What impact did thePax Romanahave on the early spread of Christianity?

God had foretold in the prophet Daniel just exactly when the Messiah was to be "cut off." If there had been men of spiritual understanding to understand the Scriptures, they might have known beforehand the very day on which the Messiah must suffer. God had chosen the exact time when He should send forth His Son; and He prepared all accordingly. He sent before Him His servant John to prepare His way before Him (see Matt. 11:10). God allowed the Romans to have a strong government, having control of all that part of the world of which Palestine is the center. The Romans made good roads and kept a great measure of order, which made it possible to preach the gospel in very many places. God had also arranged that all that part of the world should understand the Greek language, so that this helped greatly in spreading the good news. He also arranged that this language should be, perhaps, at this time, the most perfect language this world has known, with which to give us the New Testament.

But, anyhow, Greek was the current language of the world at the time of the appearance of Christianity:— the language with which a man might travel from end to end of the Roman Empire. And there appears a special providence in the circumstance that the Gospel was sent forth at the very time when there was thus a universal language, in which to convey it. It was necessary to the free circulation of the message, that it should be written in the speech of the Empire, not in some local dialect. And the Grecians or Hellenists, though despised by the Palestine Jews, appear certainly, by means both of their more common tongue, and also of their greater enlightenment, to have been the part of Israel that most generally embraced the Gospel, and carried it into distant lands, away from its original cradle in Judaea and Galilee.

Thus the Christians had about a hundred years of comparative rest and peace. There were, no doubt, many cases of persecution and martyrdom during that period, but such cases were more the result of personal hostility in some individual than from any systematic policy pursued by the government against Christianity. The first and commanding object of each succeeding emperor was to secure his contested throne. They had no time to devote to the suppression of Christianity, or to the social and religious changes within the empire. Thus the great Head of the church — who is also "head over all things to the church" — made the weakness and insecurity of the throne the indirect means of the strength and prosperity of the church.

In the year 117 Trajan died, and was succeeded by Hadrian, who continued the persecutions and it was not till the year 138, when Antoninus Pius ascended the throne, that the pressure was in any measure removed. With his mild and gentle reign a period of calm commenced, which lasted nearly thirty years; and for a time the word of the Lord had free course and was glorified. True, there were isolated cases of oppression, but the general persecution had subsided; and the gospel quickly spread through every quarter of the Roman dominions. Westward to the extremities of Gaul, and eastward to Armenia and Assyria the glorious message was conveyed; and thousands who had been vainly seeking rest of heart in the mythologies of Rome and Egypt, drank in the words of life, and declared themselves the willing followers of Christ.

In less than a hundred years from the day of Pentecost the gospel had penetrated into most of the provinces of the Roman empire, and was widely diffused in many of them. In our brief outline of the life of St. Paul, and in the chronological table of his missions, we have traced the first planting of many churches, and the propagation of the truth in many quarters. In large central cities, such as Antioch in Syria, Ephesus in Asia, and Corinth in Greece, we have seen Christianity well established, and spreading its rich blessings among the surrounding towns and villages.

We have to consider the lively traffic between the capital Rome and the various parts of the world empire, which definitely added to the spreading of the gospel. Paul will probably have come to know the many Christians to whom he sends greetings to at the close of his epistle mainly as they had been travelling outside of Rome.

Thus, during the intervening thirty years the faith had greatly spread in the city so as to have been thus widely known. Rome being the capital of the empire, people would be constantly going and coming, which would largely aid, no doubt, in spreading abroad the faith of the Roman Christians.

The well-known capital of Italy and the metropolis of the Roman empire. There were 'strangers' from Rome at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, where they would doubtless hear the gospel, some may have been converted, and carried the gospel back with them. Acts 2:10. Paul wrote his epistle to the saints at Rome about A.D. 58. He was a prisoner there in his own hired house for two years, about A.D. 61, 62, being, as was usual, chained to a soldier. But the gospel spread thereby, and entered Caesar's household. Phil. 1:13; Phil. 4:22.

But we come now to what interests us more than warfare or battles. We catch glimpses, for the first time, of some of those noble Britons who proudly refused to bow to imperial Rome, and see them now bowing in faith and worship at the name of the Lord Jesus. What missionary company first found their way to our shores? Did they bring the Book? Neither question can be answered, but it is almost certain that Roman Christians would follow Roman conquest. Indeed, many soldiers in the imperial armies were believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Another thing we know is that books at this time were comparatively cheap. Bookselling in the first century was a flourishing trade, and Rome then was to literary men what Athens had been before, or what London or Edinburgh is to-day. Publishers employed a staff of girls to copy out, in neat characters, the works of their clients, and so expeditiously was this done that a book of over 200 verses could be sold for about one penny. In later years, as the power of the Empire declined, learning was neglected, and ultimately found a home in the monasteries, where pious men, fleeing — mistakenly perhaps — from the evils of the world, spent their time in copying the Scriptures. Much evil sprang from the monastic system of the Early Church. This is one of the good things: let us not overlook it. It has been estimated that at the close of the second century there would be three millions of Christians and some 60,000 copies of the Scriptures. We may well conclude, then, that the early Christians in Britain were possessed of many copies of the Gospels in the original language, for Greek was still the literary language of the day.

A few words about Antioch, now Antaki, founded BC 300 by Seleucus Nicator, and called after his father Antiochus. It was at this time under a Roman governor, who held his court in the ancient palace of the Seleucidæ, and was reckoned the third city in the Empire, Alexandria being the second. Near by was "one of the most lovely spots on the face of the earth - the celebrated Daphne, where was the Temple of Apollo and Diana, embosomed in a grove of myrtles and cypresses, ten miles in circumference. The Antiochians every year made a triumphant procession thither, with all the pomp and pageantry of a garish superstition." [42] Into this city, inhabited by no small number of Jews, for their synagogues were numerous, and amid a dense population, Christianity got a footing, and quickly gained a considerable number of adherents. Simple, earnest men spoke, and Greeks listened. They spoke of the truth they had received, announcing the glad tidings of the Lord Jesus. Neither the inveterate opponents of Christianity - the Jews - nor idolaters interested in upholding the worship of Apollo and Diana, then appeared to hinder the work, which evidently spread most rapidly, till, under the guiding hand of the Holy Ghost, this city became the centre, the metropolis, as it were, of Christian missions to the heathen For from it the Apostle Paul went forth on each of his three missionary journeys (13:1-4, 15:35-41, 18:22,23), and returned to it at the close of the two first (14:26, 18:22), and doubtless would have conformed to his custom at the close of the third had not his free movement been arrested by imprisonment at Jerusalem.