While, however, the visit to Athens enchained the interest of St. Luke, and enchains ours still, it was far from giving unqualified satisfaction to St. Paul himself. His apostolate was never so nearly a failure as in this city of wisdom and renown ; and, when he quitted it and went on to the next stage, Corinth, he was, we know from his own words, in a state of ' weakness and fear and much trembling '{1 Co 2'). In Corinth, however, he was encouraged by one of those dreams or
visions in which the Lord visited him at critical moments ; and he was further restored to himself by finding, at this stage, in Aquila and Priscilla, tent-makers like himself, with whom he lodged and laboured, the nearest approach to an earthly home it was ever his fortune to enjoy. He re- mained longer in Corinth than he had done in any other city up to this point, and founded a large church, which, though it tried him not a little, laid a strong hold upon his heart.
This journey had been the most remarkable adventure ever attempted by any missionary ; it had been powerfully under Divine direction ; it had abounded with thrilling incidents; it had carried Christianity from the continent of its birth to the continent in which at that time resided the power of the world ; and it was rich in beginnings full of possibility and promise. It was as one who returns rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him, that he appeared again in Syria and Palestine at the headquarters of the mission.
(g) Third missionary journey . — The narrative in Acts hardly takes time enough, however, to report the termination of this journey before it starts him out on the third missionary journey, on which he repeated his previous visits to the churches lying between Antioch-in-Syria and Antioch-in-Pisidiaat the one extremity and to those lying between Troas and Corinth at the other. But the great object of this third journey was to evangelize the province of Asia, which he had had to pass by on the preceding journey, and especially to capture for the gospel the city of Ephesus, one of the great centres of population, as well as of worsliip, art, and commerce, in the ancient world. Here he made the longest stay with which any city evan- gelized by him was favoured — a space of three years. During this interval he may have visited some of the cities in the neighbourhood, which were afterwards under the pastoral charge of the apostle John, who addresses letters to them in Rev 2. 3. Some think that he paid a visit to Corinth, not mentioned in Acts, and room has been sought here for a visit to the island of Crete, mentioned in the Epistle to Titus. In such suggestions there is no impossibility, for in the account given by himself (2 Co 11) of his journey- ings, labours, and suH'erings, mention is made of not a few remarkable adventures of which there is no account in Acts, and it is certain that his life was far fuller of vicissitude than even the compre- hensive narrative of the Acts suggests. On the whole, however, Ephesus was large enough to account for all his time, especially when, as he says (1 Co 16"), 'a great door and effectual' was opened to him there. There were, however, as he adds, many adversaries, and the narrative of the Acts exhibits him in conflict with several of these. His travail culminated in a conflict with the worship of the great goddess Diana, whose annual festival brought hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from far and near to her temple, enriching the inhabitants with the money they squandered. So adversely afl'ected had the attendance become through the spread of the gospel that the silver- smiths, who vended shrines of tlie goddess to the visitors, felt their vested interests to be in perU. A riot was the result, St. Luke's account of which is, for vividness and humour, the best record of such an incident in literature. But the determina- tion of the disturbers of the peace was invincible, and St. Paul had to flee, not, however, without leaving a church which flourished for centuries to such an extent as to make Ephesus one of the foremost names in early Christianity.
On the third missionary journey St. Paul did not really advance farther to the west — the direction of progress — than in the second, and his
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ambition for the extension of Cliristianitj' was far from satislied, as may be ascertained from what lie saj's at the close of the Eiiistle to the Romans, written wliile he was at Corinth, about his desire to see Rome. But tlie days of his free and unim- peded activity were nearing an end. As ho was about to sail for headquarters, perhaps in a pil;,'riin-ship carrying many Jews to an approach- ing feast at Jerusalem, ho became aware of a plot to take his life during the voyage. So he had to resort to a land-journey instead, being accompanied bj' a number of deputies from his various churches, who were the bearers of a collection he had for some time been amassing for the poor at Jerusalem. But in the various places at which he touched the prophets in the churches began to forbode some calamity about to befall him at Jerusalem. This imparted to the speeches he delivered on the way, especially the one to the elders of Ephesus, who came down to the port at Miletus to greet him as he passed, a peculiar pathos. Yet lie did not feel himself debarred from going forward by these providential intimations. He appears, in fact, to have made up his mind that his liour had come ; and he was ready to die at Jerusalem.