Barring Damascus, no place is more full of associations and memories connected with St. Paul than Ephesus. It is strange indeed that so little should be known of the life of a saint whose ministry wrought more for the world than that of any other man before or since. Yet here are the remains of the very buildings among which he lived for years. It cannot be said of Ephesus as Lucan said of Troy “etiam periere ruinæ.” Neither Goths nor Turks have entirely wiped them out. Here is the great amphitheatre where the apostle “fought with beasts,” where some twenty-five thousand spectators would assemble for such a sight, and where Demetrius the silversmith raised the riot against him and “the whole city was filled with confusion.” Here, too, is a little square building of stupendous antiquity, which tradition says was his prison; and why should it not have been? I am old-fashioned and simple enough to have faith in tradition, which is often as trustworthy as the written word, just as I humbly accept the letter written by St. Paul “to the saints which are at Ephesus,” when he was “an ambassador in bonds,” at Rome, and pay no heed to the learned hair-splittings of scholastic commentators, to whom I would say, in the famous words of Lord Melbourne, “Why can’t you leave it alone?” Seven years later I was again at Ephesus with Lord Stafford and George Crawley, and this time we found Mr. Wood triumphant. He had just reaped the fruit of eight years of assiduous labour—labour hindered by many difficulties, lack of funds, discouragement, and, last not least, the pestilent atmosphere of the fever swamps among which he had to work. This second visit was deeply interesting, nor was it devoid of a certain element of fun. That time we arrived at Smyrna from Beirut in a small Russian coasting steamer which was carrying pilgrims from the Holy Land back to Odessa—always a curious and interesting lot of passengers, as I often found. We had to face a succession of gales, to the great discomfiture of the poor zealots. One fat old pilgrimess told me pathetically that she would have died had she not thought of the inconvenience that her death would cause on board, and so in the spirit of self-sacrifice she resisted and consented to live.