The daily banner. (Cambridge, Md.) 1897-2008, 1916-04-01
! PLEASANT FIELDS
OF HOLY WRIT
Save for my daily range
Amongt the pleasant fields
of Holly Writ.
might desp pair. -Tennyson.
International SUNDAY School Lesson
Second Quarter. Lesson L. Acts TX.
Ill: 1919. April 2, 1916.

Second Quarter. Lesson L. Acts TX.
Ill: 1919. April 2, 1916.
Conversion OF Saul.
Damascus, heart of Syria, was a
diamond set in emerald, her rivers,
ribbons of silver. At sight of her
Mohammed reigned his steed, ex-
claiming, "One paradise, only one
for me. Enter this and l lose the
one above" One event transpiring
within a stone throw of her Eastern
gate eclipses all others and makes
one forget even her transcendent
beauty. The road makes a. circuit
around the spot and visitors have
carried away stones as souvenirs un-
til a deep pit has been followed out.
What happened there made the civil
lization of Europe and Of America
then undiscovered. A young man of
ardent spirit, high social standing,
great learning, has a bit of paper in
his pocket, empowering him to crush
the infant church in Damascus. He
is thoroughly fitted for his cruel
task. Such is his eagerness to lay
hands upon the perverts from Jewery
that he shows no pity toward man or
beast in his cavalcade. The univer-
sal custom in the East would have
! called long halt during the noon
hours, but On he speeds
Like warrior when the fight is nigh,
Nor talk nor landscape heeds."
On an instant it Is as if the troop
struck a barrier, invisible, indeed but
impenetrable. Brace riders are I'M
horsed and even the dumb brutes
give sign of recognizing the super
naturalness of what is happening.
What sudden blaze is round him
poured,
AS though all Heavens refulgent
hoard,
In one rich glory shone?"
One sentence in that never-to-be
forgotten dialogue quite lifts the veil
from the heart of the PROSTATE per-
secutor. ''It is hard for thee to kick
against the pricks." So then, Saul
had been resisting repeated thrusts
of the goad of conscience. The very
speed and fury of his long inQuisi-
torial journey may have been last
effort to rid himself of the convic-
ton of the Messiahship of Jesus, a
conviction the seed of which was
planted in the blood of the martyr
Stephen. A religion that made a
mans face shine like that of an an
gel, helped him to forgive and pray
for his murderers and then to die
like one falling asleep; such relig-
ion, surely, had marks of divinity.
Commenting years afterward upon
what happened to him at Damascus,
st. Paul said, Il was not disobedient
to the heavenly vision" In that
word he affirms that transecndent
though that circumstance was, his
own volition was not destroyed in it.
He might still have resisted. Had
he done so the New Testament
would have to be rewritten and the
apostle might have gone, as he prob
ably would, to the very head of the
Hebrew Establishment, but he could
never have welded an influence, Sec
ond only in power, extent and per-
menance to that of the Founder of
Christianity himself,
The Teachers Lantern.
He reads the incident specifically
who imagines that the conversion of
st. Paul was an instantaneous and
mechanical affair, the over-slaughing
of the human by the Divine. On the
other hand this appearance of Jesus
Is merciful approach to noble
soul in desperate straits; one whose