ason or burnt out life itself, as the external light dazzled the eyes
of his body into blindness.

When his companions recovered themselves and turned to their leader,
they discovered that he had lost his sight, and they had to take him by
the hand and lead him into the city. What a change was there! Instead
of the proud Pharisee riding through the streets with the pomp of an
inquisitor, a stricken man, trembling, groping, clinging to the hand of
his guide, arrives at the house of entertainment amidst the
consternation of those who receive him and, getting hastily to a room
where he can ask them to leave him alone, sinks down there in the
darkness.

46. But, though it was dark without, it was bright within. The
blindness had been sent for the purpose of secluding him from outward
distractions and enabling him to concentrate himself on the objects
presented to the inner eye. For the same reason he neither ate nor
drank for three days. He was too absorbed in the thoughts which
crowded on him thick and fast.

47. In these three days, it may be said with confidence, he got at
least a partial hold of all the truths he afterward proclaimed to the
world; for his whole theology is nothing but the explication of his own
conversion. First of all, his whole previous life fell down in
fragments at his feet. It had been of one piece, and wonderfully
complete. It had appeared to himself to be a consistent deduction from
the highest revelation he knew and, in spite of its imperfections, to
lie in the line of the will of God. But, instead of this, it had been
rushing in diametrical opposition against the will and revelation of
God, and had now been brought to a stop and broken in pieces by the
collision. That which had appeared to him the perfection of service
and obedience had involved his soul in the guilt of blasphemy and
innocent blood. Such had been the issue of seeking righteousness by
the works of the law. At the very moment when his righteousness seemed
at last to be turning to the whiteness so long desired, it was caught
in the blaze of this revelation and whirled away in shreds of shriveled
blackness. It had been a mistake, then, from first to last.
Righteousness was not to be obtained by the law, but only guilt and
doom. This was the unmistakable conclusion, and it became the one pole
of Paul's theology.

48. But, while his theory of life thus fell in pieces with a crash
that might by itself have