point of view himself, and says that
God had mercy on him because he did it ignorantly in unbelief. But
oftener he thinks of it with overwhelming shame and remorse. The whole
course of life which had logically led up to work so inhuman in its
details and so directly in the face of God's purposes was
demonstrated by the issue to have been utterly ungodly. His thoughts
had not been God's thoughts nor his ways God's ways. The scenes of the
persecution, when, haling men and women, he cast them into prison; the
hatred and fury which in those days had raged in his breast; the
efforts which he had put forth to oppose the cause of Christ, which it
was his firm resolution to extinguish to its last embers--these
memories would never afterwards quit his mind. They kept him humble;
for he felt that he was the least of the apostles, who was not worthy
to be called an apostle, because he had persecuted the Church of God.
He called himself the chief of sinners, and believed that God had in
his case exhaustively displayed the whole wealth of His mercy for a
pattern to all subsequent generations.

The first element of St. Paul's Christianity, then, was the penitence
of a lost man and a great sinner, who owed to Christ the forgiveness
of his sins and the redemption of his life from an evil career. And he
believed that Christ had purchased these benefits for him by the
sacrifice of His own life.

2. The second great element of St. Paul's Christianity was his
Conversion, which set a gulf between the portion of his life which
preceded and the portion which followed it. It was the chief date of
his life, and confronted him every time he looked back. Its influence
extended to every part of his experience; but perhaps its most
important effect was to set Christ up within him as a living Person,
of whose reality he was absolutely assured.

Probably Paul's opposition to Christianity was from the first very
specially opposition to Christ Himself. When he struck at the
disciples, he was really striking at the Master through them. It is
easy to conceive what an affront the pretensions of Jesus must have
been felt to be by Paul. Jesus had been a man of about his own age--a
young man; he had sprung from the lowest of the people, being a
villager and mechanic; he had never sat in the schools of learning;
the men of ability and authority had had no hesitation in condemning
Him. That such a one should be esteemed the Messiah of the Jews and
worshipp