The life and work of St. Paul

tiU THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PA17L.
which were eagerly supplied by greedy imposture to gaping credulity.
them were the worda aekion, katasJeion, Use, tetras, damnameneut,
Among
and aisia, 1 which for sense and efficiency were about on a par with the dariet,
dcrdarie*, tutatariee, or ista,pista, rista, which Cato the elder held to be a
sovereign remedy for a sprain,* or the sliavriri, vriri, iriri, riri, iri, ri, accompanied
with knockings on the lid of a jug, which tho Rabbis taught as an
efficacious expulsion of the demon of blindness, 8
Stories, which elsewhere would hare 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 Apollonhia of Tyana; and it is here that
his biographer Philcstratus places tho seeno 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 Epliesus,
the thaumaturge of Tyana found the plague raging there, and in consequence
invited the population to meet him in tho theatre. When they were assem-
bled, he rose and pointed out to them a miserable and tattered old man a-j
the cause of the prevailing pestilence. Instantly th multitude seized
arid, in spitd of the old man's remonstrances, atoned him to death.
atones
When
the heaped stones were removed, they found the carcase of a Molossian
hound, into which the demon had transformed himself; 4 and on this spot
! Philoatratus did not write
they reared a statue of Herakles Apotropaios
iiis romance till A.D. 218, and his hero Apollonius has ben put forth by
medern 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 tha
unlettered fisherman of Galilee, strangers as they were to all cultivation, asd
writing as they did & century and a half before.
Another and a far darker glimpse of the Ephesus of this day may bo
obtained from the letter of the pseudo-Heraclitus. Some cultivated and abl
Jew, 5
adopting the pseudonym of the great ancient philosopher, wrote some
letters in which he is supposed to explain the reason why he was called " ths
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