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 REV. H. B. TRISTRAM, LL.D., F.R.S. 
 
 " The seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. 
 The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches : and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are 
 the seven qhurc'.ies." REVELATION i. 20. 
 
 Ruins of Christian Church, Ephesus. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY: 
 
 56, PATERNOSTER Row; 65, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD; 
 
 AND 164, PICCADILLY. 
 
 All Rights Reserved.
 
 LONDON: E. K. BURT AND co., PRINTERS.
 
 JpREFACE. 
 
 \ N the hope that an attempt to illus- 
 trate one of the most deeply inte- 
 resting portions of the Apocalyptic 
 Epistle of St. John, by references to 
 the present state and past history 
 of the Seven Churches, might be 
 profitable to the Christian student, the writer some time ago 
 inserted in TJie Sunday at Home a series of papers conveying 
 the recollections of a visit to those sacred sites. 
 
 These papers have since been carefully revised and 
 expanded, with the addition of much new matter and of 
 an introductory chapter. Especial care has been taken to 
 point out the appropriateness of the rewards promised to 
 the faithful in each Church, and their connection with some 
 special local circumstances of each city, a point which
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 seems scarcely to have been touched upon in the com- 
 mentaries on the Epistles. The principal engravings are from 
 the photographs taken by Signer Svoboda ; the small illus- 
 trations and vignettes are for the most part from rough 
 sketches made by the Author on the spot. 
 
 With the earnest prayer that these pages may, in 
 however humble a degree, subserve to the elucidation of 
 God's Holy Word, they are now sent forth. 
 
 H. B. TRISTRAM. 
 
 MODERN EPHESUS. 
 
 VI
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION i 
 
 EPHESUS 25 
 
 SMYRNA . .45 
 
 PERGAMOS 61 
 
 THYATIRA 79 
 
 SARDIS 93 
 
 PHILADELPHIA . 109 
 
 LAODICEA . 127
 
 THE TEMPLE SPOILS, SHOWING THE GOLDEN CANDLESTICK. 
 From the Arch qf Titus.
 
 THE 
 
 SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 NTRODUCTION. 
 
 EXT to the land conse- 
 crated by the footsteps of 
 our blessed Lord himself, 
 there is no country in the 
 world so full of associa- 
 tions precious to every 
 Christian as Asia Minor. 
 Those rugged and in- 
 dented shores are studded 
 with bays and harbours, 
 with a long bold range of 
 irregular peaks behind 
 them, through the passes 
 of which many a little 
 stream famed in story and 
 in poesy meanders to the 
 sea. There is not a har- 
 bour, not a valley, not a plain or mountain, not a brook or 
 dell of that classic soil but is associated with memorable names 
 
 TOMB OF ST. LUKE AT EPHESUS.
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 or exploits. The native land of Homer the oldest of poets, 
 of Herodotus the father of history, Ionia has afforded many 
 a scene for both. In fact, in its mythology and its history 
 it is even more characteristically Greek than was Greece itself. 
 Not only were much of the Hellenic mythology and traditions 
 connected with its romantic glens, it was the field of many 
 of the noblest struggles and the most brilliant victories of 
 Greece. The first resistance to the power of the Persian 
 empire was made by its people ; the doom of that empire, 
 when it crumbled before Alexander, was sealed on its soil. 
 We need not recapitulate the many bloody fields of Asia 
 Minor, in which is traced the final establishment of the 
 dominion of Rome over the East, and the internecine strug- 
 gles which were the prelude of Rome's decay. 
 
 "In this, now almost unknown part of Ancient Greece, 
 three of the seven wise men, in the early history of the world, 
 had their birth. Poetry, history, fable, and philosophy had 
 each their fathers in this country. Among the wonders of 
 the world, it boasted its Temple at Ephesus, its Mausoleum 
 in Caria, and its Colossus at Rhodes. The finest work of art, 
 the celebrated Venus, is attributed to this people. The most 
 wealthy of kings and the greatest of heroes rose in this 
 region, and their tumuli remain still undisturbed. The sites 
 of its cities are unknown to us ; and even the language of a 
 considerable portion, abounding in inscriptions, has hitherto 
 escaped the observation of the philologists of Europe." 1 
 
 The connection of Asia Minor with Greece was as ancient 
 as it was close. From the earliest to the latest period of the 
 
 1 Fellowes' " Lycia."
 
 INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 national history of these lands it is impossible to separate their 
 annals. The earliest epic in the world, the " Iliad " of Homer, 
 has its scene laid on the shores of Asia Minor. The first 
 struggles of Greece to light and to fame, whether in civili- 
 sation, war, or commerce, were here. The great contest with 
 the despotism of Persia, which arrested her march to universal 
 empire, began in cities of Ionia ; and the student of history 
 finds Greece and Asia continually interwoven in the annals 
 of Herodotus, himself an Asiatic Greek. 
 
 And when the Persian had been expelled, when for the 
 rigidity of Oriental despotism had been substituted the capri- 
 cious rule, more cruel and more reckless, of a fickle demo- 
 cracy, imposed on the cities and islands by their Athenian 
 champions Thucydides tells us how the internecine struggles 
 between Athens and Sparta for supremacy, and their contests 
 for the balance of power, were continually on Asiatic ground. 
 In the pages of that master of philosophic history we can 
 incidentally trace the political career of Miletus and Ephesus, 
 of Sardis and Lesbos, as the galleys of Athens and Sparta 
 disputed for supremacy on their coasts, or landed expedi- 
 tions in their rivers. The interest of the latter years of the 
 great Peloponnesian war, as told by Xenophon in his " Hel- 
 lenics," centres in the campaigns on the shores of Asia Minor. 
 Its cities were the hapless prize tossed by the chequered 
 fortune of war from one master to another, when the decay- 
 ing Persian empire, taking advantage of the exhaustion 
 under which, after years of civil strife, the republics of 
 Greece succumbed, until the genius of Philip of Macedon 
 welded them again into one nation, pushed forward its con- 
 quests, and regained much of its foothold in Asia Minor. 
 
 3
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 The thread of its history may be traced at this period in 
 Xenophon's " History of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand." 
 The old Lydian capital of Sardis still remained the seat of 
 government for the Persian satrapy, to which the country of 
 the Seven Churches was assigned. It was at Sardis that 
 Xenophon met the satrap Cyrus the younger, and joined him, 
 with his mercenaries, in the rash attempt to wrest the throne 
 from his brother, B.C. 401. From Sardis the army crossed the 
 
 RUINS OF CHKISTIAN CHURCH AT SARDIS. 
 
 Mount Taurus to Tarsus in Cilicia. Thence Cyrus led his 
 troops through Syria, and across the Euphrates, till forty miles 
 from Babylon the pretender fell in the battle of Cunaxa. The 
 little band of Greek mercenaries, thus left in the plains of 
 Babylonia, were led by Xenophon, after their original leader 
 had been treacherously murdered by the Persian satrap Tissa- 
 phernes, up the course of the Tigris and across Armenia 
 and the eastern portion of Asia Minor, until they reached 
 Trebizond, then a Greek colony, on the shores of the Black 
 
 4
 
 INTRO D UCTION. 
 
 Sea. Not long afterwards Xenophon led another expedition, 
 to aid the Spartans in their war against Persia, through the 
 valley of the Caicus and the country of the Seven Churches. 
 In the next generation, when Alexander took advantage 
 of the knowledge which the unopposed march of Xenophon 
 through the heart of the Persian empire had given to the 
 
 
 
 RUINS AT SAKDIS. 
 
 Greeks of the internal weakness of Persia, we find the coast- 
 line of Asia Minor again the theatre of important events. 
 
 From the conclusion of the Peloponnesian war, when Asia 
 Minor fell again under the power of Persia, the historian loses 
 sight of the history of its cities, till they successively yielded 
 to the Macedonian conqueror, becoming, for the most part, 
 no very reluctant subjects. Long unaccustomed to freedom, 
 
 5
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 it was to them the change from a foreign despot to a ruler 
 of their own kindred. Sardis, still the main station of the 
 Persians in Asia Minor, opened its gates on the approach of 
 the victor of the battle-field of Granicus, without a blow, 
 without even waiting a summons to surrender. Astonished 
 at the impregnable character of the fortifications of the citadel, 
 which he never could have subdued without a long siege, 
 Alexander directed a temple to be built in honour of Jupiter, 
 on the site of the old palace of the kings of Lydia, and, after 
 garrisoning the fortress, granted municipal freedom to Sardis, 
 on condition of the payment of the imperial tribute. He thus 
 inaugurated the system largely followed in after times by suc- 
 ceeding Roman conquerors, who, in most cases, as we see 
 especially in the New Testament history of the Jews, left the 
 vanquished nation at liberty to rule themselves, according 
 to their own laws and customs, so long as the imperial 
 supremacy in government and in foreign relations was in no 
 way impugned. 
 
 From Sardis Alexander marched to Ephesus, which, torn 
 by internal faction, promptly received him. We learn at once 
 the importance attached to the Temple of Diana at that 
 place, when we find the conqueror, while granting civil privi- 
 leges to the Greek city, not only demanding no tribute for 
 himself, but assigning the whole revenues which had formerly 
 been enjoyed by the Persians to the shrine of the great 
 goddess of the Ephesians. Before quitting Ephesus to subdue 
 Miletus, Alexander took part in one of the grandest pageants 
 ever witnessed in that gorgeous fane, when, at the head of his 
 whole army in battle array, he proceeded thither in solemn 
 procession, and there did homage to the goddess. Pergamus 
 6
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and Thyatira had submitted before he reached Sardis. There 
 remained only of the Ionian towns the great city of Miletus, 
 which, close to the sea, and with the Persian fleet of four 
 hundred sail within reach, determined to hold out. But the 
 activity of Alexander's far inferior squadron baffled the Persian 
 plans, and occupied the entrance to the harbour before the 
 admiral of Darius arrived. After a bloody struggle Alexander 
 
 RUINS ON THE ROAD TO MILETUS, NEAR EI'HESUS. 
 
 stormed the fortress of Miletus, and when a body of Greek 
 mercenaries made a stout defence, he allowed them to capitu- 
 late, took them into his service, and granted to the remnant 
 of the Milesians the privileges of a free city. 
 
 A little incident told by an ancient historian, of a discussion 
 between Alexander and his general Parmenio just before the 
 siege of Miletus, throws a curious light upon the strange power 
 
 7
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 which superstition held over the minds of even the most 
 enlightened and least bigoted heathen. The question was 
 whether the Macedonians should risk a sea fight against the 
 far superior Persian fleet. On the sea-shore, near the rear of 
 the Macedonian ships, Parmenio had seen an eagle, and there- 
 upon presaged victory. But Alexander refused to admit this 
 inference from the omen. As the eagle had been seen, it was 
 a presage to him of victory, but as it was seen over the land, 
 the victory would be of his land troops, who should by opera- 
 tions on shore overcome the Asiatic fleet. The anecdote shows 
 how easy it was for a shrewd interpreter to accommodate any 
 omen or ambiguous oracle to his plans or his wishes, and of 
 what vast importance it was to a governor or a general to 
 have a quick-witted and pliant prophet by his side to influ- 
 ence and cheer his men. 
 
 From this period the cities of Asia Minor shared the 
 varying fortunes of the conquests of Alexander, passing from 
 one successful general to another, being incorporated into 
 kingdoms which rarely survived the lifetime of their founders. 
 They formed part of the dominion of Lysander. On the fall 
 of the Greek power they were all included in the kingdom of 
 Pergamus, whose kings, as will be mentioned under Pergamus, 
 acquired and, for several generations, held the greater part of 
 Western Asia Minor. When the last Attalus bequeathed his 
 wealth to Rome, they fell, of course, under the imperial sway. 
 Ephesus was especially honoured by the Western rulers, on 
 account of the reverence paid to the Temple of Diana, which 
 had long been held an inviolable sanctuary for every class of 
 criminals. This privilege was so extended by Anthony as to 
 
 embrace a great part of the city within the area of asylum. 
 
 8
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 But many campaigns had to be fought before the Romans 
 secured peaceable possession of the great Greek colonies 
 of Asia Minor. King Antiochus received Hannibal near 
 Ephesus, and there the Carthaginian general had frequent 
 interviews with the Roman embassy sent to negotiate with 
 the Syrian monarch. Near Ephesus, too, in the war which 
 followed, several battles were fought between the Romans and 
 Antiochus, till the campaign was decided by the great victory 
 of Magnesia. Cornelius Scipio wintered at Ephesus and the 
 other Ionian cities immediately after the battle, and finally 
 rewarded their ally, the King of Pergamus, with Sardis, 
 Ephesus, Miletus, and the other cities of Asia Minor. In the 
 Mithridatic war, which followed during the supremacy of Sulla, 
 they all threw off the Roman yoke, but were received back by 
 the Romans, on their submission and the payment of a heavy 
 fine, after which they seem to have passively followed the 
 fortunes of the ruling faction of the imperial city, and never 
 again took an independent course in politics. As will be seen 
 in the accounts of the several cities, they rivalled each other 
 in servility, deifying the Roman emperors, and erecting temples 
 in honour of the despot of the day. 
 
 Ephesus was the landing-place for Asia Minor. Cicero, 
 when appointed governor of Cilicia, visited these cities on his 
 way. In his letters he gives accounts of his arrival at Ephesus, 
 and of his journey thence to Laodicea, the financial capital 
 of the province, following very much the same route as that 
 subsequently taken by Paul and Barnabas. The cities appear 
 in early Christian history as the centres of theological contro- 
 versy, rather than as possessing any political importance. Great 
 councils were held at Ephesus, Sardis, Laodicea, Nicaea, and 
 
 c 9
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 other of the Ionian cities. The temples were partly demolished 
 and partly converted into Christian churches by Constantine 
 and his successors. But the country soon fell into political 
 decay and spiritual death, till it was wrested from the feeble 
 sceptre of the Byzantine emperors. In A.D. 615, Chosroes, 
 king of Persia, overran and conquered the whole of Asia 
 Minor, except a part of the coast-line. Chalcedon was taken, 
 and a Persian camp established for ten years on the Bosphorus, 
 
 GATE OF 1'ERSECUTION AT AYASOLOUK, NEAR EPHESUS. 
 
 within sight of Byzantium. Most of the splendid basilicas 
 and Christian fanes of the Seven Churches, on which the 
 Eastern emperors had lavished their wealth, were destroyed 
 or desecrated by being devoted to fire worship. The cere- 
 monies of the magi were established everywhere, and thou- 
 sands of Christians were slaughtered. But in the three famous 
 campaigns of Heraclius, the Persian conquests were all wrested 
 
 10
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 from them, and the empire of Chosroes ended with his deposi- 
 tion and murder by his son in A.D. 628. 
 
 For the next four hundred years Asia Minor was, for the 
 most part, nominally under the Greek empire, and Christianity 
 prevailed ; yet it suffered terribly from the repeated inroads of 
 Persians and Saracens, till, in A.D. 1074, Soliman, the Turkish 
 sultan, finally rent the whole of Asia Minor, the cradle and 
 nurse of so many churches, from the sceptre of the Chris- 
 tian empire. Ages of war, discord, luxury, and corruption 
 had already done their work. " The wealth of Lydia, the arts 
 of the Greeks, the splendour of the Augustan age, existed 
 only in books and ruins." Soliman established his palace in 
 Nicsea. The divinity of our Lord was blasphemed and derided 
 in the same temple where it had been pronounced an orthodox 
 dogma by the great Christian council. Laodicea was made a 
 great Moslem centre. All the churches of Asia were pro- 
 faned. The Greek Christians could only exercise their reli- 
 gion on the hard conditions of tribute and servitude. Their 
 daughters were everywhere at the mercy of the Turks, and 
 their sons were seized and circumcised before their eyes, and 
 compelled to conform to Mohammedanism. 
 
 For a time, indeed, the Turkish kingdom was broken, when 
 the Crusading host, led by Raymond, Robert of Normandy, 
 Godfrey, and Tancred, in A.D. 1097, boldly invaded Asia Minor, 
 besieged and stormed the fortress of Nice, and then marched 
 towards Syria through a wasted land and deserted towns, after 
 a hard-fought battle and complete victory over the Turks near 
 Dorylaeum in Phrygia. But the Christian restoration was 
 short-lived, and long before the Crusaders had been expelled 
 from Palestine, Asia Minor was again in Moslem fetters, Turks
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 overrunning the west, and Kurds pressing from the eastern 
 frontier, till Orchan the Ottoman established the Turkish 
 capital of Asia at Broussa, A.D. 1312, and the ruin of the 
 Seven Churches was consummated. The invasion of Tamer- 
 lane, the Great Mogul, in A.D. 1402, was but a temporary 
 change of tyrants ; yet it is worthy of remark that the Indian 
 prince kept his camp and court for some months at Smyrna, 
 and from thence set out on an expedition to conquer the far 
 distant Chinese empire. But when he left Asia Minor, he 
 left it without a palace, a treasure, or a king, and till the 
 reunion of the Ottoman empire, twenty years later, the hapless 
 land was overspread by hordes of Tartars and Turkoman 
 robbers. Since then it has lain a soulless carcase under the 
 leaden weight of Turkish rule. 
 
 Asia Minor, though now so fallen and obscure that for cen- 
 turies it has dropped out of the world's history, must yet ever 
 be regarded as the second cradle both of civilisation and of 
 Christianity. It was the first region colonised by Greek 
 settlers, *and the foundation of its maritime cities carries us 
 back into the era of myth and fable, soon after the fall of 
 Troy. It was, in fact, the America of Greece, the region 
 into which was naturally drawn not only all the superabun- 
 dant population, but the more ruthless, bold, and ambitious 
 spirits. Often, too, the bands of defeated but not dispirited 
 political partisans from the various petty states and cities of 
 the mother-land found a refuge here. With a wider territory, 
 and comparatively unlimited space for expansion, the increase 
 of wealth and refinement was much more rapid among the 
 Ionian Greeks than in Greece itself. Not only did their com- 
 merce far surpass that of the parent states, but in the arts of 
 
 12
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 peace, in architecture, sculpture, painting, and poesy, Corinth 
 was the only city which rivalled them. They were the first 
 to cast metal statues, and excelled in painting before the art 
 was known in Greece. They acquired from the Egyptians 
 a knowledge of all their artistic processes, and then applied 
 these with their own skill and aesthetic powers, unfettered by 
 the slavish adherence to precedent which had dwarfed and 
 cramped the original conception. Hence the greater part of the 
 sculptors and painters of early Hellenic art were Asiatic Greeks. 
 Nor was it otherwise in poetry and history. We have 
 already referred to Homer and Herodotus, the fathers of 
 their respective literatures. So too in philosophy. The oldest 
 school was the Ionian. Its founder was Thales of Miletus, the 
 contemporary of Solon. These Ionian philosophers were the 
 forerunners of the modern investigators into the origin of matter 
 and life. They endeavoured, by such steps as they could find, 
 to mount from a primeval chaos into the later order of 
 nature. Thales attributed the origin of all life to water. 
 Fifty years later, Anaximenes of Miletus held air to be the 
 universal source of life. He was followed by Heraclitus of 
 Ephesus, who preferred fire, or some still more subtle fluid, 
 and who maintained that there is a single permanent intel- 
 ligent substance amidst the constant flux of all sensible 
 objects. Anaxagoras of Clazomenas improved upon this, and 
 approached the idea of the unity of the Godhead, maintain- 
 ing that there is a supreme mind, distinct from the chaos to 
 which it imparts motion, form, and order. We see in these 
 philosophical speculations that same subtlety of intellect and 
 fondness for metaphysical disquisition which has left its im- 
 press on Oriental Christianity, rending the Eastern church by
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 schisms, the grounds of which are scarcely appreciable by 
 ordinary Western minds, and which nils the pages of eccle- 
 siastical history with barren and profitless controversy. 
 
 Equally extensive and varied are the stores of archaeolo- 
 gical remains fragmentary, alas ! for the most part, but full of 
 interest, and forming a sculptured commentary on the history 
 
 REMAINS OF AQUEDUCT NEAR SMYRNA. 
 
 of Asia Minor. These may be grouped into three great 
 classes the pre-historic, the classic, and the Byzantine. 
 
 The pre-historic archaeology of the country has scarcely 
 yet been examined. The famous mounds of Sardis, the 
 tombs of the Lydian kings, which will be mentioned in their 
 place, are well known, having been described by Herodotus, 
 but to this day they remain, happily, unrifled. It is only 
 recently that close attention has been drawn to the numerous 
 Phrygian and Oriental sculptures, many of which were 
 noticed by Fellowes and by Hamilton. 
 14
 
 INTRO D UCTION. 
 
 An American missionary, Dr. Van Lennep, has lately, in 
 a most interesting journal of "Travels in Asia Minor," 1 given 
 us much fuller details of these extraordinary monuments, left 
 by a race or dynasty of the existence of which we scarcely find 
 a trace in history. Some of the most remarkable are colossal 
 rock sculptures at Pterium, of royal personages, processions, 
 priests, and animals. They have a remarkable affinity both 
 to Assyrian and Egyptian rock sculptures, but are of a distinct 
 character, and doubtless belong to the epoch of an ancient 
 
 CAPITAL USED AS A WELL-THOUGH NEAR THYATIRA. 
 
 Phrygian dynasty. The faces are decidedly handsome and 
 regular, neither Egyptian nor Assyrian, and of the Caucasian 
 type. There are figures of gods, probably the Baal of the 
 Phoenicians, but with the Phrygian cap, marking a national 
 divinity, and also a queen riding on a leopard, the well-known 
 emblem of the Assyrian Astarte, the Astaroth of the Sido- 
 nians. Some of the representations seem to point to the 
 hideous custom of human sacrifice. It is worthy of remark 
 
 1 " Travels in Little-known Parts of Asia Minor." By H. J. Van Lennep, 
 D.D. London : Murray. 1870.
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 that the symbol of the two-headed eagle appears on all these 
 Phrygian sculptures. 
 
 But it is at Euyuk that the most remarkable pre-historic 
 remains have been discovered. These consist of a vast temple, 
 somewhat on the model of those at Nineveh, with a peristyle 
 flanked by colossal figures, after the manner of the Assyrian 
 bulls. But the type of the faces and the workmanship are 
 distinct in character from the sculptures of Pterium, and seem 
 to point strongly to an Egyptian origin. Not only the features 
 of the men, but their costumes, their deity a bull on a pedestal, 
 the monkey an African importation, human sacrifice, and 
 especially the sphinxes, Dr. Van Lennep thinks strongly sup- 
 port this view. The peculiarities are the same as those on 
 the figure of Sesostris, near Nymphis, which Herodotus states 
 positively to be Egyptian. We have here some light cast on 
 an Egyptian expedition mentioned in Holy Scripture, the con- 
 quest of Rehoboam by Shishak, or Sesostris. Sesostris, after 
 overrunning the land of Israel, passed under the Lebanon by 
 the road he constructed in the rocks near Beyrout, where his 
 tablet above the Dog River commemorates his achievements. 
 Pursuing his conquering career by the plains of Issus, the shores 
 of Lycia, then by the passes of Mount Tmolus, by Ephesus 
 and Sardis, he for a time established himself in Phrygia, 
 where this temple, erected to the gods of Egypt, was after- 
 wards adapted by the Phrygians to the worship of Astarte. 
 
 The Greek remains of Asia Minor are well known. The 
 Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the 
 Temple of Ephesus, were among the seven wonders of the 
 ancient world, and Lycia alone has been a mine not yet 
 exhausted, which has already filled one of the most important 
 16
 
 INTROD UCTION. 
 
 rooms in the British Museum. Zeuxis and Apelles, the greatest 
 painters of antiquity, are claimed as sons of Asia ; and it is 
 not too much to say that most of the cities of the Seven 
 Churches are to this day a quarry of statuary, broken, indeed, 
 and mutilated, but attesting the skill with which the Grecian 
 chisel moulded stone to the ideal of beauty, too often sensuous 
 and voluptuous, like the idolatry of the land itself. 
 
 The Christian, Byzantine, and Saracenic remains are equally 
 numerous, though the former have suffered more from the 
 ravages of Turkish barbarism than even the fanes of classic 
 Greece, save when they have been employed for the lirne*- 
 burner's'kiln. But these, and especially the remains of Chris- 
 tian churches, will be more specially mentioned in detail in 
 the accounts of the several cities. 
 
 To turn from man and his remains to the physical character 
 of Asia Minor, there is much in its rugged, varied, and moun- 
 tainous nature to explain the important role it has played in 
 the world's history. The western part of the country is thickly 
 crowded with mountains, some in chains, and others isolated 
 and irregular. Three Alpine chains run east and west. First 
 is the chain of Olympus, running from the Homeric Ida into 
 Mysia and Bithynia, where it is capped with perpetual snow. 
 Another smaller range, the Temnus, forms the watershed north 
 of the Hermes, and on its slopes stands Thyatira. Then com- 
 mences the chain of the historic Tmolus, overshadowing 
 Smyrna and Sardis. Another little parallel range crops from 
 the sea at Ephesus, and separates the fertile plains of the 
 Cayster and the Meander; while, south of the Meander and 
 Miletus, the lofty range of Cadmus extends far to the east, 
 .till it merges in the Mount Taurus chain overshadowing Cilicia 
 
 D 17
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 and Tarsus, and so, running from Asia Minor through the 
 north of Syria, turns to the Euphrates. 
 
 Not less varied is its geology, and this, like its configura- 
 tion, has contributed to the variety of its products. The 
 peninsula resembles in many points the rest of the Medi- 
 terranean shores in its geology. The northern part rests on 
 an axis of schistose rocks, of which the northern mountain 
 ranges are composed. The southern parts, as Taurus, Caria, 
 and Lycia, are composed of the same compact white limestone 
 as many of the Greek islands, the prime specimen of which 
 is the Parian marble of the sculptor. 
 
 Mount Tmolus and the mountains of the Ionian coast 
 consist largely of micaceous schist and saccharine marble, but 
 continually within a very short distance of the coast-line we 
 find vast volcanic tracts, and everywhere strange contortions 
 of strata, convulsions and intrusions of igneous and volcanic 
 rocks. One district, that to the east of Sardis, is named the 
 Katakaumene, or " burnt-up," being, in fact, like an ocean of 
 lava which had been suddenly petrified in a storm ; and craters 
 starting up as sharp and black as though they had but yes- 
 terday belched forth their liquid fires. The region exactly 
 recalls the district of Auvergne, in Central France, and of the 
 Hauran, or Bashan, east of the Lake of Galilee. These ex- 
 tinct volcanoes explain also the continuous earthquakes which 
 have devastated Ionia from the earliest period of its history 
 to the present day. Hence the geologist would call it a recent 
 country. Its oldest organic remains belong only to the period 
 of our chalk formation, and the limestones and shales of the 
 chalk have become, unlike those of this country, hard and 
 compact, from heat and pressure, and are often crystalline. 
 18
 
 INTR OD UCT10N, 
 
 The mountain chains we have described do not seem to be 
 older than the end of the secondary geologic period, while 
 the evidences of volcanic action, the eruptions of lava and 
 basaltic dykes, which everywhere occur, are of the tertiary 
 geologic age. These have often enclosed vast fresh-water 
 lakes, the deposits of which, forming the superficial soil of 
 the country, contribute largely to its fertility by the great 
 depth of the alluvium of the plains. 
 
 WELL NEAR SMYRNA. 
 
 The mountains are still generally clothed with the 
 primeval pine forests, and Mount Taurus with cedars. 
 Though many of the wild beasts of yore have dis- 
 appeared, still bears, wolves, jackals, and a few leopards 
 are to be found, which in winter visit the flocks and herds 
 of the shepherds of the plains. While these wild beasts 
 are driven down from the mountains in winter, their forest 
 fastnesses are used as places of shelter by the wild Turko- 
 mans, gipsies, and other nomad tribes, who pitch their tents 
 
 19
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 in summer unrestricted over the vast interior plains, and 
 then return to the caverns and forests for the winter. 
 
 There is little to observe on the natural history of the 
 country. It was too long subdued by man for any of the 
 larger species of wild animals to have continued through 
 historic times secure even in the recesses of the mountains. 
 The bison, the aurochs, the lion have long since disappeared. 
 The wild goat, or ibex, may be found on a few rocky heights. 
 The mouflon, or wild sheep, has left no trace. Its birds are 
 like those of the neighbouring regions, less abundant in species 
 than Syria, which contains several southern forms which do not 
 reach farther north, while the mighty range of the Caucasus 
 and the vast plains of Southern Russia contain others for 
 which Asia Minor is not so well adapted. We consequently 
 know of few, if any, which are peculiar to the country, and 
 the most remarkable species seem more abundant either to 
 the east and south of it than in the region itself. 
 
 Of its domestic animals we may observe that it is the 
 north-western limit of the use of the camel as a beast of 
 burden, while the Bactrian, or two-humped camel, is found in 
 the east of the peninsula. The Angora goat, celebrated for 
 its fine hair, is still cherished and prized, and is almost con- 
 fined to Anatolia. The single-humped camel has probably 
 been introduced, or more largely used, by the nomad immi- 
 grants than in former times. Even now, though the West- 
 ern innovation of railways has preceded settled government, 
 safe roads, police, or any other mark of civilisation, and lines 
 of rail from Smyrna to Cassaba and Aidin bring the pro- 
 ducts of the interior to the port of shipment, the long trains 
 of camels compete, not unsuccessfully, with the steam-engine,: 
 
 20
 
 INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 in a country where labour costs little, and where time is 
 not yet recognised as a commodity of value. 
 
 The traveller in the East is often struck by the gro- 
 tesque juxtaposition of Oriental crystallisation and European 
 progress. Nowhere is this more startling than in the rail- 
 ways which he will use in visiting the Seven Churches.; 
 English enterprise suggested the idea of. a line with 
 
 RUINS AT EPHESL'S. 
 
 branches which should carry the raw produce, the hides, 
 wool, goats' hair, gums, drugs, and especially the cotton of 
 the interior, to Smyrna for shipment. The project has been 
 already partially carried out. The branch to Cassaba from 
 Smyrna conveys the traveller close to Sardis, and, turning 
 south, he will find by his time-table, published in Italian, 
 that he can go by rail in two and a half hours to Ephesus 
 (Ayasolouk station), where there is a newly-erected inn in
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 connection with the station ; and if he wishes to spend a 
 Sabbath morning among the desolate ruins of the city of 
 St. John, return tickets from Smyrna to Ephesus are avail- 
 able from Saturday to Monday. From Ephesus the line 
 turns to the south-east, passing on the way to Aidin (the 
 ancient Tralles) the ruins of Magnesia, where also there is 
 a station, at which every traveller will halt for a day or 
 two to explore these remains, crowded, as is all this land, 
 with associations both classical and Christian. 
 
 PERGAMOS. REMAINS OF A WATERCOURSE UNDER THE CITY WALLS. 
 
 22
 
 EPHESUS. 
 
 T is to themes of far greater interest 
 than the antiquities or the resources 
 of the country that the thoughts of the 
 Christian traveller will recur when he 
 stands on Mount Prion, and looks down, 
 over the seats of the theatre of 
 Ephesus, upon that narrow marshy 
 plain, where the dark reeds wave 
 among broken friezes and marble 
 fragments, and mark the winding 
 course of the little Cayster through 
 the morass which was once the 
 
 harbour of Ephesus, till it enters the lonely bay, where "no 
 gallant ship with oars" passes by. 
 
 Of Ephesus, no less than of Babylon, has the denunciation 
 been fulfilled : " I will make it a possession for the bittern, 
 and pools of water ; and I will sweep it with the besom of 
 destruction, saith the Lord of hosts." "The cormorant and 
 the bittern shall possess it ; the owl also and the raven 
 shall dwell in it ; and he shall stretch out upon it the 
 line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness." Who can 
 
 E 25 
 
 TOMB AT EPHESUS.
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 gaze on that scene without recalling the warning, " I will come 
 unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his 
 place, except thou repent " ? l 
 
 Out of the Holy Land itself there is no place more inti- 
 mately connected with apostolic and Christian history. With 
 the lives of two of the chiefest of the apostles it is closely 
 bound. Here St. Paul remained for the space of two years, 
 so that all they which dwelt in Asia (that is, the small 
 Roman province of which Ephesus was the capital) heard 
 the word of the Lord Jesus. 2 Hence he indited the first 
 epistle to the Corinthians. To the Ephesian church also he 
 addressed one of his chief epistles during his first imprison- 
 ment at Rome ; and to its chief pastor, his own son in the 
 faith, were written two other epistles. In that theatre St. 
 Paul's companions faced the infuriated crowd of idolaters, and 
 in it, in the next generation, many a saint won his martyr's 
 crown. Here St. John passed many tranquil years, and to 
 it, first of all the churches of Asia, he addressed his epistle 
 from his banishment in Patmos ; and here the beloved disciple 
 at last ended his days. 
 
 It is interesting to note how many topographical allusions 
 in the New Testament are illustrated as we take our stand 
 on Mount Prion. First there are " the upper coasts," 
 through which St. Paul having passed, came to Ephesus, 
 when he was about to make that city his residence, where 
 during the space of three years all they that dwelt in Asia 
 (that is, in the surrounding province) heard the word. 
 These are those upper coasts, the high table-land with its 
 
 1 Rev. ii. 5. 2 Acts xix. 10. * Acts xix. i. 
 
 25
 
 EPHESUS. 
 
 rugged edges behind us, the uplands of Asia Minor, through 
 which passed the roads which entered Ephesus by the Sar- 
 dian and Magnesian gates. The former of these roads, that 
 trodden by St. Paul in his journey, can still be easily 
 traced. In places its very pavement yet remains. Looking 
 eastward over the ruins and the Cayster, we may trace the 
 silted harbour of Panormus and the bay opening beyond it. 
 Into that harbour the apostle entered when he sailed across 
 the ^gean, after his sojourn in Corinth. 1 Close in shore, 
 by that little bay he coasted, when he hurried from Trogyllium 
 
 VIEW OF MOUNT PR1ON, EPHESfS. 
 
 to Miletus, on his last free voyage. To our left we may trace 
 the southern coast-road leading to Miletus, by which the 
 elders of the Ephesian church travelled to receive the last 
 charge of their spiritual father at Miletus. 2 In the opposite 
 direction another road winds by the shore towards Smyrna, 
 while to our left we can trace along the crest of the ridge 
 
 1 Acts xviii. 19. 2 Acts xx. 17-38. 
 
 27
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 of Mount Coressus the scarcely broken line of ruin which 
 marks the old walls of the Greek city. 
 
 But it is most of all round the Temple of Diana and her 
 worship that the associations of ante-Christian Ephesus cluster. 
 Strange that -while the temples of Attica and of Peloponne- 
 sian Greece are still the admiration of the world, as they 
 tower on their mountain tops, the fair but lifeless skeletons 
 of a long-perished superstition the very site of the great 
 Temple of Diana of Ephesus, once one of the world's wonders, 
 is itself a matter of dispute, that the house of her whom once 
 all Asia and the world worshipped cannot be certainly 
 identified. 1 The complete disappearance of this stupendous 
 edifice is accounted for by its proximity to the sea, by 
 which, on the establishment of Christianity, its choicest 
 marbles were easily exported for the decoration of the 
 cathedrals of Byzantium and Italy. It is there we must 
 look for the actual remains of Diana's temple. Some of the 
 pillars of the church of St. Sophia, now the grand mosque of 
 Constantinople, are known to have been brought from hence, 
 notably the magnificent columns of green jasper. But long 
 after it was despoiled of its choicest ornaments, the temple 
 continued to be the quarry for all the surrounding country, 
 and for the Genoese traders. 
 
 The temple, as it stood when St. Paul gazed on it, was 
 not of great antiquity. The older building. was destroyed by 
 fire on the night when Alexander the Great was born, and, 
 
 1 Since the above was written, Mr. Wood has this year (1871) discovered 
 beyond question the site of the Temple of Diana, outside the city, near the 
 point of junction of the roads from the Magnesian and Sardian gates. His 
 invaluable researches will shortly be published. 
 28
 
 EPHESUS. 
 
 magnificent as it had been, it was replaced by another of far 
 more stupendous proportions, and of more costly material. It 
 was the first great building in the Ionic style, of which it 
 was the acknowledged model. It was round this temple that 
 the political, municipal, and social system of Ephesus revolved, 
 and we shall find many expressions in the Acts of the Apostles 
 and in the epistles illustrated by the Diana-worship. 
 
 Moreover, not only was this temple the great centre 
 of worship, it was the first asylum or sanctuary of Asiatic 
 Greece, which screened any misdoer who took refuge within 
 its precincts. It was the great bank, or depository of wealth, 
 bullion, and jewels. To the temple those who had precious 
 metals or valuables to hoard, intrusted them for safe keeping 
 in an age of constant warfare and unscrupulous rapine, as a 
 spot which none, not the most reckless conqueror, would dare 
 to profane. It was also the great repository of art treasures 
 in the ancient world. The choicest paintings, the master- 
 pieces of Apollodorus, Apelles, and Zeuxis, were collected on 
 its walls. Monarchs and republics vied with each other in 
 making gifts of the costliest works of art. Its corridors were 
 filled with the triumphs of the statuary's art, by Praxiteles and 
 others, statues which we know modern art has not rivalled. 
 And besides this, it was the repository for trophies, gathered 
 by victors in all parts of the known world, while rarities and 
 curiosities of every kind were displayed there. It was, in fact, 
 the Great Exhibition of the ancient world, and the first of its 
 kind on record. It was truly an exhibition ; as many of the 
 works of art were simply deposited like the treasure chests, 
 and exhibited by the owners for a fixed or an indefinite 
 
 period. 
 
 29
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 The magnificent pile, with its history and repeated destruc- 
 tion by fire, may well have suggested the architectural alle- 
 gory of St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, written 
 from this place : " As a wise master-builder, I have laid 
 the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. ... If any 
 man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, 
 
 MEDAL OF EPHESUS. 
 
 On the obverse The figure of the goddess with her hounds, and priest and priestess. 
 
 On the reverse The fagade of the Temple, with the inscription Aij VfWKOpuv Etyemuv : the two 
 vergers or temple-sweepers, translated in our version " worshipper." 
 
 wood, hay, stubble ; every man's work shall be made manifest : 
 for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by 
 fire ; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort 
 it is." 1 
 
 Whatever were the other claims of Ephesus to pre- 
 eminence among the cities of Asia, the principal one was its 
 
 i Cor. iii. TO 13. 
 
 3
 
 EPHESUS. 
 
 devotion to the worship of Diana. Hence its title, 
 inadequately rendered in our version, " worshipper," 1 or in 
 the margin, "the temple keeper," or "warden," as we might 
 call it, literally the " temple-sweeper " of the goddess. The 
 title was not that of an individual, but was the national boast 
 of the whole people. It is found on the existing inscriptions ; 
 it occurs as repeatedly on their coins as Fidei Defensor does 
 on ours. It was the word that kindled the enthusiasm of the 
 Ephesians, and this temple was the rallying-point of heathen 
 fanaticism from the time of St. Paul to that of Polycarp. 
 
 The temple, we are told, was 425 feet long, 220 broad, 
 and its colonnade was supported by 127 shafts of marble, 
 each of them 60 feet high, and each the gift of a king. 
 It is to be remembered that it was open to the sky, being 
 in fact a series of colonnades surrounding the small inner 
 shrine, or holy place, where the idol was concealed from 
 view. It was visited by vast crowds of pilgrims from all 
 parts of the province, especially in spring, and at the time 
 of the games in May, which was called the month of Diana. 
 It was at this time that St. Paul's preaching aroused the 
 fanaticism of the craftsmen. It was the custom for visitors 
 to purchase and take away with them little portable shrines, 
 or models of the temple, which were made in various mate- 
 rials, and provided a lucrative trade for many artisans. 
 Alexander the coppersmith, as well as Demetrius, was pro- 
 bably one of these shrine-makers. The models are depicted 
 on many Ephesian coins. The time of the year being that 
 of the great festival, which had supplanted the old Pan- Ionian 
 
 1 Acts xix. 35.
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 assembly, explains the vast concourse which was gathered 
 together in the theatre. 
 
 But there is a more definite allusion to these games 
 in the title 'Ao-ia/o^ai, 1 translated "chiefs of Asia." These 
 Asiarchs were honorary dignitaries, appointed to preside over 
 the annual games. The office, one of high rank and much 
 expense, was imposed, like our shrievalty, on persons of 
 wealth and station. That any of them should have been 
 among the friends of St. Paul shows the hold which his 
 preaching must already have taken of the city. 
 
 Another incident in the history recalls other peculiarities 
 in the Diana worship of Ephesus. Though a Greek city, 
 
 Ephesus was on Asiatic soil ; and 
 it would seem that Oriental super- 
 stitions had become mingled with 
 Hellenic rites. The very image 
 itself was strangely out of keep- 
 ing with the graceful and sym- 
 metrical fane. It was rather like 
 the grotesque idols of modern 
 Hindostan, a female figure, carved 
 in wood, with an immense number 
 of breasts, and ending in a shape- 
 less block. Her worship, it has 
 well been observed, was " not a 
 vaunting philosophy, but a dark 
 and Asiatic superstition." Hence 
 it was connected with Oriental magic ; and the " Ephesian 
 
 MEDAL OF EPHESUS, WITH IMAGE OF 
 THE GODDESS. 
 
 J Acts xix. 3 1.
 
 EPHESUS. 
 
 letters," or mysterious symbols, were carried about as charms, 
 and used as amulets for protection against evil spirits. It 
 was against the possessors of this witchcraft that we are 
 told St. Paul was enabled to perform " special miracles " 
 (literally, " no ordinary wonders "), from which we may gather 
 that they were different from his usual miracles, and intended 
 to refute the- pretenders to witchcraft. Thus, to show St. 
 Paul's superiority to the ordinary manufacturers of talismans, 
 "from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs 
 or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil 
 spirits went out of them." 1 
 
 We soon hear of the effect of these signs upon the pos- 
 sessors of magical arts, many of whom, we read, not only 
 abandoned their profession, but brought their books together 
 and burned them before all men ; thus publicly proving the 
 sincerity of their recantation, and acknowledging themselves 
 convinced by a higher power. Costly as were all books in 
 that age, these carefully emblazoned collections of mystic 
 sentences, and manuals of enchantment, would command a 
 price far beyond that of ordinary literature, easily reaching 
 fifty thousand drachmae, or about ,2,000 sterling. 
 
 With our reminiscences of the temple as connected with 
 St. Paul's history, those of the Theatre of Ephesus are inter- 
 woven, and to this also the Scripture allusions are many. 
 About its site, at the foot of Mount Prion, partly scarped out 
 of its slope, there can be no dispute. It remains to this day 
 the only tolerably perfect relic of ancient Ephesus. We can 
 still look down from the hill above on to its circling tiers of 
 
 1 Acts xix. 12. 
 
 F 33
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 seats, which show it to have been, next to the Coliseum 
 and the theatre of El Djem, in Africa, probably the 
 largest in the world. From the narrative of the Acts we 
 find it was used not merely for games, but for great popular 
 assemblies. Ephesus still retained, in great measure, its 
 powers of self-government under the Romans : the " town 
 clerk," or keeper of the records, was an official of importance, 
 and the state paper office is mentioned in an existing inscrip- 
 tion. The " deputies " (avQviraToi) are also inscribed on coins 
 
 REMAINS OF AMPHITHEATRE AT EPHESUS. 
 
 of the city. They were the proconsuls who held the assizes, 
 and these were going on at the time of the outcry against 
 St. Paul : " the law is open," literally, " the assizes are being 
 held." Thus the town clerk reminds the rioters that they can 
 obtain immediate redress for any proved grievance, and pro- 
 ceeds to warn them of the danger of imperilling the freedom 
 of the people by their tumultuous conduct, as their privileges 
 were only enjoyed by the sufferance of the Roman suzerain. 
 Probably to this scene St. Paul alludes when he observes, "If 
 34
 
 EPHESUS. 
 
 after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at 
 Ephesus." 
 
 We have by no means exhausted the illustrations which 
 Ephesus and its history afford of the narrative of the apos- 
 tolic journeys ; but with the scene in the theatre, and St. 
 Paul's affectionate farewell of the church, its direct connection 
 with his life terminates, excepting on the occasion when he 
 sent from Miletus for the elders of the Ephesian church ; yet 
 his heart, through all his wanderings and trials, was still with 
 his children there. It was several years afterwards that he 
 wrote from Rome his epistle to the Ephesians ; and later 
 still, after his liberation, he despatched from Macedonia his 
 first epistle to Timothy, whom he had put in charge of that 
 church, supplying him with credentials which should induce 
 his flock the more readily to submit to the spiritual authority 
 .of their youthful bishop, and should strengthen him in his 
 struggle with the heretical teachers, who had even now arisen 
 in the church. Then, towards the close of his second impri- 
 sonment, with his martyr's crown full in view, in his second 
 epistle he exhorts Timothy, with all the earnestness of a 
 dying man, to hold fast the faith, and resist the heresies 
 which threatened to eat like a cancer into the vitals of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Whether Timothy was able to obey the call in this last 
 of the apostle's letters, and to visit him in Rome before his 
 martyrdom, we know not. We only know that a few months 
 afterwards, he whose labours and writings have invested 
 Ephesus with a glory and a fame as immortal as the renown 
 of Diana's temple has been transitory, was led forth beyond 
 the Ostian gate of Rome, to leave not only the legacy of 
 
 35
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 his blood to be the seed of the martyrs that should follow 
 him, but his written words to be the living oracles of the 
 church throughout the world, ages after the Ephesus to whom 
 they were primarily addressed had passed away and become 
 a desolate wilderness. 
 
 But it is not with St. Paul only that the ecclesiastical 
 reminiscences of Ephesus are linked. Another disciple even 
 he whom Jesus loved seems to hover in spirit over the 
 ruined city. All we know of the later days of St. John is in 
 connection with it ; but we have not, as in the case of St. 
 Paul, a crowd of scriptural incidents elucidated by the place 
 and its history. Beyond his apocalyptic epistle, the Bible 
 yields us no evidence of his residence in Asia ; but his 
 memory still lingers there, enshrined even in the Turkish 
 name of the squalid village about two miles from the ruins, 
 the only inhabited place in the neighbourhood Ayasolouk, 
 which is a corruption of the Greek ''Ayioe GeoXoyoc " the holy 
 theologian," the name universally given to the apostle in the 
 Oriental church. 
 
 The apocalyptic epistle to each church begins by a 
 distinct title of the Son of God, differing in each case, but 
 all taken from the mystic symbols which surround him, as 
 described in the first chapter. Perhaps deeper knowledge 
 might discover something in each appropriate to the special 
 circumstances of that church, as there certainly is in the 
 rewards held forth to the faithful in each. The Lord is 
 described to Ephesus as holding the seven stars in his right 
 hand, and walking in the midst of the seven golden candle- 
 sticks. Walking among them, he is active, evermore trim- 
 ming and feeding with the oil of grace the golden lamps 
 36
 
 EPHESUS. 
 
 of the sanctuary. But the church has not so trimmed her 
 lamp. Her first love has grown cold, the lamp is burning 
 dim for want of watching and of oil, and therefore follows the 
 warning that unless the lamp burn brighter the candlestick 
 shall be removed out of its place. Ephesus had left her 
 first love. She recalled the words of the prophet : " I 
 remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine 
 espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in 
 a land that was not sown," * when in the first devotion of 
 heart it seemed as though a thankful love would never ebb. 
 But though nothing has changed outwardly, everything has 
 changed within. Therefore the threat is, not extinction of 
 the candle, but removal of the candlestick ; not the putting 
 out of the light of truth, but its removal to other places. 
 And this is exactly what has occurred. The grace of God 
 withdrawn from Ephesus has been bestowed on other places. 
 The seat of the church has been changed, but Christ's 
 church still survives. 
 
 The tender love of the Lord, while it wounds, will also 
 heal, and therefore the meed of praise is awarded where it 
 can still be given : " This thou hast, that thou hatest the 
 deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." Who the 
 Nicolaitans were it is not easy to answer. They could not 
 be that sect which sprung up under the name a century 
 later. Perhaps as many of the other names, such as Jezebel, 
 Babylon, Sodom, are symbolical and mystical, so this may 
 also be. The Nicolaitans seem identified with those that 
 hold the doctrine of Balaam 2 i.e., those who repeat the sin 
 
 1 Jer. ii. 2. Ver. 14, 15. 
 
 37
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 of Balaam, and seek to overcome the people of God by like 
 temptations as those by which Balaam seduced them of old. 
 He sought to lead them into the fleshly sins of heathenism, 
 so prevalent in the idolatrous worship of Ephesus, to draw 
 them to eat idol-meats and to commit fornication, to intro- 
 duce a false freedom the freedom of the flesh, into the 
 church of God. After the battle against Jewish legalism 
 had been fought by St. Paul, the second danger was that 
 of heathen licentiousness and libertinism under the mask of 
 freedom, by men who, the servants of corruption, turned the 
 grace of God into lasciviousness. 
 
 The promise to those who have overcome is, " I will 
 give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the 
 paradise of God." Those who have abstained from the 
 idol-meats, from the sinful luxuries of the flesh, shall eat of 
 the tree of life. There is a harmony between the form of 
 the victory and the form of the reward. But there may be 
 a further appropriateness in the promise to Ephesus of 
 "the tree of life." The fame, the wealth, the power, almost 
 the very existence of Ephesus, were centred in the worship 
 of Diana. In her temples and rites the thought and life of 
 every Ephesian was bound up. In what sense was she 
 especially worshipped ? Diana, or Astarte, was the Asiatic 
 symbol for fecundity, the mother and /z/-giver of all. How 
 comforting then to the Christian, who stood aloof from all 
 this sensuous idolatry, to be reminded of what was in store 
 for him the true source of life, not hidden in the recesses 
 of a heathen temple, not enshrined in the mysteries of a 
 secret and hideous worship, but which is in the midst of 
 the paradise, the open garden of God. 
 38
 
 EPHESUS. 
 
 The mosque here, which is of great size, is undoubtedly 
 an ancient Christian church, probably the very same which 
 the Emperor Justinian built on the site of an older and 
 smaller one, dedicated in honour of St. John, and in the 
 erection of which the marbles of Diana's temple were em- 
 ployed. Four splendid monolith shafts of granite inside the 
 mosque are probably among the pillars transferred by Jus- 
 tinian to this church, which has given its name to the village. 
 
 GATEWAY IN EPHESUS. 
 
 All else which connects St. John with Ephesus is only known 
 in the shadowy and doubtful records of the sunset of the 
 apostolic age, and gives us little certain information as to the 
 extent or duration of his work here. 
 
 We know that he must have reached Ephesus after the 
 date of St. Paul's martyrdom ; for then Timothy was its chief 
 pastor ; afterwards, in the persecution of Domitian, he either 
 fled or was banished to Patmos. On the accession of Nero 
 
 39
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 he seems to have returned. Here, while combating the 
 heresies which arose, he is said to have penned his gospel, 
 and, according to Eusebius, to have attested the gospel 
 canon. Many a touching tradition, whether fact or legend it 
 matters little, has been preserved respecting his latter days. 
 The caves which we see in the hills around, remind us of 
 the story of his confronting a fierce robber-chieftain whom in 
 days gone by he had baptised ; and by his loving firmness 
 touching the conscience of the bandit, and winning him back 
 to repentance. We are all familiar with the well-attested 
 tradition of the old and loving saint, when too infirm to 
 walk or preach, carried into the church perhaps into that 
 very building of Ayasolouk now perverted to the worship of 
 the false prophet and day after day repeating the one charge 
 which embodied his Master's teaching, " Little children, love 
 one another." 
 
 No tradition points out any spot as the resting-place of 
 the bones of St. John ; but in the outskirts of the city are 
 many tombs crowded together near the Gymnasium, doubt- 
 less a Christian cemetery, from the symbols on some of 
 the stones, among which the cross is conspicuous ; and one 
 with a cross and a bull is said to mark the sepulchre of 
 St. Luke : but these are evidently a century or two later 
 in date. 
 
 But the apostle left behind him a more enduring monu- 
 ment than tomb or temple, in the disciples whom he trained 
 at Ephesus ; such were Polycarp, Ignatius, and Papias, who 
 continued to the next generation to preserve the fruit of 
 apostolic doctrine in the churches of Smyrna and other cities 
 of Asia. 
 40
 
 EPHESUS. 
 
 The reminiscences of Christian Ephesus would be incom- 
 plete, if we did not carry them down from the apostolic age 
 for more than three hundred years, when, in the year A.D. 
 431, a general council of the church assembled in the church 
 of St. Mary, the very site of which is now lost, and con- 
 demned the doctrines of Nestorius. Thankful as we may 
 be for the decision arrived at by that third of the general 
 councils, it is impossible to read the story of the unseemly 
 wranglings and fiercely retorted anathemas which character- 
 ised it without a pang of shame and regret. Worse than 
 these contentions, even, were the riots and actual violence 
 of the lawless mobs which supported the orthodox and 
 victorious party. In unseemly haste Cyril and his colleagues 
 opened the council, without waiting for the arrival of the 
 legates from Italy, or of John of Antioch and the Oriental 
 prelates, who it was known would support Nestorius. 
 
 In vain did the Emperor Theodosius attempt to mediate ; 
 and at length he dissolved the great oecumenical council of 
 Ephesus, with the stinging rebuke, " God is my witness 
 that I am not the author of this confusion. His providence 
 will discover and punish the guilty. Return to your pro- 
 vinces, and may your private virtues repair the mischief and 
 scandal of your meeting." Two things are worthy of notice 
 in the history of the third general council : first, that it was 
 summoned and dissolved by the temporal power alone ; 
 secondly, that the Bishop of Rome claimed no supremacy : 
 he only attended by his representatives, and the decrees 
 were passed before they arrived. The council had neither 
 Celestine, nor any other so-called successor of St. Peter in 
 their thoughts, and acknowledged no earthly being, but the 
 
 G 41
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 Lord of heaven alone, as the supreme head .of the universal 
 church. 
 
 But disgraceful as are the scenes which discredit the 
 council of Ephesus, they were far surpassed in violence by 
 those of the second Ephesian council, A.D. 449. Here 
 again the Bishop of Alexandria, Dioscorus, presided, the 
 Roman legate sitting below him. The predominant party, 
 not content with ecclesiastical censure, called in their bands 
 of armed retainers ; and so brutally was the unhappy 
 Flavian, bishop of Byzantium, beaten by these hirelings, 
 that he died in a few days from the injuries he had 
 received. Deservedly has the second Ephesian council been 
 known ever since as the " Latrocinian " (that is, the assembly 
 of robbers), the name with which it was branded by Leo, 
 bishop of Rome. 
 
 With this sad scene, the history of Ephesus is almost 
 closed. The carnal championship of orthodoxy availed not 
 to preserve its candlestick. Its light soon faded ; and it 
 lingered on, a decaying city, exposed to all the horrors of the 
 ceaseless wars and invasions of the Latin empire, until finally 
 the Turkish chieftains Sarukhan and Aidin, in the year A.D. 
 1312, destroyed it utterly, and the church of St. Mary was 
 laid as low as the temple of Diana.
 
 SMYRNA. 
 
 NLIKE her sister church of 
 Ephesus, Smyrna occu- 
 pies but a very scanty 
 space in the sacred writ- 
 ings. Never even 
 mentioned by name, 
 either in the travels 
 
 CASTLF. AT SMYRNA. QJ- f^g epistlCS Of 
 
 St. Paul, it is once, 
 
 and once only, brought under our notice, but that in a 
 position of the highest honour, in the apocalyptic message. 
 With the single exception of Philadelphia, Smyrna is the 
 only church to which that message is one of unmingled appro- 
 bation. It is surely by more than an accidental coinci- 
 dence that these two cities alone of the seven have retained 
 their importance, their population, and even their churches 
 in comparative freedom, through the trials and vicissitudes 
 of centuries, to the present day ; not, however, without many 
 reverses. Time after time has Smyrna had tribulation. Ten 
 times has the " ornament of Asia" (aya\/u.a rrjc 'Ao-mc) been laid 
 waste by the torch of the invader, and ten times has she risen 
 
 45
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 from her ashes, each time not less beautiful 
 than before, till now she stands the undis- 
 puted queen of the Levant, an immense city, 
 with its roofs glittering in the clear sunlight 
 of the East, rising tier beyond tier from the 
 shore to the bold hills behind, and a harbour 
 crowded with the shipping of the Western 
 nations. The flag-staffs of the foreign consuls 
 along the shore, the minarets and cypresses 
 in this meeting-place of many languages, 
 creeds, and costumes, make us mindful of the 
 changes which have occurred in this region 
 since the martyrdom of Polycarp. And this 
 consciousness of a new state of things cul- 
 minates when we notice the railways which 
 now connect Smyrna with the interior of the 
 country. 
 
 Let us, however, review the history of 
 the old city before we come down to the 
 Smyrna of our own days. The history of 
 Smyrna, it may be said, brings before us in 
 epitome the story of the Greek race through 
 all time, from the old fables of mythical tra- 
 dition before Homer sang, through the epoch 
 of Grecian supremacy in arts and arms, in 
 science and letters, through the long des- 
 perate struggles which ended in the final 
 triumph of the Crescent over the Cross, to 
 the less bloody, but no less bitter, strife of 
 to-day, when the Crescent seems waning into 
 
 4 6
 
 SMYRNA. 
 
 annihilation, though the Cross as yet appears not ready to 
 raise its symbol of supremacy, and to take its place as the 
 dominant creed of Asia. 
 
 Founded originally by the yEolian Greeks, Smyrna sub- 
 sequently (before the period of historic records) became a 
 member of the Ionic confederacy, having been captured by 
 stratagem by the people of Colophon, about B.C. 688. It 
 remained independent, not without many struggles, for two 
 hundred and fifty years, when it was, after a desperate con- 
 flict, destroyed by the Lydian king Alyattes. Thenceforward 
 the history of Smyrna is identical with that of Asia Minor, 
 liable to the same vicissitudes, enslaved by Lydian and 
 Persian in turn, and only emancipated to wear a heavier 
 yoke under the democratic tyranny of Athens, and afterwards 
 of Rome. It was not, however, until four hundred years had 
 elapsed that it resumed the importance it had attained before 
 its destruction by the King of Lydia. During all this period 
 it remained unfortified and open, until Lysimachus completed 
 the design of Alexander the Great, and built a new city, 
 about three miles south of the site of the ancient Smyrna. 
 It then became and continued one of the wealthiest and most 
 flourishing centres of commerce in Asia Minor ; and during the 
 struggles of Rome and Mithridates it secured the protection, 
 and afterwards the favour, of the former. From this time it 
 increased in splendour, and lavished a portion of its wealth 
 not only in building temples to the poet Homer, whose 
 birthplace it claimed to be, but also, with the despicable 
 flattery which disgraced that age of vice and crime, to the 
 Roman Emperor Tiberius. Once sacked during the civil 
 war which followed the death of Caesar, and twice after- 
 
 47
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 wards overthrown by earthquake, it was on each occasion 
 rebuilt with increased magnificence, and claimed the epithets 
 of "the Lovely," "the Crown of Ionia." Much of the pro- 
 sperity of Smyrna was doubtless due to the sedulous care 
 with which its inhabitants, regarding only their material in- 
 terests, worshipped the rising sun, and habitually secured for 
 themselves the favour of each conqueror in turn. As they 
 profanely worshipped Tiberius, their fathers had given to 
 Antiochus the blasphemous title of " God and Saviour," and 
 to his mother that of " Venus of Victory." So when Mithri- 
 dates was in the zenith of his power, they stamped his head 
 upon their coins ; but the tide had scarcely turned against 
 him when they erected a temple to the deified city of Rome. 
 As each of the Ionian cities had its favourite tutelary 
 deity and worship, so that of Smyrna was particularly the 
 celebration of the death and resurrection of the Grecian 
 Bacchus, and the mysteries of the god of wine were per- 
 formed with great pomp. The priests who presided annually 
 over these rites were persons of much consideration, as 
 appears from several inscriptions, and at the close of their 
 year of office were presented with a crown by the munici- 
 pality. There seems to be a distinct and appropriate allusion 
 to these familiar observances in the apocalyptic message to 
 the Smyrnean church ; all the more forcible from the super- 
 stitious regard which ancient writers tell us the inhabitants 
 of that city paid to chance phrases and expressions for the 
 purpose of augury. Thus the message begins: "These things 
 saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive." 
 The words would strike with peculiar force on ears familiar 
 with the phrases applied in a very different sense to the 
 48
 
 SMYRNA. 
 
 revels of Bacchus. So also the conclusion, " I will give thee 
 a crown of life," 1 suggests at once a contrast with the gift of 
 the municipal crown, which conferred a transitory nobility on 
 the leaders of their heathen worship. The passage may with 
 equal propriety allude to the Smyrnean Olympic games, which 
 came round every five years, and excited an interest similar 
 to those of Greece, while the prize was, as in them, merely 
 a perishing wreath. 
 
 Rich and beautiful as Smyrna was, the wealthy amongst its 
 citizens seem to have been too much absorbed in their gains 
 or their pleasures to give due heed to the preaching of the 
 gospel ; for the message of the Lord speaks of the " tribula- 
 tion and poverty" of the Smyrnean church, though rich in 
 the possession of truth pure and undefiled, beyond most of 
 its neighbours. Suffering was in store for that tried and 
 oppressed band, and they are cheered under it by heavenly 
 consolations. " Fear none of those things which thou shalt 
 suffer. Behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison, 
 that ye may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation ten days. 
 Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of 
 life." But there is no rebuke, no threat of removing the 
 candlestick out of its place, or of the Lord coming to fight 
 against error with the sword of his mouth. The church shall 
 be sifted and tried even as by fire, but it will hold fast unto 
 the end. 
 
 And the trial which was foretold was not long delayed. 
 The storm of persecution was, even when the apostle wrote, 
 gathering over the church, and before the next generation 
 had passed it burst with especial fury upon the Christians of 
 Smyrna. The early history of the church is bound up closely 
 
 H 49
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 with that of Polycarp, its martyred bishop ; and indeed it is 
 only through the records of his life and death that any par- 
 ticulars of its fortunes have come down to us. We know not 
 whether Polycarp himself was the angel of the church to 
 whom our Lord addressed the epistle, but it is not impossible; 
 for a few years later, when Ignatius of Antioch passed 
 through Smyrna, on his way to suffer martyrdom at Rome 
 (A.D. 107 circ.), he was its chief minister, and with him 
 Ignatius held consoling and cheering intercourse. Both had 
 been fellow-disciples and hearers of St. John, and a touching 
 story is told, probably a mere tradition, of the apostle having 
 committed to the care of Polycarp a young man who, once 
 his follower, had apostatised, and become the chief of a 
 robber band, but was accidentally met, and brought again 
 to repentance by St. John, near Ephesus. 
 
 So great was the renown of Polycarp, that many writers 
 occupied themselves with compiling various and contradictory 
 memoirs of his early life. The most trustworthy records of 
 him are those left us by Irenaeus, who had enjoyed personal 
 intercourse with him. He states that he was instructed by 
 the apostles, and by them ordained and appointed Bishop of 
 Smyrna. So eminent was his fame, that there is scarcely an 
 early Christian writer by whom he is not mentioned ; but of 
 his life we have few details till we come to the record of 
 his martyrdom, preserved by Eusebius in a letter from the 
 church of Smyrna to their brethren in other places. 
 
 It occurred in the persecution under Marcus Aurelius, after 
 
 A.D. 1 60, but the date is not quite certain. Several Christians, 
 
 both of this place and from Philadelphia, had been cast to 
 
 the wild beasts for the amusement of the populace, and 
 
 5
 
 SMYRNA. 
 
 Polycarp, at the entreaties of his flock, was persuaded to 
 retire to a place of safety, and not needlessly expose himself 
 to danger. Search was made for him, and at length his 
 place of retreat was disclosed by a child, who was put to the 
 torture till it revealed the secret. He had still time for 
 escape, but remained, saying, " The will of God be done." 
 When seized, he melted for a moment the hearts of his 
 captors by his prayers for them, but w r as dragged to the 
 crowded amphitheatre when the games were nearly ended. 
 On his entry, a loud voice, which the old man accepted as 
 from heaven, exclaimed, " Be strong, O Polycarp, and quit 
 you like a man ! " 
 
 The proconsul, moved by his age and venerable appear- 
 ance, urged him again and again to obey the imperial edict, 
 and to swear by the fortunes of Caesar and recant. The 
 form of recantation required was, " Away with the god- 
 less." The aged saint with a sigh looked up to heaven, and 
 said, "Away with the godless." Again the proconsul urged 
 him : " Swear by Caesar, and I will release thee. Revile 
 Christ." Calmly he replied, " Eighty and six years have I 
 served him, and he never did me wrong : how, then, can I 
 revile my King and my Saviour ? " Vainly was he threat- 
 ened with being thrown to the lions, or being burnt to 
 death; to each menace he boldly replied, "I am a Christian." 
 The populace, infuriated by the brutish sports, and not yet 
 satiated with human blood, cried out, "Away with this man, 
 the father of the Christians, the subverter of our gods, who 
 teaches many not to worship or adore them." They de- 
 manded that a lion should be let loose against him. This 
 Philip of Tralles, the presiding Asiarch, refused to do, on
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 the ground that the games were finished. He had evidently 
 been touched by this example of Christian heroism. But 
 the populace, thirsting for blood, cried out, " Let him be 
 burnt alive!" and while he stood calmly praying, the people 
 rapidly gathered fuel from the workshops and baths near, in 
 which employment the Jews were foremost. The old man 
 ungirded himself, and took his place among the faggots. 
 When they were about to nail him to the stake he said, 
 " Let me remain as I am ; for He who giveth me strength to 
 sustain the fire will enable me also, without your fastening me 
 with nails, to endure its fierceness." Then putting his hands 
 behind him, he suffered himself to be bound, and uttered a 
 touching prayer, which has been preserved, thanking God who 
 had counted him worthy of the honour of martyrdom, for 
 the resurrection to eternal life of soul and body in Christ, 
 and ascribing glory to the blessed Trinity. The fire was 
 kindled, but a strong wind blew the flames to one side, so that 
 he was roasted rather than burned, upon which the execu- 
 tioner was directed to dispatch him with his sword. When 
 the weapon was plunged into his body, the blood which 
 gushed forth quenched the flames, which were immediately 
 rekindled, lest the Christians should bury him with honour. 
 The Jews were especially anxious that the body should be 
 utterly consumed, lest, said they, these people should leave 
 the worship of the Crucified One for this man. On this the 
 epistle remarks on their ignorance, "who imagined that it 
 was possible for us to forsake Christ, who suffered for the 
 salvation of all who are saved of the human race, or ever 
 to worship any other." As if by anticipation guarding against 
 any sanction of the saint or relic worship of Rome and 
 52
 
 SMYRNA. 
 
 Greece, the church of Smyrna proceeds : " We adore him 
 as the Son of God, but we justly love the martyrs as dis- 
 ciples of the Lord and followers of him, on account of the 
 affection they bore towards their King and Teacher." 
 
 SMYRNA FROM THE SEA. 
 
 His ashes were collected afterwards by the faithful of his 
 flock, and deposited in a spot of which the tradition has 
 been uninterruptedly preserved, and which is still devoutly 
 visited by the Greeks of Smyrna. The tomb is pointed out 
 close by the ruins of an ancient church on the hill-side, which 
 rises to the south-east of the city, very near the scene of his 
 martyrdom, and overshadowed by an ancient tall cypress-tree. 
 
 53
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 The subsequent history of Christian Smyrna is a long 
 catalogue of trials and persecutions ; yet the light has never 
 been absolutely extinguished. While the place has main- 
 tained a commercial prosperity, chequered at times, but still 
 unrivalled elsewhere in the East, the church has fallen from 
 its former splendour, but is yet in a better condition than 
 any of the other churches. Christianity has ever maintained 
 its foothold even in the most intolerant epoch of Moslem 
 supremacy ; the light has been very dim, and partially ob- 
 scured, but yet the candlestick has remained ; and so large 
 is the proportion of native Christians, that the Moham- 
 medans, with whom it is a hated city, term it in scorn " the 
 infidel Smyrna." 
 
 Smyrna remained a portion of the Christian Greek empire 
 later than most other parts of Asia Minor. It was first 
 taken by the Turks A.D. 1084. Again it was taken and 
 retaken, and on the second occasion the Turks massacred 
 without mercy all the Christian inhabitants. It remained 
 in ruins till the Emperor Comnenos restored it about A.D. 
 1 2 20. Again it was taken by the Turks, who were expelled 
 after the Crusades by the Knights of Rhodes. Twice was it 
 captured by them, to be speedily retaken ; and the famous 
 Sultan Bajazet invested it in vain for seven years. At length 
 the terrible Tamerlane, with his Tartar hordes, stormed it 
 in A.D. 1402, after a siege of only fourteen days, and butch- 
 ered all the inhabitants without mercy, building up into a 
 tower with mortar the thousands of heads of the slaughtered 
 Christians. Still the Knights of Rhodes made a last effort, 
 and held it for a time. After their third expulsion by the 
 Turks it was once more stormed by a Venetian fleet, when 
 54
 
 SMYRNA. 
 
 the Venetians visited on the Moslems with retributive fury 
 the massacres which they had inflicted on the Christians. 
 Since the first abandonment of all attempts to expel the 
 Ottomans the city has remained under Turkish rule, but 
 with tolerable liberty for the Greek Christians, who enjoy 
 freedom of worship, and are protected from much oppression, 
 formerly by the existence of European factories, and now by 
 the influence of the Christian consuls, and the many Western 
 residents. 
 
 RUINS ABOVE SMYRNA. 
 
 Smyrna has been so frequently rebuilt that, unlike 
 Ephesus, the remains of antiquity are comparatively unimpor- 
 tant. Of old Smyrna (the early Greek city) only a few 
 traces remain, two or three miles inland. Of new Smyrna, 
 as it existed in the time of St. John, the principal relic is 
 a portion of the castle on Mount Pagus. To the west of 
 this the remains of the stadium may be seen, partially ex- 
 cavated in the hill-side, much on the plan of the theatre of 
 
 55
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 Ephesus ; but all the seats have been taken away for 
 modern buildings, except a few fragments, and the arched 
 dens, or vomiforia, where the wild beasts were confined for 
 the brutal Roman games. Here, however, we know we are 
 standing on the spot of the martyrdom of Polycarp, and 
 are close to his tomb, which is almost at the entrance of 
 the theatre. 
 
 In many of the buildings of modern Smyrna we may see 
 the fragments of ancient sculptures, of columns, and capitals 
 built, with other materials, into the walls of the houses. But 
 there is no trace of the ancient walls, which probably inclosed 
 a space rather less than is occupied by the modern and 
 expanding city. The old land-locked harbour has been filled 
 in, and is now in the middle of the lower city, covered with 
 houses and streets. In the centre of the old castle on the 
 hill-side is a ruined mosque, long disused, but originally a 
 Christian church, the only undisputed Christian relic of the 
 Roman period. Although the remains of antiquity are thus 
 scanty, and the modern buildings, with the exception of the 
 Armenian church, are of no special interest, yet the general 
 view of Smyrna is strikingly beautiful. It is best seen when 
 approached from the sea. The gulf at the head of which it 
 stands is thirty-three miles long and from five to fifteen 
 broad, and is entered close by the bluff headland of Kara- 
 bournou, or " black nose." Numerous headlands and islands 
 intervene, the latter of which once formed the favourite 
 resorts of Levantine pirates. The scenery on the south side 
 is especially grand. Steep wooded hills rise abruptly from 
 the sea, bare and rugged at the top, their sides covered with 
 evergreens and wild pear-trees ; while orange groves, with 
 56
 
 SMYRNA. 
 
 waving masses of cane-brake intervening, clothe the mountain 
 foot to the water's edge. Higher up the gulf the mountain 
 range reaches the height of 3,000 feet, culminating in two 
 strangely-shaped peaks, called the Two Brothers, the cloud- 
 cap on which is the weather-gauge of Smyrna. The harbour 
 is formed by two long sand-pits running out, the one on the 
 north being formed by the deposit of mud from the classic 
 Hermione, which here flows into the sea ; and on these spits 
 the salt-pans glisten in the morning sun as though the harbour 
 were girt by a circlet of brilliants in silver setting ; while 
 immediately behind the wide-spreading city rises the bold 
 Mount Pagus, with the dark green groves of the cypress 
 which mark the cemeteries climbing up its base, on either 
 side the castle. Inland, the hills of volcanic origin are rather 
 bare in appearance, but, like Vesuvius, are renowned for 
 their vines ; and the soil is eminently adapted for fruit-trees 
 of every kind, the produce of which is one of the staples of 
 trade. From the European steamers and lateen-sailed vessels 
 of the Greeks we pass to the bazaars of the city, where 
 English navvies jostle with stately Turks and wild Georgians ; 
 and then having traversed the filthy streets, we emerge, after 
 a walk of nearly two miles, at the caravan bridge on the 
 inland side, and encounter long files of camels with their 
 Turcoman drivers, each animal bearing on either side a bale 
 of cotton from the interior, to be shipped for Liverpool, and 
 gravely moving aside for the gay equipages of the Western 
 merchants ; while the grunt of the dissatisfied and ill-tempered 
 camel is drowned by the shrill whistle of the English engine 
 hard by, ready to start on the railway for Ephesus. So 
 grotesquely are East and West here brought side by side ! 
 
 i 57
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 One of the most conspicuous buildings of Smyrna is the 
 great barrack, interesting to Englishmen as having been used 
 as a sanatorium for our sick and wounded soldiers during 
 the Crimean war. The population of Smyrna is over 
 160,000, of whom nearly one-half are Christians, chiefly of 
 the Greek rite. Among the Moslems no missionary effort 
 has yet been made with much success, though there is a 
 much more enlightened spirit of inquiry than at Constan- 
 tinople ; but the Church Missionary Society has long had an 
 establishment here, and has done much to enlighten and 
 reform the Greeks, many of whom are diligent readers of 
 the Holy Scriptures ; while the Armenians have in many 
 cases evinced a disposition to support a reform of their 
 slumbering church. Let us hope and pray that the church 
 of Smyrna, which has been so long preserved, may yet again 
 trim her lamp, and may become once more a shining candle- 
 stick ; that, long down-trodden and oppressed, she may rise 
 again in purity, and, faithful unto death, may receive the 
 crown of life. 
 
 Sw^*!^- 
 
 OL1J GATEWAY IN SMYRNA.
 
 PERGAMOS. 
 
 " I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat (throne) 
 is : and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in 
 those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among 
 you, where Satan dwelleth." Rev. ii. 13. 
 
 T: 
 
 'HREE days' journey 
 north of Smyrna, 
 on the banks of the 
 Cai'cus, in the pro- 
 vince of Mysia, a little 
 river famed in classic 
 story, the traveller 
 comes upon a squalid 
 but populous Turkish 
 town, where, in the 
 
 narrow uneven plain, the straggling groups of modern dwell- 
 ings and dilapidated hovels are overshadowed by waving 
 cypress-trees, and massive blocks of ruin, telling of a past 
 magnificence in strange contrast with present meanness. The 
 place is the modern Bergama, shrunk within the ruins of 
 the ancient Pergamum, or, as it is incorrectly named in our 
 version, Pergamos. On a bold hill just behind the modern 
 
 61 
 
 RUIN;, IN PERGAMOS.
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 city is a long irregular line of crumbling wall, enclosing 
 many clusters of shattered ruins, where broken friezes and 
 half-sunken columns of white marble shine forth in striking 
 contrast with the dark basaltic rock, of which the hill is com- 
 posed. This was the Acropolis, or citadel, which originally 
 comprised within its walls the whole of the ancient city, and 
 where temple and royal palace once rose majestically side by 
 side, and towered over the valley of the Caicus beneath. 
 Though fallen from its royal estate, Pergamum has not, like 
 Ephesus, become a desolation, and an abode for wild beasts, 
 its appearance rather recalls that of the city " trodden down 
 of the Gentiles, till the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled." 
 
 The interest which attaches to the history of Pergamum 
 is rather classical than Christian. In fact, we have but few 
 records beyond the notice in the Apocalyptic epistle, which 
 in any prominent manner connect Pergamum with the history 
 of the primitive church. All we know of its Christian history 
 may be summed up in the fact, that from the time of Con- 
 stantine it was the seat of a metropolitan archbishop, as 
 indeed it still continues to be the seat of a poverty-stricken 
 Greek prelate : and that it fell into the hands of the Turks 
 in the time of the Greek emperor Andronicus Comnenus. 
 In fact, its remains tell us more than its records, for the 
 principal Turkish mosque is still known by the Christians 
 as the old church of St. Sophia, and an immense and mag- 
 nificent ruin, with chapels attached, now occupied by the 
 Turks, with its apse entire, is the old cathedral of St. John, 
 still so called, and where the natives believe St. John to have 
 baptised the first Christians. 
 
 One or two expressions in the epistle to the Pergamene 
 62
 
 PERGAMOS. 
 
 church, may be illustrated by an acquaintance with the 
 history and character of the ancient city. " I know thy 
 works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat (lit. 
 throne) is." Like Ephesus, Pergamum w r as pre-eminently a 
 city of temples. Long after it ceased to be the abode of 
 royalty, it continued to be a metropolis of heathen divinity. 
 Like Ephesus, it boasted on its coins and in inscriptions to 
 be a temple-keeper (vwKopoc;), and like other Asiatic Greeks, 
 we may be quite certain that the Pergamenes were devoted 
 to a sensuous and licentious worship. This alone would be 
 sufficient to explain the expression " where Satan's throne is." 
 But the reference may be more special. The tutelary deity 
 of Pergamum was ^Esculapius, the god of healing. His grave 
 possessed the right of sanctuary, the title of 2wr]|r> (Saviour) 
 was applied to him, and the serpent, among Jews and Chris- 
 tians the symbol of Satan, was his characteristic emblem. In 
 his honour, a living serpent was kept and fed in the temple, 
 while the serpent-worship was so marked a character of the 
 place, that we find this reptile engraved on many of its coins. 
 Again, the practice of the priests of ^Esculapius consisted 
 much in charms and incantations, and crowds resorted to his 
 temple, where lying miracles of healing were vaunted to be 
 performed, and which were doubtless used by Satan to 
 obstruct and counterfeit the work of the apostles and the 
 gospel. 
 
 Again it was just in such a city as this, a metropolis of 
 paganism, that the question of sacrificial meats would most 
 frequently arise to cast difficulties in the path of the early 
 Christians. Accordingly we find the rebuke, " Thou hast 
 there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught 
 
 63
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, 
 to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication." 
 And as Balak had Balaam to seduce him, " So hast thou also 
 them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing 
 I hate." The Nicolaitans are evidently those who fell into 
 the sin of Balaam, as at Ephesus (verse 6), where the seduc- 
 tions were similar. Though the context explains to us their 
 errors, it does not appear that there was then any heretical 
 sect known by this name. Probably like Jezebel (in verse 20), 
 it is a symbolical name. Some have interpreted it from a 
 fancied derivation, " Destroyers of the people." They were 
 distinct from the sect of the Nicolaitans of the second and 
 third centuries, who were a branch of the Gnostics, and who 
 perhaps took the name they found ready to their hands. 
 These were evidently lawless ones who abused the doctrines 
 of grace ; who promised liberty, being themselves the servants 
 of corruption, and turned the grace of God into lasciviousness, 
 enticing, like Balaam, his people to eat idol meats, and to 
 commit fornication. The eating of idol meats would, in such 
 a city as Pergamum, be as great a stumbling-block as caste 
 at the present day in India. To refuse to partake of things 
 offered to idols was not only to renounce idolatry, it was 
 more ; it was to abstain from almost every public and private 
 festivity, to withdraw in great measure from the social life 
 of the place. To kill and to sacrifice were almost identical, 
 and while the rich feasted his friends, the poor man after 
 making his offering of a share to the temple, sold the rest in 
 the market. 1 But the sin of the Nicolaitans was not the 
 
 See i Cor. x. 25. 
 64
 
 PERGAMOS. 
 
 eating of that which had been offered to the idol, and then 
 was sold, or used at private entertainments ; it was taking a 
 place at heathen festivals in honour of the false god, and then 
 pleading that they did it in Christian liberty, and that an idol 
 to them was nothing, for they knew the whole system to be 
 a fraud. With this stumbling-block we see how closely joined 
 was the other. Here, as in the decrees of the council of 
 Jerusalem, 1 the two sins are spoken of together, for the im- 
 pure character of heathen festivals rendered them almost 
 inseparable, especially in an oriental Greek city. 
 
 Of Antipas, the proto-martyr of the church of Pergamum, 
 history tells us nothing. The persecution must have been 
 severe from the marked way in which, after naming the faith- 
 ful martyr, the Lord repeats emphatically, " where Satan 
 dwelleth." We only know that he was not the only one 
 supplied by Pergamum to the noble army. We read after- 
 wards of Carpus, Papylus, and a lady, Agathonice, who 
 suffered gloriously, soon after Polycarp. Attalus too, one of 
 the most distinguished of the martyrs in Gaul, during the 
 persecutions of Lyons and Vienne, was, we are informed by 
 Eusebius, a Pergamene. 
 
 The reward which is held out to him that overcometh 
 in this church, seems also to bear a covert allusion to their 
 circumstances. " I will give to eat of the hidden manna." 
 Those who shun for conscience' sake the feasts of idolatry, 
 shall have better food, the bread that cometh down from 
 heaven the bread of life, of which he who eats shall never 
 hunger and never die, even that Saviour who, now with- 
 
 Acts xv. 20. 
 
 K 65
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 drawn from sight, like the manna laid up before the ark of 
 the covenant, knows no corruption, reserved in heaven for us. 
 
 The promise has doubtless a double fulfilment. There is 
 hidden manna for the believer in this life, though the full 
 flavour of its sweetness can only be realised in the next. 
 Christ is even now " the bread of life," " the manna that 
 cometh down from heaven," of which whoso eateth shall 
 never die. He is even now as " hidden manna," which the 
 world tasteth not, knoweth not of: in the sanctuary He is laid 
 up, withdrawn from sight, but yet accessible to those who, 
 " kings and priests unto God," can even now enter by faith 
 within the veil. But there is a yet further fulfilment in store. 
 The . manna shall not always be hidden Christ shall not 
 always remain withdrawn from his people's sight. His glory 
 shall be revealed before men and angels. And even in antici- 
 pation of that time, those who have eaten by faith in this life, 
 waiting within the sanctuary, before the throne, delivered from 
 the burden of the flesh, shall enjoy the full fruition of that 
 manna of which they now can only slightly taste the sweetness. 
 
 To this the Lord adds : " And will give him a white 
 stone, and in the stone a name written, which no man 
 knoweth saving he that receiveth it." The white stone, 
 perhaps the pure and sparkling diamond, may be placed in 
 contrast with the charms supplied to the votaries of ./Escu- 
 lapius, with the cabalistic characters inscribed on them, and 
 which were worn as amulets to protect them from disease. 
 This spiritual stone, inscribed like the Urim, with a name 
 which no man knew, may set forth the revelation which the 
 Lord will make to his faithful people, of mysteries hidden 
 before from kings and prophets, like the hidden manna and 
 66
 
 PERGAMOS. 
 
 the Urim, seen by the high-priest alone, but which revela- 
 tion of the glory of God can only be known by those who 
 have received him. 
 
 ^ 
 
 BERpAMA, THE ANCIENT PERGAMl'M. 
 
 The history of Pergamum is a striking example of the 
 mutability of political fortune. During the early period of 
 the Persian and Greek wars, it does not appear to have been 
 a place of much importance, though the conical hill rising 
 
 67
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 above the plain, near the river Ca'icus, two of the affluents 
 of which wash its base, and which is navigable from the sea, 
 only eighteen miles distant, must ever have been a strong 
 natural fortification. Xenophon is the first ancient writer who 
 gives us any description of it, and in his time it was settled 
 chiefly by Greeks, whose city occupied only the Acropolis, 
 the now deserted peak, where tradition said the god Jupiter 
 had been born. It was consequently invested with a sort of 
 sacred character. Afterwards Lysimachus, one of the generals 
 and successors of Alexander the Great, after his invasion and 
 conquest of the northern part of Asia Minor, selected Per- 
 gamum as the citadel where best to secure his enormous 
 treasury. This he entrusted to the care of Philetserus of 
 Tyana, who after Lysimachus had sacrificed his own son 
 Agathocles to the jealousy of his stepmother, Arsinoe, joined 
 in a revolt against him. Seleucus, king of Syria, then invaded 
 the territory, and the last two survivors of the heroes of 
 Alexander met in battle when over seventy years of age, and 
 Lysimachus fell on the plain of Sardis. But Philetserus was 
 not prepared to surrender his treasure-house to the con- 
 queror, who at once laid siege to the place, and the miserable 
 biography of the successors of the Macedonian king is closed 
 with the story of the assassination of Seleucus the last sur- 
 vivor of the race, by the son of his old friend Ptolemy, after 
 a seven months' ineffectual siege of Pergamum. 
 
 Philetaerus now contrived to assert an independent position, 
 and founded the kingdom of Pergamum, which after a reign 
 of twenty years he bequeathed to his nephew Eumenes ; who 
 firmly established the monarchy against all his neighbours by 
 a signal victory over Antiochus, son of Seleucus, on the plains 
 68
 
 PER G 'AMOS. 
 
 of Sardis. The dynasty was continued by his cousin, 
 Attalus i., who held the sceptre for forty-three years, and was 
 the founder of the great wealth and power of his house. He 
 repelled the northern barbarians, who, under the name of 
 Galatians, had already made irruptions into Asia Minor, and 
 restrained them within the limits of the province known by 
 their name. With a selfish prescience of the rising power 
 of Rome, he allied himself with that distant nation, and assisted 
 them in their wars against Macedon, thus giving powerful aid 
 in the establishment of the fourth universal empire upon the 
 ruins of the third. He annexed Smyrna and the greater part 
 of Mysia and ^Eolia to his dominions, and commenced those 
 sumptuous temples and public buildings of which we may yet 
 trace the shattered ruins. The magnificent schemes which he 
 formed, continued to be carried out by his son and successor, 
 Eumenes IL, who by his steady support of the Romans suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining their ratification of his acquisition of all 
 the territories of Asia Minor west of Mount Taurus, after he 
 had assisted them to defeat and overthrow Antiochus the 
 Great, when the Greek kingdom of Syria finally submitted to 
 the supremacy of Rome. 
 
 Eumenes has, however, higher claims to a place in history 
 than the mere aggrandisement of his dominion, or his uncon- 
 scious aid in the fulfilment of Daniel's prophecy. Besides 
 the magnificent public buildings and porticos on which he 
 right royally lavished the wealth which accrued from his pre- 
 decessors and his conquests, his love of literature and art led 
 him to expend almost fabulous sums in the collection of a 
 public library, which rivalled that of Alexandria. It is said 
 that two hundred thousand manuscripts were gathered into 
 
 69
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 this sumptuous collection. The world was ransacked, and 
 carefully transcribed copies of every writing by every known 
 author, were made for the royal savant. The great difficulty 
 under which Eumenes laboured was that of obtaining durable 
 material on which to have his transcripts written. He there- 
 fore established manufactories at Pergamum for the prepara- 
 tion of skins for this purpose. These smooth and whitened 
 skins, so much more serviceable and durable than the papyrus 
 of Egypt, obtained the name of Pergamena chartce, or " Per- 
 gamene papers," of which our familiar word " parchment " is 
 simply a corruption. It is not a little interesting, after the 
 lapse of more than two thousand years, to find not only that 
 the identical material remains the best for documents where 
 preservation is of importance, but also that the name of Per- 
 gamum is thus crystallised in our familiar language ; still 
 more, that to this day the manufacture of parchment is the 
 chief industry of Bergama, and that the banks of the little 
 river Selinus, which flows through the modern city, are 
 fringed with parchment-tanneries in full operation. Doubtless 
 the parchments which St. Paul left with Carpus at Troas, a 
 place not many miles distant, were of Pergamene manufacture. 
 For the first discovery of the art of parchment-making it is 
 said we are indebted to the jealousy of the rival collector, 
 king Ptolemy of Egypt, who forbad the exportation of papyrus, 
 lest the library of Eumenes should surpass his own. 
 
 Eumenes was, after a reign of forty-nine years, succeeded 
 by his son Attalus n., whom the Romans successfully defended 
 against various attacks from his Asiatic neighbours and rivals, 
 and who inherited the tastes of his father. He is said to 
 have bid six hundred thousand sesterces, about ,4,000, an 
 70
 
 PERGAMOS. 
 
 enormous sum in those days, for a picture by the famous 
 painter Aristides, and to have given nearly double that price, 
 or one hundred talents, for another picture by the same artist, 
 a proof that the giving of immense sums for the chefs-d'oeuvre 
 of art is not alone a modern taste. His capital was once 
 taken and pillaged by Prusias, king of Bithynia, whom the 
 Romans compelled to make good the damage he had caused. 
 In his reign the city spread down between the rivers Selinus 
 and Cetius, far beyond the old fortress, and he extended the 
 Nicephorium, or grove of all the gods, in which was a col- 
 lection of sumptuous temples to all the principal deities of 
 the Greek mythology. Of these, the temple of Venus was 
 of most elaborate beauty, and even the outside fa9ade was 
 inlaid with the choicest and rarest marbles. Apart from the 
 conjecture that the expression in the Revelation, " where 
 Satan's seat is," refers to the serpent worship of yscu- 
 lapius, this collection of temples would of itself explain the 
 phrase, while the prominence of the worship of Venus would 
 well illustrate the subsequent allusion to the Moabitish seduc- 
 tions of Balaam. 
 
 Attalus is supposed to have been poisoned by his nephew 
 Attalus in., who did not long enjoy his crown ; but after 
 a short reign of five years died without issue, B.C. 133, 
 bequeathing by will his wealth, and, as they assumed, his 
 kingdom also, to the Romans. His enormous fortune caused 
 the name of Attalian wealth to pass into a proverb, and 
 nothing more accelerated the demoralisation and corruption 
 of Roman politicians than the fortunes which they continued 
 to secure out of this legacy. 
 
 From the time when M. Aquilius was sent as proconsul, 
 
 71
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 to enter on the royal bequest, the fortunes of Pergamum de- 
 clined, but not its splendour. " Its prominence," it has been 
 well observed, " was not that of a commercial town like 
 Ephesus or Corinth, but arose from its peculiar features. It 
 was a sort of union of a pagan cathedral city, an university 
 town, and a royal residence, embellished during a succession 
 of years by kings who all had a passion for expenditure, 
 and ample means of gratifying it." M. Antony, the Roman 
 triumvir, robbed Pergamum of its choicest treasure, for he 
 granted its magnificent and costly library to his paramour, 
 Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, who had it removed to Alexan- 
 dria, where, combined with that of the Ptolemies, it remained 
 until, at the Mohammedan conquest of Egypt, the Khaliph 
 Omar barbarously committed the whole collection to the flames 
 (A.D. 642), after it had remained there for more than seven 
 hundred years. 
 
 Still the religious eminence of the place remained. The 
 temple of yEsculapius was the resort of invalids from all parts 
 of Asia. Thousands used to offer their sacrifice and dedi- 
 cate their votive gifts, after which they were to sleep in the 
 porticos of the temple, where it was believed the god would 
 reveal to them in a dream the remedies or the observances 
 that were to cure them. So wide-spread was this superstition 
 that even emperors themselves went and lay down under the 
 fane, waiting for the healing inspiration. It is curious to 
 note how the same superstition, with only the object not the 
 form changed, has remained among both Greeks and Turks 
 in Asia Minor to the present day, where certain churches and 
 temples are supposed to be endowed with healing virtues ; 
 like the holy wells of our own country in the days of Romish 
 72
 
 PER G 'AMOS. 
 
 darkness. The Greeks light their wax candles before the 
 altar, pay their fee in money, and then sleep in the cloisters of 
 some renowned church, where the prophet Elias is expected 
 to whisper, in the visions of the night, the means for their 
 recovery. 
 
 The identification of the various temples of Pergamum is 
 uncertain. That which is generally believed to have been the 
 temple of yEsculapius, being, like the Nicephorium, outside the 
 city walls, stands between the Acropolis and the river Selinus, 
 and has been transformed into a Christian cathedral, called by 
 the Greeks the church of St. John. It is an oblong building 
 nearly two hundred feet long, and about half that breadth, 
 built of brick and white marble, with an apse at one end, 
 evidently added when it was transformed into a basilica or 
 Christian church, and the elevated position of the altar can 
 be plainly seen. It is now roofless, but inhabited by Mussul- 
 mans, who have built hovels of mud against the inner walls. 
 But adjoining the apse, standing at each side of the church, 
 are two circular buildings with vaulted stone roofs and door- 
 ways still entire, about forty feet in diameter, and seventy feet 
 high. These were evidently connected with the temple, 
 perhaps chapels of the goddess of health, and seem to have 
 been afterwards appropriated to Christian worship, probably 
 as baptisteries. The church of St. Sophia, a Byzantine struc- 
 ture, has been, ever since the Turkish conquest, desecrated 
 to the worship of the false prophet, but still retains its name. 
 
 The most interesting ante-Christian relics of Pergamum 
 are the walls of the old Acropolis, a portion of which, of 
 hewn granite or basalt, is a hundred feet deep and its foun- 
 dation sunk into the native rock. Above it a course of large 
 
 L 73
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 substructions forms a platform, strikingly recalling to the 
 traveller the platform of Solomon's temple, now the mosque 
 of Omar, at Jerusalem. Upon this once rose a temple of 
 Minerva, which towered over the surrounding country and 
 commanded a view of the ^Egean sea, its base being eight 
 hundred feet above the plain. The surface is strewn with 
 carvings, with friezes, and columns, and many more are sunk 
 in the ground. Near this, but lower down, is the outline 
 of the ancient royal palace, first of Lysimachus and after- 
 wards of the Attalian dynasty. The palace was connected 
 with the Ca'icus by an aqueduct, and it extends right into 
 the lower city, even over the river Selinus, which flows 
 through a double tunnel underneath it. This tunnel, sup- 
 posed to be the work of the first Attalus, is still perfect, and 
 of marvellously beautiful masonry. It is about two hundred 
 yards in length, and the modern houses and bazaar are 
 mingled with the ruins over it. Besides this, there still 
 remain entire five other ancient bridges. The pleasure- 
 loving Greeks had also their theatres, which may yet be 
 traced, but besides these there are very perfect remains of 
 a magnificent and vast Roman amphitheatre, sunk in the 
 slope of a hill, about a mile out of the town, to the west. 
 The " vomitoria," or places where the wild beasts and gladia- 
 tors were kept for the brutal shows, are very massive. The 
 lower tier of galleries beneath the building may yet be 
 traversed, though half buried in debris. Here probably 
 the faithful Antipas was slain, and many others after him 
 who held fast the name of Jesus and refused to deny his 
 faith. But the amphitheatre has long been a desolation. 
 The stream still flows through it, which, by contrivances 
 74
 
 PER GAM OS. 
 
 which yet remain in the lower part of the building, could 
 at any time be turned on, so as to flood the arena and gratify 
 the spectators with a sham sea-fight. It is interesting to 
 observe in the utterly deserted and silent city of Gerash, in 
 the interior of the Syrian deserts, a precisely similar arrange- 
 ment for the amphitheatre there, and to find that there 
 also the little stream still flows uninterrupted through the 
 lonely arena. 
 
 Nothing conveys a clearer idea of the enormous wealth of 
 
 RUINS OF CHRISTIAN CHURCH NEAR PERGAMOS. 
 
 old Pergamum than the vast quantities of white marbles which 
 everywhere strew its site. These blocks, and columns, and 
 sculptures, are crowded on the surface and under it ; many of 
 these shafts are thirty and forty feet in length, and yet there 
 are no marble quarries within many miles. The whole neigh- 
 bourhood is basalt and trap. But for centuries these ruins 
 have served as Turkish quarries, nor for quarries only the 
 marbles are continually being broken up and burnt for lime. 
 Fragments of statues strew the ground. Large sculptures 
 
 75
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 are frequently disinterred, but at once broken up by the 
 Turks, who, unfortunately for the hopes of European collectors, 
 believe that treasure is concealed in the head of these idols, 
 which are therefore at once demolished ; and this notion, com- 
 bined with the Moslem horror of all representations of the 
 human form as idolatrous, has probably destroyed more 
 Grecian statues at Pergamum than now grace the museums 
 of Europe. 
 
 Such is Bergama, with its wilderness of ruins, ruins 
 where once was Satan's seat, in all the pomp and splendour 
 of the gorgeous and sensuous ritual of voluptuous Greece, 
 but now towering like gaunt " vast fortresses amidst barracks 
 of wood," and where the very cemeteries are full of sculp- 
 tured relics. There is still a considerable population, variously 
 estimated at from twenty to thirty thousand but only a few 
 of these are Christians not more than four thousand ; and 
 under the dominant Turkish race they have never enjoyed the 
 comparative freedom of worship permitted to their brethren 
 in Smyrna and Philadelphia. One mean and inconspicuous 
 building is the only church, and even there the worship is 
 often hushed, lest it should exasperate an outburst of fana- 
 ticism. Satan still retains his sceptre, though without the 
 glory of his ancient throne. 
 
 76
 
 THYATIRA. 
 
 ' I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience, 
 and thy works; and the last to be more than the first." Rev. ii. 19. 
 
 A GREAT Roman road traversed the 
 interior of Mysia and Lydia from 
 Pergamum to Sardis, and thence 
 across Mount Tmolus ; and the 
 traveller exploring these ruins and 
 solitudes follows, for the most part, 
 the time-worn and dilapidated track. 
 Still all is not solitude. We have 
 seen that Pergamum, though shorn 
 of its ancient glories, is even yet 
 a prosperous town. The road of 
 which we speak may have been 
 familiar to St. John, in many an 
 apostolic journey ; for it is in the 
 
 order in which the cities lie on this route that the churches 
 are named in the apocalyptic epistle. To the modern pilgrim, 
 without appliances and facilities, it is a two days' journey 
 from Pergamum to Thyatira. After a three hours' ride over 
 
 79 
 
 TOMB NEAR THYATIRA.
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 the rich plain of Pergamum we cross the classic Caicus, and 
 ascending a low range of hills, where are several busy 
 villages, we descend on the second day to the wide region 
 which is drained by the Hermus, where a number of gently 
 sloping valleys, each watered by some stream famed in 
 olden story, gradually open upon the plain once dominated 
 by royal Sardis. Diverging a little to the right, the broad 
 valley of the Hyllus opens to view, and, as we look down in 
 spring or summer, we see before us a panorama resembling 
 in kind, though not equal in extent or grandeur to, the 
 traveller's first glimpse of Damascus. The eye tracks across 
 the plain the silver thread which marks the course of one of 
 the affluents of the Hyllus ; and in the centre, nourished by 
 its verdure, are crowded the white roofs of a wide-spread 
 Turkish city, with here and there a minaret towering in the 
 midst, and many a clump of tall cypresses raising their 
 funereal plumes on high ; while the whole is girt with a rich 
 fringe of orchards and watered gardens, over which the silver 
 mist, drawn up by the sun, hangs in a thin quivering cloud. 
 This is Ak-hissar "the white castle," the ancient Thyatira. 
 
 Unlike its sisters, Thyatira can boast but little of mytho- 
 logic or historic glories, and the name occurs but rarely in 
 the olden records. 
 
 It is said that a city, under various names, had existed 
 on the spot for many generations : but the first distinct 
 mention of the place occurs during the Macedonian period, 
 when Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Grseco-Syrian 
 monarchy, settled here a Macedonian colony, and gave it 
 the name of Thyatira, in commemoration of a daughter 
 being born to him. Situated on the confines of 
 80
 
 THYATIRA. 
 
 Mysia and Lydia, it had probably been heretofore merely an 
 unwalled town, till Seleucus planted a military colony, and 
 gathered within the fortifications the inhabitants of the neigh- 
 bouring villages. After this the name not unfrequently occurs. 
 
 AK-HISSAR, THE MODERN THYATIRA. 
 
 Antiochus the Great selected it as the first base of operations 
 in his struggle against Roman power (B.C. 190), but was com- 
 pelled to fall back on Mysia. In the plain between the two 
 
 M 81
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 cities he was finally defeated by the two Scipios, when the 
 whole region submitted to the Roman power. 
 
 Thyatira must have at this time been a place of con- 
 siderable trade and wealth, if we judge by the enormous booty 
 which was obtained there by the Romans and their ally the 
 king of Pergamum. After the downfall of the Syrian king, 
 Thyatira was handed over to the kingdom of Pergamum, and 
 remained in obscurity during the continuance of the Attalic 
 dynasty. Nor does it appear to have risen to greater 
 celebrity when it came under the direct suzerainty of Rome, 
 although it boasted a senate, and many corporate guilds of 
 artisans. With a city as with a nation, perhaps happiest is 
 that which has no history ; and Thyatira, occupied in trade 
 and manufactures, escaped many of the vicissitudes and 
 catastrophes of its more ambitious neighbours. 
 
 Though abounding in ruins, its inscriptions are few, and 
 all that have been discovered are subsequent to the Roman 
 conquest. From these it appears that Vespasian, and after 
 him Caracalla, were especial benefactors, the former is re- 
 corded with gratitude, as having restored the roads in the 
 neighbourhood, a boon which would be thoroughly appreci- 
 ated by a manufacturing and commercial population. 
 
 Amongst the inscriptions are no less than three which 
 afford us a very interesting illustration of the single allusion 
 to Thyatira which occurs in the apostolic history of St. Paul. 
 Excepting the address to the angel of the church in the 
 Revelation, the only mention of the place is in the account 
 of St. Paul's visit to Philippi i 1 "And -a certain woman, 
 
 Acts xvi. 14, 15. 
 82
 
 THYATIRA. 
 
 named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, 
 which worshipped God, heard us : whose heart the Lord 
 opened, that she attended unto the things that were spoken 
 of Paul. And when she was baptised, and her household, 
 she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faith- 
 ful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And 
 she constrained us." As Thyatira, though not a place of 
 first-rate dignity, was a Macedonian colony, we may take it 
 as a slight and unintentional confirmation, in a very minute 
 particular, of the accuracy of the details in the Acts, that 
 Lydia of Thyatira is met with in the Macedonian city of 
 Philippi ; this being precisely the sort of incident that was 
 likely to happen, from the close and uninterrupted intimacy 
 which ever existed in the social system of old Greece between 
 a colony and its mother city, however distant. 
 
 But Lydia was a seller of purple, and the three inscrip- 
 tions referred to above all speak of the dyers as one of 
 the incorporated guilds of the place. From the earliest 
 times the manufacture of purple dyes, though a Phoenician 
 discovery, was no monopoly of Tyre and Sidon. As early 
 as the time of Homer we find Maeonia, or Lydia, the region 
 in which Thyatira was situated, celebrated for the purple 
 dye manufactured by its women : 
 
 " As when a Carian or Mseonian maid 
 Impurples ivory trappings for the cheeks 
 Of martial steeds." 1 
 
 This trade evidently formed an important part of the in- 
 dustrial activity of Thyatira, as it did of that of Laodicea 
 
 1 "Iliad," iv. 441. 
 
 83
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 and Colosse. Possibly from Lydia the Thyatiran church 
 had its commencement. She had gone forth with her wares 
 to her mother city to sell and get gain ; but the hostess 
 of the apostle returned with a far richer treasure than any 
 she had carried thence. " For the merchandise of it 
 (wisdom) is better than the merchandise of silver, and the 
 gain thereof than fine gold." 1 
 
 It is not easy to identify the allusions of the apocalyptic 
 address with the local circumstances of Thyatira, of which 
 we know so little. There are, however, some traces of pecu- 
 liar or special superstitions connected with Thyatira. The 
 old coins of the city are impressed with the effigies of Bacchus, 
 Minerva, and Cybele ; but the principal deity of the city 
 appears to have been the sun-god Apollo, introduced by 
 the Macedonian colonists. 
 
 Another peculiar superstition may throw some light on 
 the rebuke to the angel of the Thyatiran church : " Because 
 thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a 
 prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit 
 fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols." We 
 are told by Suidas that there was outside the walls, in the 
 midst of an inclosure called the court of the Chaldseans, a 
 small temple dedicated to a sybil, Sambethe, an oriental object 
 of idolatry, said to have been introduced by the Jews of 
 the dispersed tribes from Chaldaea or Persia. It is possible 
 that the expression Jezebel has reference to this polluted 
 union of Jewish and heathen rites, as practised by these 
 degenerate Israelites. Time is given to her and to her 
 
 1 Prov. iii. 14. 
 84
 
 THYATIRA. 
 
 followers to repent, as if her worship had not been idolatrous 
 from the beginning, but had become corrupted by. inter- 
 course with others. There was probably a large Jewish 
 trading population in Thyatira. There were certainly many 
 Roman settlers, as well as the colonists from European 
 Greece. Latin words are introduced into Greek inscriptions, 
 and many tablets bear Greek and Latin names strangely 
 accumulated on the same individual. 
 
 In ancient times the commingling of races was almost 
 sure to be accompanied by a strange confusion of different 
 superstitions, in a state of society where religious obser- 
 vances were entwined with every circumstance of daily life. 
 If then, amongst the Judseo-Christians, there existed the 
 spirit of Sambethe, combining the profession of a purer faith 
 with the superstitions and impurities of oriental rites, the 
 censure and the space given for repentance may be more 
 easily understood. 
 
 Perhaps the description with which the epistle begins 
 " The Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame 
 of fire, and his feet are like fine brass" may bear some 
 reference to the popular representations of Apollo, the sun- 
 god, and tutelar divinity of the city. The following verse 
 (verse 19) sets before us the spiritual state of the church of 
 Thyatira as exactly the converse of that of Ephesus. There the 
 doctrine was sound, and zeal for orthodoxy was unquestioned, 
 but love was cold ; while here charity and service, faith and 
 patience, were conspicuous and increasing, or, as we may 
 paraphrase it, the service of love and the patience of faith ; 
 their service or ministrations arising from their chanty or 
 love, and their patience founded on their faith, as seeing 
 
 85
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 Him that is invisible ; and so the last works were more than 
 the first works, while Ephesus had left its first love. 
 
 But the purity in doctrine of the Thyatiran church was 
 not commensurate with its love and zeal. There can be 
 very little doubt that the same perversion of truth lay at 
 the root of the errors of the Nicolaitans of Ephesus, the 
 Balaamites of Pergamum, and the Jezebel of Thyatira, 
 all alike setting at nought the obligations of the moral law, 
 professing to follow Christ in the Spirit, but combining that 
 profession with the grossest antinomianism, forgetting that 
 without holiness no man shall see the Lord, and plausibly 
 deluding themselves and their followers into the indulgence 
 of the grossest licentiousness. 
 
 There is nothing to lead us to reject the view of many 
 commentators, that Jezebel refers to some individual teacher, 
 though the conjecture of Grotius, that it is the wife of the 
 bishop who is thus censured, seems to have no warrant 
 whatever. 
 
 If the allusion be to the rites of Sambethe, the life of 
 the historic Jezebel is full of apposite incidents ; for she was 
 the first to introduce not merely a corruption of the true 
 worship of Jehovah, as were the golden calves, but to sup- 
 plant it by the impure celebration of the Sidonian Ashtaroth, 
 the Venus of Asia. Hence Jehu asks, " What peace, so 
 long as the whoredoms of thy -mother Jezebel and her 
 witchcrafts are so many ?" To one who introduced similar 
 practices the evil name is here transferred. In the warning, 
 " I will kill her children with death," there is perhaps a covert 
 allusion to the slaughter of the prophets of Baal on Mount 
 Carmel, predicting some signal visitation, by which " all the 
 86
 
 THYATIRA. 
 
 churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins 
 and hearts." 
 
 One more expression in the epistle may have some local 
 reference, the blessing to those who " have not this doctrine, 
 and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak." 
 The phrase, " the depths of Satan," would seem to have been 
 adopted by these followers of Jezebel themselves, meaning, 
 probably, as ' did some of the later Gnostics, that it was lawful 
 for them to fathom every depth of iniquity, by drinking the 
 cup of sinful pleasure to its very dregs, and yet boasting 
 that, while they could give the body to the lusts of the flesh, 
 they could preserve the soul in an imaginary ether undefiled, 
 and so defeat Satan in the midst of his own kingdom. To 
 those who have not thus sought the fruit of the tree of 
 knowledge of good and evil the Lord says, " I will put upon 
 you none other burden " than merely, as the apostles had 
 decided in the Acts, to "abstain from things offered to idols, 
 and from blood ; from things strangled, and from fornication," 
 adding, almost in the same words, that they lay on the Gentiles 
 no greater burden than these necessary things, i.e., to con- 
 tinue to protest in doctrine and in practice against these 
 distortions of Christian liberty. Finally, as to the faithful 
 at Ephesus is promised to eat of the tree of life, to Smyrna 
 the crown of life, to Pergamum the white stone and the 
 hidden manna, each probably with an allusion to local cir- 
 cumstances, so to Thyatira, the city of Apollo, is promised 
 the " morning star," a better than Hesperus, even "the Root 
 and Offspring of David, and the bright and morning star." 
 
 Beyond the incidental occurrence of the name of a bishop 
 of Thyatira from time to time in the lists of the synods and 
 
 87
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 councils of the East, the place disappears altogether from 
 history, until we approach the time of the final struggle 
 between the Byzantine empire and the Turkish hordes. 
 Thyatira then stood prominently forward in its zeal and 
 devotion to the cause of Christendom. While Andronicus 
 Palseologus n. and his grandson were destroying the resources 
 of the Eastern empire by intestine wars and suicidal feuds, 
 the fatal blow at the Christian power in Asia was struck by 
 
 RUINS OF THYATIRA. 
 
 the capture of Broussa. When he entered its gate Orchan 
 had founded the Ottoman empire, although the glory is 
 attributed in popular language to his father Othman. An- 
 dronicus in., hastily crossing into Asia, A.D. 1330, vainly 
 endeavoured to stay his progress. He made a desperate 
 stand at Pergamum ; but when he was driven from thence, 
 Thyatira still held firm to the Christian cause. It was only 
 by storm that it was taken at last, after every other city in 
 88
 
 THYAT1RA. 
 
 Asia Minor except Philadelphia had submitted to the Cres- 
 cent, and Andronicus Palaeologus was obliged to abandon his 
 attempts to check the progress of the Moslem invasion. A 
 century afterwards Thyatira was ravaged by Tamerlane, and 
 was finally incorporated into the Turkish empire, after the 
 victory of the Sultan Mourad before its walls. From that 
 time its name has been lost, and the Turkish appellation 
 Ak-hissar, "white castle," has been substituted. 
 
 Though full of remains of classic and of Christian times 
 marble friezes built into the walls of hovels, sculptured capitals 
 used as troughs or well-covers few buildings can be traced 
 among the debris ; but the old cathedral church of St. John 
 remains, preserving the tradition of the apostle's visits ; and 
 though perverted to the worship of the false prophet, with a 
 tall minaret added, it is still only known by the native Christian, 
 forbidden ever to cross its threshold, as "the Church of 
 the Holy Theologian." It had evidently been transformed 
 from heathen to Christian uses, or, if not a temple, had been 
 constructed from the materials of heathen fanes. One-third 
 of the inhabitants, who number in all about fifteen thousand, 
 still adhere to the Christian faith, from which, in the earlier 
 and less lenient days of Turkish rule, the native population 
 of the neighbourhood rapidly apostatised, the young men 
 induced by the allurements of military service and exemption 
 from taxation, while the widows and maids of the conquered 
 race were at the mercy of the invaders. Like the inhabitants 
 of Philadelphia, the Christians of Thyatira were able by their 
 valour to extort some terms from the victors ; and there is 
 still a Greek bishop resident in the place. 
 
 The old trade of the dyer has long since become extinct ; 
 
 N 89
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 but the Christians, who are the wealthiest and most thriving 
 part of the population, are busily occupied in the cultivation 
 of cotton, which has become the staple of the district. The 
 railway from Smyrna to Magnesia, only thirty miles distant, 
 is about to be extended to Ak-hissar, and we can only pray 
 that, with the revival of its trade and commerce, when once 
 more open to Western influences, the Christianity of Thyatira 
 may revive, and a clearer light illumine the children of those 
 who, for generation after generation, isolated and oppressed, 
 have held fast, with unwavering constancy, at least the 
 Christian name. 
 
 RUINS AT TYRE.
 
 SARDIS. 
 
 O 
 
 N the banks of the little 
 river Hermus, which 
 drains the plain of Lydia 
 into the gulf of Smyrna, is 
 centred the story of Asiatic 
 Greece. Olden poets have 
 sung of that plain as wide 
 and vast. Rich and fertile 
 though it be, it is small 
 in the eyes of those familiar 
 with Western lands, but to 
 one who has been taught 
 not to confound greatness 
 with bigness, that river's 
 
 banks recall many a mighty deed, and the Hermus waters 
 a plain of imperishable renown in the world's history. 
 As we ascend from Smyrna, and follow up the river's 
 course, we ford many a brook, the very name of which 
 is redolent of classic memories ; and, where the plain 
 expands to the widest, a little stream, scarce more than 
 
 93 
 
 RUINS AT SARDIS.
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 a silver thread under the summer sun, flows northward 
 from Mount Tmolus, bringing with it the contributions 
 from the many outlying spurs that break up the plain, 
 which here assumes the appearance of a cluster of wide 
 converging valleys. That little stream is the Pactolus, 
 the golden sands of which, once famed in song, attracted 
 of old the adventurers of Greece, but which are now as im- 
 poverished as the villages which they lave. Following the 
 track of this little stream for about two hours, we reach 
 a spot where it washes a small jagged peak that pushes 
 out into the plain. For acre after acre, the soil, luxuriant 
 in its growth of thistles and thorny shrubs, is strewn with 
 carved stone and marble fragments. Here and there, a 
 mass of brickwork, a crumbling arch, or a broken column, 
 tells the story of a perished splendour ; but the existing 
 signs of human occupation are confined to a water-mill 
 and two or three wretched little hovels. Such is Sart, the 
 living relic of the ancient Sardis, a royal city, and the 
 seat of a powerful empire, ere Alba had given place to 
 Rome. In classic fame and historic dignity, Sardis takes 
 precedence of all her sister churches. But her regal 
 dignity had passed away long before the apocalyptic 
 epistle was written, and, though still a city of wealth and 
 splendour, it could scarcely vie in political importance with 
 Ephesus and Pergamum. 
 
 Herodotus, the father of history, gives us the early 
 story of Sardis, which is interwoven with that of the old 
 dynasty of the kings of Lydia. At first, only a collection 
 of wattled huts, it increased in importance, as the king- 
 dom of which it was the cradle overspread the western 
 94
 
 SARDJS. 
 
 portion of Asia Minor. Before the time of Candaules, 
 B.C. 716, the first historical king of Lydia, it had become 
 a fortified city. But its houses, merely thatched with 
 reeds, were frequently burnt, though the citadel which no 
 doubt occupied the peak that still, now much eroded by 
 floods, commands the ruin-strewn plain retained its ancient 
 fortifications for several centuries. So strong was this 
 acropolis, surrounded by a triple wall, that when, in the 
 reign of Ardys, B.C. 678, the northern barbarians overran 
 the whole of Asia Minor, and destroyed Sardis, the citadel 
 itself successfully withstood their assault. 
 
 It was under the rule of Croesus, the last and most 
 famous king of Lydia, that Sardis reached the pinnacle of 
 its prosperity. To the golden sands of the Pactolus, much 
 of the wealth of that monarch was attributed. Thither 
 the Spartans sent to purchase the precious metal, in order 
 to decorate the statues of their gods ; there gold and silver 
 were first coined, and stamped with the effigies of the 
 sovereign ; Sardis in this respect anticipating even the 
 mint of ^Egina. But auriferous as may have been the 
 sand of the Pactolus, the real wealth of the place was 
 probably much more due to its political and commercial 
 importance. We are told, that the Lydian kings were the 
 first to establish in their city permanent shops for trade, 
 which, up to this time, had been only carried on at fairs, 
 and by travelling merchants ; that the art of dyeing, to 
 which Thyatira owed its importance, was here first invented, 
 and that it was the great market for the wool and woollen 
 cloths, which formed the wealth of Phrygia. The Sardian 
 fabrics, famed in ancient writers, which furnished the 
 
 95
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 couches and floors of the wealthy, are supposed to have 
 been the originals of our well-known Turkey carpets. So 
 highly esteemed were the finer sorts, that they were 
 reserved for the exclusive use of the Persian king. 
 
 One of the noblest lessons taught by the uninspired 
 wisdom of the Greek philosophy, of the vanity of human 
 prosperity, is embodied in the story of Crcesus, the last 
 king of Lydia. Proud of his wealth, he had exhibited 
 his treasures to Solon, the Athenian philosopher and law- 
 giver, in the same spirit of ostentation in which Hezekiah 
 displayed his to the Babylonian ambassadors ; and then he 
 triumphantly asked him, whom he thought the happiest of 
 men ? Solon gave him the name of an Athenian of 
 humble position, who, happy in his family, had fallen for 
 his country in the moment of victory. The next place he 
 gave to two dutiful sons, who, after winning the prize in 
 the public games, had drawn their mother to the temple, 
 and there died with their honours fresh upon them. 
 Crcesus, astonished that the sage found no place for him, 
 was warned of the thousand changes of fortune, and told 
 that a man might be healthy, wealthy, handsome, blessed 
 in his sons, and yet a change might come. Therefore he 
 should call no man happy until he had seen his end, and 
 knew his death. Fourteen years afterwards the Persians 
 invaded Lydia, and, after Cyrus (B.C. 546) had defeated 
 Crcesus in a pitched battle, Sardis was taken by storm, 
 and the captured monarch, according to the barbarous 
 custom of the times, was laden with fetters, and sentenced 
 by the victor to be burnt alive. While on the funeral 
 pyre, he exclaimed three times, " O Solon ! Solon ! " 
 96
 
 SARDTS. 
 
 Cyrus having inquired the meaning of this exclamation, 
 heard the story of the warning which Croesus had received 
 from the philosopher. But the pyre was already kindled ; 
 touched, however, by the tale, and perhaps some pang of 
 conscience suggesting to him that he too might meet with 
 a reverse, the Persian king ordered the flames to be extin- 
 guished, and had the captive brought before him. Croesus 
 explained how ambiguous oracles had led him to be con- 
 fident of his power, and, finally, having made his submis- 
 sion to Cyrus, he was attached to his court, and became 
 his faithful friend and follower. Sardis was, after this, 
 absorbed in the Persian empire, and Cyrus, having rebuilt 
 it, made it the residence of the satrap who governed the 
 whole of Asia Minor, including the Greek cities of the 
 coast. 
 
 When the lonians, in the reign of Darius, assisted by 
 the Athenians, and headed by Aristagoras and Histiseus, 
 endeavoured to assert their independence, they took the 
 city of Sardis, which was accidentally burnt down just after 
 its capture. The Persians, however, under Artaphernes, 
 retained the citadel, and the lonians were compelled to 
 withdraw. But this burning of their western capital excited, 
 more than anything else, the indignation of the Persians, 
 and was the principal cause alleged for the invasion of 
 Greece, first by Darius, and a few years afterwards by his 
 successor, Xerxes, who made Sardis his head-quarters prior 
 to the famous march, which met with the repulses of 
 Salamis and Plataea, indelible in the world's history. From 
 the temple of the goddess Cybele having been consumed 
 in the conflagration at the time of the Ionian attack, the 
 
 o 97
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 Persians found a pretext for violating the rules of ancient 
 warfare, and for burning all the temples of Greece during 
 their invasion. 
 
 Though Greece and the maritime cities were delivered from 
 Persian rule, Sardis never recovered its independence, but 
 remained an appanage of the Persian empire. Here Cyrus 
 the younger mustered his army, when about to attack his 
 brother Artaxerxes, and it was not until Alexander the Great 
 had invaded Asia and won the battle of the Granicus, that it 
 opened its gates without resistance to the Greek conqueror. 
 In acknowledgment of its complaisance, he restored to its 
 inhabitants their Greek laws, and their right of self-government. 
 He built a temple to Jupiter Olympus, and in other ways 
 enriched the city of the history of which we know little 
 more in detail until the Roman period. On the partition of 
 Alexander's conquests, it fell to the lot of Antigonus. After 
 the battle of Issus (B.C. 301) it submitted to Seleucus, and 
 afterwards to Ptolemy. For a time it was annexed to the 
 kingdom of Pergamum, and after a siege of more than a year, 
 it was stormed by Antiochus. When the Scipios defeated him 
 at the battle of Magnesia, Sardis passed into the hands of the 
 Romans, and became the seat of the prefect of their province 
 of Asia. 
 
 The terrible earthquake in the reign of Tiberius, which 
 has been mentioned in the account of Ephesus, laid low all 
 the public buildings of Sardis, which were restored with in- 
 creased splendour by order of the emperor. We find from 
 Tacitus, that the Sardians emulated their neighbours in their 
 sycophancy of the ruling powers, and sent an embassy to 
 Rome to claim the privilege of erecting a temple to the 
 98
 
 SARDIS. 
 
 emperor, on the plea of their wealth, the fertility of their soil, 
 and especially the relationship of Tyrrhenus and Lydus, the 
 mythic founders of Tuscany and Lydia. 
 
 In the apostolic epistle to Sardis there are fewer local 
 allusions to be recognised than in any of the others. In fact, 
 Sardis was at that time sunk rather in worldliness than in 
 superstition. The material prosperity of the place, quiet and at 
 ease, had infected the church, which was sinking into spiritual 
 deadness and torpor the lamp of faith was waning and almost 
 extinguished in the hearts of the professors. Hence the 
 Lord addresses them as " He that hath the seven spirits,"- 
 the fulness of all spiritual gifts able therefore to revive and 
 to recover, from the very gates of spiritual death, those who 
 would employ the little strength they had still retained, in 
 calling upon him. To no other church is so severe a re- 
 proach uttered, as this : " I know thy works, that thou hast 
 a name that thou livest, and art dead." Laodicea indeed 
 counted herself rich when she was poor, but we are not told 
 that she had the name of spiritual wealth. Sardis, on the 
 other hand, was not looked upon as almost dead, but had the 
 name and reputation of life. The outer profession of spiritual 
 life was by no means wanting. She seems to have passed for 
 an orthodox blameless church, and yet the show of life only 
 concealed the reality of spiritual death. Other churches had 
 a diseased part ; she was altogether benumbed by spiritual 
 stagnation ; she was, in fact, a lifeless church. The things 
 that remained were ready to die. She had lost her watch- 
 fulness, for she is bidden to become watchful, and the spark 
 of grace was all but extinguished. 
 
 That she was reputable in the eyes of others seems im- 
 
 99
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 plied by the expression in the second verse, " I have not 
 found thy works perfect before God ;" for before men she 
 had a " name to live," and may have appeared perfect. It 
 has been remarked that Sardis and Laodicea are the only 
 churches the epistles to which make no mention of any 
 struggle, difficulty, burden or persecution borne for Christ. It 
 could not be that the church of Sardis had openly coalesced 
 with the world. In the days of pagan Rome that was im- 
 possible. There could have been no open truce with idolatry, 
 but there may have been a tacit armistice. 
 
 Strange, too, that in these two churches there was no 
 open heresy to be rebuked. It would seem as though Satan 
 troubled not himself to infuse the poison of false doctrine 
 into a church, or to agitate it by divisions, so long as it lay 
 quiescent under the effects of a spiritual opiate. Sleeping 
 and inactive, there was nothing in this moribund church to 
 rouse either the antagonism of the heathen without, or to stir 
 up the selfwill of evil-minded men within. The charge is 
 not one of perversely holding untruth, but of heedlessly hold- 
 ing the truth ; and therefore she is bidden to " remember how 
 thou hast received and heard, and hold fast and repent." She 
 is reminded of the fervour of her first love, when doubtless 
 " there was great joy in that city," and is bidden by self- 
 examination to recognise her own backsliding. She is warned, 
 " If thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief- 
 predicting that the visitation of Christ will be unexpected, 
 and perhaps, too, referring to the story of the Greek mythology, 
 which pictured the noiseless approach of Divine judgments 
 by the avenging goddesses having their feet shod with 
 wool. 
 
 100
 
 SARDIS. 
 
 Still, in Sardis there were a few names that had not defiled 
 their garments perhaps the " ten righteous," enough to save 
 the church for the time names that were more than names, 
 for they had not only the form, but the power of godliness. 
 The word "defiled" (f/u6\vi>av) is different from that used for 
 the spotless robe of Christ's righteousness, meaning not so 
 much a robe without stain, as one without filth upon it, i.e., 
 the filth of open sin and carnal defilement. These are not 
 to be involved in the condemnation of the dead church. Their 
 robes, kept clean from corruption, shall be changed for the 
 spotless white raiment of the redeemed and glorified. " They 
 shall walk with me in white," shall be clothed in white raiment, 
 clad in the righteousness of Christ, and the glorified body 
 transformed into the likeness of Christ's body. " And I will 
 not blot his name out of the book of life." While the names 
 of the mere professors shall fade away when exposed to the 
 searching light of Him who seeth in secret, the names of 
 these are indelibly written in heaven, and there shall be 
 confessed. 
 
 The name of Sardis appears but rarely in early Christian 
 history. One eminent man it produced in Melito, who was 
 its bishop in the second century. Only a few fragments of 
 his writings have descended to our times ; but these, and the 
 manner in which his works are spoken of by his contem- 
 poraries and successors, make us regret their loss. One valu- 
 able fragment is preserved by Eusebius, interesting as being 
 the earliest catalogue of the books of the Old Testament given 
 by any Christian writer. It exactly corresponds with the 
 received canon, excepting that he omits Nehemiah and Esther, 
 both of them being probably included by him under the title 
 
 101
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 of Ezra. It is very important to observe that not one of the 
 books of the Apocrypha, foisted into the canon by the Church 
 of Rome, is mentioned by him. From his use of the term, 
 " The books of the Old Covenant," we may infer that at the 
 time he wrote (about A. D. 170), the New Testament Scriptures 
 had already been collected into a complete volume. So 
 anxious have been the interpolators of the Apocrypha to avail 
 themselves of some authority from Melito, that they have 
 argued that by the title " Wisdom," which he gives as a second 
 appellation of the book of Proverbs, he intended the apocryphal 
 book of Wisdom. 
 
 At the least, twenty works are recorded as having been 
 the products of his pen, the most celebrated of which was his 
 apology or defence of the Christians, addressed to the Emperor 
 Aurelius during his persecution. He also wrote on the Lord's 
 day, on the nature of Christ, on the doctrine of the Incar- 
 nation, and on the Christian church. He compiled a sum- 
 mary of the Old Testament, in six books, doubtless very 
 useful in an age when the multiplication of copies was so 
 costly. Of the details of his life and death we know nothing ; 
 but he was buried at Sardis before the end of the second 
 century. 
 
 About one hundred and fifty years afterwards (A.D. 347) 
 a council was held at Sardis, upon the authority of which 
 great stress is laid by the church of Rome, because it is 
 stated by its fourth canon, that in case of the deposition of 
 a bishop the prelate might appeal to the Bishop of Rome. 
 Not, however, to enter into the question of the genuineness 
 of this canon, which is much disputed, it referred only to 
 a particular case, the granting of a court of appeal to a 
 
 102
 
 SAADTS. 
 
 deposed bishop, and the council was at best an obscure 
 and local synod, never recognised as of any authority by 
 the church at large. 
 
 The temples of Sardis were restored and reopened, and 
 its churches closed, by Julian the Apostate, in his vain effort 
 to resuscitate a defunct idolatry; and in the year A.D. 400, 
 during the first invasion of the Goths, Sardis was ravaged 
 and plundered. It remained, however, a wealthy and pros- 
 perous city for six hundred years, until its final capture by 
 the Turks in the twelfth century ; but for many years before 
 this it had been exposed to the incessant inroads of the 
 hordes of Islam. These incursions, in which all the male 
 prisoners were slaughtered, and the females carried off, had 
 rapidly diminished the Christian population. Its trade was 
 gone, and the greater part of the surviving inhabitants pre- 
 ferred a more obscure refuge in the mountain fastnesses of 
 Tmolus, until Tamerlane the Tartar carried fire and sword 
 through Asia Minor, in the first years of the fifteenth 
 century, and so utterly devastated Sardis and scattered its 
 inhabitants, that no attempt has since been made to plant 
 even a village on the spot. 
 
 As might have been expected from its repeated destruction 
 by earthquake, fire, and war, the monuments of antiquity in 
 Sardis are both scattered and few. The most conspicuous 
 are two solitary columns, with Ionic capitals, on the banks 
 of the river Pactolus, at the back of the Acropolis, which 
 are stated to surpass any specimens of the Ionic style now 
 existing in perfection of style and execution. Their bases 
 are buried in rubbish which has crumbled down from the 
 citadel ; but, from their proportions, they must be about sixty 
 
 103
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 feet high. From their position we know, according to the 
 ancient inscriptions, that they belonged to a temple of Cybele ; 
 and they have been frequently attributed to the age of Crcesus, 
 but as Herodotus mentions specially the destruction of this 
 temple by the lonians, they are more probably the work of 
 Alexander, erected on the same site. As there are no marble 
 quarries on Mount Tmolus the blocks must have been brought 
 from a great distance. At the end of the last century there 
 were six columns still standing, but four have since been 
 destroyed by the Turks for the sake of their marble, to break 
 it up for lime and for tombstones. 
 
 On the other side of the Acropolis there are the remains 
 of a theatre, four hundred feet in diameter, with a vast 
 stadium, both facing the plain of the Hermus. But little 
 remains of either, excepting the general contour and a few 
 seats. Of its later remains the most conspicuous are two large 
 buildings, partly brick and partly stone, which have evidently 
 been Christian basilicas or cathedrals, probably of the epoch 
 of Justinian ; but beyond their ground-plan, and the spring 
 of their arches, there is very little which can be clearly iden- 
 tified. One remarkable building remains, called the Gerusia, 
 or the house of Croesus, said to have been a temple con- 
 verted into an asylum for aged men. Of the churches, the 
 lower one, which is two hundred and fifty feet long from 
 east to west, whilst oblong outside, has within, an apse, or 
 semicircular termination at either end, of which there is no 
 sign externally, resembling the coena of many modern Greek 
 churches. Both these buildings consisted of brick arches 
 raised upon marble piers, made up entirely of architectural 
 fragments plundered from former buildings. 
 104
 
 SAJtDIS. 
 
 The Acropolis is strangely weather-worn and jagged by 
 the combined effect of sun and rains, and the whole of the 
 ancient summit has been washed down excepting a narrow 
 ridge defended by a double wall and perpendicular precipices, 
 several of the detached pinnacles of which are only held 
 together by the fragments of wall which clamp them. But 
 the view from this Acropolis is magnificent, commanding the 
 broad plain of the Hermus to the north, backed by the wide 
 expanse of the Gyga^an Lake and the distant hills, and, to 
 the south, an undulating broken country of hill and valley, 
 of wood and field, fringed in the far distance by the snow- 
 tipped peaks of Mount Tmolus. The whole site of the 
 lower city, and the once-famed Valley of Sweets, said to have 
 been the most beautiful pleasure-ground in the world, are 
 alike strewn with broken and shapeless fragments now indeed 
 a valley of desolation. A few temporary shepherds' huts 
 may be seen in summer ; and the river Pactolus, which once 
 enriched a nation with its golden sands, now renders its only 
 service to man by turning the wheel of the solitary mill 
 where resides the one inhabitant of Sart, himself a Christian, 
 and the single representative of the apocalyptic church, of 
 the seat of a bishop, and the gathering-place of councils. 
 
 Any account of Sardis would be imperfect without mention 
 of the burying-place of the ancient kings of Lydia, which 
 ranks among the wonders of the ancient world. On the top 
 of a high plateau, on the other side of the plain of the 
 Hermus, about six miles north of Sardis, is a vast collection 
 of gigantic mounds, known by the Turks as Bin-teppe (the 
 Thousand Mounds), which spread for a vast distance over 
 the plain. It is the mausoleum of the dynasty of Croesus. 
 
 p . 105
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 One of these, which towers far above the others, the monu- 
 ment of Alyattes, the father of Croesus, is accurately described 
 by Herodotus (i. 93), and remains undisturbed by man to the 
 present day. It is three thousand eight hundred feet in cir- 
 cumference and one thousand three hundred feet in breadth. 
 It rises at an angle of about twenty-two degrees, and is a 
 conspicuous object on all sides. Herodotus tells us that it 
 was raised by merchants, artificers, and women, and that there 
 were marking-stones to show how much of the work each 
 had done. When measured, the work of the women proved 
 to be the greatest. Of these boundary-stones one of a 
 conical shape still remains on the summit of the mound ; but 
 the inscription, if there ever was one, is completely obliterated 
 by time. These amazing earthen pyramids have hitherto 
 escaped the ravages of invaders, nor is there any trace of 
 their having been ever violated by the hand of man. It is 
 still left to future antiquarians to illustrate by their hidden 
 treasures the arts and funeral customs of a people whose 
 civilisation dates long before that of Greece, and is second 
 only to Egypt and Assyria. 
 
 RUINS AT SARDIS. 
 
 106
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 T 
 
 RUINS OF PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 'HE range of Mount 
 Tmolus is the centre 
 round which most 
 of the churches of 
 Asia Minor clus- 
 tered. Far away 
 to the eastward, 
 at the edge of 
 the north-eastern 
 slopes of that 
 mountain, about ninety miles inland from Sardis, two valleys 
 converge, that of the Hermus on one side, and that of the 
 Meander on the other. The site is a commanding one ; for its 
 central position draws to the spot the traffic of the interior for 
 the coast, whether directed towards Smyrna or Ephesus. Here 
 on the edge of the volcanic region of Asia Minor, Attalus 
 Philadelphus, the second king of Pergamum, founded for 
 commercial purposes, in B.C. 140, a city, which he fortified, 
 and called, according to the fashion of ancient monarchs, after 
 his own name, Philadelphia. Unlike its sister churches, there 
 
 109
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 is no halo of mythic antiquity about its origin ; no olden 
 stories of nymphs or heroes cradled on its site invested it 
 with sanctity, or wove a localised superstition into its civic 
 celebrations ; nor could it vie with Sardis or Pergamum in 
 its boast of a past regal or imperial splendour. 
 
 Situated on the little river Cogamus, which winds through 
 the valley, and joins the Hermus near Sardis, and on the 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, WITH MOUNTAINS BEHIND. 
 
 frontiers of Lydia and Phrygia, its importance was simply 
 that of a considerable commercial emporium, and politically 
 it was attached by the Romans to the jurisdiction of Sardis. 
 The lower hills just behind it are composed of the detritus 
 washed down from the mountains above, picturesquely worn 
 and wooded, and form a vast amphitheatre, from the crest of 
 which there is a magnificent view of the town, with its ruined 
 
 no
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 walls, and here and there a great block of ancient masonry 
 rising from the midst of a wilderness of gardens and orchards. 
 The country round resembles a billowy sea suddenly petrified. 
 Old streams of lava, with their surface decomposed into rich 
 black soil, may be traced in every direction, clad with luxuriant 
 verdure, here and there interrupted by a bold protuberance, 
 a dark basaltic dyke pushed above the lava. But in front of 
 the town a fertile belt of plain extends, about five miles in 
 width. In early summer it presents the appearance of a 
 gorgeous carpet ; for the principal product is opium, and the 
 poppies, white, lilac, and purple, mingled indiscriminately, are 
 in full blossom. The business of collecting the intoxicating 
 drug commences at once. The women and children scratch 
 the green heads with a pointed skewer, when the acrid milk 
 exudes, and soon dries in the sun outside the pod, of a dark 
 brown colour. This is scraped off, and when washed is ready 
 for market without further preparation. But- it is a very 
 hazardous industry, and the crop is most precarious ; for a 
 single shower falling while the sap is exuding washes off the 
 whole, and will destroy the hopes of the season. Happily 
 for the morals of the people, all the opium is taken by 
 government for the Constantinople market, at a fixed price, 
 and the sale of the deadly drug is strictly forbidden in the 
 country itself. 
 
 In former ages the produce of this plain was far more 
 wholesome ; for Herodotus mentions it as famous for the 
 manufacture of sugar from the sweet cane (Holckus sorghum), 
 which was largely cultivated afterwards by the crusaders in 
 the valley of the Jordan. Through this plain the Persian 
 king Xerxes passed with his army, on his way to invade
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 Greece. A town named Collatebus, the name of which is 
 now quite lost, seems to have stood on or near the site of 
 Philadelphia. Herodotus mentions it as noted for a sort of 
 confection or honey, made with tamarisk and wheat ; and it 
 is worthy of remark, as showing the unchanging customs of 
 the East, that just as parchment is still the staple manu- 
 facture of Pergamum, after the lapse of twenty-two centuries, 
 the favourite sweetmeat of Philadelphia is this very confec- 
 tion, still made in the same way by the natives, and called 
 by them "halva." The Greek historian tells too of a plane- 
 tree of surpassing beauty, under which King Xerxes rested, 
 and with which he was so much struck, that he presented the 
 tree with golden ornaments, and entrusted it to the special 
 care of one of his body-guard. The neighbourhood of Phi- 
 ladelphia is still noted for its noble plane-trees (Platanus 
 orientalis), which flourish here more luxuriantly than in any 
 other part of Asia Minor. 1 
 
 But while corn and sweet cane covered the plain, the 
 staple, and indeed the wealth of Philadelphia, from its foun- 
 dation by Attalus n., was the cultivation of the vine on the 
 rocky volcanic hills around. Like the sides of Vesuvius and 
 
 1 As a rather amusing illustration of the importance of actual observa- 
 tion in identifying ancient historical sites, we may mention, that while some 
 geographical writers have argued that Collatebus could not be identical with 
 Philadelphia, because of the plane-tree mentioned by Herodotus, since plane- 
 trees were not likely to grow well in so rocky a region, Signor Svoboda, in 
 the notes to his beautiful series of photographs of "The Seven Churches," 
 recently published by Messrs. Low, remarks, in evident ignorance of this 
 stay-at-home criticism, on the magnificence of the plane-trees which he 
 observed there, as surpassing all others in the region.
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 Etna, its volcanic soil is peculiarly adapted for the growth 
 of the vine, and the region is celebrated by Virgil for the 
 excellence of its wines. Philadelphia was the market of the 
 wine region of Asia, and its coins indicate this, as they are 
 stamped with the head of Bacchus, or with the figure of a 
 female Bacchanal, though now tangled forests have supplanted 
 the vine. Like other famous wine districts, it has suffered 
 much from earthquakes, so much so, that Strabo, writing at 
 the time of the Christian era, in the reign of Tiberius, tells 
 us that, owing to the insecurity of the houses, most of the 
 people passed their time in the fields and villages round, and 
 marvels at there being found any so attached to their city as 
 to reside there at all ; and still more at the want of foresight 
 in the founders of the place. But, in spite of these dangers, 
 the city still exists, occupying exactly the same extent, and 
 girt by the same crumbling and shivered walls which marked 
 its limits in the Roman times. 
 
 Though its continued existence and many circumstances 
 of its history are marvellous illustrations of the epistle in the 
 Revelation, and have even extorted admissions from sceptical 
 writers, yet there is less of direct allusion to the local circum- 
 stances of the place in this than in any other of the apoca- 
 lyptic addresses. One expression, however, may perhaps, 
 without incurring the charge of a fanciful interpretation, be 
 taken as peculiarly appropriate to the dwellers in Philadelphia. 
 The promises of future blessedness to the faithful are couched 
 in different terms in the address to each church, and many of 
 them under metaphors which occur nowhere else in the 
 sacred writings. Thus to Ephesus we have " the tree of 
 life ;" to Smyrna, " a crown of life," the complement of the 
 
 Q "3
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 crown of martyrdom ; to Pergamos, " the hidden manna " and 
 the " white stone," the revelation of the holy of holies ; to 
 Thyatira, where the heathen were given to the worship of 
 Apollo, " the morning star ;" to royal Sardis, the " white rai- 
 ment ;" so to the faithful in Philadelphia is the pledge given, 
 " Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple 
 of my God, and he shall go no more out." What Chris- 
 tian, feeling himself a pilgrim here, could so thoroughly 
 realise the permanence of his eternal home, under the figure 
 of a pillar in the temple of his God, as one whose earthly 
 home, shattered repeatedly by the heaving of the unstable 
 earth, and often rent and overthrown by the earthquake, 
 reminded him by its cracks and fissures of the insecurity of 
 all human buildings ? Time after time had all the marble 
 columns of the temples of Philadelphia been laid low. The 
 shattered and gaping walls of this city needed so often to 
 be repaired, that the burden of their maintenance had, we 
 are told, utterly impoverished the citizens. But to the pro- 
 mise of stability was added permanence of residence : " He 
 shall go no more out." He who had so often fled into the 
 open field at the premonitory rumbling ; he whose house 
 had so often been deserted when he had camped in the plain, 
 out of reach of the falling dwellings (for the historian tells 
 us how the inhabitants had to live for the most part in the 
 country), he, of all others, could appreciate the promise, " He 
 shall go out no more," for no earthquake can move the 
 eternal pillars, no shaking of the strong foundations drive out 
 .the inhabitants of the heavenly city. 
 
 The same idea of permanence runs through the whole of 
 the Lord's address to his beloved church. " He that is true" 
 114
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 (ver. 7), the very truth (aXrj&voc), not merely true, but the per- 
 fect, the culminating truth, in a sense in which none other 
 ever can be, "He that hath the key of David, He that 
 openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man 
 openeth," (not merely who has the key of interpretation, who 
 opens and explains the dark places of prophecy, but as 
 having the royal key, the symbol of kingly power,) He of whom 
 David was the type, who has the keys of the kingdom of 
 heaven, the sole power of binding and loosing, of admitting 
 to or rejecting from, the eternal temple. Vain for man pre- 
 sumptuously to claim this power : its exercise will be judged 
 of by Him who alone has the key of David, and who will 
 redress in his tribunal the wrong-doing of the highest tribunal 
 on earth, that claims to act in his name. When ignorance 
 or hatred has wronged any servant of his upon earth, he 
 stands there to disallow and reverse the erring or unrighteous 
 decrees of men. 
 
 But the key of David has power also on earth, for " I 
 have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it :" 
 using here a metaphor very frequent in the writings of St. 
 Paul, but with the addition that man should not prevail to 
 shut again this door against the Philadelphian church, poor 
 and weak in numbers though it might be ; for none should 
 hinder his word from having free course and being glorified 
 in them ; the more so because they had but "a little strength," 
 were but a little flock of small account in the eyes of men, 
 and poor in worldly goods, unlike their neighbours in Lao- 
 dicea, who boasted that they were rich and increased in 
 goods and had need of nothing. 
 
 Beyond this, there is a promise to Philadelphia of final 
 
 "5
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 triumph over their Jewish opponents, greater and more 
 decisive than even that to Smyrna. To her it was promised 
 that they should not prevail against her, but to this church 
 is foretold a more blessed victory than even that of endurance 
 to the end, for her enemies should come and worship before 
 her feet and know that He had loved her. In short, owning 
 that God was with them of a truth, conquerors and con- 
 quered should be blessed alike and rejoice together. The 
 Jews should look on Him whom they had pierced and 
 acknowledge him. The promise seems to have been early 
 and literally fulfilled ; for Ignatius, in his epistle to the Phila- 
 delphian church, in the beginning of the second century, 
 immediately after the death of St. John, alludes to converts 
 from Judaism in this city, who had learned the love of Jesus, 
 and were now preaching the faith which once they destroyed. 
 Richer still is the next promise : " Because thou hast 
 kept the word of my patience, I will also keep thee from 
 the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, 
 to try them that dwell on the earth." Poor and tried, the 
 Philadelphian church had learned to practise patient waiting 
 for Christ, till he should appear. In watching and waiting 
 they had kept his word ; therefore he promises to keep 
 them ; not indeed that they shall have no temptation, but 
 rather shall be kept in temptation. But they shall be kept 
 from the hour of temptation, which shall be universal, the 
 great catastrophes which were coming upon the world at 
 large to try and test them, God's judgments which put all 
 men to proof, and of which the earthquakes of Philadelphia 
 were as premonitory types. Probably the word "temptation" 
 is used here in the same sense in which it is applied several 
 116
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 times in Deuteronomy to the plagues of Egypt, which brought 
 out the pride and obstinacy of Pharaoh as no ordinary pro- 
 vidence would have done. 
 
 To Philadelphia, as to Smyrna, is the crown of life pro- 
 mised : " That no man take thy crown," and to this church 
 in terms even more emphatic than those to her sister. To 
 her it was, " I will give thee a crown of life." Here the 
 crown is spoken of as already won by the zeal and patience 
 of the little company. With little means accomplishing a 
 mighty work a crown not of present triumph, but of future 
 glory, is laid up for them above. Those who would strive to 
 despoil them of it, are, of course, not the seekers after a crown 
 for themselves, but those who would beguile them of their 
 reward, the adversaries, who, fallen and discrowned themselves, 
 would eagerly lead others down to a like depth of dishonour. 
 But nothing save the failing of their own faith, backsliding, or 
 apostacy, could ever rob them of their glorious reward. 
 
 We may note that while "the crown" is spoken of as 
 already given, the succeeding blessing, of which we have 
 already spoken, "him that overcometh will I make a pillar 
 in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out," is 
 promised as future. Their salvation was already assured as 
 members of the church militant, their glorification as members 
 of the church triumphant was yet to come, when earthquakes 
 and persecutions shall be no more. Then the door now set 
 open before them shall be shut for ever, safely to enclose 
 those who shall be for ever with the Lord, for "the servant 
 abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever." 1 
 And as elsewhere in the Apocalpse we read that the ser- 
 
 1 John viii. 35. 
 
 117
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 vants of God shall have the seal of God in their forehead, 
 or have the Father's name written in their foreheads, a 
 similar metaphor is applied here : " I will write upon him 
 the name of my God." As inscriptions, and especially charters 
 from kings and emperors, were commonly inscribed on pillars, 
 so on them shall be engraved the charter of their heavenly 
 citizenship, " the name of the city of my God, which is New 
 Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God ;" 
 the continuing city, the city which hath foundations, for 
 which Abraham as well as they themselves looked and with 
 the gorgeous description of which the sacred canon is closed. 
 Archbishop Trench well observes that the epithet " new " 
 (/catyoc) sets the heavenly Jerusalem in contrast with the old 
 worn-out sinful city bearing the same name, for this word 
 expresses the antithesis of the new to the old as the out- 
 worn, while the common word veog would but express that 
 which has recently come into existence, as contrasted with 
 that which has subsisted long: thus Neapolis, "the city re- 
 cently founded." There would, therefore, have been no fitness 
 in this last epithet here, for this New Jerusalem, " whose 
 builder and maker is God," is at once new, in that sin has 
 never wasted it, and at the same time the oldest of all, dating 
 as far back as the promise given after the fall. It is no 
 material city to be let down bodily from heaven to earth, 
 as the Montanists strangely dreamt, and Tertullian fancied, 
 and as other modern interpreters have sometimes speculated, 
 in their inability to translate the figurative language of Scrip- 
 ture into those glorious realities of the heavenly city, whereof 
 those figures were the vesture and outward array. 
 
 It is a trite remark that to Smyrna and Philadelphia, alone 
 118
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 of the seven, is the message of the Apocalypse one of un- 
 mingled approbation and encouragement, and that these 
 churches alone have maintained their existence and material 
 
 MODERN PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 prosperity to the present day. As we have already seen, 
 this inference is not strictly accurate ; for, while three have 
 indeed utterly perished, two of the others, Pergamum and 
 
 119
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 Thyatira, still exist, and contain Christian churches, though 
 shorn of their ancient splendour, and sunk in poverty, ignorance, 
 and degradation. Still the towns themselves are as flourish- 
 
 o 
 
 ing as most others in Asia Minor, where there is no foreign 
 element to protect the native Christian population. But Phila- 
 delphia has, with Smyrna, maintained an independence and 
 a freedom, as well as a degree of prosperity which has fallen 
 to the lot of none of the others. In the case of Philadelphia 
 this is the more remarkable, for, unlike Smyrna, there has 
 been no trade nor foreign element to aid it in maintaining 
 its position. 
 
 We cannot trace its history and mark its present state 
 without feeling that the threatenings and promises of God have 
 fulfilled themselves in history not less evidently than in the 
 case of the cities of Gennesaret, of Capernaum, Chorazin, and 
 Bethsaida. Even the historian Gibbon, when recounting the 
 overthrow of the Christian power in Asia Minor, writes on 
 these cities as if he almost believed their varied fates to be 
 an accomplishment of the inspired prediction. After recount- 
 ing the final subjugation of the provinces of Bithynia by Orchan 
 (A.D. 1312, etc.), he proceeds: "The captivity or ruin of the 
 seven churches of Asia was consummated, and the barbarous 
 lords of Ionia and Lydia still trample on the monuments of 
 classic and Christian antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus the 
 Christians deplored the fall of the first angel the extinction 
 of the first candlestick of the Revelation. The desolation is 
 complete ; and the temple of Diana or the church of Mary 
 will equally elude the search of the curious traveller. The 
 circus and three stately theatres of Laodicea are now peopled 
 with wolves and foxes ; Sardis is reduced to a miserable 
 
 120
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 village ; the God of Mohammed, without a rival or a son, is 
 invoked in the mosques of Thyatira and Pergamos ; and the 
 populousness of Smyrna is supported by the foreign trade of 
 the Franks and Armenians. Philadelphia alone has been saved 
 by prophecy or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten 
 by the emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her 
 valiant citizens defended their religion and freedom above- 
 four-score years, and at length capitulated with the proudest 
 of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and churches 
 of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect a column in a scene of 
 ruins a pleasing example that the paths of honour and safety 
 may sometimes be the same." * 
 
 It is difficult to trace the history of Philadelphia from the 
 date of St. John to the twelfth century. Happy, perhaps, it 
 was in having no history. It is only once or twice incidentally 
 mentioned by the later Greek writers, and not alluded to 
 excepting in lists of bishops by ecclesiastical authors. But in 
 the middle ages it comes into more prominent notice. From 
 the eleventh century, when the northern hordes began to ravage 
 the eastern portion of the empire, it was exposed to incessant 
 assaults, and its country repeatedly ravaged by barbarian in- 
 vaders. Still it bravely resisted in siege after siege, until, 
 about A.D. 1290, it was captured by the Seljoocides. But its 
 brave resistance, and the determined character of its inha- 
 bitants, secured it moderate terms, and they had already 
 begun to combine against their Moslem oppressors, when the 
 invasion of Asia by that marvellous soldier of fortune, Roger 
 de Flor, encouraged them openly to raise the standard of 
 
 1 Gibbon's " Decline and Fall," chap. Ixiv. 
 
 R 121
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 revolt. Roger, who had risen to the chief command of the 
 disbanded armies which sought adventure after the peace of 
 Sicily following upon the terrible massacre of the Sicilian 
 Vespers, was named by Andronicus i., of Byzantium, Duke of 
 Roumania. He at once crossed the Hellespont, and attacked 
 the Turks. In two bloody battles thirty thousand Moslems 
 fell. Part of their army was engaged in the siege of Phila- 
 delphia, whither Roger marched at once, raised the siege, and 
 liberated the place. His successes earned for him the title 
 of the Deliverer pf Asia. For a time Philadelphia was included 
 with Sardis in the province of Pergamum ; but the intestine 
 broils of Constantinople, the assassination of Roger de Flor, by 
 order of Andronicus, and the utter weakness of Byzantium, 
 soon exposed that fair land to renewed devastation. Orchan 
 subjugated -the whole of Asia Minor, and in A.D. 1391 Phila- 
 delphia remained the last Christian city which had not been 
 taken by the Turks. 
 
 Knolles relates, from the Arabic histprians, the tale of the 
 last siege pf Philadelphia by Bajazet. It was now completely 
 isolated, and its distance from the sea forbad all hope of 
 succour. Still the garrison scorned the summons to surrender, 
 relying on a tradition that the Christian city of Philadelphia 
 should never fall intp the hands of the infidel. At first Bajazet 
 forbad his soldiers to plunder the district, and ordered that 
 private property should be respected ; but finding the resist- 
 ance more stubborn than he had expected, determined to drive 
 them to desperation by utterly ravaging the whole country 
 round. After some months the garrison was reduced to ex- 
 tremity, and capitulated on terms of complete submission, 
 saving only their lives and religion. But the saddest part 
 
 122
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 of the story of the last extinction of Christian independence 
 in Asia Minor is, that to the eternal infamy of the Greeks, 
 the deposed emperor John, with his son Manuel, in their 
 resentment against the emperor Andronicus, led their troops 
 to assist in the siege, and that Manuel and his soldiers were 
 the first to force the breach which compelled the surrender 
 of the town. Notwithstanding this perfidy, and that the city 
 was actually entered by the storming parties, honourable terms 
 were given. 
 
 Soon again was Philadelphia exposed to the horrors of a 
 siege, for about ten years afterwards, after the capture of 
 
 RUINS IN PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 Bajazet by Tamerlane, the Tartar stormed it, but he too, 
 contrary to his wont, spared it from pillage and destruction. 
 
 Its very name in Turkish, Allah-Shehr, " the city of God," 
 implies that its conquerors have acknowledged in it some 
 special claim to sanctity, or have been convinced of its being 
 under a more than ordinary Divine Providence. Of the whole 
 population, which is about fifteen thousand, fully one-third are 
 Christians of the Greek church. There is still a bishop of 
 
 123
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 Philadelphia, and about fifteen churches are now belonging to 
 that communion. The Christians have still the free exercise 
 of their religion, and are permitted to ring their church bells, 
 and to have religious processions in the streets a privilege 
 accorded to no other town in the interior of Asia Minor. 
 
 Besides the churches in repair, there are upwards of twenty 
 in ruins, most of which have been destroyed by earthquakes, 
 and their places supplied by humbler edifices. One of these 
 ancient piles forms by far the most conspicuous object in the 
 city. It was undoubtedly the old cathedral, and is still called 
 the Church of the Holy Theologian, i.e., of St. John. Its 
 massive pilasters tower high above the modern buildings, with 
 large blocks of masonry ; but the arches which sprung from 
 them have long since been overthrown. Though named after 
 St. John, its date cannot be referred to an earlier period than 
 the reign of Justinian, about the fifth century, and the frag- 
 ments of many ancient temples have been employed in its 
 construction. The piers and lower parts of the wall are built 
 of blocks of stone and marble, while the arches, of some of 
 which the springs remain, are of brick. Many niches and 
 brackets may yet be seen in the walls, and portions of muti- 
 lated inscriptions remain, built into many of the modern 
 churches and houses. The walls of the city can everywhere 
 be distinctly traced, though dilapidated, and in some places 
 completely overthrown. The only other remains of any 
 importance are the ruins of the stadium near the acropolis, 
 the shape of which, hollowed in the side of the hill, can be 
 distinctly traced. 
 
 124
 
 LAODICEA. 
 
 TOMB NEAR LAODICEA. 
 
 IN its history and in its fate Lao- 
 dicea presents a startling con- 
 trast to its sister church of Phila- 
 delphia. From the height of 
 wealth and luxury it has sunk 
 to the very depths of degrada- 
 tion and desolation. While Phil- 
 adelphia pursued, age after age, 
 the even tenour of her way, 
 Laodicea shot, meteor-like, into 
 splendour and fame, soon to fall 
 
 " wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." 
 Far away in the interior, beyond the boundaries of Lydia 
 on the confines of Caria and Phrygia, where the frontiers 
 of those regions were so undefined that it was sometimes 
 described as a city in the south-west of Phrygia, sometimes 
 as of Caria, and sometimes of Lydia, stood the city of Lao- 
 dicea. A group of towns of some importance crowded round 
 the spurs of Mount Cadmus, the theatre of many apostolic 
 labours Colosse, Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Aphrodisias. Down 
 the slopes of Cadmus many little streams work their way, 
 
 127
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 forming wider valleys as they approach the plain of the Meander, 
 of which river they are the principal feeders. Near one of 
 these stood Laodicea, generally called, from the name of the 
 river, Laodicea on the Lycus. A long shoulder of a rounded 
 hill stretches out into the level country, between the narrow 
 valleys of the little streams Caprus and Asopus, which unite 
 and form the Lycus. To reach the place from the coast we 
 must follow up this valley, composed of dreary sand-hills with 
 scarcely any vegetation, and monotonous rounded hills on 
 either side. About fifteen miles up the valley we see in front 
 a low hill, not quite a mile long, and about a quarter of a 
 mile broad, clad with short herbage, excepting where, here 
 and there, a rugged block of ruin protrudes. " Nothing can 
 exceed the desolation and melancholy appearance of the site 
 of Laodicea. No picturesque features in the nature of the 
 ground on which it stands relieve the dull uniformity of its 
 undulating and barren hills." There is not even the geological 
 character of the Catacaumene round Philadelphia, with its 
 lava streams and basalt dykes to give a feature to the scenery. 
 The gritty rocks are all horizontal, undisturbed by earthquake, 
 and scored by time. The very ruins themselves are, like 
 the hills, featureless masses of conglomerate, from whence 
 all the marble facings have been torn by Turkish gravestone 
 cutters, leaving the relics of fair temples reduced to the debris 
 of a stone quarry. 
 
 The place, though utterly without inhabitants, is still 
 marked by its Turkish name, Eski Hissar, i.e., Old Castle ; 
 and of ruins, enough are left to attest its ancient grandeur 
 in the heaps of its vast stadium, its aqueducts, bridges, 
 theatres, and gymnasium. In desolation it passes even Sardis. 
 128
 
 LAODICEA. 
 
 The stonecutter never comes but for the day, and hurries 
 back to Denisli. The pasturage is poor, and it is only in 
 
 SITE OF LAODICICA. 
 
 spring that even a gipsy-tent may occasionally be seen, 
 while the flocks are grazing on the early herbage. 
 
 Yet the roll of its olden history is a long one, extending 
 
 s 129
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 from the establishment of the Greek empire to that of the 
 Turkish. Pliny has given us its early traditions. They are 
 not royal or mythical like those of Sardis. Trade, business, 
 material prosperity, and luxury not splendour, fame, or art 
 seem from the first to have been the pursuit of the Laodiceans. 
 Pliny gives us its earliest history as known in his day. The 
 Ionian Greeks, its probable founders, named it Diospolis, " the 
 City of Jupiter," which was afterwards exchanged for the 
 name of Rhoas, under which appellation it became the largest 
 city of Phrygia. It suffered greatly during the wars of the 
 successors of Alexander; and at length Antiochus IL, king 
 of Syria, surnamed Theos, rebuilt it, and gave it the name 
 of his wife Laodice, whom he afterwards heartlessly divorced 
 for the sake of a matrimonial and political connection with 
 Ptolemy, king of Egypt, referred to in Dan. xi. 6 : "In the 
 end of years they shall join themselves together ; for the 
 king's daughter of the South (Egypt) shall come to the king 
 of the North (Syria) to make an agreement : but she shall 
 not retain the power of the arm." In two years the union 
 was dissolved, and Laodice contrived the assassination of her 
 husband and his new spouse. 
 
 We next find Laodicea suffering in the desperate contest 
 between the Romans and Mithridates king of Pontus for the 
 sovereignty of Asia, when the city sustained a long siege, 
 was given over to pillage, and partially destroyed. But it 
 quickly rose again, and, under the dominion of Rome, in- 
 creased in wealth and importance. Many of its sons became 
 merchant-princes, and lavished vast sums in the decoration 
 of their native city. Strabo tells us of one merchant Hieron, 
 who adorned the city with many splendid buildings, and at 
 130
 
 LAO DICE A. 
 
 his death bequeathed the enormous sum of two thousand 
 talents to be applied to public purposes at Laodicea. No 
 wonder that the inheritors of such wealth as this had yielded 
 to the seductions of riches, and were led to boast, " I am 
 rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing!" 
 The orator Zenon, and the rhetorician Polemon, both of them 
 natives of Laodicea in the Roman times, were also con- 
 spicuous benefactors to the city of their birth, and the former 
 had taken an active part in encouraging his countrymen to 
 resist the invasion of Labienus. Along with wealth there had 
 evidently grown up a taste for arts, science, and literature ; for 
 the sceptic philosopher Antiochus and the empiric Theudas 
 were natives and residents of Laodicea. There was also a 
 great medical school here, distinguished by the names of some 
 of the most eminent successors of Galen. Some of the exist- 
 ing ruins have been supposed to be the porticos of these 
 philosophers. When the terrible earthquakes devastated Asia 
 Minor in the reign of Tiberius, the wealth of this city enabled 
 its inhabitants to restore it at once with greater splendour 
 than before, at their own cost. 
 
 Long before the Christian era its commercial importance 
 had drawn many Jews to settle here, and hence probably 
 the very early establishment of Christianity. It lay on the 
 line of the great road to the interior from the coast, and 
 therefore, when the gospel had been preached at Ephesus, 
 Laodicea, the seat of the Roman conventus, would soon, 
 through its Hebrew visitors, hear of the new faith. 
 
 It is first mentioned in the New Testament in the epistle 
 of St. Paul to the neighbouring church of Colosse, where 
 the name occurs four times ; but we have no record that the
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 apostle ever personally visited Laodicea. In fact, from the 
 expression, " I would that ye knew what great conflict I have 
 for you and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have 
 not seen my face in the flesh," it is reasonable to infer that 
 St. Paul's missionary journeys had not extended thither, and 
 this opinion is supported by the best critics. More difficult 
 is another allusion to Laodicea in the same epistle : " Cause 
 that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and that 
 ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea," 1 i.e., the letter 
 which was to come from Laodicea, which St. Paul had written 
 to it. There have been two principal theories on this subject. 
 First, that by the letter is meant the epistle to the Ephesians, 
 which was addressed as a circular letter to several neighbour- 
 ing churches, Laodicea among the rest, and which is, therefore, 
 without those local salutations at the end which mark St. Paul's 
 other epistles. Secondly, that the message refers to a letter 
 now lost. Against this latter view our best authorities cer- 
 tainly incline, unless the letter were merely a slightly altered 
 copy of another apostolic epistle. We have no trace of any 
 such in early ecclesiastical history, nor any allusion to any 
 lost letter of St. Paul. The apocryphal work professing to 
 be the " Epistola ad Laodicenses " is manifestly a clumsy 
 forgery, compiled from the Galatians and Ephesians, and only 
 exists in Latin. 
 
 The subscription at the end of the first epistle to Timothy, 
 stating it to have been written from Laodicea, is of no 
 authority as to St. Paul's having ever visited the place ; but 
 it illustrates the importance of the city. 
 
 1 Colos. iv. 1 6. See Howson, Ellicott, etc. 
 132
 
 LAO DICE A. 
 
 We next come to the Apocalyptic Epistle, which we shall 
 find to contain various allusions to the peculiar circumstances 
 and character of the place. The angel of the church of the 
 Laodiceans has been supposed to be once mentioned in the 
 epistle to the Colossians " Say to Archippus, Take heed to 
 the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou 
 fulfil it." In the apostolic constitutions Archippus is named 
 as the first bishop of the Laodicean church. If he were the 
 son of Philemon, 1 one of the principal converts of Colosse, 
 it would be very natural to find him selected as bishop of the 
 neighbouring city, perhaps more for his father's merits than 
 his own, and he may very probably have been still holding 
 that position thirty years later. If this conjecture be correct 
 it would only be too consonant with the downward course of 
 lukewarmness, that he who required from St. Paul, for his 
 want of zeal and his slackness, the warning " Take heed," 
 should in the lapse of years have grown more and more 
 negligent, till he is visited with this sharpest reproof from 
 his Lord. 
 
 " These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true wit- 
 ness." Here alone the Redeemer takes to himself the title 
 " The Amen," more emphatically proclaiming his eternal truth 
 than even the emphatic " Verily, verily," of his own dis- 
 courses, and thus rendering the warning to Laodicea the most 
 solemn and awful of all. He is also " the Beginning of the 
 creation of God" not, as the Arians and Socinians falsely 
 explain, "the first created," but as He, the personified Wisdom, 
 declares, 2 " I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, 
 
 1 Phil. ver. 2. 2 Prov. viii. 23.
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 or ever the earth was" " by whom all things were made." 
 Any other interpretation would contradict every passage in 
 Scripture in which Divine attributes are ascribed to him. 
 Besides, every other title which he gives himself in these 
 seven epistles is only compatible with Deity the divinity 
 whom every creature is represented, a little farther on, as 
 worshipping together with the Father. 1 
 
 The warning begins, " I know thy works, that thou art 
 neither cold nor hot ; I would thou wert cold or hot." We 
 might have thought that lukewarmness, though worse than 
 heat, was at least a better state than that of spiritual cold- 
 ness that to have half a heart for Christ was better than 
 not to be stirred at all by his love. It would doubtless be so, 
 if it were spoken of a growing state, advancing from the first 
 melting of the icy heart to fervid love. But here he who is 
 cold is one whom the powers of grace have never yet reached. 
 He is one who has not tasted of the powers of the world to 
 come at all. The lukewarm has tasted of the good gift, but 
 has not been kindled by it. He is like the Pharisees like 
 that Simon who loved little ; while the disciples were hot, 
 and the publicans and harlots cold, until changed, like the 
 woman in Simon's house, who, having had much forgiven, 
 became from being icy cold intensely hot. " She loved much," 
 like Saul the persecutor changed to Paul the apostle. These 
 cold ones, when brought to know "the Amen," may reach 
 a degree of Divine heat unattainable by the lukewarm, self- 
 satisfied Simon. 
 
 As Jeremy Taylor remarks, "God hates lukewarm worse 
 
 1 Rev. v. 13.
 
 LA OD ICE A. 
 
 than stark cold . . . must mean that there is some appen- 
 dant evil in this state which is not in the other, and that 
 accidentally it is much worse ; and so it is if we rightly under- 
 stand it, i.e., if we consider it not as a being- in, or passing 
 through the middle way, but as a state and a period of religion. 
 If it be in motion, a lukewarm religion is pleasing to God ; 
 for God hates it not for its imperfection and its natural 
 measures of proceeding ; but if it stands still and rests there, 
 it is a state against the designs and against the perfection of 
 God." And because this state of indifference is absolutely 
 nauseous to God, " I will spue thee out of my mouth :" where 
 the original implies rather, " I am about to," or, " I intend 
 to," as if giving time yet for the lukewarm to grow hot again. 
 " Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, 
 and have need of nothing ; and knowest not that thou art 
 wretched and miserable (literally ' the wretched one and the 
 miserable one'), and poor, and blind, and naked." There 
 is a figure here from the outward wealth and splendour of 
 their city, applied to their self-deception in claiming for 
 themselves spiritual riches, and glorying in spiritual gifts. 
 They were perhaps misled, to their imminent peril, by the 
 absence of outward or notorious heresy among them. It has 
 been already remarked that the only two churches addressed, 
 with reference to which there is no mention either of foes 
 without or of traitors within, are just those two which were 
 in the most deplorable spiritual condition Sardis and Lao- 
 dicea. Cold and dead, sunk in slumber, they slept on, 
 undisturbed by heathen persecution or false Jews. No 
 Nicolaitans corrupted their doctrine, no followers of Balaam, 
 no seducing Jezebel rent the church, and at the same time
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 constrained them earnestly to contend for the truth. It was 
 just, perhaps, because she had not gainsayers nor heretics to 
 resist, that the church of Laodicea did not learn to grasp 
 more firmly and to prize more dearly the truths she so coldly 
 held. It was not good for them to be without the necessity 
 of doing battle for the truth. What is this but the lesson 
 which all church history teaches, that when the church has 
 settled down at ease, supreme apparently over all around, 
 she has lost, first her watchfulness, and then her faithfulness ? 
 The struggles of the second century prevented the church 
 from settling down into a philosophical sect. The oft-recur- 
 ring heresies of the third century caused all doctrine pertain- 
 ing to the person and offices of our blessed Lord to be so 
 defined, that clearness of dogma on those great points, and 
 orthodoxy were ever after inseparable. The dominant church 
 of the middle ages, on the contrary, lost all its life and its 
 love, and sank into the dark sleep of death so soon as it had 
 conquered the world, and the history of the middle of the 
 eighteenth century in England and Scotland is almost a 
 repetition of the same sad story. 
 
 But now comes the remedy offered to Laodicea : " I 
 counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou 
 mayest be rich ; and white raiment, that thou mayest be 
 clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear ; 
 and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see." 
 Here is the three-fold remedy for their three-fold need gold 
 for their poverty, white raiment for their nakedness, eye-salve 
 for their blindness. There is an irony, but, as it has been 
 said, the irony of Divine love, in the counsel. The emphasis 
 of the exhortation is in the words "buy of Me," in whom 
 136
 
 LAO DICE A. 
 
 are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. They 
 had relied for these especially on themselves ; and the price 
 they are called on to pay is simply the renunciation of their 
 own wisdom and their own righteousness. All is a free gift, 
 but to obtain that gift, they must strip themselves of their 
 own filthy rags, and count their own spiritual attainments but 
 dung that they win Christ's gifts. . " Christ conforms him- 
 self, so far as the outward form of his words reaches, to the 
 language of earth. To the merchants and factors of this 
 wealthy mercantile city he addresses himself in their own 
 dialect. Laodicea, on the great high road of oriental com- 
 merce, was a city of extensive money transactions, so that 
 Cicero, journeying to or from his province, proposes to take 
 up money there. Christ here invites to dealings with himself. 
 He has gold of so fine a standard, that none will reject it. 
 The wools of Laodicea, of a raven blackness, were famous 
 throughout the world. He has raiment of dazzling white 
 for as many as will receive it at his hands. There were 
 ointments for which many of the Asiatic cities, perhaps 
 Laodicea among the number, were famous; but he, as he 
 will presently announce, has eye-salve more precious than 
 them all. Would it not be wise to transact their chief busi- 
 ness with him?" 1 Thus Perkins comments "Christ saith, 'I 
 counsel thee to buy of me,' when he alludeth to the outward 
 state of this city, for it was rich, and also given to much traffic, 
 as histories record ; and therefore he speaks to them in their 
 own kind, as if he should say, Ye are a people exercised in 
 much traffic, and delighted with nothing more than buying and 
 
 1 Trench, /// loc.
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 selling. Well, I have wares that will serve your turn, as gold, 
 garments, and oil ; therefore come and buy of me." 
 
 The gold and the white raiment set forth the true riches, 
 and the only garment that will clothe the nakedness of souls, 
 the righteousness of Christ. Many profess Christ, who have 
 not yet put on Christ. Here we have an illustration of the 
 great doctrine, that Christ's righteousness must be not only 
 imparted, but imputed put on if the shame of our naked- 
 ness is not to appear, while the beginning of all true growth 
 is to have the eyes anointed with eye-salve, that we may 
 be able to see ourselves really poor and naked, without 
 righteousness, and standing in all our shame unclothed before 
 God. The eye-salve, then, is the enlightening grace of the 
 Holy Spirit, which not only shows us the true nature of God, 
 but reveals us to ourselves as we are in God's sight. 
 
 " As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten," evidently 
 implies that the threat of being spued out of the mouth, the 
 fate of utter rejection, is delayed to give time for repentance. 
 And so the Lord continues : " Behold, I stand at the door, 
 and knock : if any man hear my voice, and open the door, 
 I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with 
 me." The illustration is taken from the imagery of the Song 
 of Solomon, and exactly sets forth Christ's mode of dealing 
 with men. Not only does he wait for them, he conies to 
 seek them. Instead of demanding that we should knock at 
 his door, he knocks at ours. He searches for the straying 
 sheep, and reverses the whole relation which we might have 
 expected. He calls as well as knocks, that the sheep may 
 hear his voice, and may know who it is that seeks admission 
 to their hearts. He not only visits us by the outward deal- 
 138
 
 LAODICEA. 
 
 ings of his providence, but speaking directly by the Holy 
 Spirit to our spirits, He explains to the listening heart the 
 purpose of His dispensations. Yet the knock and the voice 
 may alike remain unheeded. It is man who must open the 
 door. The Lord claims admittance as of right, but He does 
 not break open the door. Man must open the gates of his 
 own heart, in order that Christ may enter ; and if it is he who 
 must open, he can also keep them shut. Yet it is only when 
 Christ knocks that man can open. " Whose heart the Lord 
 opened " it must ever be ; and none can feel any desire to 
 open, unless with the external knockings of providences 
 there come also the inward voice of the Spirit, penetrating 
 within the heart. The coming in and supping with the 
 believer is a figure, again, it would seem, taken from the 
 Canticles, where the Beloved has prepared a feast for his 
 bride, while she has prepared one for him. " Let my 
 Beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits ;" 
 that spiritual feast, of which the Lord's Supper is the earthly 
 emblem, and to the spiritually -minded the earthly antepast. 
 
 The final promise is, " To him that overcometh will I 
 grant to sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame, 
 and am set down with my Father on his throne." "My throne" 
 points to the exaltation of the saints in glory. " My Father's 
 throne" to the exaltation of the only begotten Son to the glory 
 which He had with the Father before the world was. It 
 must not escape our observation, that this promise held out 
 to the church to which the most terrible warning of all has 
 been given, as it is the last and crowning, so it is the highest 
 and most glorious of all. Those who, if they remain luke- 
 warm, are threatened with rejection and spueing out of his
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 mouth, are offered on repentance, not like the apostles, 
 to sit on twelve thrones, but to share the throne with the 
 Son himself. We may trace a regular gradation in the 
 rewards offered to the faithful, till we reach this culminating 
 triumph. 
 
 There is in the promises to the seven churches, it has 
 been remarked, an order parallel to the unfolding of the 
 kingdom of God from its first beginnings on earth to its 
 glorious consummation in heaven. They begin with " the 
 
 RUINS OF HIE3APOLIS, NEAR LAODICEA. 
 
 tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God" to Ephesus, 
 where we are carried back, as it were, to Eden. Then death 
 entered, and the blessing to Smyrna is next, the removal 
 of that curse, " I will give thee a crown of life." From the 
 patriarchs we go on to the Mosaic dispensation, and the third 
 blessing is the hidden manna and the white stone, more 
 glorious than Urim. Then to Thyatira the figure is taken 
 from the glories of the period of David and Solomon, " I 
 will give power over the nations, and he shall rule them 
 with a rod of iron." The next three promises are not clothed 
 140
 
 LAODICEA. 
 
 in type adapted from the history of the earthly church, but 
 their language is from the prophecies of the church's spiritual 
 future. First, the name not blotted out of the book of life, 
 " but I will confess his name before my Father and before 
 his angels." This is the individual blessing of immortality. 
 Next follows, to Philadelphia, the promise of being made "a 
 pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out no 
 more ;" and the citizenship of the New Jerusalem, is fellow- 
 ship with Christ and with all his glorified members. Lastly, 
 we have here the crowning triumph, beyond which there can 
 be nothing further of dignity or of blessing, for the summit 
 has been reached, the very presence of Him who sits upon 
 the throne, not only within reach of Him at all times, but, as 
 it were, leaning on His breast. " To him that overcometh 
 will I grant to sit with Me on My throne." 
 
 Whether the solemn warning against lukewarmness, and 
 the glorious reward " to him that overcometh" roused the 
 angel of the church of Laodicea for a time, and quickened 
 his spiritual life, we know not. History tells us from time 
 to time of the importance of the church there, in rank and 
 numbers. Laodicea became the seat of a metropolitan arch- 
 bishop, and under the roof of its cathedral church were 
 gathered from time to time councils of the eastern church. 
 One was gathered here at an uncertain date, either A.D. 363, 
 or more probably A.D. 372 ; undoubtedly at a period of 
 lukewarmness, for its leanings were decidedly semi-Arian, 
 although its decrees were afterwards, through the influence of 
 Basil and the Gregories, accepted by the orthodox church. 
 These canons, first acknowledged by the eastern and after- 
 wards by the western, do not, however, touch on any con- 
 
 141
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 troverted dogma of the great Christian verities. The best 
 known is that which forbade the placing of bishops in country 
 places, but directed that the villages should be visited by 
 itinerating presbyters, under the direction of the bishop of 
 the city. Practically, this council forbade the multiplication 
 of suffragan bishops. 
 
 A much more important canon of this council, as showing 
 how gradual was the change from the Jewish sabbath to the 
 Christian Lord's-day, is that which regulates its observance. 
 It enacts that " Christians shall not judaize or rest from labour 
 on the seventh day, but work on it as usual. But on the 
 Lord's-day they are to rest from labour, as far as possible 
 (ti'ye SvvaivTo), like Christians." In these days of chafing and 
 fretting at the Divine authority of the Lord's-day, these words 
 are very important, as proving the practice of the early 
 church ; nor less so are the comments of the Byzantine 
 writers, who observe that the exceptions are special cases, as 
 fighting to preserve men's lives against an enemy, toiling at 
 the helm and oar to escape a storm, travelling to church for 
 the service of God, dressing food for man, labouring to save 
 the life of man or beast or the like. No word here of 
 games, or sports, or amusements, all of which were expressly 
 and peremptorily forbidden, as in the code of Theodosius. 
 
 The council of Laodicea also affirmed the canon of Scrip- 
 ture as already laid down and received. 
 
 From this period the name of Laodicea often occurs 
 incidentally in Greek writers, and it became a place of 
 military as well as commercial importance. The emperor 
 Manuel strongly fortified it after his visit on his way to 
 Colosse and Apamea. But it shared the fate and terrible 
 1.42
 
 LAODICEA. 
 
 vicissitudes of all the great cities of Asia Minor in that 
 struggle with the Turks which lasted for generations. It was 
 one of the first places captured by the Mussulman hordes 
 towards the end of the eleventh century. Then about 
 A.D. 1 1 20 the emperor John Comnenus recaptured it, and 
 restored for a time the Christian inhabitants. For one 
 hundred years more it continued to change hands. Turk, 
 Tartar, Greek and mercenary, alternately strode over its 
 walls, till its final destruction by the Ottomans about A.D. 1230, 
 when the place was utterly overthrown, the Christians who 
 could not escape were slaughtered or seized as slaves, and 
 the site of Laodicea became, what it has ever since continued, 
 a desolate heap : " The circus and the stately theatres of Lao- 
 dicea are now peopled with wolves and foxes." 1 The Christian 
 fugitives, still clinging to their native soil, fled to the ravines 
 of Mount Cadmus, at the foot of which they afterwards 
 reunited in the village of Denisli, which still exists with a 
 handful of Christian inhabitants. 
 
 Many travellers have described at length the present 
 state of the ruins of Laodicea. They strike one as rather 
 bewildering than impressive. The vast masses of con- 
 glomerate, the huge crumbling piles of shapeless rubble and 
 stone work, with the many fragments of marble slabs with 
 which porticos and palaces were once veneered, recall rather 
 the epoch of Roman luxury than of Grecian grandeur and 
 solidity. 
 
 The circuit of the walls may be clearly traced, and also 
 the places of the gateways, by the great heaps of ruin which 
 
 1 Gibbon. 
 
 M3
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 once composed the defensive towers. But there are many 
 silent walls, which convey no idea of their purpose. Here 
 and there are the possible remains of a church, and a few 
 of the tombs outside bear Christian symbols. But of the 
 great church which was the seat of metropolitans and the 
 gathering-place of councils, no trace can be identified. 
 
 The remains of the aqueduct which supplied the city 
 are almost continuous, the calcareous incrustation of the 
 water having encased the arches into one mass of petri- 
 
 ;=rpr- 
 
 RUINS OF THE GYMNASIUM. 
 
 faction. It is interesting to notice that this aqueduct proves 
 the Romans to have been acquainted with the hydrostatic 
 principle of water finding its own level ; for instead of being 
 conveyed on lofty arches, it was conveyed down the hill in 
 massive stone pipes, and then taken across the plain, and 
 up the hill on the other side to its original level, into the 
 town, where was a great reservoir near the circus. The 
 stone pipes are hollowed to a diameter of two feet inside, 
 and beautifully fitted one within the other. At the entrance 
 of the city are the remains of a bridge, of which the un- 
 cemented stones appear to have been shaken out of their 
 144
 
 LAODICEA. 
 
 places by an earthquake. The public buildings are all 
 crowded on the acropolis, extending for about a mile in 
 length. The finest and least destroyed of the ancient 
 buildings is the stadium, hollowed out of the side of the 
 hill, or rather out of two sides of a narrow valley utilised 
 for the purpose, and closed across the end. The hollowed 
 subterranean road by which the horses and chariots entered 
 the arena, may still be traced. The rows of marble seats 
 have not yet been all destroyed by the Turkish tomb- 
 cutters, and some of them yet retain, roughly sculptured, 
 the Greek letters and numbers which marked them either 
 as private property, or as reserved seats. The marble seats 
 have been all supported by carved lions' paws of the same 
 material. Three other theatres remain, two of them of 
 unusual size ; the third, rather smaller, was doubtless the 
 Odeum. A long inscription in the Greek language, of the 
 period of Hadrian, can still be deciphered over the entrance, 
 and has been published by Hamilton. 
 
 But since our visit, the progress of destruction has been 
 rapid. Signor Svoboda, in his illustrations of the seven 
 churches, gives sad details of the systematic destruction now 
 going on. A party of workmen sawing marble in the theatre, 
 told him they had been engaged for six years at the same 
 place, and had dug out the whole entablature, which was 
 covered with richly sculptured figures, and sawn it into slabs. 
 Near the same place a colossal statue was seen sawn in 
 pieces in the same way. No wonder, then, that the magnifi- 
 cent female colossal statue and others described by Pocock 
 and several earlier travellers, have long since disappeared. 
 So have also the two oriental agate pillars, eighteen inches, 
 
 u 145
 
 THE SEVEN GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 in diameter, which were standing one hundred and twenty 
 years ago as were rows of richly sculptured composite 
 columns, adorned with busts and heads in relief, and vases 
 with wreaths of leaves and fruits. The great theatre was in 
 the Corinthian style, a little earlier than the others. 
 
 At the north extremity of the acropolis is supposed to 
 have been the Christian basilica, and the bases of a few 
 
 TOMB AT HIKRAPOLIS, NEAR LAODICEA. 
 
 columns yet remain ; but there is little of interest beyond 
 them, and nothing to fix definitely the site of the Laodicean 
 council. Just beyond the walls on this side are the traces of 
 the Christian cemetery, as well as of the earlier heathen one. 
 Many sarcophagi, some broken and some whole, are strewn 
 about, but all long ago rifled. They are frequently used by 
 the visitors for various purposes, and some have been carried 
 146
 
 LAODICEA. 
 
 to Denisli for wine-presses or feeding troughs, according to 
 the universal utilitarian custom of the East. 
 
 Such is Laodicea to-day rejected and desolate, unvisited 
 save by the riflers of tombs or the wandering gipsy. No 
 picturesque features relieve the dull uniformity of its rounded 
 and barren hills. Its grey and scattered ruins present little 
 to attract. Yet when we recall its early history, interwoven 
 with that of the foundation of our faith, and look back in 
 historic retrospect on its splendour, its high professions, its 
 Christian councils, and see it now shunned of man, and 
 its crumbling heaps inhabited only by deadly serpents, the 
 dread of the stranger who ventures to ramble among the 
 ruins we wonder no more at the tone of reverent awe with 
 which even a Gibbon recounts the fate of the seven churches 
 of Asia, and we withdraw from their contemplation with 
 prophecy and fact blended before the mind's eye in one 
 harmonious history. 
 
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