60 Sermon Illustrations on Sin

If but one sin be unrepented of, the man continues still a bond-slave of hell. By one little hole, a ship will sink into the bottom of the sea. The stab of a penknife to the heart will as well destroy a man as all the daggers that killed Caesar in the senate-house. The soul will be strangled with one cord of vanity as well as with all the cart-ropes of iniquity: only the more sins, the more plagues and fiercer flames in hell; but he that lives and dies impenitent in one, it will be his destruction. One dram of poison will despatch a man, and one reigning sin will bring him to endless misery. R. Bolton

The consul Q. S. Carpio had taken the city of Toulouse by an act of more than common perfidy and treachery, and possessed himself of the immense hoards of wealth stored in the temples of the Gaulish deities. From this day forth, he was so hunted by calamity, all extremist evils and disasters, all shame and dishonor, fell so thick on himself and all who were his, and were so traced up by the moral instinct of mankind to this accursed thing which he had made his own, that any wicked gains fatal to their possessor acquired this name; and of such a one it would be said, "He has gold of Toulouse." Trench.

There is an Australian missile called the boomerang, which is thrown so as to describe singular curves, and fall at last at the feet of the thrower. Sin is a kind of boomerang, which goes off into space curiously, but turns again upon its author, and with tenfold force strikes the guilty soul that launched it.

It is the Trojan horse: it hath sword and famine and pestilence in the belly of it. Sin is a coal, that not only blacks, but burns. Sin creates all our troubles: it puts gravel into our bread, wormwood in our cup. Sin rots the name, consumes the estate, buries relations. Sin shoots the flying roll of God's curses into a family and kingdom (Zech. v. 4). It is reported of Pho-cas, having built a wall of mighty strength about his city, there was a voice heard, "Sin is in the city, and that will throw down the wall." T. Watson.

On an extreme cold night, shivering by the stove in a grog-shop in Cincinnati, sat a young man about twenty-five years of age, (although he appeared much older,) who was evidently the victim of a depraved appetite. His eye, though swollen and bloodshot, had not entirely lost the power of its expression, and a careful observer could discover that he once possessed a bright intellect and a commanding genius. He gazed on vacancy, reflecting perhaps upon the misery he had brought upon himself and relatives, in consequence of his dissipation. He was thinly clad, and seemed to be laboring under some horrible sensation.

Those who came and went, looked with disgust upon him, and then passed on. At length, one entered who was acquainted with him, and after looking at him for a moment, turned upon his heel and said to the bar-tender:

"Brown, why do you let such loafers as that sit here, to the annoyance of respectable people?" This last speaker, whom we will call Somers, was also a young man, respectably clad, and belonged to the same mechanical business, as did the one whom he was pleased to term "loafer." He was a moderate drinker, the other a drunkard! The bar-tender replied:

"I have told him a number of times to keep away from the place, and am determined that if he comes here again drunk, I will send him, head and heels, into the street."

This rebuke cut poor William H—, (for that was his name,) to the very quick. He was not so drunk but that he could see and understand—nor had rum entirely obliterated that manly pride which once burned brightly within his bosom. Although he was degraded,

'—he had one virtue left;

That true shoot which precept doth inculcate,

And keep the root and trunk alive,—

One virtue—Manhood!"

He rose and left the place to go—he knew not whither. * * * *

Two years passed away, and William H— had become a Washingtonian, and a highly respectable member of society—surrounded by innumerable friends, who placed the most implicit confidence in his integrity as a man and a citizen, and was doing a prosperous business. One morning, as he took up the daily paper, his eye fell upon that department devoted to "Coroner's inquests"—and, to his utter astonishment and grief, he read that George Somers had died on the previous day at the Alms House from the effects of intemperance!