Acts 9:24

But their plot became known to Saul. And they watched the gates also day and night that they might kill him: but his disciples took him by night, and let him down through the wall, lowering him in a basket.

The mighty preaching of the erstwhile persecutor should have been enough to convert all who heard him. As Lange said:

The miracle Christ performed upon the mind of such a man outshone the miracle upon men's bodies; giving such a man another heart was more than giving men to speak with other tongues.[23]

And yet, far from converting all who heard, Saul's preaching only confirmed the desire of some who heard him to take away his life. This is proof enough that evidence alone cannot convert any man. Prior to salvation, there must be, on the part of one who is to receive it, "an honest and a good heart" (Luke 8:15), as our Lord himself declared.

It is also evident in this passage that one who faithfully follows the teachings of Christ is certain to encounter hostility and outright hatred.

Through the wall in a basket ... Paul expressly tells us that "the ethnarch kept watch over the city with a garrison, purposing to apprehend him" (2 Corinthians 11:32); and, incidentally, this indicates that Rome did not control Damascus at that time. The ethnarch was the governor of the city appointed by Aretas, whose daughter was Herod's wife whom he forsook for Herodias. Howson reasoned that:

From an unguarded portion of the wall, in the darkness of the night, probably where some overhanging houses, as is usual in Eastern cities, opened upon the outer country, they let him down from a window in a basket.[24]

[23] John Peter Lange, Commentary on Acts (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1866), p. 465.

[24] E. S. Howson, op. cit., p. 83.