We believe that Thou shalt come to be our Judge,
We therefore pray Thee help Thy servants
Whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy Precious Blood ! 2
When with these eyes, closed now by Thee,
But then restored, The great and white throne I shall see
Of my dread Lord; And lowly kneeling, for the most
Stiff then must kneel, Shall look on Him, at whose high cost
Unseen, such joys I feel.
Whatever arguments or skill
Wise heads shall use, Tears only and my blushes still
I will produce. And should those speechless beggars fail,
Which oft have won, Then taught by Thee I will prevail,
And say, Thy will be done ! 3 1 G. Jackson. - J. M. Gibbon. s Henry Vaughan.
202 THE LASH OF THE LAW
III.
The Effect of the Sermon.
i. Felix was terrified.
1. Paul knew that there was in every man something that would respond to the manifestation of the truth. He knew that he had a message for Felix — even God's message ; and presently there was that in the bearing of the man whom he addressed which abundantly justified his confidence. "Felix was terrified." He may have shared, he probably did share, in the widespread scepticism or unbelief of the educated heathen of the age. He had overlived all faith in the things which his own religion taught him, of the rewards laid up for the good, of the punishments reserved for the wicked. Tartarus and Elysium, Minos and Rhadamanthus with their seats of judgment, the wheel of Ixion, the stone of Sisyphus, the whips of the Furies, all these, no doubt, were poets' fictions, old wives' tales, dotards' dreams for him. Dismissing these, he may have long since dis- missed with them the truth which was behind them all, that kernel of truth whereof these were but the husk and outer covering. But now at Paul's words, that truth, so old and yet so new, revived in him again — just as by some chemical applica- tions the writings on parchment, long since apparently effaced by age, may start into life again. Besides the voice of the Apostle, there was another voice in his own heart, deep calling unto deep, which told him that this was true, which compelled him to set his own seal to the Apostle's words; and "Felix was terrified."
2. The awakened conscience is just like the sense of pain in the physical world, it has got a work to do, and a mission to perform. It is meant to warn us off dangerous ground. Thank God for pain ! It keeps off death many a time. Felix was on the high road to utter hardness and blindness of heart, but he had not arrived at that condition yet. For this is the strange characteristic of sin, when carried to the extent of producing spiritual blindness and hardness of heart, that those solemn glimpses of an unseen world, those feelings of horror at the
ACTS xxiv. 25 203
thought of the loss of God's favour, become at length like the dreams of infancy, and are regarded as little ; but Felix " was terrified."
3. But impulse is not to be a resting-place. Emotion is not the goal. Is that altogether a needless warning ? It is possible to cultivate a spurious emotionalism, a luxury of emotions, which may come to be regarded as the marrow and essence of true religion. True religion is not merely the enjoyment of certain feelings ; it is the translation of them. There is a wide difference between good impulse and good life, and the work of true religion is to translate the one into the other. We have to take the impulse, given us by God, and translate it first into resolution and then into action. That is religion, to take divine impulse, and, by the process of living, translate it into finished and eternal achievement.
T| Dr. Wayland Hoyt tells the story of a captain whom he met in the pilot-house of a Missouri Eiver steamboat, and who asked his judgment concerning his conduct. He said that when he was a young man, and was first married, his wife was a Christian, and to please her he began to go to church; he never could hear singing and not be moved; the songs they sang in the church touched him strongly. They brought up forgotten memories and unloosed the springs of feeling; he was overcome. Because he wept, they thought he had become a Christian. His wife, the minister, and many friends pressed him to join the church. " But," said the captain, " I could not. I told them I had simply been stirred by songs as I always am. I knew I had not given up my evil ways."
ii. Felix put off Decision.
1. " Felix answered, Go thy way for this time ; and when I have a convenient season, I will call thee unto me." Felix broke off the audience, saying that when he found another oppor- tunity he would summon Paul again for a public audience. But Paul remained in Caesarea two full years waiting for the second hearing. Felix did indeed send for Paul again — but we do not read that he felt any emotion again. He communed with him often. But why? Was it to deepen his impression? Was it that he might obtain more perfect knowledge of the way of Christ? Was it that he might better learn how to flee from