While the young scholar was working at his new trade of weaving tent-cloth and making tents in the busy, thriving town of Tarsus, wonderful things were occurring beyond the Amanus Mountains, in the land of Palestine. Every traveller who came from Galilee and every pilgrim who passed through Capernaum brought tidings of a strange and extraordinary Teacher, totally unlike the great Rabbis and Scribes.

In far-away Tarsus not much was reported at first of what this Teacher said. The travellers told, first of all, of the wonderful things He did.

One man had heard, as he came through Galilee, of a little girl who had been very ill. Nobody could help her. At last in despair the father went out to search for this Teacher, to see if He could do anything to save his daughter. He found Him by the lakeside preaching to a great multitude of people, and he begged Him to come at once, to make his daughter whole. Many strange and unusual things happened on the way and, at last, when they arrived, the little girl seemed beyond help, for she lay all still and did not breathe. But this remarkable Person took her by the hand and spoke some words in His own Hebrew language and the girl rose up and walked and was instantly well, and everybody wondered.

Many other such things they told of this Teacher. He made all kinds of sick people well. He even made totally blind persons see. All the towns around the Lake of Gennesareth were full of excitement over His cures and His other miraculous doings, and in all the country throughout Galilee people everywhere talked about Him and went long journeys to see Him, and to bring sick persons to Him.

Then, slowly, reports began to come of His words and His teachings. They said He seemed to have found out something new and strange about God. He was not afraid of God as other people were. He loved Him and talked about Him as though He knew Him. He kept calling God His Father, and He said God wanted to be Father to all persons, because He was full of love and tenderness for everybody in the world. He kept telling, in all His talks with the people who came to hear Him, about a new kingdom which He was trying to set up in the world. It was very hard to tell from the vague reports, which the travellers brought, what this kingdom was to be. It did not seem like the “new Jerusalem,” that Saul had learned about in Gamaliel’s school. It seemed even greater than that, for it seemed like a new kind of world for everybody. Everybody, who loved God and learned how to live a life of love and kindness to all people everywhere, could be in it, and it would grow and spread like seeds of grain in the field.

Then, later, when the people who had gone up from Tarsus to the Passover, came back from Jerusalem, they brought news of a terrible thing that had happened there during the Passover week. This Teacher, it would seem, had come up to keep the Passover and the common people had discovered Him and they thought at first that He must be the long-expected Messiah and they had made a procession for Him and had tried to proclaim Him their king. But this and other things frightened the rulers in Jerusalem and they sent by night and seized Him and got Pilate, the governor of Palestine, to condemn Him and crucify Him. Then all the people turned against Him and thronged out of the city in great multitudes to see Him nailed on the cross and to see Him die hanging in the air. And the pilgrim who brought the reports said He was not like any other victim that was ever crucified. Instead of shouting and wailing and cursing, He had been calm and unmoved. Every time He spoke, His words were full of love. Once He spoke in a quiet, gentle way to a thief who was crucified on a cross near Him. And once, and this was the strangest thing they reported, He looked up toward the sky and then out toward the great multitude of shouting people and said in a gentle voice which reached out over all the throng, “Father, forgive these people. They do not know what they are doing.”

A few who came back later had another story which they told but they couldn’t make anybody at Tarsus believe it. They said that some of the followers and friends of this wonderful Teacher from Galilee declared that they had seen Him alive after He was crucified. Some of these followers said they had heard Him speak just the way He used to do before He was crucified, and they claimed that He told them when they were on the way going up to Jerusalem that He would be crucified, but that He would come back to life again.

When Saul heard these strange reports he was at first very much moved by them. He could not sleep at night because he thought so much over the stories he heard from the travellers. But little by little he made up his mind that they were just idle tales such as travellers love to tell to those who stay at home. He said to himself: “It isn’t likely that there really was any such person in Galilee as this one they tell about. I should have heard about him while I was in Jerusalem, for he could not have got his power suddenly and if he was beginning to do these wonderful things then, it would have been known in the city. But nobody had heard of him at all. If he got his power suddenly, without any preparation and without studying in any of the schools, it is probable that some evil spirit, like Beelzebub, has helped him and revealed secrets to him. It is almost certain that he was not sent by God, for the books of the law do not tell about any such Teacher who would come and die for his truth, and the words they bring about his teaching are not at all like what we know of God from our sacred books. No, either there was no such person, or, if there was, he was deluded and misguided.”

But when Saul was talking one beautiful evening with his mother, who seemed now much older than when she talked about the commandments with her little boy, suddenly Saul said: “Wouldn’t it be strange, Mother, if what that Galilean Teacher, of whom the travellers talk, said about God were really true—I mean, that God is a Father and loves men, even men who do wrong and sin. My tent-maker thinks that God is a great Spirit who dwells in everything and is everywhere. But this is more wonderful, that God is full of love and tenderness for all kinds of people in the world. It cannot, however, be true, for the Rabbis would have known it if it had been so!”

And the mother answered: “Ah, yes, no doubt the wise Rabbis would know. But is there not something just a little like that in some of the beautiful psalms which we sing in the Synagogue—‘Like as a Father’?”

“But, Mother, this man, they say, died on a cross, and no good man, whom God approved, could die that way, for our law says that all who are hanged on trees are cursed and disapproved of by God, so that we need not think any more about him.” But try as he would, Saul could not get these things out of his mind.