Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/95

Rh inebriety, and love of drunken revelry; and however much he tried to case his conscience, and especially his ambition, by an extreme fanaticism of law-worship and law-defence, there were moments which he said to himself: "All is in ruin; the anguish of theunfulfilled law cannot be vanquished." Similar feelings may have taken hold of Luther when, in his monastic cell, he wished to become the perfect man of theecclesiastical ideal; ad just as Luther one day begun to hate the ecclesiastical ideal, the pope and the saints and all the clergy, with a true, deadly hatred which he durst not admit to himself—so it happened to Paul.The law was the cross to which he felt nailed. How he hated it! what a grudge he bore it! how he searched for means to destroy it—not to fulfil it any longer himself! And at last a resenting thought, together with a vision, as was natural with an epileptic like him, flashed upon him: to him, the fierce zealot of the law, who, at heart, was wearied to death by it, there appeared on a lonely path that Christ, with the radiance of God on his countenance, and Paul heard the words:“Why pursuest thou Me?” What really happened is this: his mind all at once had become enlightened. “It is unreasonable," so he said to himself, "to persecute this very Christ. Here is the way out, here perfect revenge, here and nowhere else have I and hold I the destroyer of the law." The sufferer from the most anguished pride felt suddenly restored, his moral despair