Saul of Tarsus was a bitter persecutor of the followers of Christ Jesus. His mistaken sense of right made him, for a season, an agent of evil. We read in Acts (9:3, 4) that as he journeyed to Damascus to extend the persecutions, "suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"
In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes of this experience (p. 326): "Saul of Tarsus beheld the way—the Christ, or Truth—only when his uncertain sense of right yielded to a spiritual sense, which is always right. Then the man was changed. Thought assumed a nobler outlook, and his life became more spiritual."
With the revelation of the Christ to his consciousness came a change of character, and Saul assumed the name of Paul. Paul's experience of redemption is a helpful example to all of us, for he became one of the most consecrated followers of the Christ. Later, writing of the redemption of the human selfhood, Paul said (Col. 3:4-10): "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. . . . Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him."
