Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/505

 thunder-struck, by his distressed attendants, into the city, which he had hoped to make the scene of his cruel persecutions, but which he now entered, more surely bound, than could have been the most wretched of his destined captives.

Kuinoel and Bloomfield will furnish the inquiring reader with the amusing details of the hypotheses, by which some of the moderns have attempted to explain away the whole of Saul's conversion, into a mere remarkable succession of natural occurrences, without any miracle at all.

HIS STAY IN DAMASCUS.

Thus did the commissioned persecutor enter the ancient capital of Aram. But as they led him along the flowery ways into this Syrian paradise, how vain were its splendors, its beauties and its historic glories, to the eyes which had so long strained over the far horizon, to catch the first gleam of its white towers and rosy gardens, beyond the mountain-walls. In vain did Damascus invite the admiring gaze of the passing traveler, to those damask roses embowering and hedging his path, which take their name in modern times, from the gardens where they first bloomed under the hand of man. In vain did their fragrance woo his nobler sense to perceive their beauty of form and hue; in vain did the long line of palaces and towers and temples, still bright in the venerable splendor of the ancient Aramaic kings, rise in majesty before him. The eyes that had so often dwelt on these historical monuments, in the distant and brilliant fancies of studious youth, were now closed to the not less brilliant splendors of the reality; and through the ancient arches of those mighty gates, and along the crowded streets, amid the noise of bustling thousands, the commissioned minister of wrath now moved distressed, darkened, speechless and horror-struck,—marked, like the first murderer, (of whose crime that spot was the fabled scene,) by the hand of God. The hand of God was indeed on him, not in wrath, but in mercy, sealing his abused bodily vision for a short space, until his mental eyes, purified from the scales of prejudice and unholy zeal, should have become fitted for the perception of objects, whose beauty and glory should be the theme of his thoughts and words, through all his later days, and of his discourse to millions for whom his heart now felt no love, but for whose salvation he was destined to freely spend and offer up his life. Passing along the crowded ways of the great city, under the guidance of his attendants, he was at last led into the street, which for its regularity was called the "," and there was lodged in the house of a person named Judas,—re