The life and work of St. Paul

114 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
of Judas, and while his very presence seemed to breathe peaco, he addressed the
sufferer by the dear title of brother, and laying his hands upon the clouded
eyes, bade him rise, and see, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. " Be baptised,"
he added, " and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord." The
words of blessing and trust were to the troubled nerves and aching heart of
the sufferer a healing in themselves. Immediately " there fell from his eyes as
it had been scales." l He rose, and saw, and took food and was strengthened,
and received from the hands of his humble brother that sacrament by which
he was admitted into the full privileges of the new faith. He became a member
of the Church of Christ, the extirpation of which had been for months the
most passionate desire and the most active purpose of his life.
Fruitful indeed must have been the conversation which he held with
Ananias, and doubtless with other brethren, in the delicious calni that followed
this heart-shaking moment of conviction. In those days Ananias must
more and more have confirmed him in the high destiny which the voice of
revelation had also marked out to himself. "What became of his commission ;
what ho did with the High Priest's letters ; how his subordinates demeaned
themselves ; what alarming reports they took back to Jerusalem ; with what
eyes he was regarded by the Judaic synagogues of Damascus, we do not
know but we do know that in those ;
days, whether they wore few or many, it
became more and more clear to him that " God had chosen him to know His
will, and see that Just One, and hear the voice of His mouth, and be His
witness unto all men of what he had seen and heard." 2
And here let me pause to say that it is impossible to exaggerate the im-
portance of St. Paul's conversion as one of the evidences of Christianity.
That he should have passed, by one flash of conviction, not only from, dark-
ness to light, but from one direction of life to the very opposite, is not only
characteristic of the man, but evidential of the power and significance of
Christianity. That the same man who, just before, was persecuting Christianity
with the most violent hatred, should come all at once to believe in Him
whose followers he had been seeking to destroy, and that in this faith he
should become a " new creature " what is this but a victory which Chris-
tianity owed to nothing but the spell of its own inherent power ? Of all
who have been converted to the faith of Christ, there is not one in whose case
the Christian principle broke so immediately through everything opposed to
it, and asserted so absolutely its triumphant eupericiity. Henceforth to Paul
Christianity was summed up in the one word Christ. And to what does
he testify respecting Jesus P To almost every single primarily important
fact respecting His Incarnation, Life, Sufferings, Betrayal, Last Supper, Trial,
Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Heavenly Exaltation. 3 We com-
1 There is a remarkable parallel in Tob. ad. 13, K