HIS TEACHER.
Saul having been thus endowed with a liberal education at home, and with the principles of the Jewish faith, as far as his age would allow,—went up to Jerusalem to enjoy the instruction of Gamaliel. There is every reason to believe that this was Gamaliel the elder, grandson of Hillel, and son of Simeon, (probably the same, who, in his old age, took the child Jesus in his arms,) and father of another Simeon, in whose time the temple was destroyed; for the Rabbinical writings give a minute account of him, as connected with all these persons. This Gamaliel succeeded his ancestors in the rank which was then esteemed the highest; this was the office of "head of the college," otherwise called "Prince of the Jewish senate." Out of respect to this most eminent Father of Hebrew learning, as it is recorded, Onkelos, the renowned Chaldee paraphrast, burned at his funeral, seventy pounds of incense, in honor to the high rank and learning of the deceased. This eminent teacher was at first not ill-disposed towards the apostles, who, he thought, ought to be left to their own fate; being led to this moderate and reasonable course, perhaps, by the circumstance that the Sadducees, whom he hated, were most active in their persecution. The sound sense and humane wisdom that mark his sagely eloquent opinion, so wonderful in that bloody time, have justly secured him the admiration and respect of all Christian readers of the record; and not without regret would they learn, that the after doings of his life, unrecorded by the sacred historian, yet on the testimony of others, bear witness against him as having changed from this wise principle of action. If there is any ground for the story which Maimonides tells, it would seem, that when Gamaliel saw the new heretical sect multiplying in his own days, and drawing away the Israelites from the Mosaic forms, he, together with the Senate, whose President he was, gave his utmost endeavors to crush the followers of Christ, and composed a form of prayer, by which God was besought to exterminate these heretics; which was to be connected to the usual forms of prayer in the Jewish liturgy. This story of Maimonides, if it is adopted as true, on so slight grounds, may be reconciled with the account given by Luke, in two ways. First, Gamaliel may have thought that the apostles and their successors, although heretics, were not to be put down by human force, or by the contrivances of human ingenuity, but that the whole matter should be left to the hidden providence of God, and that their
