6 Sermon Illustrations on Devotion to God

He would be a cruel man who should cast his provisions and superfluities into the street, and deny them to the poor, or should allow his drink to run into the Rennel, rather than that the thirsty should taste a drop of it. Such are we to God; we know not what to employ our thoughts upon, and yet we will not think of his name. We will go musing upon vanity all the day long, and thus grinding chaff rather than we will take good corn into the mill. Well put! We meet with persons upon whose hands time hangs heavily; they have nothing to do, and are dying of ennui. Why will they thus spend their time in waste? Yet all the while they give not God a thought, nor spend a little time in reading his word, or in conversing with him in prayer. Have they all their days on hand, and yet will they not afford their God an hour? Are they full of time even to a surfeit, and yet cannot they give ten minutes' space to their Maker? Well does our author speak of cruelty. Was ever such cruelty on earth as this denial of an hour of our superfluous time to God? Will we rather waste it, or defile it, than give him a portion of it? Must we invent pastimes to pass time away, and yet refuse ten minutes for meditation? Oh, that this little parable might meet some careless eye, and through the eye pierce the heart! What, will you sooner kill time at cards, or with a novel, or in utter idleness, than do your greatest Benefactor the honour of thinking of him? Is he so distasteful to you that you count it a bore, a burden, a bugbear even to hear his sacred name? Come, do thyself this favour—to give the next hour to God and to thine own soul. Your cruelty to your God will prove to be cruelty to yourself. Do not persevere in it, but yield to your heavenly Friend a portion of your weary time. May be you will thus find out a way of never being weary again in this fashion—find out, in fact, the way to make time pass like a river which flows over golden sands, with a paradise on either bank.

M. De Renty, a French nobleman, used to read daily three chapters of the Bible, with his head uncovered and on his bended knees. Lady Frances Hobart read the Psalms over twelve times a year, the New Testament thrice, and the other parts of the Old Testament once. Susannah, Countess of Suffolk, for the last seven years of her life read the whole Bible over twice annually. Dr. Gouge used to read fifteen chapters every day,—five in the morning, five after dinner, and five in the evening before going to bed. Mr. Jeremiah Whittaker usually read all the epistles in the Greek Testament twice every fortnight. Joshua Barnes is said to have read a small pocket Bible which he usually carried about him, a hundred and twenty times over. Mr. Robert Cotton read the whole Bible through twelve times a year. The Rev. Mr. Romaine studied nothing but the Bible for the last thirty or forty years of his life. A poor prisoner, being confined in a dark dungeon, had no light, except for a few moments when his food was brought to him. He used to take his Bible and read a chapter, saying he could find his mouth in the dark when he could not read. Henry Willis, farmer, aged eighty-one, devoted every hour that could be spared from his labor during the course of so long a life to the devout and serious perusal of the Holy Scriptures. He had read with the most minute attention all the books of the Old and New Testaments eight times over, and had proceeded as far as the Book of Job in his ninth reading, when his meditations were terminated by death. Bib. Soc. Record.

"Live to-day!" was the morning-salutation of John Wesley to Sophia Cook, a young lady who lived in his house. The words made her more earnest, and resulted in the founding of Sunday schools. Miss Cook first suggested them to Mr. Raikes, saying of the children, "Let us teach them to read, and take them to church;" and was associated with him in the carrying-out of the plan.