St. Tammany farmer., 1903-04-11
out from the battlements Of Heaven

and step to earth and 1t trembles and
shakes under their tread. The jailer
awakened suddenly OF. of his sleep
feels the foundations of the prison
giving way, sees the walls trembling
like ship in storm, and an awful
fear takes hold of his heart. Every
door which he had SO carefully shut and
bolted stands wide open. He hears the
chains as they fall clanking to the floor
In mad despair he seizes his. sword and
would have killed himself, supposing
that the prisoners had fed. Within
that inner prison Paul stands freed
from his fetters. The hand of Gods
power has pressed open the doors OF
that prison as though they had been
made of paper and the bolts had been
but pencil marks. His fingers have
cut the iron bands as though they had
been but ropes of sand. And Paul and
Silas realized that they were in the
hollow of that hand which was
moving so nightly in their behalf.
Yea, and knowing this, Paul stands
calmly and dignifedly in his place and
cries to the jailer to do himself no
harm, for they are all there. And now
we will let the jailer tell who the Man
in Prison is. His cry: "What must I
do to be saved" shows that he has
caught new glimpse of himself. He
is a lost man, shut up in the prison
house of sin. He sees his doom written
all over the black walls of his hard
heart. In the anguish Of his despair
he cries out for deliverance.
1t is the man who realizes he is in
prison who wants to get out. Every
soul is in prison who has not been set
free by Jesus Christ. But oh, sad, sad
fact! thousands upon thousands of
people all over this land, all over the
world, are in prison and do not realize
it. will not believe ii! Like the jailer
at Philippi, they sleep in the comfort
of their own self-confidence and believe
that they are safe and free. But the
earthquake of Gods judgment is COM
ing as it came there that night at Phil
ippi. God grant that you, my friend,
if you are in the prison house of sin,
may wake up to a realization of your
lost condition before it is too late
for the Deliverer to reach your side and
make you free. We cannot argue and
show you by human reason that you
are in prison. Paul did not convince
the jailer, that he was the Man in Pris-
on. God, by the convicting power of
His Holy Spirit, did that. Paul might
have spent all that night in forcible
argument trying to convince that iailer
that he was in prison, but the light of
the morning sun would have seen him
still laughing the apostle to scorn.
But Paul let some little seed fall into
that Jaller's heart that night as he was
leaving, after claiming them in the
inner prison, and the Holy Spirit used
it to convict the jailer of sin.
And as soon as he realized that he
was a sinner, that he was help
less prisoner in the prison house of
san, he Immediately began to cry for
dellverance. Satan blinds the human
heart to its real condition and pre-
vents the lips from uttering the cry:
What must do to be saved; he uses
every device to keephis prisoners safe;
he encourages the heart 20 make all
manner of excuses for not accepting
Christ as the only Deliverer. What is
ne holding up before your eyes which
is making you blind to the fact that
you are hopeless, helpless prisoner in
Satan's death cell? Let Gods Word
convince your heaft that "all have
slnned and come short of the glory of
Gods" that ''the soul that sinneth r.
shall dies" that there is salvation in
none other than in Jesus Christ: and
that IF the Son shall make you free.
ye shall be free indeed"
Lydia, Paul's first convert at Phil.
lppl. was in prison until the Lord
opened her heart under the preach
ing OF the apostle down by the river
bank and set her soul free in Christ
Jesus. Before PauTs coming she was
devout soul. She believed in God. She
was honorable in her dealings. She
was benevolent and kind to those
about her. She was faithful in her
home duties, even though the cares
OF a successful business pressed upon
her. But, Notwithstanding all this,
Lydia was in prison. Her weekly
prayers by the river bank and the
daily prayers in the home could not
break the prison bars of soul death
and save her. All her virtues and her
devotions to her home were not
strong enough to open the door to
the prison house of her soul and give
it the right to an eternal dwelling
place in Heaven. No! Neither will
church membership or religious serv-
ice as devout and sincere as that of
Lydia save you, my friend, from the
prison house of death which sin has
built around your soul. Neither can
you break it's walls down by batter
ing it with all your virtues, or the
virtues of your wife, or sister, or
mother, be they ever so many and
ever so rare. You are in prison, as
was Lydia, unless Christ has shaken
down the walls by the tread of His
wounded feet. and unless His nail
pierced hands have struck the shack
les from your fettered limbs.
In Prison.-Being in prison implies
wrong-doing. They put the violator
of the law in prison, but the law-abid-
ing citizen has no fear of the lock-
up. The soul is in prison because it
has transgressed Gods holy law, not
once, but scores of times. But even
if only once, and in only one particu-
lar, Gods Word declares that, "who-
soever shall keep the whole law, and
yet offend in one point, he is guilty
of all'' The thief does not have to
r,n,1rda.. bofaro ho ic ,lo ond