expression the comparison fails. But every serious Christian knows, that the longer he lives under the influence and direction of the Gospel, the greater proficiency he makes in religion, the more he continues to "grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ'."

It

Unhappily this was not the case with Felix. is no sooner recorded that he trembled at the Apostle's preaching, than it is said that he hurried to put an end to the conference. "Go thy way for this time, when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee." A convenient season! What season can be more convenient than the present? for death, and a thousand difficulties and inconveniences, stand between us, and that which is to come. We find, indeed, that the governor frequently communed with the Apostle, doubtless on subjects of a similar nature; and yet this convenient season for apprehending the great truths of Christianity, and modelling his conduct by a pure faith, never arrived. Alas! sinner, this is thy case! Thou art no stranger to the historical faith of the Gospel, and yet, vital Christianity, such as moves the affections, and improves the heart, never operates towards thy conversion. The reason why Felix so often conversed with Paul, may be thy case also. It was interested, and venal. "He hoped that money should have been given him." Base love of riches tempted him, and beware thou, lest a covetous or parsimonious disposition tempt thee to depart from

the unerring rectitude of moral conduct. Beware also lest some other motive, equally base, and equally treacherous, may produce the same effect; for danger lurks where vice flatters, and virtue sinks in the same proportion that religious principle decays.

But be not led by the example of those who save appearances at the expense of their integrity. Felix durst not listen to St. Paul; and therefore put him off by a flattering, time-serving apology. "Let no man deceive you; he that doth righteousness is righteous'." Our Christianity must be radically just, pure, consistent, and sincere, to give us a well-grounded hope that it will be successful. "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another; and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin 2."

After all that had passed between Felix and our venerable Apostle, it might have been expected that good-will, at least, should have induced him to set him at liberty, when he found that no bribe could be procured, and that justice could not condemn him. No. He had other masters to please. "For after two years," (so long did this intercourse continue) Porcius Festus was sent to take the government, and "Felix, willing to shew the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound." In this case also his

pleasure was his interest. He wished to conciliate the people of his province; for his rapacity, and venality, followed him to Rome, where he must have met with his deserts, but for the interposition of his brother Pallas, a favourite of the Emperor Nero, and the silence of those over whom he had so unworthily presided. Thus Paul's captivity became itself the bribe, as his blessed Master's had been before, to appease the cruel and unprovoked indignation of the Jewish people; and thus ended the procuratorship of Felix.

There is much matter for reflection in the different subjects of this Lecture, which, I trust, none of us will be willing to put off to a more convenient season. A I have endeavoured to select the most prominent parts for our contemplation, may God's grace draw them nearer to our hearts, that we may call for them, not at some distant period, but now, when we most want them, in our houses, and in our chambers, in the midst of our families, and in our private retirements! Let us be guarded by religion's better part, that we may hear the voice of God's ministers reasoning concerning the faith of Christ, and reproving those "sins, which most easily beset us," without feeling the severe tremors of Felix, or continuing in the callous apathy of Drusilla.

LECTURE XXV.

ACTS XXV. XXV.

St. Paul's Defence before Festus, and Appeal to Cæsar-Characters of Agrippa and Bernice-His Defence before Agrippa. --Cæsarea. A. D. 62.

WHEN We accompany the narrative of a good man's life with suitable reflections on the various incidents of it as they occur, how sweetly do the hours of reading pass, and how delightful are the impressions left upon the mind! During the repetition of those scenes which he spent in ease and tranquillity, what sympathetic calmness rests upon our breasts! When we follow his steps in the moments of difficulty and danger, we partake of the perplexity of his situation; and when this is heightened into actual, or approaching sufferings, that happiness which the mind experienced, is changed into uneasy apprehensions, and we forget that we are only spectators. Some feelings of this nature, and those not faint, attend the perusal of St. Paul's travels with this additional interest, that our own comfort, our own happiness, our own salvation, is connected

with the holy doctrines for which he became a

martyr.

Two years of the Apostle's valuable life were spent in that kind of imprisonment at Cæsarea, which we have described; at the end of which time, a new Governor appears. New expectations consequently arise, and new disappointments follow. We do not indeed find the character of the new Governor base and venal like his predecessor, but the state of the country over which he came to preside was miserable in the extreme, and exhibited a melancholy picture of rapacity and mismanagement. "When Festus came to Judæa,” says the Historian of the Jews," he found all in desolation and distress; the country laid waste; the people driven from their habitations; their houses exposed to fire and pillage, and themselves at the mercy of a brutal and ferocious multitude." To this description of the country, he adds a most uncomfortable account of the High Priest, and leaders of the Jews, at this period; an account which considerably illustrates St. Luke's history, and renders, in all respects, credible, their persecution of the venerable Apostle, and their intention privately to destroy him whom they could not publicly condemn. Immediately after the arrival of Festus in his province, he went up to Jerusalem. The first request that was made him, was to order the prisoner Paul, whose case the Sanhedrim laid before him, to be brought to Jerusalem; by no

1 Jos. Hist. B. 20. c. 7.