had been a disciple and listener, which was not the fact;[I.50] that the time between his conversion and his first journey to Jerusalem was very short; that his sojourn in that city was quite protracted; that his preaching was received with general satisfaction; that he lived on intimate terms with all the apostles, though he assures us that he had seen but two of them; and that the faithful of Jerusalem took care of him, though Paul declares that they were unknown to him. The same disposition to prove that Paul was a frequent visitor to Jerusalem, which had induced our author to prolong the apostle's stay in Jerusalem, seems also to have induced him to credit the apostle with one journey too many. He says that Paul came to Jerusalem with Barnabas, bearing the offerings of the faithful after the year 44 (Acts XI. 30; XII. 25). Now, Paul expressly declares that between the journey made three years after his conversion and that made in relation to the subject of circumcision, he did not go to Jerusalem at all (Gal. I. and II.); in other words, between Acts IX. 26, and XV. 2, Paul makes no mention of any travel. One could wrongly deny the identity of the journey described in the second chapter of Galatians with that mentioned in the fifteenth chapter of Acts, and yet not be subject to contradiction. "Three years after my conversion," says St. Paul, "I went to Jerusalem to make the acquaintance of Cephas, and fourteen years afterwards I went again to Jerusalem." There has been some doubt whether this period of fourteen years dates from the conversion, or from the journey three years subsequent to that event. We will assume the first hypothesis as being most favorable to those who defend the account as given in Acts. There would then, according to St. Paul, have been at least eleven years between his first and second journey to Jerusalem; now surely there are not eleven years between that which is related in Acts IX. 26 and the following verses, and the account which we find in Acts XI. 30, etc. By maintaining it against all show of truth, one would fall into another impossibility. The truth is, that which is related in Acts XI. 30 is contemporaneous with the death of James, the son of Zebedee,[I.51] which having just preceded the death, in the year 44, of Herod Agrippa I., furnishes us with the only fixed date in the Acts of the Apostles.[I.52] The second journey took place at least fourteen years after his conversion; and if he had really made that journey in the year 44--the conversion must have occurred in the year 30--a theory which is manifestly absurd. It is then impossible to allow any credence to the statements in Acts XI. 30 and XII. 35.