way characteristic of the real deep-seated nature of one city more than of another. He had his eye fixed on

the broad permanent character of Ephesian scenery and surroundings, and his thought moved in accord

with the nature of the locality, and expressed itself in a form that applied to Ephesus and to no other of the

Seven Churches.

There is one characteristic that belongs to Ephesus, distinctive and unique among the cities of the Seven

Churches: it is change. In most ancient sites one is struck by the immutability of nature and the mutability of

all human additions to nature. In Ephesus it is the shifting character of the natural conditions on which the

city depends for prosperity that strikes every careful observer and every student either of history or of

nature. The scenery and the site have varied from century to century. Where there was water there is now

land: what was a populated city in one period ceased to be so in another, and has again become the centre

of life for the valley: where at one time there was only bare hillside or the gardens of a city some miles

distant, at another time there was a vast city crowded with inhabitants, and this has again relapsed into its

earlier condition: the harbour in which St. John and St. Paul landed has become a mere marsh, and the

theatre where the excited crowd met and shouted to Diana, desolate and ruinous as it is, has been more

permanent than the harbour. The relation of sea and land has changed in quite unusual fashion: the broad

level valley was once a great inlet of the sea, at the head of which was the oldest Ephesus, beside the

Temple of the Goddess, near where the modern village stands. But the sea receded and the land emerged

from it. The city followed the sea, and changed from place to place to maintain its importance as the only

harbour of the valley.

All those facts were familiar to the Ephesians; they are recorded for us by Strabo, Pliny, and Herodotus, but

Ephesian belief and record are the foundation for the statements of those writers. A threat of removing the

Church from its place would be inevitably understood by the Ephesians as a denunciation of another

change in the site of the city, and must have been so intended by the writer. Ephesus and its Church should

be taken up, and moved away to a new spot, where it might begin afresh on a new career with a better spirit.

But it would be still Ephesus, as it had always hitherto been amid all changes.

Such was the meaning that the Ephesians must have taken from the letter; but no other of the Seven Cities

would have found those words so clear and significant. Others would have wondered what they might

mean, as the commentators are still wondering and debating. To the Ephesians the words would seem

natural and plain.

But after this threat the letter returns to the dominant note. The Ephesian Church was still, as it had been

from the beginning, guarding the way, testing all new teachers, and rejecting with sure judgment the

unworthy. In the question which beyond all others seemed to the writer the critical problem of the day the

Ephesians agreed with him, and hated the works of the Nicolaitans. In two other letters that party in the

early Church is more fully described. In the Ephesian letter the Nicolaitans are only named.

The promise contained in the perorations of the Seven Letters is different in every case, and is evidently

adapted in each instance to suit the general tone of the letter and the character and needs of the city. To the

Ephesian who overcometh, the promise is that he shall eat of the tree of life, which is in the Garden of God.

Life is promised both to Smyrna and to Ephesus; yet how differently is it expressed in the two cases. Smyrna

must suffer, and would be faithful unto death, but it shall not be hurt of the second death. Ephesus had

been falling from its original high level of enthusiasm; it needed to be quickened and reinvigorated, and

none of the promises made to the other Churches would suit its need; but the fruit of the tree of life is the

infallible cure, the tree whose very leaves were for the healing of the nations, the tree in which every true

Christian acquires a right of participation (22:2,14). The expression is, of course, symbolical; and its real

meaning can hardly be specified. It would be vain to ask what St. John had precisely in his mind; but it might

be a more hopeful task to inquire what meaning the Asian readers would take from the phrase. It is a Jewish

expression; but the Asian readers would take it in the way in which many Jewish ideas seem to have become

efficacious in the Province, viz., in a sort of syncretism of Jewish and native Asian thought.