es at
least were appealed to, vision and hearing, and in both vision and
hearing there were partial participators. Physical consequences that
lasted for three days accompanied the hallucination; and the man 'was
blind, not seeing the sun, and neither did eat nor drink.' There must be
some soil beforehand in which delusions of such a sort can root
themselves. But, if we take the story in the Acts of the Apostles, there
is not the smallest foothold for the fashionable notion, which is
entirely due to men's dislike of the supernatural, that there was any
kind of misgiving in the young Pharisee, springing from the influence of
Stephen's martyrdom, as he went forth breathing out threatenings and
slaughter. The plain fact is that, at one moment he hated Jesus Christ
as a bad man, and believed that the story of the Resurrection was a
gross falsehood; and that at the next moment he knew Him to be living
and reigning, and the Lord of his life and of the world. Hallucinations
do not come thus, like a thunderclap on unprepared minds. Nor is there
anything in the subsequent history of the man that seems to confirm, but
everything that contradicts, the idea that such a revolutionary change
as upset all his mental furniture, and changed the whole current of his
life, and slammed in his face the door that was wide open to advancement
and reputation, came from a delusion.

I think the hallucination theory is out of court, too, and there is
nothing left but the old-fashioned one, that what he said he saw, _he
saw_, and did not fancy; and that which he said he heard, _he heard_;
and that it was not a buzzing of a diseased nerve in his own ears, but
the actual speech of the glorified Christ. Very well, then; if that be
true, what then? The old-fashioned belief--Jesus who died on the Cross
is living, Jesus who died on the Cross is glorified, Jesus who died on
the Cross is exalted to the throne of the universe, puts His hand into
the affairs of the world as a power amongst them. Paul's Christology is
but the _rationale_ of the vision that led to Paul's conversion. It was
in part because he 'saw that Just One, and heard the words of His
mouth,' that he declares, 'God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a
name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow.' I do not say that the vision to Paul is a demonstration of
the reality of the Resurrection, but I do say that it is a very strong
confirmatory evidence, whic