7 Sermon Illustrations on Spiritual Identity

"Everything tendeth to the place of its original. Men love their native soil; things bred in the water delight in that element; inanimate things tend to their centre; a stone will fall to the ground though broken in pieces by the fall." Thus I may judge of my nature by my inclination. What delights me? For where my delight is my heart is. If I take pleasure in the ways of the world, then I am of the world. If I find myself at home in sin, then I am still the servant of sin. Doubtless many hasten to evil with such desperate speed that they will be broken in the fall; yet to evil they must needs go, and he who would hinder them gets a wound for his pains. Come, my heart, what sayest thou of thyself? Art thou inclined to holiness or to lewdness, to grace or to covetousness? How much hangs on this! Yet take heart, for if thou hast a nature which came from heaven it will rise to heaven. If Jesus is the source of thy life, that life will rise as high as the place where Jesus dwells. Is not this a rich encouragement?

You are too apt to feel that your religious experience must be the same as others have; but where will you find analogies for this? Certainly not in nature. God's works do not come from his hand like coin from the mint. It seems as if it were a necessity that each one should be, in some sort, distinct from every other. No two leaves on the same tree are precisely alike; no two buds on one bush have the same unfolding, nor do they seek to have. What if God should command the flowers to appear before him, and the sunflower should come bending low with shame because it was not a violet; and the violet should come striving to lift itself up to be like a sunflower; and the lily should seek to gain the bloom of the rose; and the rose, the whiteness of the lily: and so each one, disdaining itself, should seek to grow into the likeness of the other? God would say, "Stop, foolish flowers! I gave you your own forms and hues and odors; and I wish you to bring what you have received. O sunflower! come as a sunflower; and you, sweet violet, come as a violet; and let the rose bring the rose's bloom; and the lily, the lily's whiteness." Perceiving their folly, and ceasing to long for what they had not, violet and rose, lily and geranium, mignonette and anemone, and all the floral train, would come, each in its own loveliness, to send up its fragrance as incense, and all wreathe themselves in a garland of beauty about the throne of God. Now, God speaks to you as to the flowers, and says, "Come with the form and nature that I gave you. If you are made a violet, come as a violet; if you are a rose, come as a rose: if you are a shrub, do not desire to be a tree; let every thing abide in the nature which I gave it, and grow to the full excellence that is contained in that nature." Beecher.

If, among painters of the human face and form, there should spring up a sect of the eyes, and another sect of the nose, a sect of the hand, and a sect of the foot, and all of them should agree but in the one thing, of forgetting that there was a living spirit behind the features more important than them all, they would too much resemble the schools and cliques of Christians; for the spirit of Christ is the great essential truth: doctrines are but the features of the face, and ordinances but the hands and feet. Beecher.