=Situation and Importance of Ephesus.= Ephesus was at this time the chief commercial city of eastern Asia Minor. Here converged the great highways from the east and north. The town lay opposite the island of Samos, on the bank of the Cayster River. Like most Greek cities, it was built on and about an imposing hill and was enclosed by a great wall. It was a characteristic Roman city, with a huge theatre,^{(138)} a beautiful agora, a stadium seating over six thousand, a forum, and streets lined with colonnades; but its dominant life and ideas were Greek. This western culture was deeply influenced by that of the Orient, for Ephesus, by virtue of its position, was pre-eminently the place where the East and West met and blended. The population of the city was as cosmopolitan as its civilization. Here also Roman, Greek, Alexandrian, and oriental thought met and mingled. Next to Delphi, its temple was the most important religious force in the Greek world, but its influence, on the whole, was immoral and debasing. Here, in the face of active persecution, Paul and the Christian workers whom he gathered about him established what later proved to be the most influential church in Asia Minor. Paul did not leave the Ægean until he had established a Christian community at Troas, which he had visited on his second journey, and at the important cities of Colossæ and Laodicea, east of Ephesus, on the great caravan road from Syria and the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. The latter churches appear to have been established by his co-workers, for in his letter to the Colossians Paul implies that he had never personally visited their city. =Return to Palestine.= Having planted the Christian faith in all the great strategic centres along the main thoroughfares which led to Rome, Paul set out by boat from Miletus^{(139)} to return to Jerusalem. Following the usual course along the southern shore of Asia Minor, he landed at Tyre. Thence he went by land to Jerusalem, stopping at Ptolemais and Cæsarea. The bitter persecution which he experienced at the Jewish capital and his long, wearisome confinement at Cæsarea are familiar chapters in the life of the apostle.^{(115)} They only intensified his oft-expressed desire to visit the capital of the great empire, whose strength and weakness he fully appreciated. Again his Roman citizenship enabled him to escape his persistent persecutors and to reach Rome, although as a prisoner.