7 Sermon Illustrations on Divine Purpose

"Bad will be the day," said Phillips Brooks, "for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is still, in spite of all, the child of God."

With a reservedseat ticket in his hand, a gentleman once took his place in a public hall, according to the number on the check, and sat down complacently in the indicated position. Soon a gentleman came along who had purchased a reserved seat, and politely requested him to move. "Thank you, sir: here is my check for this seat," said he. "Look at the figures."—"Much obliged to you, sir," said he. "Here is my check: look at the figures." He did look, and discovered that the checks were duplicated, both calling for the same seat. A blunder had been made somewhere, which implied the absurdity of locating two individuals in the room of one, and at the same time. No such complications occur in the issuing of checks for our appointed sphere in life.

The wind has called at yon city, fetid with miasma, and groaning with pestilence; and, with its bosom of swift pinions, it has swept the plague away. It has looked into yon haven, and found a forest of laden ships sleeping over their freights; and it has chased them all to sea. And finding the harvest arrested in a broad and fertile realm, the earth chapped, and the crops withering, it is now hurrying with that black armament of clouds to drench it in lifesome irrigation. To narrow observation or to selfishness, that wind is an annoyance; to faith, it is God's angel forwarding the mighty plan. 'Tis a boisterous night, and Pictish savages curse the noisy blast which shakes their peat-hovel round their ears; but that noisy blast has landed the gospel on St. Andrew's shore. It blows a fearful tempest, and it sets some rheumatic joints on aching; but the morrow shows, dashed in pieces, the awful Armada which was fetching the Spanish Inquisition to our British Isle. The wind blows east, and detains James's ships at Harwich; but it guides King William to Torbay. Yes, "the wind blows south, and the wind blows north; it whirleth about continually, and returneth again according to its circuits:" but, in the course of these circuits, the wind has blown to our little speck of seagirt happiness the gospel and Protestantism, and civil and religious liberty. Dr. J. Hamilton.

Wisdom sees the great in the small. What could be more trivial than the heaving of the lid of a tea-kettle?—yet in that motion lay the germ of ocean steamers, railways, and mills. Development dilates the small into the great. By that law, sparks flame into conflagrations, fountains flow into streams, and the minute swells into the magnificent. The seeds of many a world-famed change were dropped in silence; night-dews watered them when no eyes looked on; but at length they bore fruit in the hearts of millions; and the harvest of them waved over all the breadth of a continent. S. Coley.