Part 1.
Of all the memories which linger round the ancient streets and ruins of Rome, none are more sacred than those of the Apostle Paul. The lonely Christian may well be excused if with patient care he traces out every footstep of the apostle in that great city.
Come with me for a walk in the Campagna, that is the country outside Rome. There in the distance are the beautiful Latin Hills, from the top of which Paul caught his first glimpse of the city What are those long lines of arches, broken here and there and which seem to cross the plain between the mountains and the city? They are the aqueducts built by the ancient Romans to carry pure water from the springs in the hills to the fountains in the city.
Here we are on the road I wanted to find! Do you see it is paved with great round cobblestones? And how straight it runs from the city to the Latin Hills! There in the mountains it passes a place called “Appii Forum,” for this road is the famous “Appian Way,” trodden by Paul about eighteen hundred and fifty-five years ago. It was built long before Paul was born, but even now it is one of the chief highways to Rome and is still paved in the old Roman manner.
It is a good five miles to the city gate from where we are. The afternoon is partly over, so let us set out for home and think of St. Paul as we go along. He was led along as a prisoner by a band of soldiers. Was he in chains, or did the courteous centurion leave him to walk freely? We do not know, but one thing we may be glad of, he had friends with him. There was the faithful loving doctor, Luke, who had come with him all the way from Caesarea, and there were the Roman brethren who had brought him fresh courage when he met them at Appii Forum. For years Paul had longed to see Rome, but I suppose he had never thought he would go there as a prisoner to be judged before Caesar.
Do you feel these stones trying to your feet? How weary Paul must have been— “such an one as Paul, the aged.”
Now we are getting near the city, and a high stone wall shuts out the view on either side of the toad, unbroken except for now and then an ancient inn or blacksmith shop. The sun begins to set behind us, but here we are at last, at the city gate. On each side are grim old towers and beyond them the brown tufa wall stretches away into the distance. But we are still far from home, for this gate leads us into the ruined part of old Rome, where scarcely anyone lives. So wearily we must trudge on. To our left rises the Palatine Hill, with the ruins of the palaces of the Caesars showing gigantic in the dusk against an amber sky. Still our Appian Way leads us straight on, and Paul, too, must have followed it to the center of the city. To me it will always seem that he must have arrived in the evening, after a long march.
But here we are at last in familiar ground. I see the Forum at our right. Now we can take an electric car home to supper. Paul and the other prisoners were formally delivered over by the centurion to the captain of the guard. “And then,” we ask, “were there brethren to receive him, to take him home and refresh him?” We may hope so, for Luke tells us that Paul was permitted to dwell by himself in his own hired house with a soldier that kept him.
For the next two years he was never separated from the soldiers who took turns to guard him. He was living in Rome, the city of great soldiers, and from this time on, you may notice constant references to soldiers or fighting, or armor, in his writings.
“Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ,” he had written to Timothy. He, himself, had endured many a hardship. “What persecutions I endured! But out of them all the Lord delivered me.” (2 Tim. 3:1111Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me. (2 Timothy 3:11).)
ML 05/06/1917