90 Sermon Illustrations on Sin

—There was a man who committed a murder in a Scottish castle upon a young bridegroom, at whose - marriage festivities he had hypocritically assisted. The assassin took horse in the dead of night and fled for his life through wood and winding path. When the sun dawned he slackened his pace and behold! he was emerging from a thicket in front of the very castle whence he had fled, and to which, by tortuous paths, he had returned. Horror seized Mm; he was discovered, and condemned to death.

A recent traveller, relating the incidents of his voyage to India, writes:—"Flocks of greedy albatrosses, petrels, and Cape pigeons, crowded around the ship's stern. A hook was baited with fat, when upwards of a dozen albatrosses instantly rushed at it, and as one after another was being hauled on deck, the remainder, regardless of the struggles of the captured, and the vociferations of the crew, kept swimming about the stern. Not even did those birds which were indifferently hooked and made their escape, desist from seizing the bait a second time." Thus to the letter do ungodly men rush at the baits of Satan; they see others perish, but remain careless, and even when they are all but destroyed themselves they persist in their infatuation.

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Jesus stated long ago the philosophy of the paragraph below when He said “Neither cometh to the light lest their evil deeds should be reproved” and “men love darkness ... because their deeds are evil.”

The municipality had better take the cue, less light, more crime, more light, less crime. There are still dark spots to be found at night within the city limits where a few powerful arcs would wield an immediate influence. It is easy to see that arc-lights are cheaper than police officers and a brightly lit city the greatest imaginable offset to criminality in any stage or form. (Text.)--_Electricity._

An officer in India, who one day fell asleep with his left hand hanging over the couch, was awakened by his young pet lion licking him. The rough tongue brought blood, and the officer tried to withdraw his hand. At the first movement the lion gave a short growl and grasped the hand more firmly, upon which the officer, seeing that his lion cub had become suddenly changed from a domestic pet to a wild beast, took a loaded pistol from under his pillow with his right hand and shot the animal dead.

There are pet sins that men caress, parade, and boast of. They appear harmless enough to the casual observer, but at some unexpected moment they becoming a “roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” (Text.)

One day in a public restaurant a gentleman, who owns a large fruit-orchard in one of the Northwestern States, was talking about what wonderful fruit was produced by his trees.

“Why,” said he, “I see in market here in Pittsburg apples selling at a good price that we wouldn’t even use out our way. We’d never think of selling them. Such apples are thrown aside as culls.”

There are a great many human culls, men and boys, who, because of some injurious habit, have lost their full market value. There is the cigaret cull, the boy who is blighting his future and depreciating his value as a member of society because of his nauseous habit. And there is the whisky and beer cull, the man who can not keep out of a saloon; good enough man, many ways, but nobody wants to employ him in any responsible position. Then we have the obscene cull, the individual who has some rancid story to tell to raise a haw-haw among companions as coarse and vulgar as himself. He may be a good workman, but morally he is a cull. Another man I know is the Sabbath cull. This is the man who goes about watering his garden on the Sabbath, or driving out in his automobile for the pleasure of the thing; who is sometimes seen on the train Sabbath morning with his golf-sticks going out to some country club grounds. They may have their thousands and live in the best houses on the avenue, but they are moral culls. These things are blemishes which show the character. (Text.)

Bad habits are very easily formed; and, when they are once formed, they are just like the course of a mighty river. You know, that when the river has worn out a course for itself, whether through the soft soil, or the hard rock, or the pleasant meadow, it is very difficult to divert it out of its accustomed channel. Some of the oldest rivers in the world have the same place in the map, and the same windings on the face of the earth, which they first cut for themselves; and that way they have continued to follow through the succession of all coming generations.

— J. A. Wallace

M. Guillotin, the inventor of the instrument of death which bears his name, was a physician of Paris well known for his mildness of disposition and his philanthropy. He devised the guillotine with the sole intention of mitigating the severity of capital punishment; but it turned out a voracious monster, always clamoring for blood.

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.

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!

The old proverb hath it, "Here's talk of the Turk and the Pope, but 'tis my next neighbour that does me the most harm." It is neither popery nor infidelity that we have half so much cause to dread as our own besetting sins. We want more Protestants against sin, more Dissenters from carnal maxims, and more Nonconformists to the world. Our own besetting sins require far more of our watchfulness than State blunders or ecclesiastical abuses.

It was written just before he committed suicide. “I leave to the world a wasted character and ruinous example; I leave to my parents as great a sorrow as in their weakness they could possibly bear; I leave to my brothers and sisters as much shame and dishonor as I could have brought them; I leave to my wife a broken heart and a life full of shame; I leave to my children poverty, ignorance, a bad character and the memory of their father lying in a drunkard’s grave and having gone to a drunkard’s hell.” This is typical. Decent men are becoming sick at heart with this thing. We are now in the midst of a war that promises to become world-wide, relentless until our Christian obligation to the world is fully met. Since religion, business, science, education and the State have taken the field against drink there is certain promise of victory.--_Methodist Recorder._

Donald Sage Mackay, in “The Religion of the Threshold,” writes in substance as follows:

Henry Drummond vividly describes the ravages of the African white ant. One may never see the insect possibly in the flesh, for it lives underground. But its ravages confront one at every turn. You build your house, perhaps, and for a few months fancy you have pitched on the one solitary site in the country where there are no white ants. But one day suddenly the door-post totters, and lintel and rafter come down together with a crash. You look at a section of the wrecked timbers and discover that the whole inside is eaten clean away. The apparently solid logs of which the rest of the house is built are now mere cylinders of bark, and through the thickest of them you can push your little finger. It is a vivid picture of the way in which concealed sins eat out the pith of the soul. To the outward eye everything may remain the same, but the fiber of character has been punctured through and through, till the whole nature is corroded.