"I would not vex with darkened words thine ear,
My master," gently deprecated Paul;
"But otherwise how can I, than in words
Dark-seeming, frame of things ineffable
Shadow or image only? God revealed
His Son in me; thenceforth no longer I
Lived, but Christ in me. I am not myself.
The self that once was I, was crucified
With Jesus on that cross, with Jesus then
Was buried, and with Jesus rose again,
To be forever other than before.
"I journeyed to Damascus glorying,
In my old heart, the heart thou knewest for Saul,
Against the name, and those that owned the name,
Of Jesus, to destroy them from the earth.
But Jesus, in a terror of great light,
Met me and smote me prostrate on the ground.
A voice therewith I heard, the voice was wide,
And all my members seemed one ear to hear
That voice, which shone too, like the light around
Me that had quenched the midday sun; it pressed
At every pore with importunity
So dreadful that the world became a sound:
'Saul, Saul, why art thou persecuting me?'
'Who art thou, Lord?' my trembling flesh inquired.
'Jesus I am whom thou dost persecute,'
I heard through all my members in reply.
"I cannot tell thee, master, how my soul,
All naked of its flesh investiture,
Lay quivering to the touch of sight and sound.
Into annihilation crushed, my pride,
My pride, my hate, the fury of my zeal,
The folly and the fury of my zeal
Against God and His Christ, were not, and I
Myself was not, but Christ in me was all.
Thenceforth to me to live was Christ, and Christ
None other than that Man of Calvary,
The Jesus whom we crucified and slew.
Rabban Gamaliel, then knew I that God
Had visited His people otherwise
Than we were used to dream that He would come,
In glory, and in splendor, and in power,
To overwhelm our enemies, and us
To the high places of the earth lift up.
Yea, otherwise, far otherwise, than so,
Had our God visited His people—hid
That glory which no man could see and live—
Sojourning in the person of one born
Lowly, to teach us that the lowly place,
And not the lordly, is for us to choose.
Whoso the lowly place shall choose, and, prone
Before Jehovah humbled to be man
In Jesus Christ of Nazareth, fall down
To worship, and, believing, to obey,
Him will the Lord God show Himself unto,
Since unto such He can, such being like
Himself and able to behold His face."
Silence between them, silence filled to Paul
With intercession of the Spirit, He
In groanings that could not be uttered praying;
And to Gamaliel silence filled with awe.
A pride not inaccessible to touch
From the divine, and not incapable
Of moments almost like humility,
Was nature to Gamaliel that sometimes
Renewed him in his spirit to a child.
He lay now like an infant tremulous
That feels the motion of the mother's breast,
But other motion, of its own, has not.
The awful powers of the world to come,
Benign but awful, brooded over him;
Eternity a Presence watching Time!
Such breathless silence of the elder twain
Left audible the breathing of the boy,
Young Stephen, who, worn weary with his hours
Of over-early anxious walk and watch,
Had found the happy haven, ever nigh
To youth and health and innocence o'erwrought,
And dropped his anchors in the sounds of sleep.
Thus then stretched out remiss upon the floor,
As if unconscious body without soul,
Lay Stephen slumbering there, beside those two
So wakeful that each might in contrast seem
Soul only, without body, soul disclad.
A blast, not loud, of trumpet sudden blown
For signal, and a clangor as of stir
Responsive from the mailéd feet of men,
Broke on the stillness from the court without.
Gamaliel, rousing from his reverie,
Gazed deep on Paul, who met his master's eye—
Gazed long and deep with slow-perusing look.
"Look on me, Saul, and let me look on thee,"
At length Gamaliel said, "look on thee still;
Steady thine eye, if that thou canst, my son,
And my look take, unruffled, like a spring
Sunken beneath the winging of the wind;
Stay, let me sound within thee to the deeps,
And touch the bottom of thy being, there
At leisure with mine eye the truth explore.
Be pure and simple, if thou mayest; cloud not
My seeing with aught other than sincere,
Nor cross with baffling thwart perversity."
Gamaliel, leaning on his elbow, fast
His aged vision, like an eagle's, fixed
On Paul, and through the windows of his soul,
Wide open, as into a crystal sky
Gazing, beheld his thoughts orbed into stars.
Half disappointed and half satisfied,
The gazer slowly let the look intense
Fade from his eyes, and pass into a deep
Withdrawn expression, as of one who sees,
Unseeing, things without, and wraps his mind
In contemplations of an inward world.
"No conscious falseness," murmured he, aloud,
Yet inly, as communing with himself;
"No conscious falseness there, the same clear truth
That ever was the character of Saul;
No falseness, and no subtle secret flaw,
Unconscious, in the soundness of the mind;
The same sane sense that marked him from of old.
He has been deceived; how could he be deceived?
That light which fell around him at mid-noon,
Who counterfeited that? It might have been
Force from the sun that smote him in the brain,
As he was smitten whom Elisha healed,
That son of promise to the Shunammite—
Nay, that had made a darkness, and not light,
To him, and dulled his senses not to hear,
And dulled his fancy not to feign, such voice
As that which spake so dreadfully to him.
Astounding voice, that uttered human speech
And yet, like thunder, occupied the world!
Did Saul discern the tongue in which it spake?
Perhaps some mere illusion of the mind,
Whimsical contradiction to the thought
That had so long been uppermost therein,
Imposed itself upon him for the truth;
Perhaps some automatic stroke reverse
Of overwrought imagination made
A momentary, irresponsible
Conceit of fancy seem a fact of sense;
Perhaps, not hearing, he but deemed he heard.
If he distinguished clearly what the tongue
Was of the voice that spake, then—I will ask
And see. Those words, Saul, which thou seemedst to hear,
What were they, Greek or Hebrew? Didst thou heed
So as to mark the manner of the speech,
Or peradventure but the meaning take?"
"Hebrew the words were, master," Saul replied;
"If ever it were possible for me
To lose them from my memory, mine ear
Would hear their haunting echo evermore.
Such light, such sound, forsake the senses never.
O master, when God speaks to man, doubt not
He finds the means to certify Himself.
Let Him now certify Himself to thee,
Through me, me the least worthy of such grace,
To be ambassador of grace from Him!"