This ease and frequency of communication under the Roman Empire was merely the culmination of a

process that had long been going on. Here, as in many other departments of life, the Romans took up and

improved the heritage of Greece. Migration and intermixture of peoples had been the natural law of the Greek

world from time immemorial; and the process was immensely stimulated in the fourth century BC by the

conquests of Alexander the Great, which opened up the East and gave free scope to adventure and trade. In

the following centuries there was abundant opportunity for travelling during the fine season of the year.

The powerful Monarchies and States of the Greek world keep the sea safe; and during the third century BC,

as has been said by Canon Hicks, a scholar who has studied that period with special care, "there must have

been daily communication between Cos (on the west of Asia Minor) and Alexandria" (in Egypt).

When the weakness of the Senatorial administration at Rome allowed the pirates to increase and navigation

too become unsafe between 79 and 67 BC, the life of the civilised world was paralysed; and the success of

Pompey in re -opening the sea was felt as the restoration of vitality and civilisation, for civilised life was

impossible so long as the sea was an untraversable barrier between the countries instead of a pathway to

unite them.

Thus the deep-seated bent of human nature towards letter-writing had been stimulated and cultivated by

many centuries of increasing opportunity, until it became a settled habit and in some cases, as we see it in

Cicero, almost a passion.

The impression given by the early Christian writings is in perfect agreement with the language of those

writers who spoke from actual contact with the life of the time, and did not merely imitate older methods and

utter afresh old sentiments. Probably the feature in those Christian writings, which causes most surprise at

first to the traveller familiar with those countries in modern time, is the easy confidence with which extensive

plans of travel were forme d and announced and executed by the early Christians.

In Acts 16:1ff a journey by land and sea through parts of Syria, Cilicia, a corner of Cappadocia, Lycaonia,

Phrygia, Mysia, the Troad, Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece is described, and no suggestion is made that this

long journey was anything unusual, except that the heightened tone of the narrative in 16:7-9 corresponds

to the perplexingly rapid changes of scene and successive frustrations of St. Paul's intentions. But those

who are most intimately acquainted with those countries know best how serious an undertaking it would be

at the present time to repeat that journey, how many accidents might occur in it, and how much care and

thought would be advisable before one entered on so extensive a programme.

Again, in 18:21 St. Paul touched at Ephesus in the ordinary course of the pilgrim-ship which was conveying

him and many other Jews to Jerusalem for the Passover. When he was asked to remain, he excused himself,

but promised to return as he came back from Jerusalem by a long land-journey through Syria, Cilicia,

Lycaonia, and Phrygia. That extensive journey seems to be regarded by speaker and hearers as quite an

ordinary excursions. "I must by all means keep this feast that cometh in Jerusalem; but I will again return

unto you, if God will." The last condition is added, not as indicating uncertainty, but in the usual spirit of

Eastern religion, which forbids a resolve about the future, however simple and easy, to be declared without

the express recognition of Divine approval--like the Mohammedan "inshallah," which never fails when the

most ordinary resolution about the morrow is stated.

In Romans 15:24, when writing from Corinth, St. Paul sketches out a comprehensive plan. He is eager to see

Rome: first he must go to Jerusalem, but thereafter he is bent on visiting Spain, and his course will naturally

lead him through Rome, so that he will, without intruding himself on them, have the opportunity of seeing

the Romans and affecting their Church on his way.

Throughout medieval times nothing like this off-hand way of sketching out extensive plans was natural or

intelligible; there were then, indeed, many great travellers, but those travellers knew how uncertain their