The life and work of St. Paul

204 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL.
"
eternity ; how often had his barque furrowed the blue waters of the
among those
"
Sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, which o'erlace the sea,
And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps Greece
"
!
But all these scenes of glory and loveliness left no impression upon his mind,
or have at least left no trace upon his page. 1 We might pity the loss which
he thus suffered, and regret the ineffectualness of a source of consolation
which would otherwise have been ever at hand, were it not that to St. Paul
such consolations were needless. The soul that lived in heaven, 2 the thoughts
which were full of immortality, the conviction that the Lord was at hand, the
yearning for the souls for which Clirist died made up to him for all besides.
but the
God would have granted all other consolations had he needed them ;
steps which were ever on the golden streets of the New Jerusalem trod heedlessly
over the volcanic soil of a world treasured up with the stores of fire which
should hereafter reduce it to ashes. 3 The goblet which was full of the new
wine of the kingdom of heaven had no room in it for the fruit of the vine of
even those earthly pleasures which are of all
most universal, and the most blest.
others the most innocent, the
Nor must we fail to see that there was an advantage as well as a disadvan-
tage in this absorption. If St. Paul never alludes to the transcendent beauties
of the lands through which ho travelled, so neither does one word escape him
about the recurrent annoyances, the perpetual minor discomforts and vex-
ations of travel. The journals of modern wanderers tell us of the drenching
rains, the glaring heats, the terrible fatigues, the incessant publicity, tho stings
of insects, tho blinding storms of dust, the trying changes of season, the
scarcity and badness of provisions. But to Paul all these trivial burdens,
which often, nevertheless, require more heroism for their patient endurance
than those more serious perils which summon up all our fortitude for their
conquest or resistance, were as nothing. He felt the tedium and the miseries
of travel as little as he cared for its rewards. All these things had no bearing
on his main purpose ; they belonged to the indifferent things of life.
And so the Apostles made their way up the valley of the Oestrus, passed
along the eastern shore of tho large and beautiful Like Eyerdir, and aftor a
journey of some forty leagues, which probably occupied about a week, they
arrived at the flourishing commercial town of Antioch in Pisidia, or Autiochia
Caesarea. Wo learn from Strabo that it had been founded by the Magnetos,
re-founded by Seleucus, and subsequently made a Eoinan colony, with free
municipal government, by Augustus. The centrality of its position on roads
1 There are some excellent remarks on this subject in Friedliinder, Sittcn
vii. 5, 3. He shows that the ancients rather noticed details than general elfccts. They
never allude to twilight colours, or the blue of distant hills, or aerial perspective.
Landscape painting, the culture of exotic plants, and the poetry of natural history have
developed those feelings in the moderns (Humboldt's Cosmos, ii.).
s Phil. iii. 20 ; Eph. ii. 6, &c. 2 Pet. iii. 7.