and whether he thought of its truth or of its grace, its origin from God or its adaptation to man, it became a "necessity" for him to proclaim it. Saturated with evangelical truth, and urged on by the constraining power of the love of Christ, Saul returned to Damascus. And now, as he was more powerful in argument, his appeals must have been armed with a keener barb than on his first visit.

So that, after narrating the natural wonder and talk of spectators, the historian adds-"But Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ"-proving— forging link after link in a chain of argument. Opposition did not daunt him. No appeal to the tenor of his past life could shame him-no satirical remarks about consistency could put him out. He rose in intellectual and spiritual power. He was well aware, from his own experience, what were the strongholds of Pharisaic pride and fanaticism. He could anticipate every objection, remove every scruple, and so enter into the spirit of his opponents as to meet and refute every doubt. He had but to remember how himself had felt and reasoned, and he was armed for his task, and then, with his new and additional information, he confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus. As he heaped proof upon proof in intense accumulation, as he laid bare their sophisms and gave them a vivid anatomy of their inner nature, transferred his own experience to them, exposed every prejudice, and overturned every refuge of lies-no wonder he "confounded" them; that is, he so perplexed them with his reasonings, that ingenuity failed them-they were struck dumb, and could

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not reply. They "could not resist the wisdom and power" by which he spake, as he was "proving that this is very Christ;" that this man who passed among men by the name of Jesus, is verily the long-promised and longexpected Christ or Messiah-that is, the anointed Onehaving in the unction of the Holy Ghost the seal and signal of His commission, and the great element of His qualification; for God gave "Him not the Spirit by measure"-"the Spirit of counsel and might"-the Spirit which descended "like a dove, and it abode upon Him"since He was "justified in the Spirit;" "by the Spirit of God" He wrought miracles; "through the eternal Spirit" He offered Himself; put to death in the flesh, He was "quickened by the Spirit;" nay, He was "declared to be the Son of God, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead."

The evidence must have rested on a comparison of Christ's life with the "prophecies that went before concerning" Him. That evidence is varied and convincing. He was born at Bethlehem, as Micah had predicted, and before the four hundred and ninety years had expired, as Daniel had foretold; born of a virgin, and of the family of David, as the seers had announced; walking and worshipping in the second temple, as the last of the prophets had pre-intimated; baptized with the Holy Ghost, and assuming a public ministry, for thus had He been heralded; speaking, and that by parable, as the Psalmist had avouched; working, and that by miracle, as Isaiah had chanted living a holy and gentle life, as long ago pencilled by the Spirit; betrayed by His "own familiar friend which did eat

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of His bread;" apprehended and put to death, according to "the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God;" His hands and feet pierced, and yet "not a bone of Him broken," for so had it been fore-pictured; offered vinegar in His thirst, as His suffering prototype had drunk before Him; "numbered among transgressors," for such had been the strange and awful utterance; a grave prepared Him with the two thieves, and yet laid in the tomb of "a rich man," who begged His body; the execrated of the world, and yet the Saviour of the world.

Such a demonstration was Saul's special work in the meantime. He upheld the claims of Jesus, as he was for the second time confronted with his countrymen, and there were fifty thousand of them in Damascus. He did not

beat about the question, but brought it at once into earnest conflict. It was a question of life and death-it was the question of the age-the question for all ages—the identification of Jesus with that divine Emancipator whom the Hebrew bards had sung of in rapturous anticipation—with Him who, in taking humanity, was to redeem it, and in descending to the world was to lift it out of degradation and ruin, and elevate it to renewed fellowship with its Creator. It needed faith, indeed, to comprehend the mystery, for there had been no external manifestation. He was not born in a palace, nor swaddled "in soft raiment." The Babe did not sleep on a lordly couch, nor was there a glory round the head of the Youth. The Man was not surrounded with oriental luxuries, but He handled hammer and hatchet, when He earned His bread by the sweat of His brow and felt the primal curse. He wore no

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divine livery, as He wrought His miracles; and when He died, no choir of angels were heard singing hymns of comfort in His ear. What about Him, then, signalized Him? It needed a keen eye to watch Him, so as to detect His higher nature. But then, as you compare Him with the olden oracles, who can doubt their fulfilment in Him? Moses throws a halo over his successor "like unto" him. Aaron, clothed with the ephod and breast-plate, and carrying "the blood of goats and calves," represents Him dying and pleading. David, with his diadem on his brow, claims Him as his Son, and last and great successor. Yes, this is He, seen in the light of type and prophecy. O surely it is a sin of sins to reject Him. If men are "confounded," and yet are not convinced; if they cannot refute the proof, and yet in defiance of it will not admit the conclusion; if, though vanquished in argument, they withhold their faith, and fall back on prejudice, or wrap themselves in indifference-then surely theirs is the terrible condemnation of those who "love the darkness rather than the light," and, wilfully shrouding themselves in the gloom, gather it in thickening folds around them for ever. If this be the very Christ, let us hail His advent with rapture, contemplate His life in admiration, open our hearts to His words, strive to imbibe His spirit of untiring beneficence, prostrate ourselves in awful wonder round His cross, survey His empty tomb with sabbatic gladness, and follow Him with loud hosannahs as He ascends to His throne of Glory. Thou, the only-begotten Son of God and first-born Child of Mary-the living embodiment of Abraham's far-off

visions and David's gladsome pæans; Thou, the Ange of the Covenant and the Man of sorrows; Thou, the Lord of the temple and the Infant of the manger-Blessed Jesus, Thou art the very Christ!

Saul's preaching during his second sojourn of "many days" at Damascus, so provoked his enemies that they resolved on his assassination-a miserable weapon of defence, and the token, too, of conscious defeat. The same spirit was rising against Saul as had risen in his own mind against Stephen. He saw his former self alive again in those adversaries, and by himself could measure their truculent ferocity. The tormentor became in turn the tormented—the knife he had whetted was pointed against himself. "I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake," said the Lord to Ananias; and the neophyte soon began to learn the lesson, and he who was "in perils oft" never ceased to learn it. The Jews in many cities had a species of separate internal government, with a local magistrate of their own race, somewhat in the same way as British residents in a foreign port are under the protection of a British consul. When, therefore, "they took counsel to kill him," they obtained the assistance of the garrison, so as to seize him and prevent his flight. But his friends interfered: the ethnarch under Aretas missed his prey; and the sentinels at the gates found their vigilance ineffective. That life was too richly laden to be so prematurely cut off: "Through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped." He who had entered Damascus a blind and stricken traveller, left it a fugitive in haste and by night,