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.