Sermons Author:C H Spurgeon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SEKMON IV. THE CONVERSION OF SAUL OF TARSUS. " And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and Baying, in the Hebrew tongue... more », Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."—Acts, xxvi. 14. How marvellous the condescension which induced the Saviour to take notice of such a wretch as Saul! Enthroned in the highest heavens, amidst the eternal melodies of the redeemed, and the seraphic sonnets of the cherubim and all the angelic hosts, it was strange that the Saviour should stoop himself from his dignity to speak to a persecutor. Engaged as he is both day and night in pleading the cause of his own church before his Father's throne, it is condescension indeed which could induce him, as it were, to suspend his intercessions, in order that he might speak personally to one who had.sworn himself his enemy. And what grace was it that could lead the Saviour's heart to speak to such a man as Saul, who had breathed out threatenings against his church? Had he not haled men and women to prison ? had he not compelled them in every synagogue to blaspheme the name of Jesus Christ ? and now Jesus himself must interpose to bring him to his senses! Ah, had it been a thunderbolt which quivered in its haste to reach the heart oŁ man, we should not have marvelled, or had the lips of the Saviour been heaving with a curse we should not have been astonished. Had he not himselfn his own lifetime cursed the persecutor ? Did he not say, whosoever shall oifend one of the least of these my little ones, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were cast in thesea ? But now the man that is cursed by that language is yet to be blessed by him whom he had persecuted ; who though he had stained his ha...« less