Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/438

416 PAUL while his fellow-disciples in the rabbinical schools had been content to dissect the text of the sacred code with a minute anatomy, the vision of a law of God which transcended both text and comment had loomed upon him like a new revelation. And with the sense of law had come the sense of sin. It was like the first dawn of conscience. He awoke as from a dream. "The commandment came." It was intended to be "unto life," but he found it to be "unto death"; for it opened up to him infinite possibili ties of sinning: "I had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shalt not lust." And the possibilities of sinning became lures which drew him on to forbidden and hated ground: "sin, finding occasion through the commandment, beguiled me and through it slew me "(Rom. vii. 7-11). This was his inner life, and no man has ever analysed it with a more penetrating and graphic power. In his out ward life this sense of the law of God became to him an overpowering stimulus. The stronger the consciousness of his personal failure the greater the impulse of his zeal. The vindication of the honour of God by persecuting heretics, which was an obligation upon all pious Jews, was for him a supreme duty. He became not only a persecutor but a leader among persecutors (Gal. i. 14). What he felt was a very frenzy of hate ; he " breathed threatening and slaughter," like the snorting of a war-horse before a battle, against the renegade Jews who believed in a false Messiah (Acts ix. 1, xxvi. 11). His enthusiasm had been known before the popular outbreak which led to Stephen s death, for the witnesses to the martyr s stoning " laid down their clothes " at his feet (Acts vii. 58), and he took a prominent place in the persecution which followed. .He himself speaks of having "made havoc" of the com munity at Jerusalem, spoiling it like a captured city (Gal. i. 13, 23); in the more detailed account of the Acts he went from house to house to search out and drag forth to punishment the adherents of the new heresy (viii. 3). When his victims came before the Jewish courts he tried, probably by scourging, to force them to apostatize (xxvi. 11); in some cases he voted for their death (xxii. 4, xxvi. 10). The persecution spread from Jerusalem to Judaea and Galilee (ix. 31) ; but Paul, with the same spirit of enterprise which afterwards showed itself in his missionary journeys, was not content with the limits of Palestine. He sought and obtained from the ecclesiastical authorities at Jerusalem letters similar to those which, in the 13th century, the popes gave to the " militia Jesu Christi contra hasreticos." The ordinary jurisdiction of the synagogues was for the time set aside ; the special commissioner was empowered to take as prisoners to Jerusalem any whom he found to belong to the sect known as " The Way " (Acts ix. 2, xxii. 4, xxiv. 14; it is possible that the phrase w r as used of Christians by themselves, like the phrase " The Cause " among some of the nonconforming churches of England). Of the great cities which lay near Palestine Damascus was the most promising, if not the only field for such a commission. At Antioch and at Alexandria, though the Jews, who were very numerous, enjoyed a large amount of independence and had their own governor, the Roman authorities would probably have interfered to prevent the extreme measures which Paul demanded. At Damascus, where also the Jews were numerous and possibly had their own civil governor (2 Cor. xi. 32), the Arabian prince Aretas (Haritha), who then held the city, might naturally be disposed to let an influential section of the population deal as they pleased with their refractory members. Conver- On Paul s way thither an event occurred which has siou to proved to be of transcendent importance for the religious history of mankind. He became a Christian by what he 111 J believed to be the personal revelation of Jesus Christ. His own accounts of the event are brief, but they are at the same time emphatic and uniform. " It pleased God ... to reveal His Son in me" (Gal. i. 16) ; "have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord" (1 Cor. ix. 1); "last of all He was seen of me also as of one born out of due time " (1 Cor. xv. 8, where axj>6->) Ka/W must be read in the sense of the parallel expressions w</>6fy K/c/>a, Ac. ; in other words, Paul puts the appearance to himself on a level with the appearances to the apostles after the resurrection). These accounts give no details of the circumstances. St Paul s estimate of the importance of such details was probably different from that which has been attached to them in later times. The accounts in the Acts of the Apostles are more elaborate ; they are three in number, one in the con tinuous narrative, ix. 3-19, a second in the address on the temple stairs, xxii. 6-21, a third in the speech to Agrippa, xxvi. 12-18; they all differ from each other in details, they all agree in substance ; the differences are fatal to the stricter theories of verbal inspiration, but they do not constitute a valid argument against the general truth of the narrative. 1 It is natural to find that the accounts of an event which lies so far outside the ordinary experience of men have been the object of much hostile criticism. The earliest denial of its reality is found in the Judax>- Christian writings known as the Clementine Homilies, where Simon Magus, who is made to be a caricature of Paul, is told that visions and dreams may come from demons as well as from God (Clem. Horn., xvii. 13-19). The most import ant of later denials are those of the Tubingen school, which explain the narratives in the Acts either as a trans lation into the language of historical fact of the figurative expressions of the manifestation of Christ to the soul, and the consequent change from spiritual darkness to light (e.g., Baur, Paul, E.T., vol. i. p. 76; Zeller, Acts, E.T., vol. i. p. 289), or as an ecstatic vision (Holsten, Das Evanyelium des Paulus, p. 65). But against all the difficulties and ap parent incredibilities of the narratives there stand out the clear and indisputable facts that the persecutor was suddenly transformed into a believer, and that to his dying day he never ceased to believe and to preach that he had " seen Jesus Christ." Nor was it only that he had seen Him ; the gospel which His he preached, as well as the call to preach it, was due to special this revelation. It had " pleased God to reveal His Son missi in him" that he "might preach Him among the Gentiles" (Gal. i. 12, 16). He had received the special mark of God s favour, which consisted in his apostleship, that all nations might obey and believe the gospel (Rom. i. 5, cf. xii. 3, xv. 15, 16). He had been entrusted with a secret (/xifm/pioi ) which had "been kept in silence through times eternal," but which it was now his special office to make known (Rom. xi. 25, xvi. 25, 26 ; and even more promi nently in the later epistles, Eph. i. 9, iii. 2-9, vi. 19; Col. i. 26, 27, iv. 3). This secret was that " the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and fellow- partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel." This is the key to all his subsequent history. He was the " apostle of the Gentiles," and that " not from men, neither through man" (Gal. i. 1); and so thoroughly was the conviction of his special mission wrought into the fibres of his nature that it is difficult to give full credence to statements w 7 hich appear to be at variance with it. Of his life immediately after his conversion he himself 1 For a clear and concise summary of the points of agreement and difference between the three accounts, reference may be made to an article by F. Zimnier, "Die drei Berichte der Apo.stelgeschiclite u ber die Bekehrung des Paulus," iu Hilgeufeld s Zeitschr. f. icisscnsch. TkeoL, 1882, p. 465 sq.