5 Sermon Illustrations on Power

A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy. Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant; accommodates itself to the meanest capacities; silences the loud and clamorous, and brings over the most obstinate and inflexible. Philip of Macedon was a man of most invincible reason this way. He refuted by it all the wisdom of Athens, confounded their statesmen, struck their orators dumb, and, at length, argued them out of their liberties. A division.

Cyrus, the Persian king, was accustomed to say, that did men but know the cares he had to sustain, he thought no man would wish to wear his crown.

The conquests of Alexander the Great could not satisfy him; for when he had conquered the whole of one known world, he sat down and wept because he knew of no other world to conquer.