ed as if He were Divine, raised a storm of indignation in the
heart of Paul.

Probably nothing could have converted him except the miraculous
occurrence which God employed. Christ had to come to him in person and
in a visible shape--in the shape of the glorified humanity which He
wears somewhere in that empire of God which we call Heaven. Paul knew
the light in which he was enveloped to be a Divine light; the sound of
the voice calling him was the thunder which from of old had been
recognised by the race to which he belonged as the voice of God; he
was looking straight up to the place of God; and in that place he saw
Jesus, whom he was persecuting. Most Divine of all, however, were the
sweetness, the clemency and the respect of the words in which he was
addressed. This Jesus, against whom he was raging, came to him, not
with corresponding rage, to take vengeance and destroy him, but with
winning words of truth and with the call to a high and blessed
vocation. It was this which broke the heart of Paul and attached him
to Christ forever.

He always afterwards believed that what took place on this occasion
was what I have said--that Jesus of Nazareth descended from the right
hand of God to prove to him who He was and to claim him as His servant
and apostle--and never afterwards did he for a moment doubt that the
man whom his fellow-countrymen had crucified, and whom he himself had
persecuted, was seated on the throne of heaven, clothed with Divine
blessedness and omnipotence.

Of course others have doubted this. It may be said that what Paul saw
was only a vision, and that therefore his new life was founded on a
mistake. I believe his own account to be the correct one; but perhaps
we need not dogmatize too much about what he saw; because it was not
in reality on any theory of this vision that his faith was founded. It
was not because he saw Christ that day with the bodily eye, or
believed he did so, that he became or continued a Christian; it was
because, trusting Christ, thus revealed, he obtained that for which he
had all his life been longing: he was no longer banished or kept at a
distance, but brought nigh to God; he was reconciled, and the love of
God was shed abroad in his heart. He had all his lifetime been asking
in despair, "What must I do to be saved?" but now he was saved. The
humiliating bondage in which his spiritual nature had been held was
dissolved, and, following Christ, he advanced from victory to vic