corrupt and demoralized, and so that was
the time for the Messiah to make his appearance.

He went to work at once. He began to preach his new Christianity at
Damascus about the year 51, and found out that the world was not
prepared for his ideas. He had a narrow escape at Damascus, where the
governor and soldiers pursued him. Like the spies at Jericho, he was let
down in a basket over the city walls and made his escape. So _he_
narrates the story. The author of the Acts, true to his hostility to the
Jews, of course brings them in as the persecutors. But Paul, in general,
never speaks otherwise than with the highest regard and love of his
kinsmen and his brothers according to the flesh.

The failure at Damascus did not discourage Paul. It only convinced him
that he was too young--he could not at that time have been much over
twenty-one years; that he was not sufficiently prepared for the great
enterprise; that it was not such an easy task to throw down the
superannuated heathenism and to reorganize society on a new basis. He
retired into Arabia and remained there nearly three years, to perfect a
plan of operation. Nearly three years he spent in silent contemplation,
to discover the proper means, to take the right hold upon the heathen
world, and to unfurl a new banner of heaven upon this wicked earth. In
53 or 54 we meet him again at Antioch, with his new and original
gospel--the gospel for the Gentiles--prepared for his mission and ready
to embark in the great enterprise, to wage active war upon all existing
systems of religion and philosophy, and to replace all of them by Paul's
gospel. He had been in Jerusalem fifteen days, had conversed with Peter
and nobody else, but he repeatedly tells us that he had taken advice of
none, consulted none, was appointed by nobody, and learned nothing of
anybody. The gospel was his gospel, and he was an apostle by the
appointment of God Almighty himself, who had revealed his Son to him. In
Antioch he established the first congregation of Jews and Gentiles, and
called them Christians. So Paul was the actual author of Christianity
among the Gentiles.

What was Paul's gospel? Paul, setting out on his journeys with the great
idea of converting heathens, was obliged to paganize the Gospel. The
heathens knew nothing of the Jewish Messiah, and he gave him the name
popularly known among them--he called him the Son of God, which was a
common name in mythology. The Son of God and Mary was a