The person who is a real hero in spirit and nature can be a hero at school as well as anywhere else. In fact those who prove to be heroes in later life are almost always heroes in their school-days. This youth who had come to Jerusalem from Tarsus of Cilicia did not have to wait for some occasion, with all the world looking on, before he could rise to heroic actions. He found a chance to be heroic even in the quiet uneventful cloisters of Gamaliel’s school. All the boys and young men who gathered round this famous teacher very soon knew that a brave fellow and a real, born leader had joined their ranks. When a hard and difficult thing was to be done they turned naturally to him. When a question was asked which taxed everybody’s brain, they all looked for him to answer.
There was no end to his zeal. Nothing seemed too hard for him. He had learned Greek as a boy in his home at Tarsus and he had always known the current Hebrew speech, but now he learned carefully the ancient Hebrew of his fathers. He pored over the Rolls of Scripture and took note of each jot and tittle. He learned all the fine points of grammar which his great Rabban could teach him. His patience seemed never to give out and he would work on in his search for truth long after the others had rolled up in their strange mat-like beds and were lost in peaceful slumber.
He seemed to think of ignorance as a great giant enemy to be fought with and to be killed, no matter how long and hard the fight might be. It was in this fight he showed his true heroic fibre. He was always hunting a new weapon to fight with, or he was sharpening an old weapon in his possession. He would travel miles to find a book he wanted or to discover what a strange word meant or to consult some authority whose opinion he desired.
“What do you suppose that Saul of Tarsus will be when he grows up?” the boys would ask of one another.
“He will surely be a great Rabbi and have a school in Jerusalem, like our master,” one would say.
“I think he will be greater even than that,” another would say. “I think sometimes, as I look at his face and watch him while he reads, that perhaps he will be a new prophet and bring a new word of God to our people.”
“But that is not possible,” a pious youth from a Jerusalem family would answer. “The words of God have already all been given. There will be nothing new until Messiah comes. I have heard my father say that many times.”
This coming of Messiah was one of the things our youth from Tarsus studied most carefully. The books and traditions had much to say about it, but it was hard to decide just what would happen and just how to get ready for this greatest event of all the world. With the help of Gamaliel and his books, young Saul came to believe that a great day was soon to come for Jerusalem and for all good Jews. A new king, like David, only greater and wiser and better and stronger would suddenly appear. He would have power to turn stones to bread, or to leap from the top of the temple to the ground without being hurt in the least. He would break the Roman army all to pieces in a minute. He would call hosts of angel soldiers from the sky at the sound of a trumpet and they would destroy or carry away all who had been bad Jews and had not kept the law. Then he would make Jerusalem a perfect city. The streets would all be cleansed and purified, until one could see his face reflected in every pavement. The walls would be changed into precious stones, the gates into pearls, and every person left in the city would be as pure as the city itself. Nobody would be sick any more, nobody would die, or have any sorrow. And best of all, all the good Jews who had ever lived would be brought back to life again to live in the perfect Jerusalem with the good people who were there with the great king. This king of their hopes and dreams was called “Messiah,” because he would be “anointed” by God himself to rule forever. Saul believed that his people were the only ones out of all the world who would have this king for their king and this perfect city, and all who had ever done anything against his nation would suffer and suffer and suffer, while the happy Jews were enjoying their beautiful Mount Zion.
He believed, too, and he thought his books proved it, that he and others who were willing to work for it, could hurry up this great day and make it come sooner. This is the way you could do it. It couldn’t come until there were a great many persons who were good enough to start the new world and the perfect city. The king, Messiah, would not come until he could find a large number of people all ready for him and as near perfect as you could be. Now to be perfect you must keep all the law and do everything that God commanded in the Old Testament and in the traditions of the Rabbis. If you broke one single commandment, it was as bad as though you broke them all, for if you broke one, then you had not kept the whole law.
Now my reader will see, I hope, what a hero this young Saul was. He had decided to be one of the men who would be ready for this mighty king and he was resolved to live the kind of life that would help bring him soon. He was going to live as though the perfect city had come already. He would not do one thing that would seem like disobeying God—even the littlest. Gamaliel had one student who was trying with all his might to be perfect, and that meant, to be a hero.
