The life and work of St. Paul

166 THE LIFE AND WOEI OF ST. PAUL.
l
of the lowest periods of human history passed the eager spirit of Saul of
Tarsus. On his way, five miles from the city, he must have seen upon the
river-bank at least the fringe of laurels, cypresses, and myrtles that marked
"
that sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes," 1
and caught sight, perhaps, of its colossal statue of Apollo, 8 reared by Seleucus
Nicator. But it was sweet no longer, except in its natural and ineffaceable
hare entered
beauty, and it is certain that a faithful Jew would not willingly
its polluted precincts. Those precincts, being endowed with the right of
asylum, were, like all the asylums of ancient and modern days, far more a
protection to outrageous villany than to persecuted innocence;* and those
umbrageous groves were the dark haunts of every foulness. For their scenic
loveliness, their rich foliage, their fragrant herbage, their perennial fountains,
the fiery-hearted convert had little taste. He could only have recalled with a
sense of disgust how that grove had given its title to a proverb which expressed
6
the superfluity of naughtiness, and how its evil haunts had flung away the one
rare chance of sheltering virtue from persecution, when the good Onias was
tempted from it to be murdered by the governor of its protecting city. 6
Such was the place where, in the street Singon, Saul began to preach. He
may have entered it by the gate which was afterwards called the Gate of the
Cherubim, because twenty-seven years later 7 it was surmounted by those
colossal gilded ornaments which Titus had taken from the Temple of
Jerusalem. It was a populous quarter, in close proximity to the Senate
House, the Forum, and the Amphitheatre ; and every time that during his
sermon he raised his eyes to the lower crags of Mount Silpius, he would be
confronted by the stern visage and rocky crown of the choleric ferryman of
Hades. But the soil was prepared for his teaching. It is darkest just before
the dawn. When mankind has sunk into hopeless scepticism, the help of God
"
is often very nigh at hand. Bitter with weariness, and sick with sin," there
were many at any rate, even among the giddy and voluptuous Antiochenes,
who, in despair of all sweetness and nobleness, were ready to hail with
rapture the preaching of a new faith which promised forgiveness for the past,
and brought ennoblement to the present. The work grew and prospered, and
for a whole year the Apostles laboured in brotherly union and amid constant
encouragement. The success of their labours was most decisively marked by
1 Ausonius saya of Antioch and Alexandria,
"Turbida vulgo
Utraque et amentia populi malesana tumultu " (Ordo Nob. Urb. ill.).
3 See the celebrated passage in Gibbon's Decline and Fatt, ch. xxiii.
3 Now Beit-al-Ma?a a secluded glen. A few dilapidated mills mark a spot where thu
shrine of Apollo once gleamed with gold and gems. When Julian the Apostate it a
paid
solemn visit, he found there a solitary goose ! The Bab Boles, cr " Gate of Paul," is on
the Aleppo road. The town still bears a bad name for licentiousness, and only contains a
few hundred Christians. (See Carne's Syria, i. 5, &c.)
4 2 Maco. iv. 83. * "Daphnici more*." Joa. Antt. xii. 5, V
* A.D. 70,