to the East.. It lay midway between the once royal cities of Pergamos and Sardis, but its own significance was always purely mercantile. It owe<l its prosjierity to the nMinufaclure of woollen gooils, and especially to its ilyed fabrics. An interesting evidence of tlie spiritual influence of the Jews in Thyatira is furnished bj- the fact that St. Paul's earliest European convert, the proselyte Lj'dia, is described as 'a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira' (Ac 16'''). Many scholars tliink that 'Lydia'was not her proper name but her ethnic designation — 'the Lydian.' It was probably at her home in the Lycus Valley that she had "been attracted to the lofty theism and jiure morality of Judaism, and, on going to I'liilippi as the agent of a house of Thyatiran numufacturersand dyers, she naturally sought out the fellowship of the Jewish proscuche.
Purple liad a much wider meaning in ancient than in modern times. The )>urple of Thyatira was prob- ablj- the well-known turkey-red, nuule from the madder-rootwhich grows abundantly in that region.
The native deities of Thyatira, as appears from in.scri])tions on coins, were the male and female Tyrinmos and Boreitene, whom the Ionian settlers identilied with Apollo and Artemis. Christianity was ]irobably brought to tlie cit y at the I ime of St. I'aul's prolonged mission in Ephesus (Ac 19'°" '*). Sown by whatever hand, the seed took firm root there and steadily grew. There was no ensuing decline of the Church's ' love and faith and ministry and patience,' her last works being more than her first (Rev 2'*). Thyatira had, however, a perplex- ing moral problem to solve, and it is the handling of this question that makes the letter to the church of Thj-atira (2"--') the longest and in some respects the most obscure of all the Messages to the Seven Churches. Like the craftsmen of mediaeval Europe, those of many towns in Asia Minor were united in gilds, called Ipya or ipyaalai. In.scriptions pro\e that no city had more flourishing .societies of this kind than Thyatira, the workers in wool and linen, the tanners and bronze-smiths, the dyers and pot- ters, an<l so on, all having their separate gilds. When the new religion was firmly established and became a real power in the city, the burning ques- tion of the hour came to be the attitude of the Christian society to the gild. Could the new and the old live peaceably side by side ? One .section of the church was led by a prominent and influential woman, admired by the weaker minds of the com- munity as worthy to rank with those prophets whose oracular utterances in the primitive Church almost riviilled the insjiiied words of the apostles. The watchword of this [larty w,ash<:arty fellowship between the church and tlie gild. Throwing them- selves with equal zest into tlie life of both, they no doubt justified themselves with specious argu- ments. All l;ibour, they said, is sacred, the strong collective activity of the gild no less than the feebler service of the lonely toiler. It cannot be wrong for members of the same craft to associate themselves in order to defend and promote their common interests, as well as to assist one another in days of sickness and misfortune. To enlightened Christians no real harm can come from initiation into the gild with the conventional pagan rites, from partaking of food sacrificed to iilols, and even from witnessing the riotous mirth of the heathen orgies. And in the name of liberty some so-called Christians of Tliyatira evidently went still further, maintaining that a ]ilunge into occult 'depths,' an experience of unnamed immoralities, could afl'ect only the vile body, while it w.as powerless to soil or h.arm the pure immortal .soul.
Writing ill the name of Christ to the church of Thyatira, St. John uses the scathing language of indignant scorn, the piercing invective of wounded
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TlliEKIUS
love. Leaving unanswered the tlieoretical ques- tion whether tlie gild might conceivably be so Christianized that the believing artisan might con- scientiously seek its protection and share its fellow- shiii, he keeps his eye on the actual situation. To him it is clear as daylight that no servant of God can become, or remain, a member of the gild as it is — steejied in idolatry and immorality. The union of the Christian Church with the pagan association is nothing less than treason to Christ ; in the lan- guage of Hebrew and Christian Puritanism, it is fornication or adultery (Kev 2-°'-^). The 'pro- plietess ' of the Tliyatiran church is denounced as a new Jezebel, all the more subtly dangerous be- cause .she is not, like the hrst, a fanatical heathen defender of nature- worship, but a philosophical and sentimental dabbler in it, who is using her intel- lectual gifts to 'teach and seduce' the followers of Christ, reviving the old fallacy, ' ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.' To the indignant prophet of the Apocalypse this kind of reasoning is infernal; the 'depths' of experience into which members of the church of Thyatira are being initi- ated are the 'depths of Satan' (2-^). He warns the coadjutors and youthful victims of the Tliya- tiran ' prophete.ss ' — called 'her lovers' and 'her children ' — that they will see the couch of pleasure changed into the bed of sickness and di.sease, and lind that no sophistry can prevent sin from work- ing death (2--'^). All antinomian progress is retro- gression ; every ascent ' beyond good and evil ' is a disastrous fall.