ation
by other considerations. For, in the first place, St. Paul was, under
whatever restraints, at Rome. He had reached his goal--a new centre of
evangelization which was also the centre of the world. Step by step
the centre of Christian evangelization had passed toward Rome as its
goal. From Jerusalem, which told unmistakably that 'the salvation was
of the Jews,' it had moved to Antioch, where in a Greek city Jew met
Gentile on equal terms. From Antioch, under St. Paul's leadership, it
had passed to Corinth and Ephesus. These were indeed thoroughly
Gentile cities, and leading cities of the Empire, but they were
provincial. No imperial movement could rest satisfied till it
established itself at the centre of the great imperial
organization--till it had got to Rome.

If we are to understand at all adequately the world in which St. Paul
wrote, the thought of the Roman Empire and of the unity which it was
giving the world must be clearly before our minds: and it will not be a
digression if we pause to dwell upon it at this point when we are
considering the significance of St. Paul's situation as at once a
prisoner and an evangelist in the great capital.

{22}

The Roman Empire brought the world, that is the whole of the known
world which was thought worth considering, into a great unity of
government. What had once been independent kingdoms had now become
provinces of the empire, and the whole of the Roman policy was directed
towards drawing closer the unity, and educating the provinces in Roman
ideas[15].

If we seek to define Roman unity a little more closely the following
elements will be found perhaps the most important for our purpose. (1)
It was a unity of government strongly centralized at Rome in the person
of the emperor. The letters of a provincial governor like Pliny to his
master Trajan at Rome reveal to us how even trivial matters, such as
the formation of a guild of firemen in Pliny's province of Bithynia,
were referred up to the emperor. Roman government was in fact personal
and centralized in a very complete sense, and had the uniformity which
accompanies such a condition. (2) This centralized personal government
is, of course, only possible where there is a well-organized system of
inter-communication between the widely-separated parts of a great {23}
empire. And there was this to an amazing extent in the Roman empire.
We find evidence of it in the great roads representing a highly
deve