Daniel, c Messiah cut off, but not for Himself the l Son
of man coming in the clouds of heaven : ' in Hosea, the
plague of death and destroyer of the grave : in Joel, the
Lord and dispenser of the Spirit : in Amos, the ' Kepairer
of the breaches' in David's tabernacle: in Micah, the 'Ruler'
whose birth is to be at Bethlehem, and whose c goings forth
have been of old, from everlasting : ' in Zephaniah, ' He who
rests in his love, and joys over his people with singing:' in
Haggai, the l Desire of all nations : ' in Zechariah, the i Man
whose name is the Branch ; ' and, the ' Sun of Righteous-
ness,' in the book of Malachi. And then came the argument
that these descriptive epithets met in Jesus, and that His
whole life embodied them. The preacher must have heard
often of Jesus, and may have, at a prior period, learned
the leading facts of His career in a distorted shape. But
a few days in Damascus must have given him detailed and
accurate information, and his trained mind was soon able to
arrange it, and use it to advantage.
SOLITARY PREPARATION. 13
A Christian teacher must not be a " novice " or recent
convert, lest he be lifted up with pride by his speedy ele-
vation. So the apostle ruled, and so he exemplified it.
He had shown the Jews of Damascus the change which had
come over him, and he had laboured to make them par-
takers of his own vivid and imperious convictions. What
success attended his labours we know not; perhaps the
suddenness of his conversion may have made him an
object of suspicion and distrust ; some might be disposed
to wait for further explanations of it, as if some chain of
subordinate and personal motives might have led to it ;
others might compassionate him as partially bereft of his
intellect by the startling radiance that had enveloped him
near the bridge where he and his companions had fallen ;
as in short labouring under some hallucination which might
gradually pass off, so that, as soon as he should come to
himself, he should return more fondly and fixedly to his
original creed. From whatever reason, the apostle left
Damascus, and retired into the neighbouring deserts, where,
perhaps, he might maintain himself by his handicraft as a
tent-maker; tent-cloth, or a coarse cashmere, being woven of
the hair of the shaggy goats in that region, as in his native
province of Cilicia. In those solitudes the apostle spent a
lengthened period. There his soul must have communed
much with itself and God, and there he enjoyed successive
revelations of the scheme of mercy. Great disclosures have
resulted from solitary study, and from musing in scenes
"Where woven shades shut out the. light of day,
While, towering near, the rugged mountains make
Dark back-ground 'gainst the sky,"
14 SAUL AT DAMASCUS.
discoveries in science, inventions in art, and forms of
ideal beauty have flashed upon the self-rapt spirit as it
held secret fellowship with nature. Dreams have fallen
on it which indicate the dawn of a better philosophy, and
it has given incidental utterance to hints which have
proved themselves the seeds of a bounteous harvest. " An
horror of great darkness " may have occasionally enveloped
him, for the mighty change did not mechanically fortify
him against all memories, or shut out from him all antici-
pations. His susceptible nature must have undergone a
process involving every variety of emotion and soliloquy ;
casting up the motives of the past, and forecasting the
possibilities of the future ; taking the measure of itself in
searching and repeated self-questionings; sounding the
depths of its convictions and resolves ; a lifetime in awful-
ness and intensity of feeling, and in depth, vastness, and
pressure of thought, crowded into the space of a few short
months. Such agonies of preparation are the prelude to
valiant deeds : the Slough of Despond precedes the firm
path, and the Valley of Humiliation lies in front of the
Delectable Mountains.
Saul studied theology in no earthly school, and under
no human teacher. He called no man master, and after
he left the feet of Gamaliel he never occupied a similar
relation towards any other human being. Nor yet did
he think out the various truths of the gospel for himself,
or with the assistance of kindred minds. The doctrines
which he subsequently proclaimed were not evolved by
such a secret and prolonged mental process as a daring
and speculative spirit loves to indulge in ; for they were
SPECIAL INSPIRATION. 15
in no sense "after man" neither in man's style of creation
nor expression. The revelations which the recluse enjoyed,
suspended his natural powers only so far as inventive
genius was concerned. He had not to excogitate a system,
but he had still to connect and comprehend the disclosures
made to him. What the Divine Teacher time after time
communicated to him, that he would revolve and meditate
on, viewing it in all lights and upon all sides ; till being
mastered in sum and in detail, it was inwoven with his
spiritual constitution, and became a portion of himself.
The great reformer of philosophy could truly say Thus
Bacon thought ; but the apostle of the Gentiles could only
affirm Thus was I taught. On such revelations he casts
himself when his authority is open to question, as when,
in writing on the Lord's Supper to the Corinthians, and
referring to his account of the first scene, himself not having
been present, he affirms " I have received of the Lord that
which also I delivered unto you." So, when about to
describe the free and full admission of Gentiles into the
church an idea that excited no little prejudice, and met
with no common antagonism he solemnly avers "how that
by revelation He made known unto me the mystery ;" or as
when he portrays the solemn mysteries of the last day
the rising of "the dead in Christ" before the change of the
living he announces, "This we say unto you by the
word of the Lord." After the musings and revelations in
Arabia, the " chosen vessel" was so filled with divine
communication, that his chiefest pleasure afterwards lay in
giving it out. By a resistless law of his spiritual nature,
he could not but speak what his soul was surcharged with j
16 SAUL AT DAMASCUS.
and whether he thought of its truth or of its grace, its origin
from God or its adaptation to man, it became a " neces-
sity " for him to proclaim it. Saturated with evangelical
truth, and urged on by the constraining power of the love
of Christ, Saul returned to Damascus. And now, as he
was more powerful in argument, his appeals must have
been armed with a keener barb than on his first visit.
So that, after narrating the natural wonder and talk of
spectators, the historian adds " But Saul increased the
more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt
at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ " proving
forging link after link in a chain of argument. Oppo-
sition did not daunt him. No appeal to the tenor of his
past life could shame him no satirical remarks about
consistency could put him out. He rose in intellec-
tual and spiritual power. He was well aware, from his
own experience, what were the strongholds of Pharisaic
pride and fanaticism. He could anticipate every objection,
remove every scruple, and so enter into the spirit of his
opponents as to meet and refute every doubt. He had but
to remember how himself had felt and reasoned, and he
was armed for his task, and then, with his new and addi-
tional information, he confounded the Jews which dwelt at
Damascus. As he heaped proof upon proof in intense
accumulation, as he laid bare their sophisms and gave them
a vivid anatomy of their inner nature, transferred his own
experience to them, exposed every prejudice, and overturned
every refuge of lies no wonder he "confounded" them;
that is, he so perplexed them with his reasonings, that
ingenuity failed them they were struck dumb, and could
CHRIST, THE ANOINTED ONE. 17
not reply. They " could not resist the wisdom and power 1 '
by which he spake, as he was " proving that this is very
Christ;" that this man who passed among men by the
name of Jesus, is verily the long-promised and long-
expected Christ or Messiah that is, the anointed One
having in the unction of the Holy Ghost the seal and
signal of His commission, and the great element of His
qualification ; for God gave " Him not the Spirit by
measure" "the Spirit of counsel and might" the Spirit
which descended " like a dove, and it abode upon Him "
since He was "justified in the Spirit; " "by the Spirit of
God" He wrought miracles; "through the eternal Spirit"
He offered Himself; put to death in the flesh, He was
" quickened by the Spirit ;" nay, He was " declared to be
the Son of God, according to the Spirit of holiness, by
the resurrection from the dead."
The evidence must have rested on a comparison of
Christ's life with the "prophecies that went before con-
cerning" Him. That evidence is varied and convincing.
He was born at Bethlehem, as Micah had predicted, and
before the four hundred and ninety years had expired, as
Daniel had foretold ; born of a virgin, and of the family of
David, as the seers had announced ; walking and worship-
ping in the second temple, as the last of the prophets
had pre-intimated ; baptized with the Holy Ghost, and
assuming a public ministry, for thus had He been heralded ;
speaking, and that by parable, as the Psalmist had avouched ;
working, and that by miracle, as Isaiah had chanted;
living a holy and gentle life, as long ago pencilled by the
Spirit ; betrayed by His " own familiar friend which did eat
B
18 SAUL AT DAMASCUS.
of His bread 5" apprehended and put to death, according
to " the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God "
His hands and feet pierced, and yet " not a bone of Him
broken," for so had it been fore-pictured ; offered vinegar
in His thirst, as His suffering prototype had drunk before
Him ; " numbered among transgressors," for such had
been the strange and awful utterance; a grave prepared
Him with the two thieves, and yet laid in the tomb of
"a rich man," who begged His body; the execrated of the
world, and yet the Saviour of the world.
Such a demonstration was Saul's special work in the
meantime. He upheld the claims of Jesus, as he was for
the second time confronted with his countrymen, and there
were fifty thousand of them in Damascus. He did not
beat about the question, but brought it at once into earnest
conflict. It was a question of life and death it was
the question of the age the question for all ages the
identification of Jesus with that divine Emancipator
whom the Hebrew bards had sung of in rapturous antici-
pation with Him who, in taking humanity, was to redeem
it, and in descending to the world was to lift it out of
degradation and ruin, and elevate it to renewed fellowship
with its Creator. It needed faith, indeed, to comprehend
the mystery, for there had been no external manifestation.
He was not born in a palace, nor swaddled "in soft
raiment." The Babe did not sleep on a lordly couch, nor
was there a glory round the head of the Youth. The Man
was not surrounded with oriental luxuries, but He handled
hammer and hatchet, when He earned His bread by the
sweat of His brow and felt the primal curse. He wore no
THE VERY CHRIST. 19
divine livery, as He wrought His miracles ; and when He
died, no choir of angels were heard singing hymns of com-
fort in His ear. What about Him, then, signalized Him ?
It needed a keen eye to watch Him, so as to detect His
higher nature. But then, as you compare Him with the
olden oracles, who can doubt their fulfilment in Him?
Moses throws a halo over his successor "like unto" him.
Aaron, clothed with the ephod and breast-plate, and car-
rying "the blood of goats and calves," represents Him
dying and pleading. David, with his diadem on his brow,
claims Him as his Son, and last and great successor.
Yes, this is He, seen in the light of type and prophecy.
O surely it is a sin of sins to reject Him. If men are
" confounded," and yet are not convinced; if they cannot
refute the proof, and yet in defiance of it will not admit
the conclusion ; if, though vanquished in argument, they
withhold their faith, and fall back on prejudice, or
wrap themselves in indifference then surely theirs is
the terrible condemnation of those who "love the dark-
ness rather than the light," and, wilfully shrouding
themselves in the gloom, gather it in thickening folds
around them for ever. If this be the very Christ, let us
hail His advent with rapture, contemplate His life in
admiration, open our hearts to His words, strive to
imbibe His spirit of untiring beneficence,, prostrate
ourselves in awful wonder round His cross, survey His
empty tomb with sabbatic gladness, and follow Him with
loud hosannahs as He ascends to His throne of Glory.
Thou, the only-begotten Son of God and first-born Child
of Mary the living embodiment of Abraham's far-off
20 SAUL AT DAMASCUS.
visions and David's gladsome paeans 5 Thou ; the Ange"
of the Covenant and the Man of sorrows ; Thou, the
Lord of the temple and the Infant of the manger Blessed
Jesus, Thou art the very Christ !
Saul's preaching during his second sojourn of " many
days " at Damascus, so provoked his enemies that they
resolved on his assassination a miserable weapon of
defence, and the token, too, of conscious defeat. The
same spirit was rising against Saul as had risen in his
own mind against Stephen. He saw his former self alive
again in those adversaries, and by himself could measure
their truculent ferocity. The tormentor became in turn the
tormented the knife he had whetted was pointed against
himself. " I will show him how great things he must
suffer for my name's sake," said the Lord to Ananias ;
and the neophyte soon began to learn the lesson, and he
who was " in perils oft " never ceased to learn it. The
Jews in many cities had a species of separate internal
government, with a local magistrate of their own race,
somewhat in the same way as British residents in a foreign
port are under the protection of a British consul. When,
therefore, " they took counsel to kill him," they obtained
the assistance of the garrison, so as to seize him and pre-
vent his flight. But his friends interfered : the ethnarch
under Aretas missed his prey ; and the sentinels at the
gates found their vigilance ineffective. That life was too
richly laden to be so prematurely cut off: "Through a
window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and
escaped." He who had entered Damascus a blind and
stricken traveller, left it a fugitive in haste and by night,
SPIRITUAL HEROISM. 21
as if he had committed a crime, and sought in cowardice
to avoid the penalty. His sincerity was tried, but he
wavered not; the strength of his convictions was put
to a hard and sudden test, but he stood it. Henceforth
he might be used for any service the Master required
to do or to suffer; for the one or the other he was
alike prepared, for into both he had been thus early
initiated. Men may, by shifting sides, get greater popu-
larity and a higher reputation for honesty. They may
become leaders in the new warfare, or from a lower pin-
nacle they may be lifted to the summit, and the feeling
that they are first may compensate them for any odium or
satire which their change may have provoked. But Saul
had no cheering prospect of this nature ; for he was scorned
by the Jews, then assaulted by the Judaizing Chris-
tians, and perhaps never fully trusted by the original
apostles. His life was but a battle and a march, and a
march and a battle, doing and suffering, suffering and doing.
He was weak in every man's weakness, and burning with
every man's offence ; "in weariness and painfulness, in
watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in cold and naked-
ness;" his heart oppressed and broken by "the care of all
the churches." We who know the worth, wisdom, and
devotedness of his life, are apt so to idealize him, that we
cannot see these privations in their literal existence. We
associate dignity and authority with the great preacher,
and cannot picture the poor pinched stranger insignificant,
in " bodily presence," weary and footsore, ragged, hungry
and shivering coming into a city like a shiftless vagabond
who had spent all ; and was in want the livid ring on his
22 SAUL AT DAMASCUS.
limbs so scantily clad, revealing his acquaintance with the
stocks, and the scar of the whip on his back espied through
his tattered mantle as he is seeking out a lodging in the
meanest streets, where dwelt some pious Jews or proselytes
amongst " the offscourings of all things." There he lived
and fared, and thence he issued to preach " the unsearch-
able riches of Christ.'' And this was usual with him.
Luther in knight's armour, Calvin in the garb of a vine-
dresser, Tyndale in a blouse, or Bunyan in a smock these
were but disguises assumed for a brief period to escape
peril, but the apostle's normal state was one of privation
and suffering. Never, except in the instance of his Master,
had appearance and reality been in such contrast. That
mind had insight little less in clearness or in reach than
that of "the living creatures full of eyes." That heart
had more than man's firmness, and more than woman's
softness ; and that life was devoted to his species with an
aim that never wavered, and a self-feeding ardour which
was never damped, and which could not be extinguished
save in the blood of him who felt and cherished it.
II. SAUL AT JEKUSALEM.
ACTS ix. 26-30 ; xxii. 17-21. GAL. i. 18, 19.
THE humble stratagem by which Saul had escaped those
who were " desirous to apprehend " him, was neither a
matter of shame to the inspired historian nor to the
apostle himself, for both have referred to it. The wit of
a woman had done a similar exploit in the olden time ;
Eahab let the spies " down by a cord through the window,
for her house was upon the town wall." The apostle
tells us that he had a special motive in going at this
time to Jerusalem, for " he went up to see Peter" or make
his acquaintance. He had formed this intention, but the
conspiracy of his foes hastened his departure, and, when
the basket touched the ground, he did not make for some
safe and obscure retreat, but set his face toward the
metropolis. It was night. It was in blindness that he
had first entered Damascus he " could not see for the
glory of that light " and now he is forced to flee from it
under the friendly cover of darkness. As he left Damascus
and proceeded to Jerusalem, he could not pass the scene of
his conversion without a holy shudder. Every turn of the
road during these hundred and twenty miles, must have
reminded him of his eastward journey. But he hurries
westward a changed man, dead to his former self, and to all
24 SAUL AT JEHUSALEM.
previous impressions, aspirations, and hopes. And lie must
have sometimes wondered how he should meet the zealots of
his nation, his instigators in his days of cruelty and igno-
rance, and he must also have surmised how they would
shrink from his presence, or hurl against him the fierce
curses which their eloquent fury could so copiously supply.
But he was too brave to fear human opinion ; he had "seen
Christ Jesus the Lord," and heard His voice, and what
cared he either for scowls or anathemas? And if he entered
the city at the gate by which he had left it, or passed the
place of Stephen's martyrdom, his soul must have trembled
in its gratitude to sovereign mercy ; for all such past things
were severed by a great gulf from his present being. The
bigot had become a Christian ; the persecutor an apostle.
His arrival at Jerusalem must have created as much doubt
and wonder as it had done at Antioch, for we are told that
"when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join him-
self to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and
believed not that he was a disciple." He had been a long
time away from them ; first rumours had subsided he
had been absent, too, from Damascus for a season, and
tidings did not then travel very speedily from land to land.
He assayed to join himself made several earnest but
ineffectual efforts. He did not attempt to take them by
storm, and parade the glory of his conversion before them.
" Less than the least of all saints," he humbly sought
admission, but he was refused ; his veracity was ques-
tioned -"they did not believe that he was a disciple."
Indeed " they were afraid of him ;" they deemed him to
be a wolf in lamb's clothing, and would not credit him that
PETER AND PAUL. 25
his old heart was gone, and that he was a Nazarene who
had been " a persecutor, and a blasphemer, and injurious."
Yes, Saul was denied Christian fellowship no small trial,
in his present condition, for one who had done and suffered
so much under his new convictions. His discipleship,
gained by such a miracle, was disallowed, and, as he had
left Damascus in haste, he had brought with him no creden-
tials. But Barnabas kindly interfered and vouched for his
sincerity, telling " how he had seen the Lord in the way "
and had been converted, and how he had laboured so cour-
ageously on the very scene of his intended havoc. Then
was he admitted to fellowship, and "he was with them
coming in and going out at Jerusalem." He met at this
time with only two of the apostles, James and Peter, and
he resided with Peter. The apostle of the circumcision and
the apostle of the Gentiles dwelt for "fifteen days " under
one roof. What conversations, discussions, and projected
enterprises from two minds so unlike in structure and dis-
cipline, and yet so very like in zeal and courage ! The one
flamed, but the other burned ; the one was fitful and for-
ward, the other was patient and uniform ; the one was a
creature of impulse, the other glowed with a steady enthu-
siasm. Peter loved Palestine, yet Paul loved it none the
less that his heart embraced the world. The former felt
at home in the sphere of the Old Testament, the other
stretched beyond it while he did not forsake it. To the
one, a Gentile was a man to be converted ; to the other, a
brother also to be won. Peter did what he knew to be his
duty in repairing to the house of Cornelius, but he did not
feel at perfect liberty to repeat such deeds; while the
^^^-fe
Of TBGR
26 SAUL AT JERUSALEM.
untrammelled Paul exclaims " Inasmuch as I am the
apostle of the Gentiles I magnify mine office." In a
word, Peter was like the Jordan, the stream that belonged
exclusively to his fatherland, though a foreigner, like
Naaman, might once in its history wash and be healed in
it; but Paul resembled the "great sea," which washes the
shores of the three large continents.
Saul stayed only a fortnight in Jerusalem, but he was
not and could not be idle. It is said of him briefly and
emphatically, that " he spake boldly in the name of the
Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians : but
they went about to slay him." Four features of his
preaching come into view
1. The class to whom he addressed himself were the
Grecians or Hellenists, that is, Jews, but, like himself, born
out of Palestine; Jews like Stephen, whom he had con-
fronted in the Hellenistic synagogue, and to whose death
he had "consented." He was most naturally drawn to
them. The Jews born in Juda3a were victims of narrow-
ness and prejudice ; the " genius of the place " overawed
them, and held them in bondage. But the Hellenists born
and brought up in other countries were less liable to these
strong opinions, for they had mingled with other races, and
their minds were expanded with literary and commercial
intercourse. As one of them, Saul specially appealed
to them, in the hope that, as he understood them and
might expect them to sympathize with him, he might
win them over to the gospel. For, there are certain ties of
blood, education, and language which are to be recognized
even in the advocacy of the truth, and which it would be
HELLENISM. 27
wrong in a public advocate or orator to overlook. Saul,
therefore, "in the meekness of wisdom," laboured in
a sphere where he imagined that he had most hopes
of success. He did not fling the gospel in the face of
the high priest, did not go to the temple and harangue
the fanatical crowds, but prudently and earnestly he
brought to bear upon the Hellenists the result of his
training and experience in Damascus. " One of your-
selves presents himself to you" might be his preface
as he began in the Greek tongue, more familiar to them
than Hebrew, to advance and maintain the claims of
Jesus as Messiah. Saul, therefore, as a preacher, was