The Life of St. Paul | Page 5

all its issues. He
gave his heart to the Gentile mission, and the history of his life is the
history of how true he was to his vocation. There was never such
singleness of eye or wholeness of heart. There was never such
superhuman and untiring energy. There was never such an
accumulation of difficulties victoriously met and of sufferings
cheerfully borne for any cause. In him Jesus Christ went forth to
evangelize the world, making use of his hands and feet, his tongue and
brain and heart, for doing the work which in His own bodily presence
He had not been permitted by the limits of His mission to accomplish.
CHAPTER II
HIS UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR HIS WORK
Paragraphs 13-36.
14-16. DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH. His Love of Cities. 17, 18.
HOME. 19-26. EDUCATION. 19. Roman citizenship; 20. Tent-making;
21, 22. Knowledge of Greek Literature; 23-26. Rabbinical Training.
Gamaliel. Knowledge of Old Testament. 27-30. MORAL AND
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 28. The Law; 29, 30. Departure from
and return to Jerusalem. 31-33. STATE OF THE CHRISTIAN
CHURCH. Stephen. 34-36. THE PERSECUTOR.
13. God's Plan.--Persons whose conversion takes place after they are
grown up are wont to look back upon the period of their life which has
preceded this event with sorrow and shame and to wish that an
obliterating hand might blot the record of it out of existence. St. Paul
felt this sentiment strongly: to the end of his days he was haunted by
the specters of his lost years, and was wont to say that he was the least
of all the apostles, who was not worthy to be called an apostle, because
he had persecuted the Church of God. But these somber sentiments are
only partially justifiable. God's purposes are very deep, and even in
those who know Him not He may be sowing seeds which will only
ripen and bear fruit long after their godless career is over. Paul would
never have been the man he became or have done the work he did, if he

had not, in the years preceding his conversion, gone through a course of
preparation designed to fit him for his subsequent career. He knew not
what he was being prepared for; his own intentions about his future
were different from God's; but there is a divinity which shapes our ends,
and it was making him a polished shaft for God's quiver, though he
knew it not.
14. Birth and Birthplace.--The date of Paul's birth is not exactly known,
but it can be settled with a closeness of approximation which is
sufficient for practical purposes. When in the year 33 A.D. those who
stoned Stephen laid down their clothes at Paul's feet, he was "a young
man." This term has, indeed, in Greek as much latitude as in English,
and may indicate any age from something under twenty to something
over thirty. In this case it probably touched the latter rather than the
former limit; for there is reason to believe that at this time, or very soon
after, he was a member of the Sanhedrin--an office which no one could
hold who was under thirty years of age--and the commission he
received from the Sanhedrin immediately afterward to persecute the
Christians would scarcely have been entrusted to a very young man.
About thirty years after playing this sad part in Stephen's murder, in the
year 62 A.D., he was lying in a prison in Rome awaiting sentence of
death for the same cause for which Stephen had suffered, and, writing
one of the last of his Epistles, that to Philemon, he called himself an old
man. This term also is one of great latitude, and a man who had gone
through so many hardships might well be old before his time; yet he
could scarcely have taken the name of "Paul the aged" before sixty
years of age.
These calculations lead us to the conclusion that he was born about the
same time as Jesus. When the boy Jesus was playing in the streets of
Nazareth, the boy Paul was playing in the streets of his native town,
away on the other side of the ridges of Lebanon. They seemed likely to
have totally diverse careers. Yet, by the mysterious arrangement of
Providence, these two lives, like streams flowing from opposite
watersheds, were one day, as river and tributary, to mingle together.
15. The place of his birth was Tarsus, the capital of the province of

Cilicia, in the southeast of Asia Minor. It stood a few miles from the
coast, in the midst of a fertile plain, and was built upon both banks of
the river Cydnus, which descended to it from the neighboring Taurus
Mountains, on the snowy peaks of which the inhabitants of the town
were wont, on summer