Part 2
“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