St. Paul, the hero

Contents

CHAPTER

I The Boy of Ten Years .

II His Heroes

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 Caesarea, 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 io ST. PAUL THE HERO

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

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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

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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."

H ST. PAUL THE HERO

"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

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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 Caesar. Now it is time little boys were in bed."

Ill

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

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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,

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Like winged birds, the time flew by, just as it does now for school-boys and schoolgirls 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 Godl

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.