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.
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.