ST. GAMALIEL

HE was of the sect of the Pharisees, and a doctor of the law, in the highest reputation at Jerusalem. St. Paul recommended himself to the Jews by saying that he had been his scholar.1 When the Jews were deliberating to put the apostle to death, St. Gamaliel prevented such a resolution, and indirectly showed the Christian religion to be the work of God; yet this he did with so much prudence as not to incur any suspicion. Though he had not then embraced the faith, his conversion was more early than that of St. Paul, as St. Chrysostom assures us.2 Having buried St. Stephen at his own estate, twenty miles from Jerusalem, he was afterward himself interred in the same sepulchre, and discovered his relics to Lucian, in a vision, in 415, as was related above.