The Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul 109 Lyttelton at once raises the question of motive. What could have induced him while on his way to Damascus, filled with implacable hatred against this whole sect, to turn around and become a disciple of Christ? i . Was it wealth? No, all the wealth was in the keeping of those whom he had forsaken; the poverty was on the side of those with whom he now identified himself. So poor had they been, that those among them possessed of any little prop- erty sold whatever belonged to them in order to provide for the dire necessities of the rest. Indeed, one of the burdens afterwards laid upon Paul was to collect means for those who were threatened with starvation. Such was the humble con- dition of these early Christians, that he often refused to take anything from them even for the bare necessities of life, but labored himself to provide for his scanty needs. To the Corinthians, he writes, "Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place; and we toil working with our hands.” (1 Cor. 4:11, 12. See also 2 Cor. 12:14; 1 Thess. 2 ; 4 - 9 ; 2 Thess. 3:8, etc.) In his farewell to the elders of Ephesus, he appeals to them as knowing it to be true that, “I coveted no man’s silver or gold or apparel. Ye yourselves know that these hands ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me” (Acts 20:33, 34). He forsook the great Jewish hierarchy with its gorgeous temple and its over- flowing treasuries, where his zeal in putting down the hated sect of the Nazarene would have been almost certainly re- warded with a fortune. He cast in his lot among the pov- erty-stricken disciples of Jesus Christ, among whom it was his ambition to be poor. Near the end of his life he presents to us the picture of an old man shivering in a Roman dun- geon and pathetically asking for a cloak to be sent him to cover his naked and suffering limbs during the severity of an Italian winter.
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