Yet this vision sufficed for him and for the world. In the strength of this vision, (followed, no doubt, by subsequent visions and communings with the Lord Jesus), the Thirteenth Apostle, the intruder, as he might be called—not “chosen of men,” like Matthias, not called by Christ in the flesh did the great work of which you and I, with millions of others, are now joint inheritors. Think of it; Is it not a remarkable instance of “men working one thing while God worketh another” to see the Apostles with due form and ceremony electing their substitute for the Traitor to be the solemnly ordained Twelfth Apostle, henceforth unnamed in Holy Writ and all the while the Holy Spirit preparing a Thirteenth! And for this Thirteenth Apostle, who never looked on the face of Christ, never heard a single word of His doctrine, it has been reserved to tell us perhaps more about the meaning of Christ’s teaching and certainly to give us more cogent proof of His Resurrection than all the other Apostles and Evangelists put together! Truly the last has been first! And in the strength of his proof of Christ’s Resurrection—mere vision though we may call it—this Thirteenth Apostle, in the face of persecutions outside the Church, and discouragements and jealousies inside the Church, first converted the Roman empire to the Christian faith; then, fifteen centuries afterwards, reconverted and purified a large section of the Church from mediæval corruptions; and now, as I believe, some nineteen centuries afterwards, is on the point of still further purifying the Church from antique superstition and from modern materialism! What shall we say of the mighty vision that originated these stupendous results? Shall we take the view of the modern scientific young man, and lecture the great Apostle on the folly of that indiscreet journey to Damascus at noon-tide, when his nerves were a little over-wrought after that unpleasant incident of poor Stephen? Shall we say it was all ophthalmia and indigestion—that flash of blinding light, those unforgettable words, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”—all a mere vision? Is a fact that changed the destinies of Europe to be put aside with the epithet “mere”? Would not even a materialist stonemason recognize that a vision which built St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s is of some tangible importance? You and I and your scientific young lecturer—do we not in some sort owe our existence to this “mere vision,” but for which the earth might be a chaos of barbarism, England a forest scantly populated with tattooed bipeds, and our civilized selves non-existent? Patricidal creatures, let us not speak lightly of the “mere” author of our own important being!