of the German Reformation; for as Luther, before he understood the doctrine of a free salvation, attempted to earn a title to heaven by the austerities of monastic discipline, so Paul in early life was “taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers,” [59:4] and “after the strictest sect of his religion lived a Pharisee.” [59:5] His zeal led him to become a persecutor; and when Stephen was stoned, the witnesses, who were required to take part in the execution, prepared themselves for the work of death, by laying down their upper garments at the feet of the “young man” Saul. [59:6] He had established himself in the confidence of the Sanhedrim, and he appears to have been a member of that influential judicatory, for he tells us that he “shut up many of the saints in prison,” and that, when they were put to death, “he gave his voice, or his vote, [60:1] against them”—­a statement implying that he belonged to the court which pronounced the sentence of condemnation.  As he was travelling to Damascus armed with authority to seize any of the disciples whom he discovered in that city, and to convey them bound to Jerusalem, [60:2] the Lord appeared to him in the way, and he was suddenly converted. [60:3] After reaching the end of his journey, and boldly proclaiming his attachment to the party he had been so recently endeavouring to exterminate, he retired into Arabia, [60:4] where he appears to have spent three years in the devout study of the Christian theology.  He then returned to Damascus, and entered, about A.D. 37, [60:5] on those missionary labours which he prosecuted with so much efficiency and perseverance for upwards of a quarter of a century.

Paul declares that he derived a knowledge of the gospel immediately from Christ; [60:6] and though, for many years, he had very little intercourse with the Twelve, he avers that he was “not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.” [60:7] Throughout life he was associated, not with them, but with others as his fellow-labourers; and he obviously occupied a distinct and independent position.  When he was baptized, the ordinance was administered by an individual who is not previously mentioned in the New Testament, [61:1] and when he was separated to the work to which the Lord had called him, [61:2] the ordainers were “prophets and teachers,” respecting whose own call to the ministry the inspired historian supplies us with no information.  But it may fairly be presumed that they were regularly introduced into the places which they are represented as occupying; they are all described by the evangelist as receiving the same special instructions from heaven; and the tradition that, at least some of them, were of the number of the Seventy, [61:3] is exceedingly probable.  And if, as has already been suggested, the mission of the Seventy indicated the design of our Saviour to diffuse the gospel all over the world, we can see a peculiar propriety in the arrangement that Paul was ushered into the Church under the auspices of these ministers. [61:4] It was most fitting that he who was to be, by way of eminence, the apostle of the Gentiles, was baptized and ordained by men whose own appointment was intended to symbolise the catholic spirit of Christianity.