The Acts of the Apostles (1911) — PDF Scan 431

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THE TRIAL AT C^SAEEA 425 the gulf of ages to the Lamb of God that was to take away the sin of the world. God justly claims the love and obedience of all His creatures. He has given them in His law a perfect standard of right. But many forget their Maker, and choose to follow their own way in opposition to His will. They return enmity for love that is as high as heaven and as broad as the universe. God cannot lower the requirements of His law to meet the standard of wicked men; neither can man, in his own power, meet the demands of the law. Only by faith in Christ can the sinner be cleansed from guilt, and be enabled to render obedience to the law of his Maker. Thus Paul, the prisoner, urged the claims of the divine law upon Jew and Gentile, 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 had never before listened to the truth; and as the Spirit of God sent conviction to his soul, he became deeply agitated. Conscience, now aroused, made her voice heard; and Felix felt that PauPs words were true. Memory went back over the guilty past. With terrible distinctness there came up before him the secrets of his early life of profligacy and bloodshed, and the black record of his later years. He saw himself licentious, cruel, rapacious. Never before had the truth been thus brought home to his heart. Never before had his