As he proceeded on his way, prepared by nervous tension to see the miraculous in any startling event, he suddenly beheld a blinding flash of lightning, fell to the ground deprived of sight, saw an apparition of Jesus, and heard, in reverberating thunder, an imaginary voice exclaiming, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?'1 the voice of suppressed remorse, denouncing the cruelty of the theologian, appealing to the humanity of the man, and producing that swift revulsion of feeling which piety calls miraculous conversion.

Recovered from temporary loss of sight, Saul became an enthusiastic convert to Christianity; but, according to his Epistle to the Galatians, instead of hastening to the twelve apostles, to Mary Magdalene, and to the mother of Jesus, to learn the truths of the Gospel, he rashly assumed that he had received a special revelation, declined to communicate with the companions of Jesus, declared that he had been taught nothing by man, and pronounced an anathema on all whose evangelical views differed from his own.2 The Creed of the Mount was repentance, forgiveness, reformation, and faith in Jesus; but, by engrafting on this simplicity the creations of his own imagination, Saul became the first Christian heretic, and thus set the example which fostered, in later generations, the prolific growth of doctrines, dogmas, and mysteries, subversive of the original teaching of Jesus.

Although addressed from heaven as Saul, a change of name follows conversion, and henceforth we know him as Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles.

The Pauline portion of the Acts is little more than

a record of missionary journeys interspersed with speeches, as obviously assignable to the invention of the author, as the language put by Livy into the mouths of his historical personages. How strange that this apostolic annalist could produce nothing more worthy of the author of the Pauline Epistles than the discourses at Antioch, Athens, and Cæsarea!

The speech at Antioch is on the same model as that of Stephen, and Paul preaches, not an attested, but a constructive Resurrection. Jesus rose from the dead, not because five hundred witnesses proclaimed the miracle, but because a misinterpreted passage in the Psalms prohibited the decomposition of the Holy One.

The speech at Athens on the text' To the Unknown God(Αγνώστῳ God'-(Ayvwστw e) might have been uttered by a heathen philosopher, sustaining the Unity of Divinity; but when Paul suddenly announces to an audience as critical as the Athenians that the Deity would judge the world through a man whom he had raised from the dead, what could he reasonably expect but courteous incredulity or supercilious scorn, in the absence of any proof of the miracle?

But the poverty of imagination disclosed by the author of the Acts culminates in the speech at Cæsarea. Paul attains the privilege of preaching the Gospel before King Agrippa, Bernice, and the Roman Proconsul, Festus, and yet instead of uttering an eloquent discourse on the life, teaching, and attested Resurrection of the Son of Man, he egotistically dwells on his own phantasmal experience, and the alleged predictions of Moses and the Prophets, forecasting the sufferings and Resurrection of Jesus. Thus, on one of the most im

portant occasions on which the Gospel was preached, it was found resting on no more credible basis than the vision of Paul, and what ought to have occurred because predicted by prophets.

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Can we wonder if a practical Roman statesman saw in Paul the victim of religious hallucination; or that Agrippa should exclaim, with sarcastic pleasantry,— With but shallow reasoning you desire to make me a Christian.' In other words-'Where is the proof of your statements?' Paul had said, Why is it judged incredible with you, if God doth raise the dead?' but this is merely dealing with the theory of the Resurrection, and the gist of the matter lay in proof that an individual man had actually risen from the dead. Modern piety believes all things possible to God, but would reject the rumour of a specific resurrection without conclusive evidence of the miracle. Why, therefore, should Agrippa, Bernice, or Festus prove less sceptical than modern Christians, and if even Galilean apostles demanded material proof, should not Paul have brought some of the five hundred witnesses into court to satisfy the doubts of men less facile of conviction than himself?

The apostolic annalist is silent as to Bernice's views of Paul. If he possessed the winning smile which tradition gives him, she probably pitied the interesting fanatic, and wondered whether a woman's voice might not some day charm him more than vocal thunder.

We all know what would be the fate of Paul summoned in modern times before a bench of magistrates in connection with some popular commotion. The Acts xxvi. 28, incorrectly translated in the A.V.

narrative of Voice and Vision would be listened to with courteous incredulity and bland compassion; and remanded for medical inquiry, Paul would be pronounced insane, removed to an asylum, and there detained until the exhausted tissues of his brain had been sufficiently restored to silence supernatural voices and banish celestial visions.

Turning from anonymous fiction, let us seek more reliable information of Paul in the writings attributed to his pen. Historic evidence of the existence of Pauline literature dates from the second century. The author of 2 Peter speaks of the writings of Paul as Scripture difficult of comprehension by the ignorantlanguage impossible to a Galilean apostle, who would have necessarily condemned all doctrinal innovations on the simplicity of his Lord and Master. Irenæus and Tertullian canonise thirteen Pauline Epistles to the exclusion of Hebrews, variously assigned to Clement, Barnabas, Apollos, and Luke. This anonymous Epistle, the fruitful source of primitive, medieval, and modern controversies, can no longer be numbered among the works of Paul, but assigned to some great Unknown of the second century, who exhausted all the resources of apologetic ingenuity in the hopeless task of reconciling the irreconcilable, through the fanciful adaptation of Hebrew legends and Mosaic ritualism to the story of Jesus of Nazareth. How profound would have been the indignation of Jesus, could he have foreseen that he, who abhorred priestcraft, and was slain by priests, would yet be proclaimed a Supreme Pontiff after the order of Melchizedek!

It matters not who wrote the brief and simple letter

to Philemon. The Pastoral Epistles, addressed to Timothy and Titus, disclose their post-Pauline authorship through reference to a more advanced episcopal organization than existed in the age of the apostles. Are the seven remaining epistles the veritable autograms of Paul? Internal evidence gives us the option of one preacher of conflicting doctrines and transitional revelation, or a Pauline school modifying the teaching of its founder, through interpolated versions or pseudonymous epistles. On the theory of progressive revelation in Paul, the absence of metaphysical mysticism from the Epistles to the Thessalonians assigns to them the earliest place in Pauline literature; and as they teach nothing more than faith in Jesus, and preparation through a blameless life for the second advent of the Messiah, they stand in much closer affinity to the Galilean, than to the Pauline school.

The author borrows freely from the Book of Enoch. The word of his mouth shall destroy all the sinners, and all the ungodly, who shall perish in his presence. Trouble shall come upon them as upon a woman in travail. One portion of them shall look upon another: they shall be astonished, and shall abase their countenances, and trouble shall seize them when they shall behold the Son of woman sitting upon the throne of his glory.' Whilst in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, we read: Then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape. The wicked whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the pre