Spiritual deprivation.
The translation which gives us the word "superstition" in this verse of our English Version, cannot be accepted as conveying the meaning of Festus. He would not have spoken of that which was, at all events nominally, the religion of Agrippa, as a "superstition." We may safely adopt the ordinary word "religion "—a word, even from the Jews' point of view, little enough appreciated by a Roman official—as found in the Revised Version. Great as was the practical injustice in some directions of Festus, for instance, in keeping Paul in prison; yet we cannot fail to note a certain truthfulness of his lip. He has already spoken sufficiently the acquittal of his prisoner. This he does again, privately, in conversation with Agrippa; and yet again tomorrow, without disguise, in the publicity of the open court. To that same lip it was also given to utter, at all events, the central truth about Jesus in his relation to men, however little he believed or understood it. We may notice here—
I. THE WIDE DISTANCE THAT SEPARATES THE MAN WHO HAS NO KNOWLEDGE OF REVELATION FROM HIM WHO HAS SOME SUCH KNOWLEDGE. Presumably, Festus had not the slightest inclination to speak slightingly to Agrippa of the religion of the Jews of Jerusalem. But nevertheless his tone is that of a man who speaks of what is utterly unintelligible to him. A Roman's worship was a strange thing; his religion a strange product under any circumstances—perhaps in nothing so strange as in this disabling quality of them. But the phenomenon, after all, is most typical. It is typical of all those in their measure, i.e. the measure of their time and place in the whole world's history, who are without true revelation. It shows these in the twofold aspect, and apparently contradictory aspects, of believing tar too much and far too little.
1. They believe far too much; for they are sure to construct their own superhuman and supernatural. They will have their own pantheon in some sort.
2. And they believe far too little; for the verities of the true revelation of the superhuman and supernatural they are most averse to receive. Be the account of this what it may, it is but the expression of the thing of perpetual recurrence. The domain so wide, so dreary, of superstition lies where ignorance of true revelation is the appointed signal for men to make the materials of revelation unreal and incongruous for themselves. "Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools," not less in what they accept than in what they reject. What a world of thought and feeling, of meaning and of truth, was shut off from Festus, as his present language betrays him! And what a world of thought and feeling, of meaning and of truth, is shut off from any man and every man who is destitute of true revelation! If it have not yet traveled to him, it is at present his mysterious lot. If it have, and he reject it, it is his undeniable folly and guilt. Religion and superstition are not differenced by one not introducing the supernatural, while the other does introduce it. They both introduce it, and they both earnestly believe in it. They are differenced in that the one acquaints with what things are real and which it concerns us to know, beyond the ken of mortal eye or reason; but the other offers us imaginations, perhaps in every grotesquest form, for truth and stones for bread.
II. BRIEFLY EXPRESSED, THE VITAL FACT OF ALL CHRISTIAN TRUTH, OF ALL CHRISTIAN FAITH, OF ALL CHRISTIAN IMPULSE. "One Jesus, who was dead and whom," now no longer Paul alone, but a vast portion of the world, "affirms to be alive." It were past all his merit that it should be given to the lip of Festus to utter these words, the charter of our faith and hope and religion, that day, and to have them recorded as his. Yet there they were spoken by him, and here for ever they will lie. The dead and anon living One is the center of Christian faith, hope, love. It is the description he gives of himself: "I am he that liveth, and was dead, and, behold, I am alive for evermore" (Revelation 1:18). Three perennial springs—springs of heavenly truth and influence, issue out of these simplest and coldest words as uttered by Festus.
1. The death of Christ has
2. The life of Christ, after his death, has a very luster of light for us, if we think of it simply for what it teaches us about himself. It proclaims him, when all is considered, different from any other, unique among men, Prince of life, Victor over death. These are his own dignities. He shines wonderful in the midst of them, did we all but worship far away in wonder and admiration but mystery lost.
3. That risen life, and what followed it—the ascended life, have floods of joyful meaning for us, when we remember all that is distinctly revealed as involved in it for mankind and ourselves.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK