The time will come when the religion of Christ will conquer all the observatories and universities, and then, through her telescope Philosophy will behold the morning star of Jesus, and in her laboratory see that “all things work together for good,” and with her geological hammer discover the “Rock of Ages.”
Instead of cowering and shivering when the skeptic stands before you and talks of religion as though it were a pusillanimous thing, take your New Testament from your pocket and show him the picture of the intellectual giant of all the ages, prostrated on the road to Damascus, while his horse is flying wildly away. Then ask the skeptic what it was that frightened the one and threw the other.
Oh, no! It is no weak Gospel. It is a most glorious Gospel. It is an all-conquering Gospel. It is an omnipotent Gospel. It is the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation.
Jesus and Paul were boys at the same time in different villages, and Paul’s antipathy to Christ was increasing. He hated every thing about Christ. He was going down then with writs in his pockets to have Christ’s disciples arrested. He was not going as a sheriff goes—to arrest a man against whom he has no spite—but Paul was going down to arrest those people because he was glad to arrest them. The Bible says: “He breathed out slaughter.” He wanted them captured, and he also wanted them butchered.
It was particularly outrageous that Saul should have gone to Damascus on that errand. Jesus Christ had been dead only three years, and the story of His kindness, generosity and love filled all the air. It was not an old story, as it is now. It was a new story. Jesus had only three Summers ago been in these very places, and Saul every day in Jerusalem must have met people who knew Christ, people with good eyesight whom Jesus had cured of blindness, people who were dead and had been resurrected by the Savior, and people who could tell Paul all the particulars of the crucifixion—just how Jesus looked to the last hour—just how the heavens grew black in the face at the torture. He heard that recited every day by people who were acquainted with all the circumstances, and yet in the fresh memory of that scene he goes out to persecute Christ’s disciples, impatient at the time it takes to feed the horses at the inn, not pulling at the snaffle, but riding with loose rein—faster and faster.
Truly, Paul was the chief of sinners. No outbreak of modesty when he said that. He was a murderer. He stood by when Stephen died, and helped in the execution of that good man. When the rabble wanted to be unimpeded in their work of destroying Stephen, and wanted to take off their coats but did not dare to lay them down lest they be stolen, Paul said: “I will take care of the coats.” So they put their coats down at the feet of Paul, and he watched them, and he watched the horrid mangling of glorious Stephen.
Is it not a wonder that when Paul fell from the horse he did not break his neck—that his foot did not catch somewhere in the trappings of the saddle, and he was not dragged and kicked to death? He deserved to die—miserably, wretchedly and for ever—notwithstanding all his metaphysics, eloquence and logic.
It seems to me as if I can see Paul today, rising up from the highway to Damascus, brushing off the dust from his cloak and wiping the sweat of excitement from his brow, as he turns to us and all the ages, saying:
“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”
If it had been a mere optical illusion on the road to Damascus, was not Paul just the man to find it out? If it had been a sham and pretense, would he not have pricked the bubble? He was a man of facts and arguments, of the most gigantic intellectual nature, and not a man of hallucinations; and when I see him fall from the saddle, blinded and overwhelmed, I say there must have been something in it.