The life and work of St. Paul

SAUL'S RECEPTION AT JERUSALEM 129
In any case, his journey could not have been much prolonged, for he
tells us that it was his express object to visit Peter, whose recognition
must have been invaluable to him, apart from the help and insight which
he could not but derive from conversing with one who had long lived in
such intimate friendship with the Lord.
CHAPTER XTTT.
SAUL'S RECEPTION AT JERUSALEM.
" Cogitemus ipsum Paulum, licet caelesti voce prostratum et instructum, ad
hominem tamen missum esse, ut sacramenta perciperet." AUG. Dt Doctr. Christ.,
Prol
To re-visit Jerusalem must have cost the future Apostle no slight effort. How
deep must have been his remorse as he neared the spot where he had seen
the corpse of Stephen lying crushed under the stones ! With what awful
interest must he now have looked on the scene of the Crucifixion, and the
spot where He who was now risen and glorified had lain in the garden-tomb !
How dreadful must have been the revulsion of feeling which rose from the
utter change of his present relations towards the priests whose belief he
had abandoned, and the Christians whose Gospel he had embraced ! He
had left Jerusalem a Rabbi, a Pharisee, a fanatic defender of the Oral Law ;
he was entering it as one who utterly distrusted the value of legal righteousness,
who wholly despised the beggarly elements of tradition. The
proud man had become unspeakably humble; the savage persecutor unspeakably
tender ; the self-satisfied Rabbi had abandoned in one moment
his pride of nationality, his exclusive scorn, his Pharisaic pre-eminence, to
take in exchange for them the beatitude of unjust persecution, and to become
the suffering preacher of an execrated faith. What had he to expect from
Theophilus, whose letters he had perhaps destroyed ? from the Sanhedrists,
whose zeal he had fired? from his old fellow-pupils in the lecture-room of
Gamaliel, who had seen in Saul of Tarsus one who in learning was the glory
of the school of Hillel, and in zeal the rival of the school of Shammai?
How would he be treated by these friends of his youth, by these teachers and
companions of his life, now that proclaiming his system, his learning, his
convictions, his whole life and therefore theirs no less than his to have
been irremediably wrong, he had become an open adherent of the little Church
which he once ravaged and destroyed P
But amid the natural shrinking with which he could not but anticipate an
encounter so full of trial, he would doubtless console himself with the thought
that he would find a brother's welcome among those sweet and gentle spirits
whose faith he had witnessed, whose love for each other he had envied while
he hated. How exquisite would be the pleasure of sharing that peace which