During the first part of the time in Rome, Paul expected to be freed. He thought his trial would come off favourably, and he was full of hope. In this early period he wrote a beautiful letter to his friend Philemon, who lived in Asia. He told this friend that he expected soon to be free and he playfully added you can get me a lodging, for I shall be coming to Asia before long. He had found in Rome a run-away slave that belonged to Philemon. He had told the slave, who was named Onesimus, about Christ and Onesimus had become a follower of Christ. Paul sent him back to his master, changed from a slave to a brother and Paul calls him his “own son in Christ.” This was the way Paul’s gospel worked for all kinds of people. It made them new men, and it gave them a new relationship to everybody. One day a poor, mean slave, the next day a brother and a son! In this letter Paul calls himself an old man. He writes: “I am Paul the aged.” He could not have been very old in years—probably not more than fifty-five—but his years in prison and the terrible hardships, through which he had been, had left their mark upon him and he seemed old before he was old. As time went on, and Paul had had two years in “his own hired house,” he seems to have been taken to some imperial prison, perhaps to the famous Mamertine prison, which was deep underground, and very dark, cold and damp. It became more and more evident that the wonderful prisoner was not to go free again. His friends in Philippi remembered him and sent one of their number all the way to Rome to comfort him and to carry to him the things he needed in his hard prison life. He was very deeply touched by their love and kindness and he wrote an extraordinary letter of thanks to his first Christian believers in Europe—those men of Macedonia who called him to them. He told them that he did not know whether the outcome of his trial was to be life or death, but that he was “ready” for either event that might come. “I have learned” he wrote, “how to be contented with what comes to me. I know how to be successful and how to be defeated. I know how to be happy when I am full and I know how to be happy when I am hungry. I can do everything with Christ’s help.” “I want you,” he told his friends, “to learn the secret. I want you to rejoice and again to _rejoice_, and evermore to REJOICE.”