The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-07-22

about their experiences; Saul of Tar
sus, perhaps the greatest traveller
and adventurer of his time-certainly
the most influential-said almost
nothing about where he had been and
what he had seen and done. He wrote
thirteen books of the New Testament,
and barely mentions his marvellous
travel experiences; and never alludes
to a single famous sight"
One mysterious and alluring chap
ter of Saups biography. Immediately
after his cataclysrnic transformation
on the Damascus road, is summarized
in the simple words from his Galatian
Letter, II went away into Arabia
How tantalizing! Did he go into
the rocky Businesses and caves of the
Hauran, south Of Damascus, where
today the Druzes dwell in their sub
terranean rock-cut communities, a
ties of the early Church?
Or did he fare forth to the black
Bedouin tents of the east, sharing the
sort of discipline for a great task
that Moses had received? Moses
was a shepherd: Saul was a tent
maker; but he would have been well
coined by the philosophically-min
Arabs, whose interest in religion is
perennial.
Was Saul at Sinai?
1t may even have been that, like
Elijah, Saul fled to that part of
Arabia which we know as the Sinai
Peninsula: certainly the sacred asso-
ciates of the spot would have allured
one so reverent and learned as he.
AS I sat on the red crags of Mt. Sinai,
not long ago. and looked out over
that marvellous panorama of rock
strewn peaks, I wondered if the
name of Saul should not be added to
the names of those other mountain
men, Moses and Elijah, refugees for
God in this peerless fastness-
Dav1ao in ar
the mysterious rock city between
Siani and the Arabian desert, that
Saul went for seclusion. We know
that Aretas, a Petran ruler, was in
seeming authority in Damascus at the
time of SauPs great experience. Only
a very few Europeans have ever
visited this colorful city of wonder
ment, lost to history for centuries:
most of the visitors, 1 observed with
chagrin, had written their names in
smoke upon the walls of the great
rock chamber known as the Kings
Treasury. Petra seems the last word
in isolation and sec. usion and in the
unknown: its strange charm is en-
HANGED by the thought that it may
have been here that the greatest in
tellect of the Christian church brooded
upon the profundities and matured its
convictions.
Strength in Silence and Solitude.
Wherever the exact spot in Arabia
that Saul sojourned, the significance
to US is profound and pressing; the
first essential of training for a great
work in the world is apartness and
solitude. Before a man is with people
for service he should be alone with
himself and God for strength. In this
day of "jaZZ" and crowds and excite
ment the old, old message needs to be
sounded clearly. that only the persons
who have their times of separation
and S0C1nSinr7 ctr in In
mastery of their own souls and in the
leadership of their fellows.
We may doubt whether there ever
was personality of power who did
not have his silent and sequestered
spaces, wherein his spirit might find
itself and the great certainties. That
so many of us must needs be in the
company of our fellows every waking
hour is sign of both mental and
spiritual weakness. The boy who
loves to tramp the fields and woods
alone is likely to amount to more for
his generation than the boy who must
always run with the gang" and who
knows every latest dance step and
every fragment of sporting gossip.
Out of the desert must ever come the
great ones.
There is no other training for nign
service equal to this immemorial one
of solitude. 1.-THE world is too much
with US" In our spiritual geography
we need to learn Arabia. AS one who
has Jared far, amidst most of the cities
and crowded highways of the whole
earth, can testify that nowhere are
the stars SO clear or the skies so near
or the silence so voiceful as in the
vast desert spaces. It is easy to think
the long, long thoughts amid the
loneliness of the primeva1 wilderness.
Ones soul is stabilized and ones vision
clarified by sojourn amidst the rocks
n n nj :, L.
left scarcely trace.
The path all great preaching lies
thru Arabia.
The Preachers Paradox.
Back from Arabia, with his souls
new strength disciplined, Saul started
in at Damascus to testify. He began
where he found the Light. The time
and place to start bearing witness for
Christ is right where we first find
Christ. Saul did not ask to be sent
to foreign field, where he could
make a fresh start: he acc spted the
obstacles in his way, and used them
as pulpits. In Damascus and Jeru-
salem, where his name had been a
terror to Christianity, he earned a new
Christianity cannot be practiced and
preached at home, where We are best
known, it can not be carried abroad.
Saul is one of the paradoxes of God.
he IS the prosecutor turned preacher;
the aristocrat made democrat: the
scholar transformed into the man of
action; the ultra-Jewish Pharisee be-
come a minister to the Gentiles; the
greatest, from a worldly standpoint.
among the disciples of Jesus, made
over into the hunted. wandering, hun
cry, homeless friend of slaves and
wayfarers. Truly, Gods plans for a
life are often curiously at variance
with what would seem natural destiny.
AS pointed out last week, another
paradox in Saufs case, and perhaps
the greatest, is that he, who was a
trained Intellectual, entered upon
the Way, not by the gate of learning
or logic, but by the door of a per-
sonal emotional experience Not his
university training, but that great
hour on the Damascus road wherein
he first met Jesus thereafter domi-
mated all of the great apostles think
ing and preaching and writing.
TowarinP heights of phiI0S0nbica