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[Illustration: TARSUS]
ST. PAUL THE HERO
BY
RUFUS M. JONES
Author of “The Inner Life,” etc.
_ILLUSTRATED_
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1917
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1917
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
-------
Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1917.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE BOY OF TEN YEARS 1
II HIS HEROES 9
III IN JERUSALEM 17
IV IN RABBI GAMALIEL’S SCHOOL 25
V TENT-MAKING IN TARSUS 32
VI THE GREAT TEACHER OF GALILEE 40
VII IN JERUSALEM AGAIN 48
VIII THE MAN WITH A SHINING FACE 55
IX ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS 63
X IN ARABIA 73
XI FIFTEEN WONDERFUL DAYS 80
XII THE FIRST GREAT MISSIONARY JOURNEY 88
XIII THE FIRST GREAT PROBLEM 97
XIV A LETTER TO HIS CHURCHES 104
XV “COME OVER INTO MACEDONIA AND HELP US” 111
XVI ALONE IN ATHENS 119
XVII CORINTH AND EPHESUS 126
XVIII “READY TO BE BOUND” 139
XIX IN THE PRISON AT CAESAREA 148
XX THE STORMY JOURNEY TO ROME 157
XXI THE TRIUMPH OF THE HERO 165
PICTURES AND MAPS
Tarsus _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
Falls of the Cydnus 3
Antioch 88
Map [North East Corner Medit.] 94
Map [2nd Missionary Journey] 112
Mars Hill, Athens 122
Ephesus 129
Temple of Diana 137
ST. PAUL THE HERO
I
THE BOY OF TEN YEARS
“Father, who made the mountains that reach clear up into the sky over
there where the sun goes down in the west?”
“It was God, my dear little boy. Don’t you remember the psalm we read in
the synagogue last week: ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains,
from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord who made the
heavens and the earth’? God made the Taurus Mountains on the west of our
dear city and He made those peaks of the Amanus you see off there in the
East, over which the storks fly in the autumn, and He made this
wonderful river, the Cydnus, which dashes through the cleft in the
mountains and makes those great waterfalls which you love and which
rushes headlong through the city on its way to the blue sea.”
“Well, Father, He must be wonderful if He did that! But I don’t see how
He ever could spread out this great blue tent of a sky over all these
fields and over all the city and over both the mountain ranges and as
far as men have ever been. All the way to holy Jerusalem it goes—and
farther, to Alexandria where the man lives, who wrote the book you read
to me yesterday. Is there any end to that tent and what is it made of?
Nobody in all our province of Cilicia can weave tent-cloth like that!”
“No, my son, nobody has ever found an end to the tent of the sky. It
covers the whole world. It is harder to get to the end of it than it is
to go to the end of the rainbow, which you tried to find a few days ago.
But, my dear boy, God has made something more wonderful than the
mountains, more wonderful than the river, more wonderful even than the
blue canopy of the sky, that covers the world.”
[Illustration: FALLS OF THE CYDNUS]
“What can it be, Father, that is more wonderful than these things? Do
you mean the sea, which you sail over when you go as a pilgrim to holy
Jerusalem, to the passover?”
“No, not the sea, though that _is_ wonderful and dreadful. I mean the
law which God wrote with His own finger and gave to our great prophet
Moses. That is God’s greatest gift to our race. I want my little boy to
love the beauty of the mountains and the river and the sky and the sea.
But beyond all things, I want him to love the holy law of God, to learn
it by heart, to keep every word of it and to grow up and be one of
Jehovah’s own men. My boy comes of the tribe of Benjamin, the favourite
of all the sons of our father Jacob, and some day this little boy may
become the leader and deliverer of God’s longsuffering people. Will
little Saul promise to be Jehovah’s man, and will he always love and
keep the whole law which our God gave to Moses?”
“Will it be very hard to do, Father, and must I give up all the things I
like to do?”
“Yes, my dear boy, it will often be very hard and you will have to give
up some things you like to do. But if you keep the whole law of God and
make yourself perfect and do everything God asks you to do in the holy
law, all the people of our race forever will call you blessed, and you
will be the hero of the tribe of Benjamin, and you will help to bring
the Messiah for whom we long and pray, and Jehovah will give you eternal
life in His kingdom.”
“Oh, Father, I don’t care how hard it is, I will do it. I will let my
pet stork out of his cage, so that he can fly off with the other storks
over the mountains. I will not do one single thing on the holy Sabbath
that is wrong. I will not play by the river any more with little Gentile
boys. I will learn every word of Moses’ law and say it all to mother
when she puts me to bed. I will be ready to serve my race when God calls
for some one to do the great deed, as David did in the book we read.”
His father patted his boy on the head and smiled, as they walked home
along the banks of the rushing Cydnus and looked off at the sun-lit tops
of the Taurus Mountains.
Little Saul had had ten birth-days and he had already caught the spirit
of his race which was very strong in his father and mother who kept
feeding him on the stories of the past and waking in him the desire to
be the hero of his tribe. Tarsus, a beautiful city of the province of
Cilicia, was his home. The city was twelve miles from the Mediterranean
Sea and ships came up the river to the great wharves on either bank. Not
far away to the south was the great island of Cyprus and through a pass
in the Amanus Mountains a road went to Jerusalem and the land of his
fathers. He had been often ill and weak during the ten years he had
lived and often he had lain by the window and looked out on the world
and wondered. More than once he had seen an army go marching up the
street, carrying the Roman eagles and flashing Damascus blades in the
sun. He wondered where they were going and what they would do with these
terrible swords.
He had an older sister who was too old to play games with him, but she
took him on walks by the river and like everybody else she told him
Hebrew stories about the heroes he loved. She would picture to him often
a city on a great hill, with valleys running round it, with a gorgeous
temple in it, and she would say, “Some day you and I will go there to
live and that will be our home and we shall be where we can see the
temple of God every day!”
Saul’s father was proud of many things. He had married a wise and
beautiful woman, of his own tribe, who made his home a very happy one.
He was proud of his wife. He was proud of this strange boy who pondered
and wondered and who promised to become some day a great Rabbi and
leader. He was proud of his tribe and of his race. He was still more
proud to be a Pharisee and to be classed among those who strictly kept
the law and worshipped every least letter of it, and then he was proud
that he was a Roman citizen. He had done some service to the empire and
the great honour of being enrolled a citizen had been conferred upon
him, so that little Saul had been born a Roman citizen and had received
a double name, one for his home people—Saul, and one for Roman citizens
to call him by, Paul, which meant, “the little one.”
This was the boy who talked with his father by the shore of the Cydnus,
one evening about twenty years after Christ was born in Bethlehem.
II
HIS HEROES
Months passed by and the little boy of Tarsus grew stronger and more
eager and earnest. His father had sailed from the port of Messina for
Tyre and Ptolemais and Cæsarea, on his way to Jerusalem to keep the
Passover in the Holy Land. Little Saul had begged to be taken with him
that he might see the Temple and stand on the very ground over which the
great heroes of his race had walked, but he was told that he must wait
until he was a few years older and then he should go to Jerusalem to
study with a great Rabbi who could answer all his questions. For a long
time he had gazed at the sky where the sun had gone down over the
Taurus. He was really not looking at anything—he was just gazing off
into space and wondering. He wondered whether he would ever see the
world beyond those mountains, the world he had heard men talk about, the
world of Asia and Greece and Rome. Then he turned to look toward the
dim, yet shimmering peaks in the East and he wondered whether he would
some day climb those ranges and go through the pass into Syria and on
into the land he loved best—the real world of his own race.
He had not yet read any of the stories of Greece. He had dimly heard of
the Trojan war, but it was only a name of little meaning. Theseus and
Jason and Achilles and Ulysses were not his heroes. They were never
mentioned in his home, though he sometimes heard the boys in the street
speak of them. _His_ heroes had all lived over the other mountains.
Their names he heard almost every day. They were household words. He
sometimes made believe that he was David and he would run with a little
hand sling and kill again the mighty Philistine giant that threatened
his people. When he climbed a high hill-top he imagined himself Moses on
Nebo, looking over Jordan on the wonderful land of promise, and every
peak covered with a cloud that looked like smoke seemed to him once more
Sinai, with the Lord above giving the law in the darkness and the
thunder. He wished he could see the Seraphim as Isaiah did, with two
wings over their faces, and two wings all the way down to their feet and
two wings moving like a bird’s to carry them wherever the Lord willed
them to go. And still more he wished that he could see that wonderful
figure which Ezekiel saw by the river Chebar—a living creature with the
face of a man, and a calf and a lion and an eagle, all woven in and out
with wings and all full of eyes, flashing like lightning, whirling like
wheels, and moving wherever the Spirit of God carried the strange living
creature. He thrilled whenever he heard the story of Daniel and he
wondered whether he himself would have dared to pray to Jehovah and go
to the lions for it. He had seen a lion once who was being carried to
Ephesus in a cage, to be let out in the amphitheatre. The lion roared
and shook his cage and showed his terrible teeth. Then little Saul
thought of calm, brave Daniel going down into a den full of beasts like
that.
And Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, the three heroes of the burning
fiery furnace, were men he loved to hear about. “Be it known unto thee O
King, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image
which thou hast set up.” Those words always stirred him like a trumpet.
And he waited every time to hear once more about one like unto a son of
God walking with these brave Jews in the midst of Nebuchadnezzar’s fire.
But best of all he liked the story of the faith of great father Abraham.
He could almost see him laying the sticks of wood on the altar and
binding his own only boy upon them. He wondered if _his_ father would
have done it with him, if _he_ heard the Lord tell him to do it! Then
suddenly came the joyous relief: the ram in the thicket, and little
Isaac spared, just as the dreadful knife flashed in the air.
These heroes were going in procession through his mind as he gazed at
the eastern gate in the mountains through which the road ran that led on
toward the one city of all the world. Just then his mother stood by his
side and took his hand in hers. She could see that big thoughts were
moving in him and she felt a kind of awe as she looked down at the pale
earnest face.
“Mother, which is the hardest of all the commandments to keep—I mean,
really to keep, and not to break at all?”
In her mind, the fond Jewish mother standing in the dusk by the boy she
loved, ran over all the commandments. “Thou shalt not have any other
gods but Jehovah.”
“Thou shalt not make any graven image.”
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
“Thou shalt observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”
“Thou shalt honour thy father and mother.”
“Thou shalt do no murder.”
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
“Thou shalt not steal.”
“Thou shalt not bear false witness.”
“Thou shalt not covet, or desire.” While she was thinking how to answer,
little Saul said: “I know which is the easiest.”
“And which is it?” asked his mother.
“Thou shalt honour thy father and mother. It is the easiest thing there
is to do. I don’t have to stop to think to do that! It is not so easy,
though, to keep the Sabbath day holy. There are so many things to
remember. Now that I have let my pet stork go, I do not feel tempted any
more to play with him on the Sabbath day. But sometimes I start off for
a walk before I think, and I carry things that are too heavy to be
lifted on the Sabbath day. I wonder if I shall ever get so righteous,
like our great Hebrew saints, that I shall not do anything wrong on the
Sabbath day. It is very, very hard to be perfectly good. Do you not
think, Mother, that this is the hardest of all the commandments to
keep?”
“No, my dear Saul, there is one which you will find much harder to keep.
It is the last one in the list: “Thou shalt not want things—thou shalt
not desire.” This commandment has to do with what goes on inside. All
the others are about things we do in the world outside. This one is in
there where you think. It says that you must rule your own spirit and
not want or desire what you ought not to have or ought not to do. That
my little boy, as he grows larger, will find very hard indeed to keep.
Only the great God who guided Abraham our father all the way from Ur of
the Chaldees to the dear land of Canaan can help my boy to keep that
commandment.”
“Anyway I shall try, mother. It isn’t any harder is it than going into a
den of lions or into Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace?”
“Ah, but my Saul will never have any such dreadful things to do, for he
is born a Roman citizen and he can always appeal to Cæsar. Now it is
time little boys were in bed.”
III
IN JERUSALEM
The days grew to weeks and the weeks to months; the months added
themselves and made years in Tarsus in the first century just as happens
now where my young reader lives. Time and the multiplication table go on
in one century exactly as in another, no matter what else changes.
Before the father and mother could quite realise it, or believe it
possible, Saul, once our little boy, who looked out on his world and
wondered, was old enough to go away from his home to a great school in
Jerusalem where perhaps all his questions could be answered though only
for a little while. His sister had married now and lived in Jerusalem
and it was arranged for Saul to have his home with her while he was
studying with the famous Rabbi Gamaliel, who knew better than almost any
one else the law, and the rules by which the daily life of a strict Jew
should be guided so that he might be perfect.
Through the Syrian Gate in the Amanus ridge, Saul had gone with his
father on their way to the holy city for the Passover and for a short
time of sight-seeing and visit before the hard work of the school began.
They came on through Antioch of Syria, the first great city which Saul
had ever seen and one which some day he would know much better; then
they journeyed on by hard and dangerous roads until they saw Damascus,
with its two beautiful rivers and its high city walls. Some day Saul
would know this city better too! And the time would come when he would
find out how high those city walls were! Every foot of the road from
Damascus was crowded with interest and excitement for this
fifteen-year-old boy who was seeing the holy land for the first time.
Now he thrilled in a new way as he actually saw with his eyes the scenes
which before he had only pictured in imagination. When they crossed the
Jordan, just south of the blue lake of Gennesareth, he could hardly
contain himself. More than once he threw himself on the ground with his
arms outspread as though he were trying to grasp the country and embrace
it.
The road up from Jericho to Jerusalem was so dangerous and he had heard
so many tales of robbers there that he was too frightened to enjoy the
journey. But when at length _the city_—the city of all the world—with
its shining temple gleaming in the sun came in sight, he forgot all
about robbers and dangers and his sore and tired feet, and fell on his
face and thanked God for letting him see the Holy City about which he
had dreamed and imagined ever since he was a tiny boy. There it was! It
was no dream but a real city, with real streets and walls and houses,
and above all the temple, to his mind the holiest place in all the
world.
The next day when he came to the temple, his heart beating and his
throat swelling with emotion, he read with pride the inscription carved
on the stones: “Only he that is a Jew may enter this sacred temple. If
any one that is not a Jew enters he will be answerable for his death,
which will ensue.” Around him thronged a vast multitude of people who
had come from all parts of the known world to be present on the Great
Day of Atonement. He could see the choirs of singing men and he could
hear the far-away sound of harps, and then he saw the long line of
priests with their dress as Moses had described it in the books of the
law and the high-priest with his gorgeous robe, and on his breast were
the mysterious stones which no man understood save he who had them.
After the great days of the sacred week had passed and he had seen the
wonders of the city, Saul entered the cloister door and came into the
sombre room where the learned doctor, Gamaliel, gathered his students at
his feet to teach them. The boy was filled with awe as he got his first
sight of the white-haired man who was to be his guide in the mysteries
of the law and he made a deep salaam before him and remained bowed until
the Master said: “Rise, my son, and be seated here.”
The quick-eyed boy noticed at once that his new teacher was as full of
kindness as he was of wisdom. There was something in the face of the old
Rabbi that gave him confidence and dismissed his fear.
“Dost thou know the commandments?” asked the teacher.
“I know them all,” answered the youth. “I have said them many times to
my mother in Tarsus.”
“Dost thou know what the law requires a faithful son of Abraham to do on
the Sabbath day?”
The youth surprised his teacher as he ran through the long and
complicated lists of things that a faithful Jew might do and might not
do on the Sabbath day. At last the teacher stopped the boy and gravely
asked, “where hast thou studied?”
“With my father and with my mother in the long evenings at Tarsus. My
father is one of the wisest and one of the most strict of all the tribe
of Benjamin and my mother is like the woman of whom the wise king Lemuel
wrote in the Roll of Proverbs. They have taught me many things but I
lack much and therefore have I come to Rabban Gamaliel.”
“Canst thou recite the fifth book of Moses without a mistake?”
“I can recite every word duly, for the book itself says ‘Lest ye
forget.’”
“Thou hast done well, my son, and thou hast walked many steps in wisdom
for one so young, but now thou must learn the _authorities_, thou must
become skilful to interpret, thou must know the unwritten law and all
the traditions of the Elders and Scribes and thou must fill thy mind
with all the gathered wisdom of the great Rabbis until thou canst
explain every passage in the Rolls of the books which Jehovah our God
has given us through the holy men of old. Thou must work with diligence,
beginning early in the morning and continuing so long as the light
lasts, and thou must spend years here with me until thou hast won the
truth and until thou knowest clearly what brings God’s righteousness to
a man. Art thou ready to give up the years of strong youth; art thou
willing to lose the pleasures of the world; art thou able to endure the
toil; wilt thou go all the way to the end with me?”
Saul stepped one step nearer, raised his fine face and his dark eyes
full of eagerness to the master’s face and calmly said: “Great Rabban,
for that I come. I have left the things that are behind. I seek only one
thing in this world—to be righteous, to know the whole secret of God, to
be a perfect son of Abraham. Let it cost what it will, I follow where
the wise Gamaliel shall take me, even to the end of the long road to
truth.”
Then the teacher bowed his head and prayed that the great Jehovah of the
fathers would bless and enlighten the youth from Tarsus who was to be
for many months in the cloister of Gamaliel.
IV
IN RABBI GAMALIEL’S SCHOOL
The person who is a real hero in spirit and nature can be a hero at
school as well as anywhere else. In fact those who prove to be heroes in
later life are almost always heroes in their school-days. This youth who
had come to Jerusalem from Tarsus of Cilicia did not have to wait for
some occasion, with all the world looking on, before he could rise to
heroic actions. He found a chance to be heroic even in the quiet
uneventful cloisters of Gamaliel’s school. All the boys and young men
who gathered round this famous teacher very soon knew that a brave
fellow and a real, born leader had joined their ranks. When a hard and
difficult thing was to be done they turned naturally to him. When a
question was asked which taxed everybody’s brain, they all looked for
him to answer.
There was no end to his zeal. Nothing seemed too hard for him. He had
learned Greek as a boy in his home at Tarsus and he had always known the
current Hebrew speech, but now he learned carefully the ancient Hebrew
of his fathers. He pored over the Rolls of Scripture and took note of
each jot and tittle. He learned all the fine points of grammar which his
great Rabban could teach him. His patience seemed never to give out and
he would work on in his search for truth long after the others had
rolled up in their strange mat-like beds and were lost in peaceful
slumber.
He seemed to think of ignorance as a great giant enemy to be fought with
and to be killed, no matter how long and hard the fight might be. It was
in this fight he showed his true heroic fibre. He was always hunting a
new weapon to fight with, or he was sharpening an old weapon in his
possession. He would travel miles to find a book he wanted or to
discover what a strange word meant or to consult some authority whose
opinion he desired.
“What do you suppose that Saul of Tarsus will be when he grows up?” the
boys would ask of one another.
“He will surely be a great Rabbi and have a school in Jerusalem, like
our master,” one would say.
“I think he will be greater even than that,” another would say. “I think
sometimes, as I look at his face and watch him while he reads, that
perhaps he will be a new prophet and bring a new word of God to our
people.”
“But that is not possible,” a pious youth from a Jerusalem family would
answer. “The words of God have already all been given. There will be
nothing new until Messiah comes. I have heard my father say that many
times.”
This coming of Messiah was one of the things our youth from Tarsus
studied most carefully. The books and traditions had much to say about
it, but it was hard to decide just what would happen and just how to get
ready for this greatest event of all the world. With the help of
Gamaliel and his books, young Saul came to believe that a great day was
soon to come for Jerusalem and for all good Jews. A new king, like
David, only greater and wiser and better and stronger would suddenly
appear. He would have power to turn stones to bread, or to leap from the
top of the temple to the ground without being hurt in the least. He
would break the Roman army all to pieces in a minute. He would call
hosts of angel soldiers from the sky at the sound of a trumpet and they
would destroy or carry away all who had been bad Jews and had not kept
the law. Then he would make Jerusalem a perfect city. The streets would
all be cleansed and purified, until one could see his face reflected in
every pavement. The walls would be changed into precious stones, the
gates into pearls, and every person left in the city would be as pure as
the city itself. Nobody would be sick any more, nobody would die, or
have any sorrow. And best of all, all the good Jews who had ever lived
would be brought back to life again to live in the perfect Jerusalem
with the good people who were there with the great king. This king of
their hopes and dreams was called “Messiah,” because he would be
“anointed” by God himself to rule forever. Saul believed that his people
were the only ones out of all the world who would have this king for
their king and this perfect city, and all who had ever done anything
against his nation would suffer and suffer and suffer, while the happy
Jews were enjoying their beautiful Mount Zion.
He believed, too, and he thought his books proved it, that he and others
who were willing to work for it, could hurry up this great day and make
it come sooner. This is the way you could do it. It couldn’t come until
there were a great many persons who were good enough to start the new
world and the perfect city. The king, Messiah, would not come until he
could find a large number of people all ready for him and as near
perfect as you could be. Now to be perfect you must keep all the law and
do everything that God commanded in the Old Testament and in the
traditions of the Rabbis. If you broke one single commandment, it was as
bad as though you broke them all, for if you broke _one_, then you had
not kept the whole law.
Now my reader will see, I hope, what a hero this young Saul was. He had
decided to be one of the men who would be ready for this mighty king and
he was resolved to live the kind of life that would help bring him soon.
He was going to live as though the perfect city had come already. He
would not do one thing that would seem like disobeying God—even the
littlest. Gamaliel had one student who was trying with all his might to
be perfect, and that meant, to be a hero.
V
TENT-MAKING IN TARSUS
Like winged birds, the time flew by, just as it does now for school-boys
and school-girls and Saul’s years at the feet of Gamaliel were over. He
had changed very much while he had been in Jerusalem. Soft hair was
growing on his face now. His forehead was broader and fuller, but his
shoulders were bowed over and he walked with a stoop because he had bent
over his books so long and had taken very little exercise in these years
of eager study. His hands were soft as a woman’s and he seemed thin and
worn with the strain of his thoughts. But the same fire was in his dark
eyes and the same fine beautiful light shone on his face. He wondered as
he came up the river Cydnus from Messina to Tarsus (for he returned by
sea), whether his mother would know him. The news had spread that the
boat was coming and the whole family in the home at Tarsus were on the
watch for the returning scholar. He did not have much time to wonder
whether his mother would know him, for he soon felt her arms around his
neck and he found himself once more in the dear home with everybody
looking him over and asking him questions until he needed three or four
tongues to answer them all. His mother did not like the stoop in his
shoulders but everything else pleased her. The father was too proud of
his splendid son and too much moved with joy to say much, though he had
already given a brief prayer of thanksgiving to Jehovah for the safe
return, and for the wonderful gift of such a man-child as this. Meantime
a servant was killing the fattest of all the full-grown kids for the
feast of joy which all the household joined in preparing, and the whole
day was given up to rejoicing.
It was a proud moment for the family the next Sabbath when young Saul
was given the Roll of Scripture at the Synagogue and was asked to read
the lesson and explain it. There he stood with all the Jewish families
of Tarsus looking on and listening while he told them things they had
never heard before. When the lesson was finished many a man turned to
Saul’s father and said: “God has given you a remarkable son. He will be
an honour to our race and to our city.”
Now the time had come when Saul’s trade must be decided upon, for all
young men who were to be Rabbis were expected to learn a trade, so that
they could support themselves. Early and late in the home the question
was discussed: What was the best trade for a slight, thin, soft-handed
youth who was a great scholar and who was soon to be a famous teacher?
The mother wanted him to learn a trade that would straighten his
shoulders and make him strong and robust. The father thought he ought to
select some occupation that would be refined and dignified and very
honourable. After long and careful consideration, it was finally settled
that Saul should learn the trade of weaving the goats’ hair to make
heavy tent-cloth and to cut the cloth into tent patterns and to sew the
long tent seams.
It was strange work for the delicate scholar—so different from poring
over books and settling points of the law. At first the soft hands
blistered and the muscles were very tired with the work of the stiff
hand-loom. But little by little the hands grew harder and the arms
learned the trick of the motions and the work became natural and easy.
Saul went at this work the way he did everything else. “It is,” he would
say, “a part of my life. I cannot succeed unless I can support myself
and so I must make tents a little better than anybody else can do it.
Some good stiff work now and the habit of doing every part of it right
will make the whole thing easy for me later.”
He went to the best maker of tents in the city and worked with him, for
he knew the worth of a good teacher. But this teacher was so different
from his old master in the school at Jerusalem! Like Gamaliel, this man
also knew every fine point in his field of work. He had the secret of
selecting the finest goats’ hair and he knew the best weaves for making
water-tight cloth and he drew the best patterns for both large tents and
for small ones, and he had new ways of sewing seams that would neither
rip in the wind nor leak in the hardest rains. The only trouble with him
was that he was a Gentile and not a man of Saul’s race. But he, too, was
a scholar. He had studied in the great University of Tarsus and he knew
many books which Saul had never read or even heard about. While they
worked at the tent-cloth the master workman talked much to Saul of what
he had learned in the University under his Stoic teachers, for Tarsus
was one of the greatest centres of Stoic wisdom in all the world.
“Do you know,” he would say, as they sat sewing the long seams, “all my
books say that God is a great Spirit who fills all the universe, just
the way the soul dwells in and fills the body. This Spirit is in the
ocean and in the river, in the mountains and in the trees, in the air
and in the cloud, in the stars and in the sun and above all it is in the
mind of man. It makes everything full of purpose, and intelligent. The
bee and the spider are wise because this Spirit dwells in them and
teaches them. One of our own poets who lived here in Tarsus, in a great
hymn to the Allwise One, says that we men of earth are children of God
because our spirits have come from his Spirit, and this Spirit lives and
moves in us, if we are good and wise. The human soul is like a little
inlet into which the great sea flows. Bad and wicked men have become bad
and wicked because they shut themselves off from the inflowing tides of
that great divine Spirit. Those who have most of this divine Spirit in
their souls do not fuss or worry. They are not disturbed over what
happens to them. They say that the only thing that matters is to be
master of your own spirit and not to be conquered by anything in the
world. If I should lose all my goats and all my tent-cloth, and if all
my looms should burn up, I could still be a brave man and start again
just as though nothing had happened, but if I lost my spirit and began
to whine and lament, nobody could cure me of that. Then I should be
beaten and defeated. We Stoics try to be citizens, not only of our own
city but of the whole world. We love our own people. We are proud of our
own race, but we want more than that. We take an interest in all men
everywhere. We want all cities to be good cities. We want all people
everywhere to know God and love him, and we want to make one great
family on the earth, all living in harmony under the great Spirit.”
Saul stopped sewing and sat perfectly still. It was different from
anything he had heard in Jerusalem. It could not be true or Gamaliel
would have known it and yet it was so wonderful and beautiful. He would
think about it more, and he would read some of the books of the Stoics
who said that we are the offspring of God!
VI
THE GREAT TEACHER OF GALILEE
While the young scholar was working at his new trade of weaving
tent-cloth and making tents in the busy, thriving town of Tarsus,
wonderful things were occurring beyond the Amanus Mountains, in the land
of Palestine. Every traveller who came from Galilee and every pilgrim
who passed through Capernaum brought tidings of a strange and
extraordinary Teacher, totally unlike the great Rabbis and Scribes.
In far-away Tarsus not much was reported at first of what this Teacher
said. The travellers told, first of all, of the wonderful things He did.
One man had heard, as he came through Galilee, of a little girl who had
been very ill. Nobody could help her. At last in despair the father went
out to search for this Teacher, to see if He could do anything to save
his daughter. He found Him by the lakeside preaching to a great
multitude of people, and he begged Him to come at once, to make his
daughter whole. Many strange and unusual things happened on the way and,
at last, when they arrived, the little girl seemed beyond help, for she
lay all still and did not breathe. But this remarkable Person took her
by the hand and spoke some words in His own Hebrew language and the girl
rose up and walked and was instantly well, and everybody wondered.
Many other such things they told of this Teacher. He made all kinds of
sick people well. He even made totally blind persons see. All the towns
around the Lake of Gennesareth were full of excitement over His cures
and His other miraculous doings, and in all the country throughout
Galilee people everywhere talked about Him and went long journeys to see
Him, and to bring sick persons to Him.
Then, slowly, reports began to come of His words and His teachings. They
said He seemed to have found out something new and strange about God. He
was not afraid of God as other people were. He loved Him and talked
about Him as though He knew Him. He kept calling God His Father, and He
said God wanted to be Father to all persons, because He was full of love
and tenderness for everybody in the world. He kept telling, in all His
talks with the people who came to hear Him, about a new kingdom which He
was trying to set up in the world. It was very hard to tell from the
vague reports, which the travellers brought, what this kingdom was to
be. It did not seem like the “new Jerusalem,” that Saul had learned
about in Gamaliel’s school. It seemed even greater than that, for it
seemed like a new kind of world for everybody. Everybody, who loved God
and learned how to live a life of love and kindness to all people
everywhere, could be in it, and it would grow and spread like seeds of
grain in the field.
Then, later, when the people who had gone up from Tarsus to the
Passover, came back from Jerusalem, they brought news of a terrible
thing that had happened there during the Passover week. This Teacher, it
would seem, had come up to keep the Passover and the common people had
discovered Him and they thought at first that He must be the
long-expected Messiah and they had made a procession for Him and had
tried to proclaim Him their king. But this and other things frightened
the rulers in Jerusalem and they sent by night and seized Him and got
Pilate, the governor of Palestine, to condemn Him and crucify Him. Then
all the people turned against Him and thronged out of the city in great
multitudes to see Him nailed on the cross and to see Him die hanging in
the air. And the pilgrim who brought the reports said He was not like
any other victim that was ever crucified. Instead of shouting and
wailing and cursing, He had been calm and unmoved. Every time He spoke,
His words were full of love. Once He spoke in a quiet, gentle way to a
thief who was crucified on a cross near Him. And once, and this was the
strangest thing they reported, He looked up toward the sky and then out
toward the great multitude of shouting people and said in a gentle voice
which reached out over all the throng, “Father, forgive these people.
They do not know what they are doing.”
A few who came back later had another story which they told but they
couldn’t make anybody at Tarsus believe it. They said that some of the
followers and friends of this wonderful Teacher from Galilee declared
that they had seen Him alive after He was crucified. Some of these
followers said they had heard Him speak just the way He used to do
before He was crucified, and they claimed that He told them when they
were on the way going up to Jerusalem that He would be crucified, but
that He would come back to life again.
When Saul heard these strange reports he was at first very much moved by
them. He could not sleep at night because he thought so much over the
stories he heard from the travellers. But little by little he made up
his mind that they were just idle tales such as travellers love to tell
to those who stay at home. He said to himself: “It isn’t likely that
there really was any such person in Galilee as this one they tell about.
I should have heard about him while I was in Jerusalem, for he could not
have got his power suddenly and if he was beginning to do these
wonderful things then, it would have been known in the city. But nobody
had heard of him at all. If he got his power suddenly, without any
preparation and without studying in any of the schools, it is probable
that some evil spirit, like Beelzebub, has helped him and revealed
secrets to him. It is almost certain that he was not sent by God, for
the books of the law do not tell about any such Teacher who would come
and die for his truth, and the words they bring about his teaching are
not at all like what we know of God from our sacred books. No, either
there was no such person, or, if there was, he was deluded and
misguided.”
But when Saul was talking one beautiful evening with his mother, who
seemed now much older than when she talked about the commandments with
her little boy, suddenly Saul said: “Wouldn’t it be strange, Mother, if
what that Galilean Teacher, of whom the travellers talk, said about God
were really true—I mean, that God is a Father and loves men, even men
who do wrong and sin. My tent-maker thinks that God is a great Spirit
who dwells in everything and is everywhere. But _this_ is more
wonderful, that God is full of love and tenderness for all kinds of
people in the world. It cannot, however, be true, for the Rabbis would
have known it if it had been so!”
And the mother answered: “Ah, yes, no doubt the wise Rabbis would know.
But is there not something just a little like that in some of the
beautiful psalms which we sing in the Synagogue—‘Like as a Father’?”
“But, Mother, this man, they say, died on a cross, and no good man, whom
God approved, could die that way, for our law says that all who are
hanged on trees are cursed and disapproved of by God, so that we need
not think any more about him.” But try as he would, Saul could not get
these things out of his mind.
VII
IN JERUSALEM AGAIN
All through the quiet period in Tarsus while Saul was learning his trade
and living with his father and mother in the dear old home where he had
been a boy, he was wondering what his life was going to be. He always
felt, even as a little boy, that a great life-work lay before him. It
was too sacred and solemn to talk about and he did not tell even his
mother, but all the time, down deep in his soul, he dimly knew that he
was destined to have an unusual life and to do something signal and
wonderful. When he lay ill and everybody thought he would die, he felt
very sure that he was not going to die yet, for the great work of his
life was still to be done! He had often been in great danger, on his
journey up to Jerusalem and on the ship coming back to Tarsus, and many
times before he left home, but he always knew that somehow he would come
through the danger and be spared.
He was eager now to find his life-work and to start in on his great
career. He was, therefore, very happy when a traveller of his own race,
coming from the holy land, brought him a letter from the authorities in
Jerusalem saying that they had work for him to do in that city. They
wanted a young and learned Rabbi to teach the Jews living in Jerusalem
who spoke Greek and who were called “Hellenists.” There were, my readers
must know, two kinds of Jews. There were the Jews, first, who lived all
the time in Palestine. They could keep the law more perfectly and more
completely than other people could. They thought of themselves as the
truly real Jews and as the inner circle of God’s own people. Then,
secondly, there were the Jews who lived and did business in the great
cities of the Roman Empire—cities like Rome and Alexandria, and Ephesus
and Antioch and Philippi and Corinth and Tarsus. They could not keep
themselves as pure or as perfect as the Palestine Jews could, for they
had to meet and mingle with Gentiles who were not pure according to the
law and who defiled those that came in contact with them. Then, too,
these out-dwellers could not get to the temple very often to make
sacrifices and to keep the requirements of the law. They used the
language which the worldly people around them used. That was generally
Greek. They had their Scriptures translated into Greek and many of them
did not know and could not read Hebrew at all. But these Hellenists, or
Greek-speaking Jews, went up to Jerusalem as often as they could and
when it was possible for them to do so, they would stay in Jerusalem for
long periods in order to be near the temple. They had a synagogue of
their own in Jerusalem where they went for their lessons and for their
Sabbath services and where their little children were taught while the
parents were staying in Jerusalem. It was to this Synagogue that Saul,
the young Rabbi, was to go, to teach the Jews who came from all the
far-away countries to sojourn in Jerusalem.
It was very different for him, going to Jerusalem now from what it had
been for the fifteen-year-old boy the first time he went. Now he was
going, not for a few years, but for life. Now he was setting his hand to
carry out the great dreams and hopes of his life. Now he was leaving his
mother, perhaps for the last time. His father would still continue to go
to the Passover and Saul would perhaps see him there, but his mother
would never leave home again and it would surely be many years before he
would come back through the mountain-gate, or up the Cydnus River, to
his birth-place. Nobody knows just what goes on in a young man’s heart
when he takes this great venture and pushes out from the home he loves
to begin his real life in the strange and difficult world, where some
succeed and where some fail, where some keep pure and good, and where
some go wrong.
Many things seemed to have changed in Jerusalem during the short period
since Saul had left it. Everybody was talking of the strange events that
had taken place recently. A new people had appeared in the city. They
called themselves “the people of the way,” or “those of the way,” or
“those of Jesus’ way.” Others called them “Galileans,” or “Nazarenes.”
They were men and women who believed that Jesus the great Teacher of
Galilee was the Messiah and they declared that He was still alive and
would soon return to be king and lord. They were growing fast in numbers
and spreading in every part of the city. They met every day from house
to house and ate their evening meal together in great joy and
fellowship. They took care of all their poor people and their sick and
they shared everything they had with one another as though they were all
brothers and belonged to one great family.
The rulers in Jerusalem, however, did not like to see them spreading
through the city. They watched them carefully and arrested the leaders
when they found them doing anything to attract attention or trying to
get others to join them. They did not like to be told that the person
they had Pilate crucify was the Messiah, or that He was raised from the
dead and was now alive. It was easy to see that there was sure to be
trouble in Jerusalem, if these people went on increasing and if they
would not keep quiet.
There were some of “those of the way” in the Synagogue where Saul was to
be Rabbi. They were always ready to talk about their wonderful Teacher,
who had been crucified and they were eager to prove that He was the real
Messiah that had been so long expected. Saul thought he could very soon
teach them sense and show them how foolish they were. He would quickly
prove to them that Jesus could not be the Messiah, for the Messiah would
surely never be crucified! He would come in splendour and glory, and if
the Romans tried to crucify Him He would call down from heaven an army
of angels and destroy all His enemies in a moment! And He would break
the Roman Empire all to pieces, as one breaks an old jar of pottery. It
would be only a few days, Saul felt sure, when he would be able to stop
all this talk about a crucified Messiah. He would argue them down and
make them ashamed to say such things any more. But Saul did not know how
hard his task really was. He was to discover that some things in this
world cannot be hushed up, or argued down!
VIII
THE MAN WITH A SHINING FACE
There was one man in this Synagogue of the Hellenists more remarkable
than any of the other people who belonged to it. His name was Stephen. I
do not know what city he came from. But he was one of the
“out-dwellers,” and he had become a follower of Jesus, “one of the
way”—“a Nazarene.” He was different from any of the other followers of
Jesus. He saw farther than the rest did. He seems to have been the first
of “those of the way” to realise that Jesus did not come to be the
Messiah of the Jews alone and to purify their customs. Stephen thought
He came to bring life and light and joy to _all_ the world. The other
followers of Jesus in this early period were loyal, devoted Jews. They
went every day to the temple and they kept the law as the other Jews
did. They supposed that Jesus was to be the king in Jerusalem and that
only Jews were to be His people. Those who were not Jews could have no
share in the good news which He proclaimed.
Stephen was so pure and good and wise that he got a new idea of what the
coming of Jesus meant. The truth was far bigger than the others dreamed,
and he began to see it, and to tell about it. If God is Father, as Jesus
kept saying He was, then He must love all men as well as Jews, and if
God is Life and Spirit, then He can come into men’s lives everywhere
without any temple and without priests and sacrifices. Stephen began to
wonder, as he thought about all that Jesus had said and taught and done,
whether His message was not far greater and more wonderful even than the
law of Moses, whether some day it would not take the place of the old
system of laws and customs and sacrifices and whether even the temple
itself might no longer be needed to worship God in, for men might
worship Him anywhere where they happened to be.
Stephen was so bold and fearless, and he was so full of his great idea,
that he tried to tell the people in Saul’s Synagogue about it. They all
turned upon him and called him a dangerous man. They tried to make him
see that he was not true to the religion of his fathers, that he was
teaching new ideas, that he was turning people away from the old
customs, and that if the people followed his teaching they would
overthrow the whole wonderful system of Moses, and so make it impossible
for the Messiah to come, for whom all good Jews were waiting and
longing.