“In the Steps of St. Paul.’

Kaikoura Star, Volume LVI, Issue 93, 26 November 1936, Page 4

“In the Steps of St. Paul.’

A SERIES OF ARTICLES BY

H. V. MORTON.

ARTICLE No. 36

'flic journey from Konya to Smyrna or Izmir, as the town is now culled —takes twenty-four hours. I sat in the train, reading St- Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians ami looking out of the window at the endless bare plains ami hills. i Tn the spring the storks Uy from Africa, north through Palestine, following the line of the Jordan; and some go into Russia while others, crossing | the Taurus Mountains, fly into Asia Minor. They take up residence in their old nests on the chimneys of houses, on the tops of Roman pillars, and on the arches of ruined aqueducts. 'The natives love them because they bring good luck. In remote parts of Turkey the peasants go out to welcome the storks as the harbingers of spring, and there is hardly a village, especially in the fertile west, that is not proud of its storks’ nests. I have never seen these birds in Greece, but I suppose they occasionally go there. • * • • • In old books, such as Stuart and Revett’s “Antiquities of Athens,’’ published in 1762, engravings of the Acropolis show storks’ nests crowded together on the buildings, just as you see them to-day in any Turkish town. No doubt modern Athens, with its tramcars and its motors, has driven these delightful visitors away. 1 novel* get tired of watching the stonks in Turkey. I would like to live in a house with a stork’s nest on top of it. One could never be lonely. And the anxiety and excitement at mating time, and still more so at hatching time, must compensate the Turk for the absence of all other interest and amusements. In the fields, f think, the stork is seen at his best. He has no fear of man. He follows the ploughman with stately step, deliberately picking a frog from a furrow, inspecting with critical approval each newly turned patch of soil, an<l standing for long hours in an attitude of meditation, like the president of some learned society who is wondering where he left his top-hat. For a silk hat is all these birds need to complete their air of old-fashioned dignity. I have already described how sociable a railway journey in Tunkey can be; how the traveller is always offering a hard-boiled egg to a fellow passenger an<l receiving, in courteous return, a piece of cold chicken or a home-made dolma. And this journey was no exception. As we drew into each station, the usual ragged little children besieged us with refreshment, old men and boys walked the length of the train selling simit—bread covered with sesame seeds—anti poor, tattererd little girls stood woefully extending a hard-boiled egg in each hand. With pathetic, eagerness, I their thin little hands seized on the few piastres; for this daily train, with its stop of ten minutes, was their only chance of making money. I accumulated in the course of the first eight hours a huge brown jar of spring water, a .bag of apples, a bag of roast chestnuts, two circles of simit, a bit of newspaper full of scraps of fried mutton, a sticky bag of halva and six hard-boiled eggs. I bought al) these things because there was nothing else to do and because I was sorry for the people who were selling them. Travellers in the East tell you how foolish it is to pay for anything without bargaining; and, no doubt it is, but nothing gives me more pleasure than to watch the indescribable happiness and incredulity on the face of a small ragged girl or boy who, demanding a penny for something, is given, instead, a shilling. At one of the stations a small, plump, hook-nosed man entered the carriage. He was that new character in Turkey: a Turkish business man. 1 gave him an egg and he gave ine an orange. “I talk much bad English.” he said. “If I could speak Turkish as well as you talk English, 1 should be very proud,” I said. “You are much kind,” he replied, rising and bowing. I discovered that his task in life was to try to sell motor-cars. He mentioned that he had been in England, and I asked him how he liked it. “Berlin is better,” he said. “London I do not like. In London I am arrested at Hyde Park for looking at a lady.” ••I’m very sorry,” I said. “Wei-. 1 you looking at her very hard?” “No,” he cried indignantly, hurling an egg shell out of the window. “A man comes up and speak to me. 4 I am police’, he say. ‘Why for you follow

thees lady’? 1 say: ‘I do not follow thees lady. Boes thees lady make com plaint against me’.’ He say: ‘No, they does not. but I watch you for never so long and you must go with me . 1 made polite murmurs of sympathy, but the little man was very sore about it. ‘‘London no safe for strangers! ” h(‘ said. ‘‘One must not look at ladies.’’ While he kept on and on, dragging up memories of this unhappy incident, the wide central plains of Asia Minor rolled past, and we left behind the province that in Paid’s day was Galatia, and entered what once was Phrygia. Paul’s letter to the Galatians —or to the people he had converted in Inconium, Lystra, Derbe, and Pisidian Antioch—is a line, vigorous, and indignant rebuke to weak and fickle converts who are straying from the fold. I know little about missionaries, but 1 would be willing to wager that many a 'missionary who has been forced to leave his liock for a little while must have written such a letter to call them to order. The Epistle to the Galatians is intensely human, and it shows St. Paul in two moods: the angry, furious man •of God and the gentle, loving shepherd It is diliicult to understand any of Paul’s Epistles in the Authorised \’ersion of the Bible, because the language is out of date and the translation can be improved. Professor James Moffatt’s new translation gives an entirely new vigour and actuality to these letters, and I feel that I might have been at Paul’s elbow when he was writing them. How easy to read and understand is the following: “Bear one another’s burdens, ami so fulfil the law' of Christ. If anyone imagines he is somebody, he is deceiving himself, for he is nobody; let everyone bring his own work to the test then he will have something to boast about on his own account, and not in comparison with his fellows. Por everyone will have to boar his own load of responsibility. “Those who are taught must share all the- blessings of life with those who teach them the Word. Make no mistake —God is not to lie mocked —a man will reap just what he sows; he who sows for his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, and he who sows for the Spirit will reap life eternal from the Spirit. Never let us grow tired of doing what is light, for if we do not faint we shall reap our harvest at the opportune season. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men and in particular to the household of the faith. See what big letters I make, when 1 write you in my own hand!” 1 find Professor Moffatt more satisfying than the translators of our Authorised Version, and I think most people who compare this quotation from Galatians, vi, 2-11, will agree with me: “See what big letters I make when I write with my own hand!” How much ink has been spilt to explain these words of St. Paul. Some scholars have, on the strength of this sentence, built up the theory that Paul was unable to write and that when he attempted to do so he made clumsy, illiterate scrawls. Surely this in fantastic. How many times, when anxious to emphasise something in a letter, have we all printed and underlined our words. I receive hundreds of letters from people I do not know, most of who are anxious to emphasise something or other. And .1. have often smiled to note how many of them indulge in what I regard was St. Paul’s method in his letter to the Galatians, of printing a few words in unnecessarily large letters in order to catch the eye. “See what large letters 1 make when I write with my own hand’’ surely means that Paul, interrupting the persons to whom he hud until then been dictating, ami taking the pen in his own hand, added his sentence in order to conclude on a note of emphasis. It should be noted, by the way, that the i Authorised Version, “Ye see how large a letter 1 have written unto you with my own hand.” does not properly express the meaning of the Greek. . . . Late that night the train ran into a large city whose lights twinkled on dark hills and shorn* in the waters of the Aegean. This was lymir. L found a dark, deserted city, and our little carriage, clattering over the cobbles, sent cold echoes through the shuttered (Article No. 37 will appeal in our next issue).