The life and work of St. Paul

112 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PATJL.
brightness had, as it were, smitten him to the very earth with remorse by the
sense of this awful truth,
" But rise," it continued, and " stand upon thy
feot, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do."
This is the form in which the words are, with trivial differences, given in
St. Luke's narrative, and in St. Paul's speech from the steps of Antonia. In
his speech before Agrippa, it might seem as if more had been spoken then.
But in this instance again it may be doubted whether, after the first appalling
question, " Shaul, Shaul, why persecutest thou Me ? " which remained branded
so vividly upon his heart, Paul could himself have said how much of the revelation
which henceforth transfigured his life was derived from the actual moment
when he lay blinded and trembling on the ground, and how much from the
subsequent hours of deep external darkness and brightening inward light. In
the annals of human lives there have been other spiritual crises analogous to
this in their startling suddenness, in their absolute finality. To many the
resurrection from the death of sin is a slow and life-long process ; but others
pass with one thrill of conviction, with one spasm of energy, from death to
life, from the power of Satan unto God. Such moments crowd eternity into
an hour, and stretch an hour into eternity.
" At such high hours
Of inspiration from the Living God
Thought is not."
When God's awful warnings burn before the soul in letters of flame, it can read
them indeed, and know their meaning to the very uttermost, but it does not
know, and it does not care, whether it was Perez or Upharsin that was written
on the wall. The utterances of the Eternal Sibyl are inscribed on records
scattered and multitudinous as are the forest leaves. As the anatomist may
dissect every joint and lay bare every nerve of the organism, yet be infinitely
distant from any discovery of the principle of life, so the critic and grammarian
may decipher the dim syllables and wrangle about the disputed discrepancies,
but it is not theirs to interpret. If we would in truth understand such
spiritual experiences, the records of them must be read by a was on land or sea.
light that never
Saul rose another man : he had fallen in death, he rose in life ; ho had
fallen in the midst of things temporal, he rose in awful consciousness of the
things eternal ; he had fallen a proud, intolerant, persecuting Jew, he rose a
humble, broken-hearted, penitent Christian. In that moment a new element
had been added to his being. Henceforth to use his own deep and dominant
expression ho was " in Christ." God had found him ; Jesus had spoken to
him, and in one flash changed him from a raging Pharisee into a true disciple
' from the murderer ofJ/he saints into the Apostle of the Gentiles. It was a
new birth, a new creation. As we read the story of it, if we have one touch of
reverence within our souls, shall we not take off our shoos from ofE our feet,
for the place whorcon we stand is holy ground ?
Saul rose, and all was dark. The dazzling vision had pa=sod away, and