50 Sermon Illustrations on Spiritual Life

Those who study bees tell us when a honeybee drives its barbed stinger into flesh, it becomes so firmly imbedded that the only way the bee can escape is to leave the stinger behind. This, however, is sure to cause the death of the bee. It receives such a wound that it cannot possibly recover. So it is with us. Sometimes we sting others because they are a little better than we are. Being jealous of them, we not only leave the sting in those who happen to disagree with us, but the act brings about spiritual harm to ourselves. If our zeal embitters others, it will multiply bitterness within our own hearts. Thus, when others feel the bitterness of our zeal, they will surely come to the conclusion that we do not possess Jesus Christ who descended from heaven to give us new life.

"A corpse may be laid in state, and sumptuously adorned, but there is no life within." Adornments are out of place in the chamber of death; they do but make the scene the more ghastly. We have heard of a dead prince who was placed upon a throne, dressed in imperial purple, crowned, and sceptred! How pitiful the spectacle! The courtiers mustered to so wretched a travesty of state must have loathed the pageantry. So is it when a man's religion is a dead profession; its ostentatious zeal and ceremonious display are the grim trappings which make the death appear more manifest. When, like Jehu, a man cries, "Come with me, and see my zeal for the Lord," his false heart betrays itself. The more he decorates his godliness the more does the hypocrite's spiritual death appear. It is not possible to supply the lack of the divine life. There is an essential difference between a dead child at its best and a living child at its worst, and it needs no Solomon to see it. Unless the Spirit of God shall give life, sustain life, and perfect life, none of us can ever dwell with the living God. This is the point to look to: the vestments and trappings are a secondary business.

Whilst the stream keeps running, it keeps clear; but if it comes once to a standing water, then it breeds toads and frogs, and all manner of filth. The keys that men keep in their pockets, and use every day, wax brighter and brighter; but if they be laid aside, and hang by the walls, they soon grow rusty. Thus it is that action is the very life of the soul: whilst we keep going and running in the ways of God's commandments, we keep clear and free from the world's pollutions; but if we once flag in our diligence, and stand still, oh, what a puddle of sin will the heart be! How rusty and useless will the graces grow!

The body is more than a shell, more than a garment, more than a house: it is the married, co-operating partner of the spirit. As the soul is fitted to be the habitation of God, so is the body fitted to be the habitation of the soul. The soul is no sooner affected by the presence of God than the body also is affected. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the body takes on the condition of the spirit. If the soul be in distress, the body also is in distress. In hours of social delight, the body is as much helped and comforted as the spirit: all its senses become keen, the appetite is lively, the digestion is vigorous. Every hour of life, the body is receiving its condition from the spirit. If you pray, not only the soul, but the body also, receives divine influence. If you sin, the curse fulfils itself in your soul and body at the same time. The blood and brains of a meek, humble, heavenly-minded man carry qualities in it which the blood and brains of a worldly-minded man do not. Two men being dead, the one a regenerate and the other an unregenerated man, not only their souls are in different conditions and different worlds, but their flesh and bones retain the distinctive qualities of their two souls. There are virtues latent in all bodies corresponding with the souls which lived in them. If I may say so, Elisha slumbers in his bones; that is, as the man was, such the bones are. Joseph's bones do not belong to Egypt. J. Pulsford.

At night, when a railroad-train, having stopped at a station, is about to start again, in order that the conductor may know that every thing is as it should be, the brakeman on the last car calls out, through the darkness, "All right here!" and the next man takes up the word, "All right here!" and the next echoes, "All right here!" and so it passes along the line, and the train moves on. It does me good to sit here while you speak of the life you are guiding through the world's darkness, and pass the word from one to another, "All right here!" All is right everywhere when the heart is right. Beecher.

Vincentinus believed that he was of such enormous size, that he could not go through the door of his apartment. His physician gave orders that he should be forcibly led through it; which was done. Vincentinus cried out, as he was forced along, that the flesh was torn from his bones, and that his limbs were broken off; of which terrible impression he died in a few days, accusing those who conducted him of being his murderers.

When corn runs into straw and chaff, those that feed on it may well be thin and lean; but, when it runs into ears and kernel, thou mayest expect such as eat of it to be fat and well-favored. When religion runs into formalities and ceremonies, her followers can never be thriving spiritually. They may starve, for all the gaudy flowers wherewith several dishes on her table are decked and set forth. G. Swinnock.

You may galvanize a paralyzed limb, and, by galvanism, may restore the circulation, and so restore life to it: but the galvanism is not the life; it only rouses the dormant powers of life. Galvanism is a certain development of electricity, — the same mysterious agent, which, in another form, darts to and fro among the clouds of heaven. The life of the limb, on the other hand, consists in its answering the purposes for which it was made, in its habitual subservience to the will, in the power of contracting and relaxing its muscles, when the will gives it notice to do so. Now, the professing Christian who is not spiritually alive is a paralyzed member of the body of Christ. Impulses from a heavenly agent, the Holy Ghost, are ever and anon sent through the medium of God's ordinances in the body of Christ, and impart a convulsive, fitful motion even to those limbs which are paralyzed. It does not, however, follow that the paralyzed limbs are restored. In some cases, they may be; in some, they may not. At all events, the fitful movement of the limb is one thing, its permanent vitality another.

— Dr. Goulburn

There is much contention among men whether thought or feeling is the better; but feeling is the bow, and thought the arrow; and every good archer must have both. Alone, one is as helpless as the other. The head gives artillery; the heart, powder. The one aims, and the other fires.

— Beecher

A boy who bad a dove so tame that it would perch upon his shoulder and take food from his hand, one day held out a tempting morsel, but, as the boy was in an illnatured mood, he closed his hand just as the dove was about to eat the food. The bird turned away disappointed. Again the boy held out his hand. The dove came forward timidly, but again the hand was closed. With drooping wings the dove went to the further corner of the room. Once more the hand was extended. This time the bird hesitated. Finally it came forward slowly, hesitatingly. It was just about to take the food when the hand was again closed. Then the dove spread its wings and flew away. The boy never saw that dove again.

On a winter's day I have noticed a row of cottages, with a deep load of snow on their several roofs; but as the day wore on, large fragments began to tumble from the eaves of this one and that other, till, by-and-by, there was a simultaneous avalanche, and the whole heap slid over in powdery ruin on the pavement, and before the sun went down you saw each roof as clear and dry as on a summer's eve. But here and there you would observe one with its snow-mantle unbroken, and a ruff of stiff icicles around it. What made the difference? The difference was to be found within. Some of these huts were empty, or the lonely inhabitant cowered over a scanty fire; whilst the peopled hearth and the high-blazing fagots of the rest created such an inward warmth that grim winter melted and relaxed his gripe, and the loosened mass folded off and tumbled over on the trampled street. It is possible by some outside process to push the main volume of snow from the frosty roof, or chip off the icicles one by one. But they will form again, and it needs an inward heat to create a total thaw. And so, by sundry processes, you may clear off from a man's conduct the dead weight of conspicuous sins; but it needs a hidden heat, a vital warmth within, to produce such a separation between the soul and its besetting iniquities, that the whole wintry incubus, the entire body of sin, will come spontaneously away. That vital warmth is the love of God abundantly shed abroad—the kindly glow which the Comforter diffuses in the soul which he makes his home. His genial inhabitation thaws that soul and its favourite sins asunder, and makes the indolence and self-indulgence and indevotion fall off from their old resting-place on that dissolving heart. The easiest form of self-mortification is a fervent spirit.— James Hamilton, D.D.

Is not Christian life with a great many very like the condition of the sea? The sea advances, it gains gradually upon the beach—you would think it was about to inundate the land; but after it has reached its highest point it retires, and so it spends its force in perpetual ebb and flow. Are not ebb and flow Christians as common as sea-shells?

The other day we read in the newspapers of two persons in America being found dead from "starvation and cold," and we also read that each of these persons was possessed of a considerable sum of money. We say, "What fools!" Men with sums of money about their persons, or hidden away in their rooms, and yet suffering the ills of want till they actually die of hunger—what madness is this! Are those more sane who injure and dwarf their spiritual life for the sake of intellectual pride, or carnal joy, or the esteem of men? Is not the spirit infinitely more precious than the body? Brethren, if we starve at all, let us starve our bodies, and not our spirits. If anything must be stunted, let it be the baser nature. Let us not live eagerly for this world, and languidly for the world to come. Having the Divine life within us, let us not neglect to feed it and supply its wants.

See FULFILMENT DISAPPOINTING; IDEALS.

DRESS AFFECTING MOODS

Mrs. Bishop, in the _Chautauqua Herald_, says:

It may never have occurred to some of you that dress has any reactionary influence upon the inner states, but so potent is this influence that frequently we can change the mental states by a change of dress. When tired, gloomy or fretful, a change in apparel often means a change in mood. Many actors say that to be drest for the part is a great help toward feeling the part. An army general once declared that he could not fight without his uniform, that an ordinary hat and coat took all the courage out of him.

An English writer says:

Three or four years ago an attempt was made to supersede the water-carts of London by laying down on each side of the road a horizontal pipe, perforated with a row of holes opening toward the horse-way. The water was to be turned on, and from these holes it was to jet out to the middle of the road from each side, and thus water it all. I watched the experiment made near the Bank of England.

Instead of spouting across the road from all these holes, as it should have done from any one of them, it merely dribbled; the reason being that, in order to supply them all, the water must run through the whole of the long pipe with considerable velocity, and the viscosity and friction to be overcome in doing this nearly exhausted the whole force of water-head pressure. Many other similar blunders have been made by those who have sought to convey water-power to a distance by means of a pipe of such diameter as should demand a rapid flow through a long pipe.

This is a clear illustration of friction dissipating force. How much life force needed for constructive works of righteousness is wasted by mere friction.

There is an old Dutch picture of a little child who is dropping from his hands a beautiful toy. Looking at the painting, one is surprized to see the plaything so carelessly abandoned; until, following the child’s eye to the corner of the picture, one sees a lovely white dove flying down into the child’s outstretched hands.

That is the way it will be with all of us as soon as we actually begin to see the pure beauties and joys of the higher life. All our silly playthings will be allowed to fall out of our hands. We shall let go of fashion and luxury, and idle dissipation, and proud ambition, and greed for gain, and desire for men’s applause and for advancement in the world, and we shall stretch out our hands for the things that are best worth having. Those are the things which will stay with us. They will give something of their nature to our lives, and will ennoble everything they touch. (Text.)

Dr. R. S. Storrs points out the activity of the mind and its persistence under great limitations in these words:

A universal spasmodic disease masters the organs of locomotion, so that the arm or the limb will remain in any posture, however unnatural, in which it is placed. The senses are usually entirely sealed, of no more avail than if they were obliterated. And the continued pulsation, with the warmth which this maintains in the system, are the only indications that life remains. Yet there have been authentic instances in which the mind, thus shrouded from sight, instead of being destroyed, impaired, or even limited, in its central force, has been stimulated to a more amazing activity, by being thus crowded, as it were, into a corner of its realm; and has feared and agonized, or has triumphed and exulted, with a vividness of experience altogether unaccustomed.

Pantheism, atheism, agnosticism, materialism, pessimism--how many ugly, dangerous words there are in the dictionary, and how many young men imagine that they have all these spiritual diseases when, as a matter of fact, they are only in the way of normal spiritual development. A man comes to say of certain things that are mysterious, of which he thought he knew, “I don’t know.” Then he labels himself or allows himself to be labeled an “Agnostic.” No religious life for him. Another man sees that the great God can not stand apart from His universe, but must be working in it and through it all. He labels himself “Pantheist,” or is so labeled. Another man suddenly discovers the abyss of actual wo in the world, the evil that, for the present at least, is without remedy. He is called a “Pessimist.” Another man looks to the right hand and to the left hand, and for the time he sees not God. The final word for him is “Atheist.” Now, we can not have a free expression of what people from time to time are actually believing until we get over our fear of all such names. We must have a faith that is wholesome enough and large enough to keep us from being afraid of our own thought. The fact is, that we are continually mistaking the passing moods of the spirit for the finalities of thought. These moods through which we pass have been familiar to the most profoundly religious minds.

— SAMUEL M. CROTHERS

See SOUL MUSIC.

MUSIC OF DESPAIR AND OF HOPE

On the occasion of the funeral service of King Edward VII, William Maxwell, in the _Record and Mail_, of Glasgow, writes as follows concerning the pipes and song:

No music can express the abandonment of grief like the pipes, for none is so individual. Its notes are the tradition of centuries of wild freedom, and are bound by no ordinary system. No music is so personal, for the pipes are the retainers of the clans.

They, too, wear the tartan, and voice the feelings of their clan--its joy and grief, its triumph and despair; and none is more national, for it embodies the soul of a people, its strength and its passions.

They are famous ballads to which the music of sorrow has been wedded. For there are two national ballads known as “The Flowers of the Forest,” and both are written by women. The first version was written by Jane Elliot, of Minto, and bewails at Flodden Field--

I’ve heard the lilting at our ewe milking, Lasses a-lilting before the dawn of day; But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning, The flowers of the forest are a’ wede away.

The second song was written on the same subject by Alicia Rutherford, of Fernilie, afterward known as Mrs. Patrick Cockburn, and is generally regarded as the more effective in singing, if not in composition.

I’ve seen the forest, adorned the foremost, With flowers of the fairest, most pleasant and gay; Sae bonny was their blooming, Their scents the air perfuming, But now they are withered, and weeded away.

Oh, fickle fortune, why this cruel sporting? Oh, why still perplex us, poor sons of a day? Nae mair your smiles can cheer me, Nae mair your frowns can fear me, For the flowers of the forest are a’ wede away.

The words are beautiful, and instinct with sorrow when spoken or sung. But it is the music of the pipes that gives them supreme interpretation, and makes them the expression of grief so profound that “The Flowers of the Forest” has become the national dirge. Nor is sorrow their only note.

The pipes can sound--and have sounded on many a stricken field and in many an hour of despair--the triumph of hope and of victory over death. They have stirred the blood and cleared the head, and given strength to the arm of many a soldier who has never dreamed of the eagle plume blended with the heather and never heard through the mists of memory the clash of the broadsword on the targe--

I hear the pibroch sounding Deep o’er the mountain glen, While light springing footsteps are trampling the heath-- ’Tis the march of the Cameron men.

If a man tries to live on his own moral resources, without new supplies of divine grace, he will experience a shrinkage of character like that of the sun, as described in this extract:

The sun is gradually falling into itself, the outer layers are falling toward the center; the sun is shrinking, growing smaller; and this contraction, this falling in of the outer particles, produces the immense outflow of energy. The whole sun contracts, every particle of its whole mass falls toward the center and contributes its mite to the total supply of heat. The surface particles move, of course, through a much greater distance than do those within the sphere. On account of the tremendous mass of the sun a very slight contraction will suffice to maintain its supply of heat. A shrinkage in the solar diameter of some 300 feet a year is all that is necessary to account for the great outpour of energy.--CHARLES LANE POOR, “The Solar System.”

The mountain is vast in size and weight. The weary feet clamber over it painfully. It offers homes along its breast to the enterprise which seeks them. Its quarries build palaces, and its woods timber navies. It lifts its crown of snow and ice against the sky, and stands amid the scene a very monarch of earth, primeval and abiding. But the soul can compass that mountain in its thought, without weariness or pain; can take it up and weigh it, in the balances of exact mathematical computation; and spurning it then, as a mere footstool for its activity, can spring from it to that boundless expanse amid which the mountain is less than is the least of the dust grains of the balance to its solid bulk.

— RICHARD S. STORRS

During the fame of Ole Bull he played one night before the students of Princeton College. It was a wonderful exhibition. They marveled, as so many had marveled before them, at the strange things which he did with the violin. They heard the birds as they warbled among the trees of the forest; they heard the storms as they hurled their thunders back and forth among the crags of the mountain. Then the tones became so soft and sweet they could almost believe a mother was singing her babe asleep. When he had finished they gathered about him and said, “Tell us the secret.” Ole Bull answered, “It is not in the instrument nor the bow, tho I use the best that money can buy. It is not primarily in the hand that wields the bow, nor the fingers that press the strings. If there is anything to tell, it is this: I never play until my own soul is full. Then the music is the overflow of the musician’s soul.”

Just as the body when at a low vitality is susceptible to colds, so it may as truly be said of the soul, when impoverished it falls a prey to temptation and sin.

The common theory that all colds are the result of exposure is a great mistake, inasmuch as exposure is not the direct cause of the trouble. Colds are caused by hostile microbes, or bacteria, which gain a foothold at a time when our vitality has been lowered by exposure. But there are many quarters of the globe where one finds it impossible to catch cold, simply by reason of the fact that there is no cold to catch.

Peary and his men during the months they spent in the arctic regions were immune from cold, tho they were constantly enduring exposure of every kind. They passed day after day in clothes so saturated with perspiration that by day they froze into a solid mass, so to speak, and the clothes cut into their flesh. And at night, in their sleeping-bags, the first hour was spent in thawing out. They returned to civilization none the worse in health, but soon contracted severe colds upon reaching there. People were much amused by the press accounts of how Commander Peary had taken cold while proceeding to dine with a friend in a suburb of Washington, the taxicab which was conveying him and his wife having broken down during a snow flurry in December.--_Harper’s Weekly._

A young artist had toiled and struggled in his work upon a piece of statuary, until at last the block of marble which held his thoughts imprisoned had given way to the statue of an angel which appeared quite perfect to the beholder. The young artist wished the criticism of those of greater renown than himself, so he sent an invitation to Michael Angelo among others.

The young artist had hidden himself behind a screen, and wanted to hear the criticism of his friends without being seen. When Angelo came to look the work over most carefully he was heard to say to one of his friends standing near: “It lacks one thing.”

The poor artist was well nigh brokenhearted as he heard this criticism. He hurried away from his studio and refused either to eat or to sleep, and at last one of his friends made his way into Angelo's presence to ask what it was that the statue lacked.

“Man,” said Angelo, “it lacks only life. If it had only life, it would have been perfect as God Himself could have made it.”

This is the picture of the man who is without Christ. He has many things to commend himself to the world; his disposition may be good, and his character may be beautiful, but if he lacks eternal life, he lacks everything.

A ship in the water is good, but water in the ship is bad. A transatlantic liner, years ago, owing to some defect in one of its pumps, began to pump water into the ship instead of pumping it out. As they thought the ship had sprung a leak, they pumped all the harder, with the result that the ship only filled the faster. Presently the water rose so that their fires were extinguished. Then, thinking that they were going to the bottom, they abandoned the ship. Later on, some Englishmen found her tossing in mid-ocean, water-logged. Going on board, they ascertained the trouble, pumped her out, brought her in and secured $300,000 salvage money.

Just so the Christian in the world is good, but the world in the Christian is bad. The believer who allows the evil practises of the sinful world to dominate his heart can not possibly succeed; and yet there are men who, like those in the ship above mentioned, seem to pump the world into themselves as fast as they can.--A. F. SCHAUFFLER, _The Christian Herald_.