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BOWSER, Manager and Secretary AGENTS WANTED IN UNREPRESENTED DISTRICTS. THE BIBLE CHRISTIAN MAGAZINE. SHORT STUDIES IN THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL. VII.-SAUL WAITING-BARNABAS APPEARS. The world's a room of sickness, where each heart The truest wisdom there, and noblest art, Is his, who skills of comfort best; And love to raise the languid eye, When, like an angel's wing, they feel him fleeting by. KEBLE: ST. BARNABAS. La grande odyssée chrétienne va commencer. Déjà la barque Apostolique a tendu ses voiles, le vent souffle, et n'aspire qú à porter sur ses ailes les paroles de Jésus. RENAN: Les Apôtres. N our last paper we saw that Saul's sojourn with St. Peter at Jerusalem was brought abruptly to an end by a conspiracy of the Hellenists, or Greek-speaking Jews, in whose synagogues he had proclaimed the Messiahship and Resurrection of Jesus. To this section of the Jewish people Saul himself belonged, as did also Stephen, the proto-Christian martyr, and Philip, the deacon and evangelist, the men who had initiated the work to which Saul was afterwards to devote all the splendid energies of his nature. Three years ago the pupil of Gamaliel had abetted the fury of the men who stoned St. Stephen; now, within a month, his own life is twice endangered by the same fanatical zealots. With a haste that certainly betrays a lurking distrust of the enthusiastic convert, the brethren conducted him down to the seashore, to Cæsarea Stratonis, and thence "sent him forth to Tarsus." From St. Paul's own narrative we learn that after bidding farewell to Peter he "came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia" (Gal. i. 21). It is therefore uncertain whether he sailed in a direct course from Cæsarea to Tarsus, and subsequently visited L Syria; or whether, as is more probable, he landed at the Syrian Laodicea (Laodicea ad Mare) or at Seleucia Pieria (whence on a subsequent occasion he embarked with Barnabas for Cyprus), and thence proceeded to Tarsus by land, preaching that Jesus is the Christ in the synagogues of the Hellenists at the various cities and villages through which he journeyed, and very possibly enduring some of those hardships which he enumerates in the second epistle to the Corinthians, but which are passed over unnoticed in the Acts of the Apostles. Or he may possibly have suffered shipwreck on the Syrian coast, for we learn from the epistle just named that he was thrice shipwrecked, and no such catastrophe is noticed by St. Luke, the shipwreck of Acts xxvii. being a subsequent event. When a boy of from thirteen or fourteen years of age, Saul had left Tarsus full of hope and courage and ambition to study The Law in the Holy City, at the feet of Rabban Gamaliel the Elder, grandson of Hillel, the most illustrious teacher in the Jewish world, at whose death many years after the pious held down their heads, for the "Glory of the Law had departed." And now after more than twenty years he revisits the haunts of his early boyhood, returning, not as the favourite disciple of the great Rabbi, not as the highly-gifted Pharisee uniting in his own character the lofty patriotism, the deep religious sentiment, the personal integrity, and some portion, at least, of the literary culture of Gamaliel, with the stern severity and fiery enthusiasm of the disciples of Shammai,not as the young ruler† to whom the very highest dignities of his nation were within easy reach, but as Saul the "slave" of the despised Nazarene, Saul who has learnt to glory in nothing save in the Cross of Jesus Christ his Lord, whereby the world has been crucified unto him and he unto the world; Saul, "called to be an Apostle," and patiently waiting until the summons shall send him "far hence unto the Gentiles." * It is quite impossible to determine the chronology of St. Paul's life with any degree of certainty, as in only one or two points does it touch any important crisis in the general history of the world. Nor is it by any means certain that St. Luke in the earlier chapters of the Acts observes a strictly chronological sequence of events. On these points scarcely any two writers of reputation exactly agree. I shall follow Ewald, who, perhaps brought as great learning and ability to bear on the subject as any writer of any age. Ewald gives A.D. 38 for Saul's conversion, A.D. 41 for the visit of Saul to St. Peter, and A.D. 44 for the arrival in Antioch with Barnabas. If we assume that the apostle was born about A.D. 4 (which cannot be far wrong), he was 37 when he returned to Tarsus. + There is no positive proof that Saul was a member of the Sanhedrin (as is implied in this term) before his conversion, but if not his own words (Acts xxvi. 10) seem almost meaningless. It does not follow on that account that he was a married man, for in the degraded Sanhedrin of that time the rigid rules of membership were often arbitrarily set aside. |