Part 3

There was one man in this Synagogue of the Hellenists more remarkable than any of the other people who belonged to it. His name was Stephen. I do not know what city he came from. But he was one of the “out-dwellers,” and he had become a follower of Jesus, “one of the way”—“a Nazarene.” He was different from any of the other followers of Jesus. He saw farther than the rest did. He seems to have been the first of “those of the way” to realise that Jesus did not come to be the Messiah of the Jews alone and to purify their customs. Stephen thought He came to bring life and light and joy to _all_ the world. The other followers of Jesus in this early period were loyal, devoted Jews. They went every day to the temple and they kept the law as the other Jews did. They supposed that Jesus was to be the king in Jerusalem and that only Jews were to be His people. Those who were not Jews could have no share in the good news which He proclaimed.

Stephen was so pure and good and wise that he got a new idea of what the coming of Jesus meant. The truth was far bigger than the others dreamed, and he began to see it, and to tell about it. If God is Father, as Jesus kept saying He was, then He must love all men as well as Jews, and if God is Life and Spirit, then He can come into men’s lives everywhere without any temple and without priests and sacrifices. Stephen began to wonder, as he thought about all that Jesus had said and taught and done, whether His message was not far greater and more wonderful even than the law of Moses, whether some day it would not take the place of the old system of laws and customs and sacrifices and whether even the temple itself might no longer be needed to worship God in, for men might worship Him anywhere where they happened to be.

Stephen was so bold and fearless, and he was so full of his great idea, that he tried to tell the people in Saul’s Synagogue about it. They all turned upon him and called him a dangerous man. They tried to make him see that he was not true to the religion of his fathers, that he was teaching new ideas, that he was turning people away from the old customs, and that if the people followed his teaching they would overthrow the whole wonderful system of Moses, and so make it impossible for the Messiah to come, for whom all good Jews were waiting and longing.

Saul, with all his learning and his knowledge, thought he could easily answer Stephen and prove that he was entirely wrong. But every time he tried, Stephen got the best of him. Saul would quote texts from the Old Testament and Stephen would rise up and show that these texts meant something quite different from what Saul had always thought they meant. He was so powerful and his life was so noble that all the people who listened felt that even if he was wrong in his ideas he was great in his soul, and they began to wonder if he perhaps might be right and Saul wrong. Day after day the discussion went on without any end to it. At last Saul decided that this would never do. Some way must be found to stop this dangerous man who was leading the members of his Synagogue astray. He told the rulers in Jerusalem that he had discovered a traitor who must be arrested. “He talks against Moses,” he said. “He does not love our holy land, or our holy law, or our holy temple, the way all true Jews should.” Then the Council in Jerusalem had Stephen arrested and brought before them for trial, and witnesses came in and told all the things they could think of to make the Council condemn him.

While they were talking against him they all saw a light shine on his face, and he looked more like an angel than like an ordinary man, and everybody wondered what he would say in answer to the charges that were made against him. And Saul must have been eager to see what was going to happen to this man with the shining face, whom nobody could defeat in an argument. Then quietly Stephen began to speak for himself. He did not try to prove that the things which had been said against him were false. He paid no attention to his own case. He told the Council that all through the history of their Hebrew race the people had always failed to see new light when God brought it to them; they had always missed the path when God was trying to lead them into a new way, and they had always misunderstood when God was trying to teach them new ideas. They cried out against Moses, he told them, in the wilderness. They worshipped a golden calf just at the time when he was giving them the law of God, and when the prophets came to teach them more about God, they served Moloch and other false gods instead of Him. Their great, wise king Solomon had told them, when he built the temple, that no temple, however wonderful, could contain the great God who fills the universe, but the people did not understand his words and seemed to think that God lived only in their temple. “You have always failed to see the truth,” Stephen cried. “You have always persecuted prophets when God has sent them to you. You have killed those who told about the coming of Jesus. And now _you, yourselves_, have betrayed and killed Him when He did come. You talk about the law and you say that God gave it through angels. But you do not understand it and you do not really keep it.”

That was more than they could stand. They forgot that they were judges and were having an orderly trial. They all rushed at Stephen. They showed their teeth at him and howled him down. But he was as calm and steady as though everything were peaceful. In the midst of the uproar, they suddenly heard him say: “I see Jesus! There He is, up there in the open sky, at the right of God in His glory.” Then they all stopped their ears, so that they might not hear what he said, and they rushed at him and dragged him out of the city and stoned him. As the people who stoned him pulled off their garments so that they could throw the stones better, they gave their garments to Saul to hold. He did not join in throwing the stones, but he approved of what the others were doing and he ran along with them and carried the garments. And he could see Stephen’s wonderful face which was shining more than ever now! He did not say one hard word against those who were killing him. But just at the end, Saul heard him say: “Lord Jesus, do not blame these people for what they are doing”—“Wilt thou now receive my spirit to Thyself.” And then, with the stones raining round him, the brave, good Stephen died—with the light still on his face.

Saul never forgot that face. He thought Stephen was wrong and he believed that he must be stopped or he would bring harm to God’s people. But he had never seen anybody die like that before! And the more he meditated and thought about it, the more he wondered at what Stephen had said, and still more over his dying words and his happy, shining face!

IX

ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS

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.

X

IN ARABIA

Though dazed and blinded by the light, which seemed to come from another world beyond this world, Saul nevertheless felt perfectly sure that he _saw_ Jesus glorified. Through all the rest of his life, he always said that he had _seen_ Christ—he had seen Him as Stephen saw Him. He had seen Him as Peter and James and John saw Him and he never had any doubt any more that He was alive and victorious over death. He had heard Him speak, too, in that wonderful meeting outside the gate of the city. He had heard Him say: “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” “Why persecutest thou _me_?”

All the rest of the way into Damascus, he walked in darkness. His outer eyes were still blind from the light, but in the city his sight came back again and he could see once more. He knew that a mighty change had come within himself, but he did not know at once all that it meant. He wanted to go far away from all the old scenes of his life, far away from everybody he knew, far away from the noisy, busy world, and think out what had happened. Even before talking with Peter and the other disciples of Jesus, he wished to meditate alone and find his bearing in the new experience which had so suddenly come to him.

The greatest leaders of Saul’s race had found out the meaning of life, alone with God, in the wilderness, or in the mountains, or on the edge of the desert. Moses had come face to face with God on Mount Sinai. Elijah had heard the still small voice speaking to him, far away from the rush and din of the world. John the Baptist got his preparation for his mission in the solitary wilderness undisturbed by people. Jesus had discovered in the desert how to come forth victorious over temptation and here he had realised that His kingdom was not to rest on force and worldly power. So, too, Saul now felt that he must go away from the city and live for a time in the heart of nature and open his soul to God.

He decided to go to Arabia for his period of quiet and of meditation. Perhaps he went, as Moses had gone, to Sinai, or to some other region of this strange, mysterious land of wilderness, mountains and deserts. He has not told us a word about his life in Arabia and none of his friends has given us any reports of these months of solitude and meditation. To-day, if any man wished to prepare for a great career of ministry or missionary service, he would go to some college or university or seminary or training school and learn how to do the work which lay before him, and he would train his body with games of skill and athletic courses, so as to be at his very best in mind and heart and body. Saul had nothing of this sort open to him. He had finished his years of study but they only prepared him to be a Jewish Rabbi, a teacher of the law. Now he wanted to learn how to tell the world the full message, the good news, which Jesus had brought to men. There was no school where this was taught. There were no Christian colleges or universities or seminaries yet. There were only a few followers of Jesus. Most of them lived in Jerusalem, and they were ignorant people—fishermen, and tax-collectors—who had had no chance to study. The best thing Saul could do was, therefore, to go away alone and read and think and let God teach him.

At first he supposed that the good news which Jesus had brought was for his own people alone but as he meditated and studied and listened he began to see that God’s love reached everybody and that the great Galilean had come to bring new life to all people in the world. It was many years perhaps before Saul fully realised all that this meant, but I think he began to see it in Arabia. Another thing kept coming before him all the time. He was eager to find out why Jesus had died on the cross, why He had suffered, and what it all meant. That also took years of thought before he understood it, but here in the quiet of the mountains he began to _see_. How we wish he had written some letters from Arabia and told what he was doing and thinking! If he had only written to his mother once a week, or even once a month, and she had preserved the letters, how eagerly we would read them now! But there is not a word about it all. We only know that in the stillness his spirit was gathering power and his soul was growing richer.

At last he felt that he was “ready.” This is one of his great words—“I am now ready.” The time of quiet was over and the busy life must begin. He felt sure he could make everybody believe in his Christ. It was all so plain and wonderful that people would be bound to listen as he told them what he had seen and known and felt! He decided to go back to Damascus and begin there—near the place where he had first seen Jesus and where the great change in his life had come.

But it was not as easy as he expected. In the first place he soon discovered that he needed to know more about the life of Jesus. He had not talked with anybody yet who had been with Him in Galilee and in Jerusalem. He must learn more about Him before he could move people with his words. And then he found that the people did not want to hear about Jesus. The Jews in Damascus all thought Saul was a traitor. He had started for their city to persecute the followers of Jesus and now he was one of the followers himself, trying to make them believe. They decided to seize him and do to him what he used to do to the followers of Jesus. They would soon put him where he would not talk any more about this Galilean Teacher. They watched all the gates of the city so that Saul could not get away and they had men hunting for him through the streets. But some of Saul’s friends put him in a great basket and in the dark of the night, by a long rope, they let him down the side of the wall and he got far away from the dangerous city before the morning sun came up.

He must have felt a strange thrill as he passed by the place where he saw the great light and heard the voice saying: “Saul, why persecutest thou me?” But he hurried on over the road through Galilee and came to Jerusalem, which he had left three years before. He had started out a persecutor. He came back a follower of Jesus. He had crossed the “great divide.”

XI

FIFTEEN WONDERFUL DAYS

We have invented a little instrument called a “dictaphone.” If one of these instruments is hidden away in a room, a person at the other end of the dictaphone can overhear all the conversation that goes on in the room where it is concealed, and the entire conversation can be written down and kept. How we wish now that there had been a dictaphone in the room in which Saul staid with St. Peter for fifteen days in Jerusalem. Part of the time James, the brother of Jesus, was there, too, with them. But the rest of the time they were alone—talking, talking, talking. St. Peter was telling Saul the things he wanted to know about the life of Jesus and about His death and resurrection. What a wonderful story it would be, if we could only get it all back, word for word! There was that keen and eager face of the man still young, with all his life-work before him, and opposite the older man whose whole life had been boating and fishing until one with authority had said to him, “Follow me.” The older man knew more about this Galilean life than anybody else knew, unless it were that other fisherman, named John, and he could answer all the questions the young man asked so long as they were just questions about events, for he had seen with his eyes and he had heard with his ears and he had handled with his hands and he _knew_.