_THE CONVERSION OF THE PERSECUTOR._
"But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and
haling men and women committed them to prison."--ACTS viii. 3.
"But Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the
disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and asked of
him letters to Damascus unto the synagogues, that if he found any
that were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them
bound to Jerusalem. And as he journeyed, it came to pass that he
drew nigh unto Damascus: and suddenly there shone round about him
a light out of heaven: and he fell upon the earth, and heard a
voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? And
he said, Who art thou, Lord? And He said, I am Jesus whom thou
persecutest: but rise, and enter into the city, and it shall be
told thee what thou must do."--ACTS ix. 1-6.
We have in the last chapter traced the course of St. Paul's life as we
know it from his own reminiscences, from hints in Holy Scripture, and
from Jewish history and customs. The Jewish nation is exactly like all
the nations of the East, in one respect at least. They are all
intensely conservative, and though time has necessarily introduced
some modifications, yet the course of education, and the force of
prejudice, and the power of custom have in the main remained unchanged
down to the present time. We now proceed to view St. Paul, not as we
imagine his course of life and education to have been, but as we
follow him in the exhibition of his active powers, in the full play
and swing of that intellectual energy, of those religious aims and
objects for which he had been so long training.
St. Paul at his first appearance upon the stage of Christian history,
upon the occasion of St. Stephen's martyrdom, had arrived at the full
stature of manhood both in body and in mind. He was then the young man
Saul; an expression which enables us to fix with some approach to
accuracy the time of his birth. St. Paul's contemporary Philo in one
of his works divides man's life into seven periods, the fourth of
which is young manhood, which he assigns to the years between
twenty-one and twenty-eight. Roughly speaking, and without attempting
any fine-drawn distinctions for which we have not sufficient material,
we may say that at the martyrdom of St. Stephen St. Paul was about
thirty years of age, or some ten years or thereabouts junior to our
Lord as His years would have been numbered according to those of the
sons of men. One circumstance, indeed, would seem to indicate that St.
Paul must have been then over and above the exact line of thirty. It
is urged, and that upon the ground of St. Paul's own language, that he
was a member of the Sanhedrin. In the twenty-sixth chapter, defending
himself before King Agrippa, St. Paul described his own course of
action prior to his conversion as one of bitterest hostility to the
Christian cause: "I both shut up many of the saints in prisons, having
received authority from the chief priests, _and when they were put to
death, I gave my vote against them_"; an expression which clearly
indicates that he was a member of a body and possessed a vote in an
assembly which determined questions of life and death, and that could
have been nothing else than the Sanhedrin, into which no one was
admitted before he had completed thirty years. St. Paul, then, when he
is first introduced to our notice, comes before us as a full-grown
man and a well-trained, carefully educated, thoroughly disciplined
rabbinical scholar, whose prejudices were naturally excited against
the new Galilean sect, and who had given public expression to his
feelings by taking decided steps in opposition to its progress. The
sacred narrative now sets before us (i) the Conduct of St. Paul in his
unconverted state, (ii) his Mission, (iii) his Journey, and (iv) his
Conversion. Let us take the many details and circumstances connected
with this passage under these four divisions.
I. _The Conduct of Saul._ Here we have a picture of St. Paul in his
unconverted state: "Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter
against the disciples of the Lord." This description is amply borne
out by St. Paul himself, in which he even enlarges and gives us
additional touches of the intensity of his antichristian hate. His
ignorant zeal at this period seems to have printed itself deep upon
memory's record. There are no less than at least seven different
notices in the Acts or scattered through the Epistles, due to his own
tongue or pen, and dealing directly with his conduct as a persecutor.
No matter how he rejoiced in the fulness and blessedness of Christ's
pardon, no matter how he experienced the power and working of God's
Holy Spirit, St. Paul never could forget the intense hatred with which
he had originally followed the disciples of the Master. Let us note
them, for they all bear out, expand, and explain the statement of the
passage we are now considering.
In his address to the Jews of Jerusalem as recorded in Acts xxii. he
appeals to his former conduct as an evidence of his sincerity. In
verses 4 and 5 he says, "I persecuted this Way unto the death, binding
and delivering into prisons both men and women. As also the high
priest doth bear me witness, and all the estate of the elders: from
whom also I received letters unto the brethren,[18] and journeyed to
Damascus, to bring them also which were there unto Jerusalem in bonds,
for to be punished." In the same discourse he recurs a second time to
this topic; for, telling his audience of the vision granted to him in
the temple, he says, verse 19, "And I said, Lord, they themselves know
that I imprisoned and beat in every synagogue them that believed on
Thee: and when the blood of Stephen Thy witness was shed, I also was
standing by, and consenting, and keeping the garments of them that
slew him." St. Paul dwells upon the same topic in the twenty-sixth
chapter, when addressing King Agrippa in verses 9-11, a passage
already quoted in part: "I verily thought with myself, that I ought to
do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And this I
also did in Jerusalem: and I both shut up many of the saints in
prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, and when
they were put to death, I gave my vote against them. And punishing
them oftentimes in all the synagogues, I strove to make them
blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them
even unto foreign cities." It is the same in his Epistles. In four
different places does he refer to his conduct as a persecutor--in 1
Cor. xv. 9; Gal. i. 13; Phil. iii. 6; and 1 Tim. i. 13; while again in
the chapter now under consideration, the ninth of Acts, we find that
the Jews of the synagogue in Damascus, who were listening to St.
Paul's earliest outburst of Christian zeal, asked, "Is not this he
that in Jerusalem made havock of them which called on this name? and
he had come hither for this intent, that he might bring them bound
before the chief priests"; using the very same word "making havock" as
St. Paul himself uses in the first of Galatians, which in Greek is
very strong, expressing a course of action accompanied with fire and
blood and murder such as occurs when a city is taken by storm.
[18] What an interesting anticipation of Christian times do we
find in this passage. "The estate of the elders" is the Presbytery
in the original Greek, and the words "the brethren" by which St.
Paul refers to his unconverted fellow-countrymen are an
anticipation of the expression he always uses for the Christian
believers. Even in these little details Christianity is but an
expansion of Judaism, as, in another direction, the Catacombs of
Rome and the ornamentation used therein were all derived from the
customs of the Jewish colony in Rome long before the time of
Christ. See a treatise by Schurer, called _Die Gemeindeverfassung
der Juden in Rom in der Kaiserzeit_, p. 13 (Leipzig, 1879), where
that learned writer points out the continuity between Judaism in
Rome and early Christianity.
Now these passages have been thus set forth at length because they add
many details to the bare statement of Acts ix., giving us a glimpse
into those four or five dark and bloody years, the thought of which
henceforth weighed so heavily upon the Apostle's mind and memory. Just
let us notice these additional touches. He shut up in prison many of
the saints, both men and women, and that in Jerusalem before he went
to Damascus at all. He scourged the disciples in every synagogue,
meaning doubtless that he superintended the punishment, as it was the
duty of the Chazan, the minister or attendant of the synagogue, to
scourge the condemned, and thus strove to make them blaspheme Christ.
He voted for the execution of the disciples when he acted as a member
of the Sanhedrin. And lastly he followed the disciples and persecuted
them in foreign cities. We gain in this way a much fuller idea of the
young enthusiast's persecuting zeal than usually is formed from the
words "Saul yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the
disciples of the Lord," which seem to set forth Saul as roused to wild
and savage excitement by St. Stephen's death, and then continuing that
course in the city of Jerusalem for a very brief period. Whereas, on
the contrary, St. Paul's fuller statements, when combined, represent
him as pursuing a course of steady, systematic, and cruel repression,
which St. Paul largely helped to inaugurate, but which continued to
exist as long as the Jews had the power to inflict corporal
punishments and death on the members of their own nation. He visited
all the synagogues in Jerusalem and throughout Palestine, scourging
and imprisoning. He strove--and this is, again, another lifelike
touch,--to compel the disciples to blaspheme the name of Christ in the
same manner as the Romans were subsequently wont to test Christians by
calling upon them to cry anathema to the name of their Master.[19] He
even extended his activity beyond the bounds of the Holy Land, and
that in various directions. The visit to Damascus may not by any means
have been his first journey to a foreign town with thoughts bent on
the work of persecution. He expressly says to Agrippa, "I persecuted
them even unto foreign cities." He may have visited Tarsus, or Lystra,
or the cities of Cyprus or Alexandria itself, urged on by the
consuming fire of his blind, restless zeal, before he entered upon the
journey to Damascus, destined to be the last undertaken in opposition
to Jesus Christ. When we thus strive to realise the facts of the case,
we shall see that the scenes of blood and torture and death, the
ruined homes, the tears, the heartbreaking separations which the young
man Saul had caused in his blind zeal for the law, and which are
briefly summed up in the words "he made havock of the Church," were
quite sufficient to account for that profound impression of his own
unworthiness and of God's great mercy towards him which he ever
cherished to his dying day.[20]
[19] St. Paul, indeed, in his persecuting days may have been the
inventor of the test, which seems to have consisted in a
declaration that Jesus was not the Christ, but an impostor. We
find a reference to the Jewish custom of blaspheming the name of
Jesus in the Epistle of James (ii. 6, 7): "Do not the rich oppress
you, and themselves drag you before the judgment-seats? Do not
they blaspheme the honourable name by the which ye are called?"
with which may be compared St. Paul's words in 1 Cor. xii. 3: "No
man speaking in the Spirit of God saith, Jesus is anathema." The
same custom continued in the second century, as we learn from
frequent notices in Justin Martyr's _Dialogue_ with Trypho the
Jew, as in the following quotations: ch. xvi., "cursing in your
synagogues those that believe on Christ"; in ch. xlvii. he
enumerates amongst those who shall not be saved "those who have
anathematised and do anathematise this very Christ in the
synagogues"; and in ch. cxxxvii. he exhorts the Jews, "Assent,
therefore, and pour no ridicule on the Son of God; obey not the
Pharisaic teachers, and scoff not at the King of Israel, as the
rulers of your synagogues teach you to do after your prayers." The
Romans, as I have said, early borrowed the custom from the Jews.
They strove to compel the Christians to blaspheme, as we see from
Pliny's well-known epistle to Trajan in his _Epistles_, book x.,
97, where he describes certain persons brought before him as
"invoking the gods, worshipping the emperor's statue, and reviling
the name of Christ, whereas there is no forcing those who are
really Christians into any of these compliances."
[20] St. Paul, in 1 Tim. i. 15, says, "Faithful is the saying, and
worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners; of whom I am chief." This verse is of ancient and
of very modern interest too. It shows that to the last St. Paul
retained the keenest sense of his early wickedness. It is of
present interest because it helps to correct a modern error. There
are people who object to use the Litany and the Lord's Prayer
because of the prayers for forgiveness of sins and the occurrence
of such expressions as "Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners."
Their argument is, that believers have been washed from all their
sins, and therefore should not describe themselves as miserable
sinners. St. Paul, however, saw no inconsistency between God's
free forgiving love and his own humility in designating himself
the chief of sinners. God may have cast all our sins behind His
back; but, viewing the matter from the human side, it is well,
nay, it is absolutely necessary, if spiritual pride is to be
hindered in its rapid growth, for us to cherish a remembrance of
the sins and backslidings of other days. The greatest saints, the
richest spiritual teachers have ever felt the necessity of it. St.
Augustine in his _Confessions_ mingles perpetual reminiscences of
his own wickedness with his assured sense of God's mercy. Hooker
deals in his own profound style with such objection to the Litany
in the Fifth Book of his _Ecclesiastical Polity_, ch. xlvii.,
where he writes, replying to the objection that the expressions of
the Litany implying fear of God do not become God's saints: "The
knowledge of our own unworthiness is not without belief in the
merits of Christ. With that true fear which the one causeth there
is coupled true boldness, and encouragement drawn from the other.
The very silence which our own unworthiness putteth us unto doth
itself make request for us, and that in the consequence of His
grace. Looking inward we are stricken dumb, looking upward we
speak and prevail. O happy mixture, wherein things contrary do so
qualify and correct the danger of the other's excess, that neither
boldness can make us presume as long as we are kept under with the
sense of our own wretchedness; nor while we trust in the mercy of
God through Jesus Christ, fear be able to tyrannise over us! As
therefore our fear excludeth not that boldness which becometh
saints; so if their _familiarity_ with God (referring to his
opponents) do not savour of this fear, it draweth too near that
irreverent confidence wherewith true humility can never stand."
Bishop Jeremy Taylor understood the bearing of St. Paul's view on
personal religion. In his _Holy Living_, in the chapter on
Humility, he teaches those who seek that grace thus: "Every day
call to mind some one of thy foulest sins, or the most shameful of
thy disgraces, or the indiscreetest of thy actions, or anything
that did then most trouble thee, and apply it to the present
swelling of thy spirit and opinion, and it may help to allay it."
II. _The Mission of Saul._ Again, we notice in this passage that Saul,
having shown his activity in other directions, now turned his
attention to Damascus. There were political circumstances which may
have hitherto hindered him from exercising the same supervision over
the synagogue of Damascus which he had already extended to other
foreign cities. The political history and circumstances of Damascus
at this period are indeed rather obscure. The city seems to have been
somewhat of a bone of contention between Herod Antipas, Aretas the
king of Petra, and the Romans. About the time of St. Paul's
conversion, which may be fixed at A.D. 37 or 38, there was a period of
great disturbance in Palestine and Southern Syria. Pontius Pilate was
deposed from his office and sent to Rome for judgment. Vitellius, the
president of the whole Province of Syria, came into Palestine,
changing the high priests, conciliating the Jews, and intervening in
the war which raged between Herod Antipas and Aretas, his
father-in-law. In the course of this last struggle Damascus seems to
have changed its masters, and, while a Roman city till the year 37, it
henceforth became an Arabian city, the property of King Aretas, till
the reign of Nero, when it again returned beneath the Roman sway. Some
one or other, or perhaps all these political circumstances combined
may have hitherto prevented the Sanhedrin from taking active measures
against the disciples at Damascus. But now things became settled.
Caiaphas was deposed from the office of high priest upon the departure
of Pontius Pilate. He had been a great friend and ally of Pilate;
Vitellius therefore deprived Caiaphas of his sacred office, appointing
in his stead Jonathan, son of Annas, the high priest. This Jonathan
did not, however, long continue to occupy the position, as he was
deposed by the same Roman magistrate, Vitellius, at the feast of
Pentecost in the very same year, his brother Theophilus being
appointed high priest in his room; so completely was the whole
Levitical hierarchy, the entire Jewish establishment, ruled by the
political officers of the Roman state. This Theophilus continued to
hold the office for five or six years, and it must have been to
Theophilus that Saul applied for letters unto Damascus authorising him
to arrest the adherents of the new religion.[21]
[21] The references for all these changes are given in Lewin's
_Fasti_, and in his _Life of St. Paul_, with which Josephus,
_Antiqq._, XVIII., iv., should be compared.
And now a question here arises, How is it that the high priest could
exercise such powers and arrest his co-religionists in a foreign town?
The answer to this sheds a flood of light upon the state of the Jews
of the Dispersion, as they were called. I have already said a little
on this point, but it demands fuller discussion.[22] The high priest
at Jerusalem was regarded as a kind of head of the whole nation. He
was viewed by the Romans as the Prince of the Jews,[23] with whom they
could formally treat, and by whom they could manage a nation which,
differing from all others in its manners and customs, was scattered
all over the world, and often gave much trouble. Julius Cæsar laid
down the lines on which Jewish privileges and Roman policy were based,
and that half a century before the Christian era. Julius Cæsar had
been greatly assisted in his Alexandrian war by the Jewish high priest
Hyrcanus, so he issued an edict in the year 47 B.C., which, after
reciting the services of Hyrcanus, proceeds thus, "I command that
Hyrcanus and his children do retain all the rights of the high priest,
whether established by law or accorded by courtesy; and if hereafter
any question arise touching the Jewish polity, I desire that the
determination thereof be referred to him"; an edict which, confirmed
as it was again and again, not only by Julius Cæsar, but by several
subsequent emperors, gave the high priest the fullest jurisdiction
over the Jews, wherever they dwelt, in things pertaining to their own
religion.[24] It was therefore in strictest accord with Roman law and
custom that, when Saul wished to arrest members of the synagogue at
Damascus, he should make application to the high priest Theophilus for
a warrant enabling him to effect his purpose.
[22] See vol. i., pp. 174-6, 271.
[23] The decree of Julius Cæsar, upon which the Jewish privileges
were built, expressly calls the high priest the ethnarch
(ἐθνάρχης), or ruler, of the Jews. See Josephus, _Antiqq._,
XIV., x., 3.
[24] This point is worked out at great length and with a multitude
of references in Lewin's _Life of St. Paul_, ch. iv., vol. i., pp.
44-7. Josephus, in his _Antiquities_, book xiv., ch. x., gives the
words of Cæsar's decree. In ch. viii. of the same book he
describes the warlike assistance lent by the Jews to Julius Cæsar
in his Egyptian campaign.
The description, too, given of the disciples in this passage is very
noteworthy and a striking evidence of the truthfulness of the
narrative. The disciples were the men of "the Way." Saul desired to
bring any of "the Way" found at Damascus to be judged at Jerusalem,
because the Sanhedrin alone possessed the right to pass capital
sentences in matters of religion. The synagogues at Damascus or
anywhere else could flog culprits, and a Jew could get no redress for
any such ill-treatment even if he sought it, which would have not been
at all likely; but if the final sentence of death were to be passed,
the Jerusalem Sanhedrin was the only tribunal competent to entertain
such questions.[25] And the persons he desired to hale before this
awful tribunal were the men of the Way. This was the name by which, in
its earliest and purest day, the Church called itself. In the
nineteenth chapter and ninth verse we read of St. Paul's labours at
Ephesus and the opposition he endured: "But when some were hardened
and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude"; while
again, in his defence before Felix (xxiv. 14), we read, "But this I
confess unto thee, that after the Way which they call a sect, so serve
I the God of our fathers." The Revised translation of the New
Testament has well brought out the force of the original in a manner
that was utterly missed in the Authorised Version, and has emphasized
for us a great truth concerning the early Christians. There was a
certain holy intolerance even about the very name they imposed upon
the earliest Church. It was the Way, the only Way, the Way of Life.
The earliest Christians had a lively recollection of what the Apostles
had heard from the mouth of the Master Himself, "I am the Way, the
Truth, and the Life; no one cometh unto the Father but by Me"; and so,
realising the identity of Christ and His people, realising the
continued presence of Christ in His Church, they designated that
Church by a term which expressed their belief that in it alone was the
road to peace, the sole path of access to God. This name "the Way"
expressed their sense of the importance of the truth. Their's was no
easy-going religion which thought that it made not the slightest
matter what form of belief a man professed. They were awfully in
earnest, because they knew of only one way to God, and that was the
religion and Church of Jesus Christ. Therefore it was that they were
willing to suffer all things rather than that they should lose this
Way, or that others should miss it through their default. The
marvellous, the intense missionary efforts of the primitive Church
find their explanation in this expression, the Way. God had revealed
the Way and had called themselves into it, and their great duty in
life was to make others know the greatness of this salvation; or, as
St. Paul puts it, "Necessity is laid upon me; woe is unto me if I
preach not the gospel."[26]
[25] I know it is a common opinion that the Jews had no power of
capital punishment and that the Romans permitted the infliction
merely of scourgings and such minor penalties. Lightfoot, in his
_Horæ Hebraicæ_ on Matt. xxvi. 3; John xviii. 31; Acts ix. 2,
controverts this view in long and learned notes. The Jews
certainly stated to Pilate, according to John xviii. 31, "It is
not lawful for us to put any man to death." But then, on the other
hand, the Sanhedrin put St. Stephen to death, and St. Paul tells
us that when the saints were put to death he voted against them;
showing that the Sanhedrin did put many of the disciples to death.
Lightfoot thinks that the Jews merely wished to throw the odium of
our Lord's execution upon the Romans, and therefore pleaded their
own inability to condemn Him for a capital offence, because of the
particular chamber where the Sanhedrin then sat, where it was
unlawful to judge a capital crime. The Pharisees, too, joined in
the attempt to bring about our Lord's death, and their traditions
made them averse to the shedding of Jewish blood by the Sanhedrin.
The Sadducees were, however, the dominant party in the year 37,
and they had no such scruples. They were always of a cruel and
bloodthirsty disposition and stern in their punishments, as
Josephus tells us in his _Antiqq._, XX., ix., 1. This was of
course the natural result of their material philosophy which
regarded man as devoid of any immortal principle. Lightfoot gives
instances too (Matt. xxvi. 3) of a priest's daughter burned to
death and of a man stoned at Lydda even after the destruction of
the city, showing that the Sanhedrin still contrived to exercise
capital jurisdiction. The time when Saul set out for Damascus was
very favourable from political reasons for any new or unusual
assumptions of authority on the part of the Sanhedrin. Vitellius
the Prefect was very anxious to be deferential in every way to the
Jewish authorities. He had just restored the custody of the high
priest's robes to the Sanhedrin and the priests. This may have
encouraged them to adopt the fiercest and sternest measures
against the new sectaries. As for the minor punishment of
flogging, the synagogues in Holland have been known to exercise it
so lately as the seventeenth century.
[26] The Acts of the Apostles in this respect throws an
interesting light upon the _Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_,
published a few years ago by Bishop Bryennius, and helps us to fix
its early date. That important relic of early Christianity never
speaks of the followers of the new religion as Christians. It
opens by describing the two ways, the way of Life, which is
Christianity, and the way of Death. It must therefore have been
composed when the memory of the Church's earliest designation,
"the Way," was still fresh. By the time of Aristides (A.D. 125)
and of Pliny the title "Christians" was the common one both inside
and outside the Church.
The exclusive claims of Christianity are thus early set forth; and it
was these same exclusive claims which caused Christianity to be so
hated and persecuted by the pagans.[27] The Roman Empire would not
have so bitterly resented the preaching of Christ, if His followers
would have accepted the position with which other religions were
contented. The Roman Empire was not intolerant of new ideas in matters
of religion. Previous to the coming of our Lord the pagans had
welcomed the strange, mystic rites and teaching of Egypt. They
accepted from Persia the curious system and worship of Mithras within
the first century after Christ's crucifixion. And tradition tells that
at least two of the emperors were willing to admit the image of Christ
into the Pantheon, which they had consecrated to the memory of the
great and good.[28] But the Christians would have nothing to say or do
with such partial honours for their Master. Religion for them was
Christ alone or else it was nothing, and that because He alone was the
Way. As there was but one God for them, so there was but one Mediator,
Christ Jesus.
[27] This sense of the awful importance of Christianity as the Way
made the Christians enthusiastic and determined in their efforts
to spread their religion. In the earliest apology or defence of
Christianity, that of Aristides, which I have fully described in
the previous volume of this Commentary, we find this fact openly
avowed and gloried in as in the following passage: "As for their
servants or handmaids, or their children, if they have any, they
persuade them to become Christians for the love they have towards
them; and when they have become so, they call them without
distinction brethren." A system so broad as to view all religions
as equally important would never have innate force enough to lead
a man to become a missionary, and most certainly never would have
produced a martyr. Christianity really understood is a very broad
religion; its essential dogmas are very few; but there is a kind
of breadth in religion now fashionable which the early Christians
never understood or they would not have acted as they did. Who
would have throw away his life amid the cruellest tortures if it
was all the same whether men worshipped Jupiter or Jesus Christ?
[28] Tertullian, about the year 200, tells us (_Apologet._, ch. v.
and xxi.) that the Emperor Tiberius, under whom our Lord suffered,
was so moved by Pilate's report of the miracles and resurrection
of Christ as to propose a bill to the Senate that Christ should be
received among the gods of Rome; while, as for Emperor Alexander
Severus, A.D. 222 to 235, he went even further. In Christ he
recognised a Divine Being equal with the other gods; and in his
domestic chapel he placed the bust of Christ along with the images
of those men whom he regarded as beings of a superior order--of
Apollonius of Tyana, and Orpheus, and such like. Heliogabalus,
A.D. 219, is credited with a desire to have blended Christianity
with the worship of the Sun: see Neander, _Church History_, vol.
i., pp. 128, 173, Bohn's edition.
III. _Saul's Journey._ "As he journeyed, it came to pass that he drew
nigh unto Damascus." This is the simple record left us in Holy Writ of
this momentous event. A comparison of the sacred record with any of
the numerous lives of St. Paul which have been published will show us
how very different their points of view. The mere human narratives
dwell upon the external features of the scene, enlarge upon the light
which modern discoveries have thrown upon the lines of road which
connected Jerusalem with Southern Syria, become enthusiastic over the
beauty of Damascus as seen by the traveller from Jerusalem, over the
eternal green of the groves and gardens which are still, as of old,
made glad by the waters of Abana and of Pharpar; while the sacred
narrative passes over all external details and marches straight to the
great central fact of the persecutor's conversion. And we find no
fault with this. It is well that the human narratives should enlarge
as they do upon the outward features and circumstances of the
journey, because they thus help us to realise the Acts as a veritable
history that was lived and acted. We are too apt to idealise the
Bible, to think of it as dealing with an unreal world, and to regard
the men and women thereof as beings of another type from ourselves.
Books like Farrar's and Lewin's and Conybeare and Howson's _Lives of
St. Paul_ correct this tendency, and make the Acts of the Apostles
infinitely more interesting by rendering St. Paul's career human and
lifelike and clothing it with the charm of local detail. It is thus
that we can guess at the very road by which the enthusiastic Saul
travelled. The caravans from Egypt to Damascus are intensely
conservative in their routes. In fact, even in our own revolutionary
West trade and commerce preserve in large measure the same routes
to-day as they used two thousand years ago. The great railways of
England, and much more the great main roads, preserve in a large
degree the same directions which the ancient Roman roads observed. In
Ireland, with which I am still better acquainted, I know that the
great roads starting from Dublin preserve in the main the same lines
as in the days of St. Patrick.[29] And so it is, but only to a much
greater degree, in Palestine and throughout the East. The road from
Jerusalem to Jericho preserved in St. Jerome's time, four centuries
later, the same direction and the same character as in our Lord's day,
so that it was then called the Bloody Road, from the frequent
robberies; and thus it is still, for the pilgrims who now go to visit
the Jordan are furnished with a guard of Turkish soldiers to protect
them from the Arab bandits. And to-day, as in the first century, the
caravans from Egypt and Jerusalem to Damascus follow either of two
roads: one which proceeds through Gaza and Ramleh, along the coast,
and then, turning eastward about the borders of Samaria and Galilee,
crosses the Jordan and proceeds through the desert to Damascus--that
is the Egyptian road;[30] while the other, which serves for travellers
from Jerusalem, runs due north from that city and joins the other road
at the entrance to Galilee. This latter was probably the road which
St. Paul took. The distance which he had to traverse is not very
great. One hundred and thirty-six miles separate Jerusalem from
Damascus, a journey which is performed in five or six days by such a
company as Saul had with him. We get a hint, too, of the manner in
which he travelled. He rode probably on a horse or a mule, like modern
travellers on the same road, as we gather from Acts ix. 4 compared
with xxii. 7, passages which represent Saul and his companions as
falling to the earth when the supernatural light flashed upon their
astonished vision.
[29] See Petrie's "Tara" in the _Transactions of the Royal Irish
Academy_, t. xviii., and _Ireland and the Celtic Church_, by G. T.
Stokes, pp. 80, 81, for illustrations of this point.
[30] See Geikie's _The Holy Land and the Bible_, p. 38.
The exact spot where Saul was arrested in his mad career is a matter
of some debate; some fix it close to the city of Damascus, half a mile
or so from the south gate on the high road to Jerusalem. Dr. Porter,
whose long residence at Damascus made him an authority on the
locality, places the scene of the conversion at the village of
Caucabe, ten miles away, where the traveller from Jerusalem gets his
first glimpse of the towers and groves of Damascus. We are not anxious
to determine this point. The great spiritual truth which is the
centre and core of the whole matter remains, and that central truth is
this, that it was when he drew near to Damascus and the crowning act
of violence seemed at hand, then the Lord put forth His power--as He
so often still does just when men are about to commit some dire
offence--arrested the persecutor, and then, amid the darkness of that
abounding light, there rose upon the vision of the astonished Saul at
Caucabe, "the place of the star," that true Star of Bethlehem which
never ceased its clear shining for him till he came unto the perfect
day.[31]
[31] The question of the site of the conversion is discussed at
length in Lewin's _St. Paul_, vol. i., ch. v., p. 49.
IV. Lastly we have the actual conversion of the Apostle and the
circumstances of it. We have mention made in this connexion of the
light, the voice, and the conversation. These leading circumstances
are described in exactly the same way in the three great accounts in
the ninth, in the twenty-second, and in the twenty-sixth chapters.
There are minute differences between them, but only such differences
as are natural between the verbal descriptions given at different
times by a truthful and vigorous speaker, who, conscious of honest
purpose, did not stop to weigh his every word. All three accounts tell
of the light; they all agree on that. St. Paul in his speeches at
Jerusalem unhesitatingly declares that the light which he beheld was a
supernatural one, above the brightness, the fierce, intolerable
brightness of a Syrian sun at midday; and boldly asserts that the
attendants and escort who were with him saw the light. Those who
disbelieve in the supernatural reject, of course, this assertion, and
resolve the light into a fainting fit brought upon Saul by the
burning heat, or into a passing sirocco blast from the Arabian
desert. But the sincere and humble believer may fairly ask, Could a
fainting fit or a breath of hot wind change a man who had stood out
against Stephen's eloquence and Stephen's death and the witnessed
sufferings and patience displayed by the multitudes of men and women
whom he had pursued unto the death? But it is not our purpose to
discuss these questions in any controversial spirit. Time and space
would fail to treat of them aright, specially as they have been fully
discussed already in works like Lord Lyttelton on the conversion of
St. Paul, wholly devoted to such aspects of these events.[32] But,
looking at them from a believer's point of view, we can see good
reasons why the supernatural light should have been granted. Next to
the life and death and resurrection of our Lord, the conversion of St.
Paul was the most important event the world ever saw. Our Lord made to
the fiery persecutor a special revelation of Himself in the mode of
His existence in the unseen world, in the reality, truth, and fulness
of His humanity, such as He never made to any other human being. The
special character of the revelation shows the importance that Christ
attached to the person and the personal character of him who was the
object of that revelation. Just, then, as we maintain that there was a
fitness when there was an Incarnation of God that miracles should
attend it; so, too, when the greatest instrument and agent in
propagating a knowledge of that Incarnation was to be converted, it
was natural that a supernatural agency should have been employed. And
then when the devout mind surveys the records of Scripture how similar
we see St. Paul's conversion to have been to other great conversions.
Moses is converted from mere worldly thoughts and pastoral labours on
which his soul is bent, and sent back to tasks which he had abandoned
for forty years, to the great work of freeing the people of God and
leading them to the Land of Promise; and then a vision is granted,
where light, a supernatural light, the light of the burning bush, is
manifested. Isaiah and Daniel had visions granted to them when a great
work was to be done and a great witness had to be borne, and
supernatural light and glory played a great part in their cases.[33]
When the Lord was born in Bethlehem, and the revelation of the
Incarnate God had to be made to humble faith and lowly piety, then the
glory of the Lord, a light from out God's secret temple, shone forth
to lead the worshippers to Bethlehem. And so, too, in St. Paul's case;
a world's spiritual welfare was at stake, a crisis in the world's
spiritual history, a great turning-point in the Divine plan of
salvation had arrived, and it was most fitting that the veil which
shrouds the unseen from mortal gaze should be drawn back for a moment,
and that not Saul alone but his attendants should stand astonished at
the glory of the light above the brightness of the sun which
accompanied Christ's manifestation.[34]
[32] Lord Lyttelton's _Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul_
is a work now almost unknown to ordinary students of the Bible. It
was written in the reign of George II. by the Lord Lyttelton of
that day famous as a historian and a poet. Dr. Johnson said of it
that it is "a treatise to which infidelity has never been able to
fabricate a specious answer." It will be found reprinted in a
cheap and handy shape by the Religious Tract Society, with a
valuable preface by the well-known Henry Rogers. Lord Lyttelton
touches upon the subject of the light seen by St. Paul on p. 164,
and then adds, "That God should work miracles for the
establishment of a most holy religion which, from the insuperable
difficulties that stood in the way of it, could not have
established itself without such an assistance, is no way repugnant
to human reason; but that without any miracles such things (as the
light above the brightness of the sun and St. Paul's blindness)
should have happened as no adequate natural causes can be assigned
for is what human reason cannot believe."
[33] See Exod. iii., Isa. vi., and Dan. x.
[34] Here it may be well to point out that people should not fancy
that their own spiritual experience must necessarily be like St.
Paul's. Some persons have troubled themselves because they could
not say that they had passed exactly through the same religious
feelings and struggles as St. Paul's. But as no two leaves are
alike and as no two careers are exactly parallel, so no two
spiritual experiences are exactly the same. The true course for
any individual to adopt is not to strive and see whether God's
dealings with himself and the response which his own spirit has
made to the Divine Voice have been exactly like those of others.
His true course is rather to strive and ascertain whether he is
now really following, obeying, and loving God. He may leave all
inquiry as to the methods by which God has guided his soul into
the paths of peace to be hereafter resolved in the clear light of
eternity. Some God awakens, as He did St. Paul, by an awful
catastrophe; others grow up before Him from infancy like Samuel
and Timothy; others God gradually changes from sin and worldliness
to peace and righteousness, like Jacob of old time.
Then, again, we have the voice that was heard. Difficulties have been
also raised in this direction. In the ninth chapter St. Luke states
that the attendant escort "heard a voice"; in the twenty-second
chapter St. Paul states "they that were with me beheld indeed the
light, but they heard not the voice of Him that spake to me." This
inconsistency is, however, a mere surface one. Just as it was in the
case of our Lord Himself reported in John xii. 28, 29, where the
multitude heard a voice but understood not its meaning, some saying
that it thundered, others that an angel had spoken, while Christ alone
understood and interpreted it; so it was in St. Paul's case; the
escort heard a noise, but the Apostle alone understood the sounds, and
for him alone they formed articulate words, by him alone was heard
the voice of Him that spake. And the cause of this is explained by St.
Paul himself in chapter xxvi., verse 14, where he tells King Agrippa
that the voice spake to him in the Hebrew tongue, the ancient Hebrew
that is, which St. Paul as a learned rabbinical scholar could
understand, but which conveyed no meaning to the members of the
temple-police, the servants, and constables of the Sanhedrin who
accompanied him.[35] Many other questions have here been raised and
difficulties without end propounded, because we are dealing with a
region of man's nature and of God's domain, wherewith we have but
little acquaintance and to which the laws of ordinary philosophy do
not apply. Was the voice which Paul heard, was the vision of Christ
granted to him, subjective or objective? is, for instance, one of such
idle queries. We know, indeed, that these terms subjective and
objective have a meaning for ordinary life. Subjective in such a
connexion means that which has its origin, its rise, its existence
wholly within man's soul; objective that which comes from without and
has its origin outside man's nature. Objective, doubtless, St. Paul's
revelation was in this sense. His revelation must have come from
outside, or else how do we account for the conversion of the
persecuting Sanhedrist, and that in a moment? He had withstood every
other influence, and now he yields himself in a moment the lifelong
willing captive of Christ when no human voice or argument or presence
is near. But then, if asked how did he see Christ when he was blinded
with the heavenly glory? how did he speak to Christ when even the
escort stood speechless? we confess then that we are landed in a
region of which we are totally ignorant and are merely striving to
intrude into the things unseen. But who is there that will now assert
that the human eye is the only organ by which man can see? that the
human tongue is the only organ by which the spirit can converse? The
investigations of modern psychology have taught men to be somewhat
more modest than they were a generation or two ago, when man in his
conceit thought that he had gained the very utmost limits of science
and of knowledge. These investigations have led men to realise that
there are vast tracts of an unknown country, man's spiritual and
mental nature, yet to be explored, and even then there must always
remain regions where no human student can ever venture and whence no
traveller can ever return to tell the tale. But all these regions are
subject to God's absolute sway, and vain will be our efforts to
determine the methods of his actions in a sphere of which we are
well-nigh completely ignorant. For the Christian it will be sufficient
to accept on the testimony of St. Paul, confirmed by Ananias, his
earliest Christian teacher, that Jesus Christ was seen by him,[36] and
that a voice was heard for the first time in the silence of his soul
which never ceased to speak until the things of time and sense were
exchanged for the full fruition of Christ's glorious presence.
[35] The Rev. Dr. Abbott, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, in a
learned work, _Biblical Essays_, lately published, pp. 142 and
146, points out that the lower classes of the Jewish population
did not understand the ancient Hebrew, a knowledge of which was in
his opinion confined to a few scholars. Cf. also p. 168, where he
writes, "It deserves to be noticed that for the vast majority of
the Palestinians the Greek Bible was the only one accessible. The
knowledge of the ancient Hebrew was confined to a few scholars, in
addition to which the Hebrew books were extremely expensive."
[36] There is nothing about St. Paul's seeing the Lord in the
narrative of the conversion in Acts ix. 4-7; but St. Paul asserts
that he saw Christ, in his speech before Agrippa, when he
represents our Lord as saying (xxvi. 16): "For to this end have I
_appeared_ unto thee to appoint thee a minister," etc. And again
in 1 Cor. xv. 8, "And last of all, as unto one born out of due
time, He _appeared_ to me also"; with which should be compared the
words of Ananias (ix. 17): "The Lord who _appeared_ unto thee in
the way which thou camest"; and those of Barnabas (ix. 27): "But
Barnabas declared unto them how Saul had _seen_ the Lord in the
way." The reader would do well to consult Lewin's _St. Paul_, vol.
i., ch. iv., p. 50, for a learned note concerning the apparent
inconsistencies in the various narratives of the conversion.
And then, lastly, we have the conversation held with the trembling
penitent. St. Luke's account of it in the ninth chapter is much
briefer than St. Paul's own fuller statement in the twenty-sixth
chapter, and much of it will most naturally come under our notice at a
subsequent period. Here, however, we note the expressive fact that the
very name by which the future apostle was addressed by the Lord was
Hebrew: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me." It is a point that our
English translation cannot bring out, no matter how accurate. In the
narrative hitherto the name used has been the Greek form, and he has
been regularly called Σαῦλος. But now the Lord appeals to
the very foundations of his religious life, and throws him back upon
the thought and manifestation of God as revealed of old time to His
greatest leader and champion under the old covenant, to Moses in the
bush; and so Christ uses not his Greek name but the Hebrew, Σαούλ,
Σαούλ. Then we have St. Paul's query, "Who art Thou, Lord?" coupled
with our Lord's reply, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest," or, as St.
Paul himself puts it in Acts xxii. 8, "I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom
thou persecutest." Ancient expositors have well noted the import of
this language. Saul asks who is speaking to him, and the answer is
not, The Eternal Word who is from everlasting, the Son of the Infinite
One who ruleth in the heavens. Saul would have acknowledged at once
that his efforts were not aimed at Him. But the speaker cuts right
across the line of Saul's prejudices and feelings, for He says, "I am
Jesus of Nazareth," whom you hate so intensely and against whom all
your efforts are aimed, emphasizing those points against which his
Pharisaic prejudices must have most of all revolted. As an ancient
English commentator who lived more than a thousand years ago, treating
of this passage, remarks with profound spiritual insight, Saul is
called in these words to view the depths of Christ's humiliation that
he may lay aside the scales of his own spiritual pride.[37] And then
finally we have Christ identifying Himself with His people, and
echoing for us from heaven the language and teaching He had used upon
earth. "I am Jesus of Nazareth whom thou persecutest" are words
embodying exactly the same teaching as the solemn language in the
parable of the Judgment scene contained in Matthew xxv. 31-46:
"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these My brethren, ye did it unto
Me." Christ and His people are evermore one; their trials are His
trials, their sorrows are His sorrows, their strength is His strength.
What marvellous power to sustain the soul, to confirm the weakness, to
support and quicken the fainting courage of Christ's people, we find
in this expression, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest"! They enable us
to understand the undaunted spirit which henceforth animated the new
convert, and declare the secret spring of those triumphant
expressions, "In all these things we are more than conquerors,"
"Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ." If Christ in the supra-sensuous world and we in the world of
time are eternally one, what matter the changes and chances of earth,
the persecutions and trials of time? They may inflict upon us a little
temporary inconvenience, but they are all shared by One whose love
makes them His own and whose grace amply sustains us beneath their
burden. Christ's people faint not therefore, for they are looking not
at the things seen, which are temporal, but at the things unseen,
which are eternal.
[37] See Cornelius à Lapide on Acts ix. 5, quoting from Bede; and
St. Chrysostom in Cramer's _Catena_, p. 152, as quoted in
Conybeare and Howson's _St. Paul_, vol. i., ch. iii., p. 111
(London, 1877).