Arrived there, Saul asked eagerly for the disciples of Jesus, but they were afraid that he only sought to betray them; for, although three years had passed since his conversion, it had not become known in Jerusalem, and neither St. Peter nor St. James, who were there, believed that Saul was a Christian.
It was a fresh humiliation for that proud, lofty nature to be thus mistrusted and rejected by Christ's own Apostles, but it served to deepen his contrition for his former bitter persecution of the Church. One friend was raised up for him in St. Barnabas, who, remembering the honour and distinction which had attended Saul's departure from Jerusalem, pitied him in this humiliating return, and undertook to make known the wonderful story of his change of heart to the other Apostles.
Hearing this, they were no longer fearful, but welcomed Saul as one of their brethren, and gladly permitted him to share in their work, so that he at once began to labour for the conversion of the Grecian Jews in the city.
But they remembered him as one of their own party, one whom they had honoured as a Pharisee, and who had been their leader in the work of persecution; and these facts made them so much the more bitter in their hatred, and they began to conspire against his life.
One day, while Saul prayed in the temple, he fell into that strange supernatural state of ecstasy in which the prophets of old, and the Apostles and Saints of later times, have received messages and revelations from Heaven. It was the Lord Jesus Christ Who thus in vision appeared to His servant, bidding him leave Jerusalem because the Jews there would not receive his words, and declaring it to be the Divine purpose that he should journey afar off—to the Gentiles.
Doubtless, in the freshness and fervour of his newly-felt love, Saul would have chosen rather to remain in the city and give up his life for God, but with that great faith and ready submission of will which grace had implanted in his heart, he yielded without hesitation; and, going down to Cæsarea, entered a ship bound for Syria, and made his way to Tarsus, where he remained for many years. During that time Saul's life was secluded, and very few positive records of it remain; but it was then he took short voyages to the different towns on the coast, and suffered the shipwrecks which are mentioned in his Epistles to the Corinthians. There, too, he endured some of that hunger and thirst, scourging and imprisonment, which he suffered for the sake of Christ, and received, as it is believed, many of those wonderful revelations which God granted as a help and consolation in his trials, as well as in preparation for the still greater difficulties which were hidden in the future.
All this time the Jews, who were still unbelievers, pursued Saul with the deepest hatred and longing for revenge.