17 Sermon Illustrations on Miracles

During a great famine in the city of Myra, St. Nicholas performed one of his most stupendous miracles. As he was travelling through his diocese to visit and comfort his people, he lodged in the house of a certain host who was a son of Satan. This man, in the scarcity of provisions, was accustomed to steal little children, whom he murdered; and served up their limbs as meat to his guests. On the arrival of the bishop and his retinue, he had the audacity to serve up the dismembered limbs of these unhappy children before the man of God, who had no sooner cast his eyes on them than he was aware of the fraud. He reproached the host with his abominable crime; and, going to the tub where their remains were salted down, he made over them the sign of the cross, and they rose up whole and well. The people who witnessed this great wonder were struck with astonishment (as, indeed, they might well be); and the three children, who were the sons of a poor widow, were restored to their weeping mother.

— Mrs. Jameson

In Flemming's "Christology," it is stated, that an unbeliever visiting the sacred places of Palestine was shown the clefts of Mount Calvary. Examining them narrowly and critically, he turned in amazement to his fellow-travellers, and said, "I have long been a student of nature; and I am sure that the rents and clefts in this rock were never done by nature, or an ordinary earthquake. By such a concussion, the rock must have split according to its veins, and where it was weakest in the adhesion of parts: for this," he said, "I have observed to have been done in other rocks when separated or broken after an earthquake; and reason tells me it must always be so. But it is quite otherwise here; for the rocks are split athwart and across the veins in a strange and preternatural manner: and therefore," said he, "I thank God that I came hither to see the standing monument of miraculous power by which God gives evidence to this day of the divinity of Christ."

A gardener, when he transplanteth a tree out of one ground into another, before the tree takes root, he sets stays to it, and poureth water at the root of it daily; but when it once taketh root, he ceaseth to water it any more, and pulleth away the stays that he set to uphold it, and suffereth it to grow with the ordinary influence of the heavens. So the Lord, in planting religion: he put to the help of miracles, as helps to stay it; but when it was once confirmed and fastened, and had taken deep root, he took away such helps. Spencer.

Miracles are like candles lit up until the sun rises, and then blown out. Therefore, I am amused when I hear sects and churches talk about having evidence of divine authority, because they have miracles. Miracles in our time are like candles in the street at midday. We do no want miracles. They are to teach men how to find out truths themselves; and, after they have learned this, they no more need them than a well man needs a staff, or than a grown-up child needs a walking-stool. They are the educating expedients of the early periods of the world. As such, they are divinely wise. After they have served their purpose as such, it is humanly foolish for persons to pretend to have them. There is no teaching in Scripture of a stated providence of miracles. They are not daily helps. They do not even belong to the mere economic relations of men. In secular things, God helps the men that help themselves. Beecher.

A certain heretic called Bovidilla entertained doubts of the Real Presence in the sacrament, and, after a long argument with the saint, required a miracle in proof of this favorite dogma of the Roman-Catholic Church. St. Antony, who was about to carry the Host in procession, encountered the mule of Bovidilla, which fell down on its knees at the command of the saint, and, although its heretic master endeavored to tempt it aside by a sieve-full of oats, remained kneeling till the Host had passed.

— Mrs. Jameson

Paine, after scandalizing the account of Christ's supernatural birth in his Age of Reason, uses the following language:

"Nothing that is here said can apply even with the most distant disrespect to the moral character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and amiable man. The morality that he preached and practised was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius and by some of the Greek philosophers many ages before; by the Quakers since; and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any."

Again, Paine says: "He (Christ) called men to the practice of moral virtues and the belief of one God. The great trait in his character is philanthropy."

Paine, in the first extract, would evidently put Christ on a level with such ancient sages as Socrates and others. The mistake he here commits is sufficiently exposed in the foregoing confession of the infidel Rousseau. If Christ was a virtuous man, then he practised no imposition when he professed to work miracles; and if he wrought miracles, then his doctrines, which his miracles were wrought to confirm, are all true.

319. Shown by Confessions of their Disquietude and Misery.

When Dr. Moore was at Rome, in 1775, a new saint, called St. Buonavantura, was added to the list. Dr. M. was present at the first part of the ceremony usual on these occasions, which is called the beatification of a saint, and has given a full account of the particulars. For several days previously, a very large picture of the proposed saint was hung up in front of St. Peter's church, and printed papers announcing the ceremony were distributed, particularly by the Franciscan monks, of whose order he had been a member. On the day fixed for the solemnity, the pope with many cardinals and other ecclesiastics attended; a long discourse was pronounced by a Franciscan friar, setting forth the devotions, penances, and charitable actions of the saint, and enumerating the miracles he had performed when alive, and those effected after his death by his bones. The most remarkable among these, was his replenishing a lady's cupboard with bread, after her housekeeper had, by the saint's desire, given to the poor all the loaves she had in the family.

This orator was opposed as usual by another, who is called the advocate for the devil, and objects to the miracles of the saint, his life and conduct, etc. etc. This controversy was drawn out to a great length; but at length the claimant was admitted to the privileges of beatification, which Dr. M. says the church of Rome considers "as entitling the saint to more distinction in heaven than before; but he has not the power of freeing souls from purgatory till he has been canonized, and therefore is not addressed in prayer till he has obtained the second honor." We may here observe, that the pope decrees who are to be considered as saints, and thus professes to know who are in heaven.

In the monastery at Isenach, (says Luther,) stands an image which I have seen. When a wealthy person came hither to pray to it (it was Mary with her child), the child turned away his face from the sinner to the mother; but if the sinner gave liberally to that monastery, then the child turned to him again; and if he promised to give more, then the child showed itself very friendly and loving, and stretched out its arms over him in the form of a cross. But this picture and image was made hollow within, and prepared with locks, lines, and screws; and behind it stood a knave to move them,—and so were the people mocked and deceived, who took it to be a miracle!

St. Anthony is thought to have had a great command over fire, and power of destroying by that element those who incurred his displeasure. A certain monk of St. Anthony one day assembled his congregation under a tree where a magpie had built her nest, into which he had found means to convey a small box filled with gunpowder, and out of the box hung a long thin match that was to burn slowly, and that was hidden among the leaves of the trees. As soon as the monk or his assistant had touched the match with a lighted coal, the friar began his sermon; in the mean while the magpie returned to her nest, and finding in it a strange body which she could not remove, she fell into a passion and scratched with her feet most vehemently. The friar affected to hear without emotion, and continued his sermon with great composure, only he would now and then lift up his eyes towards the top of the tree, as if he wanted to know what was the matter. At last, when he judged that the match was near reaching the gunpowder, he pretended to be out of patience; he cursed the magpie, wished St. Anthony's fire might consume her, and went on again with his sermon. But he had scarcely proceeded two or three periods, when the match on a sudden produced its effect, and blew up the magpie with its nest; which miracle wonderfully raised the character of the friar, and proved afterwards very beneficial to him and his convent.