riding forward beneath the blaze of the
Syrian sun, a light which dimmed even that fierce glare shone round
about them, a shock vibrated through the atmosphere, and in a moment
they found themselves prostrate upon the ground. The rest was for Paul
alone: a voice sounded in his ears, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
Me?" and, as he looked up and asked the radiant Figure that had spoken,
"Who art Thou, Lord?" the answer was, "I am Jesus, whom thou art
persecuting."

44. The language in which he ever afterward spoke of this event
forbids us to think that it was a mere vision of Jesus he saw. He
ranks it as the last of the appearances of the risen Saviour to His
disciples, and places it on the same level as the appearances to Peter,
to James, to the eleven, and to the five hundred. It was, in fact,
Christ Jesus in the vesture of His glorified humanity, who for once had
left the spot, wherever it may be in the spaces of the universe, where
now he sits on His mediatorial throne, in order to show Himself to this
elect disciple; and the light which outshone the sun was no other than
the glory in which His humanity is there enveloped. An incidental
evidence of this was supplied in the words which were addressed to
Paul. They were spoken in the Hebrew, or rather the Aramaic
tongue--the same language in which Jesus had been wont to address the
multitudes by the Lake and converse with His disciples in the desert
solitudes; and, as in the days of His flesh He was wont to open His
mouth in parables, so now He clothed His rebuke in a striking metaphor:
"It is hard for thee to kick against the goad."

45. Effect on Paul's Thought.--It would be impossible to exaggerate
what took place in the mind of Paul in this single instant. It is but
a clumsy way we have of dividing time by the revolution of the clock
into minutes and hours, days and years, as if each portion so measured
were of the same size as another of equal length. This may suit well
enough for the common ends of life, but there are finer measurements
for which it is quite misleading. The real size of any space of time
is to be measured by the amount it contains of the soul's experience;
no one hour is exactly equal to another, and there are single hours
which are larger than months. So measured, this one moment of Paul's
life was perhaps larger than all his previous years. The glare of
revelation was so intense that it might well have scorched the eye of
re