The life and work of St. Paul

SAtft'S RECEPTION AT JERUSALEM, 135
combinations. It was natural that the Church should not only desire to save
Said's life, but also to avoid the danger of a fresh outbreak. Tot it was not
without a struggle, and a distinct intimation that auch was the will of God,
that Saul yielded to the solicitations of his brethren. How deeply he felt this
compulsory flight may be seen in the bitterness with which he alludes to 1
it
even after the lapse of many years. He had scarcely been a fortnight in
Jerusalem when the intensity of his prayers and emotions ended in a trance, 2
during which he again saw the Divine figure and heard the Divine voice
which had arrested his mad progress towards the gates of Damascus. " Make
"
instant haste, and depart in speed from Jerusalem," said Jesus to him for
;
they will not receive thy testimony concerning Me." But to Saul it seemed
incredible that his testimony could be resisted. If the vision of the risen
Christ by which he had been converted was an argument which, from the
nature of the case, could not, alone, be convincing to others, yet it seemed to
Saul that, knowing what they did know of his intellectual power, and
contrasting his present earnestness with his former persecution, they could
not but listen to such a teacher as himself. He longed also to undo, so far as
in him lay, the misery and mischief of the past havoc he had wrought. But
however deep may have been his yearnings, however ardent his hopes, the
answer came, brief and peremptory, "Go! for I will send thee forth afar to
the Gentiles." 3
All reluctance was now at an end ; and we can see what at the time must
have been utterly dark and mysterious to St. Paul that the coldness with
which he was received at Jerusalem, and the half-apparent desire to
precipitate his departure events so alien to his own plans and wishes, that he
pleads even against the Divine voice which enforced the indications of
circumstance wore part of a deep providential design. Tears afterward,
when St. Paul " stood pilloried on infamy's high stage," he was able with one
of his strongest asseverations to appeal to the brevity of his stay in
Jerusalem, and the paucity of those with whom he had any intercourse, in
that it was not from the Church of Jerusalem that he had received his
proof
commission, and not to the Apostles at Jerusalem that he owed his alle-
giance. But though at present all this was unforeseen by him, he yielded to
the suggestions of his brethren, and scarcely a fortnight after his arrival they
not, perhaps, wholly sorry to part with one whose presence was a source of
many embarrassments conducted him to the coast town of Csesarea Stratonis 4
1 1 Thess. ii. 15, " who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and drove
US OUt " (jj/iaj exOKoJarrwy).
2 Acts xsii. 17.
3 Acts xsii. 17 21. The omission of this vision In the direct narrative of Acts ix. is
a proof that silence as to this or that occurrence in the brief narrative of St. Luke must
not be taken as a proof that he was unaware of the event which he omits. "We also may
note, in this passage, the first appearance of the interesting word fiaprvt. Here doubtless
"
but it contains the germ of its later sense of one
it has its primary sense of " witness ;
who testified to Christ by voluntary death.
4 That he was not sent to Csesarca PhUippi IB almost too obvious to need argument.
Neither xaT^yayov, which means a going downwards i.e., to the coast nor efaireVmAa*,