As you know, the law of the Empire is that no one shall be punished with death except by a Roman court, and only when he has been convicted of specified crimes; for the spirit of Roman usage has always been, in the words of Tiberius, that the injuries of the gods are the gods' affair. Stephen, after an argument with his accusers, suddenly cried out with a loud voice: "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." With one accord his exasperated enemies stripped off their cloaks and laid them at the feet of Paul, who took charge of them; and they stoned Stephen, Paul consenting to his death. Even at the time, perhaps, standing aside and taking no part in the murder, Paul's conscience may have reproved him. In any case the incident assumed, afterwards, an enormous importance for him. He could not speak of it without emotion. Perhaps also he feared that he might be accused to the Roman authorities for his part in the riot. His mind became abnormally excited. Some days afterwards he set out for Damascus to bring up some more Christians to Jerusalem, to be tried by the same barbarous assembly. Suddenly at noon he saw a blinding light, and he fell to the ground. A voice called to him out of the sky. According to some accounts the voice uttered a phrase from Euripides: it is hard for thee to kick against the goads. The phrase had passed into current use. However strange it may seem that a voice from heaven should have uttered these words, it is perfectly natural that Paul should have heard them; he must have heard them before, many times. But what goads were meant? The pricks of conscience, perhaps, for his share in the murder of Stephen; some secret remorse, against which he had steeled his heart, in the hope that time and use would cure it. Such was the conversion of Paul. His nature had suffered no change from it; he had merely found a new aim for his life, and the same zeal, which he had used in his persecution of the Christians, he now asserted in their cause. To himself this incident of his conversion seemed unnatural, miraculous; but to us it is simple, and easily explained, being merely a repetition of Stephen's vision. As I have already written, he was of delicate health; some nervous, constitutional weakness affected him; epilepsy, perhaps, or something akin to it. His accounts of what happened varied; for he seemed to have told the story in different ways to different people. In one account, those who were with him heard the voice, but did not see the light; and in another version they saw the light, but did not hear the voice. Paul himself had not known Christ in the flesh. He knew little of him, except that he had been born, had gathered about him a group of disciples, had preached, and had died on the cross.