Babylon' means Rome.

We have here the same symbolical name as in the Book of Revelation,
where, whatever further meanings are attached to the designation, it is
intended primarily as an appellation for the imperial city, which has
taken the place filled in the Old Testament by Babylon, as the
concentration of antagonism to the Kingdom of God.

If these views of the significance of the expression are adopted we have
here the Church in Rome, the proud stronghold of worldly power and
hostility, sending its greetings to the scattered Christian communities
in the provinces of what is now called Asia Minor. The fact of such
cordial communications between communities separated by so many
contrarieties as well as by race and distance, familiar though it is,
may suggest several profitable considerations, to which I ask your
attention.

I. We have here an object lesson as to the uniting power of the gospel.

Just think of the relations which, in the civil world, subsisted between
Rome and its subject provinces; the latter, with bitter hatred in their
hearts to everything belonging to the oppressing city, having had their
freedom crushed down and their aspirations ruthlessly trampled upon; the
former, with the contempt natural to metropolitans in dealing with
far-off provincials. The same kind of relationship subsisted between
Rome and the outlying provinces of its unwieldly empire as between
England, for instance, and its Indian possessions. And the same uniting
bond came in which binds the Christian converts of these Eastern lands
of ours to England by a far firmer bond than any other. There was
springing up amidst all the alienation and hatred and smothered
rebellion a still incipient, but increasing, and even then strong bond
that held together Roman Christians and Cappadocian believers. They were
both 'one in Christ Jesus.' The separating walls were high, but,
according to the old saying, you cannot build walls high enough to keep
out the birds; and spirits, winged by the common faith, soared above all
earthly-made distinctions and met in the higher regions of Christian
communion. When the tide rises it fills and unifies the scattered pools
on the beach. So the uniting power of Christian faith was manifest in
these early days, when it bound such discordant elements together, and
made 'the church that was in Babylon' forget that they were to a large
extent Romans by birth, and stretch out their hands, with their hearts
in