addressed. The list of the Seven Churches is taken over, like the rest of the machinery of epistolary

communication, as part of the circumstances to which this literary imitation has to accommodate itself.

Moreover those who properly weigh the indisputable facts stated in chapter 6 about the g rowth of the

Laodicean district, as an example of the steady, rapid development of early Christian organisation, must

come to the conclusion that the writer of the Letters cannot have been the first to make Laodicea the

representative of a group of Churches, but found it already so regarded by general consent. Now what is

true of Laodicea must be applied to the rest of the Seven Churches.

In short, if there were not such a general agreement as to the representative character of the Seven

Churches, it is difficult to see how the writer could so entirely ignore the other Churches, and write to the

Seven without a word of explanation that the letters were to be considered as referring also to the others. St.

Paul, who wrote before that general agreement had been effected, carefully explained that his letter to

Colossae was intended to be read also at Laodicea, and vice versa; but St. John assumes that no such

explanation is needed.

Another important point to observe is that the Seven Cities were not selected s imply because they were

situated on the circular route above described, nor yet because they were the most important cities on that

route. The messenger must necessarily pass through Hierapolis, Tralleis and Magnesia on his circular

journey; all those cities were indubitably the seats of Churches at that time; yet none of the three found a

place among the representative cities, although Tralleis and Magnesia were more important and wealthy

than Philadelphia or Thyatira. What then was the principle of selection?

In chapter 3 we saw that the Christian Church owed its growth and its consolidation under the early Empire

to its carefulness in maintaining frequent correspondence between the scattered congregations, thus

preventing isolation, making uniformity of character and aims possible, and providing (so to say) the

channels through which coursed the life -blood of the whole organism; and the conclusion was reached that,

since no postal service was maintained by the State for the use of private individuals or t rading companies,

"we find ourselves obliged to admit the existence of a large organisation" for the transmission of the letters

by safe, Christian hands. Just as all the great trading companies maintained each its own corps of letter-

carriers (tabellarii), so the Christians must necessarily provide means for carrying their own letters, if they

wanted to write; and this necessity must inevitably result, owing to the constructive spirit of that rapidly

growing body, in the formation of a letter-carrying system. The routes of the letter-carriers were fixed

according to the most convenient circuits, and the provincial messengers did not visit all the cities, but only

certain centres, from whence a subordinate service distributed the letters or news over the several

connected circuits or groups.

Thus there emerges from the obscurity of the first century, and stands out clear before our view about AD

80, some kind of organisation for connecting and consolidating the numerous Churches of the Province

Asia. The Pro vince had already by that date been long and deeply affected by the new religion; and it must

be presumed that there existed a congregation and a local Church in almost every great city, at least in the

parts most readily accessible from the west coast.

Such is the bare outline of a kind of private messenger-service for the Province, similar in many ways,

doubtless, to the private postal systems which must have been maintained by every great trading

corporation whose operations extended over the same parts (the wealthiest and most educated and

"Hellenised" parts) of the Province. The general character of this messenger service, in so far as it was

uniform over the whole Roman Empire, has been described in chapter 3. A more detailed view of the special

system of the Province Asia may now be gained from a closer study of the character and origin of the Seven

When letters or information were sent round the Churches of the Province, either the same messenger must

have gone round the whole Province, and visited every Church, or several messengers must have been