| Transcript |
WITH THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA MINOR. 6*3
THE RUINS OF EPHESUS.
ASIA MINOR.
This city is not only celebrated in profane history, which ascribes its foundation to
the Amazons, but is rendered interesting to mankind, for being commemorated in
the Sacred Scriptures by many important recollections. When Christianity began to
expand itself in Asia, seven churches were founded, eminently distinguished among the
early Christians, as fountains, whence the light of the gospel should flow upon a
benighted world. The first and chief of these was the great city of Ephesus. When
St. John in his Apocalypse addresses these seven churches, the first he named was that
of Ephesus. To the professors of Christianity there, he gives a high character, intimating the reformation which the infant gospel had already effected among the Gentiles.
"I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear
those that are evil." To this church, St. Paul addressed his epistle when in bonds at
Rome, to guard them against that false doctrine that was even then beginning to taint
the purity of the gospel. This city he visited in his travels, and adds the testimony of
sacred history to that of profane, to the estimation in which the great heathen temple
was held; and from this city he took his final departure at that affecting moment, when
they kneeled down, and prayed on the sea-shore, " and wept sore for the words which he
spake—that they should see his face no more." This city once had a bishop, the angel
of the church, Timothy, the beloved disciple of St. John; and tradition reports that it was
honoured with the last days of both these great men, and of the Mother of our Lord.
The present state of this "light of Asia," this " emporium of the world," forms a sad
and striking contrast to its former splendour. The traveller lands on a dismal swamp
at the mouth of a river, choked up with sand. Beside this is an extensive jungle of low
bushes, the retreat of wolves and jackals, and all the wild animals whose solitary and
predatory habits lead them to those haunts, which had once been, but are no longer, the
habitations of men. From thence he advances up an extensive and fertile plain, through
which the Cayster winds, exhibiting all the capabilities of culture and abundance, but
now a rank marsh, scattered over with muddy pools, the retreat of flocks of aquatic
fowls, among which are sometimes seen flights of swans, indicating the permanent
character of nature still remaining unchanged, though the habits of man are altered. At
some miles from the sea are marble columns, supposed to have formed part of the quay
when the river was navigable, and Ephesus the great mart of Asia. Beyond, the plain
is skirted by a rising ground, on which appears a succession of ruins for several miles, |
