The life and work of St. Paul

THE RETIREMENT OF ST. PATTL.
considerations lead us to think likely in the case of one circumstanced as Sanl
of Tarsus was after his sudden and strange conversion? The least likely
course the one which would place him at the greatest distance from all deep
and earnest spirits who have passed through a similar crisis would be for him
to have plunged at once into the arena of controversy, and to have passed,
without pause or breathing-space, from the position of a leading persecutor
into that of a prominent champion. In the case of men of shallow nature, or
superficial convictions, such a proceeding is possible ; but we cannot imagine it
of St. Paul. It is not thus with souls which have been arrested in mid-career
by the heart-searching voice of God. Just as an eagle which has been drenched
and battered by some fierce storm will alight to plume its ruffled wings, so
when a great soul has " passed through fire and through water " it needs some
safe and quiet place in which to rest. The lifelong convictions of any man
may be reversed in an instant, and that sudden reversion often causes a
marvellous change ; but it is never in an instant that the whole nature and
character of a man are transformed from what they were before. It is difficult
to conceive of any change more total, any rift of difference more deep, than
and we are
that which separated Saul the persecutor from Paul the Apostle ;
sure that like Moses, like Elijah, like our Lord Himself, like almost every
great soul in ancient or modern times to whom has been entrusted the task of
swaying the destinies by moulding the convictions of mankind like Sakya
Mouni, like Mahomet in the cave of Hira, like St. Francis of Assisi in his
sickness, like Luther in the monastery of Erfurdt he would need a quiet
period in which to elaborate his thoughts, to still the tumult of his emotions,
to commune in secrecy and in silence with his own soul. It was necessary for
him to understand the Scriptures to co-ordinate his old with ;
his new beliefs.
It is hardly too much to say that if Saul ignorant as yet of many essential
truths of Christianity, alien as yet from the experience of its deepest power
had begun at once to argue with and to preach to others, he could hardly have
done the work he did. To suppose that the truths of which afterwards ho
became the appointed teacher were all revealed to him as by one flash of light
in all their fulness, is to suppose that which is alien to God's dealings with the
human soul, and which utterly contradicts the phenomena of that long series
of Epistles in which we watch the progress of his thoughts. Even on grounds
of historic probability, it seems unlikely that Saul should at once have been
able to substitute a propaganda for an inquisition.
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Under such circumstances
it would have been difficult for the brethren to trust, and still more difficult
for the Jews to tolerate him. The latter would have treated him as a shame-
less i-enegade, 1 the former would have mistrusted him as a secret spy.
We might, perhaps, have expected that Saul would have stayed quietly
among the Christians at Damascus, mingling unobtrusively in their meetings,
listening to them, learning of them, taking at their love-feasts the humblest
place. We can hardly suppose that he cherished, in these first days of his
1 They would have called him a irno, one who had abandoned hia religions conviction*.