The two older men, whose names were Paul the Tarsian and Silas, had trudged six hundred miles.  Their younger companion, whose name was “Fear God,” or Timothy as we say, with his Greek fondness for perfect athletic fitness of the body, proudly felt the taut, wiry muscles working under his skin.

On they walked for day after day, from dawn when the sun rose behind them to the hour when the sun glowed over the hills in their faces.  They turned northwest and at last dropped down from the highlands of this plateau of Asia Minor, through a long broad valley, until they looked down across the Plain of Troy to the bluest sea in the world.

Timothy’s eyes opened with astonishment as he looked down on such a city as he had never seen—­the great Roman seaport of Troy.  The marble Stadium, where the chariots raced and the gladiators fought, gleamed in the afternoon light.

The three companions could not stop long to gaze.  They swung easily down the hill-sides and across the plain into Troy, where they took lodgings.

They had not been in Troy long when they met a doctor named Luke.  We do not know whether one of them was ill and the doctor helped him; we do not know whether Doctor Luke (who was a Greek) worshipped, when he met them, AEsculapius, the god of healing of the Greek people.  The doctor did not live in Troy, but was himself a visitor.

“I live across the sea,” Luke told his three friends—­Paul, Silas and Timothy—­stretching his hand out towards the north.  “I live,” he would say proudly, “in the greatest city of all Macedonia—­Philippi.  It is called after the great ruler Philip of Macedonia.”

Then Paul in his turn would be sure to tell Doctor Luke what it was that had brought him across a thousand miles of plain and mountain pass, hill and valley, to Troy.  This is how he would tell the story in such words as he used again and again: 

“I used to think,” he said, “that I ought to do many things to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth.  I had many of His disciples put into prison and even voted for their being put to death.  I became so exceedingly mad against them that I even pursued them to foreign cities.

“Then as I was journeying[6] to Damascus, with the authority of the chief priests themselves, at mid-day I saw on the way a light from the sky, brighter than the blaze of the sun, shining round about me and my companions.  And, as we were all fallen on to the road, I heard a voice saying to me: 

“’Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?  It is hard for you to kick against the goad.’

“And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’

“The answer came:  ‘I am Jesus, whom you persecute.’”

Then Paul went on: 

“I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision; but I told those in Damascus and in Jerusalem and in all Judaea, aye! and the foreign nations also, that they should repent and turn to God.

“Later on,” said Paul, “I fell into a trance, and Jesus came again to me and said, ‘Go, I will send you afar to the Nations.’  That (Paul would say to Luke) is why I walk among perils in the city; in perils in the wilderness; in perils in the sea; in labour and work; in hunger and thirst and cold, to tell people everywhere of the love of God shown in Jesus Christ."[7]