13 Sermon Illustrations on Guilt And Forgiveness

The Duke of Ossuna, Viceroy of Naples, passing through Barcelona, went on board the Cape galley; and, passing through the crew of slaves, he asked several of them what their offences were. Every one excused himself upon various pretences: one said he was put in out of malice, another by bribery of the judge; but all of them unjustly. The duke came at last to a sturdy little black man, whom he questioned as to what he was there for? "My lord," said he, "I cannot deny but I am justly put in here; for I wanted money, and so took a purse near Tarragona, to keep me from starving." The duke, on hearing this, gave him two or three blows on the shoulder with his stick, saying, "You rogue! what are you doing among so many honest, innocent men? Get you out of their company." The poor fellow was then set at liberty, while the rest wore left to tug at the oar. Percy.

Nicholson, the murderer of Mr. and Mrs. Bonar, at Chiselhurst, in Kent, who paid the forfeit of his life to the violated laws of his country, declared solemnly in writing, after sentence of death was passed upon him, that he had no previous malice towards the parties, nor intention to murder them, five minutes before he committed the horrid deed; but that suddenly, as he awoke, the thought suggested itself to his mind, and which he can only account for by confessing, "that he had long lived in utter forgetfulness of God, and was in the habit of giving way to the worst passions of the human heart."

A duel was fought near the city of Washington, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. A distinguished individual challenged his relative who was once his friend. The challenged party having the choice of weapons, named muskets, to be loaded with buck-shot and slugs, and the distance ten paces; avowing at the same time his intention and desire that both parties should be destroyed. They fought. The challenger was killed on the spot; the murderer escaped unhurt! Years afterwards, a gentleman was spending the winter in Charleston, South Carolina, and lodged at the same house with this unhappy man. He was requested by the duellist one evening, to sleep in the same room with him, but he declined, as he was very well accommodated in his own. On his persisting in declining, the duellist confessed to him that HE WAS AFRAID TO SLEEP ALONE; and as a friend who usually occupied the room, was absent, he would esteem it a great favor if the gentleman would pass the night with him. His kindness being thus demanded, he consented, and retired to rest in the room with this man of fashion and honor, who some years before had stained his hands in the blood of a kinsman. After long tossing on his unquiet pillow and repeated half-stifled groans, that revealed the inward pangs of the murderer, he sank into slumber, and as he rolled from side to side, the name of his victim was often uttered, with broken words that discovered the keen remorse that preyed like fire on his conscience. Suddenly he would start up in his bed with the terrible impression that the avenger of blood was pursuing him; or hide himself under the covering as if he would escape the burning eye of an angry God, that gleamed in the darkness over him, like lightning from a thunder cloud! For him there was "no rest, day nor night." Conscience, armed with terrors, lashed him unceasingly, and who could sleep? And this was not the restlessness of disease, the raving of a disordered intellect, nor the anguish of a maniac struggling in chains! It was a man of intelligence, education, health, and affluence, given up to himself—not delivered over to the avenger of blood, to be tormented before his time; but left to the power of his own CONSCIENCE, suffering only what every one may suffer who is abandoned of God!

The following is translated from a respectable publication at Basle, Switzerland:—

A person who worked in a brewery quarreled with one of his fellow-workmen, and struck him in such a manner that he died upon the spot. No other person was witness to the deed. He then took the dead body and threw it into a large fire under the boiling-vat, where it was in a short time so completely consumed, that no traces of its existence remained. On the following day, when the man was missed, the murderer observed, very coolly, that he had perceived his fellow-servant to have been intoxicated, and that he had probably fallen from a bridge which he had to cross in his way home, and been drowned. For the space of seven years after no one entertained any suspicion of the real state of the fact. At the end of this period the murderer was again employed in the same brewery. He was then induced to reflect on the singularity of the circumstance that his crime had remained so long concealed. Having retired one evening to rest, one of the other workmen, who slept with him, hearing him say in his sleep, "It is now fully seven years ago," asked him, "What was it you did seven years ago?" "I put him," he replied, still speaking in his sleep, "under the boiling-vat." As the affair was not entirely forgotten, it immediately occurred to the man that his bedfellow must allude to the person who was missing about that time, and he accordingly gave information of what he had heard to a magistrate. The murderer was apprehended; and though at first he denied that he knew any thing of the matter, a confession of his crime was at length obtained from him, for which he suffered condign punishment.

A cruel persecutor of God’s ancient people, after having been consigned to exile, suffered the torments of a guilty conscience. If he heard a soft step, he thought it was someone coming to smite him unawares, or if a hasty step, it was one coming quickly to kill him. If men spoke roughly to him he quaked with fear, or if kindly, he fancied it was a plot to beguile him. If they fed him sparingly it was to starve him, or if luxuriantly it was to fatten him like an ox for slaughter.

The only thing needed to show guilt or innocence is sufficient light:

Aaron Burr once defended a prisoner charged with murder, and as the trial proceeded it became too manifest to him that the guilt of the murder lay between the prisoner and one of the witnesses for the prosecution. He accordingly subjected this witness to a searching and relentless cross-examination; and then, as he addrest the jury in the gathering dusk of evening, he brought into strong relief every fact that bore against this witness, and suddenly seizing two candelabra from the table, he threw a glare of light on the witness’s face, and exclaimed, “Behold the murderer, gentlemen!” Alarmed and conscience-stricken, the man reeled as from a blow, turned ghastly pale, and left the court. The advocate concluded his speech in a tone of triumph, and the jury acquitted the prisoner. (Text.)--CROAKE JAMES, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”