HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON
Paul before Felix.
I. TERTULLUS AND PAUL: A CONTRAST. Between false and spurious eloquence. False rhetoric, as Plato taught, always owes its power to its flattering the passions of the audience. So here the orator addresses himself directly to the magistrate's self-love. It is pretty clear that Felix, instead of being the beneficent ruler he is described as being, must have been well hated by the people for his vices and oppression. Later they accused him to the emperor. Flattery is a great solvent. The great gain the little, and not less the little gain the great to their ends by it. "Great lords, by reason of their flatterers, are the first to know their own virtues, and the last to know their own vices" (Selden). "Know that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors" (Sir W. Raleigh). On the other hand, true eloquence speaks to the heart and conscience (Acts 24:10). Paul indulges Felix in no flattering complimentary titles. He respects the office and the existing order which it represents, true to his teaching in Romans 13:1-14.; but not the bad man in the office. He speaks with freedom and boldness. He avows himself the member of a despised sect. He is a Nazarene. But Christianity is no newly invented heresy, nor does the gospel depart from the faith of the fathers. Rather Christ's gospel their spiritual sum and substance, the end and goal of the old covenant. All that is true in any of our sects is continuous with the old; what is quite novel is probably not true. The simple words of Paul contain a fine defense of persecuted opinions.
1. They are not of yesterday.
2. The future belongs to them.
3. Meanwhile, the great thing we exercise is a good conscience. If they are really conscientious, force cannot put them down.
II. THE CHRISTIAN'S BEST DEFENSE.
1. "To have a conscience void of offence." Religion which does not aim at this and end in this, is vain; otherwise a mere matter of the head, or of hereditary habit, an occasion of contention and source of division, chaff without wheat, and a shadow without life. A life that will bear the inspection of men and of God, the only certificate of true religion; or rather, the endeavor for such a life. The "exercise of one's self" in worthy habits, to noble ends.
2. Hope is ever connected with the good conscience. The hope of the resurrection not a doctrine the splendor of which first appears in the New Testament pages; it appears in bright glimpses in the Old from the time of the Babylonian Captivity onward. In some form it lives and burns at the heart of all genuine faith and religion. With a joyous confession on the lips, a clear conscience in the bosom, an innocent life-record behind one, the just judgment of God before one's expectation,—here are the defenses of the Christian against the arrows of calumny.—J.