68 Sermon Illustrations on Faith in God

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When Alexander once was about to engage in battle with Darius, having completed his arrangements, he lay down to sleep. Next morning Tarmenio exprest surprize that he could sleep so soundly when such vast issues were impending. “You seem as calm,” said he, “as if you had had the battle and gained the victory.” “I have done so,” replied Alexander, “for I consider the whole work done when we have gained access to Darius and his forces, and find him ready to give us battle.” (Text.)

Crossing the Atlantic, a vessel is often encircled by small ice-floes, looking like a flock of white sheep on the blue ocean. When they started on their course southward, those ice-floes were great frozen masses. But the warm Gulf Stream played on them beneath, and the sun melted them from above, till they dwindled as they entered a warm atmosphere. A man’s doubts at first seem large enough to freeze his faith, but let him go steadily onward into the warm atmosphere of Christian love, and gradually his doubts will no more impede his progress than the ice-floes impede an ocean-liner.

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One day, at a little prayer-meeting, our deacon, Yi Chun Ho, startled the Koreans, as well as the missionary, by the suggestion that the natives should put up the new church without foreign aid. I at once said: “You have raised twenty yen, and believed that you had done all you could; it will take almost one thousand yen to put up the church. Can you do it?” I felt strongly rebuked by his quiet reply: “We ask such questions as ‘Can you do it?’ about men’s work, but not about God’s work.”--PIERSON, “The Miracles of Missions.”

When the soul of man is full of faith it is in a changed condition. The man is the same, but his state is not the same, and he in the new state develops new powers and new capacities. To be full of faith is to be full also of power of a new kind. For faith is spiritual dynamite.

Cold iron is precisely identical with iron heated in the fire; but tho the metal is the same, the fire that has entered it entirely transforms its condition and endows it with a new potency. And the fire also by entering the iron takes upon itself new action, making of the metal a vehicle of its dynamic potency. So does the Spirit of God transfuse and transform and vivify and fortify human nature. (Text.)

There is a true story of a man who crossed the river Usk, England, under circumstances where faith was far better than sight:

He had been absent on business for some time, and in the meantime the bridge had been washed away, and a new one was being constructed. While the buttresses were in place, he drove up in his gig one very dark night, and gave the reins to his horse, who, he knew, was well accustomed to the road. They crossed safely over what he took to be the bridge, and came to an inn near the river. The landlady asked him, being an old acquaintance, what part of the country he had come in from. “From Newport,” he answered. “Then you must have crossed the river?” said the woman in astonishment. “Yes, of course. How else could I have come?” “But how did you manage it, and in the dark, too?” “The same as usual; there is no difficulty in driving over the bridge, even tho it be dark.” “Bless the man!” said the landlady, “there is no bridge to drive over. You must have come along the planks left by the men.” “Impossible,” was the answer; and nothing could persuade the traveler that night that there was no bridge. But early next morning he went to the river-side, and found, as he had been told, that the bridge was gone. His horse had taken him safely over three planks, left by the workmen, where one false step, to the right or to the left, would instantly have plunged him into the swollen river beneath. The man stood aghast at the dreadful danger he had gone through, and so marvelously escaped. (Text.)

Take the little “radioscope” in your hand--a tiny tube less than an inch in length, closed at one end, with a small magnifying lens at the other. In the closed end of the tube you observe a small disk of paper covered with microscopic particles of yellow crystals--sulfid of zinc. In front of the yellow crystals is a small metallic pointer, like the second-hand of a very small watch, and on the end of the pointer is--nothing, absolutely nothing, so far as your eye can see. Look at it very carefully. No! Nothing! Now, take the little tube, go into a darkened room, and look into it through the lens end, and you will see a sight incredible. The metal pointer does have a minute speck of something on its tip, and between that tip and the yellow crystals are leaping showers of sparks of light. Will the shower stop after a few minutes? No. After an hour? No; nor after a thousand hours, or a thousand years, or ten thousand years! The calculation is that that all but invisible speck on the tip of the pointer will keep that shower of sparks going day and night, for thirty thousand years! For that speck is radium, which actually seems as tho it were a hot fragment struck off from God’s great white throne, so amazing is its radiant energy.

It operates, not merely by setting “waves” in motion, but it throws off a stream of actual particles which move with an inconceivable velocity (at the rate, some physicists allege, of 200,000 miles a second), and without--and here is the miracle--without any apparent diminution in the morsel of radium itself. It can hurl these particles literally through six inches of armor plate. It can and does send them right through your own head while you are looking at them, just as if your brain were a loose sieve, as perhaps it is, or a grove of trees quite wide apart, and a bright, flashing bird, all crimson and gold, were flying right through the trees, without even hitting his wings.

Now, what I want to say is that the modern discovery of such marvels as these, as being real, actual, objective, demonstrated facts, stretches the mind out into a thrilling series of undreamed-of possibilities, and this is a preparation for faith. This is the first step. This is the first lamp on the modern road to faith.

— ALBERT J. LYMAN

Faith bids us be of good cheer. Long ago, that old Greek studied the mental operations of a bee, with brain not as large as a pinhead. Here is a little bee, that organizes a city, that builds ten thousand cells for honey, twelve thousand cells for larvæ, a holy of holies for the mother queen; a little bee that observes the increasing heat and when the wax may melt and the honey be lost, organizes the swarm into squads, puts sentinels at the entrances, glues the feet down, and then with flying wings, creates a system of ventilation to cool the honey, that makes an electric fan seem tawdry--a little honey-bee that will include twenty square miles in the field over whose flowers it has oversight. But if a tiny brain in a bee performs such wonders providential, who are you, that you should question the guidance of God? Lift up your eyes, and behold the hand that supports these stars, without pillars, the God who guides the planets without collision. Away with fear! (Text.)

— N. D. HILLIS

One of America’s prominent astronomers is only four feet high, and would hardly outweigh a boy of ten years. But there are few who could outweigh him in intellect and achievement. Alexander H. Stephens, with a dwarf’s body, did a giant’s work. With only a broken scythe, by sheer force of will and work, he overmatched in the harvest those who had fine mowing-machines.

Mark Twain, the famous American writer had a life full of tragic crises. He was notorious as a skeptic and unbeliever. Here are some of the troubles that plagued him:

1858 - Twain's younger brother Henry, whom he had recruited to work on steamboats, was badly scalded by a boiler explosion on the steamboat Pennsylvania. This is how Twain described the long painful death of his brother: “For forty-eight hours I labored at the bedside of my poor burned and bruised but uncomplaining brother...and then the star of my hope went out and left me in the gloom of despair…” Twain had prayed "prayed as never man prayed before," but his brother still died. [see HolwickID #34997]

1872 - lost his infant son, Langdon, aged 19 months. (Twain was 37)

1895 - lost his fortune by bad business investments. He had to go on a two-year worldwide lecture tour to pay off his debts. He had to leave two of his daughters at home, but his wife and middle daughter traveled with him.

1896 - after much success, arrived in London, planning to have two girls come to London to meet them. Upon hearing word that Susie, the oldest and favorite, was ill, he sent his wife and daughter back to America. Before they arrived in the United States, Twain got a telegram telling him that Susie was dead of spinal meningitis. Twain blamed himself.

1902 - Twain's beloved wife died. She was the light of his life. His grief was incredible.

1906 - Youngest daughter an epileptic, became violent, was sent to an institution. Begged to come home a few years later. Twain agreed.

1909 - Youngest daughter determined to make Christmas “like old times”. Much bustle and preparation followed. On Christmas Eve she got up for a full day of preparations. A servant heard her go into her bath, but after a long delay became concerned; she had had a seizure and drowned in her own bathtub.

Twain often railed against God and expressed the idea in this question: “If God is good, and he is able to do something about tragedy, why doesn't he?”

One commentator said that Twain wanted to believe in God but couldn't bring himself to it.