Paul disbelieved _continued_.--_First of his four Visits to Jerusalem after his Conversion_; _say_ Jerusalem Visit I. _or_ Reconciliation Visit.--_Barnabas introducing him from Antioch to the Apostles._ SECTION 1. PAUL'S PROCEEDINGS BETWEEN HIS CONVERSION AND THIS VISIT.--CONTRADICTION. PER PAUL, IT WAS NOT TILL AFTER THREE YEARS SPENT IN ARABIA; PER ACTS, IMMEDIATELY. Already on another occasion, and for a different purpose, have the two accounts, between which this self-contradiction manifests itself, been brought to view: viz. on the occasion of the accounts, given or supposed to be given, by Paul, of the cause and manner of his conversion:--accounts given in the first place, in writing, and consequently, with all requisite time for deliberation, in his Epistle to the Galatians:--given, or supposed to be given, in the next place, by a speech spoken, namely, that which, in the Acts is reported as spoken by him, on the occasion of his trial, to Festus and Agrippa:--Festus, the Roman Proconsul, Agrippa, the Jewish King. In the whole account of this matter, as given by Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians, how much of truth there probably was, and how much of falsehood or misrepresentation,--has been seen already in some measure, ch. II. i. 5, and will be seen more fully as we advance. As to his motive for this visit, he has endeavoured to keep it to himself: but, by the result, according to the account he himself gives of it, it is betrayed. It was--to effect the so much needed _reconciliation_:--his reconciliation with the Apostles:--the Apostles, in relation to whom his disregard is professed, the need he had of them, no otherwise than virtually, nor yet the less effectually confessed. Without an interval of considerable length between his conversion and this visit, all such reconciliation would have been plainly hopeless. From this circumstance, the length, as alleged by him, of his abode in Arabia, receives obvious and highly probative confirmation. The confirmation is, indeed, reciprocal. The nature of his situation, proves the need he had, of an interval of considerable length, before any hope of reconciliation could be fulfilled, or, naturally speaking, so much as conceived: by this circumstance, his abode in some other country is rendered probable to us: and this other country may, for aught we know, as well have been the country mentioned by him--to wit, _Arabia_, as any other: and, thus it is, that this assertion, of his having been three years in Arabia, between the time of his departure from Jerusalem to Damascus, and his return to Jerusalem to see Peter, is confirmed:--confirmed, by the natural length, of the interval, requisite to the affording any, the least chance, that Peter could be induced to meet upon terms of amity and intercourse a man, in whom he beheld the murderer of a countless multitude of human beings, linked to him by the closest bonds of self-regarding interest, as well as sympathy and