p. 53 | Saul of Tarsus by Eugene Lawrence

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 22, 1885

Saul of Tarsus.

By Eugene Lawrence

ONE great name, eminent only in its lowliness, from this time (the death of Stephen) overshadows and controls the church of Jerusalem. Fierce, cruel, unsparing in his unsanctified state, Saul of Tarsus had disputed with vehemence against the eloquent Stephen, had consented to his death. Among the eager populace who watched the fate of the holy martyr, none was more malevolent than the Jew of Tarsus. He saw without a tear the woes he had occasioned; he heard without a sigh the tender words of forgiveness; an impenetrable veil hid from the world and from himself those nobler qualities that were yet to shine forth with surpassing luster upon mankind. From the murder of Stephen, Saul proceeded to new excesses. He became the leader of that fierce persecution that broke out in Jerusalem. He forced his way into the Christian homes of the Bezetha, or Mount Zion; amidst the wail of women, the cry of little children, he dragged fathers and mothers to their doom; he filled the prisons with his victims. When sated with persecution at home, he hurried to Damascus armed with letters from the high priest and the Sanhedrim, to strike down the infant church that had sprung up amidst the groves and gardens and the glittering waters of the fairest city of the East. The incarnation of the rigid law, of a Pharisaical formalism, of a cruelty not surpassed by an Alva or a Bonner, Saul traveled swiftly and sternly over the ancient road from Jerusalem to Damascus, dead to the fair face of gentle nature around him, to the beautiful and true in life, to the loveliness of virtue and of faith. A pride like that of Hildebrand, a cruelty like that of Innocent, a madness such as ever clouds the intellect of ambitious priests and overbearing churchmen, impelled him as he rushed like a maniac to the slaughter of the just. Suddenly a light came down from heaven; a gentle voice, the harmony of infinite compassion, pierced his soul; he groveled in the dust; he knew that of all sinners he was the chief.

Blind, he staggered on to Damascus. He was led by his companions, more helpless than a child. He saw no more the ever-blooming groves, the countless gardens, the radiant flowers that strewed the banks of the golden river, the rich bazaars, the crowded streets, the stately pomp of the paradise of cities. For three days he remained sightless. A miracle restored him; a presbyter of the Damascus church received the penitent to its society; and he was forgiven by those whom he had sought to destroy. But not by himself. Paul fled from the luxurious landscape of Damascus to the wild and inhospitable desert. He hid in the sands of Arabia for three years. Amidst the herbless solitude, overhung by rocks and mountains ever seared with torrid heat, the burning wind parching his fevered brow, his food the scanty gleanings of the desert, his dress that of the impoverished Bedouin, his only companions the wild beast and the serpent, the apostle perhaps lived in his remorse. Ever before him, in his wild retreat, must have hovered the memory of his guilt; of the gentle Stephen, whose dying love had failed to touch his own cruel heart; of the weeping families he had tortured at Jerusalem; of the fierce hatred he had borne for the church of Christ; of the persecution he had instigated against his Lord. A man of deep conscientiousness, of the purest impulses, now that the veil of a cruel formalism had been torn away from his mind, we can well imagine with what abject penitence the once haughty persecutor prayed and fasted in the homeless desert. Yet, happier in his desolation than in his pride, he toiled for forgiveness, purity, faith. In the Arabian solitude, in the bitter struggle with remorseful woe, Paul was prepared for that fierce combat he was destined to wage with every dominant formalism, with the high priest at Jerusalem or the imperial pontifex of Rome.

Paul was born probably in the second or third year after the Saviour's birth. He may have been thirty-five years old at the time of his flight to Arabia. His youth was passed in his native city, Tarsus in Cilicia, one of those brilliant centers of artistic taste and literary excellence that covered the prosperous East, and the young Jew was, no doubt, highly cultivated in its libraries and its lecture-rooms; his avid mind gathered knowledge eagerly from every source. He was small and plain in appearance; his health always infirm; his voice sharp and tuneless; his intellect ever active. From Tarsus he had come up to Jerusalem to study the sacred law under Gamaliel, the most eminent of its professors, and at his house probably became acquainted with many young men of the priestly families who afterward sat with him on the benches of the Sanhedrim, or joined in his condemnation. Every young Jew was taught a trade, and was expected to provide for his own support; Paul, during his studies, labored as a tent-maker, or perhaps a sail-maker, and from the coarse hair of the Cilician goat wove cloths for mariners and travelers. He was always industrious, and, having in his youth been preserved by labor from immoral tastes, enforced the duty of self-support upon his converts. He was a rigid formalist; the high priest was to him almost a mortal god; the services of the temple, the only source of salvation; the smoking offering, the daily prayers, the fasts and feasts of the Jewish law, the direct appointment of the Almighty. With horror, therefore, the rigid Pharisee beheld the daring innovations of the Christians; with inexpressible rage he listened to the arguments of Stephen. By nature he was fierce and ardent; he was a descendant of that savage Semitic race who had so often stoned the prophets whose relatives—the Phœnician and the Carthaginian—forced mothers to throw their smiling babes into the blazing caldrons of Moloch, and who delighted in human sacrifices. Paul's fierce fanaticism found a real joy in persecution.

But in a moment the savage was converted into the tender, gentle saint. From the wild sands of Arabia, after his long and painful probation, Paul returned to Damascus a preacher of the gospel. He spoke with a natural fervor that won many hearts. Often scourged by Roman and Jew, in prison, or at the verge of death, he welcomed persecution with joy, and was ever eager to wear the crown of martyrdom. He escaped from Damascus, and about the year 43 prepared to return to Jerusalem to seek the friendship and support of the Christian church. Once more he approached the holy city, and saw before him the magnificent temple, the center of his early adoration, glittering in the sunlight on Mount Moriah; the hill of Zion covered with its palaces; the busy suburbs filled with the assemblies of the faithful. But for him all was changed. Shame and contrition probably weighed him down as he entered the scene of his former cruelties; and he scarcely complained when the Christian church at first shrunk from him in doubt and terror. How could they see in this man of cruelty and blood the great teacher of gentleness and mercy, whose inspired thoughts should pierce the hearts of the Gentiles, whose ceaseless toil was to found a church that should live forever? At last, in his humility and his contrition, Paul was made known to James and Peter, and lived in the house of the latter for fifteen days. Again he began to dispute in public, but a higher faith was now his only theme. All the vigor of his intellect, all the resources of his learning, were lavished in his controversies with the Jews of his native Cilicia or of the Grecian lands. He was a new Stephen, teaching the religion of the heart. Driven from Jerusalem by the rage of his enemies, he began that wonderful series of missionary labors that fulfilled in the highest degree the commands of the Master; that carried the name of Christ to the chief capitals of heathendom, and whose example has ever inspired the humble emulation of his modern imitators, who have penetrated with their glad tidings the savage shores of Greenland, the jungles of India, the islands of the Pacific. He was the leader of the great mental revolution whose center was the holy city. For twenty-five years the apostle wandered from land to land, maintained chiefly by his own labors, and inculcating by his example the dignity of honest toil. His intellect, ever active and vivid, was only strengthened by time; his feeble frame, often borne down by disease, was sustained by a miraculous vigor; his joyous spirit, glad in its release from bondage, carried hope to the infant churches; his inspired eloquence pierced with deadly wounds the sensual formalism of the age.—Eugene Lawrence, in Historical Studies.