The life and work of St. Paul

GNOSTICISM IN THE GERM. 607
aix miles further, upon the southern bank of the river, he would see Laodicea,
the populous and haughty metropolis of the " Cibyratie jurisdiction," which
alone of the cities of proconsular Asia was wealthy and independent enough
to rebuild its streets and temples out of its own resources, when, within a year
of the time at which these letters were written, an earthquake had shaken it. 1
Passing up the valley about ten miles further, he might before sunset reach
Colossae, a town far more anciently famous than either, but which had fallen
into comparative decay, and was now entirely eclipsed by its thriving and
ambitious neighbours. 2
This remarkable valley and these magnificent cities, St. Paul, strange to
say, had never visited. "Widely as the result of his preaching at Ephesus had
been disseminated throughout Asia, his labours for the Ephesian Church had
been so close and unremitting as to leave him no leisure for wider missionary
enterprise. 3 And although Jews abounded in these cities, the divinely guided
course of his previous travels had not brought him into this neighbourhood.
It is true that St. Luke vaguely tells us that in the second missionary journey
St. Paul had passed through " the Phrygian and Galatian country," 4 and that
in the shifting ethnological sense of the term the cities of the Lycus-valley
might be regarded as Phrygian. But the expression seems rather to mean
that the course of his journey lay on the ill-defined marches of these two dis-
tricts, far to the north and east of the Lycns. In his third journey his natural
route from the cities of Galatia to Ephesus would take him down the valleys of
the Hermus and Cayster, and to the north of the mountain range of Messogis
which separates them from the Lycus and Maaander. From St. Paul's own
expression it seems probable that the Churches in these three cities had been
founded by the labours of Epaphras, and that they had never " seen his face in
the flesh " at the time when he wrote these Epistles, though it is not impossible
that he subsequently visited them. 6
And yet he could not but feel the deepest interest in their welfare, because,
indirectly though not directly, he had been indeed their founder. Ephesus, as
we have seen, was a centre of commerce, of worship, and of political procedure ;
and among the thousands, " both Jews and Greeks," " almost throughout all
Asia," who heard through his preaching the word of the Lord, 6 must have been
Philemon, 7 his son, Archippus, and Epaphras, and Nymphas, who were leading
ministers of the Lycus Churches. 8
And there was a special reason why St. Paul should write to the Colossian
Christians. Philemon, who resided there, had a worthless slave named
1 Tac. Ann. xiv. 27, "propriis opibus revaluit." Rev. iii. 14. Cicero, who resided
there as Proconsul of Cilicia, frequently refers to it in his letters.
2 Now Chonos. Dr. Lightfoot calls it "the least important Church to which any
Epistle of St. Paul was addressed " (Col., p. 16).
Acts xx. 31.
4 "
Acts xvi. 6. In Acts xviii. 23 the order is the Galatian country and Phrygia." In
the former instance he was travelling from Antioch in Pisidia to Troas; in the latter from
Antioch in Syria to Ephesus.
* *
Col. i. 4, 6, 9 ; ii. 1.
Acts six. 1026.
7 Philem. 1, 2.
Col. iv. 12, 13, 16.