SERM. can we be sure that our reformation is XXIV. sincere, after we have lived for some time a pious, a virtuous life, when the danger of speedily dying is, or appears to be, remote from us. Our good resolutions may be, otherwise, only the effects of sickness and terror transient as the morning clouds and early dew which returning health and apparent security would soon render abortive. I shall conclude this discourse by calling your attention to the words of the text, and to the subsequent conduct of the person who uttered them.-" Go thy way for "this time; when I have a convenient "season I will call for thee." They were spoken by the Roman governor, Felix, on this occasion:-St. Paul had been sent a prisoner from Jerusalem to Cesarea, that he might plead his cause, and answer to the accusations of the Jews, before Felix. Felix had already heard his defence; but after a few days, he had an inclination to hear hear again from him some account of SERM. Christianity; he accordingly sent for him n to preach before himself and his wife Drusilla: the scripture tells us the subjects on which he spoke, and its effects on his hearer." As Paul reasoned of right eousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled; and he said unto "Paul, Go thy way for this time; when "I have a convenient season I will call " for thee." Felix resembled, I fear, too many of these days; he was convinced, by the preacher's reasoning, and the whispers of his own conscience, of the enormity and danger of sin, and of the necessity of piety and virtue; he felt the folly and absurdity of his former course of life, and formed some loose, unsteady resolutions of amending it; but when? — not at that present time, the most proper of all others, when his understanding was convinced and his heart touched, and when it might have pleased God that, by his hearing XXIV. XXIV. SERM hearing the preacher farther, and by his own endeavours, he might have been thoroughly converted; no! he was for putting off the evil hour, for such it ap peared to him, persuaded as he was of the necessity that it must one day arrive, or himself everlastingly perish. He refuses to listen to the salutary terrors that had begun to assail him, and dismisses his instructor somewhat hastily and abruptly, "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season I will call for thee." Did this convenient season ever arrive ?no! he kept Paul confined two years, and during that time had him brought before him frequently; not that he might profit by his discourses, not that he might be perfected in the reformation, which seemed to have been began by the remorse which Paul had once excited in him; but, as the scripture tells us, in hopes that he might have received money of his prisoner, to let him go free. And still farther, when he XXIV. he was removed from his government, SERM. willing to shew the Jews a pleasure, that is, desirous to atone for the many acts of oppression of which he had been guilty, and to prevent their complaints from pursuing him, which we find they afterwards did, he left Paul bound. You see that, during two whole years, this conve nient season of hearing Paul, as he ought to have been heard, never arrived: he sent for him, it is true, often; but as it was only with the expectation he would offer money for his release, he was likely to profit but little from his discourse on any other subject; and that he did profit but little, is evident, from his leaving an innocent man still a prisoner. Happy would it have been for Felix, if he had suffered the preacher's reasoning, and the voice of his own conscience, to have that immediate effect, which they ought to have had! they were so forcible, and came so home to him, that he could no other wise XXIV. SERM. wise elude and destroy their influence than by postponing the hour of reflection till a future time. His delay was his ruin.— Let us take warning by it; and whenever either the preacher's admonitions, the advice of friends, the perusal of good books, the whispers of our own hearts, or the suggestions of God's holy spirit, awaken in us a sense of contrition and remorse, and a resolution of living vir tuously in future; let us instantly attend to them, and begin directly to act in consequence; let us not put off our rereformation till to-morrow, but begin the blessed work to-day, whilst it is called today, lest we be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, FINIS. |