Like winged birds, the time flew by, just as it does now for school-boys and school-girls and Saul’s years at the feet of Gamaliel were over. He had changed very much while he had been in Jerusalem. Soft hair was growing on his face now. His forehead was broader and fuller, but his shoulders were bowed over and he walked with a stoop because he had bent over his books so long and had taken very little exercise in these years of eager study. His hands were soft as a woman’s and he seemed thin and worn with the strain of his thoughts. But the same fire was in his dark eyes and the same fine beautiful light shone on his face. He wondered as he came up the river Cydnus from Messina to Tarsus (for he returned by sea), whether his mother would know him. The news had spread that the boat was coming and the whole family in the home at Tarsus were on the watch for the returning scholar. He did not have much time to wonder whether his mother would know him, for he soon felt her arms around his neck and he found himself once more in the dear home with everybody looking him over and asking him questions until he needed three or four tongues to answer them all. His mother did not like the stoop in his shoulders but everything else pleased her. The father was too proud of his splendid son and too much moved with joy to say much, though he had already given a brief prayer of thanksgiving to Jehovah for the safe return, and for the wonderful gift of such a man-child as this. Meantime a servant was killing the fattest of all the full-grown kids for the feast of joy which all the household joined in preparing, and the whole day was given up to rejoicing.

It was a proud moment for the family the next Sabbath when young Saul was given the Roll of Scripture at the Synagogue and was asked to read the lesson and explain it. There he stood with all the Jewish families of Tarsus looking on and listening while he told them things they had never heard before. When the lesson was finished many a man turned to Saul’s father and said: “God has given you a remarkable son. He will be an honour to our race and to our city.”

Now the time had come when Saul’s trade must be decided upon, for all young men who were to be Rabbis were expected to learn a trade, so that they could support themselves. Early and late in the home the question was discussed: What was the best trade for a slight, thin, soft-handed youth who was a great scholar and who was soon to be a famous teacher? The mother wanted him to learn a trade that would straighten his shoulders and make him strong and robust. The father thought he ought to select some occupation that would be refined and dignified and very honourable. After long and careful consideration, it was finally settled that Saul should learn the trade of weaving the goats’ hair to make heavy tent-cloth and to cut the cloth into tent patterns and to sew the long tent seams.

It was strange work for the delicate scholar—so different from poring over books and settling points of the law. At first the soft hands blistered and the muscles were very tired with the work of the stiff hand-loom. But little by little the hands grew harder and the arms learned the trick of the motions and the work became natural and easy. Saul went at this work the way he did everything else. “It is,” he would say, “a part of my life. I cannot succeed unless I can support myself and so I must make tents a little better than anybody else can do it. Some good stiff work now and the habit of doing every part of it right will make the whole thing easy for me later.”

He went to the best maker of tents in the city and worked with him, for he knew the worth of a good teacher. But this teacher was so different from his old master in the school at Jerusalem! Like Gamaliel, this man also knew every fine point in his field of work. He had the secret of selecting the finest goats’ hair and he knew the best weaves for making water-tight cloth and he drew the best patterns for both large tents and for small ones, and he had new ways of sewing seams that would neither rip in the wind nor leak in the hardest rains. The only trouble with him was that he was a Gentile and not a man of Saul’s race. But he, too, was a scholar. He had studied in the great University of Tarsus and he knew many books which Saul had never read or even heard about. While they worked at the tent-cloth the master workman talked much to Saul of what he had learned in the University under his Stoic teachers, for Tarsus was one of the greatest centres of Stoic wisdom in all the world.

“Do you know,” he would say, as they sat sewing the long seams, “all my books say that God is a great Spirit who fills all the universe, just the way the soul dwells in and fills the body. This Spirit is in the ocean and in the river, in the mountains and in the trees, in the air and in the cloud, in the stars and in the sun and above all it is in the mind of man. It makes everything full of purpose, and intelligent. The bee and the spider are wise because this Spirit dwells in them and teaches them. One of our own poets who lived here in Tarsus, in a great hymn to the Allwise One, says that we men of earth are children of God because our spirits have come from his Spirit, and this Spirit lives and moves in us, if we are good and wise. The human soul is like a little inlet into which the great sea flows. Bad and wicked men have become bad and wicked because they shut themselves off from the inflowing tides of that great divine Spirit. Those who have most of this divine Spirit in their souls do not fuss or worry. They are not disturbed over what happens to them. They say that the only thing that matters is to be master of your own spirit and not to be conquered by anything in the world. If I should lose all my goats and all my tent-cloth, and if all my looms should burn up, I could still be a brave man and start again just as though nothing had happened, but if I lost my spirit and began to whine and lament, nobody could cure me of that. Then I should be beaten and defeated. We Stoics try to be citizens, not only of our own city but of the whole world. We love our own people. We are proud of our own race, but we want more than that. We take an interest in all men everywhere. We want all cities to be good cities. We want all people everywhere to know God and love him, and we want to make one great family on the earth, all living in harmony under the great Spirit.”

Saul stopped sewing and sat perfectly still. It was different from anything he had heard in Jerusalem. It could not be true or Gamaliel would have known it and yet it was so wonderful and beautiful. He would think about it more, and he would read some of the books of the Stoics who said that we are the offspring of God!