9 Sermon Illustrations on Divine Wisdom

"God knoweth what is best for us. Like foolish children, we desire a knife; but, like a wise father, he giveth us bread." It would be a most unfatherly thing for a man to give his son that which would cause his death. The largest generosity must refuse some requests, when it is a higher kindness to withhold than to bestow. The limit which is set to prayer—namely, that if we ask anything in accordance with God's will he heareth us—is just such a limit as love on God's part must fix, and as prudence on our part must approve. Would we have the Lord act according to our ignorance or according to his own wisdom? Shall our uninstructed self become the arbiter of God's providence? Assuredly no Christian in his senses would propose such an arrangement. If it could be proposed and carried out it would place us in daily jeopardy, and work, at its very best, most sadly to our loss. If we could have our own will absolutely it would be wise not to have it, but to divest ourselves of the horrible privilege. How much more restful are our minds, now that we know that our Father arranges all things, than could possibly be the case if the responsibility of management rested with ourselves. Like Phaeton, who sought to drive the chariot of the sun, we should soon perish by our own folly if the reins of providence were placed in our feeble hands. It is better far that the rule should be, "not as I will, but as thou wilt." Lord, give me not what I ask, but what I should ask, yea, what thou seest to be most for thy glory.

God’s ways seem dark, but, soon or late, They touch the shining hills of day; The sinner can not brook delay-- The good can well afford to wait.

— WHITTIER

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In “Stories of English Artists” we are told that Gainsborough’s pictures can only be properly appreciated when viewed at the right distance. As Sir Joshua Reynolds remarked in one of his famous “Discourses,” all those odd scratches and marks which on close examination are so observable in Gainsborough’s pictures, and which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident than design, this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance by a kind of magic at a certain distance assume form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places.

No doubt the apparent chaos and disorder of human events and careers, and of the natural world, would fall into order and express to us God’s wise designs if we could place ourselves at the right point of view!

Man prides himself on his powers and attainments. Has he ever made a rose or produced a mechanism like the hand, or done a thousand things that Nature knows?

As an illustration of Nature’s superiority, the electric ray is cited.

The electric ray, or torpedo, has been provided with a battery which, while it closely resembles, yet in the beauty and compactness of its structure it greatly exceeds the batteries by which man has now learned to make the laws of electricity subservient to his will. In this battery there are no less than 940 hexagonal columns, like those of a bees’ comb, and each of these is subdivided by a series of horizontal plates, which appear to be analogous to the plates of the voltaic pile. The whole is supplied with an enormous amount of nervous matter, four great branches of which are as large as the animal’s spinal cord, and these spread out in a multitude of thread-like filaments round the prismatic columns, and finally pass into all the cells. A complete knowledge of all the mysteries which have been gradually unfolded from the days of Galvani to those of Faraday, and of many others which are still inscrutable to us, is exhibited in this structure.