This young man who now unexpectedly found himself a persecutor was by nature kind and tender-hearted. He had never wilfully hurt any creature or given pain to anybody. He had come up to Jerusalem for his life-career with the highest hopes and the noblest aspirations. His whole being was aflame with a passion for his nation. Ever since he was old enough to know the story of his own people he had dreamed of the splendid future that was soon to dawn. All that the greatest prophets had seen in distant vision, he believed he should one day see with his own eyes. He had tried, with almost superhuman effort, to make his own life perfect so that he might be one of the little inner circle of perfect Jews, who would help to bring the Messiah and the perfect age and who would be ready for this glorious king when he should come.

Now he suddenly found, in his own Synagogue even, people who said that the Messiah had come already, that the rulers and Pharisees who were expecting Him and preparing for Him had not recognised Him when He did come and had crucified Him. This seemed to Saul an awful idea—an unbelievable tale. He was sure the Messiah could not be crucified. But he was afraid that these enthusiastic and misguided followers of Jesus would ruin his hopes. Everything that could be done must be done at once to stop their teaching and to destroy their influence. He saw only one way to guard the hope of Israel and that was to crush this movement absolutely and to shut up or kill every person who went about claiming that Jesus was the Messiah. It was a very disagreeable task, but it must be done for the good of the nation and, however hard and distasteful it might be, Saul was resolved to carry it through and to leave nobody who would ever again dare to say that Jesus, the crucified, was the long-expected king.

Into the peaceful homes of the “Nazarenes” he went and seized both men and women and carried them away to prison. He had to separate husbands from their wives. He had to take mothers away from their tender little babies. He had to break up meetings and drag away those who were preaching the new gospel to their eager listeners. But everywhere he went he found that these people had something which he did not have. In the midst of their sufferings and their trials they were calm and peaceful and happy and triumphant and radiant. When they were persecuted their faces shone with a light that seemed almost heavenly. They prayed for those who injured them and were not disturbed by any troubles. They kept saying most remarkable words about Jesus and their faith in Him, and they all seemed to believe that He was still alive and that they would all soon be with Him.

Saul had been trying all his life to be perfect, to be fully righteous. He had worked with all his might to keep all the law and all the commandments. But he knew deep down in his soul that he had failed to reach his aim. He could not do it. He found something in himself which he could not govern. If he didn’t break one commandment, he broke another. If he was strong at one point he was sure to be weak at another. That commandment which his mother had told him was the hardest to keep—“thou shalt not covet or desire”—was always bothering him. Even when he did not actually do wrong things, he found himself wanting to do them, and that he knew was wrong. It all filled him with discouragement, and sometimes with despair.

But these people whom he was persecuting and dragging away to prisons seemed to be good almost without trying. They had found a new power somewhere that seemed to help them. It made him wonder whether they were perhaps right and he possibly was wrong. He hated what he was doing. How gladly he would stop it, if only he could be sure that God did not want him to persecute these strange followers of Jesus. But until God should make it perfectly plain to him, he must go on with his hard duty.

He had heard of some of these “Jesus-people” in the city of Damascus. He would go to that city and stop them before they had time to spread. He got documents from the rulers in Jerusalem giving him power to ride to Damascus and to seize these people and to treat them as he had treated those in Jerusalem. With his band of helpers he started off on his journey, looking bold and fearless in his face, but feeling in his soul that it was the most disagreeable journey he had ever set out upon, and wishing all the time that he could ride straight on through Damascus and the Syrian gate in the mountains to Tarsus, and give up the whole sorry work of dragging mothers away from their children. As he rode he thought and wondered.

The road took him through Capernaum and around the magnificent lake where Jesus had done much of His work, where He had preached His divine messages and where He healed multitudes of people. Saul could hardly stay at any inn in that country without hearing some wonderful story of the Galilean Teacher. He might easily see the father of the little girl who had been raised from her bed by this Teacher. He might talk with a man whose eyes had been opened, or with a person who had been delivered from leprosy or insanity, which the people in that day called being “possessed with devils.” He might hear men tell how they themselves had heard this wonderful Galilean talk about God His Father and about the kingdom of life and love. And he might hear strange stories of what had happened after the crucifixion—how fishermen who had lived by that lake all their lives had seen Jesus in glorified form, after He had been dead and buried.

Saul would ride on from Galilee with new thoughts surging in his mind. The simple faith of those who saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears would stir him with fresh meditation as he rode over the stretch of country between Gennesareth and Damascus.

One thing had always made it impossible for him to believe that Jesus was divine, that He was sent by God or that He was the long-looked for Messiah: He had suffered and died on the cross. Saul felt sure that, if God had sent Him and He had been divine, He would not have had to suffer, but He would have come in glory and power. But as he rode along in silence and in deep thought, he remembered that he had heard these followers of Jesus say in their meetings that the Old Testament was full of prophecies which said that Christ must suffer. He began to think more carefully about these passages—especially the one in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah: “He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief.” “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.” “As a lamb that is led to the slaughter and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb; yea he opened not his mouth.” “For the transgression of my people was he smitten.” “He poured out his soul unto death and was counted with the transgressors, yet he bore the sins of many.”

This might mean that God’s great servant would not be glorious and full of power when He came but a sufferer. It might be that He would come and suffer for the sins of others, and that He would do for men what they could not do for themselves. He might be the perfect one and He might through His suffering and death bring them a new power to live by. If he was only sure that God had raised Him from the dead and had brought Him triumphantly through His sufferings and His crucifixion, then he could believe that this Galilean was the Saviour and the divine Deliverer for whom they had been waiting.

Stephen had cried out in his dying moments, “I see Jesus there, at the right hand of God.” Saul had heard how others claimed that they had seen Him alive and glorified. He would be likely to say to himself as he rode along: “If I could only see Him as these others say they have done, I would believe as they do. I would stop this miserable work I am doing and I would follow Him forever and I would make everybody believe in Him.”

Then in the stillness there suddenly broke in upon this young man a light which seemed brighter than the mid-day sun in the sky and he saw Jesus and heard Him speak and call him and his whole life was forever changed by this wonderful thing that happened on the road to Damascus.