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Sketches from the Life of Paul
the sight and knowledge of men. What the hands may do or the tongue
may utter,—what the outer life can exhibit,—but imperfectly reveals
man’s moral character. The law extends to the thoughts, motives, and
purposes of the heart. The dark passions that lie hidden from the sight
of men, the jealousy, revenge, hatred, lust, and wild ambition, the
evil deeds meditated upon in the dark recesses of the soul, yet never
executed for want of opportunity,—of all these God’s law makes a
record. Men may imagine that they can safely cherish these secret
sins; but it is these that sap the very foundation of character; for out of
the heart “are the issues of life.”
Paul then endeavored to direct the minds of his hearers to the one
great Sacrifice for sin. He pointed back to those sacrifices that were
shadows of good things to come, and then presented Christ as the
antitype of all those ceremonies,—the object to which they pointed
as the one only source of life and hope for fallen man. Holy men of
old were saved by faith in the blood of Christ. As they saw the dying
agonies of the sacrificial victims, they looked across the gulf of ages
to the Lamb of God that was to take away the sin of the world.
God justly claimed the love and obedience of all his creatures. He
had given them in his law a perfect standard of right. But they forgot
their Maker, and chose to follow their own way in opposition to his
will. They had returned enmity for a love that was as high as Heaven
and as broad as the universe. God could not bring down his law to meet
the standard of wicked men, neither could man, fallen by sin, meet the
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demands of the law by a blameless character and life. But by faith in
Christ the sinner could be cleansed from his guilt, and he enabled to
render obedience to the law of his Maker. God did not bestow his grace
to lessen the binding claims of the law, but to establish it. “Mercy
and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each
other.”
Thus Paul the prisoner urged upon Jew and Gentile the claims of the
divine law, and presented Jesus, the despised Nazarene, as the Son of
God, the world’s Redeemer. The Jewish princess well understood the
sacred character of that law which she had so shamelessly transgressed;
but her prejudice against the Man of Calvary steeled her heart against
the word of life. But Felix, who had never before listened to the truth,
was deeply agitated as the Spirit of God sent conviction to his soul.
Conscience, now aroused, made her voice heard. He felt that Paul’s