demonstrate the meanness of a man called to preside over a great
people, who exposes his foibles to public view; not having resolution
to conceal, much less to vanquish them. With Drusilla, he would make
human motives supply the defects of divine; with Felix, he would
make divine motives supply the defects of human. He would make this
shameless woman feel that nothing on earth is more odious than a woman
destitute of honor, that modesty is an attribute of the sex; that an
attachment, uncemented by virtue, can not long subsist; that those who
receive illicit favors are the first, according to the fine remark of
a sacred historian, to detest the indulgence: "The hatred wherewith
'Ammon, the son of David,' hated his sister, after the gratification
of his brutal passion, was greater than the love wherewith he had
loved her" (II Sam. xiii., 15). He would make Felix perceive that,
however the depravity of the age might seem to tolerate a criminal
intercourse with persons of the other sex, with God, who has called us
all to equal purity, the crime was not less heinous.

"He reasoned," in short, "of judgment to come." And here he would
magnify his ministry. When our discourses are regarded as connected
only with the present period, their force, I grant, is of no avail.
We speak for a Master who has left us clothed with infirmities, which
discover no illustrious marks of Him by whom we are sent. We have only
our voice, only our exhortations, only our entreaties. Nature is not
averted at our pleasure. The visitations of Heaven do not descend at
our command to punish your indolence and revolts: that power was
very limited, even to the apostle. The idea of a future state, the
solemnities of a general judgment, supply our weakness, and St. Paul
enforced this motive; he proved its reality, he delineated its luster,
he displayed its pomp. He resounded in the ears of Felix the noise,
the voices, the trumpets. He showed him the small and the great, the