In respect of education Christianity appears as filling a gap in the imperial policy, supplementing, not opposing it — a position which, though it earns no gratitude and often provokes hatred, implies no feeling of opposition in the giver.
(3) Again, the main effort of Roman policy was directed towards encouraging a sense of unity and patriotism in the Empire. It discouraged the old tribal and national divisions, which kept the subject population in their pre* Roman associations, and substituted new divisions. Patriotism in ancient time was inseparable from religious feeling, and Roman policy fostered a new imperial religion in which all its subjects should unite, viz., the worship of the divine majesty of Rome incarnate in human form in the series of the emperors and especially in the reigning emperor. Each province was united in a formal associa- tion for this worship : the association built temples in the great cities of the province, held festivals and games, and had a set of officials, who were in a religious point of view priests and in a political point of view officers of the imperial service. Everything that the imperial policy did in the provinces during the first century was so arranged as to encourage the unity of the entire Roman province ;
Sec i. The Imperial and the Christian Policy. 135
and the priests of the imperial religion became by insensible degrees a higher priesthood, exercising a certain influence over the priests of the other religions of the province. In this way a sort of hierarchy was created for the province and the empire as a whole ; the reigning emperor being the religious head, the Supreme Pontiff of the State, and a kind of sacerdotal organisation being grouped under him according to the political provinces.
As time passed, gradually the Christian Church grouped itself according to the same forms as the imperial religion, — not indeed through conscious imitation, but because the Church naturally arranged its external form according to the existing facts of communication and interrelation. In Pisidian Antioch a preacher had unique opportunities for affecting the entire territory whose population resorted to that great centre (p. 105). So Perga was a centre for Pamphylia, Ephesus for Asia. But the direct influence of these centres was confined to the Roman district or province. In this way necessarily and inevitably the Christian Church was organised around the Roman provin- cial metropolis and according to the Roman provincial divisions.
The question then is, when did this organisation of the Church begin ? I can see no reason to doubt that it began with Paul's mission to the West. It grew out of the circumstances of the country, and there was more absolute necessity in the first century than later, that, if the Church was organised at all, it must adapt itself to the political facts of the time, for these were much stronger in the first century. The classification adopted in Paul's own letters of the Churches which he founded is according to provinces, Achaia, Macedonia, Asia, and
136 St. Paul in Galatia. Chap. VI.
Galatia. The same fact is clearly visible in the narrative of Acts : it guides and inspires the expression from the time when the Apostles landed at Perga. At every step any one who knows the country recognises that the Roman division is implied. There is only one way of avoiding this conclusion, and that is to make up your mind beforehand that the thing is impossible, and there- fore to refuse to admit any evidence for it.
The issue of events showed that the Empire had made a mistake in disregarding so completely the exist- ing lines of demarcation between tribes and races in making its new political provinces. For a time it suc- ceeded in establishing them, while the energy of the Empire was still fresh, and its forward movement con- tinuous and steady. But the differences of tribal and national character were too great to be completely set aside ; they revived while the energy of the Empire decayed during the second century. Hence every change in the bounds of the provinces of Asia Minor from 138 onwards was in the direction of assimilating them to the old tribal frontiers ; and at last in 295 even the great complex province Asia was broken up after 428 years of existence, and resolved into the old native districts, Lydia, Caria, Phrygia, etc. ; and the moment that the political unity was dissolved there remained nothing of the Roman Asia. But the ultimate failure of the Roman policy must not blind us to the vigour and energy with which that policy was carried out during the first century. "Asia" and "Galatia" were only ideas, but they were ideas which the whole efforts of Roman govern- ment aimed at making into realities.