4 Sermon Illustrations on Heavenly Calling

There are a great many people who forget that there are eleven commandments. They think there are only ten. The eleventh commandment is: "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." How many of us remember--ah! how many people in Chicago forget the words of the Lord now in his wonderful sermon on the mount: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal." How few of our people pay any heed to these words. That's why there are so many broken hearts among us; that's why so many men and women are disappointed and going through the streets with shattered hopes; it's because they have not been laying up treasures in heaven.

A French officer, who was a prisoner upon his parol at Reading, met with a Bible: he read it, and was so impressed with its contents, that he was convinced of the folly of sceptical principles and of the truth of Christianity, and resolved to become a Protestant. When his gay associates rallied him for taking so serious a turn, he said in his vindication, "I have done no more than my old school-fellow Bernadotte, who has become a Lutheran." — "Yes; but he became so," said his associates, "to obtain a crown." — "My motive," said the Christian officer, "is the same: we only differ as to the place. The object of Bernadotte is to obtain a crown in Sweden: mine is to obtain a crown in heaven."