4 Sermon Illustrations on Jesus Christ

It was Napoleon who said, "Everything in Christ astonishes me. His spirit overawes me, and His will confounds me. His ideas and His sentiments, the truth which He announces, His manner of convincing are not explained either by human observation or the nature of things. His birth and the history of His life; the profundity of His doctrine, which grapples the mightiest difficulties, and which is of those difficulties the most admirable solution; His Gospel; His apparition; His empire; His march across the ages and the realms-everything is for me a prodigy, a mystery insoluble, which plunges me into a reverie from which I cannot escape-a mystery which is there before my eyes, a mystery which I can neither deny nor explain. Here I see nothing human. The nearer I approach, the more carefully I examine. Everything is above me. Everything remains grand-of a grandeur which overpowers. His religion is a revelation from an Intelligence which certainly is not that of man."

The enfeebled world was tottering on its foundations when Christianity appeared. The natural religions, which had satisfied the parents, no longer proved sufficient for their children. The new generations could not repose contented within the ancient forms. The gods of every nation, when transported to Rome, there lost their oracles, as the nations themselves had lost their liberty. Brought face to face in the capitol, they had destroyed each other, and their divinity had vanished. A great void was occasioned in the religion of the world. Then the word was made flesh: God appeared among men, and as man, to save that which was lost. In Jesus of Nazareth dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. This is the greatest event in the annals of the world. Former ages had paved the way for it: the latter ages flow from it. It is their centre, and bond of unity. Henceforward the popular superstitions had no meaning, and the slight fragments preserved from the general wreck of incredulity vanished before the majestic orb of eternal truth. D'Aubigné.