Three whole days he is kept from doing anything: during these three whole days the business of the miracle stands still. For what purpose is it thus kept at a stand? Is it that there might be time sufficient left for his learning to see, when his sight is returned, this preparatory vision, by which so little is done, and for which there is so little use?
SECTION 6.
VISIONS, WHY TWO OR THREE INSTEAD OF ONE.
As to the matter of fact designated by the words Paul's conversion, so far as regards outward conversion, the truth of it is out of all dispute:—that he was converted, i.e. that after having been a persecutor of the votaries of the new religion, he turned full round, and became a leader. Whether the so illustriously victorious effect, had for its cause a supernatural intercourse of Paul with Jesus after his resurrection and ascension, and thence for its accompaniment an inward conversion—in this lies the matter in dispute.
From those, by whom, in its essential particular, the statement is regarded as being true, a natural question may be—If the whole was an invention of his own, to what cause can we refer the other vision, the vision of Ananias? To what purpose should he have been at the pains of inventing, remembering, and all along supporting and defending, the vision of the unknown supposed associate? Answer.—To the purpose, it should seem, of giving additional breadth to the basis of his pretensions.
Among that people, in those times, the story of a vision was so common an article,—so difficultly distinguishable from, so easily confounded with, on the one hand the true story of a dream, on the other hand a completely false story of an occurrence, which, had it happened, would have been a supernatural one, but which never did happen,—that a basis, so indeterminate and aërial, would seem to have been in danger of not proving strong enough to support the structure designed to be reared upon it.
On the supposition of falsity, the case seems to be—that, to distinguish his vision from such as in those days were to be found among every man's stories, as well as in every history,—and which, while believed by some, were disbelieved and scorned by others,—either Paul or his historian bethought himself of this contrivance of a pair of visions:—a pair of corresponding visions, each of which should, by reference and acknowledgment, bear witness and give support to the other: a pair of visions: for, for simplicity of conception, it seems good not to speak any further, of the antecedent vision interwoven so curiously in the texture of one of them, after the similitude of the flower termed by some gardeners hose in hose.
Of this piece of machinery, which in the present instance has been seen played off with such brilliant success upon the theological theatre, the glory of the invention may, it is believed, be justly claimed, if not by Paul, by his historian. With the exception of one that will be mentioned presently[11], no similar one has, upon inquiry, been found to present itself, in any history, Jewish or Gentile.