The thick and massive walls of Damascus, rising about thirty feet high, afforded a site for quite a number of small dwellings. From the windows of one of these houses, in a dark night, the disciples lowered Saul down, outside the walls, in a basket, by a rope. There this heroic young man stood alone at midnight, with a career of fearful suffering clearly unveiled before him; and yet his love for Jesus, his Lord and Master, was such, that he counted it all joy that he was permitted to suffer shame in his name. From Damascus, Saul directed his steps eastward into Arabia. How far he went, and what success he enjoyed in preaching to the Jews scattered throughout those regions, are not recorded. It is not known how many weeks or months were occupied upon this missionary tour. Several years after, alluding to this event in a letter which he wrote to the Galatians, he says, “I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem.”[102] During all these three years, the sacred writers are silent respecting the adventures of Saul. At the end of this time, he went up to Jerusalem. It is an interesting indication of the slight intercourse there was between distant cities at that time, when but few could write, and there were no postal facilities, that the disciples at Jerusalem had not even heard of the conversion of Saul. When he arrived in Jerusalem, and wished to throw himself into the arms of the friends of Jesus, it is written, “They were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.”[103] But Barnabas, one of the disciples in Jerusalem, a man of wealth, and one who had already acquired reputation for his benevolence,[104] had in some way become acquainted with the conversion of Saul, and his zeal in the service of Jesus. He took Saul by the hand; led him to the apostles Peter and James, who still remained in Jerusalem,[105] and declared unto them how the Lord Jesus had appeared to Saul in the way, had spoken to him, and how Saul had preached boldly in Damascus in the name of Jesus. They then received Saul cordially, and he commenced preaching “in the name of the Lord Jesus” with all his wonted energy in the synagogues of Jerusalem. Those who had crucified Jesus, and who remembered that Saul had co-operated with them in their persecution of his disciples, were roused to intensity of rage. A conspiracy was formed, as in Damascus, to kill him. Saul had been in Jerusalem but fifteen days, taking lodgings in the house of Peter, when the brethren informed him that he must immediately escape from Jerusalem, or he would lose his life. A stranger to fear, at first he was unwilling to go. But the Lord Jesus appeared to Saul as he was praying in the temple, and said to him,―― “Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem; for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me.”