which his office as guardian of the Blessed Virgin would probably exclude him) that work now ceased. The time had come when the words of the Psalm were fulfilled : "their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words into the ends of the world:" for the Apostles appear to have personally visited every region of the known world before the destruction of Jerusalem, and to have accomplished what was probably the most important portion of their office, the delivery of the grace of Holy Orders (by which the life of Christianity was to be maintained,) in every civilised country. Henceforth the Apostolic office was to resolve itself, in the person of S. John, into that which is the ideal of the Papacy: and he was to become an universal authority to which the whole Christian world could look up for guidance in matters both of practice and knowledge. The material which others had originated, he was to consolidate and build up.

Hence we find the central authority of the Church taking up his permanent residence in a new geographical centre, not by mere accident, but with a definite relation to the position assigned him and the work he had to do. Jerusalem, the Jewish religion and the Jewish polity were henceforth of no importance to the world. Even the Jewish Christians began to be assimilated with the rest of the Church, and the see of Jerusalem itself was before long to be governed by Bishops who were not of Hebrew origin. At this crisis, therefore, S. John removed to Asia Minor, where S. Paul had already met with large success in the foundation of the Church in the synagogues of Antioch, Iconium, and Ephesus, and perhaps in Lystra and Derbe, in the former of which towns he had found Timothy, the first Bishop of the metropolitan city. There seem to have been many Jews in Asia Minor at the time S. Paul was carrying on his labours there, as their synagogues, and the agitation which they were able to raise against the Apostle, testify. Between Ephesus and Cæsarea (the chief sea-port of Palestine in those days) there was a direct communication, as is indicated by Acts xviii. 21, and it is highly probable that it was by Ephesus that the Jews kept up their intercourse with other and more distant parts of the world. If so, it was but natural that many of the Jews should take up their quarters there when the holy city itself was destroyed and the country around brought to desolation. It may have been too that the Jews had acquired considerable power at Ephesus. In the next century Trypho, the opponent of Justin Martyr, was evidently a man of note in the city. At the time of S. Paul's visit, Alexander, a Jew, was put forward by his countrymen, apparently as one so well known to the Ephesians that he would obtain from them a favourable audiWhen S. Paul wrote his last instructions to Timothy, he tells him that πονηροὶ ἄνθρωποι γόητες: will abound as opponents of

ence.

1 2 Tim. iii. 13.

the faith; and the latter term is well known to be identical with the word by which a popular kind of magicians of either Egyptian or Jewish origin were known, Ephesus being a very market for all kinds of magic. There was moreover a Jew at Ephesus, on S. Paul's second visit, of the name of Sceva, whose seven sons were the leaders of those wandering exorcists who tried to rival the deeds of the Apostle, and who held the office of agxiepeùs, or chief of the priests. It is improbable that there should have been many priests, or one called a high priest among them at Ephesus: and it seem likely therefore that Sceva the Jew held the office of 'Eperiwor 'Appeùs, which we find named on a coin, e.g., of the Second Triumvirate, as belonging to one Glaucon, about sixty years before this, and which was of course connected with the goddess whose image accompanies the inscription.1 Such facts as these seem to indicate that there were many Jews among the Ephesians and the population of Asia Minor generally: and perhaps the character of Sceva and the magicians may also indicate to us the cause which originated the necessity for that mournful passage in S. Paul's last words to the Bishop of their city: "This thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me;" a necessity which would also point towards a visit of the only remaining Apostle that he might recover a flock so prone to wander.2

But it was not only as a mercy and favour to the Church of that one city, or even to the other Churches of Asia Minor that S. John was bidden to take up his abode at Ephesus. Such a position would, from the character of the place, bring the Apostle into contact with a greater variety of people than perhaps any other abode would have given opportunity for, if we except Jerusalem itself, in which at the Passover were devout people "out of every nation under heaven." In addition to being universally

1. The name of Euthucrates the yрaμμaтeùs or “town-clerk" of the day is also in the same inscription.

some

2 Some indications of a tendency on their part to apostasy and declension are observable in S. Paul's intercourse with the Ephesians, as well as in the writings of S. John. In Acts xx. 29, the first-named Apostle warns the elders about the "grievous wolves" who would come in. In Eph. iv. 14, he tells them they are to be "no more children, tossed to and fro," &c., as if they were liable to such changeableness of mind. In 1 Tim. i. 3, special reference seems to be made to " "' who taught other doctrines than those of the Apostle, and to contend against whom S. Timothy was left in Ephesus; and in ver. 6, to some who had "swerved "" from orthodox doctrine, in some such manner as Hymenæus and Alexander, whom he delivered to Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme, or as Phygellus and Hermogenes afterwards. S. John, again, in his first Epistle, iv. 1, et seq., uses exhortations respecting the trial of spirits which look the same way, and seem to mark experiences gained at Ephesus: his last words in that Epistle are a solemn warning against idolatry, as if an exhortation against Ephesian habits and dangers: and in the Apocalypse the message to the Church of Ephesus speaks of the Angel or the Church having "tried them which say they are Apostles and are not," and of having "left their first love." Such a consensus of rebuke and warning must certainly be taken as marking a temptation to which the Ephesians more than others were liable.

known as “ ἡ πρώτη καὶ μεγίστη μητρόπολις τῆς ̓Ασίας,” it is also said, on the authority of Strabo, to have been the greatest commercial city west of the Taurus, second probably to Alexandria alone, which was a near rival of Rome itself. Being the usual landing place for access to all parts of the provinces of Asia and Bithynia, roads branched out thence in all directions towards the interior of the country: and when Nicea and Nicomedia were in all their grandeur, Ephesus was the port by which communications were kept up between them and the rest of the empire. It was so, in fact, until New Rome arose some 150 miles to the north, and in a still more favoured situation, when its importance was superseded, and many of its treasures, architectural and otherwise, taken to enrich the new imperial city. Until that time too, the see of Ephesus was reckoned as fifth in rank of all in the Church, a patriarchate over fifty sees, and only yielding in honour to Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria: but when Constantinople was established, the priority was transferred to its see from Ephesus.2 It was, however, in real importance, the third city of the Christian world for some three centuries, almost entirely (it may be believed) through its consequence as the principal seaport and commercial city of such important provinces, and the conflux of people who would thus be drawn to its harbour. No doubt that one of the reasons why S. John was directed to take up his abode at Ephesus was that he might thus possess, as it may be said, a key to the Jewish and Gentile world in common: that here, in the metropolis of Asia, in a convenient and much frequented seaport lying at the very heart of the Mediterranean, and between the three habitable quarters of the globe, he might have actual and constant communication with Rome, Greece, Egypt and Syria, and thus establish the faith among all the nations of the world.

But S. John's many years' sojourn in Ephesus was also connected, it seems to us, with the position which he was to occupy as the great intellectual opponent of Antichrist. It has been well written by Cornelius à Lapide in his introduction to the Gospel of S. John, that "Ex S. Joanne Patres omnia pene argumenta contra Arianos, Servetianos, Nestorianos, Eutychianos, similesque hæreticos: Doctores verò scholastici totam materiam de S. Trinitate, deque Deo trino et uno hauserunt:" and the universal applicability of the divine's writings to the confutation of anti-Christian heresy 1 The desecrated church of S. Sophia at Constantinople contains some of the pillars which Constantine took away from the temple of Diana at Ephesus.

2 Some compensation was made by bestowing on the Bishop of Ephesus the title of Exarch of all Asia; but even as late as the thirteenth century the Bishops of Ephesus had not given up their claim to patriarchal jurisdiction. The modern Bishop has about eleven or twelve thousand orthodox Christians under his rule, but resides at Constantinople. The Metropolitical Church of the Panurgia has disappeared, that of S. John is a mosque, and the Christians meet together in a small building some distance from the ancient city. But Asia Minor is now, like all countries under the sway of the Turks, a land of Apostates in religion, idiots in art, and sluggards in industry. May that sway soon come to an end!

is indeed one of their most remarkable features. But we do not think it has hitherto been observed, that when the Apostle went to Ephesus he came face to face with a form of idolatry representing the philosophical principle upon which all the many-sided idolatries of ancient days were founded that this principle was the same with which all heresies are, more or less combined; and that it is the principle on which especially the Antichristianism of our own day depends, and which seems likely to form the culminating point in the irreligion of a personal Antichrist when the time shall have arrived for unveiling the Precursor of the end.

There was not, it is probable, a more persistent or wide-spread idol-worship than that which held its position so long at Ephesus, throughout all the mythology of the ancients. It is not unlikely that it dates from an earlier period than the first existence of the Jewish nation, and that its influence extended far and wide over all the civilised parts of the East.

Long anterior to the Christian era Ephesus was a kind of sacred city to the whole Hellenic race, as Jerusalem was to the Jews. Pilgrimages were common, and offerings of the richest kind were made to the deity whose shrine gave its first importance to the city. But the Greek worship of Artemis was confessedly a modification of something much more ancient. The Ionians, on first taking possession of the country, had found established there the worship of some goddess which they gradually remodelled according to their own notions until it developed into that of an Artemis, having a cognate resemblance to the Artemis of the more western Greeks; who again was identified by their Roman successors with the Roman Diana. All these three, however, represented or symbolized principles which permeate the whole mythology of the ancients; namely, the deification of nature and light, the former being in fact identical with a deification of life. Thus the ancient image of the Ephesian goddess (a wooden statue of extreme antiquity) was a rude figure of feminine character, unclothed from the breasts, many in number, upwards, but from the bosom to the ancles swathed in a wrapper called the veil. The appearance of the image in this rude form was that of a mummy case set on end, and our thoughts immediately recur to Egypt and the Thebaid, as likely localities for its origin. A symbolical character was given to this figure, first, by the multitude of breasts borne on its bosom,1 and secondly, by a crescent with which its head was crowned. In later times this archaic figure was rendered in a more artistic manner, arms being added, which were supported by twisted rods of gold, and the veil being decorated with sculptures of oxen or cows, bees, wolves and other animals. But there appears reason to think that Pliny's assertion is correct, that the original image was never changed or, superseded in the temple at Ephesus.2 It is evident, then, that 1 See S. Jerome's Preface to the Epistle to the Ephesians. 2 Hist. Nat. xxxvi. 23.

this image was symbolical of the two principles to which we have already referred. The crescent or moon upon the head, was a symbol of light; the many breasts, (and in later times, the animals on the veil,) of all the fructifying and nutritive powers of nature, that is, of life. Now, the research of scholars, whether conducted on a simple basis of history, or on one of philosophical principles, tends to the identification of the Ephesian goddess with other false deities in various ages and among different nations which represented just these two ideas. Sun-worship and natureworship were probably the most ancient forms of false religion preceding actual idol-worship, and appealing at all times to the mental rather than to the sensual faculties.2 Among the Chaldeans in the earliest times, as well as among the older Assyrians, sun-worship was the most prominent phase of religion, as its development of fire-worship was among the Persians. With the Assyrians Adrammelech and Anammelech (who are named in 2 Kings xvii. 31 among the gods introduced into Palestine by the people who replaced the ten tribes) were the male and female sungod, answering to Apollo and Selene, or Janus and Diana. But the first, or masculine form of the deity was a mere abstract ideal, and no temples were erected to his honour; while the feminine form (known in Babylonish inscriptions under the name of Gula, the wife of the sun) was held in great reverence, Nebuchadnezzar erecting to her three magnificent temples at Borsippa, and two at Babylon. In the strange revivification of Assyrian and Chaldean literature which our own day has seen, records of Nebuchadnezzar have been discovered which show that this Gula was regarded as the deity of life and fecundity," she who multiplies life, the goddess presiding over births," "the arranger and benefactor of life," and "she who blesses the people :" all which characteristics belonged to the Ephesian, and some to the Grecian form of Diana, and are of course coupled with the primary idea of light which is necessarily attached to the sun.3 Still earlier traces of the same

1 The best historical account of the Ephesian Diana is given in an essay by Menetrius, printed (with noble illustrations) in the seventh volume, page 357, of Gronovius' Thesaur. Græc. Antiq. The best philosophical account is in Creuzer's Symbolism of Mythology, vol. ii. part i., page 93 of the French translation, with which alone we are familiar.

2 The sun was actually an object of adoration in Egypt as Osiris, in Arabia as Bacchus, in Phoenicia as Thammuz or Adonis, in Phrygia as Atys, in Persia as Mithra, in Greece as Apollo, in Italy as Sol, Apollo or Janus, in England and elsewhere as Thor. The powerful hold which sun-worship had on the heathen mind is illustrated by a quotation given by Cudworth from Macrobius, ""HλIE πаνтокράтWρ, KÓσμov пveîμа," O Sun Almighty, spirit of the world. (Intell. Syst, i. 4, p. 456.)

3 Singular to say, that which is supposed to be the symbol of Anammelech, and is described as a "disc with eight interior rays," is a very distinct figure of a Maltese cross bounded by a circle, as will be remembered by all who are familiar with the Ninevite remains in the British Museum. The crescent is also found there; but if this was the symbol of a moon-god, it was the symbol of Sin, not Anammelech.