Reaching for his sword he placed it, hilt to
the ground, to fall upon its point and end his life right there;--then
he heard a clear voice coming through the darkness: "Stop! don't do
that. We're all here; nobody wants to get away."
It was one of those psalm singing Jews! he recognized that at once,
and putting up his sword he called to his wife to light the lamp quick
and bring it; then he rushed into the cell where Paul and Silas stood,
their feet free from stocks and hands unmanacled, and fell down on his
face before them.
"Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" And the Philippian jailer was
thinking about the peril of his soul, for like a flash it had been
revealed to him that these men were from God. Paul's answer came quick
and true: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,
and thy house." And thy house--for Paul saw behind the jailer his
crouching, trembling wife and children. Paul told them all about it
then, and as the blessed truth came into their hearts, they stopped
trembling and began to find new hope in Jesus and a new joy in
service. Immediately, the jailer and his wife got basins of water and
washed the bruised stripes on the backs of the men. They saw in those
stripes the suffering Saviour's wounds which they would like to
soften; very differently they had viewed them the evening before.
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