The Conversion of St. Paul.
I. The change that was made in Saul was of the most extraordinary kind, and not to be accounted for by any of those sudden transitions which one sometimes sees in unstable and vacillating characters. He was a man whose whole feelings, prejudices, and interests were enlisted against Christianity. He could become a Christian only by the sacrifice of position, property, and perhaps even of life. And if you consider the history of Saul, his hatred of Christianity, the ties which bound him to great men amongst the Jews, and the advantages which depended on adherence to his party, you must allow that he would not have been brought to preach the faith which once he destroyed unless by such a demonstration that Jesus was God's Son, as to his own mind at least was quite irresistible. The brightness which struck down Saul of Tarsus lights up the moral firmament of every other generation. The voice by which he was arrested sends its echoes to the remotest lands and the remotest times.
II. The operations of God's Spirit are various, and the only proof of being in Christ is to be a new creature; but being a new creature does not in any degree depend on being able to tell how and when you were renewed. Make it your business to ascertain the change, and not to explain it.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2022.
References: Galatians 1:23. Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 246. Galatians 1:23; Galatians 1:24. S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 24.Galatians 1:24. F. Aveling, Ibid.,vol. ii., p. 4; J. Stoughton, Ibid.,vol. v., p. 145; H. Simon, Ibid.,vol. xiv., p. 53.