Page:Last and great sermon, of the Rev Dr William Dodd.pdf/4

( 4 _ Dr DODD's last SERMON, &c,

Psalm li, 3. I acknowledge my faults, and my sin is ever before me}}

ONSIDERING my peculiar circumstances and situation, I cannot think myself justified, if I did not deliver to you, in sincere Christian love some of my serious thoughts on our present awful state.

In the sixteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, you read a memorable story respecting Paul and Silas, who for preaching the gospel, were call by the Magistrates into prison, verse 23.and, after having received many stripes, were committed to the jailor, with a strict, charge to keep them safely. Accordingly he thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. At midnight Paul and Silas, supported by the testimony of a good coniscience, prayed, and sang praises to God, and the prisoners heard them: and 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 chains were loosed. The keeper of the prison awaking out his sleep, and seeing the prison doors were open, in the greatest distress (as might well be imagined) drew his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice. Do thyself no harm, for we are all here. The keeper calling for a light, and finding his prisoners thus freed from their bonds by the imperceptible agency of divine power, was convinced that these men were not offenders against the law, but martyrs to the truth; he sprang in therefore, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, and  out, and said,,  MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?

What must I do to be saved? is the important question< which it becomes every human being to study from the first hour of reason to the last; but which we,