own thoughts, through Samaria, Galilee, and across Mount Hermon, he had ample time for reflection,
and we may well imagine how the shining face of the martyr Stephen, as he stood like a holy angel
before the Sanhedrin, and as in the last moment he prayed for his murderers, was haunting him like
a ghost and warning him to stop his mad career.
Yet we must not overrate this preparation or anticipate his riper experience in the three days
that intervened between his conversion and his baptism, and during the three years of quiet meditation
in Arabia. He was no doubt longing for truth and for righteousness, but there was a thick veil over
his mental eye which could only be taken away by a hand from without; access to his heart was
barred by an iron door of prejudice which had to be broken in by Jesus himself. On his way to
Damascus he was "yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," and
thinking he was doing "God service;" he was, to use his own language, "beyond measure" persecuting
the church of God and endeavoring to destroy it, "being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions
of his fathers" than many of his age, when "it pleased God to reveal his Son in him." Moreover it
is only in the light of faith that we see the midnight darkness of our sin, and it is only beneath the
cross of Christ that we feel the whole crushing weight of guilt and the unfathomable depth of God’s
redeeming love. No amount of subjective thought and reflection could have brought about that
radical change in so short a time. It was the objective appearance of Jesus that effected it.
This appearance implied the resurrection and the ascension, and this was the irresistible
evidence of His Messiahship, God’s own seal of approval upon the work of Jesus. And the
resurrection again shed a new light upon His death on the cross, disclosing it as an atoning sacrifice
for the sins of the world, as the means of procuring pardon and peace consistent with the claims of
divine justice. What a revelation! That same Jesus of Nazareth whom he hated and persecuted as
a false prophet justly crucified between two robbers, stood before Saul as the risen, ascended, and
glorified Messiah! And instead of crushing the persecutor as he deserved, He pardoned him and
called him to be His witness before Jews and Gentiles! This revelation was enough for an orthodox
Jew waiting for the hope of Israel to make him a Christian, and enough for a Jew of such force of
character to make him an earnest and determined Christian. The logic of his intellect and the energy
of his will required that he should love and promote the new faith with the same enthusiasm with
which he had hated and persecuted it; for hatred is but inverted love, and the intensity of love and
hatred depends on the strength of affection and the ardor of temper.
With all the suddenness and radicalness of the transformation there is nevertheless a bond
of unity between Saul the Pharisee and Paul the Christian. It was the same person with the same
end in view, but in opposite directions. We must remember that he was not a worldly, indifferent,
cold-blooded man, but an intensely religious man. While persecuting the church, he was "blameless"
as touching the righteousness of the law.^373 He resembled the rich youth who had observed the
commandments, yet lacked the one things needful, and of whom Mark says that Jesus "loved him."^374
He was not converted from infidelity to faith, but from a lower faith to a purer faith, from the
religion of Moses to the religion of Christ, from the theology of the law to the theology of the
gospel. How shall a sinner be justified before the tribunal of a holy God? That was with him the
question of questions before as well as after his conversion; not a scholastic question merely, but
even far more a moral and religious question. For righteousness, to the Hebrew mind, is conformity(^373) Phil 3:6, κατὰ δικαισύνη τὴν ἐν νόμῳ γενόμενος ἄμεμπτος.
(^374) Mark 10:21.
A.D. 1-100.