Ordered Back to the Guard-Room
“Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.”’ — Acts xxiv., 25.
A CITY of marble was Cesarea — wharves of marble, houses of marble, temples of marble. This being the ordinary architecture of the place, you may imagine something of the splendor of Governor Felix’s residence. In a room of that palace, floor tesselated, windows curtained, ceiling fretted, the whole scene affluent with Tyrian purple, and statues, and pictures, and carvings, sat a very darlv-complexioned man by the name of Felix, and beside him a woman of extraordinary beauty, whom he had stolen by breaking up another domestic circle. She was only eighteen years of age, a princess by birth, and unwittingly waiting for her doom — that of being buried alive in the ashes and scoria of Mount Vesuvius, which in sudden eruption, one day, put an end to her abominations. Well, one afternoon, Drusilla, seated in the palace, weary with the magnificent stupidities of the place, says to Felix: “You have a very distinguished prisoner, I believe, by the name of Paul. Do you know he is one of my countrymen? I should very much like to see him, and I should very much like to hear him speak, for I have heard so much about his eloquence. Besides that, the other day, when he was being tried in another room of this palace, and the windows were open, I heard the applause that greeted the speech of Lawyer
Tertullus, as he denounced Paul. Now, I verj much wish I could hear Paul speak. Won’t you let me hear him speak?” “Yes,” said Felix, “I will. I will order him up now from the guard-room.” Clank, clank, comes a chain up the marble stairway, and there is a shuffle at the door, and in comes Paul, a little old man, prematurely old through exposure — only sixty years of age, but looking as though he were eighty. He bows very courteously before the Governor and the beautiful woman by his side. They say: “Paul, we have heard a great deal about your speaking; give us now a specimen of your eloquence.” Oh! if there ever was a chance for a man to show off, Paul had a chance there. He might have harangued them about Grecian art, about the wonderful water-works he had seen at Corinth, about the Acropolis by moonlight, about prison life in Philippi, about “what I saw in Thessalonica,” about the old mythologies; but “No!” Paul said to himself: “I am now on the way to martyrdom, and this man and woman will soon be dead, and this is my only opportunity to talk to them about the things of eternity.” And just there and then, there broke in upon the scene a peal of thunder. It was the voice of a judgment-day speaking through the words of the decrepit apostle. As that grand old missionary proceeded with his remarks, the stoop begins to go out of his shoulders, and he rises up, and his countenance is illumined with the glories of a future life, and his shackles rattle and grind as he lifts his fettered arm, and with it hurls upon his abashed auditors the bolts of God’s indignation. Felix grew very white about the lips. His heart beat unevenly. He put his hand to his brow, as though to stop the quickness and violence of his thoughts.
He drew his robe tighter about him, as under a sudden chill. His eyes glare and his knees shake, and, as he clutches the side of his chair in a very paroxysm of terror, he orders the sheriff to take Paul back to the gu’ardroom. ^’ Felix trembled, and said. Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.” A young man came one night to our services, with pencil in hand, to caricature the whole scene, and make mirth of those who should express any anxiety about their souls; but I met him at the door, his face very white, tears running down his cheek, as he said, “Do you think there is any chance for me?” Felix trembled, and so may God grant it may be here to-night!
I propose to give you two or three reasons why I think Felix sent Paul back to the guard-room, and adjourned this whole subject of religion. The first reason was, he did not want to give up his si7is. He looked around; there was Drusilla. He knew that when he became a Christian, he must send her back to Azizus, her lawful husband, and he said to himself, “I will risk the destruction of my immortal soul, sooner than I will do that.” How many there are now who can not get to be Christians, because they will not abandon their sins! In vain all their prayers and all their church-going. You can not keep these darling sins and win heaven; and to-night some of you will have to decide between the wine-cup, and unlawful amusements, and lascivious gratifications on the one hand, and eternal salvation on the other. Delilah sheared the locks of Samson; Salome danced Herod into the pit; Drusilla blocked up the way to heaven for Felix; and unless some of you repent, you shall likewise perish. Yet when I present the subject to-night, I fear that some of you will say, “Not quite yet. Don’t be so precipitate in your demands. I have a few tickets yet that I have to use. I have a few engagements that I must keep. I want to stay a little longer in the whirl of conviviality — a few more guffaws of unclean laughter, a few more steps on the road to death, and then, sir, I will listen to what you say. ‘Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.’” Do you know that your boat is on the edge of the maelstrom, and that the foam on the wave is the frothing lip of the destroyed; and that the gleam in the water is the glaring eyeballs of the banished; and that the roar of the wave is the groan of the damned? Oh, I know that it is a great deal easier, when you are in a boat, to pull ahead the same way you are going; but if to-night you see that you are within a few yards of the vortex, and that this may be your last hour — aye, your last moment, you had better turn around in the boat, you had better clutch with both hands the handles of the oars, as with a death grip, and, putting the blades down into the black waters, pull for your eternal life, crying, “Lord, save me, I perish!” Can you not offer such a prayer to-night, oh man! long wandering away from your God? Who is that I see running up and down in the prison-house of the lost, now trying to break through this gate, and failing, turning around and rushing to the other gate, and beating against it, and in despair crying, “Let me get out?” Who is it? Some soul to-night that will not give up his indulgences; some soul to-night that is bound hand and foot by the powers of darkness; some soul here that has a darling sin that he will not sacrifice, and who says to me, when
I present the great themes of God and eternity to his soul, “Not yet; go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.”
Another reason why Felix sent Paul back to the guard-room and adjourned this subject was, he was so very busy. In ordinary times he found the affairs of state absorbing, but those were extraordinary times. The whole land was ripe for insurrection. The Sicarii, a band of assassins, were already prowling around the palace, and I suppose he thought, “I can’t attend to religion while I am so pressed by affairs of state.” It was business, among other things, that ruined his soul, and I suppose there are three thousand people in this house to-night who are not children of God because they have so much business. It is business in the store — losses, gains, unfaithful emploj-es. It is business in your law of&ce — subpoenas, writs you have to write out, papers you have to file, arguments you have to make. It is your medical profession, with its broken nights, and the exhausting anxieties of life hanging upon your treatment It is your real estate office, your business with landlords and tenants, and the failure of men to meet their obligations with you. Ay, with some of those who are here, it is the annoyance of the kitchen, and the sitting-room, and the parlor — the wearing economy of trying to meet large expenses with a small income. Ten thousand voices of “business, business, business,” drown the voice of the Eternal Spirit, silencing the voice of the advancing judgment-day, overcoming the voice of an agonizing eternity; and they can not hear, they can not listen. They say, “Go thy way for this time.” Some of you look upon ypur goods, you look upon your profession, you look upon your memorandum-books, and you see the demands that are made this very week upon your time and your patience and your money; and while I am entreating you about your soul and the danger of procrastination, you say, “Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.” Oh Felix, why be bothered about the affairs of this world so much more than about the affairs of glory or perdition? Do you not know that when death comes you will have to stop business, though it be in the most exacting period of it — between the payment of the money and the taking of the receipt. The moment he comes you will have to go. Death waits for no man, however high, however low. Will you put your office, will you put your shop in comparison with the affairs of an eternal world? affairs that involve thrones, palaces, dominions eternal. Will you put two hundred acres of ground against immensity? Will you put forty or fifty years of your life against millions of ages? Oh Felix, you might better postpone every thing else! for do you not know that the upholstering of Tyrian purple in your palace will fade, and the marble blocks of Cesarea will crumble, and the breakwater at the beach, made of great blocks of stone sixty feet long, must give way before the perpetual wash of the sea; but the redemption that Paul offers 5^ou will be forever? and yet, and yet, and yet you wave him back to the guard-room, saying, “Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.”
Again, Felix adjourned this subject of religion and put off Paul’s argument, because he could not give up the honors of the world. He was afraid somehow he would be compromised himself in this matter. Eem.arks he made afterward showed him to be intensely ambitious. Oh how he hugged the favor of men!
I never saw the honors of this world in their hollowness and hypocrisy so much as I have seen them within the last few days, as I have been looking over the life and death of that wonderful man just departed, Charles Sumner. Now that he is dead, the whole nation takes off the hat. As he goes out toward the place of burial, even Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, asks that his remains may stop there on their way to Boston. The flags are at half-mast, and the minute-guns on Boston Common throb, now that his heart has ceased to beat. Was it always so? While he lived, how censured of legislative resolutions, how caricatured of the pictorials; how charged with every motive mean and ridiculous; how all the urns of scorn and hatred and billingsgate emptied upon his head; how, when struck down in Senate chamber, there were hundreds of thousands of people who said, “Good for him, served him right!” how, summer before last, he had to put the ocean between him and his maligners, that he might have a little peace, and how, when he went off sick, they said he was broken-hearted because he could not get to be President or Secretary of State. Oh Commonwealth of Massachusetts! who is that man that sleeps to-night in your public hall, covered with garlands and wrapped in the stars and stripes? Is that the man who, only a few months ago, you denounced as the foe of republican and democratic institutions? Is that the same man? You were either wrong then or you are wrong now — a thing most certain, oh Commonwealth of Massachusetts! Ye American people, ye can not, by one
9^ week of funeral eulogium and newspaper leaders, wliicb the dead senator can neither read nor hear, atone for twenty-five years of maltreatment and caricature. When I see a man like that, pursued by all the hounds of the political kennel so long as he lives, and then buried under great piles of garlands, and amidst the lamentations of a whole nation, I say to myself, What an unutterably hypocritical thing is all human .applause and all human favor! You took twenty-five years in trying to pull down his fame, and now you will take twenty-five years in trying to build his monument. You were either wrong then, or you are wrong now. My friends, was there ever a better commentary on the hollowness of all earthly favor? If there are young men in this house who are postponing religion in order that they may have the favors of this world, let me persuade them of their complete folly. If you are looking forward to gubernatorial, senatorial, or presidential chair, let me show you your great mistake. Can it be that now in the presence of these great national solemnities there is any young man saying, “Let me have some political office, let me have some of these high positions of trust and power, and then I will attend to religion; but not now. ‘Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee!’”
And now my subject takes a deeper tone, and it shows what a dangerous thing is this deferring of religion. When Paul’s chain rattled down the marble stairs of Felix, that was Felix’s last chance for heaven. Judging from his character afterward, he was reprobate and abandoned.
It is eighteen centuries now since Felix lost his soul;
ORDEliED BACK TO THE GUAED-ROOM. 209
it is lost yet. I suppose that Drusilla went to the same place. One dy in Southern Italy there was a trembling of the earth, and the air got black with smoke intershot with liquid rocks, and Yesuvius rained upon her and upon her son a horrible tempest of ashes and fire. They did not reject religion; they only put it off. They did not understand that that day, that that hour when Paul stood before them, was the pivotal hour upon which every thing was poised, and that it tipped the wrong way. Their convenient season came when Paul and his guardsman entered the palace: it went away when Paul and his guardsman left. Have you never seen men waiting for a convenient season? There is such a great fascination about it, that though you may have come in here totight, and may sit or stand with great respect to the truth of Christ, yet somehow there is in your soul the thought, “Not quite yet. It is not time for me to become a Christian.” I say to a boy, “Seek Christ.” He says, “N’o; wait until I get to be a young man.” I say to the young Tuan, “Seek Christ.” He says, “Wait until I come to :nid-life.” I meet the same person in mid-life, and I say, “Seek Christ.” He says, “Wait until I get old.” I meet the same person in old age, and say to him, “Seek Christ.” He says, “Wait until I am on my dying bed.” I am called to his dying couch. His last moments have come. I bend over the couch and listen for his last words. I have partially to guess what they are by the motion of his lips, he is so feeble; but rallying himself, he whispers, until I can hear him say, “I — am — waiting — for — a more — convenient — season” — and he is gone!
I can tell you when your convenient season will come. I can tell you the year — it will be 1874. I can tell you the month — it will be the month of March. I can tell you what kind of a day it will be — it will be the Sabbath-day. I can tell you what hour it will be — it will be between eight and ten o’clock. In other words, it is now — a word of three letters; but each one an anthem, or a jubilee, or a coronation, or a dungeon, or a groan. Do you ask me how I know this is your convenient sea* son? I know it because you are here, and because the Holy Spirit is here, and because the elect sons and daughters of God in this church are praying for your redemption, and because the women of the church, last Thursday afternoon, especially implored the blessing of God upon the morning and evening services of to-day. I know it because this matter was up on Friday evening at the prayer-meeting, and this morning in the prayer-meeting, and in the preceding prayer-meeting this evening. We prayed that God would come by his Holy Spirit and save your souls, and so I know this is your convenient season. I know it also from the fact that two great national funeral bells, one from the East and the other from the West, are tolling through all the valleys, and over all the mountains of the land — tolling, tolling, “Put not your trust in princes, neither in the son of man in whom there is no help; their breath goeth forth, in that very day their thoughts perish.” Ay I know it is your convenient season because some of you, like Felix, tremble as all your past life comes upon you with its sin, and all the future life comes upon you with its terror. This night air is aglare with torches to show you up or to show you down. It is rustling with wings to lift you into light, or smite you into despair, and there is a rushing to and fro, and a shouting, and a wailing, and a leaping, and a falling, and a beating against the door of your soul as with a great thunder of emphasis, telling you, “Now, now is the best time, as it may be the only time.”
My friends, be quick. You have no time to waste. Be quick, the days of your life are going. Be quick, the hour of your death is coming. Be quick, the time of grace has almost closed with some of you; perhaps it may be closed with some of you to-night. Be quick, lest some paralysis seize upon you as upon our venerable ex-President, just carried out, or you have no more time than the illustrious senator who fell this week — only time to say as he did, putting his hand upon his heart, ‘Oh! oh!” and you be gone!
May God Almighty forbid that any of you, my brethren or sisters, act the part of Felix and Drusilla, and put away this great subject. If you are going to be saved ever, why not begin to-night? Throw down your sins and take the Lord’s pardon. Christ has been tramping after you many a day.
An Indian and a white man became Christians. The Indian, almost as soon as he heard the Gospel, believed and was saved; but the white man struggled on in darkness for a long while before he found light. After their peace in Christ, the white man said to the Indian, “Why was it that I was kept so long in the darkness, and you. immediately found peace?” The Indian replied, “I will tell you. A prince comes along, and he offers you a coat. You look at your coat, and you say, ‘My coat is good enough,’ and you refuse his offer; but the prince comes along and he offers me the coat, and I look at mj old blanket and I throw that away, and take his offer.
Yon, sir,” continued the Indian, “are clinging to your own righteousness, you think you are good enough, and you keep your own righteousness; but I have nothing, nothing, and so when Jesus offers me pardon and peace, I simply take it.” My hearer, why not now throw away the worn-out blanket of your sin and take the robe of a Saviour’s righteousness — a robe so white, so fair, so lustrous, that no fuller on earth can whiten it? Oh, Shepherd, to-night bring home the lost sheep! Oh, Father, to-night give a welcoming kiss to the wan prodigal! Oh, friend of Lazarus, to-night break down the door of the sepulchre, and say to all these dead souls as by irresistible fiat, “XiVe / LIVEl”