_It pleased God to reveal His Son in me_: this is after all the essential matter in Paul's conversion, as in that of every Christian. The outward manifestation of Jesus Christ served in his case to bring about this result, and was necessary to qualify him for his extraordinary vocation. But of itself the supernatural vision had no redeeming virtue, and gave Saul of Tarsus no message of salvation for the world. Its glory blinded and prostrated the persecutor; his heart might notwithstanding have remained rebellious and unchanged. "I am Jesus," said the heavenly Form,--"Go, and it shall be told thee what thou shalt do";--that was all! And that was not salvation. "Even though one rose from the dead," still it is possible not to believe. And faith is possible in its highest degree, and is exercised to-day by multitudes, with no celestial light to illumine, no audible voice from beyond the grave to awaken. The sixteenth verse gives us the inward counterpart of that exterior revelation in which Paul's knowledge of Christ had its beginning,--but only its beginning. The Apostle does not surely mean by "in me," _in my case, through me (to others)_. This gives a sense true in itself, and expressed by Paul elsewhere (ver. 24; 1 Tim. i. 16), but unsuitable to the word "reveal," and out of place at this point of the narrative. In the next clause--"that I might preach Him among the Gentiles"--we learn what was to be the issue of this revelation for the world. But in the first place it was a Divine certainty _within the breast of Paul himself_. His Gentile Apostleship rested upon the most assured basis of inward conviction, upon a spiritual apprehension of the Redeemer's person. He says, laying emphasis on the last two words, "to reveal His Son _within me_." So Chrysostom: Why did he not say _to me_, but _in me_? Showing that not by words alone he learned the things concerning faith; but that he was also filled with the abundance of the Spirit, the revelation shining through his very soul; and that he had Christ speaking in himself. I. _The substance of Paul's gospel was, therefore, given him by the unveiling of the Redeemer to his heart._