Acts xvi. 29 — 31. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
VARIOUS are the ways in which God effects the conversion of sinners to himself. Some he draws by the attractive influences of his Spirit ; causing his word to distil as dew upon their souls, and imper- ceptibly, as it were, opening their understandings (as he did LydiaV), and inclining their hearts to embrace his truth. With others he deals rather in a way of fear and terror ; filling them with compunc- tion (as he did the converts on the day of Pentecost b), and awakening them from their security by some awful dispensation of his providence. It was thus that he impressed the savage mind of the jailor, whose conversion we are about to consider. By an earth- quake at midnight, (an earthquake that shook the very foundations of the prison, and opened all its doors,) he first rendered him sensible of his guilt and danger, and stimulated him to make the inquiries, which terminated in the conversion and salvation of his soul.
The jailor's inquiry, and the answer given to it, will form the natural division of our text.
I. The jailor's inquiry —
In this there are two things worthy of particular attention :
1. The importance of it —
[There is no other concern in this world of so great, or so universal, importance. The inquiring, " What we shall eat, or drink, or he clothed with," is certainly necessary in this present state of existence: but those things are not worth
**- ■ ver. 14. b Acts ii. 3V.