unknown process by which the Church of the Province Asia gradually worked out its internal organisation

during the first century. At the beginning of that process all those Churches of Asia, apparently, stood side

by side, equal in standing, fully equipped with self-governing authority, except in so far as they looked up

to St. Paul as their founder (either immediately or through his subordinate ministers) and parent, director and

counsellor: their relation to one another was in some degree analogous to a voluntary union of States in a

federal republic. Before the end of the century, the Province was divided into districts with representative

cities, and Asia was advancing along a path that led t o the institution of a regularly organised hierarchy

with one supreme head of the Province.

Now let us try to imagine the situation in which this process occurred. The purpose which was being

worked out in the process was --unity. The Christian Church was bent on consolidating itself in its struggle

for the spiritual lordship of the Empire. The means whereby it attained that purpose, as has been shown in

chapter 3, lay in constant intercommunication, partly by travel, but still more by letter. The result wh ich was

brought about could not fail to stand in close relation to the means by which it had been worked out. And a

glance at the map shows that there was some relation here between the means and the result. Travelling and

communication, of course, are inextricably involved in the road system: they are carried out, not along the

shortest lines between the various points, but according to the roads that connect them. And all the Seven

Cities stand on the great circular road that bound together the most populous, wealthy, and influential part

of the Province, the west-central region.

It is only fair to observe that that great scholar, the late Dr. Hort, pointed the way to the true principle of

selection in an excursus to his fragmentary, posthumously published edition of First Peter. In that excursus,

which is a model of scientific method in investigation, he points out that the reason for the peculiar order in

which the Provinces are enumerated at the beginning of the Epistle lies in the route along which the

messenger was to travel, as he conveyed the letter (perhaps in so many distinct copies) to the central cities

of the various Provinces. We now find ourselves led to a similar conclusion in the case of Asia: the gradual

selection of Seven representative Churches in the Province was in some way connected with the principal

road-circuit of the Province.

So far the result which we have reached is unavoidable and undeniable: it merely states the evident fact.

But, if we seek to penetrate farther, and to trace the process of development and consolidation more

minutely, it is necessary to enter upon a process of imaginative reconstruction. We have given to us as the

factors in this problem, the state of the Asian Church about AD 60, and again its state about AD 90: we

know that the process whereby the one was transformed into the other within those thirty years took place

along that road circuit, and was connected with correspondence and intercourse. The details have to be

restored; and as this necessarily involves an element of hypothesis, it ought to be treated in a special