would require often to go and return over part of the same road, and the difference of time in the receiving of

the news by the earlier and the later Churches would have been so great, that the advantages of

intercommunication would have been to a great degree lost. Accordingly, it must be concluded that several

messengers were simultaneously employed to carry any news intended for general information in the

Province of Asia.

Again, either those several messengers must all have started from the capital and centre of communication,

viz., Ephesus, or else one must have started from the capital, and others must have started on secondary

routes, receiving the message from the primary messenger at various points on his route. The former of

these alternatives is evidently too cumbrous, as it would make several messengers travel simultaneously

along the same road bearing the same message. It is therefore necessary to admit a distinction between

primary and secondary circuits, the former starting from Ephesus, the latter from various points on the

primary circuit.

Now, if we combine this conclusion with our previously established results, the hypothesis inevitably

suggests itself that the Seven groups of Churches, into which the Province had been divided before the

Apocalypse was composed, were seven postal districts, each having as its centre or point of origin one of

the Seven Cities, which (as was pointed out) lie on a route which forms a sort of inner circle round the

Closer examination of the facts will confirm this hypothesis so strongly as to raise it to a very high level of

probability: in fact, the hypothesis is simply a brief statement of the obvious facts of communication, and

our closer examination will be merely a more minute and elaborate statement of the facts.

The Seven Cities, as has been already stated, were situated on a very important circular route, which starts

from Ephesus, goes round what may be called Asia par excellence, the most educated and wealthy and

historically pre -eminent part of the Province. They were the best points on that circuit to serve as centres of

communication with seven districts: Pergamum for the north (Troas, doubtless Adramyttium, and probably

Cyzicus and other cities on the coast contained Churches); Thyatira for an inland district on the northeast

and east; Sardis for the wide middle valley of the Hermus; Philadelphia for Upper Lydia, to which it was the

door (3:8); Laodicea for the Lycus Valley, and for Central Phrygia, of which it was the Christian metropolis in

later time; Ephesus for the Cayster and Lower Meander Valleys and coasts; Smyrna for the Lower Hermus

Valley and the North Ionian coasts, perhaps with Mitylene and Chios (if those islands had as yet been

In this scheme of secondary districts it is evident that some are very much larger than others. The whole of

Western and Central Caria must be included in the Ephesian district. The Northeastern part of Caria would

more naturally fall in the Laodicean district, to which also a vast region of Phrygia should belong, leaving to

the Philadelphian district another large region, Northern and West-central Phrygia with a considerable part

of Eastern Lydia. But it is possible, and even probable, that Ephesus was the centre from which more than

one secondary circuit went off: it is not necessary to suppose that only one secondary messenger started

from such a city. So also with Laodicea and possibly with Philadelphia and Smyrna and others. An

organisation of this kind, while familiar to all in its results, would never be described by any one in literature,

just as no writer gives an account of the Imperial Post-service; and hence no account is preserved of either.

While the existence of a primary circuit, and a number of secondary circuits going off from the Seven Cities

of the primary circuit, seems certain, the number and arrangement of the secondary circuits is conjectural

and uncertain.

The whole of the arrangements would have to be made to suit the means of communication that existed in

the Province Asia, the roads and the facilities for travel, on which chapter 3 may be consulted. It lies apart

from our purpose to work it out in detail; but the system which seems most probable is indicated on the

accompanying sketch-map, and those who investigate it minutely will doubtless come to the conclusion that

some of the circuits indicated are fa irly certain, but most can only be regarded as, at the best, reasonably