For nearly eight hundred days, Paul remained a prisoner awaiting his trial before the Emperor. During that time, he preached the Gospel to hundreds of soldiers who had one after another daily been appointed as guards. These, when converted, would convert others, and when sent off to Roman provinces, would spread the Gospel in new lands, thus widening the area in which the light of truth might shine. [Sidenote: Message Through Epistles.] But that was not the only way in which it radiated from the humble abode of the missionary-prisoner. During that two years confinement, he kept in communication with the Church in Europe and Asia. As there were no railroads, no steamboats, nor telegraph, every letter that he received or that he sent to them was carried by a courier, who had to travel very slowly by land and sea, sometimes for hundreds of miles. But he had loving friends attending him who were always ready to bear his messages. Some of these you already know. Luke, the faithful physician; Timothy, his son in the Gospel; John Mark, who, you remember, started with Paul and Barnabas on their first mission; Aristarchus of Thessalonica; Epaphroditus, a friend from Macedonia; Onesimus, a slave belonging to Paul's friend, Philemon, and others. With these faithful servants as messengers, Paul wrote letters, called epistles, which have made the whole world better and richer in the knowledge of truth. These letters are now in the New Testament, and are called Epistle to the Philippians, Epistles to Philemon, Epistle to the Colossians, and Epistle to the Ephesians. [IMAGE: ST. PAUL. Chained by the wrist to his soldier guard, in his own house, for two whole years.] Thus did Paul's epistles written in a Roman prison become literally "Winged messengers that can fly from east to west on embassies of love." [Sidenote: Released.] Certainty of what Paul did after his having been a prisoner in Rome for two years, ends with Luke's statement, that he "received all that came unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no man forbidding him." It is believed, however, that he was finally given his liberty and that he preached in many lands, tradition saying that he even went to England. It is thought that it was during this missionary tour that he wrote his first letter to Timothy, who had been appointed to take care of the church at Ephesus, and also the one to Titus who was with the churches on the island of Crete. [Sidenote: Again Arrested.] About the year 64 A. D., however, he was again arrested and imprisoned in Rome. Only a year previous the Saints had been persecuted to death by the wicked Nero. They had been thrown into the Arena, devoured by wild beasts, burned to death as human torches, and martyred in other cruel ways. [Sidenote: Beheaded.]