Editorial August 31, 1946 Issue

"What must I do to be saved?"

John Randall Dunn

In the sixteeneth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, one finds a narrative at once beautiful and dramatic. The apostles Paul and Silas, following a remarkable experience of healing a demented woman, were cast into prison and their feet made "fast in the stocks." Before their incarceration they had been brutally beaten; but these brave soldiers of the cross and crown at midnight "prayed and sang praises unto God." "And," the Biblical record continues, "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."

Does some skeptic regard this as apocryphal? Many are the students of Christian Science who can testify to the fact that through prayer and the expression of gratitude again and again have prison doors of sickness been opened, and fetters of fear, sin, and ignorance stricken from thought. The Christian Scientist, therefore, does not question the authenticity of the phenomenal experience of these two godly men. Many returning service men and women who walked closely with God during the troublous war years are telling of demonstrations of spiritual power which seem quite as miraculous as the story under consideration.

To continue with the narrative, the keeper of the prison, overwhelmed with the wonder of the experience and the fact that the prisoners had made no effort to escape, "came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas ... and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house."

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