implied among us in the term 'Pharisee,' indelibly marks the party in which Saul had been brought up. We know how all their outward show of religion, and rigorous exaction of its forms, was unerringly detected as a 'making void the commandments of God by their tradition,' and drew on them that condensed malediction of Him who could not be deceived,- Pharisees! hypocrites!'

pocrisy.

47

It was a fearful atmosphere for the moral training of the future Apostle, since 'hypocrisy,' under all conditions, (and therefore Saul's had been no exception,) involves a separation of the moral and religious perceptions. Fatal as this had been, even among Its Hythe heathen, it was more inexcusable in those to whom God had been so distinctly revealed, and hence it was justly said, that men could not approach the Gospel unless their righteousness should exceed that of Pharisees.' It was equivalent to saying, that if a form of religion dominates without respect to that which nature itself tells of whatsoever is true, lovely, praiseworthy, and pure,' the character of its professors refuses elevation. In them, the sense of right and wrong is ruled from without. In a zealot, for instance, who consents to a law of corban,' (Example.) the divorce of religion and goodness is complete. If such were Pharisaism, then the better the Pharisee, perhaps the worse the man. In a heathen philosopher the ethical idea might have some reality, however faint; in the Pharisee, as thus conceived, it is literally superseded, so that darkness may be light and light darkness.'

h Lect. III. p. 90.

of course

possible.

And in the straitest sect of that religion' we first find Saul of Tarsus. If he were ever to become a Christian, it was from that 'straitest sect' he had Exceptions to be converted. This is not the place to enquire how in Pharisaism, as in other forms of religion, the natural conscience, aided by Divine grace, sometimes rose superior to the formal system; we can but deal with the system itself. The early beginnings of Saul were in harmony with his Pharisaism, as he himself intimates; and he was for some time most 'injurious' to the new faith, as a violent per

S. Paul

before his

secutor.

He had been present, as a youth, at the martyrdom conversion. of S. Stephen, and we find him, some four or five years afterwards, a young Rabbi full of the ardour of his party, officially deputed from the high priest to the synagogue of the Syrian capital, to arrest, imprison, or even put to death, any Jews who had joined the new Galilæan sect. We have no reason to think that up to that time he had at all examined 'the evidences' of the Gospel; and he rather represents himself as an unthinking devotee of the popular Judaism, accepting its heartiest prejudices Acts xxvi. 9. against the very Name of Jesus of Nazareth.' It was no consideration of the claims of our Lord as the Messiah of prophecy, no reasoning or calm investigation that now reversed the convictions of his life and made him a Christian. Clearly there was no time for anything of the kind. Let us hear his own account of his conversion.

Nothing can well exceed the simplicity with which,

sion.

on all occasions, he tells the unanswerable facts, as if defying contradiction from those who had commissioned him with his party of attendants from Jerusalem to Damascus. On the way, and as he His conver'drew near,' when passing therefore the gardenground within a walk of the city, he was stopped by a light from heaven, and a voice addressing him in the sacred'Hebrew tongue.' It was a 'light above the brightness of the sun,' and it smote the whole party to the earth: but what was it that sounded in the ear of Saul? It was this, 'I am JESUS, Whom thou persecutest.'

That there was then a personal revelation of the Lord, is all that the world has known of Saul's conversion. The miraculous light and noise were, indeed, common to all who accompanied him. But, it 'pleased God to reveal His Son in me,' is the utmost explanation of his inward change that the Apostle made even in his later years. Ask we, 'did he not give his companions some satisfaction at the time?' No one can answer us. Indeed so mighty a revolution within him, so entire a reversing of the purposes of years, would scarcely be matter of The account free communication, as he rose from the earth that at the time. day and listened to the marvellous words which the Heavenly Speaker addressed to him alone.

They who stood by could understand indeed well enough that Saul's mission to Damascus was at an end. He was a changed man to them, even outwardly. But the inner Revelation, or the personal sentiment towards Him Whom he had seen and heard,

E

given of it

The fact itself beyond analysis.

and Whose voice of forbearing love had fascinated his
whole soul, they could not know. As they look on,—
they see how, 'trembling and astonished at the glory
of that light,' a blindness has fallen on Saul, and
that he pauses.
Those awe-struck attendants lead
him by the hand he moves toward the city,
humbled and full of thought: he seeks for silence;
' and behold he prayeth.'

It is worse than useless, it may be profane, to investigate beyond this that marvellous event which so influenced the world's future, and was, in some sort, the type of all conversions to Christ. There is no analysis to be given by man to man of such moral movement in the individual soul as issues in a love of Righteousness, and of Christ Who is the image of God. Conversion is the personal interview of each conscience with God the Judge of all. It is a great miracle of God's power and man's will, whenever conscience 'so arises and is baptized,' and the scales fall from the eyes.' When, in coming years, the Apostle had to explain himself before Festus and Agrippa, he could tell but little of what he had experienced. It amounted to this; his own conscience had refused to be the delegate of Pharisaism. He had seen the Lord.' They to whom he thus put it were so bewildered that they asked

if he were mad.' They too, like the companions of Saul in the approach to Damascus, heard a sound,'-but to them no voice in their own tongue said, Saul! Saul!'

Such then was the beginning of Christianity in

history

51

Saul himself. And here we must pause; we know not that which immediately followed, we are told but little of his heaven-sustained solitude at first for The next period of three years, or his single-handed heroism in mission- Saul's life in his own province, while as yet he knew not his little brethren that were 'in Christ before him,' at Jerusalem. There is a kind of The historical incidents are but few, though the time solemn was long. It is enough that the Gospel which had pause. conquered Saul was the power to be used by him. henceforth to subdue the world to Christ.

known.

But we may well be anxious at once to watch, whenever we are able, the first moral efforts of this great convert in the work of converting others, the work to which he affirms that he had been so marvellously sent:' and to know those efforts will further How he assist us much in the interpretation of the writings to convert which we have to consider.

proceeded

others.

Two brief accounts have come down to us of his way of first approaching both Jews and Gentiles, when bringing the Gospel before them; the former preceding his work in Europe and his letters to the Churches. The fragments of short speeches that he made on these two remarkable occasions speak for themselves. The first was to his own countrymen, His first in the grand synagogue of the Pisidian Antioch, a speech (at place in the familiar route not far from Tarsus, though Pisidia) on that occasion the Apostle had come from Perga. He here speaks as a Jew to the Jews, that he Acts xiii. might gain the Jews.' He reminds them of their national history and hopes, and of the expectations

recorded

Antioch in

Ad Judæos.

26.