But the year 38 is marked in the history of the nascent Church by a new and important conquest. It was during that year[10.1] that we may safely place the conversion of that saint whom we saw a participant in the stoning of Stephen, and a principal agent in the persecution of 37, and who now, by a mysterious act of grace, becomes the most ardent of the disciples of Jesus.
Saul was born at Tarsus, in Cilicia,[10.2] in the year 10 or 12 of our era.[10.3] According to the manner of that day, his name was Latinized into that of Paul;[10.4] yet he did not regularly adopt this last name until he became the apostle of the Gentiles.[10.5] Paul was of the purest Jewish blood.[10.6] His family, probably originally from the town of Gischala, in Galilee,[10.7] professed to belong to the tribe of Benjamin;[10.8] and his father enjoyed the title of Roman citizen,[10.9] no doubt inherited from ancestors who had obtained that honor either through purchase or through services rendered to the state. Perhaps his grandfather had obtained it for aid given to Pompey during the Roman conquest (63 B.C.). His family, like most of the old and solid Jewish houses, belonged to the sect of Pharisees.[10.10] Paul was reared according to the strictest principles of this sect,[10.11] and though he subsequently repudiated its narrow dogmas, he always retained its asperity, its exaltation, and its ardent faith.During the epoch of Augustus, Tarsus was a very flourishing city. The population, though chiefly of the Greek and Aramaic races, included, as was common in all the commercial towns,[10.12] a large number of Jews. The taste for letters and the sciences was a marked characteristic of the place; and no city in the world, not even excepting Athens and Alexandria, was so rich in scientific institutions and schools.[10.13] The number of learned men which Tarsus produced, or who pursued their studies there, was truly extraordinary;[10.14] but it should not therefore be imagined that Paul received a careful Greek education. The Jews rarely frequented the institutions of secular instruction.[10.15] The most celebrated schools of Tarsus were those of rhetoric,[10.16] where the Greek classics received the first attention. It is hardly probable that a man who had taken even elementary lessons in grammar and rhetoric would have written in the incorrect non-Hellenistic style of the Epistles of St. Paul. He talked habitually and fluently in Greek,[10.17] and he wrote or rather dictated[10.18] in that language; but his Greek was that of the Hellenistic Jews, a Greek replete with Hebraisms and Syriacisms, scarcely intelligible to a lettered man of that period, and which can only be accounted for by his Syriac turn of mind. He himself recognised the common and defective character of his style.[10.19] Whenever it was possible he spoke Hebrew—that is to say, the Syro-Chaldaic of his time.[10.20] It was in this language that he thought, and it was in this language that he was addressed by the mysterious voice on the road to Damascus.[10.21]
Nor did his doctrine show any direct adaptation made from Greek philosophy. The verse quoted from the Thais of Menander, that occurs in his writings,[10.22] is one of those versified proverbs which were familiar to the public, and could easily have been quoted by one who had not read the original. Two other quotations—one from Epimenides, the other from Aratus—which appear under his name,[10.23] although it is not certain that he used them, may also be explained as having been borrowed at second-hand.[10.24] The literary training of Paul was almost exclusively Jewish,[10.25] and it is in the Talmud rather than in the Greek classics that the analogies of his ideas must be sought. A few general ideas of wide-spread philosophy, which one could learn without opening a single book of the philosophers,[10.26] alone reached him. His manner of reasoning was very curious. He certainly knew nothing of the peripatetic logic. His syllogism was not at all that of Aristotle; but on the contrary his dialectics greatly resembled those of the Talmud. Paul, as a general thing, was influenced by words rather than by ideas. When a word took possession of his mind it suggested a train of thought singularly irrelevant to the subject in question. His transitions were sudden, his developments interrupted, his conclusions frequently suspended. Never was a writer more unequal. One may seek in vain throughout the realm of literature for a phenomenon as bizarre as that of a sublime passage like the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians by the side of feeble arguments, laborious repetitions, and fastidious subtleties.
His father early intended that he should be a Rabbi; but, according to the general custom,[10.27] gave him a trade. Paul was an upholsterer,[10.28] or rather a manufacturer of the heavy cloths of Cilicia, which were called Cilicium. At various times he worked at this trade,[10.29] for he had no patrimonial fortune. It seems quite certain that he had a sister whose son lived at Jerusalem.[10.30] In regard to a brother[10.31] and other relatives,[10.32] who it is said had embraced Christianity, the indications are very vague and uncertain. Refinement of manners being, according to some modern ideas, in direct relation to personal wealth, it might be imagined from what has just been said, that Paul was a man of the people, badly educated and without dignity. This opinion would, however, be thoroughly erroneous. His politeness was often extreme, and his manners were exquisite. Notwithstanding the defects in his style, his letters show that he was a man of rare intelligence,[10.33] who formed for his lofty sentiments expressions of rare felicity; and no correspondence exhibits more careful attentions, finer shades of meaning, and more amiable hesitancies and timidity. One or two of his pleasantries shock us.[10.34] But what animation! What a wealth of charming sayings! What simplicity! It is easy to see that his character, at the times when his passions do not make him irascible and fierce, is that of a polite, earnest, and affectionate man, sometimes susceptible, and a little jealous. Inferior as such men are before the general public,[10.35] they possess within small sects immense advantages, through the attachments they inspire, through their practical aptitude, and through their skill in arranging difficult matters.
Paul was small in size, and his personal appearance did not correspond with the greatness of his soul. He was ugly, stout, short, and stooping, and his broad shoulders awkwardly sustained a little bald head. His sallow countenance was half hidden in a thick beard; his nose was aquiline, his eyes piercing, and his eyebrows heavy[10.36] and joined across his forehead. Nor was there anything imposing in his speech,[10.37] for his timid and embarrassed air gave but a poor idea of his eloquence.[10.38] He shrewdly, however, admitted his exterior defects, and even drew advantage therefrom.[10.39] The Jewish race possesses the peculiarity of at the same time presenting types of the greatest beauty, and the most thorough ugliness; but this Jewish ugliness is something quite apart by itself. Some of the strange visages which at first excite a smile, assume, when lighted up by emotion, a sort of deep brilliancy and grandeur.
The temperament of Paul was not less singular than his exterior. His constitution was not healthy, though at the same time its endurance was proved by the way in which he supported an existence full of fatigues and sufferings. He makes incessant allusions to his bodily weakness. He speaks of himself as a man sick and bruised, timid, without prestige, without any of those personal advantages calculated to make an effect, and altogether so uninviting that it was surprising that he did not repel people.[10.40] Besides this, he hints with mystery at a secret trial, “a thorn in the flesh,” which he compares to a messenger of Satan sent to buffet him, “lest he should be exalted above measure.”[10.41] Thrice he besought the Lord to deliver him, and thrice the Lord replied, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” This was apparently some bodily infirmity; for it is not possible to suppose that he refers to the attractions of carnal delights, since he himself informs us elsewhere that he was insensible to them.[10.42] It appears that he was never married;[10.43] the entire coldness of his temperament, the consequence of the unequalled ardor of his brain, showed itself throughout his life, and he boasts of it with an assurance savoring, perhaps, of affectation, and which, certainly, seems to us rather unpleasant.[10.44]
He came to Jerusalem,[10.45] it is said, at an early age, and entered the school of Gamaliel the Elder.[10.46] This Gamaliel was the most enlightened man in Jerusalem. As the name of Pharisee was applied to every prominent Jew who was not of a priestly family, Gamaliel passed for a member of that sect. Yet he had none of its narrow and exclusive spirit, and was a liberal, intelligent man, tolerant of the heathen, and acquainted with Greek. Perhaps, indeed, the large ideas professed by Paul after he received Christianity, were a reminiscence of the teachings of his first master; it must, however, be admitted that at first he did not learn much moderation from him. An extreme fanaticism was then prevalent in Jerusalem. Paul was the leader of a young and rigorous Pharisee party, most warmly attached to the national traditions of the past.[10.47] He did not know Jesus,[10.48] nor was he present at the bloody scene of Golgotha; but we have seen him take an active part in the murder of Stephen, and among the foremost of the persecutors of the Church. He breathed only threatenings and slaughter, and furiously passed through Jerusalem bearing a mandate which authorized and legalized all his brutalities. He went from synagogue to synagogue, forcing the more timid to deny the name of Jesus, and subjecting others to scourging or imprisonment.[10.49] When the Church of Jerusalem was dispersed, his persecutions extended to the neighboring cities;[10.50] and exasperated by the progress of the new faith, and having learned that there was a group of the faithful at Damascus, he obtained from the high-priest Theophilus, son of Hanan,[10.51] letters to the synagogue of that city, which conferred on him the power of arresting all evil-thinking persons, and of bringing them bound in cords to Jerusalem.[10.52]
The disarrangement of Roman authority in Judea explains these arbitrary vexations. The half mad Caligula was in power, and the administrative service was everywhere disturbed. Fanaticism had gained all that the civil power had lost. After the dismissal of Pilate, and the concessions made to the natives by Lucius Vitellius, the country was allowed to govern itself according to its own laws. A thousand local tyrannies profited by the weakness of the decaying power. Damascus had just passed into the hands of Hartat, or HÂreth, whose capital was at Petra.[10.53] This bold and powerful prince, after having beaten Herod Antipas, and withstood the Roman forces commanded by the imperial legate Lucius Vitellius, had been marvellously aided by fortune. The news of the death of Tiberius had suddenly arrested the march of Vitellius.[10.54] HÂreth seized Damascus, and established there an ethnarch or governor.[10.55] The Jews at that time were a numerous party at Damascus, where they carried on an extensive system of proselytizing, especially among the females.[10.56] It was deemed advisable to make them contented; the best method of doing so was to allow concessions to their autonomy, and every concession was simply a permission to commit further religious violences.[10.57] To punish and even kill those who did not think as they did, was their idea of independence and liberty. Paul, in leaving Jerusalem, followed without doubt the usual road, and crossed the Jordan at the “Bridge of the Daughters of Jacob.” His mental excitement was at its greatest height, and he was alternately troubled and depressed. Passion is not a rule of faith. The passionate man flies from one extreme creed to another, but always retains the same impetuosity. Now, like all strong minds, Paul quickly learned to love that which he had hated. Was he sure, after all, that he was not thwarting the design of God? Perhaps he remembered the calm, just views of his master Gamaliel.[10.58] Often these ardent souls experience terrible revulsions. He felt the charms of those whom he had tortured,[10.59] and the better he knew these excellent sectarians the better he liked them; and than their persecutor none had greater opportunities of knowing them well. At times he saw the sweet face of the Master who had inspired His disciples with so much patience, regarding him with an air of pity and tender reproach. He was also much impressed by the accounts of the apparitions of Jesus, describing him as an aerial being; for at the epochs and in the countries when and where there is a tendency to the marvellous, miraculous recitals influence equally each opposing party. The Mahommedans, for instance, were afraid of the miracles of Elias; and like the Christians, invoked supernatural cures in the names of St. George and St. Anthony. Having crossed Ithuria, and while in the great plain of Damascus, Paul, with several companions, all journeying on foot,[10.60] approached the city, and had probably already reached the beautiful gardens which surround it. The time was mid-day.[10.61]
The road from Jerusalem to Damascus has in nowise changed. It is that one which, leaving Damascus in a south-easterly direction, crosses the beautiful plain watered by the streams flowing into the Abana and Pharpar, and upon which are now marshalled the villages of Dareya, Kankab, and Sasa. The exact locality of which we speak, and which was the scene of one of the most important facts in the history of humanity, could not have been beyond Kankab (four hours from Damascus).[10.62] It is even probable that the point in question was much nearer the city, at about Dareya (an hour and a half from Damascus), or between Dareya and Meidan.[10.63] The great city lay before Paul, and the outlines of several of its edifices could be dimly traced beyond the thick foliage; behind him towered the majestic dome of Hermon, with its furrows of snow, making it resemble the bald head of an old man; upon his right were the Hauran, the two little parallel chains which inclose the lower course of the Pharpar,[10.64] and the tumuli of the region of the lakes; and upon his left were the outer spurs of the Anti-Libanus stretching out to join Mt. Hermon. The impression produced by these richly cultivated fields, by these beautiful orchards, separated the one from the other by trenches and laden with the most delicious fruits, is that of peace and happiness. Let one imagine to himself a shady road passing through the rich soil crossed at intervals by canals for irrigation, bordered by declivities and winding through forests of olives, walnuts, apricots, and prunes, these trees draped by graceful festoons of vines, and there will be presented to the mind the image of the scene of that remarkable event which has exerted so wide an influence upon the faith of the world.In these environs of Damascus[10.65] you could scarcely believe yourself in the East; and above all, after leaving the arid and burning regions of the Gaulonitide and of Ithuria, it is joy indeed to meet once more the works of man and the blessings of Heaven. From the most remote antiquity until the present day there has been but one name for this zone, which surrounds Damascus with freshness and health, and that name is the “Paradise of God.”
If Paul there met with terrible visions, it was because he carried them in his heart. Every step in his journey towards Damascus awaked in him afflicting perplexities. The odious part of executioner, which he was about to perform, became insupportable. The houses which he just saw through the trees, were perhaps those of his victims. This thought beset him and delayed his steps; he did not wish to advance; he seemed to be resisting a mysterious influence which pressed him back.[10.66] The fatigue of the journey,[10.67] joined to this preoccupation of the mind, overwhelmed him. He had, it would seem, inflamed eyes,[10.68] probably the beginning of ophthalmia. In these prolonged journeys, the last hours are the most dangerous. All the debilitating causes of the days just past accumulate, the nerves relax their power, and reaction sets in. Perhaps, also, the sudden passage from the sun-smitten plain to the cool shades of the gardens heightened his suffering condition[10.69] and seriously excited the fanatical traveller. Dangerous fevers, accompanied by delirium, are always sudden in these latitudes, and in a few minutes the victim is prostrated as by a thunder-stroke. When the crisis is over, the sufferer retains only the impression of a period of profound darkness, crossed at intervals by dashes of light or of images outlined against a dark background.[10.70] It is quite certain that a terrible stroke instantly deprived Paul of his remaining consciousness, and threw him senseless on the ground.
It is impossible, with the accounts which we have had of this singular event,[10.71] to say whether any exterior fact led to the crisis to which Christianity owes its most ardent apostle. In such cases, moreover, the exterior fact is of but little importance. It was the state of St. Paul’s mind, it was his remorse on his approach to the city where he was to commit the most signal of his misdeeds, which were the true causes of his conversion.[10.72] I much prefer, for my part, the hypothesis of an affair personal to Paul, and experienced by him alone.[10.73] The incident, nevertheless, was not wholly unlike a sudden storm. The flanks of Mt. Hermon are the point of formation for thunder-showers unequalled in violence.[10.74] The most unimpressible people cannot observe without emotion these terrible showers of fire. It should be remembered that in ancient times accidents from lightning strokes were considered divine relations; that with the ideas regarding providential interference then prevalent, nothing was fortuitous; and that every man was accustomed to view the natural phenomena around him as bearing a direct relation to himself individually. The Jews in particular always considered that thunder was the voice of God, and that lightning was the fire of God. Paul at this moment was in a state of lively excitement, and it was but natural that he should interpret as the voice of the storm the thoughts really passing in his mind. That a delirious fever, resulting from a sun-stroke or an attack of ophthalmia, had suddenly seized him; that a flash of lightning blinded him for a time; that a peal of thunder had produced a cerebral commotion, temporarily depriving him of sight—nothing of this occurred to his mind. The recollections of the apostle on this point appeared to be considerably confused; he was persuaded that the incident was supernatural, and this conviction would not permit him to entertain any clear consciousness of material circumstances. Such cerebral commotions produce sometimes a sort of retroactive effect, and greatly perturb the recollections of the moments immediately preceding the crisis.[10.75] Paul, moreover, elsewhere informs us himself that he was subject to visions;[10.76] and this circumstance, insignificant as it may be to others, is sufficient to show that for the time being he was demented.
And what did he see, what did he hear, while a prey to these hallucinations? He saw the countenance which had haunted him for several days; he saw the phantom of which so much had been said. He saw Jesus Himself, who spoke to him in Hebrew, saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Impetuous natures pass immediately from one extreme to the other.[10.77] For them there exist solemn moments and crucial instants which change the course of a lifetime, and which colder natures never experience. Reflective men do not change, but are transformed; while ardent men, on the contrary, change and are not transformed. Dogmatism is a shirt of Nessus which they cannot tear off. They must have a pretext for loving and hating. Only our western races have been able to produce those minds—large yet delicate, strong yet flexible—which no empty affirmation can mislead, and no momentary illusion can carry away. The East has never had men of this description. Instantly, the most thrilling thoughts rushed upon the soul of Paul. Alive to the enormity of his conduct, he saw himself stained with the blood of Stephen, and this martyr appeared to him as his father, his initiator into the new faith. Touched to the quick, his sentiments experienced a revulsion as thorough as it was sudden; and yet all this was but a new order of fanaticism. His sincerity and his need of an absolute faith prevented any middle course; and it was already clear that he would one day exhibit in the cause of Jesus the same fiery zeal he had shown in persecuting Him.
With the assistance of his companions, who led him by the hand,[10.78] Paul entered Damascus. His friends took him to the house of a certain Judas, who lived in the street called Straight, a grand colonnaded avenue over a mile long and a hundred feet broad, which crossed the city from east to west, and the line of which yet forms, with a few deviations, the principal artery of Damascus.[10.79] The transport and excitement of his brain[10.80] had not yet subsided. For three days Paul, a prey to fever, neither ate nor drank. It is easy to imagine what passed during this crisis in that brain maddened by violent disease. Mention was made in his hearing of the Christians of Damascus, but especially of a certain Ananias who appeared to be the chief of the community.[10.81] Paul had often heard of the miraculous powers of new believers over maladies, and he became seized by the idea that the imposition of hands would cure him of his disease. His eyes all this time were highly inflamed, and in his delirious imaginations[10.82] he thought he saw Ananias enter the room and make a sign familiar to Christians. From that moment he was convinced that he should owe his recovery to Ananias. The latter, informed of this, visited the sick man, spoke kindly, addressed him as his “brother,” and laid his hands upon his head; and from that hour peace returned to the soul of Paul. He believed himself cured; and as his ailment had been purely nervous, he was so. Little crusts or scales, it is said, fell from his eyes;[10.83] he again partook of food and recovered his strength.
Almost immediately after this he was baptized.[10.84] The doctrines of the Church were so simple that he had nothing new to learn, but was at once a Christian and a perfect one. And from whom else did he need instruction? Jesus Himself had appeared to him. He too, like James and Peter, had had his vision of the risen Jesus. He had learned everything by direct revelation. Here the fierce and unconquerable nature of Paul was made manifest. Smitten down on the public road, he was willing to submit, but only to Jesus, to that Jesus who had left the right hand of the Father to convert and instruct him. Such was the foundation of his faith; and such will be the starting-point of his claims. He will maintain that it was by design that he did not go to Jerusalem immediately after his conversion, and place himself in relations with those who had been apostles before him; he will maintain that he has received a special revelation, for which he is indebted to no human agency; that, like the twelve, he is an apostle by divine institution and by direct commission from Jesus; that his doctrine is the true one, although an angel from heaven should say to the contrary.[10.85] An immense danger finds entrance through this proud man into the little society of poor in spirit who until now had constituted Christianity. It will be a real miracle if his violence and his inflexible personality does not burst forth. But at the same time his boldness, his initiative force, his prompt decision, will be precious elements beside the narrow, timid, and indecisive spirit of the saints of Jerusalem! Certainly, if Christianity had remained confined to these good people, shut up in a conventicle of elect, leading a communistic life, it would, like Essenism, have faded away, leaving scarcely a trace. It is this ungovernable Paul who will secure its success, and who at the risk of every peril will lift on high its holy banner. By the side of the obedient faithful, accepting his creed without questioning his superior, there will be a Christian disengaged from all authority who will believe only from personal conviction. Protestantism thus existed five years after the death of Jesus, and St. Paul was its illustrious founder. Jesus had no doubt anticipated such disciples; and it was such as these who would most largely contribute to the vitality of His work and insure its eternity. Violent natures inclined to proselytism, only change the object of their passion. As ardent for the new faith as he had been for the old, St. Paul, like Omar, in one day dropped his part of persecutor for that of apostle. He did not return to Jerusalem,[10.86] where his position towards the twelve would have been peculiar and delicate. He tarried at Damascus and in the Hauran[10.87] for three years (38–41), preaching that Jesus was the Son of God.[10.88] Herod Agrippa I. held the sovereignty of the Hauran and the neighboring countries; but his power was at several points superseded by that of a Nabatian king, HÂrath. The decay of the Roman power in Syria had delivered to the ambitious Arab the great and rich city of Damascus, besides a part of the countries beyond Jordan and Hermon, then just opening to civilization.[10.89] Another emir, most probably Soheym,[10.90] a relative or lieutenant of HÂrath, had received from Caligula the command of Ithuria. It was in the midst of this great awakening of the Arab nation,[10.91] upon a foreign soil where an energetic race manifested its fiery activity, that Paul first showed the brilliancy of his apostolic soul.[10.92] Perhaps the material yet dazzling movement which revolutionized the country was prejudicial to a theory and preaching wholly idealistic, and founded on a belief of a speedy end of the world. Indeed, there exists no trace of an Arabian church founded by St. Paul. If the region of the Hauran became, towards the year 70, one of the most important centres of Christianity, it was owing to the emigration of Christians from Palestine; and it was really the Ebionites, the enemies of St. Paul, who had in this region their principal establishment.
At Damascus, where there were many Jews,[10.93] the teachings of Paul received more attention. In the synagogues of that city he entered into vigorous arguments to prove that Jesus was the Christ. Great indeed was the astonishment of the faithful on beholding him who had persecuted their brethren at Jerusalem, and who had come to Damascus “to bring themselves bound unto the chief-priests,” now appearing as their leading defender.[10.94] His audacity and personal characteristics almost alarmed them. He was alone; he sought no counsel;[10.95] he established no school; and the emotions he excited were those of curiosity rather than of sympathy. The faithful felt that he was a brother, but a brother marked by singular peculiarities. They believed him incapable of treachery; but amiable and mediocre natures always experience sentiments of mistrust and alarm when brought in contact with powerful and original minds, whom they acknowledge as their superiors, and who they know must surpass them.
