“They say this town is full of cozenage;
As, nimbling jugglers that deceive the eye,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such–like liberties of sin.”
SHAKSP. ComedyofErrors.
“Diana Ephesia; cujus nomen unicum. … totus veneratur orbis.”
APPUL. Metam.
THE justice of Gallio had secured for St. Paul an unmolested residence in Corinth, such as had been promised by the vision which had encouraged him amid his earlier difficulties. He availed himself of this pause in the storm of opposition by preaching for many days—perhaps for some months—and then determined to revisit Jerusalem, from which he had now been absent for nearly three years. It may be that he had collected something for the poor; but in any case he felt the importance of maintaining amicable relations with the other Apostles and with the mother church. He wished also to be present at the approaching feast—in all probability the Pentecost —and thereby to show that, in spite of his active work in heathen cities, and the freedom which he claimed for Gentile converts, in spite, too, of that deadly opposition of many synagogues which had already cost him so dear, he was still at heart a loyal although a liberal Jew. Accordingly, he bade farewell to the friends whom he had converted, and, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila, set out for Cenchreæ. At that busy seaport, where a little church had been already formed, of which Phœbe was a deaconess, he gave yet another proof of his allegiance to the Mosaic law. In thanksgiving for some deliverance1—perhaps from an attack of sickness, perhaps from the Jewish riot—he had taken upon him the vow of the temporary Nazarite. In accordance with this, he abstained from wine, and let his hair grow long. At the legal purification which formed the termination of the vow, the head could only be shaved at Jerusalem; but as it was often impossible for a foreign Jew to reach the Holy City at the exact time when the period of his vow concluded, it seems to have been permitted to the Nazarite to cut his hair,2 provided that he kept the shorn locks until he offered the burnt–offering, the sin–offering, and the peace–offering in the Temple, at which time his head was shaved, and all the hair burnt in the fire under the sacrifice of the peace–offerings. Accordingly, Paul cut his hair at Cenchreæ, and set sail for Ephesus. The mention of the fact is not by any means trivial or otiose. The vow which St. Paul undertook is highly significant as a proof of his personalallegiance to the Levitic institutions, and his desire to adopt a policy of conciliation towards the Jewish Christians of the Holy City.3
A few days’ sail, if the weather was ordinarily propitious, would enable his vessel to anchor in the famous haven of Panormus, which was then a forest of masts at the centre of all the Mediterranean trade, but is now a reedy swamp in a region of desolation. His arrival coincided either with the eve of a Sabbath, or of one of the three weekly meetings of the synagogue, and at once, with his usual ardour and self–forgetfulness, he presented himself among the Ephesian Jews. They were a numerous and important body, actively engaged in the commerce of the city, and had obtained some special privileges from the Roman Emperors.4 Not only was their religion authorised, but their youth were exempted from military service. One of their number, the “Chaldean” or “astrologer” Balbillus, had at this period availed himself of the deepening superstition which always accompanies a decadent belief, and had managed to insinuate himself into the upper circles of Roman society until he ultimately became the confidant of Nero.5 Accustomed in that seething metropolis to meet with opinions of every description, the Jews at first offered no opposition to the arguments of the wandering Rabbi who preached a crucified Messiah. Nay, they even begged him to stay longer with them. His desire to reach Jerusalem and pay his vow rendered this impossible; but in bidding them farewell he promised that, God willing,6 he would soon return. Once more, therefore, he weighed anchor, and sailed to Cæsarea. From thence he hastened to Jerusalem, which he was now visiting for the fourth time after his conversion. He had entered it once a changed man;7 he had entered it a second time with a timely contribution from the Church of Antioch to the famine–stricken poor;8 a third time he had come to obtain a decision of the loud disputes between the Judaic and the liberal Christians which threatened, even thus early, to rend asunder the seamless robe of Christ.9 Four years had now elapsed, and he came once more, a weak and persecuted missionary, to seek the sympathy of the early converts,10 to confirm his faithful spirit of unity with them, to tell them the momentous tidings of churches founded during this his second journey, not only in Asia, but for the first time in Europe also, and even at places so important as Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth. Had James, and the circle of which he was the centre, only understood how vast for the future of Christianity would be the issues of these perilous and toilsome journeys—had they but seen how insignificant, compared with the labours of St. Paul, would be the part which they themselves were playing in furthering the universality of the Church of Christ—with what affection and admiration would they have welcomed him! How would they have striven, by every form of kindness, of encouragement, of honour, of heartfelt prayer, to arm and strengthen him, and to fire into yet brighter lustre his grand enthusiasm, so as to prepare him in the future for sacrifices yet more heroic, for efforts yet more immense! Had anything of the kind occurred, St. Luke, in the interests of his great Christian Eirenicon—St. Paul himself, in his account to the Galatians of his relations to the twelve—could hardly have failed to tell us about it. So far from this, St. Luke hurries over the brief visit in the three words that “he saluted the church,”11 not even pausing to inform us that he fulfilled his vow, or whether any favourable impression as to his Judaic orthodoxy was created by the fact that he had undertaken it. There is too much reason to fear that his reception was cold and ungracious; that even if James received him with courtesy, the Judaic Christians who surrounded “the Lord’s brother” did not; and even that a jealous dislike of that free position towards the Law which he established amongst his Gentile converts, led to that determination on the part of some of them to follow in his track and to undermine his influence, which, to the intense embitterment of his latter days, was so fatally successful. It must have been with a sad heart, with something even of indignation at this unsympathetic coldness, that St. Paul hurriedly terminated his visit. But none of these things moved him. He did but share them with his Lord, whom the Pharisees had hated and the Sadducees had slain. He did but share them with every great prophet and every true thinker before and since. Not holding even his life dear unto himself, it is not likely that the peevishness of unprogressive tradition, or the non–appreciation of suspicious narrowness, should make him swerve from his divinely appointed course. God had counted him worthy of being entrusted with a sacred cause. He had a work to do; he had a Gospel to preach. If in obeying this call of God he met with human sympathy and kindness, well; if not, it was no great matter. Life might be bitter, but life was short, and the light affliction which was but for a moment was nothing to the exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Once more he set forth for a new, and, as it turned out, for the most brilliantly energetic, for the most eternally fruitful, for the most overwhelmingly afflictive period of his life of toil.
From Jerusalem he went to Antioch, where we can well imagine that a warmer and kindlier greeting awaited him. In that more cordial environment he rested for some little time; and thence, amid many a day of weariness and struggle, but cheered in all probability by the companionship of Timothy and Titus, and perhaps also of Gaius Aristarchus and Erastus, he passed once more through the famous Cilician gates of Taurus,12 and travelled overland through the eastern region of Asia Minor,13 confirming on his way the Churches of Galatia and Phrygia. In Galatia he ordered collections to be made for the poor at Jerusalem by a weekly offertory every Sunday.14 He also found it necessary to give them some very serious warnings; and although, as yet, there had been no direct apostasy from the doctrines which he had taught, he could trace a perceptible diminution of the affectionate fervour with which he had been at first received by that bright but fickle population.15 Having thus endeavoured to secure the foundations which he had laid in the past, he descended from the Phrygian uplands, and caught a fresh glimpse of the Marseilles of the Ægean, the hostelry and emporium of east and west,16 the great capital of Proconsular Asia. Very memorable were the results of his visit. Ephesus was the third capital and starting–point of Christianity. At Jerusalem, Christianity was born in the cradle of Judaism; Antioch had been the starting–point of the Church of the Gentiles; Ephesus was to witness its full development, and the final amalgamation of its unconsolidated elements in the work of John, the Apostle of Love. It lay one mile from the Icarian Sea, in the fair Asian meadow where myriads of swans and other waterfowl disported themselves amid the windings of Cayster.17 Its buildings were clustered under the protecting shadows of Coressus and Prion, and in the delightful neighbourhood of the Ortygian Groves. Its haven, which had once been among the most sheltered and commodious in the Mediterranean, had been partly silted up by a mistake in engineering, but was still thronged with vessels from every part of the civilised world. It lay at the meeting–point of great roads, which led northwards to Sardis and Troas, southwards to Magnesia and Antioch, and thus commanded easy access to the great river–valleys of the Hermus and Mæander, and the whole interior continent. Its seas and rivers were rich with fish; its air was salubrious; its position unrivalled; its population multifarious and immense. Its markets, glittering with the produce of the world’s art, were the Vanity Fair of Asia. They furnished to the exile of Patmos the local colouring of those pages of the Apocalypse in which he speaks of “the merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointment and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, andsoulsofmen.”18
And Ephesus was no less famous than it was vast and wealthy. Perhaps no region of the world has been the scene of so many memorable events in ancient history as the shores of Asia Minor. The whole coast was in all respects the home of the best Hellenic culture, and Herodotus declares that it was the finest site for cities in the world of his day.19 It was from Lesbos, and Smyrna, and Ephesus, and Halicarnassus that lyric poetry, and epic poetry, and philosophy, and history took their rise, nor was any name more splendidly emblazoned in the annals of human culture than that of the great capital of Ionia.20 It was here that Anacreon had sung the light songs which so thoroughly suited the soft temperament of the Greek colonists in that luxurious air; here that Mimnermos had written his elegies; here that Thales had given the first impulse to philosophy; here that Anaximander and Anaximenes had learnt to interest themselves in those cosmogonic theories which shocked the simple beliefs of the Athenian burghers; here that the deepest of all Greek thinkers, “Heracleitus the Dark,” had meditated on those truths which he uttered in language of such incomparable force; here that his friend Hermodorus had paid the penalty of virtue by being exiled from a city which felt that its vices were rebuked by his mere silent presence;21 here that Hipponax had infused into his satire such deadly venom;22 here that Parrhasius and Apelles had studied their immortal art. And it was still essentially a Greek city. It was true that since Attalus, King of Pergamos, nearly two hundred years before, had made the Romans heirs to his kingdom, their power had gradually extended itself in every direction, until they were absolute masters of Phrygia, Mysia, Caria, Lydia,23 and all the adjacent isles of Greece, and that now the splendour of Ephesus was materially increased by its being the residence of the Roman Proconsul. But while the presence of a few noble Romans and their suites added to the gaiety and power of the city, it did not affect the prevailing Hellenic cast of its civilisation, which was far more deeply imbued with Oriental than with Western influences. The Ephesians crawled at the feet of the Emperors, flattered them with abject servility, built temples to their crime or their feebleness, deified them on their inscriptions and coins.24 Even the poor simulacrum of the Senate came in for a share of their fulsomeness, and received its apotheosis from their complaisance.25 The Romans, seeing that they had nothing to fear from these degenerate Ionians, helped them with subsidies when they had suffered from earthquakes, flung them titles of honour, which were in themselves a degradation, left them a nominal autonomy, and let them live without interference the bacchanalian lives which passed in a round of Panionic, Ephesian, Artemisian, and Lucullian games. Such then was the city in which St. Paul found a sphere of work unlike any in which he had hitherto laboured. It was more Hellenic than Antioch, more Oriental than Corinth, more populous than Athens, more wealthy and more refined than Thessalonica, more sceptical and more superstitious than Ancyra or Pessinus. It was, with the single exception of Rome, by far the most important scene of all his toils, and was destined, in after–years, to become not only the first of the Seven Churches of Asia, but the seat of one of those great Œcumenical Councils which defined the faith of the Christian world.
The character of the Ephesians was then in very bad repute. Ephesus was the head–quarters of many defunct superstitions, which owed their maintenance to the self–interest of various priestly bodies. South of the city, and brightened by the waters of the Cenchrius, was the olive and cypress grove of Leto,26 where the ancient olive–tree was still shown to which the goddess had clung when she brought forth her glorious “twin–born progeny.”27 Here was the hill on which Hermes had proclaimed their birth; here the Curetes, with clashing spears and shields, had protected their infancy from wild beasts; here Apollo himself had taken refuge from the wrath of Zeus after he had slain the Cyclopes; here Bacchus had conquered and spared the Amazons during his progress through the East. Such were the arguments which the Ephesian ambassadors had urged before the Roman Senate in arrest of a determination to limit their rights of asylum. That right was mainly attached to the great world–renowned Temple of Artemis, of which Ephesus gloried in calling herself the sacristan.28 Nor did they see that it was a right which was ruinous to the morals and well–being of the city. Just as the mediæval sanctuaries attracted all the scum and villainy, all the cheats and debtors and murderers of the country round, and inevitably pauperised and degraded the entire vicinity29—just as the squalor of the lower purlieus of Westminster to this day is accounted for by its direct affiliation to the crime and wretchedness which sheltered itself from punishment or persecution under the shadow of the Abbey—so the vicinity of the great Temple at Ephesus reeked with the congregated pollutions of Asia. Legend told how, when the temple was finished, Mithridates stood on its summit and declared that the right of asylum should extend in a circle round it as far as he could shoot an arrow, and the arrow miraculously flew a furlong’s distance. The consequence was that Ephesus, vitiated by the influences which affect all great sea–side commercial cities, had within herself a special source of danger and contagion.30 Ionia had been the corruptress of Greece,31 Ephesus was the corruptress of Ionia—the favourite scene of her most voluptuous love–tales, the lighted theatre of her most ostentatious sins.
The temple, which was the chief glory of the city and one of the wonders of the world,32 stood in full view of the crowded haven. Ephesus was the most magnificent of what Ovid calls “the magnificent cities of Asia,”33 and the temple was its most splendid ornament. The ancient temple had been burnt down by Herostratus—an Ephesian fanatic who wished his name to be recorded in history—on the night of the birth of Alexander the Great. It had been rebuilt with ungrudging magnificence out of contributions furnished by all Asia—the very women contributing to it their jewels, as the Jewish women had done of old for the Tabernacle of the Wilderness. To avoid the danger of earthquakes, its foundations were built at vast cost on artificial foundations of skin and charcoal laid over the marsh.34 It gleamed far off with a star–like radiance.35 Its peristyle consisted of one hundred and twenty pillars of the Ionic order hewn out of Parian marble. Its doors of carved cypress–wood were surmounted by transoms so vast and solid that the aid of miracles was invoked to account for their elevation. The staircase which led to the roof was said to have been cut out of a single vine of Cyprus. Some of the pillars were carved with designs of exquisite beauty.36 Within were the masterpieces of Praxiteles and Phidias, and Scopas and Polycletus. Paintings by the greatest of Greek artists, of which one—the likeness of Alexander the Great by Apelles—had been bought for a sum said to be equal in value to £5,000, of modern money, adorned the inner walls. The roof of the temple itself was of cedar–wood, supported by columns of jasper on bases of Parian marble.37 On these pillars hung gifts of priceless value, the votive offerings of grateful superstition. At the end of it stood the great altar adorned by the bas–relief of Praxiteles, behind which fell the vast folds of a purple curtain. Behind this curtain was the dark and awful adytum in which stood the most sacred idol of classic heathendom; and again, behind the adytum was the room which, inviolable under divine protection, was regarded as the wealthiest and securest bank in the ancient world.
The image for which had been reared this incomparable shrine was so ancient that it shared withthe Athene of the Acropolis, the Artemis of Tauris, the Demeter of Sicily, the Aphrodite of Paphos, and the Cybele of Pessinus, the honour of being regarded as a Διοπετὲς Ἄγαλμα—“an image that fell from heaven.”38 The very substance of which it was made was a matter of dispute; some said it was of vine–wood, some of ebony, some of cedar, and some of stone.39 It was not a shapeless meteorite like the Kaaba at Mecca, or the Hercules of Hyettus,40 or the blackstone of Pessinus; nor a phallic cone like the Phœnician Aphrodite of Paphos;41 nor a mere lump of wood like the Cadmean Bacchus;42 but neither must we be misled by the name Artemis to suppose that it in any way resembled the quivered “huntress chaste and fair” of Greek and Roman mythology. It was freely idealised in many of the current representations,43 but was in reality a hideous fetish, originally meant for a symbol of fertility and the productive power of nature. She was represented on coins—which, as they bear the heads of Claudius and Agrippina, must have been current at this very time, and may have easily passed through the hands of Paul—as a figure swathed like a mummy, covered with monstrous breasts,44 and holding in one hand a trident and in the other a club. The very ugliness and uncouthness of the idol added to the superstitious awe which it inspired, and just as the miraculous Madonnas and images of Romanism are never the masterpieces of Raphael or Bernardino Luini, but for the most part blackened Byzantine paintings, or hideous dolls like the Bambino, so the statue of the Ephesians Artemis was regarded as far more awful than the Athene of Phidias or the Jupiter of the Capitol. The Jewish feelings of St. Paul— though he abstained from “blaspheming” the goddess45— would have made him regard it as pollution to enter her temple; but many a time on coins, and paintings, and in direct copies, he must have seen the strange image of the great Artemis of the Ephesians, whose worship, like that of so many fairer and more human idols, his preaching would doom to swift oblivion.46
Though the Greeks had vied with the Persians in lavish contributions for the re–erection of the temple, the worship of this venerable relic was essentially Oriental. The priests were amply supported by the proceeds of wide domains and valuable fisheries, and these priests, or Megabyzi, as well as the “Essen,”47 who was at the head of them, were the miserable Persian or Phrygian eunuchs who, with the Melissae, or virgin–priestesses, and crowds of idle slaves, were alone suffered to conduct the worship of the Mother of the Gods. Many a time, in the open spaces and environs of Ephesus, must Paul have seen with sorrow and indignation the bloated and beardless hideousness of these coryphaei of iniquity.48 Many a time must he have heard from the Jewish quarter the piercing shrillness of their flutes, and the harsh jangling of their timbrels; many a time have caught glimpses of their detestable dances and corybantic processions, as with streaming hair, and will cries, and shaken torches of pine, they strove to madden the multitudes into sympathy with that orgiastic worship, which was but too closely connected with the vilest debaucheries.49 Even the Greeks, little as they were liable to be swept away by these bursts of religious frenzy, seem to have caught the tone of these disgraceful fanatics. At no other city would they have assembled in the theatre in their thousands to yell the same cry over and over again for “about the space of two hours,” though they had been so many Persian dervishes or Indian yogis. This senseless reiteration was an echo of the screaming ululatus which was one of the characteristics of the cult of Dindymene and Pessinus.50
We are not surprised to find that under the shadow of such a worship superstition was rampant. Ephesus differed from other cities which Paul had visited mainly in this respect, that it was pre–eminently the city of astrology, sorcery, incantations, amulets, exorcisms, and every form of magical imposture. On the statue of the goddess, or rather, perhaps, on the inverted pyramid which formed the basis for her swathed and shapeless feet, were inscribed certain mystic formulæ to which was assigned a magic efficacy. This led to the manufacture and the celebrity of those “Ephesian writings,” which were eagerly supplied by greedy imposture to gaping credulity. Among them were the words askion, kataskion, lix, tetras, damnameneus, and aisia,51 which for sense and efficiency were about on a par with the daries, derdaries, astataries, or ista, pista, sista, which Cato the elder held to be a sovereign remedy for a sprain,52 or the shavriri, vriri, iriri, riri, iri, ri, accompanied with knockings on the lid of a jug, which the Rabbis taught as an efficacious expulsion of the demon of blindness.53
Stories, which elsewhere would have been received with ridicule, at Ephesus found ready credence. About the very time of St. Paul’s visit it is probable that the city was visited by Apollonius of Tyana; and it is here that his biographer Philostratus places the scene of some of his exploits. One of these is all the more interesting because it is said to have taken place in that very theatre into which St. Paul, though in imminent peril of being torn to pieces, could scarcely be persuaded not to enter. During his visit to Ephesus, the thaumaturge of Tyana found the plague raging there, and in consequence invited the population to meet him in the theatre. When they were assembled, he rose and pointed out to them a miserable and tattered old man as the cause of the prevailing pestilence. Instantly the multitude seized stones and, in spite of the old man’s remonstrances, stoned him to death. When the heaped stones were removed, they found the carcase of a Molossian hound, into which the demon had transformed himself;54 and on this spot they reared a statue of Herakles Apotropaios! Philostratus did not write his romance till A.D. 218, and his hero Apollonius has been put forth by modern infidels as a sort of Pagan rival to the Jesus of the Gospels. Let any one read this wretched production, and judge! The Pagan sophist, with all his vaunted culture and irritating euphuism, abounds in anecdotes which would have been regarded as pitiably foolish if they had been narrated by the unlettered fishermen of Galilee, strangers as they were to all cultivation, and writing as they did a century and a half before.
Another and a far darker glimpse of the Ephesus of this day may be obtained from the letter of the pseudo– Heraclitus. Some cultivated and able Jew,55 adopting the pseudonym of the great ancient philosopher, wrote some letters in which he is supposed to explain the reason why he was called “the weeping philosopher,” and why he was never seen to laugh. In these he fully justifies his traditional remark that the whole Ephesian population deserved to be throttled man by man. He here asks how it is that their state flourishes in spite of its wickedness; and, in the inmost spirit of the Old Testament, he sees in that prosperity the irony and the curse of Heaven. For Artemis and her worship he has no scorn too intense. The dim twilight of her adytum is symbolical of a vileness that hateth the light. He supposes that her image is “stonen” in the contemptuous sense in which the word is used by Homer—i.e., idiotic and brutish. He ridicules the inverted pyramid on which she stands. He says that the morals which flourish under her protection are worse than those of beasts, seeing that even hounds do not mutilate each other, as her Megabyzus has to be mutilated, because she is too modest to be served by a man. But instead of extolling her modesty, her priests ought rather to curse her for lewdness, which rendered it unsafe otherwise to approach her, and which had cost them so dear. As for the orgies, and the torch festivals, and the antique rituals, he has nothing to say of them, except that they are the cloak for every abomination. These things had rendered him a lonely man. This was the reason why be could not laugh. How could he laugh when he heard the noises of these infamous vagabond priests, and was a witness of all the nameless iniquities which flourished so rankly in consequence of their malpractices—the murder, and waste, and lust, and gluttony, and drunkenness? And then he proceeds to moral and religious exhortations, which show that we are reading the work of some Jewish and unconverted Apollos, who is yet an earnest and eloquent proclaimer of the one God and the Noachian law.
In this city St. Paul saw that “a great door and effectual was open to him,” though there were “many adversaries”56 During his absence an event had happened which was to be of deep significances for the future. Among the myriads whom business or pleasure, or what is commonly called accident, had brought to Ephesus, was a Jew of Alexandria named Apollonius,57 or Apollos, who not only shared the culture for which the Jews of that city were famous in the age of Philo, but who had a profound knowledge of Scripture, and a special gift of fervid eloquience.58 He was only so far a Christian that he knew and had accepted the baptism of John; but though thus imperfectly acquainted with the doctrines of Christianity, he yet spoke and argued in the synagogue with a power and courage which attracted the attention of the jewish tent–makers Priscilla and Aquila. They invited him to their house, and showed him the purely initial character of John’s teaching. It may have been the accounts of the Corinthian Church which he had heard from them that made him desirous to visit Achaia, and perceiving how useful such a ministry as his might be among the subtle and intellectual Greeks, they not only encouraged his wish,59 but wrote for him “letters of commendation”60 to the Corinthian elders. At Corinth his eloquence produced a great sensation, and he became a pillar of strength to the brethren. He had so thoroughly profited by that reflection of St. Paul’s teaching which he had caught from Priscilla and Aquila, that in his public disputations with the hostile Jews he proved from their own Scriptures, with an irresistible cogency, the Messiahship of Christ, and thus was as acceptable to the Christians as he was formidable to the Jews. He watered what Paul had planted.61
By the time of St. Paul’s arrival, Apollos had already started for Corinth. He had, however, returned to Ephesus before St. Paul’s departure, and the Apostle must have gazed with curiosity and interest on this fervid and gifted convert. A meaner soul might have been jealous of his gifts, and all the more so because, while less valuable, they were more immediately dazzling and impressive than his own. St. Paul was of too noble a spirit to leave room for the slightest trace of a feeling so common, yet so ignoble. Apollos had unwittingly stolen from him the allegiance of some of his Corinthian converts; his name had become, in that disorderly church, a watchword of faction. Yet St. Paul never speaks of him without warm sympathy and admiration,62 and evidently appreciated the high–minded delicacy which made him refuse to revisit Corinth,63 in spite of pressing invitations, from the obvious desire to give no encouragement to the admiring partisans who had elevated him into unworthy rivalry with one so much greater than himself.
Ephesus, amid its vast population, contained specimens of every form of belief, and Apollos was not the only convert to an imperfect and half–developed form of Christianity. Paul found there, on his arrival, a strange backwater of religious opinion in the persons of some twelve men who, like Apollos, and being perhaps in some way connected with him, were still disciples of the Baptist. Although there were some in our Lord’s time who stayed with their old teacher till his execution, and though the early fame of his preaching had won him many followers, of whom some continued to linger on in obscure sects,64 it was impossible for any reasonable man to stop short at this position except through ignorance. St. Paul accordingly questioned them, and upon finding that they knew little or nothing of the final phase of John’s teaching, or of the revelation of Christ, and were even ignorant of the very name of the Holy Spirit, he gave them further instruction until they were fitted to receive baptism, and exhibited those gifts of the Spirit—the speaking with tongues and prophecy—which were the accepted proofs of full and faithful initiation into the Church of Christ.65
For three months, in accordance with his usual plan, he was a constant visitor at the synagogue, and used every effort of persuasion and argument to ripen into conviction the favourable impressions he had at first created. St. Luke passes briefly over the circumstances, but there must have been many an anxious hour, many a bitter struggle, many an exciting debate before the Jews finally adopted a tone not only of decided rejection, but even of so fierce an opposition, that St. Paul was forced once more, as at Corinth, openly to secede from their communion. We do not sufficiently estimate the pain which such circumstances must have caused to him. His life was so beset with trials, that each trial, however heavy in itself, is passed over amid a multitude that were still more grievous. But we must remember that St. Paul, though a Christian, still regarded himself as a true Israelite, and he must have felt, at least as severely as a Luther or a Whitefield, this involuntary alienation from the religious communion of his childhood. “We must conjecture, too, that it was amid these early struggles that he once more voluntarily submitted to the recognised authority of synagogues, and endured some of those five beatings by the Jews, any one of which would have been regarded as a terrible episode in an ordinary life.
As long as opposition confined itself to legitimate methods, St. Paul was glad to be a worshipper in the synagogue, and to deliver the customary Midrash; but when the Jews not only rejected and reviled him, but even endeavoured to thwart all chance of his usefulness amid their Gentile neighbours, he saw that it was time to withdraw his disciples from among them;66 and, as their number was now considerable, he hired the school of Tyrannus—some heathen sophist of that not very uncommon name.67 It was one of those schools of rhetoric and philosophy which were common in a city like Ephesus, where there were many who prided themselves on intellectual pursuits. This new place of worship gave him the advantage of being able to meet the brethren daily, whereas in the synagogue this was only possible three times a week. His labours and his preaching were not unblessed. For two full years longer he continued to make Ephesus the centre of his missionary activity, and, as the fame of his Gospel began to spread, there can be little doubt that he himself took short journeys to various neighbouring places, until, in the strong expression of St. Luke, “all they that dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.”68 In Ephesus itself his reputation reached an extraordinary height, in consequence of the unusual works of power which God wrought by his hands.69 On this subject he is himself silent even by way of allusion, and though he speaks to the Ephesian elders70 of his tears, and trials, and dangers, he does not say a word as to the signs and wonders which in writing to the Corinthians he distinctly claims. Although St. Paul believed that God, for the furtherance ot the Gospel, did allow him to work “powers” beyond the range of human experience, and in which he humbly recognised the work of the Spirit granted to faith and prayer, yet he by no means frequently exercised these gifts, and never for his own relief or during the sickness ot his dearest friends. But it was a common thing in Ephesus to use all kinds of magic remedies and curious arts. We are not, therefore, surprised to hear that articles of dress which had belonged to Paul, handkerchiefs which he had used, and aprons with which he had been girded in the pursuit of his trade,71 were assumed by the Ephesians to have caught a magic efficacy, and were carried about to sick people and demoniacs. St. Luke was not with the Apostle at Ephesus, and enters into no details; but it is clear that his informant, whoever he was, had abstained from saying that this was done by St. Paul’s sanction. But since Ephesus was the head–quarters of diabolism and sorcery, the use of St. Paul’s handkerchiefs or aprons, whether authorised by him or not, was so far overruled to beneficial results of healing as to prove the superiority of the Christian faith in the acropolis of Paganism, and to prepare the way for holy worship in the stronghold of Eastern fanaticism and Grecian vice. He who “followed not Jesus,” and yet was enabled to cast out devils in His name, could hardly fail to be the prototype of others who, though they acted without sanction, were yet for good purposes, and in that unsearched borderland which lies between the natural and the supernatural, enabled by God’s providence to achieve results which tended to the furtherance of truth.
But lest any sanction should be given to false and superstitious notions, we can hardly fail to see in the next anecdote which St. Luke has preserved for us a direct rebuke of mechanical thaumaturgy. Exorcism was a practice which had long been prevalent among the Jews, and it was often connected with the grossest credulity and the most flagrant imposture.72 Now there was a Jewish priest of some distinction of the name of Seeva,73 whose seven sons wandered about from place to place professing to eject demons; and on learning the reputation of St. Paul, and hearing doubtless of the cures effected by the application of his handkerchiefs, they thought that by combining his name with that of Jesus, they could effect cures in the most virulent cases, which defeated even the ring and root of Solomon.74 Encouraged possibly by some apparent initial success—so at least the story seems to imply—two of these seven itinerant impostors75 visited a man who was evidently a raving maniac, but who had those sufficiently lucid perceptions of certain subjects which many madmen still retain. Addressing the evil demon, they exclaimed, “We exorcise you by Jesus, whom Paul preacheth.” In this instance, however, the adjuration proved to be a humiliating failure. The maniac astutely replied, “Jesus I recognise, and Paul I know;76 but who are you?” and then leaping upon them with the superhuman strength of madness, he tore their clothes off their backs, and inflicted upon them such violent injuries that they were glad to escape out of the house stripped and wounded.
So remarkable a story could not remain unknown. It spread like wildfire among the gossiping Ephesians, and produced a remarkable feeling of dread and astonishment. One result of it was most beneficial. We have had repeated occasion to observe that the early Christians who had been redeemed from heathendom, either in the coarsenesses of slave–life or in the refined abominations of the higher classes, required a terrible struggle to deliver themselves by the aid of God’s Holy Spirit from the thraldom of past corruption. The sternly solemn emphasis of St. Paul’s repeated warnings—the actual facts which occurred in the history of the early churches—show conclusively that the early converts required to be treated with extreme forbearance, while, at the same time, they were watched over by their spiritual rulers with incessant vigilance. The stir produced by the discomfiture of the Benî Sceva revealed the startling fact that some of the brethren in embracing Christianity had not abandoned magic. Stricken in conscience, these secret dealers in the superstitious trumpery of “curious arts” now came forward in the midst of the community and confessed their secret malpractices. Nor was it only the dupes who acknowledged the error. Even the deceivers came forward, and gave the most decisive proof of their sincerity by rendering impossible any future chicanery. They brought the cabalistic and expensive books77 which had been the instruments of their trade, and publicly burned them. It was like the Monte della Pielà reared by the repentant Florentines at the bidding of Savonarola; and so extensive had been this secret evil–doing, that the value of the books destroyed by the culprits in this fit of penitence was no less than fifty thousand drachms of silver, or in our reckoning, about £2,030.78 This bonfire, which must have lasted some time,79 was so striking a protest against the prevalent credulity, that it was doubtless one of the circumstances which gave to St. Paul’s preaching so wide a celebrity throughout all Asia.
This little handful of incidents is all that St. Luke was enabled to preserve for us of this great Ephesian visit, which Paul himself tells us occupied a period of three years.80 Had we nothing else to go by, we might suppose that until the final outbreak it was a period of almost unbroken success and prosperity. Such, however, as we find from the Epistles81 and from the Apostle’s speech to the Ephesian elders,82 was very far from being the case. It was indeed an earnest, incessant, laborious, house–to–house ministry, which carried its exhortations to each individual member of the church. But it was a ministry of many tears; and though greatly blessed, it was a time of such overwhelming trial, sickness, persecution, and misery, that it probably surpassed in sorrow any other period of St. Paul’s life. We must suppose that during its course happened not a few of those perils which he recounts with such passionate brevity of allusion in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Neither from Jews, nor from Pagans, nor from nominal Christians was he safe. He had suffered alike at the hands of lawless banditti and stately magistrates; he had been stoned by the simple provincials of Lystra, beaten by the Roman colonists of Philippi, hunted by the Greek mob at Ephesus, seized by the furious Jews at Corinth, maligned and thwarted by the Pharisaic professors of Jerusalem. Robbers he may well have encountered in the environs,83 as tradition tells us that St. John the Evangelist did in later days, as well as in the interior, when he travelled to lay the foundation of various churches.84 Perils among his own countrymen we know befell him there, for he reminds the elders of Ephesus of what he had suffered from the ambuscades of the Jews.85 To perils by the heathen and in the city he must have often been liable in the narrow streets. Of his perils among false brethren, like Phygellus, and Hermogenes, and Alexander, we may see a specimen in the slanders against his person, and the internecine opposition to his doctrine, of which we shall meet with future proofs. Perils in the wilderness and in the sea were the inevitable lot of one who travelled over vast districts in those days, when navigation was so imperfect and intercourse so unprotected. It was very shortly after his departure from Ephesus that he wrote of all these dangers, and if, as is possible, he took more than one voyage from the haven of Ephesus to various places on the shores of the Levant, it may have been at this time that he suffered that specially perilous shipwreck, in the escape from which he floated a day and a night upon the stormy waves.86 And all this time, with a heart that trembled with sympathy or burned with indignation,87 he was carrying out the duties of a laborious and pastoral ministry,88 and bearing the anxious burden of all the churches, of which some, like the churches of Corinth and Galatia, caused him the most acute distress. Nor were physical cares and burdens wanting. True to his principle of refusing to eat the bread of dependence,89 he had toiled incessantly at Ephesus to support, not himself only, but even Aristarchus and the others who were with him; and not even all his weariness, and painfulness, and sleepless nights of mingled toil and danger,90 had saved him from cold, and nakedness, and the constant pangs of hunger during compulsory or voluntary fasts.91 And while he was taking his place like a general on a battlefield, with his eye on every weak of endangered point; while his heart was constantly rent by news of the defection of those for whom he would gladly have laid down his life; while a new, powerful, and organised opposition was working against him in the very churches which he had founded with such peril and toil;92 while he was being constantly scourged, and mobbed, and maltreated, and at the same time suffering from repeated attacks of sickness and depression; while he was at once fighting a hand–to–hand battle and directing the entire campaign;—he yet found time to travel for the foundation or confirming of other churches, and to write, as with his very heart’s blood, the letters which should rivet the attention of thousands of the foremost intellects, eighteen centuries after he himself had been laid in his nameless grave. In these we find that at the very hour of apparent success he was in the midst of foolishness, weakness, shame—“pilloried,” as it were, “On infamy’s high stage,” the sentence of death hanging ever over his head, cast down, perplexed, persecuted, troubled on every side, homeless, buffeted, ill–provided with food and clothes, abused, persecuted, slandered, made as it were the dung and filth of all the world.93 Nay, more, he was in jeopardy not only every day, but every hour; humanly speaking, he had fought with wild beasts in the great voluptuous Ionic city; he was living every day a living death. He tells us that he was branded like some guilty slave with the stigmata of the Lord Jesus;94 that he was being “killed all the day long;”95 that he was “in deaths oft;”96 that he was constantly carrying about with him the deadness of the crucified Christ;97 his life an endless mortification, his story an inscription on a cross. What wonder if, amid these afflictions, there were times when the heroic soul gave way? What wonder if he speaks of tears, and trembling, and desolation of heart, and utter restlessness; of being pressed out of measure, above strength, despairing of life itself,98 tried almost beyond the extreme of human endurance—without fightings, within fears? What wonder if he is driven to declare that if thisis all the life belonging to our hope in Christ, he would be of all men the most miserable?99 And yet, in the strength of the Saviour, how triumphantly he stemmed the overwhelming tide of these afflictions; in the panoply of God how dauntlessly he continued to fling himself into the never–ending battle of a warfare which had no discharge.100 Indomitable spirit! flung down to earth, chained like a captive to the chariot–wheels of his Lord’s triumph,101 haled as it were from city to city, amid bonds and afflictions,102 as a deplorable spectacle, amid the incense which breathed through the streets in token of the victor’s might—he yet thanks God that he is thus a captive, and glories in his many infirmities. Incomparable and heroic soul! many saints of God have toiled, and suffered, and travelled, and preached, and been execrated, and tortured, and imprisoned, and martyred, in the cause of Christ. Singly they tower above the vulgar herd of selfish and comfortable men; but yet the collective labours of some of their greatest would not equal, nor would their collective sufferings furnish a parallel to those of Paul, and very few of them have been what he was—a great original thinker, as well as a devoted practical worker for his Lord.
But of this period we learn from the Acts only one closing scene,103 and it is doubtful whether even this is painted for us in colours half so terrible as the reality. Certain it is that some of the allusions which we have been noticing must bear reference to this crowning peril, and that, accustomed though he was to the daily aspect of danger in its worst forms, this particular danger and the circumstances attending it, which are rather hinted at than detailed, had made a most intense impression upon the Apostle’s mind.
At the close of about two years, his restless fervour made him feel that he could stay no longer in the school of Tyrannus. He formed the plan of starting after Pentecost, and visiting once more the churches of Macedonia and Achaia, which he had founded in his second journey, and of sailing from Corinth to pay a fifth visit to Jerusalem, after which he hoped to see Rome, the great capital of the civilisation of the world.104 In furtherance of this purpose he had already despatched two of his little band of fellow–workers, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia with orders that they were to rejoin him at Corinth. Erastus105—if this be the chamberlain of the city—was a person of influence, and would have been well suited both to provide for the Apostle’s reception and to superintend the management of the weekly offertory, about which St. Paul was at present greatly interested. The visit to Jerusalem was rendered necessary by the contribution for the distressed Christians of that city, which he had been collecting from the Gentile churches, and which he naturally desired to present in person, as the best possible token of forgiveness and brotherhood, to the pillars of the unfriendly community. This had not been his original plan.106 He had originally intended, and indeed had announced his intention, in a letter no longer extant,107 to sail straight from Ephesus to Corinth, make his way thence by land to the churches of Macedonia, sail back from thence to Corinth, and so sail once more from Corinth to Jerusalem. Weighty reasons, which we shall see hereafter, had compelled the abandonment of this design. The ill news respecting the condition of the Corinthian churches which he had received from the slaves of Chloe compelled him to write his first extant letter to the Corinthians, in which he tacitly abandons his original intention, but sends Titus, and with him “the brother,” to regulate to the best of their power the gross disorders that had arisen.108 Probably at the same time he sent a message to Timothy—uncertain, however, whether it would reach him in time—not to go to Corinth, but either to return to him or to wait for him in Macedonia. The first Epistle to the Corinthians was written about the time of the Passover in April, and probably in the very next month an event occurred which, at the last moment, endangered his stay and precipitated his departure.
It was now the month of May, and nothing seemed likely to interfere with the peaceful close of a troubled ministry. But this month was specially dedicated to the goddess of Ephesus, and was called from her the Artemisian.109 During the month was held the great fair—called Ephesia—which attracted an immense concourse of people from all parts of Asia, and was kept with all possible splendour and revelry. The proceedings resembled the Christmas festivities of the middle ages, with their boy bishops and abbots of misrule. The gods were personated by chosen representatives, who received throughout the month a sort of mock adoration. There was an Alytarch, who represented Zeus; a Grammateus, who played the part of Apollo; an Amphithales, who personated Hermes; and in the numberless processions and litanies, and sacrifices, they paced the streets, and were elevated in public places, arrayed in robes of pure white or of tissued gold, and wearing crowns which were set with carbuncles and pearls. The theatre and stadium were densely crowded by festive throngs to listen to the musical contests, to watch the horse–races, and the athletic exhibitions, or to look on with thrills of fiercer emotion at the horrible combats of men and beasts. The vast expense of these prolonged festivities and superb spectacles was entirely borne by the College of the ten Asiarchs, who thus fulfilled the same functions as those of the Curule Ædiles at Rome. They were men of high distinction, chosen annually from the wealthiest citizens of the chief cities of Asia, and it was their duty to preside over the games, and to keep order in the theatre. The heavy pecuniary burden of the office was repaid in honorary privileges and social distinctions. Their names were recorded on coins and in public inscriptions, and the garlands and purple robes which distinguished them during the continuance of the feast were the external marks of the popular gratitude.110
During the sacred month the city rang with every sort of joyous sounds; gay processions were constantly sweeping to the famous temple; drunkenness and debauchery were rife; even through the soft night of spring the Agora hummed with the busy throngs of idlers and revellers.111 It was inevitable that at such a time there should be a recrudescence of fanaticism, and it is far from improbable that the worthless and frivolous mob, incited by the Eunuch priests and Hierodules of Artemis, may have marked out for insult the little congregation which met in the school of Tyrannus, and their well–known teacher. This year there was a perceptible diminution in the fast and furious mirth of the Artemisian season, and the cause of this falling off was perfectly notorious.112 Not only in Ephesus, but in all the chief cities of Proconsular Asia, deep interest had been excited by the preaching of a certain Paulus, who, in the very metropolis of idolatry, was known to be quietly preaching that they were no gods which were made with hands. Many people had been persuaded to adopt his views; many more had so far at least been influenced by them as to feel a growing indifference for mummeries and incantations, and even for temples and idols. Consequently there arose in Ephesus “no small stir about that way.” Paul and his preaching, the brethren and their assemblages, were in all men’s mouths, and many a muttered curse was aimed at them by Megabyzos and Melissae, and the hundreds of hangers–on which gather around every great institution. At last this ill–concealed exasperation came to a head. The chief sufferer from the diminished interest in the goddess and her Hieromenia, had been a certain silversmith, named Demetrius, who sold to the pilgrims little silver shrines and images in memorial of their visits to Ephesus113 and her temple. They were analogous to the little copies in alabaster or silver of the shrine of Loretto, and other famous buildings of Italy; nor was it only at Ephesus, but at every celebrated centre of Pagan worship, that the demand for such memorials created the supply. Demetrius found that his trade was beginning to be paralysed, and since the emasculate throng of sacred slaves and musicians dared not strike a blow for the worship which fed their lazy vice, he determined, as far as he could, to stop the mischief. Calling together a trades–union meeting of all the skilled artisans and ordinary workmen who were employed in this craft,114 he made them a speech, in which he first stirred up their passions by warning them of the impending ruin of their interests,115 and then appealed to their latent fanaticism to avenge the despised greatness of their temple, and the waning magnificence of the goddess whom all Asia and the world worshipped.116 The speech was like a spark on inflammable materials. Their interests were suffering,117 and their superstition was being endangered; and the rage which might have been despised if it had only sprung from greed, looked more respectable when it assumed the cloak of fanaticism. The answer to the speech of Demetrius was a unanimous shout of the watchword of Ephesus, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” So large a meeting of the workmen created much excitement. Crowds came flocking from every portico, and agora, and gymnasium, and street. The whole city was thrown into a state of riot, and a rush was made for the Jewish quarter and the shop of Aquila. What took place we are not exactly told, except that the life of the Apostle was in extremest danger. The mob was, however, balked of its intended prey. Paul, as in the similar peril at Thessalonica, was either not in the house at the time, or had been successfully concealed by Priscilla and her husband, who themselves ran great risk of being killed in their efforts to protect him.118 Since, however, the rioters could not find the chief object of their search, they seized two of his companions—Gaius of Macedonia,119 and the faithful Aristarchus.120 With these two men in their custody, the crowd rushed wildly into the vast space of the theatre,121 which stood ever open, and of which the still visible ruins—“a wreck of immense grandeur”—show that it was one of the largest in the world, and could easily have accommodated 30,000 spectators.122 Paul, wherever he lay hidden, was within reach of communication from the disciples. Full of anxiety for the unknown fate of his two companions, he eagerly desired to make his way into the theatre and there address the rioters. There is, perhaps, no courage greater than that which is required from one who, in imminent danger of being torn to pieces, dares to face the furious insults and raging passions of an exasperated crowd. But the powers and the spirit of the Apostle always rose to a great occasion, and though he was so sensitive that he could not write a severe letter without floods of tears, and so nervous that he could scarcely endure to be left for even a few days alone, he was quite capable of this act of supreme heroism. He always wished to be in the forefront of battle for his Master’s cause. But his friends better appreciated the magnitude of the danger. Gaius and Aristarchus were too subordinate to be made scapegoats for the vengeance of the crowd; but they were sure that the mere appearance of that bent figure and worn and wasted face, which had become so familiar to many of the cities of Asia, would be the instant signal for a terrible outbreak. Their opposition was confirmed by a friendly message from some of the Asiarchs,123 who rightly conjectured the chivalrous impulse which would lead the Apostle to confront the storm. Anxious to prevent bloodshed, and save the life of one whose gifts and greatness they had learnt to admire, and well aware of the excitability of an Ephesian mob, they sent Paul an express warning not to trust himself into the theatre.
The riot, therefore, spent itself in idle noise. The workmen had, indeed, got hold of Gaius and Aristarchus; but as the crowd did not require these poor Greeks, whose aspect did not necessarily connect them with what was generally regarded as a mere Jewish sect, they did not know what to do with them. The majority of that promiscuous assemblage, unable to make anything of the discordant shouts which were rising on every side, could only guess why they were there at all. There was, perhaps, a dim impression that some one or other was going to be thrown to the wild beasts, and doubtless among those varying clamours voices were not wanting like those with which the theatre of Smyrna rang not many years afterwards—at the martyrdom of Polycarp—of “Paul to the lions!” “The Christians to the lions!”124 One thing, however, was generally known, which was, that the people whose proceedings were the cause for the tumult were of Jewish extraction, and a Greek mob was never behindhand in expressing its detestation for the Jewish race. The Jews, on the other hand, felt it hard that they, who had long been living side by side with the Ephesians in the amicable relations of commerce, should share the unpopularity of a sect which they hated quite as much as the Greeks could do. They were anxious to explain to the Greeks and Romans a lesson which they could not get them to learn—namely, that the Jews were not Christians, though the Christians might be Jews. Accordingly they urged Alexander to speak for them, and explain how matters really stood. This man was perhaps the coppersmith who, afterwards also, did Paul much evil, and who would be likely to gain the hearing of Demetrius and his workmen from similarity of trade. This attempt to shift the odium on the shoulders of the Christians entirely failed. Alexander succeeded in struggling somewhere to the front, and stood before the mob with outstretched hand in the attempt to win an audience for his oration. But no sooner had the mob recognised the well–known traits of Jewish physiognomy than they vented their hate in a shout of “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”125 which was caught up from lip to lip until it was reverberated on every side by the rocks of Prion and Coressus, and drowned all others in its one familiar and unanimous roar.
For two hours, as though they had been howling dervishes, did this mongrel Greek crowd continue incessantly their senseless yell.126 By that time they were sufficiently exhausted to render it possible to get a hearing. Hitherto the authorities, afraid that these proceedings might end in awakening Roman jealousy to a serious curtailment of their privileges, had vainly endeavoured to stem the torrent of excitement; but now, availing himself of a momentary lull, the Recorder of the city—either the mock officer of that name, who was chosen by the Senate and people for the Artemisia, or more probably the permanent city official—succeeded in restoring order.127 It may have been all the more easy for him, because one who was capable of making so admirably skilful and sensible a speech could hardly fail to have won a permanent respect, which enhanced the dignity of his position. “Ephesians!” he exclaimed, “what human being is there who is unaware that the city of the Ephesians is a sacristan128 of the great Artemis, and the Heaven–fallen? Since, then, this is quite indisputable, your duty is to maintain your usual calm, and not to act in the precipitate way in which you have acted,129 by dragging here these men, who are neither temple–robbers,130 nor blasphemers of your goddess.131 If Demetrius and his fellow–artisans have any complaint to lodge against any one, the sessions are going on,132 and there are proconsuls;133 let them settle the matter between them at law. But if you are making any further inquisition about any other matter, it shall be disposed of in the regular meeting of the Assembly.134 For, indeed, this business renders us liable to a charge of sedition, since we shall be entirely unable to give any reasonable account of this mass meeting.”
The effect of this speech was instantaneous.
“He called
Across the tumult, and the tumult fell.”
The sensible appeal of the “virpietategravis” made the crowd repent of their unreasoning uproar, and afraid of its possible consequences, as the Recorder alternately flattered, intimidated, argued, and soothed. It reminded them very forcibly that, since Asia was a senatorial, not an imperial province, and was therefore governed by a Proconsul with a few officials, not by a Proprætor with a legion, they were responsible for good order, and would most certainly be held accountable for any breach of the peace. A day of disorder might forfeit the privileges of years. The Recorder’s speech, it has been said, is the model of a popular harangue. Such excitement on the part of the Ephesians was undignified, as the grandeur of their worship was unimpeached; it was unjustifiable, as they could prove nothing against the men; it was unnecessary, as other means of redress were open; and, finally, if neither pride nor justice availed anything, fear of the Roman power135 should restrain them. They felt thoroughly ashamed, and the Recorder was now able to dismiss them from the theatre.
It is not, however, likely that the danger to St. Paul’s person ceased, in a month of which he had spoiled the festivity, and in a city which was thronged, as this was, with aggrieved interests and outraged superstitions. Whether he was thrown into prison, or what were the dangers to which he alludes, or in what way God delivered him “from so great a death”136 we cannot tell. At any rate, it became impossible for him to carry out his design of staying at Ephesus till Pentecost.137 All that we are further told is that, when the hubbub had ceased, he called the disciples together, and, after comforting them,138 bade the Church farewell—certainly for many years, perhaps for ever.139 He set out, whether by sea or by land we do not know, on his way to Macedonia. From Silas he had finally parted at Jerusalem. Timothy, Titus, Luke, Erastus, were all elsewhere; but Gaius and Aristarchus, saved from their perilous position in the theatre, were still with him, and he was now joined by the two Ephesians, Tychicus and Trophimus, who remained faithful to him till the very close of his career.
The Church which he had founded became the eminent Christian metropolis of a line of Bishops, and there, four centuries afterwards, was held the great Œcumenical Council which deposed Nestorius, the heretical Patriarch of Constantinople.140 But “its candlestick” has been for centuries “removed out of his place;”141 the squalid Mohammedan village which is nearest to its site does not count one Christian in its insignificant population;142 its temple is a mass of shapeless ruins; its harbour is a reedy pool; the bittern booms amid its pestilent and stagnant marshes; and malaria and oblivion reign supreme over the place where the wealth of ancient civilisation gathered around the scenes of its grossest superstitions and its most degraded sins. “A noisy flight of crows,” says a modern traveller, “seemed to insult its silence; we heard the partridge call in the area of the theatre and the Stadium.”143