It may be presumed that, in the course of the persecution, he became well acquainted with the state of mind of those whom he was siibjecting to every kind of examination. Did it ever occur to
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him to think what would be the result if he ever came to have as clear proof as thuy believed they had that He for whose sake they were sutl'ering was not dead but alive? St. Stephen was a singu- larly clear and forcible reasoner, who went far on the very pathway of revolution which St. Paul was afterwards to travel himself. Did Saul perceive the cogency of the logic, if it were not for one great assumption ? 15ut to him this assumption was not oidy an impos.sihility but a blasiihemy ; and so he emerges for the first time into history as the keeper of the clothes of the men who stoned Stephen.
(c) Conversion. — For a time, which was not very brief, the persecutor raged like a wolf in the fold of the followers of the Nazarene ; and it was because there were no more victims left, as he sujiposed, in Jerusalem and Judiva that he begged for instructions from the authorities to go in quest of fresh victims as far as Damascus. Of what took place on the way thither the author of the Acts has given a most graphic account, and, as St. Paul turned out subsequently to be one of those religious persons who are not indisposed to narrate their most intimate experiences, there are in Acts no fewer than three accounts of the conversion, the other two being from the mouth of the subject himself (9'-'» 22'--' 26'-^). These accounts are not painfully alike. On the contrarj', they might almost be said to be so. constructed as to give the caviller a chance. Indeed, the event itself is exposed to obvious objections, for the persecutor was posting forward in the heat of midday, when he ought to have been taking a siesta, and what he saw might all have been the etlect on an over- strained brain of the unnatural experiences through which he had been passing. Full advantage has, of course, been taken of these circumstances ; but both St. Luke and St. Paul go forward with the utmost freedom, and there can be no question what they believed the event to be. St. Paul classes the vision vouchsafed to himself W'ith the a]>pearances of the Risen Saviour to the disciples after His resurrection, and those who regard the latter experiences as only subjective infer that his was only subjective also. But it is certain that he himself reasoned the opposite way : he believed the appearances to the Twelve and to the other dis- ciples to be not visionary but actual, and he was convinced, at the time and ever afterwards, that he had himself seen the living Lord. This was the datum on which his entire subsequent life was based.
Accordingly, he appeared immediately after his conversion in the synagogue at Damascus, bearing the testimony of the Apostolic Church, that Jesus is the Messiah (Ac 9™). Happilj' for us, however, he was not content with this simple statement, but, under the overpowering impression of what had happened to him, went away to Arabia, in order to think out all that it implied, and he did not consider the theme exhausted till he had pondered on it for three years {Gal 1"). AA'here was this retreat ? No exact information is supplied, but the probability is that he betook himself to the scenes of the earlier revelations made to his forefathers. As Elijah the prophet, in a period of mental crisis, wandered southwards to Mount Sinai, feeling it congenial to be where the thunders and lightnings had girdled the mountain and, in the centre, Moses had stood before the Lord, so St. Paul courted the same associations, and, aided by the memories of Moses and Elias, attempted to understand Him in whom Law and prophecy were fulfilled. This incident is passed over in Acts ; but it is probable that in 9^ we are informed how his testimony recommenced at Damascus with such power that the Jews took counsel to kill him, and he had to flee from the city.
Naturally, Jerusalem was tlie place to which he now directuii his steps. 35ut his long absence, after his conversion, Imil one serious result : it barred the way for his cordial recejition by the Christians, who could not believe that he was really one of themselves, but supposed his pretended conversion to be a ruse of the persecutor. Then it was that Barnabas showed himself a friend in need, by introducing him to the companj' of the disciples and persuading them to accept him as a brother. He seemed on the point of linking bis forces with those of the original witnesses for the resurrection of Christ ; but so much opposition did his opening testimony arouse among the Jews that he had, for safetj', to be sent away to his native Tarsus.
(d) Evangelistic activity. — Here, for a longtime, he was almost entirely lost to siglit ; but there can be little doubt that, during these years, he evan- gelized his native province of Cilicia ; and it is an interesting question whether the church in this province founded by him was Jewish or Gentile. It has been almost universally taken for granted that it was Jewish, even St. Paul not being able to anticipate the development of Providence. But both he himself and St. Luke render it indubitable that he was already acquainted with the purpose of God to make him the missionary of the Gentiles ; and it is generally recognized that in Arabia he had thought out the substance of his subsequent teaching. There is one word in the narrative of the Acts which seems sufficient to prove that he was already, both in theory and in practice, the evangelist of Gentiles as well as of Jews ; this is the mention of Cilicia (15*') among the cliurches to ■which, after the Council of Jerusalem, the apostles' message was sent, to relieve them from the obliga- tion of being circumci.^ed. If this was required in Cilicia, and if it gave satisfaction there, as it did elsewhere, then the church founded during the unrecorded years of St. Paul's sojourn in bis native province must have contained Gentiles.