The life and work of St. Paul

THE CONVERSION OF SAUL. 109
it was the very crisis and most intense moment of his life. Others might hint
at explanations or whisper doubt: 1 Saul knew. At that instant God had
shown him His secret and His covenant. God had found him ; had flung him
to the ground in the career of victorious outrage, to lead him henceforth
in triumph, a willing spectacle to angels and to men. 2 God had spoken
to him, had struck him into darkness out of the noonday, only that Ho might
kindle a noon in the midnight of his heart. From that moment Saul
was converted. A change total, utter, final had passed over him, had
transformed him. God had called him, had revealed His Son in him, 3 had
given him grace and power to become an Apostle to the Gentiles, had sent
him forth to preach the faith which he had once destroyed, had shone in his
heart to give " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ."*
And the means of this mighty change all lay in this one fact : at that
awful moment he had seen the Lord Jesus Christ. 6 To him the persecutor to
him as to the abortive-born of the Apostolic family 6 the risen, the glorified
Jesus had appeared. Ho had "been apprehended by Christ." On that
appearance all his faith was founded ; on that pledge of resurrection of immortality
to himself, and to the dead who die in Christ all his hopes were
anchored. 7 If that belief were unsubstantial, then all his life and all his labours
were a delusion and a snare he was a wretch more to be pitied than the
wretchedest of the children of the world. But if an angel from heaven
preached a different doctrine it was false, for he had been taught by the revelation
of Jesus Christ, and if this hope were vain, then to him
" The pillared firmament was rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble."
The strength of this conviction became the leading force in Paul's future
life. He tells us that when the blaze of glory lightened round him he was
struck to the earth, and there he remained till the voice bade him rise, and
when he rose his eyes were blinded ; he opened them on darkness. Had he
been asked about the long controversies which have arisen in modern days, as
to whether the appearance of the Risen Christ to him was objective or subjective,
I am far from sure that he would even have understood them. 8 He
uses indeed of this very event the term " "
vision." I was not disobedient,"
ho says to King Agrippa, " to the heavenly vision." 9 But the word used for
1 We trace a sort of hesitating sneer in the Clementine Homilies, xvii. 13, "He who
believes a vision .... may indeed be deceived by an evil demon, .... which
really is "
nothing, and if he asks who it is that appears [with an allusion to ils el, Ku'ptc;
" "
(is.. 5)], it can answer what it will ; with very much more to the same effect.
2 2 Cor. ii. 14.
8 Acts xxii. 21 ; xxvi. 17, 18 ; Gal. L 15, 16.
4 2 Cor. iv. 6.
5 1 Cor. ix. 1 xv. 8 ; ; v. supra, p. 41 seq.
8
1 Cor. xv. 8. 71 Cor. xv. 1029. See 2 Cor. xii. 1.
9 Acts xxvi. 19, rg ovpavitf oirroo-i^. When Zacharias came out of the Temple speechless,
the people recognised that he had seen an imraa-ia (Luke L 22). The women returning
from the tomb say they have seen an oirrao-ia ayye'Xa.i' (Luke xxiv. 23). The word, then, La
peculiar to Luke and the Acts, as are so many words. It is, however, the word used in