, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having
passed through the upper country came to Ephesus. His preaching here had
great effect. And not a few of them that practiced curious arts brought
their books together, and burned them in the sight of all: and they
counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.
So mightily grew the word of the Lord and prevailed.

Now after these things were ended, Paul purposed in the spirit, when he
had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying,
"After I have been there, I must also see Rome."

And having sent into Macedonia two of his companions who ministered unto
him, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.

II

A RIOT IN EPHESUS

"_Great is Diana of the Ephesians!_"

And about that time there arose no small stir concerning the new faith.
For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver
shrines of Diana, brought no little business unto the craftsmen;

{419}{420}

[Illustration]
RUINS OF GREAT GREEK THEATER AT MILETUS.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood and used by special permission.

Miletus once was one of the leading centers of Greek civilization,
which began to decay in Paul's day.

"Even in Homer, the 'Carian Miletus' appears as a place of renown.
Eighty colonies went forth from the banks of the Maeander, and some of
them were spread even to the eastern shores of the Black Sea and
beyond the Pillars of Hercules to the west. It received its first blow
in the Persian war, when its inhabitants, like the Jews, had
experience of a Babylonian captivity. It suffered once more in
Alexander's great campaign; and after his time it gradually began to
sink towards its present condition of ruin and decay, from the
influence, as it would seem, of mere natural causes,--the increase of
alluvial soil in the delta having the effect of removing the city
gradually farther and farther from the sea. Even in the Apostle's
time, there was between the city and the shore a considerable space of
level ground, through which the ancient river meandered in new windings,
like the Forth at Stirling. Few events connect the history of Miletus
with the transactions of the Roman Empire. When St. Paul was there, it
was simply one of the second-rate seaports on this populous coast,
ranking, perhaps, with Adramyttium or Patara, but hardly with Ephesus
or Smyrna."
[End illustratio