Part 1

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

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.”

“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.”