The life and work of St. Paul

136 THE LIFE AND WOBK OF ST. PAUL.
to start him on his way to bis native Tarsus. Of bis movements on this
but in the Epistle to
occasion we hear no more in the Acts of the Apostles ;
the Galatians he says that he came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, but
remained a complete stranger to the churches of Judtea that were in Christ,
all that they had heard of him being the rumours that their former persecutor
was now an evangelist of the faith of which he was once a destroyer ;
which gave them occasion to glorify God in him. 1
news
Since we next find him at Tarsus, it might have been supposed that he
sailed there direct, and there remained. The expression, however, that " ha
came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia," seems to imply that this was not
the case. 2
Syria and Cilicia were at this time politically separated, and there
is room for the conjecture that the ship in which the Apostle sailed was
destined, not for Tarsus, but for Tyre, or Sidon, or Seleucia, the port of
Antioch. The existence of friends and disciples of Saul in the Phoenician
towns, and the churches of Syria as well as Cilicia, 3 point, though only with
dim uncertainty, to the possibility that he performed part of his journey to
Tarsus by land, and preached on the way. There is even nothing impossible
in Mr. Lewin's suggestion* that his course may have been determined by one
of those three shipwrecks which he mentions that he had undergone. But
the occasions and circumstances of the three shipwrecks must be left to the
merest conjecture. They occurred during the period when St. Luke was not
a companion of St. Paul, and he has thought it sufficient to give from his own
journal the graphic narrative of that Liter catastrophe of which he shared the
perils. The active ministry in Syria and Cilicia may have occupied the period
between Saul's departure in the direction of Tarsus, and his summons to
fresh fields of labour La the Syrian Antioch. During this time he may have
won over to the faith some of the members of his own family, and may have
enjoyed the society of others who were in Christ before him. But all is
uncertain, nor can we with the least confidence restore the probabilities of a
period of which even the traditions have for centuries been obliterated. The
stay of Saul at Tarsus was on any supposition a period mainly of waiting and
of preparation, of which the records had no large significance
in the history
of the Christian faith. The fields in which he was to reap were whitening for
the harvest ;
prepared.
the arms of the reaper were being strengthened and his heart
would at all suit the long journey northwards to Caesarea Philippi ; nor is it probable
that Saul would go to Tarsus by land, travelling in the direction of the dangerous
Damascus, when he could go so much more easily by sea. It is a more interesting
inquiry whether, as has been suggested, these words and
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