"What is my trouble to you? I can bear it alone," I said harshly. "The things which you have written I have read in our own philosophers."
"You have found nothing else in me which was not in them?"
A gloom spread over his face, the light which had illuminated it died out, leaving only the smouldering fires of his eyes, which burned dimly. He dropped my hands. The others turned away their eyes and shifted uneasily.
"There is he in whose name I speak. The love of Christ constrained me."
"It is not yet time," he continued sadly. "One must have patience, exceeding patience. You do not understand what we teach concerning Christ, who is the Son of God. Yet you came to us willingly; you, a Roman, came and took the hand of a Jew, whose touch, to your fellows, is contamination; and, in my pride I said: Lo! I have triumphed over the wisdom of the Gentile. It is through God's grace only that I am called to be an apostle to men. It is through his grace alone that you will be saved; for you will come again. Tell me that you will come again."
"I shall come again," I said simply; the curious anxiety of his words troubled me vaguely. I felt a profound pity for this man, to whom even a stranger was a brother. I rose and took my cloak; as I passed out each gave me a salutation, the salutation of peace.
Outside it was dawn. The lupanars were giving up their dead, some sailors and devotees of the great goddess were already congregating in the wine-shops. Muffled as I was in my great coarse cloak they suspected me of being one of the Roman soldiers, and none spoke to me or offered me insult. I did not heed them but passed along the quays, looking at Acrocorinth towering like Eryx, that other home of the sea-born and lure for sailors, into the infinite blue of a cloudless sky. Wreaths of vapour cloaked its lower reaches, and it seemed like a great dome suspended in the air. On the other side laughed the wide sea in multitudinous ripples of light. It all seemed to reflect some childish half-conscious gaiety of my soul. My sorrow still lay there, but comforted with human sympathy, and the two mystical gifts of the Christians, peace and love.
It was only after I had escaped from the enchantment of his presence that I was able to understand the aims and ambitions of Paul, as he showed them in the letter which he had dictated that night, and which was to be copied and sent to all the communities that had come together in Greece, Asia and Italy. His aim was principally to abolish the restrictions which hampered conversion into his faith, rites of the Jews, circumcision, the use of certain meats which they had considered unclean, and the huge body of formulæ and observances, which had grown and developed out of casuistry and the old Hebrew law; but beyond and above that he wished them to propitiate the civil power. When he spoke of the abolition of the law he meant those rites and ceremonies which seemed a profanation of, a bartering with, the divinity. He felt that his mission was not to the Jews alone, but to all the nations of the world. In this he was opposed by the more rigid Christians at Jerusalem, who held that circumcision was necessary, and that only a Jew could be saved. One of the most rigid adherents of this narrower sect was a brother of Christ, who seemed to pass his whole life in the Temple, praying and fasting.