Sermon Illustration

A little boy declared that he loved his mother “with all his strength.” He was asked to explain what he meant by “with all his strength.” He said, “Well, I’ll tell you. You see, we live on the fourth floor of this tenement; and there’s no elevator, and the coal is kept down in the basement. Mother is busy all the time, and she isn’t very strong; so I see to it that the coal hold is never empty. I lug the coal up four flights of stairs all by myself. And it’s a pretty big hold. It takes all my strength to get it up here. Now, isn’t that loving my mother with all my strength?” Gospel Herald

When Donna was three years old she gave me a birthday card which ended with, “I love you, Daddy! Donna!” When she wrote “D” for daddy she came to the end of the page and at the beginning of the next line wrote “addy.” Do you think I gave it back and told her to do it right? Of course not. It was full of love and hard work and 3-yearold ability. Her love on the inside came to the outside and showed itself in words and works just like ours should for our heavenly Father.

Every element in our nature is to be under the influence of grace, and we are bound to make the best use of every faculty. We have affections. They are to be set on things above. They are also to go out towards the rest of the redeemed family. They are to become stronger as life advances. Our love is to “abound.” We have understanding. It is to be exercised in reliance on divine guidance. How often we make mistakes in our own wisdom, and then wonder why Providence sends us the troubles these mistakes occasioned! Let us approve things that are excellent, and then we shall have no stumblingblock (“offense”) in our own minds or before others. —John Hall

Human nature is selfish. The new nature is to be affectionate. Much of the Ten Commandments are introduced with “Thou shalt not.” A “new commandment” is positive, and it may well secure our obedience, coming, as it does, from the lips of Jesus, who is Love incarnate. “Love one another,” notwithstanding faults and weaknesses. How unlovely we were; yet Christ loved us! Let us show that we have learned and are learning of Him, by the love we display to one another. —John Hall

A Christian woman, laboring among the degenerate of London, found a poor street girl desperately ill in a bare cold room. With her own hands she ministered to her, changing her bed linen, procuring medicines, nourishing food, building a fire, and making the poor place as bright and cheery as possible, and then she said, “May I pray with you?” “No” said the girl, “You don’t care for me; you are doing this to get to heaven.” Many days passed, the Christian woman unwearily kind, the sinful girl hard and bitter. At last the Christian said, “My dear, you are nearly well now, and I shall not come again, but as it is my last visit, I want you to let me kiss you,” and the pure lips that had known only prayers and holy words met the lips defiled by oaths and unholy caresses—and then the hard heart broke. That was Christ’s way.

Fanny Crosby, the blind songwriter, was at the McAuley Mission. She asked if there was a boy there who had no mother, and if he would come up and let her lay her hand on his head. A motherless little fellow came up, and she put her arms about him and kissed him. They parted; she went from the meeting and wrote that inspiring song Rescue the Perishing; and when Mr. Sankey was about to sing the song in St. Louis he related the incident. A man sprang to his feet in the audience and said, “I am the boy she kissed that night. I never was able to get away from the impression made by that touching act, until I became a Christian. I am now living in this city with my family, am a Christian, and am doing a good business.”

One night of bitter cold and pitiless storm a mother was out in the wilds with her child in her arms. Unable to carry her precious burden and find a shelter, she took off her own outer clothing, and wrapping it about her little one she laid him in a cleft of the rock, and hastened on, hoping to find help. Next morning some shepherds heard the cry of a child, and found the babe safe and warm in the rock’s cleft. Then, not far away in the snow, they discovered the mother—dead. She had died in the cold to save her child. Did not Jesus do the same? —J. R. Miller

That grand old man of English statesmanship, William Gladstone, one day arose in Parliament and solemnly announced that he had a sad statement to make. “Princess Alice is dead,” said he; “and love did it.” Her boy was ill with diphtheria and near to death. The physician had cautioned her not to come close enough to the child to breathe his breath. But the little fellow looked up from his bed, reached out his tiny arms, and said feebly, “Mamma, please come and kiss me.” And she did it, in spite of warning, and at the cost of her own life.

“For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). I have heard of a girl who in an evil hour left her mother—won by the promises of some villain, and traveled to a large city. And there went down to the lowest depths. At last all sad at heart and perishing with hunger she thought she would creep back and see the old home again, and die. Of course her mother would never receive her anymore, but nobody in the village would know her, and it would be good to see the cottage and the flowers of the garden and to hear the birds sing again. And so with heavy heart and wearied steps she wandered on until she reached the little village. It was night when she got there. Footsore and faint she could just stand by the gate, and, dark as it was, the stars would give light enough to see the place—and there she would stand and try to feel again as she had done long ago. But, as she came near, a light glimmered along the path and she saw that it was her mother’s cottag...

An opal lay in the case, cold and lusterless. It was held a few moments in a warm hand, when it gleamed and glowed with all the beauty of the rainbow. All about us are human lives of children or of older persons, which seem cold and unbeautiful, without spiritual radiance or the gleams of indwelling light which tell of immortality. Yet they need only the touch of a warm human hand, the pressure of love, to bring out in them the brightness of the spiritual beauty that is hidden in them. —J. R. Miller

A gentleman saw a dozen boys teasing an aged beggar. The gentleman stepped up to them, and taking one of the boys by the collar, he shook him, and took him home (presumably for further discipline). But the other boys he did not meddle with. Now, why did he punish that boy and leave alone the others? Because it was his own son! The very word “chasten,” to make chaste, to make pure, has a depth of significance.

An experiment is being tried in the poorest and most degraded quarters of London, of seeking to arouse an interest in art. The result is very gratifying. The Whitechapel Art Gallery is justifying itself in a way that is surprising some of its keenest supporters. During the first month an average of about ten thousand people a day visited the gallery, and they showed the most intense interest in the pictures. The fact is, human nature is a good deal alike everywhere, and the love of beauty and the longing for knowledge, as well as the possibility of goodness, are in every man and woman. Man does not belong to the devil. Satan is only an invader.

A touching incident has been told of a sixteen-year-old girl who was a chronic invalid, and whose mother was a pleasure-loving woman who could not endure the idea of being much with her shut-in daughter. While the mother was traveling abroad in Italy, she remembered the coming birthday of her daughter, and sent her a rare and wonderful Italian vase. The trained nurse brought it to the girl, saying that her mother had sent it so carefully that it came right on her birthday. After looking at its beauty for a moment the girl turned to the nurse and said: “Take it away, take it away. O mother, mother, do not send me anything more; no books, no flowers, no vases, no pictures. Send me no more. I want you, you!” Don’t give Christ things—only things. He wants you. “Son, daughter, give me your heart.” That daughter wanted her mother. She wanted her presence, her companionship, her love. Christ wants you. He wants you first of all. He wants your yielded heart, your confidence, your trust, your ...

A little boy had a canary bird which he loved very much. His mother became ill, and the singing of the bird gave her great annoyance. The boy was told by the mother that the bird gave her great pain by its singing. He went at once and gave the bird away to his cousin, and then came home and told his mother that the bird would not disturb her anymore, for he had given it away. “But did you not love it very much?” she asked him. “How could you part with it?” “Yes,” he replied, “but I love you a great deal more. I could not really love anything that gave you pain.” We must love God as this boy loved his mother, more than we love anything else, and also everything that grieves Him we must give up, however much we may like it.

The story is told of a wounded Scottish Highlander, stroking a German spiked helmet, as he lay upon a cot in a London hospital. A nurse said to him, “I suppose you killed your man?” “No, indeed,” was the reply. “It was like this: he lay on the field badly wounded and bleeding, and I was in the same condition. I crawled to him and bound up his wounds; he did the same for me. I knew no German, and he knew no English; so I thanked him by just smiling. He thanked me by smiling back. By way of a token I handed him my cap, while he handed me his helmet. Then, lying side by side, we suffered together in silence till we were picked up by the ambulance squad. No, I didn’t kill my man.”

In Brooklyn one day I met a young man passing down the streets. At the time the war broke out the young man was engaged to be married to a young lady in New England, but the marriage was postponed. He was very fortunate in battle after battle, until the Battle of the Wilderness took place, just before the war was over. The young lady was counting the days at the end of which he would return. She waited for letters, but no letters came. At last she received one addressed in a strange handwriting, and it read something like this—“There has been another terrible battle. I have been unfortunate this time; I have lost both my arms. I cannot write myself, but a comrade is writing this letter for me. I write to tell you you are as dear to me as ever; but I shall now be dependent upon other people for the rest of my days, and I have this letter written to release you from your engagement.” This letter was never answered. By the next train she went clear down to the scene of the late conflict, ...

A king asked his three daughters how much they loved him. Two of them replied that they loved him better than all the gold and silver in the world. The youngest one said she loved him better than salt. The king was not pleased with her answer, as he thought salt was not very palatable. But the cook, overhearing the remark, put no salt in anything for breakfast next morning, and the meal was so insipid that the king could not enjoy it. He then saw the force of his daughter’s remark. She loved him so well that nothing was good without him.

A pleasant-faced woman boarded a bus with her two small sons during the busy noon hour of the holiday season. The smaller boy sat with his mother upon one side of the bus, while the other, who was about four years old, took a seat opposite. It interested him to look out of the window, but frequently he glanced across at his mother. At length he called softly, “Mother!” “Mother!” This time it was said a bit louder, and the mother looked over and smiled. The boy’s eyes lighted, and he whispered: “Mother! I love you.” The mother turned a glorified face upon her small son, and men and women in the bus looked tenderly from one to the other. The city bus had suddenly become a place of blessing because a little boy had voiced this ever beautiful sentiment: “Mother, I love you.”

He was, at Rome, a prisoner under military custody, chained by the arm both night and day to one of the Praetorian Guard. What passion for souls burned like a pent-up fire in his bones when he not only turned his lodgings into a sanctuary, “receiving all who came to him,” but actually used his close contact with these soldiers as a means of extending his acquaintance and influence. With these sentries he spoke of the great salvation, until, as they relieved each other, he was brought into contact with the whole bodyguard unit in turn; and this is doubtless what he means when in Philippians 1:13 (NIV), he says that his bonds became manifest in Christ throughout the whole of the Palace Guard. Grand man! the clank of whose chain, like the pomegranates and bells on the high priest’s robe, were vocal with the music of the Gospel’s message! who could not be kept from witnessing to Christ and winning souls even by present fetters and prospective martyrdom!

Love blossoms out in inevitable countless kindnesses. And Paul is certain that in proportion as he really loves, he cannot envy…. The envious spirit cannot be kind, and the really kind spirit cannot be envious.