1 R. "Winterbotham. • Dora Farncomb, The Vision of His Face, 4.
216 VISIONS AND OBEDIENCE
before the eye of Saul of Tarsus, of this earth, and, in part, of his own creating. It took shape in a great measure out of the circumstances of his birth ; it was such a vision as would naturally be seen by one who was " of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews." Moreover, the vision took the colour of " that strictest sect of the Jews' religion " to which he who saw it belonged. It was the vision of a justification wrought out for the man by the man himself, a salvation of his own obtaining ; the dream of a life by which he would become " touching the righteousness which is in the ' law, blameless." Perhaps, too, there rose before the mind of Saul a vision of fame and renown. His Epistles point him out as a man of profound intellectual power; his life's story declares him a man of mar- vellous energy, daring, persistency. He had attached himself to the most illustrious rabbi of his day, one of the most celebrated in the records of Judaism. Might not this young Pharisee hope to succeed to some measure of the fame and influence of his master Gamaliel, and to be written on the same roll of merit with those whom his nation and generation delighted to honour — Simon the Just, Abtalyon, and the great Hillel ? Circumstances favoured such ambition ; he was " a young man," but apparently he was already wielding influence in the ecclesiastic councils of his people — giving his vote, and entrusted with inquisitorial powers. Probably if one part of this self-made earthly vision glowed with brighter hues, it was the destruction of the Nazarene heresy: against this, to use his own words, he was "exceeding mad." But there rose before him another vision ; no longer a self-made and earthly, but, as he terms it, " a heavenly vision." It showed him the men and women, whom he would hale to prison, would condemn to suffering or death, or compel to blaspheme : but he — Saul of Tarsus — was of that martyr-throng. It showed him that Jesus, whom they acknowledged as the Messiah and the Son of God as persecuted by Saul, and demanding, "Why persecutest thou me?"
Many the fields we reap,
And the secrets we divine; We sink where the dim pearls sleep,
And soar where the planets shine, While the race, with its restless heart, doth creep Toward the far, grey limit-line.
ACTS xxvi. 19 217
The treasures we've won are nought,
The treasures to win are all; The thing that the seeker sought
Is held — and then let fall; For the prize well-grasped is not worth a thought When the ungrasped gives a call.
The best is but the best
While it lies beyond the hand; The subtle joy of the quest
Is the hope by the questing fanned; And no man loveth the land possessed As he loveth the promised land.
Thus doth the life indeed
Call to the life that seems; Ever a larger creed
Stands writ in the land of dreams, And read when the gloom of a wordless need Is pierced by a far world's gleams.
Thus it hath ever been,
And thus shall it ever be — This spell of the "things not seen"
Cast over the things we see — Till the gain and the praise of the days look mean In the dream of eternity.1
^[ It has been pointed out by the great Brighton preacher, Frederick Eobertson, that it is largely by illusions that God in His mercy leads us on ; as we find to have been the case in the story of His chosen people. And this same thought is also well illustrated in two verses (one of them autobiographical) written by Cardinal Newman about the year 1836 —
Did we but see,
When life first open'd, how our journey lay
Between its earliest and its closing day,
Or view ourselves, as we one time shall be,
Who strive for the high prize, such sight would break
The youthful spirit, though bold for Jesus' sake.
1 P. C. Ainsworth, Poems and Sonnets, 1 2.
218 VISIONS AND OBEDIENCE
But Thou, dear Lord !
Whilst I traced out bright scenes which were to come,
Isaac's pure blessings, and a verdant home,
Didst spare me, and withhold Thy fearful word ;
Wiling me, year by year, till I am found
A pilgrim pale, with Paul's sad girdle bound.
^f The dreams of boyhood are mostly dreams of realized ambition ; and such dreams need, it is true, purification by the motives of religion ; yet they are not to be despised ; for ambitions are often noble in themselves, and the youth who in a kind of vision sees himself as a man living and acting as he would wish to live and act is really helped towards the realization of his ideal by the thrill of mingled hope and triumph that affects his whole frame when he pictures to himself the moment when he will have reached that climax of his hopes, which it is wholly honourable in him to desire to reach. Without some such " heavenly vision " — for these things are from God, or are at any rate permitted by Him — many a man who has served God and his country well would have frittered away his energies in useless or in ignoble pursuits, and, unmanned by depression, would never have achieved anything at all.1