Acts 24:26

26, 27. True to the character which Tacitus attributes to Felix, Luke adds that (26) "Hoping also that money would be given to him by Paul, so that he would release him, he therefore sent for him the oftener, and conversed with him. (27) But after two years Felix received Portius Festus as a successor; and wishing to do the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul bound." Having learned, from Paul's own lips, that he had been up to Jerusalem to bear alms from distant Churches to the poor, and knowing something, perhaps of the general liberality of the disciples toward one another, he could have no doubt, judging them according to the usage of the age, that they would be willing to purchase Paul's freedom at a high price. That it was not done, shows that the disciples had too elevated a standard of morality to buy from a corrupt judge release from even unjust and protracted imprisonment.

These two years, if we judge from the silence of history, were the most inactive of Paul's career. There are no epistles which bear this date; and though his friends and brethren had free access to him, we have no recorded effects of their interviews with him. The only moments in which he emerges into our view, from the obscurity of his prison, are those in which he appeared before his judges. We shall, on this account, contemplate his conduct on these occasions with the deeper interest.