The life and work of St. Paul

366 THE LIFE AND WOBK OF ST. PAITL.
them. It was like the Monte della Pieta reared by the repentant Florentines
4t 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. 1 This bonfire, which must have lasted some time, 2 was so striking a
that it was doubtless one of the cir-
protest against the prevalent credulity,
cumstances 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. 3 Had we nothing else to go by, we might suppose that
until the final outbreak it was a period of almost unbroken success and pros-
4
perity. Such, however, as we find from the Epistles and from the Apostle's
speech to the Ephesian elders, 6 was very far from being the case. It was
iudeed 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 sur-
passed in sorrow any other period of St. Paul's life. We nmst 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
he had been stoned by the simple provincials of Lystra, beaten
magistrates ;
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. Bobbers he may well have encountered in the
environs, 8 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. 7 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. 8 To perils by the heathen and in the city he must have
Hence the EeVia ypawiara were sometimes engraved on seals ( Atlien. xii. 584). Kenan
says (p. 345) that the names of the " seven sleepers of Ephesus " are still a common
incantation in the East.
1 On the almost certain supposition that the "pieces of silver" were Attic drachms
of the value of about 9|d. If they were Roman denarii the value would he 1,770.
Classic parallels to this public abjuration of magic are quoted from Lir. xl. 29 ; Suet.
Aug. 31; Tac. Ann. xiii. 50; Agric. 2.
2
ica.TfKa.iav, impf.
3 Acts xx. 31 ; but owing to the Jewish method of reckoning any part of time to the
whole, the period did not necessarily much exceed two years.
* Chiefly those to the Corinthians. On the Epistle to " the Ephesians " see infra, p.
5 Acts xx. 1835. 2 Cor; xi. 26.
7 He had not, however, visited Laodicea or Colossre, where churches were founded by
Philemon and Epaphras (Col. i. 7; iv. 12 16). But he may well have made journeys to
.Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, &c. (See 1 Cor. xvi. 19.)
8 Acts xx. 19 ; which again shows the fragmentary nature of the narrative aa regard*
ll particulars of personal suffering.