This was the secret of the Church's growth. It was not so much what the Apostles and first believers did or said, but what they were, that made it grow.

It grew because it lived, it grew by the power of its hidden life.

It was against this Society with its outward witness to Jesus as the Christ, and its inner life in the Holy Ghost, that Saul came into conflict.

To him this new doctrine was the abandonment of the faith and hope of Israel, a pestilent heresy that must be stamped out: to him the Christians were a set of ignoble fanatics, renegades from their faith, rebels against God.

But we must trace more clearly the way in which this conflict was brought about.

To meet a temporary necessity which the rapid growth of the new Society called forth, seven officers had been appointed.

The first of these was Stephen. Higher work was soon found for him than that for which he had been first appointed, and we find him engaged in active work as a preacher and a disputant in the synagogues of the foreign Jews at Jerusalem.

The preaching of S. Stephen took a wider range than any that had yet been taken. He was beginning to see, as no Christian teacher had hitherto seen, that the life of Christ's Church was not bound up in the life of Judaism; that the old order of the Mosaic Dispensation would pass away, and yield place to the new order of Christianity; that the old Jerusalem would pass away, while the new Jerusalem, the Church of the living God, would remain for

ever.

This new departure in the teaching of the Christian Church raised to a white heat the already excited

indignation of the Sadducean party; and at the same time roused the sleeping fanaticism of the Pharisees, among whom Saul of Tarsus, whose career we have been following, stood out in the front rank.

When S. Stephen disputed in the synagogue of the Cilicians you remember that Tarsus was the capital of Cilicia-he doubtless found his most formidable antagonist in this profound scholar, this skilled controversialist, this pupil of the great Gamaliel.

When the hurried judgment of the Sanhedrim condemned him to death, Saul gave his voice against him. When the witnesses at whose testimony he was condemned, and who by the law were required to cast the first stone at the condemned man, laid aside their outer robes for this purpose, they placed them at a young man's feet whose name was Saul,

The martyrdom of S. Stephen was the signal for the breaking out of a cruel and deadly persecution against the disciples of Jesus: and in this persecution the prime mover, the inquisitor and persecutor in chief, was Saul.

But it is very clear that the holy martyr's death made a profound impression upon him, however much he might try and shake it off. Indeed, it has been suggested that it was to throw off this impression that made Saul plunge into a still deeper and fiercer persecution of the new sect.

Not content with ravaging the Church at Jerusalem and its neighbourhood, he followed the Christian believers to strange cities, and did his best to make them blaspheme that worthy Name for which they suffered.

Among these "strange cities" was Damascus, where was a large colony of Jews, and also, as it would seem, a considerable number of the hated and despised synagogue of the Nazarenes.

C

Armed with full authority from the High Priest as Inquisitor-in-chief, and accompanied by a considerable escort, Saul commenced his journey.

Damascus was about 150 miles from Jerusalem, and, at the ordinary rate of travelling, the journey thither would occupy nearly a week.

We can hardly doubt that as he rode along, the terrible scenes in which he had been engaged, and above all the scenes outside Jerusalem, when Stephen the Nazarene fell beneath the crushing stones of his murderers, must have been constantly before his mind. The angelic face of the first martyr of Jesus would haunt him day and night, his dying words would ring perpetually in his ears. What if, after all, the Nazarene were right, and he were wrong! What if, after all, he were fighting against God! What if, after all this, Jesus of Nazareth were indeed the Christ!

The journey was nearly over: Damascus, perhaps, in sight. It was noon. At this hour travellers in that burning climate always rest: but there was no rest for Saul. The fire of hatred which burned in his heart would not let him rest. He hurried on. Then suddenly he was arrested in his course. A light more dazzling than the noonday sun shone about him. He fell prostrate to the earth in terror and confusion, and heard a voice, the sound of which was heard by all, but the words of which were heard by him alone, saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"

Fancy the suddenness and the awfulness of this! The Persecutor met on the way by Him whose servants he was persecuting. To feel in a moment that he was wrong, that his life was wrong, that he was doing wrong, that he was indeed fighting against God, persecuting the Saviour of the world: what a

fearful spiritual experience this was for a man to undergo.

This sudden revulsion of feeling and thought is more than we can possibly conceive of. Only, indeed, those whose experience has approached that of Saul, can form any idea of the conflict which must have raged within him. We can only record the fact, we can only ponder his words-"And he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"

This was the "Conversion," the turning of S. Paul.

Yet you will notice that the Lord did not tell him what he would have him to do.

He only made clear to him one step at a time. "Go into the city," the Lord said to him, "and it shall be told thee what thou must do."

Thus Christ led him step by step: and even thus will He lead us.

It was better so for him, and it is better so for us.

"I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me."

CHAPTER III.

THE CONVERSION AND BAPTISM OF S. PAUL.

HE Conversion of Saul was the most wonderful and the most important event in the history of the Christian Church, as well as the highest triumph of divine

grace. When we think of what Saul was, and what by God's grace he came to be; when we think of what his Conversion involved, both to himself and to the world, we are struck with amazement.

Among the external evidences for the truth of the Christian Religion, the conversion of its chief persecutor into its most famous Apostle is one of the most striking.

To begin with, he had everything to lose and nothing to gain, as far as worldly things were concerned. It is not as if he passed from a negative Judaism to a negative Christianity. He passed, at a bound, from the fiercest opposition to the most absolute devotion to the cause of Christ. "Saul rose another man: he had fallen in death, he rose in life; he had fallen a proud intolerant Jew, he rose a humble broken-hearted Christian."

What power, short of the reality of the appearance of Jesus to him, what less than the flashing upon his