ong those which he
wrote from Rome were the Epistles to the Colossians, the Ephesians, and
many pastoral letters like those written to Philemon, Titus, and
Timothy. We know but little of the life of Paul after his arrival at
Rome, for at this point Saint Luke closes his narrative, and all after
this is conjecture and tradition.[4] But the main part of Paul's work
was accomplished when he was first sent to Rome as a prisoner to be
tried in the imperial courts; and there is but little doubt that he
finally met the death he so heroically contemplated, at the hands of the
monster Nero, who martyred such a vast multitude of Paul's
fellow-Christians.

[Footnote 4: There has been much doubt as to whether Paul was martyred
during the three years of this imprisonment, or whether he was
acquitted, left Rome, visited his beloved churches in Macedonia and Asia
Minor, went to preach the gospel in Spain, and was again arrested, taken
to Rome, and there beheaded. The earliest authorities seem to have been
agreed upon the second hypothesis; and this is based chiefly upon a
statement made by Paul's disciple Clement to the effect that the apostle
had preached in "the extremity of the West" (an expression of Roman
writers to denote Spain), and also on the impossibility of placing
certain facts mentioned in the second letter to Timothy and the one to
Titus in the period of the first imprisonment. He was certainly tried,
defended himself, and he may have been at first acquitted.]

At Jerusalem and at Antioch he had vindicated the freedom of the Gentile
from the yoke of the Levitical Law; in his letters to the Romans and
Galatians he had proclaimed both to Jew and Gentile that they were not
under the law, but under grace. During the space of twenty years Paul
had preached the gospel of Jesus as the Christ in the chief cities of
the world, and had formulated the truths of Christianity. What
marvellous labors! But it does not appear that this apostle's
extraordinary work was fully appreciated in his day, certainly not by
the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem; nor does it appear even that his
pre-eminence among the apostles was conceded until the third and fourth
centuries. He himself was often sad and discouraged in not seeing a
larger success, yet recognized himself as a layer of foundations. Like
our modern missionaries, Paul simply sowed the seed; the fruit was not
to be gathered in until centuries after his death. Before he died, as is
seen