of the Roman Empire, skeptic and
scoffer though he was.

The seven churches of seven of the most considerable cities of Asia
were then, as the churches of Christ still are, the salt of the earth.
Ten righteous men would have averted God's judgments from Sodom. Jesus
pronounced the sentences of these churches seventeen hundred and sixty
years ago, and the present condition of the cities attests the divine
authority of the record containing them. They are various and specific.
Three were to be utterly destroyed. Against two no special threatening
is denounced. To the remaining two promises of life and blessing are
given.

Ephesus, famous for its magnificence, the busy avenue of travel, the
seat of the temple of Diana, long the residence of an apostle, and
afterward of Christian bishops--"one of the eyes of Asia"--as it stood
first on the roll of cities, first receives the doom of abused
privileges: "_I will remove thy candlestick out of its place, unless
thou repent._"

Says Gibbon: "The captivity and ruin of the seven churches of Asia was
consummated (by the Ottomans) A. D. 1312; and the barbarous lords of
Ionia and Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and Christian
antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus the Christians deplored the fall of
the first angel, and the extinction of the first candlestick of the
Revelation. _The desolation is complete_, and the temple of Diana or the
church of Mary will equally elude the search of the curious
traveler."[118]

Since Gibbon's day the foundations of the temple have been discovered
twelve to fourteen feet below the soil; but no church of Christ remains
to illuminate the minds of the few squalid and lazy dwellers in the
village of Aisayalouk. One cobbler's stall represented the whole
manufacturing industry of Ephesus; and four boys playing a game like
drafts, with pebbles, in front of it seemed the only public likely to
patronize its theater, as I took note of its people and their
occupations, in 1872. Then leaving the storks in their nests, on the
top of the ruined arches of its great aqueduct, to proceed toward the
ruins of the great theater, we tried in vain to procure horses or asses
for the ladies; found the only road so filled with water from the recent
rains as to be impassable, and were fain to plunge on foot through the
plowed fields till we reached the elevation on which it was erected.
Here we surveyed its rock-hewn seats, capable of accommodating an
audience