usalem from
the first in all good conscience.

28. He had brought with him from home the conviction, which forms the
basis of a religious life, that the one prize which makes life worth
living is the love and favor of God. This conviction grew into a
passionate longing as he advanced in years, and he asked his teachers
how the prize was to be won. Their answer was ready--By the keeping of
the law. It was a terrible answer; for the Law meant not only what we
understand by the term, but also the ceremonial law of Moses and the
thousand and one rules added to it by the Jewish teachers, the
observance of which made life a purgatory to a tender conscience.

But Paul was not the man to shrink from difficulties. He had set his
heart upon winning God's favor, without which this life appeared to him
a blank and eternity the blackness of darkness; and, if this was the
way to the goal, he was willing to tread it. Not only, however, were
his personal hopes involved in this, the hopes of his nation depended
on it too; for it was the universal belief of his people that the
Messiah would only come to a nation keeping the law, and it was even
said that, if one man kept it perfectly for a single day, his merit
would bring to the earth the King for whom they were waiting. Paul's
rabbinical training, then, culminated in the desire to win this prize
of righteousness, and he left the halls of sacred learning with this as
the purpose of his life. The lonely student's resolution was momentous
for the world; for he was first to prove amidst secret agonies that
this way of salvation was false, and then to teach his discovery to
mankind.

29. At Jerusalem.--We cannot tell in what year Paul's education at the
college of Jerusalem was finished or where he went immediately
afterward. The young rabbis, after completing their studies, scattered
in the same way as our own divinity students do, and began practical
work in different parts of the Jewish world. He may have gone back to
his native Cilicia and held office in some synagogue there. At all
events, he was for some years at a distance from Jerusalem and
Palestine; for these were the very years in which fell the movement of
John the Baptist and the ministry of Jesus, and it is certain that Paul
could not have been in the vicinity without being involved in both of
these movements either as a friend or as a foe.

30. But before long he returned to Jerusalem. It was as natura