Again, young King Agrippa, along with the young Bernice, hear a sermon from Paul the prisoner. The outward picture presented to the eye on that day had nothing more remarkable or peculiar about it than has been witnessed a thousand times before and since. Those royal personages entered "the place of hearing" with "great pomp," accompanied by "the chief captains and principal men of the city." And before them appeared an almost unknown prisoner, upon whom his own nation, including "the chief priests and elders from Jerusalem," demanded the judgment of death to be passed. That prisoner, "in bodily presence weak and contemptible," was however "permitted to speak for himself;" and verily he did speak! He spoke of God and Christ; of repentance and the new life; and of his own glorious commission to "open the eyes" of men, "to turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God, that they might receive the forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them that are sanctified through faith in Jesus." What a revelation was this from God to man! The voice which spoke from Sinai and through the prophets, the voice of Him who is truth and love, spoke at that moment of life through Paul to those royal hearers, and to the captains and principal men. But Agrippa, with a sneer or with some conviction of the truth, replied, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." Unlike St Paul himself, when the Lord spoke to him on his way to Damascus, Agrippa was disobedient to the heavenly vision. And so the sermon ended; the gay multitude dispersed; the place of hearing was left in silence, and echoed only the midnight winds or the beat of the sea-wave on the neighbouring shore. St Paul retired to his cell; Agrippa, Festus, and Bernice, to their chambers of rest, to sleep and dream by night, as they slept and dreamt by day. But they never heard the apostle preach again! It was their first and last sermon; that moment in their life came and passed, but never returned. Like two ships which meet at midnight on a moonlit sea, those two persons, the prisoner and the king, spoke, then each passed into the darkness, and onward on their voyage to their several ports, but never met again! Oh, how awful are such moments when truth reveals herself to the responsible spirit of man! And so, my reader, does it ofttimes happen between thee and God's Spirit. Let me beseech of thee to "redeem the time," to know this "the day of _thy_ visitation," and to hear and believe "the word of the Lord."