The life and work of St. Paul

THE CONVERSION OF SAUL. 103
But the gliosts of these obstinate questionings would not always be so
laid. As long as he had work to do he could crush by passion and energy
such obtruding fancies. But when his work was done when there were in
Jerusalem no more Hellenists to persecute when even the Galilaeans had fled
or boon silenced, or been slain then such doubls would again thicken round
him, and ho would hear the approach of them like the sound of a stealthy
footfall on the turf. Was it not this that kindled his excessive madness this
that made him still breathe out threats and blood ? Was not this a part of
the motive which had driven him to the wily Sadducoo with the demand for
a fresh commission ? Would not this work for the Law protect him from the
perplexing complications of a will that plunged and struggled to resist the
agonising goad-thrusts of a ruinous misgiving ?
But now that he was journeying day after day towards Damascus, how
could he save himself from his own thoughts P Ho could not converse with
the attendants who were to execute his decisions. They wero mere subordinates
mere apparitors of the Sanhedrin members, perhaps, of the
Temple guard ignorant Lovites, whose function it would be to dr.ig with
them on his retum the miserable gang of trembling heretics. Wo may be
sure that the vacuity of thought in which most men live was for Saul a thing
impossible. Ho could not help meditating as the sages bade the religious Jew
to meditate, on the precepts and promises of his own Law. For the first timo
perhaps since he had encountered Stephen he had the uninterrupted leisure to
face the whole question calmly and seriously, in the solitude of thoughts
which could no longer be sophisticated by the applause of Pharisaic partisans.
He was forced to go up into the dark tribunal of his own conscience, and set
himself before himself. More terrible by far was the solemnity, more impartial
the judgment of that stern session, than those either of the Jewish
Sanhedrin, or of that other Areopagus in wliich he would one day stand. If
if the cancer of conceit or
there be in the character any seriousness at all ;
vice have not eaten out all of the heart that is not frivolous and base, then
how many a man's intellectual conclusions, how many a man's moral life has
been completely changed and for how many would they not at this moment
be completely changed by the necessity for serious reflection during a few
days of unbroken leisure ?
And so we may be quite sure that day after day, as he rode on under the
morning sunlight or the bright stars of an Eastern night, the thoughts of
Saul would be overwhelmingly engaged. They would wander back over the
past; they would glance sadly at the future. Those were happy years in Tarsus ;
happy walks in childhood beside " "
the silver Cydnus ; happy hours in the
school of Gamaliel, where there first dawned upon his soul the glories of Moses
and Solomon, of the Law and the Temple, of the Priesthood and the chosen
race. Those were golden days when he listened to the promised triumphs of
the Messiah, and was told how near was that day when the Holy Land should
be exalted as the Lady of kingdoms, and when the vaunted strength of Rome,
which now lay so heavy on his subjugated people, should be shattered like