3 Sermon Illustrations on Personal Conviction

When Lincoln was a young man he accompanied a cargo of produce down the Mississippi to New Orleans. There he witnessed a slave auction. The trade in human lives was exhibited in all its awful iniquity that day. Husbands were torn from wives, and mothers from children. The rail-splitter was greatly aroused, and he said: “I call the Eternal God to witness that if I ever get a chance to hit that thing, I will hit it hard.” That was a turning point in Lincoln’s life. How well he carried out his declaration was proven by the fact that in after years he broke the iron chain of slavery, wiped out the curse of selling men and women like cattle, and set millions free.

“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” issued from the consecrated genius of Robert Robinson, a native of Norfolk, England, who was converted under Whitefield’s powerful preaching, and himself became a minister of the gospel.

It was while on a stage journey once, in company with an unknown lady passenger, that he heard her begin singing the above lyric to divert her attention, when he said to her: “Madam, I am the unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago; and I would give a thousand worlds if I had them, if I could feel as I felt then.” (Text.)