And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be
saved, and thy house.--ACTS xvi. 30,31.

This is one of the most abused texts in the Bible, and one which,
perhaps, has been made to do quite as much work for the devil as for
God. Let every saint present, ask in faith for the light of the Holy
Ghost, while we try rightly to apply it. Let us enquire:--

1. _Who are to believe_? 2. _When are they to believe_? 3. _How are they
to believe_?

I. Who are to believe? To whom does the Holy Spirit say, "Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved?" Now mark, I answer,
_not_ to all sinners indiscriminately. And here is a grand
mistake in a great deal of the teaching of this age--that these words
are wrested from their explanatory connexion, and from numbers of
other texts bearing on the same subject, and held up independently of
all the conditions which must ever, and did ever, in the mind and
practice of the Apostles, accompany them; indeed, it has only been
within the last sixty or seventy years that this new gospel has
sprung into existence, preaching indiscriminately to unawakened,
unconverted, unrepentant sinners--"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ."
It seems to me, that great injury has been done to the cause of
Christ by thus wrongly dividing the Word of truth, to say nothing of
the unphilosophical character of such a course, for how can an
unawakened, unconvicted, unrepentant sinner, believe? As soon might
Satan believe. It is an utter impossibility. Thousands of these
people say, "I do believe." My dear son, only a little time ago, on
the top of an omnibus, was speaking to a man who was the worse for
liquor, and using very improper language; trying to show him the