onceit, to have to change his mind
once for all on all matters in heaven and earth. What must it not
have cost him to throw up at once all his friends and relations; to
part himself from all whom he loved and respected on earth, to feel
that henceforth they must look upon him as a madman, an infidel, an
enemy. To an affectionate man, and St. Paul was an extremely
affectionate man, what a bitter struggle that must have cost him.
But he faced that struggle, and conquered in it, like a brave and
honest man. And the consequence was, that he had, in time, and
after many lonely years, many Christian friends for each Jewish
friend that he had lost; and to him was fulfilled (as it will be to
all men) our Lord's great saying, 'There is no man that hath left
house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or
children, or lands for my sake, and the gospel's, but he shall
receive an hundredfold now in this time, . . . and in the world to
come eternal life.'

Next; we may take comfort, in the hope that God will not impute to
us these early follies and mistakes of ours; if only there be in us,
as there was in St. Paul, the honest and good heart; that is, the
heart which longs to know what is true and right, and bravely acts
up to what it knows. St. Paul did so. God, when he set him apart,
as he says, from his very birth, gave him a great grace, even the
honest and good heart; and he was true to it, and used it. He tried
to learn his best, and do his best. He profited in the Jews'
religion, beyond all his fellows. He was, touching the
righteousness which was in the law, blameless. He was so zealous
for what he thought right, that he persecuted the Church of Christ,
as the Pharisees, his teachers, had taught him to do. In all
things, whether right or wrong in each particular case, he was an
honest, earnest seeker after truth and righteousness. And therefore
Christ, instead of punishing him, fulfilled to him his own great
saying,--'To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have
abundance.' He had not yet, as he himself says, again and again,
the grace of Christ, which is love to his fellow-men; and therefore
his works were not pleasing to God, and had, as the article says,
the nature of sin. His empty forms and ceremonies could not please
God. His persecuting the Church had plainly the nature of sin. But
there was something which God had put in him, and which God would
not lose sight of, or suffer to