Thus did the commissioned persecutor enter the ancient capital of Aram.
But as they led him along the flowery ways into this Syrian paradise,
how vain were its splendors, its beauties and its historic glories,
to the eyes which had so long strained over the far horizon, to catch
the first gleam of its white towers and rosy gardens, beyond the
mountain-walls. In vain did Damascus invite the admiring gaze of the
passing traveler, to those _damask_ roses embowering and hedging his
path, which take their name in modern times, from the gardens where
they first bloomed under the hand of man. In vain did their fragrance
woo his nobler sense to perceive their beauty of form and hue; in vain
did the long line of palaces and towers and temples, still bright in
the venerable splendor of the ancient Aramaic kings, rise in majesty
before him. The eyes that had so often dwelt on these historical
monuments, in the distant and brilliant fancies of studious youth,
were now closed to the not less brilliant splendors of the reality;
and through the ancient arches of those mighty gates, and along the
crowded streets, amid the noise of bustling thousands, the commissioned
minister of wrath now moved distressed, darkened, speechless and
horror-struck,――marked, like the first murderer, (of whose crime that
spot was the fabled scene,) by the hand of God. The hand of God was
indeed on him, not in wrath, but in mercy, sealing his abused bodily
vision for a short space, until his mental eyes, purified from the
scales of prejudice and unholy zeal, should have become fitted for
the perception of objects, whose beauty and glory should be the theme
of his thoughts and words, through all his later days, and of his
discourse to millions for whom his heart now felt no love, but for
whose salvation he was destined to freely spend and offer up his life.
Passing along the crowded ways of the great city, under the guidance
of his attendants, he was at last led into the street, which for its
regularity was called the “STRAIGHT WAY,” and there was lodged in
the house of a person named Judas,――remaining for three days in utter
darkness, without the presence of a single friend, and without the
glimmer of a hope that he should ever again see the light of day.
Disconsolate and desolate, he passed the whole of this period in
fasting, without one earthly object or call, to distract his attention
from the solemn themes of his heavenly vision. He had all this long
interval for reflection on the strange reversion of destiny pointed out
by this indisputable decree, which summoned him from works of cruelty
and destruction, to deeds of charity, kindness and devotion to those
whose ruin he had lately sought with his whole heart. At the close
of this season of lonely but blessed meditation, a new revelation of
the commanding presence of the Deity was made to a humble and devout
Christian of Damascus, named Ananias, known even among the Jews as a
man of blameless character. To him, in a vision, the Lord appeared, and
calling him by name, directed him most minutely to the house where Saul
was lodging, and gave him the miraculous commission of restoring to
sight that same Saul, now deprived of this sense by the visitation of
God, but expecting its restoration by the hands of Ananias himself, who
though yet unknown to him in the body, had been distinctly seen in a
vision by the blind sufferer, as his healer, in the name of that Jesus
who had met him in the way and smote him with this blindness, dazzling
him with the excess of his unveiled heavenly glories. Ananias, yet
appalled by the startling view of the bright messenger, and doubting
the nature of the vision which summoned him to a duty so strangely
inconsistent with the dreadful fame and character of the person named
as the subject of his miraculous ministrations, hesitated to promise
obedience, and parleyed with his summoner. “Lord! I have heard by many,
of this man, how much evil he has done to thy saints at Jerusalem; and
here, he has commission from the chief priests to bind all that call
on thy name.” The merciful Lord, not resenting the rational doubts
of his devout but alarmed servant, replied in words of considerate
explanation, renewing his charge, with assurances of the safe and
hopeful accomplishment of his appointed task. “Go thy way: for he is a
chosen instrument of mercy for me, to bear my name before nations and
kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how great things
he must suffer for the sake of my name.” Ananias, no longer doubting,
now went his way as directed, and finding Saul, clearly addressed him
in terms of confidence and even of affection, recognizing him, on the
testimony of the vision, as already a friend of those companions of
Jesus, whom he had lately persecuted. He put his hands on him, in the
usual form of invoking a blessing on any one, and said, “Brother Saul!
the Lord Jesus, who appeared to thee in the way, as thou camest, has
sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with a
holy spirit.” And immediately there fell from the eyes of the blinded
persecutor, something like scales, and he saw now, in bodily, real
presence, him who had already been in form revealed to his spirit, in
a vision. At the same moment, fell from his inward sense, the obscuring
film of prejudice and bigotry. Renewed in mental vision, he saw with
the clear eye of confiding faith and eternal hope, that Jesus, who
in the full revelation of his vindictive majesty having dazzled and
blinded him in his murderous career, now appeared to his purified sense,
in the tempered rays and mild effulgence of redeeming grace. Changed
too, in the whole frame of his mind, he felt no more the promptings
of that dark spirit of cruelty, but, filled with a holy spirit, before
unknown to him, he began a new existence, replete with the energies of
a divine influence. No longer fasting in token of distress, he now ate,
by way of thanksgiving for his joyful restoration, and was strengthened
thereby for the great task which he had undertaken. He was now admitted
to the fellowship of the disciples of Jesus, and remained many days
among them as a brother, mingling in the most friendly intercourse with
those very persons, against whom he came to wage exterminating ruin.
Nor did he confine his actions in his new character to the privacies of
Christian intercourse. Going immediately into the synagogues, he there
publicly proclaimed his belief in Jesus Christ, and boldly maintained
him to be the Son of God. Great was the amazement of all who heard him.
The fame of Saul of Tarsus, as a ferocious and determined persecutor of
all who professed the faith of Jesus, had already pervaded Palestine,
and spread into Syria; and what did this strange display now mean? They
saw him, whom they had thus known by his dreadful reputation as a hater
and exterminator of the Nazarene doctrine, now preaching it in the
schools of the Jewish law and the houses of worship for the adherents
of Mosaic forms, and with great power persuading others to a similar
renunciation of all opposition to the name of Jesus; and they said, “Is
not this he who destroyed them that called on this name in Jerusalem,
and came hither, with the very purpose of taking them bound, to the
Sanhedrim, for punishment?” But Saul, each day advancing in the
knowledge and faith of the Christian doctrine, soon grew too strong in
argument for the most skilful of the defenders of the Jewish faith; and
utterly confounded them with his proofs that Jesus was the very Messiah.
This triumphant course he followed for a long time; until, at last,
the stubborn Jews, provoked to the highest degree by the defeats which
they had suffered from this powerful disputant, lately their most
zealous defender, took counsel to put him to death, as a renegade from
the faith, of which he had been the trusted professor, as well as the
commissioned minister of its vengeance on the heretics whose cause he
had now espoused, and was defending, to the great injury and discredit
of the Judaical order. In contriving the means of executing this scheme,
they received the support and assistance of the government of the
city,――Damascus being then held, not by the Romans, but by Aretas, a
petty king of northern Arabia. The governor appointed by Aretas did not
scruple to aid the Jews in their murderous project; but even himself,
with a detachment of the city garrison, kept watch at the gates, to
kill Saul at his first outgoing. But all their wicked plots were set
at nought by a very simple contrivance. The Christian friends of Saul,
hearing of the danger, determined to remove him from it at once; and
accordingly, one night, put the destined apostle of the Gentiles in
a basket; and through the window of some one of their houses, which
adjoined the barriers of the city, they let him down outside of the
wall, while the spiteful Jews, with the complaisant governor and his
detachment of the city guard, were to no purpose watching the gates
with unceasing resolution, to wreak their vengeance on this dangerous
convert.
Michaelis alludes to the difficulties which have arisen about
the possession of Damascus by Aretas, and concludes as follows:
“The force of these objections has been considerably weakened,
in a dissertation published in 1755, ‘De ethnarcha Aretae Arabum
regis Paulo insidiante,’ by J. G. Heyne, who has shown it to be
highly probable, first, that Aretas, against whom the Romans,
not long before the death of Tiberius, made a declaration of war,
which they neglected to put in execution, took the opportunity
of seizing Damascus, which had once belonged to his ancestors;
an event omitted in Josephus, as forming no part of the Jewish
history, and by the Roman historians as being a matter not
flattering in itself, and belonging only to a distant province.
Secondly, that Aretas was by religion a Jew,――a circumstance
the more credible, when we reflect that Judaism had been widely
propagated in that country, and that even kings in Arabia Felix
had recognized the law of Moses. * * * And hence we may explain
the reason why the Jews were permitted to exercise, in Damascus,
persecutions still severer than those in Jerusalem, where the
violence of their zeal was awed by the moderation of the Roman
policy. Of this we find an example in the ninth chapter of the
Acts, where Paul is sent by the high priest to Damascus, to
exercise against the Christians, cruelties which the return of
the Roman governor had checked in Judea. These accounts agree
likewise with what is related in Josephus, that the number of
Jews in Damascus amounted to ten thousand, and that almost all
the women, even those whose husbands were heathens, were of the
Jewish religion.” (Michaelis, Introduction, Vol. IV. Part I. c.
ii. § 12.)