2. " It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." In our land we rarely see oxen yoked to the plough. Obedient horses do that work in our fields. But in the lands of the Bible, oxen were employed in the task, and they did not take kindly to it until they were broken in. They were often in rebellious mood, and flung their heels back in angry protest against the beam or shaft of the ploughshare. They stood and kicked instead of moving on. To stop this a somewhat cruel device was used. The beam was faced with small, sharp iron spikes, and when those rebellious limbs of theirs were flung furiously back it was only to have them pricked and sorely wounded. The most stubborn oxen speedily got tired of that self-inflicted torture ; settled down to the yoke and the labour, and submissively went whither the ploughman drove. It is a curious figure to apply to a man, but distinctly forcible ; and this was the figure which our glorified Lord used to that haughty and headstrong man, Saul of Tarsus. Here he was, entrusted with a most important mission, armed with letters and credentials from the most imposing authorities in his nation, lifted up with the intoxication of rage and assurance, resolved to destroy at a blow this new pernicious sect of Christians which had sprung
no WHY PERSECUTEST THOU ME?
up, and doubtless expecting to win great glory in doing it. And Christ appeared and knocked down his pride with this little word : told him that he was like one of those stupid oxen which, in refusing to do what they were ordered to do, only inflicted suffering upon themselves. Now, how did the figure apply to him ? What was the resemblance between this man, driving forward on his mission of persecution, and the ox refusing to be driven, and wounding himself in sheer wrath and obstinacy ? Saul understood it quickly. It meant that God had laid hold of him and yoked him to higher service, and that all this furious zeal against Jesus and the saints was just an effort to escape the yoke, to resist the power that was driving him, an effort which was bound to fail, for like the oxen he was bound to go submissively when he had abandoned kicking against the pricks. Yes, he was already yoked. A Master's hand was upon him, and he was trying to fling it off and could not.
3. It has been said that the martyrdom of Stephen converted Saul. That is overstating it ; but the blood-drops of that sufferer were the seed-grain of Saul's changed life. He had heard the courageous testimony, watched and seen the face which in its dying agony was as the face of an angel ; seen with what absolute fearlessness a Christian could suffer and die. It had preached to him through his obstinately closed ears ; it had pricked his heart and left a sense of pain. He had crushed it down many a time, but it rose again. It was like a fire that still burned and would not be quenched. It grew fiercer, indeed, the more he tried to quench it. He fanned his hatred against the Christian sect; he followed them, hunted them, laid fierce hands upon them, dragged them off to prison, got them scourged and stoned and slain. What of that? It only brought him face to face with them. Through every one of them Christ spoke and pleaded. He saw their patient heroism, serenity in suffering, cheerfulness in dying. He could not help asking himself the secret of it. What was it that nerved and inspired these men ? There was something here which he had never found in his own orthodox Pharisaism, and what was it ? Could Christ be true ? Was the Nazarene, indeed, the Son of God ? and in slaying these people was he murdering the saints of God ? Such thoughts as these had searched the
ACTS ix. 4 m
heart of Saul of Tarsus, and it was face to face with himself that he was prepared for the vision of the Son of God.
Tf We can be born thus more than once ; and each birth brings us a little nearer to our God. But most of us are content to wait till an event, charged with almost irresistible radiance, intrudes itself violently upon our darkness, and enlightens us, in our own despite. We await I know not what happy coincidence, when it may so come about that the eyes of our soul shall be open at the very moment that something extraordinary takes place. But in everything that happens there is light ; and the greatness of the greatest men has but consisted in that they had trained their eyes to be open to every ray of this light.1
II.
The Vision.
1. We do not know the precise spot where the vision occurred, but tradition localizes it at Salahijeh, an outer spur of the Lebanon range, at the foot of huge limestone cliffs, where the traveller first catches sight of the boundless plain and the magnificent city of Damascus set in the midst of it. One moment the famished eye sees on every side nothing but the grey aridity of limestone rock, without a leaf to enliven it; and the next it gazes enraptured upon an ocean of infinitely varied foliage. For hours Saul had been passing through the dreariest mountain scenery, whose sterile crags, bleaching in the hot sunshine, fatigued body and mind ; and now all at once there rushed upon his vision, prepared for it, as it were, by the obliteration of even the memory of any green thing, a scene so strangely fair that it seemed as if a new and radiant world had opened up before him — the world-old city of Damascus, embosomed in the brightest verdure and bloom, a pearl surrounded by emeralds, the "eye of all the East." It pleases us to think that, with a poetic fitness, this was the place where Saul and his escort of soldiers were arrested by the super- natural vision.