The Gospel for To-day

YOU will find the text in Acts 9:20: ‘‘And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.” The Revised Version is even more suggestive, ‘‘And straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God,” There was perhaps never a more amazed audience than that one which heard Saul of Tarsus preach his first sermon in Damascus. Saul was known far and wide as a hater of Jesus Christ and as a persecuter of Christians. He had come to Damascus for the express purpose of laying waste the church, arresting all believers in Jesus Christ, and dragging them to Jerusalem for punishment and death. There is not on earth to-day, and has not been for centuries, so bitter an infidel as Saul of Tarsus; and yet on his first public appearance in Damascus, this same Saul of Tarsus preaches a sermon of tremendous power, declaring and proving that Jesus is the Son of God. Will you please look at two things to-night, and if you will look at them earnestly and honestly, it will result in some of you being converted to-night. The first thing I wish you

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to look at is the preacher in the text, the second thing I wish you to look at is the preacher’s message,

I. The Preacher.

Look first at the preacher. The preacher was Saul of Tarsus. As you look at him, I wish to submit three good reasons why this particular preacher’s message should command attention, and should be accepted. Taken together, these three reasons prove that the message is beyond an honest question true.

I. The first reason why this preacher’s message should command attention and should be accepted is that he had been a hater of the Jesus whom he now proclaimed.

Saul had not been brought up to believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and therefore he did not keep on preaching it because it was what he had been taught to believe from childhood. There are many who say of our modern preachers, “Oh, he believes that and preaches that just because it is what his parents and early teachers taught him to believe.” But no such charge can be brought against Saul of Tarsus. The doctrine that Jesus was the Son of God was not something Saul had taken up without any due thought, not something that he had inherited from his parents and early teachers. Saul had opposed this doctrine with all the vigour of an intense soul; he had gone up and down the streets of the city of Jerusalem, in and out of the houses, arresting men, women and children, for no other reason than that they believed that Jesus was the Son of God, and confessed their faith in Him as such. He had attended their trials and voted for their death. Noth-A CONVEETED INFIDELS PEEAOHING 13

ing seemed to cause him greater joy than the violent death of some Christian. He had had a part in the murder of the first Christian martyr, Stephen. Not only so, but when he had exhausted all his opportunities of manifesting in violent ways his hatred of Christians in Jerusalem, his hatred of Christ and Christianity was not satisfied, and he had sought and obtained authority to go to Damascus to carry out a similar work of opposition and destruction there. Now when a man like that turns completely around and says, I was wrong, I was utterly wrong, I was awfully wrong, in my denial that Jesus was the Son of God,’’ then we ought to give his change of opinion careful attention; he must have had some good reason for it.

2. But Saul’s testimony ought to have great weight for another reason, and that is because of what he sacrificed for his change of opinion. Saul’s change of opinion cost him much. It cost him everything of a worldly character that he possessed. It cost him the loss of a position of great influence and promise; it cost him the loss of all his old friends; it cost him the severest persecution; it cost him arrest after arrest, and imprisonment after imprisonment, and scourging after scourging, and stoning and insult, and attempted assassination. It cost him wandering, and hunger and nakedness; it cost him suffering of the most intense kind, and dangers of indescribable magnitude. When a man of standing and education like Saul of Tarsus makes sacrifices like that for a change of opinion, his new opinion must demand great consideration.

Of course, men are constantly changing their opin-THE GOSPEL POE TO-DAYions because they are going to gain something by the change. Many a Republican becomes a Democrat, and vice versa, many a Democrat becomes a Republican because of some personal profit that is to come to them in one way or another from the change, and of course a change of opinion in a case like that is not worthy of much consideration. There are professed Christians who have become infidels, outspoken infidels, because they could make money by the change, or because they had sinned, and the truth of Christianity was causing them pain of conscience, and they wished to save their consciences, or because of some other low end that was to be gained by the change of opinion.

When I was in Sydney, Australia, a man was urged to come and hear my address, but he replied that he took no stock in that sort of thing, that he himself had been a preacher once, and a missionary, and had found that the whole thing was a humbug. I took occasion to look into the man’s history, and I found that he had been a missionary, but that his change of opinion was not due to the fact that further information and study had shown him that Christianity was untrue, but because as a missionary he had gotten into trouble for his immorality, and that he was expelled from the mission, as he should have been, and in that way was led to change his opinion about Christianity and to accept infidelity. But when a man of great intelligence changes his opinion, and sacrifices everything that men hold dear, for that change, and is transformed in character by the change, and when the man who does thus change is a man like Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the

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Apostle, any honest man will hesitate a long time before he says Saul was mistaken in the change.

3. But there is a third reason, and a better one yet, why Saul’s opinion must have great weight. Indeed this reason is so absolutely conclusive, if we are thoroughly honest, we must say that Saul was certainly right in what he says, and that Jesus is as Saul said he was, ‘‘ the Son of God.” That reason is found in the way in which Saul of Tarsus came to change his opinion. Why did Saul change from the opinion that Jesus was an impostor and blasphemer to the opinion that Jesus was the Son of God? Saul himself tells us why he changed his opinion. He says it was because as he drew near to Damascus whither he was going to arrest the Christians and bring them to Jerusalem to be punished, at the noon hour suddenly there shone around about him from Heaven a great light, above the light of the noontime sun, and that in that light he saw the face and form of Jesus who was once crucified, now risen and glorified, and that he heard a voice saying unto him, ‘‘ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” and that when he inquired who was speaking to him, the form there in the glory said, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest” (Acts 22: 6-8, 16~18; cf. 9: 5, 6).

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