“Yes, my dear boy, it will often be very hard and you will have to give up some things you like to do. But if you keep the whole law of God and make yourself perfect and do everything God asks you to do in the holy law, all the people of our race forever will call you blessed, and you will be the hero of the tribe of Benjamin, and you will help to bring the Messiah for whom we long and pray, and Jehovah will give you eternal life in His kingdom.” “Oh, Father, I don’t care how hard it is, I will do it. I will let my pet stork out of his cage, so that he can fly off with the other storks over the mountains. I will not do one single thing on the holy Sabbath that is wrong. I will not play by the river any more with little Gentile boys. I will learn every word of Moses’ law and say it all to mother when she puts me to bed. I will be ready to serve my race when God calls for some one to do the great deed, as David did in the book we read.” His father patted his boy on the head and smiled, as they walked home along the banks of the rushing Cydnus and looked off at the sun-lit tops of the Taurus Mountains. Little Saul had had ten birth-days and he had already caught the spirit of his race which was very strong in his father and mother who kept feeding him on the stories of the past and waking in him the desire to be the hero of his tribe. Tarsus, a beautiful city of the province of Cilicia, was his home. The city was twelve miles from the Mediterranean Sea and ships came up the river to the great wharves on either bank. Not far away to the south was the great island of Cyprus and through a pass in the Amanus Mountains a road went to Jerusalem and the land of his fathers. He had been often ill and weak during the ten years he had lived and often he had lain by the window and looked out on the world and wondered. More than once he had seen an army go marching up the street, carrying the Roman eagles and flashing Damascus blades in the sun. He wondered where they were going and what they would do with these terrible swords. He had an older sister who was too old to play games with him, but she took him on walks by the river and like everybody else she told him Hebrew stories about the heroes he loved. She would picture to him often a city on a great hill, with valleys running round it, with a gorgeous temple in it, and she would say, “Some day you and I will go there to live and that will be our home and we shall be where we can see the temple of God every day!”