[Footnote 107: These conjectures and regard to St. Paul's birth and parentage are not founded on any solid basis, but on the contrary appear to be quite improbable. The author's citation from the Rabbinical maxims overturns the argument which he derives from the fact that St. Paul practised a handicraft. All Jews, whatever their birth or wealth, learned a trade. St. Paul's knowledge of the tent-maker's trade, therefore, does not prove that he was of low birth, or belonged to the class of artisans. On the contrary, his possession of the privileges of Roman citizenship, which he must have inherited, and which could only have been conferred on account of some great service rendered to the state by one of his ancestors, together with his thorough education, go to show that he belonged to one of the most eminent Jewish families of Tarsus.--Ed. C.W.]
Manual occupation, however, did not absorb the whole time, nor the whole soul of the young Israelite; since the tradition of the fathers points to him as frequenting the schools of Tarsus, and joining that studious swarm of young civilians who crowded there to attend the lectures delivered by the professors of science and literature. [Footnote 108] His Epistles retain some traces of these his first studies. In these he quotes now and then words of the ancient poets, Menander, Aratus, Epimenides. He expressed himself with equal facility in the three great languages of the civilized world, the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin; and it is manifest that he knew the secrets of the art of eloquence, for which he [{535}] retained in later times only a magnanimous contempt. He was also initiated in philosophy, under the teachers whom I have named already. Besides Stoicism, whose patrons and success in Tarsus I have mentioned, Platonism flourished there under the protection of Nestor, a man of great distinction, who had been the preceptor of that illustrious youth Marullus, who was sung by Virgil, and bewailed by Augustus. Is it not, at this period, that a young man of Tyana, himself destined to acquire a strange celebrity, came to Tarsus in his fourteenth year, and passionately embraced there the precepts of Pythagorean doctrine? The uncertainties of the history, which was written by Philostratus afterward, do not permit us to say anything definite upon this point; but one cannot help thinking that it is from the same place, and at the same time, that those two extremes of the power of good and of the power of evil have set out--Apollonius of Tyana, and Saint Paul.
[Footnote 108: Sancte Hieronymi, t. vi. 322.--"Comm. Epist. ad Galat.">[
Finally, not far from there the oriental doctrines drove to their several beliefs respectively the multitudes of Asia, and invaded also the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the Islands. Thus Parsism on the one hand, and Hellenism on the other, met in Tarsus with Judaism. By its position, as well as by its commerce, the birthplace of St. Paul was the point of confluence of the two currents of ideas, which shared the world between themselves. From this centre the future apostle was able to embrace in one view all those different sorts of minds which he was to embrace in his zeal afterwards.
Such were his beginnings. In them Saul plays an insignificant part; but God a great one; God does not act openly as yet; he prepares. But what preparation! What a concurrence of circumstances manifestly providential! What greatness even in this obscurity! The seal of predestination is visibly impressed upon that soul appointed to regenerate the world by the faith. The place, the time, the means, everything seems disposed, consecrated in advance, as it were, for a great scene. God incarnate was to fill it, but he had chosen Saul of Tarsus to be in it the actor most worthy of him.
II.
The second education of Saul took place in Jerusalem. He was yet young when his parents, yielding to that instinct which recalled the Jews to their native country, sent him, or, perhaps, went and took him with themselves, to the holy city, in order to fix their residence there.
There occur in history some solemn epochs; but that in which Saul arrived at Jerusalem possesses a consecration which cannot belong to any but to itself alone: it was what St. Paul called, afterward, "the fulness of the times." The seventy weeks determined by Daniel, entered then into the last phasis of their accomplishment. The sceptre had been taken away from Judah, and, at a few steps from the temple, a centurion, with the vine-stock in his hand, quietly walked around the residence of a Roman proconsul. People were waiting to see from what point the star of Jacob was to appear. It had risen already, and the young workman of Tarsus, while going to Jerusalem, might have met on his way with a workman like himself, who, sitting at the foot of some unknown hill, preached in parables to the people of his own country and of his condition. This was in fact taking place under the second Herod. Saul was then twenty-nine years old, and the Word made flesh dwelt among us full of grace and truth.
Did Saul have the happiness to see his divine Master during his mortal life? Grave historians formally affirm it, [Footnote 109] and some passages in the Epistles allow us to believe it. Others think [{536}] that what they refer to is only the vision on the road to Damascus.
[Footnote 109: Alzog, "Histoire Universelle de l'Eglise," t. i. p. 157.]