the
chief priests themselves, at mid-day I saw on the way a light from the
sky, brighter than the blaze of the sun, shining round about me and my
companions. And, as we were all fallen on to the road, I heard a voice
saying to me:

"'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick
against the goad.'

"And I said, 'Who are you, Lord?'

"The answer came: 'I am Jesus, whom you persecute.'"

Then Paul went on:

"I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision; but I told those in
Damascus and in Jerusalem and in all Judaea, aye! and the foreign
nations also, that they should repent and turn to God.

"Later on," said Paul, "I fell into a trance, and Jesus came again
to me and said, 'Go, I will send you afar to the Nations.' That (Paul
would say to Luke) is why I walk among perils in the city; in perils
in the wilderness; in perils in the sea; in labour and work; in hunger
and thirst and cold, to tell people everywhere of the love of God
shown in Jesus Christ."[7]

_The Call to Cross the Sea._

One night, after one of these talks, as Paul was asleep in Troy, he
seemed to see a figure standing by him. Surely it was the dream-figure
of Luke, the doctor from Macedonia, holding out his hands and pleading
with Paul, saying, "Come over into Macedonia and help us."

Now neither Paul nor Silas nor Timothy had ever been across the sea
into the land that we now call Europe. But in the morning, when Paul
told his companions about the dream that he had had, they all agreed
that God had called them to go and deliver the good news of the
Kingdom to the people in Luke's city of Philippi and in the other
cities of Macedonia.

So they went down into the busy harbour of Troy, where the singing
sailor-men were bumping bales of goods from the backs of camels into
the holds of the ships, and they took a passage in a little coasting
ship. She hove anchor and was rowed out through the entrance between
the ends of the granite piers of the harbour. The seamen hoisting the
sails, the little ship went gaily out into the AEgean Sea.

All day they ran before the breeze and at night anchored under the lee
of an island. At dawn they sailed northward again with a good wind,
till they saw land. Behind the coast on high ground the columns of
a temple glowed in the sunlight. They ran into a spacious bay and
anchored in the harbour of a new city--Neapolis as it was called--the
port of Philippi.

Landing from the little ship, Pau