At the close of his epistle to the Colossians St Paul directs this Church to procure “from Laodicea,” in exchange for their own, a letter which he is sending there (iv. 16). Is it possible that we have the lost Laodicean document in the epistle before us? So Ussher suggested; and though the assumption is not essential to his theory, it falls in with it very aptly. Marcion may, after all, have preserved a reminiscence of the fact that Laodicea, as well as Ephesus, shared in this letter. The conjecture is endorsed by Lightfoot, who says, writing on Colossians iv. 16: “There are good reasons for the belief that St Paul here alludes to the so-called epistle to the Ephesians, which was in fact a circular letter, addressed to the principal Churches of proconsular Asia. Tychicus was obliged to pass through Laodicea on his way to Colossæ, and would leave a copy there before the Colossian letter was delivered.”[22] The two epistles admirably supplement each other. The Apocalyptic letter “to the seven churches which are in Asia,” ranging from Ephesus to Laodicea (Rev. ii., iii.), shows how much the Christian communities of this region had in common and how natural it would be to address them collectively. For the same region, with a yet wider scope, the “first catholic epistle of Peter” was destined, a writing that has many points of contact with this. Ephesus being the metropolis of the Asian Churches, and claiming a special interest in St Paul, came to regard the epistle as specially her own. Through Ephesus, moreover, it was communicated to the Church in other provinces. Hence it came to pass that when Paul’s epistles were gathered into a single volume and a title was needed for this along with the rest, “To the Ephesians” was written over it; and this reference standing in the title, in course of time found its way into the text of the address. We propose to read this letter as _the general epistle of Paul to the Churches of Asia_, or _to Ephesus and its daughter Churches_. * * * * *