Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/41

Rh proved by its equipping the only definitely organised preaching expeditions to the heathen world in these early days of which we have any account. Thus in very ancient times this great Church came to the front, a position it maintained for centuries as the metropolis of Christianity in Syria. Chiefly owing to the work of St. Paul, who had been sent out by the Church at Antioch as a companion to Barnabas, at that time a more prominent person, the gospel soon reached Cyprus, the south and west of Asia Minor, Macedonia and Achaia, and even extended as far as Illyricum. After Jerusalem and Antioch—the two metropolitan centres—the chief Christian cities in the Apostolic Age were Ephesus, the capital of Asia; Thessalonica, the capital of South Macedonia; and Corinth, the capital of Achaia; to which must be added the one great outpost of the Apostolic Church in the West, Rome itself, the seat of the empire. It is possible that a Church arose in this early period at Alexandria, the metropolis of Egypt, although but little weight can be attached to the legend that this Church was founded by St. Mark, since it does not appear in any extant writing of Clement or Origen, and is first met with in Eusebius, who only records it as a tradition.

Nothing is more significant of the courage and confidence of the early Christian evangelists than the fact that from the first they seized on metropolitan centres for their missions. In St. Paul these characteristics led to a magnificent prolepsis. With an enthusiasm which would have been pretentious if it had not sprung from faith and afterwards found justification in fact, the apostle spoke largely of Roman provinces—"Asia," "Macedonia," "Achaia"—as though they were already won, when he had done little more than plant his standard in their chief towns. For generations Christianity was a town religion. The intelligence, quickness, and energy of urban populations responded more readily to the new appeal of the gospel than the slower and more conservative nature of the