He was now in Alexander's old country and there,being familiar with the Greek language,he preached the words of Jesus to his first western audience.
Before he had spoken more than a couple of times,he was arrested and taken to prison.
But the people had liked him and he was quietly allowed to escape.
Nothing daunted by this unfortunate experience,he decided to attack the enemy in their own stronghold.He went to Athens.The Athenians listened politely enough.But they had heard so many new doctrines during the last four hundred years,that missionaries no longer interested them.
Paul's work was never interfered with,but no one stepped forward and asked to be baptised.
In Corinth,Paul secured a great success,as we know from the two letters which afterwards he wrote to the Corinthian congregation,and in which he explained some more of his ideas,which as time passed grew further and further away from those old formulas which were still so dear to the hearts of the Jewish-Christians.
Paul by this time had been several years in Europe.
The fundament for all future missionary work had been laid.He could return to his own world of Asia Minor.
First he visited Ephesus,on the western shore.In that city since time immemorial there had been a shrine to Diana.Diana (or Artemis,as the Greeks called her),the twin sister of Apollo,was something more than the goddess of the moon.The people believed that she could influence all living matter and in their imagination she was more powerful than her father Zeus,just as during the Middle Ages,Mary the mother of Jesus was thought worthy of greater homage than Jesus.
Paul,not knowing the conditions in the city,asked permission to speak in the local synagogue.This was granted,but withdrawn as soon as the Jews had heard a few of his sermons.He then hired the lecture hall of a former Greek philosopher and for three years he conducted what one might call the first theological seminary.
Ephesus,like Jerusalem,was a city with a religious monopoly.The services in the temple of Diana brought profit to many people.
There were visitors and there were offerings.There was a brisk trade in statues of Diana which pilgrims carried home,just as to-day we buy statues of the Madonna in Lourdes and images of Peter in Rome.
This business of course was threatened with ruin if Paul should be successful and should destroy the ancient belief in the supernatural powers of the wonder-working goddess.The goldsmiths and the silversmiths and the priests of the temple did exactly what their colleagues of Jerusalem had done a few years before.They tried to kill Paul in the same way as the Pharisees and the Sadducees had murdered Jesus.
Paul,warned of his danger,fled.But his work had been done.
The Christian community of Ephesus was too strong to be destroyed and although Paul never visited the city afterwards,Ephesus became the most important centre of the early Christian world and several of the earliest councils which gave the new doctrines their final shape were held in this town,as you may read in the chronicles of the second and third centuries of our era.
Paul was now growing older.
He had suffered many hardships and did not know whether he could live much longer.
Before his death he decided to visit once more the scene of his Master's death.
There were many who warned him.
The so-called Christian community of Jerusalem was in truth a branch of the Judaic faith.The very name of Paul was execrated by those who could not forgive the apostle his love for the heathen.His success in Greece counted for nothing in a town which was still dominated by the spirit of the Pharisees.