ATE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
Stephen. 34-36. THE PERSECUTOR.

13. God's Plan.--Persons whose conversion takes place after they are
grown up are wont to look back upon the period of their life which has
preceded this event with sorrow and shame and to wish that an
obliterating hand might blot the record of it out of existence. St.
Paul felt this sentiment strongly: to the end of his days he was
haunted by the specters of his lost years, and was wont to say that he
was the least of all the apostles, who was not worthy to be called an
apostle, because he had persecuted the Church of God. But these somber
sentiments are only partially justifiable. God's purposes are very
deep, and even in those who know Him not He may be sowing seeds which
will only ripen and bear fruit long after their godless career is over.
Paul would never have been the man he became or have done the work he
did, if he had not, in the years preceding his conversion, gone through
a course of preparation designed to fit him for his subsequent career.
He knew not what he was being prepared for; his own intentions about
his future were different from God's; but there is a divinity which
shapes our ends, and it was making him a polished shaft for God's
quiver, though he knew it not.

14. Birth and Birthplace.--The date of Paul's birth is not exactly
known, but it can be settled with a closeness of approximation which is
sufficient for practical purposes. When in the year 33 A.D. those who
stoned Stephen laid down their clothes at Paul's feet, he was "a young
man." This term has, indeed, in Greek as much latitude as in English,
and may indicate any age from something under twenty to something over
thirty. In this case it probably touched the latter rather than the
former limit; for there is reason to believe that at this time, or very
soon after, he was a member of the Sanhedrin--an office which no one
could hold who was under thirty years of age--and the commission he
received from the Sanhedrin immediately afterward to persecute the
Christians would scarcely have been entrusted to a very young man.
About thirty years after playing this sad part in Stephen's murder, in
the year 62 A.D., he was lying in a prison in Rome awaiting sentence of
death for the same cause for which Stephen had suffered, and, writing
one of the last of his Epistles, that to Philemon, he called himself an
old man. This term also is one of great latitude, and