(Sermons to the Young), xvi. 549 (Garbett).
What must I do to be Saved?
Sirs, what must I do to be saved ? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved.— Acts xvi. 30, 31.
The events recorded in this sixteenth chapter of the Acts are not the only ones which have given a name and a fame in the after- world to an obscure provincial town in Macedonia. At this same Philippi, about one hundred years before the arrival there of Paul and Silas, the empire of the world had been played for and lost and won. The great battle which derives its name from this city did much to shape the after-history of the world. No one capable of judging will deny this ; and yet there are names and incidents linked with Philippi which possess a far deeper interest for us, which touch us far more nearly than the conflict between the chiefs of the two selfish factions, who, quarrelling over the spoils of the world, here decided by the bloody arbitrament of the sword to which those spoils should belong. The shocks of contending hosts, the deeds which once filled the world with their fame, these have passed away. Brutus and Cassius, Antony and the young Octavius, win but a languid interest from us ; while Lydia, the humble purple-seller of Thyatira, the first-fruits of the Gospel on European soil, whose heart the Lord opened here, " that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul," and Paul and Silas singing hymns to God out of the depths of their dungeon, and that unnamed Philippian jailor with his earnest agonizing cry, " What must I do to be saved ? " — their story is ever fresh and ever new ; it has the same hold upon us as it had upon those who first heard it, touching, as it does, the central heart of things, the everlasting hopes and interests of men.
I.
The Scene in the Pkison.
1. On some false or frivolous pretext, Paul and his fellow- labourer, Silas, were dragged before the Eoman magistrates at
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Philippi. These, it seems, would not so much as hear them in their own defence ; but with their own hands " rent off their clothes, and commanded to beat them." Perhaps, but we cannot be sure of this, Paul, if he might have spoken, would have pleaded his Eoman citizenship, as he did at Jerusalem, and so have saved himself from the last indignity of scourging. But, whether this is so or not, "when they had laid many stripes upon them" (St. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, speaks of having been "shamefully entreated at Philippi"), "they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely." He, careless about their sufferings, only selfishly careful to make all safe for himself in the easiest way, "having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison," a dark dungeon, below the level of the ordinary prison, and, smarting and bleeding from the rods as they were, "made their feet fast in the stocks," an instrument of punishment as painful as it was shameful, but which a great prophet of the elder covenant had made trial of before them (see Jer. xx. 2); and so left them there to them- selves ; or rather, not to themselves, but to their God.
2. " About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing praises unto God." They were praying ; this was natural. The cry de profundis is the one which most readily arises ; but more than this their voices were voices not of prayer only, but also of praise. They " sang praises " unto Him " who giveth songs in the night," who had counted them worthy to suffer for His name's sake, who had brought them in this sacrament of suffering into a closer fellowship with their Lord, the captain of the crucified, the leader and commander in the great army of martyrs. We count it a great feat of Christian magnanimity not to murmur, to be what we call resigned: here were those who were "joyful in tribula- tion." "And the prisoners," we are told, "heard them," or " listened to them." Strange, indeed, must those voices of prayer and thanksgiving have sounded in that place, most unlike the voices with which those walls at other times had resounded. Curses, no doubt, were familiar enough in that dismal house of punishment and pain, but not blessings ; oaths, but not prayers ; wailing and gnashing of teeth, of the slave and the malefactor, not hymns of a holy gladness, of the saint and the martyr. No
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wonder, then, that they all listened ; and presently the Lord set His seal to the prayer of His servants. " Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken : and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed."
3. The earthquake which released Paul and Silas wakened the jailor, who, " seeing the prison doors open, drew his sword, and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped." Suicide was held by the Komans to be not only lawful, but even in certain cases commendable. This unhappy man knew that he was responsible to his superiors for the safety of those com- mitted to his charge ; he knew that the magistrates would show no mercy (cf. xii. 19), as he had slept at his post ; and so he pre- ferred immediate death to the disgrace of public exposure and the death to which he would certainly be sentenced. But he was arrested in the very act of self-destruction by the Apostle's voice, " Do thyself no harm : for we are all here." And now a new terror took possession of him. He saw the miraculous interfer- ence which restrained the freed prisoners from escaping ; he called to mind the causes which had led to the imprisonment of these Christians. Certain strange words which he had heard often of late must have recurred to his mind : " These men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation."