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CHAPTER I.

S. PAUL'S EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION.

N the following pages I hope to be able to tell you something about S. Paul, something about the man himself, something

about his work, and about his preparation for that work and especially I hope to be able to give you some idea of the letters which he was inspired to write, letters which have instructed and comforted sixty generations of Christians.

Such a subject as this ought to be interesting, and I will do my best to make it interesting.

It is really almost impossible to reckon up the debt of gratitude which under God's providence we owe to S. Paul. It is hardly too much to say that if it had not been for S. Paul, the Christian Religion and the Catholic Church would have been very different from what they are.

The Christian Church, in its framework, in its extent, in its practical teaching, owes its existing form in great measure to the force of character, the genius, and devotion of this great Apostle.

To his keen and many-sided intellect we owe the systematic statement of the truths of Christianity in their relation to one another.

To his spiritual insight, to his indomitable courage and persistence we owe it, that the Religion of Jesus was freed from the weight of Jewish observances and the yoke of the Mosaic law which at one time threatened to crush out its life.

The Emperor Augustus was said to have boasted that he found Rome a city of brick, and left it a city of marble.

It might almost seem that the Christian community as S. Paul found it might have become little more than a Jewish sect, a sect which possibly might not have survived the destruction of Jerusalem; Christianity, as S. Paul left it, was in a fair way of becoming the Religion of the Roman world, and was seen to posscss the elements of a universal Religion.

It was only natural that as S. Paul was especially called to be the Apostle of the Gentiles, his training should have been different from that of the other apostles, whose mission was primarily to the chosen people.

The future Apostle and organizer of the Church was born, so it would appear, about seven years before the birth of our Saviour. He was born at Tarsus, the chief city of the Province of Cilicia, "a citizen," as he himself tells us, "of no mean city."

Tarsus was a great commercial city, like Liverpool or Glasgow: but it was more than that, it was something like what we should call a University town, like Oxford or Cambridge, or Edinburgh, being the seat of a famous school of learning.

But though Tarsus itself was no mean city, Cilicia, the Province of which it was the capital, had a not very enviable reputation.

The birth of Saul at Tarsus determined the trade which the future Apostle was taught, and by which in after days he supplied his scanty needs.

The manufacture of the rough cloth made from goat's hair, which was used for making tents, was the staple trade of Tarsus, and was the handicraft which Saul learnt.

You must not, however, suppose from this that Saul's parents belonged to the poorer class of people. It was the general practice of Jewish parents, of whatever rank, to teach their sons a trade. Indeed, it was a common saying that a father who did not teach his son a trade, taught him to be a thief.

But although born in a heathen city, the abode of Grecian learning and Grecian vice, the young Saul was brought up as a strict and conscientious Jew. His parents were strict Jews, his father was a Pharisee. Under their training Saul grew up to be a thorough-going Jew, a Jew in sympathy, a Jew in nationality, a Jew in faith, or as he himself describes it, "a Hebrew of the Hebrews."

But besides being a citizen of the commonwealth of Israel, he was also a citizen of Rome. This privilege, of which the future Apostle often availed himself, was acquired or inherited by his father, and was by him transmitted to his son, who was, as he proudly asserts, "free born."

The childhood and boyhood of the future Apostle, allowing for the difference of time and country, would not be so very different from the life of an English boy now. He would be taught, as we are, the old Bible stories; he would learn about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, about the Flood, and Noah's ark, about Joseph and his brethren; he would read with especial pride and delight the exploits of his namesake Saul, and Jonathan, the heroes of his own tribe of Benjamin. He would also very probably learn by heart, as English boys and girls should be encouraged to do, portions of Holy Scripture.

We may think of Saul as walking through the busy streets, under the care of a slave, who was called the Pædagogue, or boy-leader, to the Syna

gogue School, and there sitting cross-legged on the floor, with other children, receiving the elements of learning.

At the age of thirteen the young Saul, like other Jewish boys, would undergo a ceremony which in some respects answered to Confirmation with us, and became, as the phrase was, “a son of the Law"; and as he was probably intended for the profession of a Rabbi, or Teacher of the Law, he would be entered as a student in the School of some great Doctor of the Law.

The young student of Tarsus was according'y sent to Jerusalem, and became one of the scholars of Gamaliel.

We all know what an important epoch it is in an English boy's life when he goes up to London for the first time: so we can easily imagine what this first visit to Jerusalem must have been to Saul. But Jerusalem would be to him far more than London would be to us, it would be more what a visit to Rome would be to an ardent Roman Catholic boy. It was not only the capital City of his nation, but the one place which God had chosen to place His Name there. It was "the Holy City," "the Perfection of Beauty," "the Joy of the whole Earth.”

Saul was very fortunate in having such a master as Gamaliel, for he was one of the wisest and most liberal, as well as one of the most learned of the Jewish Rabbis. The advantages of a Jerusalem education in the School of Gamaliel were not thrown away upon Saul. The future apostle became an eager and earnest student.

He tells us himself (Gal. i. 14) that he advanced in the Jews' religion beyond many of his own age among his countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of his fathers.

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