The life and work of St. Paul

THE BEGINNING OF A LONG MARTYRDOM. 125
What was the nature of this stake in the flesh, we shall examine fully in a
separate essay ;
l but that, whatever it may have been, it came to St. Paul as a
direct consequence of visions and revelations, and as a direct counteraction to
the inflation and self-importance which such exceptional insight might
otherwise have caused to such a character as his, he has himself informed us.
We are, therefore, naturally led to suppose that the first impalement of his
health by this wounding splinter accompanied, or resulted from, that greatest
of all his revelations, the appearance to him of the risen Christ as he was
travelling at noonday nigh unto Damascus. If so, we see yet another
reason for a retirement from all exertion and publicity, which was as necessary
for his body as for his soul.
CHAPTER XII.
THE BEGINNING OF A LONG MARTYRDOM.
" Be bold as a leopard, swift as an eagle, bounding as a stag, brave as a lion, to
do the will of thy Father which ia in heaven." FESACHIM, f. 112, 2.
CALMED by retirement, confirmed, it may be, by fresh revelations of the will
of God, clearer in his conceptions of truth and duty, Saul returned tc
Damascus. We need look for no further motives of his return than such as
rose from the conviction that he was now sufficiently prepared to do the work
to which Christ had called him.
He did not at once begin his mission to the Gentiles.
" "
To the Jew first
was the understood rule of
2
the Apostolic teaching, and had been involved in
the directions given by Christ Himself. 3
Moreover, the Gentiles were
so unfamiliar with the institution of preaching, their whole idea of worship was
so alien from every form of doctrinal or moral exhortation, that to begin
by preaching to them was almost impossible. It was through the Jews that
the Gentiles were most easily reached. The proselytes, numerous in every
city, were specially numerous at Damascus, and by their agency it was certain
that every truth propounded in the Jewish synagogue would, even if only by
the agency of female proselytes, be rapidly communicated to the Gentile
agora.
It was, therefore, to the synagogues that Saul naturally resorted, and
there that he first began to deliver his message. Since the Christians were
still in communion with the synagogue and the Toiuple since their leader,
Ananias, was so devout according to the law as to have won the willing
testimony of all the Jews who lived in Damascus 4 no obstacle would be placed
in the way of the youthful Eabbi ; and as he had been a scholar in the most
1 See Excursus X., "St. Paul's 'Stake in the Flesh.'"
2 Rom. i. 16 ; Acts iii. 26 ; xiii. 38, 39, 46 ; John iv. 22.
* Luke xxiv. 47 ; cf. Isa. ii. 4
2, 3 ; xlix. 6 ; Mic. iv. 2.
Acts xxit. 12.