we do know is that, while he was living in Tarsus, a man named
Barnabas thought of Saul and came to Tarsus to find him. Barnabas was
another man something like Stephen. He saw farther than most of the
others did. He was always ready for new things and he was full of faith
and activity. Like Saul, he could not rest—he wanted to tell everybody
what he had discovered. He heard of a new movement in the great city of
Antioch, the capital of the province of Syria, and he went off to
Antioch to see what this movement really was. When he got there he found
that some followers of Jesus who had been forced to leave Jerusalem,
because of the persecutions, had come to Antioch and had begun a little
church there and were preachingdrowned the voice of the speaker with their shouts. A
man named Alexander—perhaps he was “Alexander, the coppersmith,” who,
Paul says, did him “much evil,” a little later—tried to speak, when
suddenly the vast throng of excited people began crying again, “Great is
Diana of the Ephesians.” “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” For two
hours nobody could stop this cry which went on and on, with the
continual shout, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” At last the
town-clerk of the city got the people quiet and made a sensible speech
to them, telling them if they had any charge against Paul the right
thing to do was to take the matter to the courts and not to get up a
riot and endanger the liberty and reputation of the city. Then he sent
the people away to