ch he was put to was the commonest one in
Tarsus--the making of tents from the goat's-hair cloth for which the
district was celebrated. Little did he or his father think, when he
began to handle the disagreeable material, of what importance this
handicraft was to be to him in subsequent years: it became the means of
his support during his missionary journeys, and, at a time when it was
essential that the propagators of Christianity should be above the
suspicion of selfish motives, enabled him to maintain himself in a
position of noble independence.

21. Education.--It is a question natural to ask, whether, before
leaving home to go and get his training as a rabbi, Paul attended the
University of Tarsus. Did he drink at the wells of wisdom which flow
from Mount Helicon before going to sit by those which spring from Mount
Zion? From the fact that he makes two or three quotations from the
Greek poets it has been inferred that he was acquainted with the whole
literature of Greece. But, on the other hand, it has been pointed out
that his quotations are brief and commonplace, such as any man who
spoke Greek would pick up and use occasionally; and the style and
vocabulary of his Epistles are not those of the models of Greek
literature, but of the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew
Scriptures, which was then in universal use among the Jews of the
Dispersion. Probably his father would have considered it sinful to
allow his son to attend a heathen university. Yet it is not likely
that he grew up in a great seat of learning without receiving any
influence from the academic tone of the place. His speech at Athens
shows that he was able, when he chose, to wield a style much more
stately than that of his writings, and so keen a mind was not likely to
remain in total ignorance of the great monuments of the language which
he spoke.

22. There were other impressions, too, which the learned Tarsus
probably made upon him: its university was famous for those petty
disputes and rivalries which sometimes ruffle the calm of academical
retreats; and it is possible that the murmur of these, with which the
air was often filled, may have given the first impulse to that scorn
for the tricks of the rhetorician and the windy disputations of the
sophist which form so marked a feature in some of his writings. The
glances of young eyes are clear and sure, and even as a boy he may have
perceived how small may be the souls of men