PAUL 



811 



no less than eleven specific trials are not so much 

 as alluded to in the Acts. St Luke does not 

 mention one of the five scourgings with Jewish 

 thongs ; only one of the three flagellations with 

 Roman rods ; not one of the three shipwrecks, 

 though he minutely describes a fourth. He makes 

 nn allusion to the 'night and day in the deep,' 

 and only mentions two of what Clement of Rome 

 tells us were seven imprisonments. Nor, again, 

 do*- St Luke refer to any one of the perils of 

 watercourses, perils of robbers, perils in the wilder- 

 ness, perils among false brethren, hunger, thirst, 

 fasting, cold, and nakedness, for which we can 

 only find places in the travels of the apostle by 

 reproducing in imagination the character of the 

 countries through which he made his long and 

 toilsome journeys. 



St Jerome, perhaps following a true but confused 

 and anachronistic tradition, says that St Paul was 

 born at Giscala in Galilee, and taken by his parents 

 to Tarsus of Cilicia in early infancy. The con- 

 jectural date of his birth is about 3 A.D. Tarsus 

 was at that time ' no mean city. ' It was beauti- 

 fully situated on the river Cydnus, and was a 

 centre not only of political power and commercial 

 enterprise, but also of learning and philosophy. 

 He grew up in the midst of paganism, but was 

 trained 'a Hebrew of the Hebrews,' in pro- 

 found acquaintance with the Jewish Scriptures, 

 and with some slight knowledge of classical litera- 

 ture. Being of the tribe of Benjamin, he received 

 the famous tribal name of Saul. Tarsus was only 

 an urhs libera, but in some unknown way St 

 Paul was a Roman citizen, and it has been con- 

 jectured that his father may have been one of the 

 Tarsians carried by Cassius to Rome, and may 

 there have obtained the civitas. He was sent, 

 probably as a boy, to relatives at Jerusalem, where 

 in after days he seems to have had a married sister. 

 He there became an illustrious and learned Pharisee 

 of the famous school of the Rabban Gamaliel (q. v. ), 

 a grandson of the sweet and noble Hillel. At the 

 feet of this eminent doctor he sat for many years, 

 endeavouring to attain to the legal blamelessiiess 

 which was the ideal of Pharisaic virtue, but which 

 could give little satisfaction to his deepest yearn- 

 ings. It was hardly wonderful that he should 

 have imbibed the spirit of fanatical hatred against 

 that new and immeasurable force of the gospel, 

 which to a Pharisee seemed to involve the over- 

 throw of all his most cherished idols and formal- 

 ities. If, as he seems to imply, he had a vote in 

 tin- Sanhedrin (Acts, xxvi. 10), he must have been 

 married ; and from the context of 1 Cor. vii. 8 it 

 has lieen inferred that he was a widower, and 

 remained a widower by choice (1 Cor. ix. 5). 

 Gamaliel approved of the wise policy of tolera- 

 tion : but Saul, less wise herein than his teacher, 

 was hurried by what he himself afterwards and 

 remorsefully described as a spirit of frenzied rage 

 (Acts, xxvi. 11) into the attitude of a most violent 

 persecutor. He haled men and even women to 

 prison, hunted them out for punishment through 

 every synagogue, scourged them (Acts, xxii. 4), 

 voted for their execution, and did his best to make 

 them blaspheme. The persecution culminated in 

 the martyrdom of St Stephen by stoning, and on 

 this occasion the executioners laid their garments 

 at the feet of Saul. Fanaticism enabled him to 

 witness that horrible death, but he was haunted 

 long years afterwards by the memory of the angel 

 face (Acts, vi. 15), the light of which he had seen 

 quenched in blood ( Acts, vii. 58-60, xxii. 20 ; 1 

 Cor. xv. 9; Gal. i. 13). 



When he had finished his bad work as ah inquis- 

 itor at Jerusalem, and had, as he hoped, extirpated 

 the odious sect of Nazarenes, he obtained letters of 

 authorisation from the high-priest, and went as 



commissioner of the Sanhedrin to root them out 

 from Damascus. On his journey he met the crisis 

 of his fate. He was, as he regarded it, arrested 

 apprehended by Christ, dashed to the ground, taken 

 captive, led in triumph, branded as a slave with the 

 stigmata of the Lord Jesus, when the dazzling 

 vision, which outshone the Syrian noon, wrapped 

 him as in a blinding sheet of flame, and filled him 

 with the unalterableconviction that he had bothseen 

 and heard his risen Lord. From that moment he 

 was a changed man. He felt that the tire of God 

 had melted the iron sinews, and the hammer of 

 God had shattered the stony heart. What is certain 

 is that from that time forth the proud man became 

 utterly humble, and the fierce persecutor a tender- 

 hearted evangelist. The hard and self-sufficient 

 Rabbi, abandoning for ever his national arrogance, 

 his rabbinic wisdom, his legal scrupulosity, became 

 thenceforth the suffering and despised preacher of 

 an execrated faith. 



It is needless to follow in detail the further 

 narrative of the Acts or the personal indications 

 of the epistles. Healed by Ananias of his tempor- 

 ary blindness, he retired for about three years to 

 Arabia, and then returning to Damascus began 

 powerfully to preach the gospel which he had 

 heretofore toiled to destroy. Driven from Damascus 

 by Jewish animosity, he contrived to escape down 

 the city wall in a basket, and made his way to Jeru- 

 salem, where, as was natural, he was received with 

 coldness and suspicion, until Barnabas generously 

 intervened to remove the prejudices of the brethren. 

 After a trance and vision in the temple, in which 

 his future destiny was foreshadowed to him, he 

 was driven to Tarsus by a plot to murder him, 

 and there he stayed with his family, waiting and 

 preparing for his work. Meanwhile the capital of 

 Christianity was being gradually transferred from 

 Jerusalem to Antioch, and Barnabas, realising the 

 importance of the vast sphere of labour which was 

 there opening before him, set out to seek Paul as 

 his fellow-labourer. At Antioch he laboured for 

 a year with ever-widening influence, and went 

 to Jerusalem with Barnabas in the year 44 to 

 carry contributions to the necessitous mother- 

 church. Soon after his return began the first 

 stirring of the missionary spirit, and Barnabas 

 and Saul were set apart by divine consecration 

 to preach Christ to the Jew first and afterwards 

 to the Gentile. They set forth accompanied by 

 Mark, who was the cousin (Col. iv. 10) of Barnabas, 

 and sailed to Cyprus, where they converted the 

 proconsul Sergius Paulus, and confounded the 

 false prophet Elymas, by whom he had been duped. 

 From that time Saul assumes the Gentile name of 

 Paul. Thence they sailed to I'erga, and travelled 

 through the passes of the Taurus to the Pisidian. 

 Antioch. Driven from thence, and afterwards 

 from Iconium, by the jealous fury of the Jews at 

 the success of their preaching among the Gentiles, 

 they went to Lystra, where, healing a cripple, they 

 were at first taken for gods ; but a revulsion of 

 feeling against them was again caused by the 

 Jews, and Paul was stoned and left for dead. It 

 is probable that he carried with him to the grave 

 the marks of this cruel martyrdom ; but at Lystra 

 he hail the happiness of winning a young convert 

 named Timotheus, the beloved son and companion 

 of many later trials and travels, even to the end 

 of his life. From Lystra they fled secretly to 

 Derbe, and thence retraced their steps to Antioch, 

 appointing in each place elders over the infant 

 churches. Such was the first flight of the eagle, 

 the first journey of Christian missionaries. It con- 

 firmed Paul in 1iis destined work as the Apostle of 

 the Gentiles. 



Shortly after their return to the Syrian Antioch 

 the church began to be troubled by the Pharisaic 



