We must bear in mind this terrible record of suffering if we wish to estimate fairly the character of the man.  During his whole life after his conversion he was exposed not only to the hardships of travel, sometimes in half-civilised districts, but to ’all the cruelty of the fanaticism which rages like a consuming fire through the religious history of the East from the slaughter of Baal’s priests to the slaughter of St. Stephen, and from the butcheries of Jews at Alexandria under Caligula to the massacres of Christians at Adana, Tarsus, and Antioch in the year 1909’—­(Deissmann).  It is one evil result of such furious bigotry that it kindles hatred and resentment in its victims, and tempts them to reprisals.  St. Paul does speak bitterly of his opponents, though chiefly when he finds that they have injured his converts, as in the letter to the Galatians.  Modern critics have exaggerated this element in a character which does not seem to have been fierce or implacable.  He writes like a man engaged in a stern conflict against enemies who will give no quarter, and who shrink from no treachery.  But the sharpest expression that can be laid to his charge is the impatient, perhaps half humorous wish that the Judaisers who want to circumcise the Galatians might be subjected to a severer operation themselves (Gal. v. 12).  The dominant impression that he makes upon us is that he was cast in a heroic mould.  He is serenely indifferent to criticism and calumny; no power on earth can turn him from his purpose.  He has made once for all a complete sacrifice of all earthly joys and all earthly ties; he has broken (he, the devout Jewish Catholic) with his Church and braved her thunders; he has faced the opprobrium of being called traitor, heretic, and apostate; he has ‘withstood to the face’ the Palestinian apostles who were chosen by Jesus and held His commission; he has set his face to achieve, almost single-handed, the conquest of the Roman Empire, a thing never dreamed of by the Jerusalem Church; he is absolutely indifferent whether his mission will cost him his life, or only involve a continuation of almost intolerable hardship.  It is this indomitable courage, complete self-sacrifice, and single-minded devotion to a magnificently audacious but not impracticable idea, which constitute the greatness of St. Paul’s character.  He was, with all this, a warm-hearted and affectionate man, as he proves abundantly by the tone of his letters.  His personal religion was, in essence, a pure mysticism; one worships a Christ whom he has experienced as a living presence in his soul.  The mystic who is also a man of action, and a man of action because he is a mystic, wields a tremendous power over other men.  He is like an invulnerable knight, fighting in magic armour.