Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians

by Elizabeth Miller

The Levites looked in a little fear at the spot where they had been so mysteriously overwhelmed, but Marsyas lifted Saul and bore him back into the shade he had left to continue unto Damascus.

All of his own passion and purpose had been swept away, leaving his mind to the tenantry of the sweetest content he had ever known. Though he had seen no man nor heard a voice, he knew that the Lord had visited Saul, and that the eye of the Lord beheld Saul's work.

After that reverent translation of the supernatural event, he troubled himself no more concerning the vision.

Absolute relief possessed his soul; rest of spirit so all-comprehensive that it strengthened his body, peace so whole that it bordered on gladness, and confidence, new, delicious and simple, embraced all his being. The old restless ambition was so stilled and soothed that it seemed to have been fulfilled; the old Essenic cynicism that had slandered all the world, tinctured his friendships with distrust and his love with fear, was dissipated like a distorting illusion; his hates, his thirst for revenge, his impatience with the deliberation of God, and his self-dependence were things unremembered. He did not understand his change and did not seek after its meaning; his feelings did not even hark back to the old love for Saul. Pity and filial solicitude, sensations that on a time he could not have believed possible as shown to Saul, made the strength of his arm gentle and his service reverential. He thought now of Lydia, with worshipful, marvelous homage, as if his soul knelt to her. He had ceased to be afraid for her or to fear that he would not find her. Everything good became possible; the prospering of virtue, the fidelity of Agrippa, the prevention of Flaccus and the favor of Cæsar, even the restoration of his beloved, seemed to be things absolutely assured.

He did not say these things to himself; they were simple convictions that made themselves felt in a tender blending which amounted to perfect waiting on the Lord.

He did not know that his face had become beautiful, or that Joel looked askance at him or that the other Levites wondered if he had come to them in the great light. So when the sun stood three hours above the horizon, he raised Saul from the shade of the walnut grove and passed on to Damascus.

The golden haze reddened over the glorious Damascene plain, the distance became obscured; the purple triumphed; then the royal color over the world began to run out into plum shades, and the sudden night came up from the east.

But before this hour at one of the north gates of Damascus, the halting group of Levites, the stricken man among them, and the silent, kindly young stranger appeared before Aretas' wiry black Arab sentry that held that post.

They did not know the ways of the Pearl of the Orient, and they wished to find Via Recta—Straight Street. There Judas, a Pharisee of wealth and power, expected to entertain Saul.

Though the Cæsars possessed the city's fealty, exacted tribute, installed Jupiter in the temples and the eagle on its standard, it was still the dominion of Rimmon, vassal of Nimrud, high place of the sons of Uz. It had submitted to Alexander of Macedon as placidly as it suffered the wolfish Roman, who would pass, likewise. It notched its calendar by the rise and fall of nations, and marked its days by the sway of kings. It had propitiated Time, hence there was no death for Damascus; it steeped itself in the oils of the Orient and so was spiced against decay. There were Romanized colonnades along the streets, but the winged bulls of the dromoes, the stucco-work and the tiles, the swaying of carpets from balconies obscured their influence. Architects of Cæsar's extravagances scowled at the giant structures that were old in Baalbec's time and looked their defeat; Chaldean philosophers contemplated the trenches worn in the rock pavements by the feet of men and held their peace; olives, as old as Troy, cast their leaves down on the heads of Greeks who shook them off impatiently, but the sons of Abraham could point to a mound of clay and say: "This was a temple which our father builded unto God, before you all!"