distance as far as from Land's End to
John O' Groat's, evangelizing all the way. It must have taken months,
perhaps even years. Yet of this long, laborious period we possess no
details whatever, except such features of his intercourse with the
Galatians as may be gathered from the Epistle to that church. The
truth is that, thrilling as are the notices of Paul's career given in
the Acts, this record is a very meager and imperfect one, and his life
was far fuller of adventure, of labors and sufferings for Christ, than
even Luke's narrative would lead us to suppose. The plan of the Acts
is to tell only what was most novel and characteristic in each journey,
while it passes over, for instance, all his repeated visits to the same
scenes. There are thus great blanks in the history, which were in
reality as full of interest as the portions of his life which are fully
described.

Of this there is a startling proof in an Epistle which he wrote within
the period covered by the Acts of the Apostles. His argument calling
upon him to enumerate some of his outstanding adventures, "Are they
ministers of Christ?" he asks, "I am more; in labors more abundant, in
stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the
Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten
with rods. Once was I stoned. Thrice I suffered shipwreck. A night
and a day have I been in the deep. In journeyings often, in perils of
water, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in
perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the
wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in
weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in
fastings often, in cold and nakedness."

Now, of the items of this extraordinary catalogue the book of Acts
mentions very few: of the five Jewish scourgings it notices not one, of
the three Roman beatings only one; the one stoning it records, but not
one of the three shipwrecks, for the shipwreck so fully detailed in the
Acts happened later. It was no part of the design of Luke to
exaggerate the figure of the hero he was painting; his brief and modest
narrative comes far short even of the reality; and, as we pass over the
few simple words into which he condenses the story of months or years,
our imagination requires to be busy, filling up the outline with toils
and pains at least equal to those the memory of which he has prese