PAUL, the prisoner, and Felix, the governor, were no strangers to each other when the latter came to the end of his term of office at Caesarea. Often had the so-called “noble Felix” listened to the fearless, faithful gospel preacher who stood in chains before him. Once, at least, as the prisoner reasoned of “righteousness,” temperance, and judgment to come, had the judge been made to tremble. But, alas! he never repented, never turned to God, never got converted.
As his two full years of more than ordinary opportunity wore away, the earnestness of Felix seemed to increase. What a likely case! we should probably have considered him. Indeed, any thoughtful onlooker might reasonably have said, “Surely this Roman governor cannot be far from the kingdom of God”; and with every, new hearing would come the wondering exclamation, how can he hear such things and come away so indifferent!
Alas! there was a secret hindrance. There was a hidden, soul-deadening motive behind all this seeming interest. It was worldly gain he was after. Out of Paul’s misery (as he no doubt deemed his imprisonment) he thought he could make money. Constant calls for a new hearing, he vainly calculated, would, in the end, make manifest the prisoner’s willingness to purchase his freedom by a secret bribe. Therefore we read, “He sent for him the oftener, and communed with him.” This continued till at last the day came when he had himself to quit office―a disappointed man. Has this no voice for many a see singly interested gospel hearer in the preset day? We are convinced it has. The secret of their dangerous, soul-damning delay may not yet have come to light, but it will. The Roman governor’s secret was exposed by the Holy Spirit as a warning to others.
To go no further, why have you not responded, my reader, to God’s oft-repeated call to repentance? Do you not know that God’s gracious forgiveness in the name of Him who died and rose again is proclaimed with it? Yet you coldly hold back, and deliberately procrastinate. Why is this? Is it not that you know well enough that repentance toward God can no more be possible, with the willful continuance of your sinful pursuits, than clinging tenaciously to a hundredweight of gold at the bottom of the ocean could help you to rise to the surface?
Paul told king Agrippa and all who sat with him that the result of the heavenly vision to which he was not disobedient was that he showed first unto them of Damascus (where he really began his Christian service), and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, “that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance” (Acts 26:19, 2019Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: 20But showed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. (Acts 26:19‑20)).
It is not that present-day gospel hearers have any open quarrel with this announcement. Nay their consciences, unless seared, compel them to go with it; but some hidden lust is fondly cherished, and the way of their own will is persistently followed. No doubt in many a bosom there is the secret purpose to decide upon a different course at some future day, some more “convenient season,” as Felix expressed it. But for the present it is all briefly summed-up thus: My will today; God’s will tomorrow. And, alas! this goes on with thousands until death overtakes them, and their convenient tomorrow turns out to be a night of despair. As an old writer (A.D. 1632) has well expressed it: ―
“ ‘I will tomorrow, that I will;
I will be sure to do it.’
Tomorrow comes, tomorrow goes,
And still thou art to do it.
Thus still repentance is deferred.
From one day to another,
Until the day of death is come,
And judgment is the other.”
Beware, my reader, that you do not wear out your day of grace by such a course of guilty indifference to the holiness and love of God expressed at the cross of Jesus lest for this world’s tempting glitter you forfeit an eternity of heavenly bliss.
As surely as Felix has gone, you are going.
We ask you, Where?
If you have not yet responded to God’s call, if you have not repented and believed the gospel, there is secret reason to be found somewhere.
It is for you to inquire what that secret is, and to consider what it will be worth when you are as far beyond gospel opportunities as Felix is now beyond his.
“Let others boast of heaps of gold, Christ for me;
His riches never can be told, Christ for me;
Your gold will waste and wear away,
Your honors perish in a day,
My portion never can decay, CHRIST FOR ME.”
GEO. C.