J. ROCHE, PRINTER, 25, HOXTON-SQUARE, LONDON.

THE

WESLEYAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL MAGAZINE.

PRACTICAL PAPERS.

THE EARLY LIFE OF ST. PAUL.

BY W. R. BURGESS.

(Continued from page 222.)

THE HE social position of St. Paul's parents is a matter of pure conjecture. By some it is thought from the fact that the young man was taught the trade of a tent-maker, that their circumstances were mean and narrow. But his learning the trade of a tent-maker did not imply that such a trade was necessary to his subsistence. It was simply a compliance with a Jewish custom that all boys should learn a trade. "What is required of a father towards his son?" asks a Jewish writer. "To circumcise him, to teach him the law, and to teach him a trade." And another Rabbi says, "He that teacheth not his son a trade, doth the same as if he taught him to be a thief." And Gamaliel, Paul's teacher, saith, "He that hath a trade in his hand, to what is he like? He is like a vineyard that is fenced." The most probable conjecture is, that his father was engaged in the profitable occupation of making tents, the material of which was hair-cloth, supplied by the goats of his native province, and sold in the markets of the Levant by the well-known name of Cilicium. But whatever their social position, they doubtless had that respectability which belongs to moral excellence and a good reputation. Some of his relatives Paul speaks of as having embraced Christianity before himself, and his nephew certainly rendered him good service by disclosing the plot in which the forty Jews engaged, when they swore that they would neither eat nor drink until they had slain Paul.

At the period of which we now speak, three great nations appear prominent: the Jew, the Greek, the Roman. Each of these had its distinctive features strongly marked. Each of them had its representatives in the principal cities of the East. Thus the superscription over the cross of our Saviour was "written in Hebrew and Greek and Latin." The same Herod

VOL. IX. NEW SERIES.-November, 1874.

M

who re-built the Temple for the Jew, had erected for the Greek a theatre and for the Roman an amphitheatre, in the same city; whilst Josephus tells us that on a parapet of stone in the Temple area, pillars were placed at equal distances, with notices, some in Greek and some in Latin, that no alien should enter the sacred enclosure of the Hebrews.

Each of these nationalities represented a different phase of political, intellectual or religious life. Each of them illustrated the highest civilization of the times. The peculiarity of the Roman displayed itself in organization and government; that of the Greek in the culture of the imagination and the intellect; that of the Hebrew in his religion. Apart from their strictly religious observances, everything in the collective and private life of the Jews was connected with a revealed religion; their wars, their poetry had a sacred character; their national code was full of the details of public worship; their ordinary employments were touched at every point by Divinely-appointed and significant ceremonies.

The genius of the Greeks exhibited itself in the various forms of art, poetry, literature and philosophy; in restless activity of mind and body, finding its exercise in athletic games or subtle disquisitions; in love of the beautiful, quick perception, indefatigable inquiry. They always manifested a remarkable catholicity of character, and a singular power of adaptation to those whom they called barbarians; that is, all other than Greeks. Though they despised foreigners, they were never unwilling to visit them and to cultivate their acquaintance. Although at this time their political power had given place to the Roman, their intellectual force was still felt.

The civilization of the Romans took a more practical form. Universal conquest and permanent occupation were the ends at which they aimed. The gigantic roads of the Empire have been unrivalled until the present century; their material works were accomplished at an enormous expenditure and were of vast extent. Their baths and aqueducts; their amphitheatres, harbours, bridges, sepulchres and temples, were the wonder of that and succeeding ages. Wherever they came they conquered, until East and West alike bowed beneath their yoke.

It was amidst these different and conflicting elements that St. Paul was born, and amongst them he passed his earliest years. Each of them would exercise its influence upon him. By religion he was a "Hebrew of the Hebrews;" he enjoyed the privileges of

THE EARLY LIFE OF ST. PAUL.

243

a Roman citizen, and we cannot suppose he would escape the influences of the Greek learning for which his native city was so famous. The languages with which he would be most familiar were the Hebrew and the Greek; the Latin or Roman, that of the governing power, was less used, although he afterwards became acquainted with it. It is certain that he acquired all these languages. He would early attain a mastery of Hebrew, when studying under Gamaliel; his quotations from the Old Testament were from the Septuagint or Greek translation; and the readiness with which he addressed a Greek audience from the Areopagus at Athens was such as a Jew would not have attained, had not Greek been familiar to him from his childhood. Although Greek may have been more generally spoken in Tarsus, yet he would be quite as familiar with the Hebrew. Himself a Jew, descended from Jewish parents, mingling with the Jewish merchants who would inhabit or visit the city, it is not likely that his parents would fail to instruct their son in the language of the fatherland, any more than an Englishman settled in India would forget his mother tongue, or fail to impart it to his children, although he might also acquire that of the country where his lot was cast.

His education would most likely be given at home; or if he went to a school, it would be in some room connected with the Jewish synagogue, where the children would receive the rudiments of instruction, seated on the ground. To this place he would go under the care of a slave or attendant. When St. Paul, in Gal. iii. 24, speaks of the Law being "a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ," the true meaning is, that it should have the care and charge of us on our way to Christ.

At such a school young Saul of Tarsus would be taught to read and write. As his years advanced, his religious knowledge would be obtained from hearing the Law read in the synagogue; from listening to the arguments and discussions of learned doctors, and from that habit of questioning and answering which was permitted even to the children amongst the Jews. The question as to how he became acquainted with Greek literature has been much disputed. He quoted Greek authors on several occasions. It is hardly probable that one of St. Paul's abilities and disposition. could live for many years at the most acquisitive and impressible period of his life at one of the most important seats of Greek learning, without being in some degree affected by the influences operating around him, and acquiring some of the knowledge with which the place abounded. Even if Greek literature and philosophy

were not made a study, we can readily understand how he might obtain some familiarity with them.

The educational maxim of the Jews was, "At five years of age, let children begin the Scripture; at ten, the Mishna; at thirteen, let them be subjects of the Law." If, as we may suppose, his parents acted upon this maxim, we can readily imagine that such an education would tend greatly to make St. Paul what he afterwards became, a "Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the Church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless." "Taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers;" “zealous toward God," and "persecuting this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prison both men and women." The study of the Jewish Scriptures would inform him as to the history and prospects of his nation; the Mishna or Talmud would teach him the civil and canonical law of the Jewish people; those rules and institutions by which, in addition to the Old Testament, the conduct of the nation was regulated; whatever was considered obligatory on him in addition to the Law, where his doubts would be resolved, his duties explained, cases of conscience cleared up, and the most minute circumstances relative to the conduct of life discussed; where he would be taught matters pertaining not merely to religion, but to philosophy, history, medicine, jurisprudence and the various branches of practical duty. His aftertraining in the Law, under Gamaliel, would confirm him in his hereditary opinions, perfect him in the exercise of his intellectual faculties, and prepare him for that religious warfare in which he afterwards engaged, and the better fit him to attack and demolish that system of teaching which he was trained to defend.

At the age of thirteen or fourteen he would be sent to Jerusalem, to commence his studies at the feet of Gamaliel. The journey would be to him of the liveliest interest. To visit the land of his fathers, the city of David, the scene of great transactions with which history had made him familiar; to gaze upon the very spot where these things had occurred; to mark the hills and valleys, the rivers and lakes of which he had heard so much; to have his memory quickened into vigorous activity as one object after another presented itself; to have his imagination picturing the events which had occurred, and giving them a vividness and a reality which they had never before possessed,-all this would, to a youth of an enthusiastic and susceptible nature, be in the highest degree impressive and attractive.