at comforting my brother
captives and myself with the recollection that Paul was once a captive
like ourselves, and that in this state of imprisonment he preached
upon the text which I have selected for this day. I said:

Brethren, if any have cause to tremble, we have none. Those should
tremble who seek to lay obstacles in the way of others who aim to do
good and no evil. As a rule, prisoners are nervous and sometimes
tremble when taken into court: but judges are proverbially calm and
self-composed. Hence the old adage: "As sober as a judge." But this
order is entirely reversed in the case of Paul before Felix. Here we
see that Paul is calm, collected and self-possessed, and that Felix is
first nervous, and soon trembles all over. In this trial it appears
that the judge is convicted of guilt by the prisoner himself, and that
the prisoner shows himself clear. But this is not the only case in
which an innocent criminal has stood before a guilty judge. Felix had
never heard such a sermon before. All that he had ever heard were most
probably eulogistic in character, and spoken in praise of the Roman
emperor and his subordinates. Felix was one of these, and it was
natural for him to appropriate quite a large share of this praise to
himself. But he did not find a eulogist in Paul. Panegyric had no
place in Paul's earnest nature. Life and death, holiness and sin were
subjects of moment too great and too real to be trifled with. If Paul
would have stooped to flattery he might have quickly obtained his
release, because Felix and those following him in office confessed
they found no cause of death in his case. They kept him bound merely
to please the flattering, deceitful Jews.

He reasoned of righteousness first. And this logic was all new to
Felix, who had never thought of righteousness or justice as being the
end and object of government. Herod was a pretty fair specimen of
those Roman rulers or kings as they were sometimes called, and the
unrighteous cause for which he had the head of John the Baptist cut
off manifests the measure of his regard for justice. If history be
correct, Felix was not much in advance of him in this respect. He was
governor of Samaria at this time, and his headquarters and home were
at Cesarea on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It was in this same
city that Paul defended himself so heroically before Festus and
Agrippa. Paul is silent as to the course of reasoning employed in
bringing his three