Amazing effects, my brethren, of conscience!  Evident argument of the vanity of those gods whom idolatry adorns after it has given them form!  Jupiter and Mercury, it is true, had their altars in the temples of the heathens; but the God of heaven and earth has His tribunal in the heart:  and, while idolatry presents its incense to sacrilegious and incestuous deities, the God of heaven and earth reveals His terrors to the conscience, and there loudly condemns both incest and sacrilege.

Secondly, consider Felix as a prince; and you will find in this second office a second cause of his fear.  When we perceive the great men of the earth devoid of every principle of religion, and even ridiculing those very truths which are the objects of our faith, we feel that faith to waver.  They excite a certain suspicion in the mind that our sentiments are only prejudices, which have become rooted in man, brought up in the obscurity of humble life.  Here is the apology of religion.  The Caligulas, the Neros, those potentates of the universe, have trembled in their turn as well as the meanest of their subjects.  This independence of mind, so conspicuous among libertines, is consequently an art,—­not of disengaging themselves from prejudices, but of shutting their eyes against the light, and of extinguishing the purest sentiments of the heart.  Felix, educated in a court fraught with the maxims of the great instantly ridicules the apostle’s preaching.  St. Paul, undismayed, attacks him, and finds a conscience concealed in his bosom:  the very dignity of Felix is constrained to aid our apostle by adding weight to his ministry.  He demolishes the edifice of Felix’s pride.  He shows that if a great nation was dependent on his pleasure, he himself was dependent on a Sovereign in whose presence the kings of the earth are as nothing.  He proves that dignities are so very far from exempting men from the judgment of God that, for this very reason, their account becomes the more weighty, riches being a trust which Heaven has committed to the great:  and “where much is given, much is required.”  He makes him feel this awful truth, that princes are responsible, not only for their own souls, but also for those of their subjects; their good or bad example influencing, for the most part, the people committed to their care.

See then Felix in one moment deprived of his tribunal.  The judge became a party.  He saw himself rich and in need of nothing; and yet he was “blind, and naked, and poor.”  He heard a voice from the God of the whole earth, saying unto him, “Thou profane and wicked prince, remove the diadem and take off the crown.  I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more” (Ezekiel xxi., 25-27).  “Tho thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and tho thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord” (Obadiah, 4).  Neither the dignity of governor, nor the favor of Caesar, nor all the glory of empire shall deliver thee out of My hand.