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.