Three years having been passed by him in that to him strange country, what, during all that time, were his means of subsistence? To this question an unquestionable answer will be afforded by the known nature of his situation. He was bred to a trade, indeed a handicraft trade--tent-making: an art, in which the operations of the architect and the upholsterer are combined. But, it was not to practise either that, or any other manual operation, that he paid his visit to that country. When he really did practise it, he took care that this condescension of his should not remain a secret: from that, as from everything else he ever did or suffered, or pretended to have done or suffered, he failed not to extract the matter of glory for himself, as well as edification for his readers. In Arabia, his means of subsistence were not then derived from his trade: if they had been, we should have known it:--from what source then were they derived?[17] By the very nature of his situation, this question has been already answered:--from the purses of those, whom, having had it in his power, and even in his commission, to destroy, he had saved. And now, as to all those things, which, from the relinquishment of his labours in the field of persecution to the first of his four recorded visits to Jerusalem, he is known to have done, answers have been furnished:--answers, to the several questions _why_ and by what _means_, such as, upon the supposition that the supernatural mode of his conversion was but a fable, it will not, it is hoped, be easy to find cause for objecting to as insufficient. SECTION 5. ARABIA-VISIT--MENTIONED BY PAUL, NOT ACTS. Not altogether without special reason, seems the veil of obscurity to have been cast over this long interval. In design, rather than accident, or heedlessness, or want of information,--may be found, it should seem, the cause, of a silence so pregnant with misrepresentation. In addition to a length of time, more or less considerable, spent in Damascus, a city in close communication with Jerusalem, in giving proofs of his conversion,--three years spent in some part or other of the contiguous indeed, but wide-extending, country of Arabia--(spent, if Paul is to be believed, in preaching the religion of Jesus, and at any rate in a state of peace and innoxiousness with relation to it)--afforded such proof of a change of plan and sentiment, as, in the case of many a man, might, without miracle or wonder, have sufficed to form a basis for the projected alliance:--this proof, even of itself; much more, when corroborated, by the sort of certificate, given to the Church by its preeminent benefactor Barnabas, who, in introducing the new convert, to the leaders among the Apostles, for the special purpose of proposing the alliance,--took upon himself the personal responsibility, so inseparably involved in such a mark of confidence.