answer Stephen and prove that he was entirely wrong. But every time he
tried, Stephen got the best of him. Saul would quote texts from the Old
Testament and Stephen would rise up and show that these texts meant
something quite different from what Saul had always thought they meant.
He was so powerful and his life was so noble that all the people who
listened felt that even if he was wrong in his ideas he was great in his
soul, and they began to wonder if he perhaps might be right and Saul
wrong. Day after day the discussion went on without any end to it. At
last Saul decided that this would never do. Some way must be found to
stop this dangerous man who was leading the members of his Synagogue
astray. He told the rulers in Jerusalem that he had discovered a traitor
who must be arrested. “He talks against Moses,” he said. “He does not
love our holy land, or our holy law, or our holy temple, the way all
true Jews should.” Then the Council in Jerusalem had Stephen arrested
and brought before them for trial, and witnesses came in and told all
the things they could think of to make the Council condemn him.
While they were talking against him they all saw a light shine on his
face, and he looked more like an angel than like an ordinary man, and
everybody wondered what he would say in answer to the charges that were
made against him. And Saul must have been eager to see what was going to
happen to this man with the shining face, whom nobody could defeat in an
argument. Then quietly Stephen began to speak for himself. He did not
try to prove that the things which had been said against him were false.
He paid no attention to his own case. He told the Council that all
through the history of their Hebrew race the people had always failed to
see new light when God brought it to them; they had always missed the
path when God was trying to lead them into a new way, and they had
always misunderstood when God was trying to teach them new ideas. They
cried out against Moses, he told them, in the wilderness. They
worshipped a golden calf just at the time when he was giving them the
law of God, and when the prophets came to teach them more about God,
they served Moloch and other false gods instead of Him. Their great,
wise king Solomon had told them, when he built the temple, that no
temple, however wonderful, could contain the great God who fills the
universe, but the people did not understand his words and seemed to
think that God lived only in their temple. “You have always failed to
see the truth,” Stephen cried. “You have always persecuted prophets when
God has sent them to you. You have killed those who told about the
coming of Jesus. And now _you, yourselves_, have betrayed and killed Him
when He did come. You talk about the law and you say that God gave it
through angels. But you do not understand it and you do not really keep
it.”
That was more than they could stand. They forgot that they were judges
and were having an orderly trial. They all rushed at Stephen. They
showed their teeth at him and howled him down. But he was as calm and
steady as though everything were peaceful. In the midst of the uproar,
they suddenly heard him say: “I see Jesus! There He is, up there in the
open sky, at the right of God in His glory.” Then they all stopped their
ears, so that they might not hear what he said, and they rushed at him
and dragged him out of the city and stoned him. As the people who stoned
him pulled off their garments so that they could throw the stones
better, they gave their garments to Saul to hold. He did not join in
throwing the stones, but he approved of what the others were doing and
he ran along with them and carried the garments. And he could see
Stephen’s wonderful face which was shining more than ever now! He did
not say one hard word against those who were killing him. But just at
the end, Saul heard him say: “Lord Jesus, do not blame these people for
what they are doing”—“Wilt thou now receive my spirit to Thyself.” And
then, with the stones raining round him, the brave, good Stephen
died—with the light still on his face.
Saul never forgot that face. He thought Stephen was wrong and he
believed that he must be stopped or he would bring harm to God’s people.
But he had never seen anybody die like that before! And the more he
meditated and thought about it, the more he wondered at what Stephen had
said, and still more over his dying words and his happy, shining face!
IX
ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS
This young man who now unexpectedly found himself a persecutor was by
nature kind and tender-hearted. He had never wilfully hurt any creature
or given pain to anybody. He had come up to Jerusalem for his
life-career with the highest hopes and the noblest aspirations. His
whole being was aflame with a passion for his nation. Ever since he was
old enough to know the story of his own people he had dreamed of the
splendid future that was soon to dawn. All that the greatest prophets
had seen in distant vision, he believed he should one day see with his
own eyes. He had tried, with almost superhuman effort, to make his own
life perfect so that he might be one of the little inner circle of
perfect Jews, who would help to bring the Messiah and the perfect age
and who would be ready for this glorious king when he should come.
Now he suddenly found, in his own Synagogue even, people who said that
the Messiah _had come already_, that the rulers and Pharisees who were
expecting Him and preparing for Him had not recognised Him when He did
come and had crucified Him. This seemed to Saul an awful idea—an
unbelievable tale. He was sure the Messiah could not be crucified. But
he was afraid that these enthusiastic and misguided followers of Jesus
would ruin his hopes. Everything that could be done must be done at once
to stop their teaching and to destroy their influence. He saw only one
way to guard the hope of Israel and that was to crush this movement
absolutely and to shut up or kill every person who went about claiming
that Jesus was the Messiah. It was a very disagreeable task, but it must
be done for the good of the nation and, however hard and distasteful it
might be, Saul was resolved to carry it through and to leave nobody who
would ever again dare to say that Jesus, the crucified, was the
long-expected king.
Into the peaceful homes of the “Nazarenes” he went and seized both men
and women and carried them away to prison. He had to separate husbands
from their wives. He had to take mothers away from their tender little
babies. He had to break up meetings and drag away those who were
preaching the new gospel to their eager listeners. But everywhere he
went he found that these people had something which he did not have. In
the midst of their sufferings and their trials they were calm and
peaceful and happy and triumphant and radiant. When they were persecuted
their faces shone with a light that seemed almost heavenly. They prayed
for those who injured them and were not disturbed by any troubles. They
kept saying most remarkable words about Jesus and their faith in Him,
and they all seemed to believe that He was still alive and that they
would all soon be with Him.
Saul had been trying all his life to be perfect, to be fully righteous.
He had worked with all his might to keep all the law and all the
commandments. But he knew deep down in his soul that he had failed to
reach his aim. He could not do it. He found something in himself which
he could not govern. If he didn’t break one commandment, he broke
another. If he was strong at one point he was sure to be weak at
another. That commandment which his mother had told him was the hardest
to keep—“thou shalt not covet or desire”—was always bothering him. Even
when he did not actually _do_ wrong things, he found himself _wanting_
to do them, and _that_ he knew was wrong. It all filled him with
discouragement, and sometimes with despair.
But these people whom he was persecuting and dragging away to prisons
seemed to be good almost without trying. They had found a new power
somewhere that seemed to help them. It made him wonder whether they were
perhaps right and he possibly was wrong. He hated what he was doing. How
gladly he would stop it, if only he could be sure that God did not want
him to persecute these strange followers of Jesus. But until God should
make it perfectly plain to him, he must go on with his hard duty.
He had heard of some of these “Jesus-people” in the city of Damascus. He
would go to that city and stop them before they had time to spread. He
got documents from the rulers in Jerusalem giving him power to ride to
Damascus and to seize these people and to treat them as he had treated
those in Jerusalem. With his band of helpers he started off on his
journey, looking bold and fearless in his face, but feeling in his soul
that it was the most disagreeable journey he had ever set out upon, and
wishing all the time that he could ride straight on through Damascus and
the Syrian gate in the mountains to Tarsus, and give up the whole sorry
work of dragging mothers away from their children. As he rode he thought
and wondered.
The road took him through Capernaum and around the magnificent lake
where Jesus had done much of His work, where He had preached His divine
messages and where He healed multitudes of people. Saul could hardly
stay at any inn in that country without hearing some wonderful story of
the Galilean Teacher. He might easily see the father of the little girl
who had been raised from her bed by this Teacher. He might talk with a
man whose eyes had been opened, or with a person who had been delivered
from leprosy or insanity, which the people in that day called being
“possessed with devils.” He might hear men tell how they themselves had
heard this wonderful Galilean talk about God His Father and about the
kingdom of life and love. And he might hear strange stories of what had
happened after the crucifixion—how fishermen who had lived by that lake
all their lives had seen Jesus in glorified form, after He had been dead
and buried.
Saul would ride on from Galilee with new thoughts surging in his mind.
The simple faith of those who saw with their own eyes and heard with
their own ears would stir him with fresh meditation as he rode over the
stretch of country between Gennesareth and Damascus.
One thing had always made it impossible for him to believe that Jesus
was divine, that He was sent by God or that He was the long-looked for
Messiah: _He had suffered and died on the cross._ Saul felt sure that,
if God had sent Him and He had been divine, He would not have had to
suffer, but He would have come in glory and power. But as he rode along
in silence and in deep thought, he remembered that he had heard these
followers of Jesus say in their meetings that the Old Testament was full
of prophecies which said that Christ must suffer. He began to think more
carefully about these passages—especially the one in the fifty-third
chapter of Isaiah: “He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrow
and acquainted with grief.” “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried
our sorrows.” “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for
our iniquities.” “As a lamb that is led to the slaughter and as a sheep
that before her shearers is dumb; yea he opened not his mouth.” “For the
transgression of my people was he smitten.” “He poured out his soul unto
death and was counted with the transgressors, yet he bore the sins of
many.”
This might mean that God’s great servant would not be glorious and full
of power when He came but a sufferer. It might be that He would come and
suffer for the sins of others, and that He would do for men what they
could not do for themselves. He might be the perfect one and He might
through His suffering and death bring them a new power to live by. If he
was only sure that God had raised Him from the dead and had brought Him
triumphantly through His sufferings and His crucifixion, then he could
believe that this Galilean was the Saviour and the divine Deliverer for
whom they had been waiting.
Stephen had cried out in his dying moments, “I see Jesus there, at the
right hand of God.” Saul had heard how others claimed that they had seen
Him alive and glorified. He would be likely to say to himself as he rode
along: “If _I_ could only see Him as these others say they have done, I
would believe as they do. I would stop this miserable work I am doing
and I would follow Him forever and I would make everybody believe in
Him.”
Then in the stillness there suddenly broke in upon this young man a
light which seemed brighter than the mid-day sun in the sky and he saw
Jesus and heard Him speak and call him and his whole life was forever
changed by this wonderful thing that happened on the road to Damascus.
X
IN ARABIA
Though dazed and blinded by the light, which seemed to come from another
world beyond this world, Saul nevertheless felt perfectly sure that he
_saw_ Jesus glorified. Through all the rest of his life, he always said
that he had _seen_ Christ—he had seen Him as Stephen saw Him. He had
seen Him as Peter and James and John saw Him and he never had any doubt
any more that He was alive and victorious over death. He had heard Him
speak, too, in that wonderful meeting outside the gate of the city. He
had heard Him say: “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” “Why persecutest
thou _me_?”
All the rest of the way into Damascus, he walked in darkness. His outer
eyes were still blind from the light, but in the city his sight came
back again and he could see once more. He knew that a mighty change had
come within himself, but he did not know at once all that it meant. He
wanted to go far away from all the old scenes of his life, far away from
everybody he knew, far away from the noisy, busy world, and think out
what had happened. Even before talking with Peter and the other
disciples of Jesus, he wished to meditate alone and find his bearing in
the new experience which had so suddenly come to him.
The greatest leaders of Saul’s race had found out the meaning of life,
alone with God, in the wilderness, or in the mountains, or on the edge
of the desert. Moses had come face to face with God on Mount Sinai.
Elijah had heard the still small voice speaking to him, far away from
the rush and din of the world. John the Baptist got his preparation for
his mission in the solitary wilderness undisturbed by people. Jesus had
discovered in the desert how to come forth victorious over temptation
and here he had realised that His kingdom was not to rest on force and
worldly power. So, too, Saul now felt that he must go away from the city
and live for a time in the heart of nature and open his soul to God.
He decided to go to Arabia for his period of quiet and of meditation.
Perhaps he went, as Moses had gone, to Sinai, or to some other region of
this strange, mysterious land of wilderness, mountains and deserts. He
has not told us a word about his life in Arabia and none of his friends
has given us any reports of these months of solitude and meditation.
To-day, if any man wished to prepare for a great career of ministry or
missionary service, he would go to some college or university or
seminary or training school and learn how to do the work which lay
before him, and he would train his body with games of skill and athletic
courses, so as to be at his very best in mind and heart and body. Saul
had nothing of this sort open to him. He had finished his years of study
but they only prepared him to be a Jewish Rabbi, a teacher of the law.
Now he wanted to learn how to tell the world the full message, the good
news, which Jesus had brought to men. There was no school where this was
taught. There were no Christian colleges or universities or seminaries
yet. There were only a few followers of Jesus. Most of them lived in
Jerusalem, and they were ignorant people—fishermen, and
tax-collectors—who had had no chance to study. The best thing Saul could
do was, therefore, to go away alone and read and think and let God teach
him.
At first he supposed that the good news which Jesus had brought was for
his own people alone but as he meditated and studied and listened he
began to see that God’s love reached everybody and that the great
Galilean had come to bring new life to all people in the world. It was
many years perhaps before Saul fully realised all that this meant, but I
think he began to see it in Arabia. Another thing kept coming before him
all the time. He was eager to find out why Jesus had died on the cross,
why He had suffered, and what it all meant. That also took years of
thought before he understood it, but here in the quiet of the mountains
he began to _see_. How we wish he had written some letters from Arabia
and told what he was doing and thinking! If he had only written to his
mother once a week, or even once a month, and she had preserved the
letters, how eagerly we would read them now! But there is not a word
about it all. We only know that in the stillness his spirit was
gathering power and his soul was growing richer.
At last he felt that he was “ready.” This is one of his great words—“I
am now ready.” The time of quiet was over and the busy life must begin.
He felt sure he could make everybody believe in his Christ. It was all
so plain and wonderful that people would be bound to listen as he told
them what he had seen and known and felt! He decided to go back to
Damascus and begin there—near the place where he had first seen Jesus
and where the great change in his life had come.
But it was not as easy as he expected. In the first place he soon
discovered that he needed to know more about the life of Jesus. He had
not talked with anybody yet who had been with Him in Galilee and in
Jerusalem. He must learn more about Him before he could move people with
his words. And then he found that the people did not want to hear about
Jesus. The Jews in Damascus all thought Saul was a traitor. He had
started for their city to persecute the followers of Jesus and now he
was one of the followers himself, trying to make them believe. They
decided to seize him and do to him what he used to do to the followers
of Jesus. They would soon put him where he would not talk any more about
this Galilean Teacher. They watched all the gates of the city so that
Saul could not get away and they had men hunting for him through the
streets. But some of Saul’s friends put him in a great basket and in the
dark of the night, by a long rope, they let him down the side of the
wall and he got far away from the dangerous city before the morning sun
came up.
He must have felt a strange thrill as he passed by the place where he
saw the great light and heard the voice saying: “Saul, why persecutest
thou me?” But he hurried on over the road through Galilee and came to
Jerusalem, which he had left three years before. He had started out a
persecutor. He came back a follower of Jesus. He had crossed the “great
divide.”
XI
FIFTEEN WONDERFUL DAYS
We have invented a little instrument called a “dictaphone.” If one of
these instruments is hidden away in a room, a person at the other end of
the dictaphone can overhear all the conversation that goes on in the
room where it is concealed, and the entire conversation can be written
down and kept. How we wish now that there had been a dictaphone in the
room in which Saul staid with St. Peter for fifteen days in Jerusalem.
Part of the time James, the brother of Jesus, was there, too, with them.
But the rest of the time they were alone—talking, talking, talking. St.
Peter was telling Saul the things he wanted to know about the life of
Jesus and about His death and resurrection. What a wonderful story it
would be, if we could only get it all back, word for word! There was
that keen and eager face of the man still young, with all his life-work
before him, and opposite the older man whose whole life had been boating
and fishing until one with authority had said to him, “Follow me.” The
older man knew more about this Galilean life than anybody else knew,
unless it were that other fisherman, named John, and he could answer all
the questions the young man asked so long as they were just questions
about events, for he had seen with his eyes and he had heard with his
ears and he had handled with his hands and he _knew_.
The pity of it is, not a word of this conversation has been preserved.
We can imagine what some of the questions were and we can guess what
some of the answers would be, but the actual words are gone. They are
lost forever. What we do know, however, is that at the end of these
fifteen days of wonderful talk, Saul went away from Jerusalem, his mind
stored with truth about Jesus. He had heard from Peter’s lips the
supreme facts about the life of the Person who was henceforth to be Lord
and Master of his own life. Peter and James told all their friends in
Jerusalem what had happened to Saul, how his career had suddenly
changed, how the man who once dragged harmless Christians to prison was
now getting ready to give his whole life to the work of telling the good
news about Jesus and they already saw that a mighty champion of the
truth had joined them and they all thanked God for Saul of Tarsus. When
he left Jerusalem, after his memorable visit with Peter, Saul probably
went home to Tarsus, and he lived and worked for a time in the home
province of Cilicia. There is a long period of his life at this time
about which we know nothing at all. He must have been at work for he
could not settle down and rest. There was a tremendous drive in his
glowing spirit, and wherever he was something was always happening. If
he spent some years in Tarsus, as is probable, it is certain that many
people there heard of Jesus from him and we can well believe that he
went from town to town through the mountain province to tell in all the
synagogues the truth which he had learned.
It is possible, however, that he may at this time have had a long period
of serious illness. He has himself given us one single glimpse into this
unknown period of his life. In the twelfth chapter of Second
Corinthians, he says that a tremendous experience came to him fourteen
years before—that would be in this period. He was suddenly “caught up”
into a higher world where he saw what nobody can see with ordinary eyes
and where he understood the mysteries of life in a new way. It seemed
for a moment as though he had lost his body and found his soul, as
though he had leaped across all the space of the universe and had come
to God’s dwelling-place and everything lay plain and clear before him.
But about this time, he says further, some terrible illness came upon
him, which was so bad that it felt like “a thorn,” or “a stake in his
body”—a piercing, racking pain that seemed to bore into his quivering
flesh. It was almost more than he could endure. He begged and besought
that he might be relieved of it but it lasted on and on. We do not know
certainly what this painful disease was but perhaps a little later, as
we go on with his life, we may get some idea of what it was, for it
appears to have come back again when he was in Galatia.