ONE THING,HOWEVER,WAS NECESSARY BEFORE CHRISTIANITY COULD BECOME A WORLD-RELIGION.THERE MUST BE A BREAK WITH JERUSALEM AND THE NARROW TRIBAL PREJUDICES OF THE OLDER FAITH.A BRILLIANT SPEAKER AND ORGANISER BY THE NAME OF PAUL SAVED CHRISTIANITY FROM THE FATE OF DEGENERATION INTO ANOTHER LITTLE JEWISH SECT.PAUL LEFT JUDAEA,CROSSED OVER INTO EUROPE AND MADE THE NEW CHURCH AN INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTION WHICH RECOGNISED NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JEW AND ROMAN AND GREEK
We know Paul well.
Historically speaking,we know him really much better than we do Jesus.The Acts of the Apostles,the fifth book of the New Testament,which follows immediately upon the Gospels,devotes sixteen Chapters to the life and the works of Paul.And in the letters written by him when he was travelling among the heathen of the west,we find a very minute deion of his doctrines.
He was the son of Jewish parents who lived in the city of Tarsus,in the district of Cilicia in the northwest corner of Asia Minor.Their son was given the name of Shaul or Saul.
He was well connected,had relatives in several parts of the empire,and when quite young he had been sent to Jerusalem to go to school.Here his position was somewhat anomalous,for although a Jew,he happened to be a Roman citizen.This honour seems to have been conferred upon his father for certain services rendered to Rome.In those days it was a passport which allowed the owner a great many privileges.
After he had finished his education (the conventional education of all Jewish children)Saul was apprenticed to a tentmaker and afterwards he set up for himself in the same business.
Trained in the strict school of the Pharisees,young Saul was heart and soul with the Great Council when they ordered the execution of Jesus.Afterwards,he eagerly joined the group of young patriots who tried to eradicate the seditious doctrines which the hated Nazarene had spread throughout Galilee and Judaea.
He was present when Stephen was stoned to death and moved not a finger to save the poor man who was the first martyr to give his life for the new faith.
But as he was for ever at the head of a band of young rowdies,who in the name of the old law were committing new crimes,he came in almost daily contact with the followers of Jesus.
These earliest Christians,in great contrast to most of their contemporaries,were exemplary in their personal conduct.
They lived sober and abstemious lives,they told no lies,they gave liberally to the poor,they shared their possessions with their needy neighbours and went to the gallows with a prayer upon their lips for those who persecuted them.
At first,Saul was puzzled.
Then he began to understand that Jesus must have been something more than a revolutionary agitator to have inspired such devotion in people who had never even seen him.
He was a very intelligent pupil.Jesus had been a very intelligent teacher.Suddenly Saul understood Jesus,and surrendered himself to the will of his unknown Master.
His conversion took place on a lonely road.
He was on his way to Damascus.The authorities in Jerusalem had heard that a number of Jews in that city were beginning to show a leaning towards the Christian doctrines.The High Priest had given Saul letters to his colleague in Damascus asking that those heretics be surrendered and be brought to Jerusalem for trial and execution.
Saul had gone upon this gruesome errand as happy as a boy.But ere he reached the capital of Syria,he had a vision.
His blind eyes became seeing.
Jesus was right,and the High Priest was wrong.
It was the logical conclusion to which millions of people have come ever since.
Instead of presenting his credentials and asking that the dissenters be given into his custody,Saul went straightway to Ananias,who was the leader of the Damascan community and begged that he might be baptised.
From that moment on he was called Paul and under that name he gained his fame as the apostle to the heathen.
He gave up his profession and at the request of Barnabas (an early convert from the island of Cyprus)he went to the city of Antiochia,where the name Christians was for the first time publicly given to those who accepted Jesus and no longer worshipped in the old synagogue.
Paul stayed in Antioch only a short time and then commenced that life of a wandering missionary which carried him to all the corners of the Empire and gave him as his final reward a martyr's grave in an unknown Roman cemetery.
At first he worked chiefly among the coastal cities of Asia Minor and made many converts.The Greeks listened to him with evident pleasure.They could follow his line of reasoning.They were impressed by the tact he used to overcome their objections and willingly they joined the new faith.
But the little groups of Jewish-Christians which were to be found in most Mediterranean ports hated Paul and did their best to make his work a failure.
Prejudices inherited from twenty generations of orthodox ancestors cannot be shed in a minute.To those good people it seemed that Paul was going much too far,that he was too friendly to the followers of Zeus and Mithras,that he should first of all be a Jew and that his Christian ideals should be of secondary importance and should conform as closely as possible to the old Mosaic laws.
When Paul tried to prove to them that the two had nothing in common,that one could not serve Jehovah and the God of Jesus at the same time,their dislike was turned into open hatred.
Several times they tried to kill the hated tent-maker,until Paul began to understand that Christianity,if it were to survive,must appeal to an entirely new public,and must break definitely and unequivocally with Judaism.
He still remained in Asia Minor,but finally in Troas (a seaport not far from the ruins of the old city of Troy of which Homer had sung)he made up his mind to go to Europe.
He crossed the Hellespont and went straightway to Philippi,an important town in the heart of Macedonia.