it is said, cut off his dog’s tail that quidnuncs might not become extinct from want of excitement. Some such motive, we doubt not, moves one or two of our natural and experimental philosophers to get up a project for a railroad from Boston to Albany--a project which every one knows, who knows the simplest rule in arithmetic, to be impracticable and at an expense little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts; and which, if practicable, every person of common sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon.

The road was built, and there is no more prosperous road in the country.--_Harper’s Weekly._

The Rev. Mr. Fletcher, the pious vicar of Madely, Eng., relates that going into the pulpit one Sabbath morning, he could recollect no part of his sermon, not even the text. Feeling exceedingly perplexed in his mind, and not willing to dismiss the people without saying any thing, he thought that he would endeavor to make a few remarks upon the morning's lesson, which was respecting the three worthies who were cast into the furnace of fire. Finding uncommon and unexpected enlargement of spirit in so doing, he announced to the congregation at the close, that if there was any person present to whom those remarks more particularly applied, he desired that they would call upon him, in the course of the week. On Wednesday a woman called, and informed him that she had been under serious impressions for some time; but that her husband, who was a butcher, constantly opposed her, and forbid her attending any of the religious meetings, even at the parish church, on Sunday; that on the last Sabbath morning he told her that if she should presume to go to church, he would build up a great fire in the oven, and throw her into it, as soon as she came home. But she resolved to go, and says she, "Sir, while you were speaking of the three young men who were thrown into the fiery furnace, because they would not sin against God, I thought it was just my case, and it pleased the Lord then and there to set my soul at liberty. I went home with a light heart, trusting that the Lord would be with me. When I came near the house, I saw the flames issuing from the oven, and knowing what a man my husband was, I expected to be immediately thrown into it. But what was my amazement upon opening the door, instead of being thrown into the oven, to find my husband upon his knees crying for mercy." Says Mr. Fletcher, "I then knew why I had forgotten my sermon, and was led to speak upon something else."