154. The Prayer Of Saul Of Tarsus, After His Conversion.

The Prayer Of Saul Of Tarsus, After His Conversion. The Prayer as recorded.—Acts 9:3-5. The Lord’s Answer.—Acts 9:5.

Continuation of the Prayer.—Acts 9:6. The Lord’s Answer.—Acts 9:6-18

“Behold, be prayeth.” He who had breathed out threatenings and slaughter, had persecuted the church, despised and abused the followers of Christ, now breathes the vital breath of a Christian, and through all his subsequent life inculcates the doctrine of repentance towards God, and faith in the Lord Jesus, and enjoins, more than all the sacred writers, the duty of always “praying with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, and watching thereto with all perseverance.” And what has caused this great change in Saul of Tarsus? The ardent, zealous persecutor is a child of God, the Holy Spirit, with his enlightening, purifying influence, has caused him to renounce all confidence in his own virtues; his strong will is now submissive to that of his Maker; he seeks to be justified not by his own merits, but by the Savior; to use his own forcible words, it has been “given him to believe.”

All this revolution in the mind and heart of Saul must be attributed, then, to the divine infusion of faith in his heart; it is not a mere conviction of his understanding, but a new life-giving principle, which fills his whole soul with new motives, new desires; its nature is spiritual, and the holy spark is only kept alive by spiritual communion with the great God who first kindled it in the soul. “It gathers energy as it proceeds; the more advanced are its attainments, the more prospective are its views. The nearer it approaches to the invisible realities to which it is stretching forward, the more their dominion over it increases till it almost makes the future present, and the unseen visible.” Its light becomes brighter, its flame purer, its aspirations stronger, as life advances, and it approximates to its great object. This faith is an active principle, hence the prayer of Saul; the will of God was henceforward to guide him, not his own desires, or the sinful corruptions of his natural heart. God hath taken away that stony heart, and hath given a heart of flesh; he is born again; and now what is his work on earth, what will the Lord have him to do. Chosen as the apostle to the Gentiles, to tell of the riches and freeness of the grace of our God and Savior, his soul was filled with incessant desires to advance the cause of the Redeemer. And is this he who so short time ago courted the favor of the intolerant Sanhedrim, who hailed men and women to prison, and who bitterly persecuted the followers of Christ?

It is Saul of Tarsus, but over his heart has come that change, without which no child of Adam can be saved. This doctrine, so plainly exemplified in the ease of Saul, is jeered at by the learned, the wise, the foolish, and the weak; but the Church of God, and the whole body of faithful followers of Christ, since Saul trembling and astonished made this prayer, will bear testimony to its truth. In the language of another we would say, “Let not the timid Christian be discouraged, let not his faith in this doctrine be shaken, though he may find that the principle to which he trusts his eternal happiness is considered false by him who knows nothing of its truth, that the change, of which the sound believer exhibits so convincing an evidence, is derided as absurd by the philosophical skeptic, treated as chimerical by the superficial reasoner, or silently suspected as incredible by the decent moralist.”