11 Sermon Illustrations on Knowing God

Existence is the state of being, or having an actual essence. Mr. Locke says, that we arrive at the knowledge of our own existence by intuition; of the existence of God, by demonstration; of other things, by sensation. As for our own existence, continues he, we perceive it so plainly, that it neither needs, nor is capable of, any proof. I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain: can any of these be more evident to me than my own existence? If I doubt of all these things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own existence, and will not suffer me to doubt. If I know I doubt, I have as certain a perception of the thing doubting as of that thought which I call doubt: experience, then, convinces us that we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence. Maunder.

The freedmen exhibited great anxiety to learn to read. One of them, an old preacher, spelled out the word GOD, and was told that it was the name of the One he sometimes preached about. He held up his hands in surprise, exclaiming, "Is this the name of God, and that the way it looks when printed?" Then, brushing away his tears, he gazed upon the blessed name, saying, "Oh, blessed day! God has permitted his old eyes to see to read his name."

Intellectual difficulty, like the fabled monster that of old haunted the neighborhood of classic Thebes, besets the path of life, meets us at every turn, and presses on us its enigmas with terrible severity. When we solve its dark riddles, we kill it; when we fail, we become its victims. Godliness is the only true Œdipus of the soul. In the beans of a God-loving heart, all mental mysteries melt away as the mountain-mists in the summer's sun. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom:" piety is an "unction from the Holy One, by which we know all things."

The priests of Mercury, as Plutarch tell us, in eating of their holy things, were wont to cry out, "Sweet is the truth!" But how sweet and delicious that truth is which holy and heaven-born souls feed upon in their mysterious converse with the Deity, who can tell but they that taste it?

— John Smith

Mr. Cecil, during a severe illness, said to a person who spoke of it, "It is all Christ. I keep death in view. If God does not please to raise me up, he intends me better. I find every thing but religion only vanity.—To recollect a promise of the Bible: this is substance! Nothing will do but the Bible. If I read authors, and hear different opinions, I cannot say this is truth! I cannot grasp it as substance; but the Bible gives me something to hold. I have learned more within these curtains, than from all the books I ever read."

Who would belong to a church which withholds from its members the inspired volume? We copy the following fact from a periodical called "The Thistle," published in 1836:

Not long since, when priest W., of Corofin, was passing by some men and boys who were engaged in breaking stones for a new road, now in progress in the neighborhood of Carhue, he said, that the road there would be of great use; "and it is a long time," said he, "since there was a road in this place." "Not since Adam was a boy," remarked one of the men. "And when was that? can you tell me?" said priest W. "No, sir, I cannot," replied the man. The same question was asked of several persons, and a similar reply given. At length the priest turned to a young boy, and said, "Can you tell me, my lad, when Adam was a boy?" "Sir, Adam never was a boy; God created him man, and made him perfect also." "Are ye not ashamed," said the priest, "to be excelled by a young boy like this?" "No," answered one of those appealed to, "we are not; that boy reads the Scriptures, and has them explained to him; that is what is not done to us, and we are prevented from reading them ourselves." Priest W. rode away without making any reply.