The Life of St. Paul | Page 7

indicate that the home in which he was brought up was one of those out
of which nearly all eminent religious teachers have sprung--a home of
piety, of character, perhaps of somewhat stern principle, and of strong
attachment to the peculiarities of a religious people. He was imbued
with its spirit. Although he could not but receive innumerable and
imperishable impressions from the city he was born in, the land and the
city of his heart were Palestine and Jerusalem; and the heroes of his
young imagination were not Curtius and Horatius, Hercules and
Achilles, but Abraham and Joseph, Moses and David and Ezra. As he
looked back on the past, it was not over the confused annals of Cilicia
that he cast his eyes, but he gazed up the clear stream of Jewish history
to its sources in Ur of the Chaldees; and, when he thought of the future,
the vision which rose on him was the kingdom of the Messiah,
enthroned in Jerusalem and ruling the nations with a rod of iron.
18. The feeling of belonging to a spiritual aristocracy, elevated above
the majority of those among whom he lived, would be deepened in him
by what he saw of the religion of the surrounding population. Tarsus
was the center of a species of Baal-worship of an imposing but
unspeakably degrading character, and at certain seasons of the year it
was the scene of festivals, which were frequented by the whole
population of the neighboring regions, and were accompanied with
orgies of a degree of moral abominableness happily beyond the reach
even of our imaginations. Of course a boy could not see the depths of
this mystery of iniquity, but he could see enough to make him turn
from idolatry with the scorn peculiar to his nation, and to make him
regard the little synagogue where his family worshiped the Holy One of
Israel as far more glorious than the gorgeous temples of the heathen;
and perhaps to these early experiences we may trace back in some
degree those convictions of the depths to which human nature can fall
and its need of an omnipotent redeeming force which afterward formed
so fundamental a part of his theology and gave such a stimulus to his
work.
19. Trade.--The time at length arrived for deciding what occupation the
boy was to follow--a momentous crisis in every life--and in this case

much was involved in the decision. Perhaps the most natural career for
him would have been that of a merchant; for his father was engaged in
trade, the busy city offered splendid prizes to mercantile ambition, and
the boy's own energy would have guaranteed success. Besides, his
father had an advantage to give him specially useful to a merchant:
though a Jew, he was a Roman citizen, and this right would have given
his son protection, into whatever part of the Roman world he might
have had occasion to travel. How the father got this right we cannot tell;
it might be bought, or won by distinguished service to the state, or
acquired in several other ways; at all events his son was free-born. It
was a valuable privilege, and one which was to prove of great use to
Paul, though not in the way in which his father might have been
expected to desire him to make use of it. But it was decided that he was
not to be a merchant. The decision may have been due to his father's
strong religious views, or his mother's pious ambition, or his own
predilections; but it was resolved that he should go to college and
become a rabbi--that is, a minister, a teacher and a lawyer all in one. It
was a wise decision in view of the boy's spirit and capabilities, and it
turned out to be of infinite moment for the future of mankind.
20. But, although he thus escaped the chances which seemed likely to
drift him into a secular calling, yet, before going away to prepare for
the sacred profession, he was to get some insight into business life; for
it was a rule among the Jews that every boy, whatever might be the
profession he was to follow, should learn a trade, as a resource in time
of need. This was a rule with wisdom in it; for it gave employment to
the young at an age when too much leisure is dangerous, and
acquainted the wealthy and the learned in some degree with the feelings
of those who have to earn their bread with the sweat of their brow. The
trade which he was put to was the commonest one in Tarsus--the
making of tents from the goat's-hair cloth for which the district was
celebrated. Little did he or his father think, when he