This Paul operated independent of the other Apostles. He was a "free lance" and launched forth, both in a field, and with a doctrine all his own. He was thoroly familiar with the whole Jewish system. He knew all about the meaning and purpose of the sacrifice of atonement. Yet he was too wise not to know that there was no _intrinsic merit_ in the blood of bulls and goats to cleanse from sin, or appease the divine wrath. Yet as a loyal Jew he certainly _believed_ these to be of divine origin,--and that they must have a meaning deeper than the physical fact itself. He was a believer in the coming of the long-promised Messiah--to restore Israel. A man of his knowledge and foresight might well be able to read "the signs of the times," and see that the Jewish nation could but little longer maintain its separate identity against the overwhelming power of the growing Roman Empire. It must soon be swallowed up and its separate identity lost in the greater whole. No power in Israel seemed to be able to stem the tide of events. Remember that this was now some years after the crucifixion; and after Paul had changed his course towards the new sect, because of the events about Damascus,--no matter what they may have been. At any rate, it is quite clear, no matter what the reasons may have been that induced him to do so, that he had accepted in good faith, as a veritable truth, the belief in the physical resurrection of the crucified Jesus. Paul tells us himself that after his escape from Damascus he went into Arabia for three years,--perhaps to try to think out some rational interpretation of the meaning of the events that he had felt himself forced to accept as true. After this we find him passing thru Jerusalem, stopping a few weeks with Peter and the other Apostles to learn from them all he could; and then going on to his native city, Tarsus, where we lose sight of him for several years before we find him starting on his first great missionary journey from Antioch, in which we begin to get our first glimpses of the doctrine of vicarious atonement made for the sins of the world by the death of Jesus of Nazareth.