The life and work of St. Paul

100 THE LIFE AND WOBK OF ST. PAUL.
early days before the Ascension, with doors closed, for fear of the Jews.
Some of the Christians had suffered cruelly for their religion ; the faithless
members of the Church had doubtless apostatised ; the majority had fled at
once before the storm. 1
It is, perhaps, to indicate the continuance of this active hostility that St.
Luke here inserts the narrative of Philip's preaching as a fitting prelude to
the work of the Apostle of the Gentiles. At this narrative we shall glance
hereafter ; but now we must follow the career of Saul the Inquisitor, and see
the marvellous event which, by one lightning flash, made him "a fusile
Apostle" which in one day transformed Saul the persecutor into Paul the
slave of Jesus Christ.
His work in Jerusalem was over. The brethren who remained had either
eluded his search-warrant, or been rescued from his power. But the young
zealot was not the man to do anything by halves. If he had smitten one head
of the hydra, 2 it had grown up in new places. If ho had torn up the heresy
by the roots from the Holy City, the winged seeds had alighted
on other
fertile ground, and the rank weed was still luxuriant elsewhere ; so that, in his
outrageous madness it is his own expression 3 ho began to pursue them
even to foreign cities. Damascus, ho had heard, was now the worst nest of
this hateful delusion, and fortunately in that city he could find scope for
action ; for the vast multitude of Jews which it contained acknowledged
allegiance to the Sanhedrin. To the High Priest, therefore, he went unsated
by all his previous cruelties, and in a frame of mind so hot with rage that
again it can only be described by the unparalleled phrase that he was " breathing
threats and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," 4 The High Priest
in all probability Thowphilus, who was promoted by Vitellius at the Pentecost
of A.D. 37 5 was a Sadducee, and a son of the hated house of Hanan. Yet it
was with Saul, and not with Theophilus, that the demand originated, to pursue
the heresy to Damascus. 6 Not sorry to find so thorough an instrument in one
who belonged to a different school from his own not sorry that the guilty
responsibility for " this man's blood " should be shared by Sadducees with the
followers of Hillel Theophilus gave the lettprs which authorised Saul to set
up his court at Damascus, and to bring from thence in chains all whom he
could find, both men and women, to await such mercy as Stephen's murder
might lead them to hope for at the hands of the supreme tribunal.7 In ordinary
1 This is implied In the iv iKtivy rfj ^'p?, and in the aorist Sietrirapijo-av of Acts viii. 1.
2 Domitian and Maximin struck medals of Hercules and the Hydra with the inscription
" Deleta religione Christiana quae orbem turbabat."
3 Acts XXVI. 11, irepKTcrw? cjUTuupopei'Ot avrotfr
* Acts IX. 1, tfiirvetav arri.\ii)? xai fywov.
6 Jos. Antt. xviii. 5, 3.
6 Acts ix. 2, "If he should find any of the way." The word Xpt