Acts 24:25 And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go your way for this time… I. We learn from this history that THERE IS, EVEN IN THE WORST OF MEN, A NATURAL CONSCIENCE OF GOOD AND EVIL, which may be darkened, perverted, and very much defaced, but is hardly ever quite obliterated and lost. There are certain seasons, which check the insolence of the passions and dispose for gravity and consideration, in which it revives, and represents the malignity of irregular and vicious excesses in a clear and strong light. II. We may observe from the text WHAT A MISERABLE THING IT IS TO HAVE A CONSCIENCE BURDENED WITH GUILT, IN THAT A MAN DARES NOT TRUST HIMSELF TO THINK FOR FEAR OF BEING ALARMED AND FILLED WITH TERROR AND CONFUSION. As long as, men are amused with company or engaged in a hurry of business, or can keep their passions inflamed and silence the voice of reason and natural conscience by a course of intemperance, they may continue stupid and insensible. But when anything happens that damps their gaiety, gives a shock to the mind, and puts them upon thinking, they are soon roused out of their lethargy and entertained with none but dark and gloomy prospects. And nothing, surely, can be a more perverted state of mankind than to derive all their relief, all their peace, from the suppression or extinction of reason. Besides, as guilt is such an enemy to consideration, there is this dreadful circumstance attending it farther to aggravate and enhance its misery, that it cuts off in a great measure the only possible means of the sinner's recovery. III. It is a very natural inference from the text that INCULCATING THE GREAT DUTIES OF MORALITY AND ENFORCING THE PRACTICE OF THEM FROM A REGARD OF THE FUTURE JUDGMENT IS TRUE GOSPEL PREACHING, and answers in the most effectual manner the excellent design of Christianity. To preach Christ is universally allowed to be the duty of every Christian minister. But what does it mean? It is not to use His name as a charm, to work up our hearers to a warm pitch of enthusiasm, without any foundation of reason to support it. 'Tis not to encourage undue and presumptuous reliances on His merits and intercession, to the contempt of virtue and good works. No, but to represent Him as a Lawgiver as well as a Saviour, as a preacher of righteousness, as one who hath given us a most noble and complete system of morals enforced by the most substantial and worthy motives, and to show that the whole scheme of our redemption is a doctrine according to godliness. IV. A SENSE OF GUILT MAKES THOSE THINGS THE OBJECTS OF AVERSION AND HORROR WHICH, NATURALLY, YIELD THE HIGHEST DELIGHT AND SATISFACTION. We have an instance in the text of one that was shocked at the strict obligations of justice, without which there can be no pleasure or convenience in human life, and the whole frame of civil societies must immediately be dissolved. It mortifies the epicure and the adulterer to be told of the rules of temperance and chastity, which are absolutely necessary to the health of our bodies, the rectitude and vigour of our minds, and the grand security of what is most dear and sacred to us; and the cruel and revengeful to hear of gentleness, beneficence, and the soft impressions of humanity, though they form the most excellent and amiable character we can possibly conceive of. In like manner, the future judgment of mankind is in itself far from being an object of terror; for that we are moral, accountable creatures is owing to our superior capacities, which are the distinguishing dignity of our nature; and nothing can be a more comfortable reflection to a well-disposed mind than that its integrity will be tried and rewarded by a Being of unerring wisdom, inflexible justice, and unlimited goodness. But to a guilty sinner this is so tremendous a scene, that the mere prospect of it fills him with agony and confusion. He does not consider it as honourable to human nature, because it threatens his vices; can't think of abiding by the sentence of unchangeable rectitude and infinite benevolence itself; and the sum of his wishes is to die like a brute. The future judgment is not revealed with a view to alarm and confound the mind, but to restrain those irregular practices which are the surest ground of melancholy suspicions and inward horror. (James Foster.) Parallel Verses KJV: And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee. |
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