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.