EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES

We come now, after these preliminaries, to the question what was St Paul's purpose in writing the Epistle. We have considered what can be known or reasonably surmised respecting the state of the Church to which he wrote it, and we may be sure that it was intended to bear very directly on what he knew of the Roman needs at that time. But it is difficult to believe that this single Italian Church alone was in his mind. Various indications suggest that the Epistle was partly prompted by thoughts about the Churches of all lands, and also that it was connected with a peculiar crisis in his own personal life. It will therefore be well to leave Rome for the present, and try to see what light is thrown on the purpose of the Epistle by any particulars in the life and work of the writer, which we must remember were at this time, humanly speaking, the greatest moving power in the enlargement and building up of the Universal Church.

The first great extension of the preaching of the Gospel beyond the Holy Land to the capital of Syria, Antioch, took place without St Paul. It was due in the first instance to the sporadic teaching of unofficial converts, just as we have seen to have been the case with the foundation of the Church of Rome.