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+Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians, by G. G. Findlay
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians
+
+Author: G. G. Findlay
+
+Editor: W. Robertson Nicoll
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2012 [EBook #39196]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: EPHESIANS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Nigel Blower and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
+Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  [Transcriber's Note:
+
+  This e-text is intended for users whose text readers cannot display
+  the Unicode (utf-8) version of the file. Greek words have been
+  transliterated and enclosed in equals signs, e.g. =ho logos=.
+
+  _Italic_ words have been similarly enclosed in underscores.
+
+  As the oe ligature cannot be included in this file format, for
+  consistency both ae and oe ligatures have been replaced with the
+  separate letters throughout. In addition, where a macron is placed
+  above the letter e in the original to represent the Greek letter eta,
+  it is replaced in this version by a circumflex over the e: e.
+
+  A few minor typographical errors have been silently corrected.
+
+  The Table of Contents refers to original page numbers.
+
+  All advertising material has been placed at the end of the text.]
+
+
+
+
+         THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE
+
+           EDITED BY THE REV.
+    W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
+    _Editor of "The Expositor," etc._
+
+      THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS
+
+         BY THE REV. PROFESSOR
+          G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+       HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS
+
+                London
+         HODDER AND STOUGHTON
+         27, PATERNOSTER ROW
+
+             MDCCCXCVIII
+
+
+
+
+                 THE
+       EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS
+
+
+         BY THE REV. PROFESSOR
+          G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+       HEADINGLEY COLLEGE, LEEDS
+
+             THIRD EDITION
+
+                London
+         HODDER AND STOUGHTON
+         27, PATERNOSTER ROW
+
+             MDCCCXCVIII
+
+
+    _Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    _INTRODUCTION._
+
+    CHAPTER i. 1, 2.
+
+    CHAPTER I.
+
+    THE WRITER AND READERS.
+                                                                  PAGE
+    Contrast of Galatians and Ephesians--Pauline qualities of
+    Ephesians: intellectual, historical, theological, spiritual,
+    ethical--The Idea of the Church--The Person of
+    Christ--Ephesians and Colossians--Style of
+    Ephesians--Circular Hypothesis--Epistle from
+    Laodicea--Designation of the Readers--Faithful Brethren          3
+
+
+    _PRAISE AND PRAYER._
+
+    CHAPTER i. 3-19.
+
+    CHAPTER II.
+
+    THE ETERNAL PURPOSE.
+
+    The Apostle's Hymn of Praise--Blessed be God!--Blessing
+    spiritual, heavenly, Christian--In the Beginning the
+    Election of Grace--The World and its Founder--Redemption
+    embedded in Creation--God's prescient
+    Choice--Our Holiness His Purpose--Divine Adoption--Who
+    are the Elect?                                                  21
+
+    CHAPTER III.
+
+    THE BESTOWMENT OF GRACE.
+
+    Structure of the Paragraph--Grace an Experience--Christ the
+    Beloved--Forgiveness and its Price--The Value of
+    Forgiveness--Wisdom a Gift of Grace--The Gospel as an
+    intellectual Force--God's Will the Goal of human
+    Thought--Sonship and Heritage--The Fulness of the Times--The
+    Christian Inventory of the Universe--Reconciliation and
+    Reconstitution--Gathering in and Gathering out                  34
+
+    CHAPTER IV.
+
+    THE FINAL REDEMPTION.
+
+    Mutual Inheritance--Jewish and Gentile Heirs--Uses of the
+    Seal--The Stamp of Sanctity--Promise fulfilled and to be
+    fulfilled--Hearing and Believing--Salvation by the
+    Truth--Salvation for the Gentiles--Faith and the Holy
+    Spirit--The two Redemptions--The encumbered Property--The
+    Earnest of our consummate Life                                  50
+
+    CHAPTER V.
+
+    FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART.
+
+    Thanksgiving for the Readers--The God of Christ, the Father
+    of Glory--Christian Enlightenment--Seeing with the
+    Heart--What is our Hope?--God's Wealth in Men--The true
+    Standard of Value--The Power of Christ's Resurrection           65
+
+
+    THE DOCTRINE.
+
+    CHAPTER i. 20--iii. 13.
+
+    CHAPTER VI.
+
+    WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST.
+
+    Prayer and Teaching--Historical Effect of Christ's
+    Resurrection--The Stages of His Exaltation--Christianity
+    without Miracles--The efficient Cause of Christianity--The
+    perfect Resurrection--The First-begotten out of the
+    Dead--The Risen One, the Holy One--Resurrection and
+    Ascension--Ascension to Rule--Christ and the Angels--Christ
+    glorified God's Gift to the Church--Christ the Fulness of
+    God                                                             81
+
+    CHAPTER VII.
+
+    FROM DEATH TO LIFE.
+
+    Raised with Christ--Sin is Death--Jesus Christ in a dead
+    World--Alive in Body, dead in Spirit--Religious
+    Difficulties--Antipathy to God--The Power of the Air--God's
+    Anger against Sinners--The Soul's Awaking--Consciousness of
+    God--Fellowship in Salvation                                    95
+
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    SAVED FOR AN END.
+
+    Beginning and End of God's Plan--Mercy, Love, Kindness,
+    Grace and Gift--Not of Works--Boasting excluded--Evangelical
+    Assurance--In the heavenly Places--Grace a
+    Task-master--Creation and Redemption--The apostolic Church
+    and the coming Times                                           109
+
+    CHAPTER IX.
+
+    THE FAR AND NEAR.
+
+    Wherefore remember!--Sudden and gradual Conversion--The
+    Gentile World: Godless, hopeless, Christless--Away with the
+    Atheists!--The double Pessimism--The Uncircumcision--Nigh in
+    the Blood of Christ--Reunion in Guilt and in Pardon            120
+
+    CHAPTER X.
+
+    THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION.
+
+    The Jewish War--The two Parties in the Church--The Jewish
+    Enmity typical--The new Christian Humanity--The Church in
+    the first Century and the nineteenth--Hindrances to Unity:
+    external, internal--The Ground of Reconciliation--Enemies of
+    God--The Atonement of the Cross--Moral Communism--Personal
+    Faith--The Fraternization of Mankind                           131
+
+    CHAPTER XI.
+
+    GOD'S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY.
+
+    The Divine Occupant--The Service of Man and of God--One
+    Temple and many Buildings--The Variety of the apostolic
+    Church--The primitive Catholicism--Church and Dissent--Union
+    by Approximation--Our Lord's Prayer for Unity--The apostolic
+    Basis--The Builder Spirit--The sure Foundation Stone           143
+
+    CHAPTER XII.
+
+    THE SECRET OF THE AGES.
+
+    St Paul's Style of Composition--Christ the Mystery of
+    God--Christ in the Old Testament--The Exploration of
+    Christ--The Portion of the Gentiles in Israel--The Organs of
+    the new Revelation--The unique Office and Influence of the
+    Apostle Paul                                                   155
+
+    CHAPTER XIII.
+
+    EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN.
+
+    Christ the Bond of Angels and Men--Our Lord and
+    theirs--Jesus of Nazareth the Lord of the Ages--The Reality
+    of the Angels--Their Interest in the Church--The Peculiarity
+    of the human Problem--The Docility of the heavenly
+    Potentates--The angelic Standpoint--The Grandeur of
+    Christianity inspires Courage                                  167
+
+
+    _PRAYER AND PRAISE._
+
+    CHAPTER iii. 14-21.
+
+    CHAPTER XIV.
+
+    THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST.
+
+    Contents of St Paul's Prayer--The Father of Angels and of
+    Men--Strength of Spirit and of the Spirit--Christ abiding in
+    the Heart--Christ and the Christ--Christ's Claim on the
+    Intellect--Neglect of Theology--Dimensions of God's
+    Building--Strength to grasp the Magnitude of
+    Christianity--The true Broad Churchman                         183
+
+    CHAPTER XV.
+
+    KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE.
+
+    Knowledge in the Growth--Paul's Study of the Love of
+    Christ--Christ's manifested Love--God's Fulness our
+    final Aim--The Fulness more than Love--Praise out-soaring
+    Prayer--God's Gifts beyond our Requests--The
+    Divine Power immanent in Men--The Inspirer of Prayer
+    its Fulfiller--The Union of the Church and Christ in
+    God's Praise--The eternal Glory                                197
+
+
+    _THE EXHORTATION.
+    ON CHURCH LIFE._
+
+    CHAPTER iv. 1-16.
+
+    CHAPTER XVI.
+
+    THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES.
+
+    The Prisoner in the Lord--The Foes of Church Peace:
+    Low-mindedness, Ambition, Resentfulness--The Basis of Unity:
+    sevenfold, threefold--One Body despite Divisions--One Spirit
+    makes one Body--Unity of Life and Hope--One Lord in all
+    Churches--Baptism a Sign of Christ's Rule, the Seal of a
+    corporate Life--The one God, and the many                      213
+
+    CHAPTER XVII.
+
+    THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST.
+
+    Unity in Diversities--Christ the Administrator--The
+    Ascension of David and of David's Son--Height and
+    Breadth--The Giving of Jesus--Christ's Descent and
+    Ascent--The Warfare of Christ--The Spoils of His
+    Victory--The Enlistment of His Prisoners--Apostles and
+    Prophets, Evangelists and Pastors--Paul, Augustine, Luther,
+    Knox, Wesley--The Demands of the Future--Individual
+    Responsibility                                                 227
+
+    CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+    THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.
+
+    The Aim of the Christian Ministry--A perfect
+    Manhood--Sleight or Sport?--Junctures of Supply--Reunion in
+    the Knowledge of the Son of God--The Stature of Christ our
+    Standard--The Dangers of Childishness--Speculative
+    Error--Gnosticism and Agnosticism--Conditions of
+    Safety--Church Organization--The Framework of the Body of
+    Christ--Its Continuity of Tissue                               244
+
+
+    _ON CHRISTIAN MORALS._
+
+    CHAPTER iv. 17-v. 21.
+
+    CHAPTER XIX.
+
+    THE WALK OF THE GENTILES.
+
+    The old World and the old Man--Impotence of Gentile
+    Reason--Science and Pessimism--Loss of the Life of
+    God--Ignorance the Mother of Indevotion--Induration of
+    Heart--Impudicity of Paganism                                  261
+
+    CHAPTER XX.
+
+    THE TWO HUMAN TYPES.
+
+    Defective Views of Christ amongst Paul's Readers--The
+    historical Jesus the true Christ--Paul and the Tradition of
+    Jesus--Jesus the human Model--Nero a Type of the Pagan
+    Order--The Fraud of Sin--The Growth and the Birth of the new
+    Man--Righteousness and Holiness                                275
+
+    CHAPTER XXI.
+
+    DISCARDED VICES.
+
+    The seven Gentile Sins--Truthfulness and the Truth--The
+    Perils of Anger--The Antidote to Theft--Sinfulness of vain
+    Speech--Malice and its Brood--Imitation of the Divine
+    Love--Filthiness and Jesting--The golden Leprosy               290
+
+    CHAPTER XXII.
+
+    DOCTRINE AND ETHICS.
+
+    The Intrinsic and Experimental in Morals--Originality of
+    Christian Ethics--Ethical Art and Science--Four Principles
+    of Pauline Ethics--Personality and Morals--Ethical
+    Character of Christ's Forgiveness--Auguste Comte and the
+    Gospel--The moral Import of the Resurrection--And of the
+    Atonement                                                      305
+
+    CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+    THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT.
+
+    Right the Fruit of Light--All Virtue from one
+    Source--Unbelief and Immorality--Christian Goodness--The Way
+    of Righteousness--Truth the Hall-mark of Sanctity--Verity
+    and Veracity--Specialists in Virtue--Reproof of open and of
+    hidden Sins--Manifestation and Transformation                  321
+
+    CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+    THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT.
+
+    Soberness and Excitement--The heedful Look--Evil Days for
+    the Asian Christians--Wisdom to know God's Will--Wine and
+    social Pleasure--The Craving for Excitement--Fulness of the
+    Spirit--The Rise of Christian Psalmody--The Music of the
+    Heart--Enthusiasm and Order                                    336
+
+
+    _ON FAMILY LIFE._
+
+    CHAPTER v. 22-vi. 9.
+
+    CHAPTER XXV.
+
+    CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE.
+
+    The Divine Character of Marriage--Religious Equality of the
+    Sexes--The Glory of the Man--Women's Rights--Christ's
+    undivided Headship--Masculine Selfishness--Greek Terms for
+    Love--The Husband and the Priest--The double
+    Self--Indelibility of Wedlock                                  353
+
+    CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+    CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.
+
+    Marriage and the Doctrine of the Church--The Individual and
+    the Church--The Glory of the vicarious Death--Christ the
+    Sanctifier of His Church--The Signification of Baptism--The
+    Water and the Word--The Bride made ready--The Church a
+    Christocracy--Adam's Wedding-song--The Church inherent in
+    Christ                                                         366
+
+    CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+    THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD.
+
+    Children in the Church--The initial Form of
+    Duty--Commandment and Promise--Gentleness of fatherly
+    Rule--Spoilt Children--The Lord's Nurture--Greek and Roman
+    Slaves--The Church and the Slaves--Christ a Pattern for
+    Slaves--Servants of Society--Care, Honesty, Heartiness in
+    Work--The heavenly Master's Reward--Responsibility of the
+    earthly Master                                                 380
+
+
+    _ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT._
+
+    CHAPTER vi. 10-18.
+
+    CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+    THE FOES OF THE CHURCH.
+
+    Henceforth be strong!--The two Panoplies--The Personality of
+    Satan--The Devil and his Angels--Paul's Demonology--The
+    spiritual Combat--Interior Temptations--Persecution and
+    Heresy--The Region of the Struggle--The Siege of the
+    heavenly City                                                  397
+
+    CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+    THE DIVINE PANOPLY.
+
+    The coming evil Day--Comparison with Revelation ii.,
+    iii.--The Girdle of Truth--The Breastplate of
+    Righteousness--Shoes of Gospel Readiness--The great Shield
+    of Faith--Fire-tipped Darts--The Helmet of Salvation--The
+    Spirit's Sword--The Weapon of All-prayer                       410
+
+
+    _THE CONCLUSION._
+
+    CHAPTER vi. 19-24.
+
+    CHAPTER XXX.
+
+    REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION.
+
+    Paul's Need of the Church's Prayers--Christ's Ambassador
+    before the Emperor--Speaking the Word given--Good News for
+    the Asian Churches--Character and Services of
+    Tychicus--Peace to the Brethren--Love with Faith--Love
+    toward Christ and Grace from God--The Love incorruptible       427
+
+
+
+
+
+_THE INTRODUCTION_
+
+CHAPTER i. 1, 2.
+
+    =Ou monon Ephesou alla schedo pases tes Asias ho Paulos houtos
+    peisas metestesen hikano ochlon= (Demetrius the Silversmith).
+
+    ACTS xix. 26.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+_THE WRITER AND READERS._
+
+    "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the
+    saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and
+    peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."[1]--EPH. i. 1,
+    2.
+
+
+In passing from the Galatian to the Ephesian epistle we are conscious of
+entering a different atmosphere. We leave the region of controversy for
+that of meditation. From the battle-field we step into the hush and
+stillness of the temple. Verses 3-14 of this chapter constitute the most
+sustained and perfect act of praise that is found in the apostle's
+letters. It is as though a door were suddenly opened in heaven; it shuts
+behind us, and earthly tumult dies away. The contrast between these two
+writings, following each other in the established order of the epistles,
+is singular and in some ways extreme. They are, respectively, the most
+combative and peaceful, the most impassioned and unimpassioned, the most
+concrete and abstract, the most human and divine amongst the great
+apostle's writings.
+
+Yet there is a fundamental resemblance and identity of character. The
+two letters are not the expression of different minds, but of different
+phases of the same mind. In the Paul of Galatians the Paul of Ephesians
+is latent; the contemplative thinker, the devout mystic behind the
+ardent missionary and the masterly debater. Those critics who recognize
+the genuine apostle only in the four previous epistles and reject
+whatever does not conform strictly to their type, do not perceive how
+much is needed to make up a man like the apostle Paul. Without the
+inwardness, the brooding faculty, the power of abstract and metaphysical
+thinking displayed in the epistles of this group, he could never have
+wrought out the system of doctrine contained in those earlier writings,
+nor grasped the principles which he there applies with such vigour and
+effect. That so many serious and able scholars doubt, or even deny, St
+Paul's authorship of this epistle on internal grounds and because of the
+contrast to which we have referred, is one of those phenomena which in
+future histories of religious thought will be quoted as the curiosities
+of a hypercritical age.[2]
+
+Let us observe some of the Pauline qualities that are stamped upon the
+face of this document. There is, in the first place, the apostle's
+intellectual note, what has been well called his _passion for the
+absolute_. St Paul's was one of those minds, so discomposing to
+superficial and merely practical thinkers, which cannot be content with
+half-way conclusions. For every principle he seeks its ultimate basis;
+every line of thought he pushes to its furthest limits. His gospel, if
+he is to rest in it, must supply a principle of unity that will bind
+together all the elements of his mental world.
+
+Hence, in contesting the Jewish claim to religious superiority on the
+ground of circumcision and the Abrahamic covenant, St Paul developed in
+the epistle to the Galatians a religious philosophy of history; he
+arrived at a view of the function of the law in the education of mankind
+which disposed not only of the question at issue, but of all such
+questions. He established for ever the principle of salvation by faith
+and of spiritual sonship to God. What that former argument effects for
+the history of revelation, is done here for the gospel in its relations
+to society and universal life. The principle of Christ's headship is
+carried to its largest results. The centre of the Church becomes the
+centre of the universe. God's plan of the ages is disclosed, ranging
+through eternity and embracing every form of being, and "gathering into
+one all things in the Christ." In Galatians and Romans the thought of
+salvation by Christ breaks through Jewish limits and spreads itself over
+the field of history; in Colossians and Ephesians the idea of life in
+Christ overleaps the barriers of time and human existence, and brings
+"things in heaven and things in earth and things beneath the earth"
+under its sway.
+
+The second, historical note of original Paulinism we recognize in the
+writer's _attitude towards Judaism_. We should be prepared to stake the
+genuineness of the epistle on this consideration alone. The position and
+point of view of the Jewish apostle to the Gentiles are unique in
+history. It is difficult to conceive how any one but Paul himself, at
+any other juncture, could have represented the relation of Jew and
+Gentile to each other as it is put before us here. The writer is a Jew,
+a man nourished on the hope of Israel (i. 12), who had looked at his
+fellow-men across "the middle wall of partition" (ii. 14). In his view,
+the covenant and the Christ belong, in the first instance and as by
+birthright, to the men of Israel. They are "the near," who live hard by
+the city and house of God. The blessedness of the Gentile readers
+consists in the revelation that they are "fellow-heirs and of the same
+body and joint-partakers with us of the promise in Christ Jesus" (iii.
+6). What is this but to say, as the apostle had done before, that the
+branches "of the naturally wild olive tree" were "against nature grafted
+into the good olive tree" and allowed to "partake of its root and
+fatness," along with "the natural branches," the children of the stock
+of Abraham who claimed it for "their own"; that "the men of faith are
+sons of Abraham" and "Abraham's blessing has come on the Gentiles
+through faith"?[3]
+
+For our author this revelation has lost none of its novelty and
+surprise. He is in the midst of the excitement it has produced, and is
+himself its chief agent and mouthpiece (iii. 1-9). This disclosure of
+God's secret plans for the world overwhelms him by its magnitude, by the
+splendour with which it invests the Divine character, and the sense of
+his personal unworthiness to be entrusted with it. We utterly disbelieve
+that any later Christian writer could or would have personated the
+apostle and mimicked his tone and sentiments in regard to his vocation,
+in the way that the "critical" hypothesis assumes. The criterion of
+Erasmus is decisive: _Nemo potest Paulinum pectus effingere._
+
+St Paul's doctrine of _the cross_ is admittedly his specific
+theological note. In the shameful sacrificial death of Jesus Christ he
+saw the instrument of man's release from the curse of the broken law;[4]
+and through this knowledge the cross which was the "scandal" of Saul the
+Pharisee, had become Paul's glory and its proclamation the business of
+his life. It is this doctrine, in its original strength and fulness,
+which lies behind such sentences as those of chapter i. 7, ii. 13, and
+v. 2: "We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our
+trespasses--brought nigh in the blood of Christ--an offering and
+sacrifice to God for an odour of sweet smell."
+
+Another mark of the apostle's hand, his specific spiritual note, we find
+in the _mysticism_ that pervades the epistle and forms, in fact, its
+substance. "I live no longer: Christ lives in me." "He that is joined to
+the Lord is one spirit."[5] In these sentences of the earlier letters we
+discover the spring of St Paul's theology, lying in his own
+experience--_the sense of personal union through the Spirit with Christ
+Jesus_. This was the deepest fact of Paul's consciousness. Here it meets
+us at every turn. More than twenty times the phrase "in Christ" or its
+equivalents recur, applied to Christian acts or states. It is enough to
+refer to chapter iii. 17, "that the Christ may make His dwelling in your
+hearts through faith," to show how profoundly this mysterious
+relationship is realized in this letter. No other New Testament writer
+conceived the idea in Paul's way, nor has any subsequent writer of whom
+we know made the like constant and original use of it. It was the habit
+of the apostle's mind, the index of his innermost life. Kindred to this,
+and hardly less conspicuous, is his conception of "God in Christ" (2
+Cor. v. 19) saving and operating upon men, who, as we read here, "chose
+us in Christ before the world's foundation--forgave us in Him--made us
+in Him to sit together in the heavenly places--formed us in Christ Jesus
+for good works."
+
+The ethical note of the true Paulinism is the conception of the _new
+man_ in Christ Jesus, whose sins were slain by His death, and who shares
+His risen life unto God (Rom. vi.). From this idea, as from a
+fountainhead, the apostle in the parallel Colossian epistle (ch. iii.)
+deduces the new Christian morality. The temper and disposition of the
+believer, his conduct in all social duties and practical affairs are the
+expression of a "life hid with Christ in God." It is the identical "new
+man" of Romans and Colossians who presents himself as our ideal here,
+raised with Christ from the dead and "sitting with Him in the heavenly
+places." The newness of life in which he walks, receives its impulse and
+direction from this exalted fellowship.
+
+The characteristics of St Paul's teaching which we have described--his
+logical thoroughness and finality, his peculiar historical, theological,
+spiritual, and ethical standpoint and manner of thought--are combined in
+the conception which is the specific note of this epistle, viz., its
+idea of _the Church_ as the body of Christ,--or in other words, of _the
+new humanity_ created in Him. This forms the centre of the circle of
+thought in which the writer's mind moves;[6] it is the meeting-point of
+the various lines of thought that we have already traced. The doctrine
+of personal salvation wrought out in the great evangelical epistles
+terminates in that of social and collective salvation. A new and
+precious title is conferred on Christ: He is "Saviour of _the body_" (v.
+23), _i.e._, of the corporate Christian community. "The Son of God who
+loved _me_ and gave up Himself for _me_" becomes "the Christ" who "loved
+_the Church_ and gave up Himself for _her_."[7] "The new man" is no
+longer the individual, a mere transformed _ego_; he is the type and
+beginning of a new mankind. A perfect society of men, all sons of God in
+Christ, is being constituted around the cross, in which the old
+antagonisms are reconciled, the ideal of creation is restored, and a
+body is provided to contain the fulness of Christ, a holy temple which
+God inhabits in the Spirit. Of this edifice, with the cross for its
+centre and Christ Jesus for its corner-stone, Jew and Gentile form the
+material--"the Jew first," lying nearest to the site.[8]
+
+The apostle Paul necessarily conceived the reconstruction of humanity
+under the form of a reconciliation of Israel and the Gentiles. The
+Catholicism we have here is Paul's Catholicism of _Gentile
+engrafting_--not Clement's, of _churchly order and uniformity_; nor
+Ignatius', of _monepiscopal rule_. It is profoundly characteristic of
+this apostle, that in "the law" which had been to his own experience the
+barrier and ground of quarrel between the soul and God, "the strength of
+sin," he should come to see likewise the barrier between men and men,
+and the strength of the sinful enmity which distracted the Churches of
+his foundation (ii. 14-16).
+
+The representation of the Church contained in this epistle is,
+therefore, by no means new in its elements. Such texts as 1 Corinthians
+iii. 16, 17 ("Ye are God's temple," etc.) and xii. 12-27 (concerning the
+_one body and many members_) bring us near to its actual expression.
+But the figures of the _body_ and _temple_ in these passages, had they
+stood alone, might be read as mere passing illustrations of the nature
+of Christian fellowship. Now they become proper designations of the
+Church, and receive their full significance. While in 1 Corinthians,
+moreover, these phrases do not look beyond the particular community
+addressed, in Ephesians they embrace the entire Christian society. This
+epistle signalizes a great step forwards in the development of the
+apostle's theology--perhaps we might say, the last step. The Pastoral
+epistles serve to put the final apostolic seal upon the theological
+edifice that is now complete. Their care is with the guarding and
+furnishing of the "great house"[9] which our epistle is engaged in
+building.
+
+The idea of the Church is not, however, independently developed.
+Ephesians and Colossians are companion letters,--the complement and
+explanation of each other. Both "speak with regard to Christ and the
+Church"; both reveal the Divine "glory in the Church and in Christ
+Jesus."[10] The emphasis of Ephesians falls on the former, of Colossians
+on the latter of these objects. The doctrine of the Person of Christ and
+that of the nature of the Church proceed with equal step. The two
+epistles form one process of thought.
+
+Criticism has attempted to derive first one and then the other of the
+two from its fellow,--thus, in effect, stultifying itself. Finally Dr.
+Holtzmann, in his _Kritik der Epheser-und Kolosserbriefe_,[11] undertook
+to show that each epistle was in turn dependent on the other. There is,
+Holtzmann says, a Pauline nucleus hidden in Colossians, which he has
+himself extracted. By its aid some ecclesiastic of genius in the second
+century composed the Ephesian epistle. He then returned to the brief
+Colossian writing of St Paul, and worked it up, with his own Ephesian
+composition lying before him, into our existing epistle to the
+Colossians. This complicated and too ingenious hypothesis has not
+satisfied any one except its author, and need not detain us here. But
+Holtzmann has at any rate made good, against his predecessors on the
+negative side, the unity of origin of the two canonical epistles, the
+fact that they proceed from one mint and coinage. They are _twin_
+epistles, the offspring of a single birth in the apostle's mind. Much of
+their subject-matter, especially in the ethical section, is common to
+both. The glory of the Christ and the greatness of the Church are truths
+inseparable in the nature of things, wedded to each other. To the
+confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," His
+response ever is, "_I will build my Church_."[12] The same
+correspondence exists between these two epistles in the dialectic
+movement of the apostle's thought.
+
+At the same time, there is a considerable difference between the two
+writings in point of style. M. Renan, who accepts Colossians from Paul's
+hand, and who admits that "among all the epistles bearing the name of
+Paul the epistle to the Ephesians is perhaps that which has been most
+anciently cited as a composition of the apostle of the Gentiles," yet
+speaks of this epistle as a "verbose amplification" of the other, "a
+commonplace letter, diffuse and pointless, loaded with useless words and
+repetitions, entangled and overgrown with irrelevancies, full of
+pleonasms and obscurities."[13]
+
+In this instance, Renan's literary sense has deserted him. While
+Colossians is quick in movement, terse and pointed, in some places so
+sparing of words as to be almost hopelessly obscure,[14] Ephesians from
+beginning to end is measured and deliberate, exuberant in language, and
+obscure, where it is so, not from the brevity, but from the length and
+involution of its periods. It is occupied with a few great ideas, which
+the author strives to set forth in all their amplitude and significance.
+Colossians is a letter of discussion; Ephesians of reflection. The whole
+difference of style lies in this. In the reflective passages of
+Colossians, as indeed in the earlier epistles,[15] we find the
+stateliness of movement and rhythmical fulness of expression which in
+this epistle are sustained throughout. Both epistles are marked by those
+unfinished sentences and _anacolutha_, the grammatical inconsequence
+associated with close continuity of thought, which is a main
+characteristic of St Paul's style.[16] The epistle to the Colossians is
+like a mountain stream forcing its way through some rugged defile; that
+to the Ephesians is the smooth lake below, in which its chafed waters
+restfully expand. These sister epistles represent the moods of conflict
+and repose which alternated in St Paul's mobile nature.
+
+In general, the writings of this group, belonging to the time of the
+apostle's imprisonment and advancing age,[17] display less passion and
+energy, but a more tranquil spirit than those of the Jewish controversy.
+They are prison letters, the fruit of a time when the author's mind had
+been much thrown in upon itself. They have been well styled "the
+afternoon epistles," being marked by the subdued and reflective temper
+natural to this period of life. Ephesians is, in truth, the typical
+representative of the third group of Paul's epistles, as Galatians is of
+the second. There is abundant reason to be satisfied that this letter
+came, as it purports to do, from _Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus
+through God's will_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But that it was addressed to "the saints which are _in Ephesus_" is more
+difficult to believe. The apostle has "heard of the faith which prevails
+amongst" his readers; he presumes that they "have heard of the Christ,
+and were taught in Him according as truth is in Jesus."[18] He hopes
+that by "reading" this epistle they will "perceive his understanding in
+the mystery of Christ" (iii. 2-4). He writes somewhat thus to the
+Colossians and Romans, whom he had never seen;[19] but can we imagine
+Paul addressing in this distant and uncertain fashion his children in
+the faith? In Ephesus he had laboured "for the space of three whole
+years" (Acts xx. 31), longer than in any other city of the Gentile
+mission, except Antioch. His speech to the Ephesian elders at Miletus,
+delivered four years ago, was surcharged with personal feeling, full of
+pathetic reminiscence and the signs of interested acquaintance with the
+individual membership of the Ephesian Church. In the epistle such signs
+are altogether wanting. The absence of greetings and messages we could
+understand; these Tychicus might convey by word of mouth. But how the
+man who wrote the epistles to the Philippians and Corinthians could have
+composed this long and careful letter to his own Ephesian people without
+a single word of endearment or familiarity,[20] and without the least
+allusion to his past intercourse with them, we cannot understand. It is
+in the destination that the only serious difficulty lies touching the
+authorship. Nowhere do we see more of _the apostle_ and less of _the
+man_ in St Paul; nowhere more of _the_ Church, and less of _this or
+that_ particular church.
+
+It agrees with these internal indications that the local designation is
+wanting in the oldest Greek copies of the letter that are extant. The
+two great manuscripts of the fourth century, the Vatican and Sinaitic
+codices, omit the words "in Ephesus." Basil in the fourth century did
+not accept them, and says that "the old copies" were without them.
+Origen, in the beginning of the third century, seems to have known
+nothing of them. And Tertullian, at the end of the second century, while
+he condemns the heretic Marcion (who lived about fifty years earlier)
+for entitling the epistle "To the Laodiceans," quotes only the _title_
+against him, and not the text of the address, which he would presumably
+have done, had he read it in the form familiar to us. We are compelled
+to suppose, with Westcott and Hort and the textual critics generally,
+that these words form no part of the original address.
+
+Here the _circular hypothesis_ of Beza and Ussher comes to our aid. It
+is supposed that the letter was destined for a number of Churches in
+Asia Minor, which Tychicus was directed to visit in the course of the
+journey which took him to Colossae.[21] Along with the letters for the
+Colossians and Philemon, he was entrusted with this more general
+epistle, intended for the Gentile Christian communities of the
+neighbouring region at large. During St Paul's ministry at Ephesus, we
+are told that "all those that dwell in Asia heard the word of the Lord,
+both Jews and Greeks" (Acts xix. 10). In so large and populous an area,
+amongst the Churches founded at this time there were doubtless others
+beside those of the Lycus valley "which had not seen Paul's face in the
+flesh," some about which the apostle had less precise knowledge than he
+had of these through Epaphras and Onesimus, but for whom he was no less
+desirous that their "hearts should be comforted, and brought into all
+the wealth of the full assurance of the understanding in the knowledge
+of the mystery of God" (Col. ii. 1, 2).
+
+To which or how many of the Asian Churches Tychicus would be able to
+communicate the letter was, presumably, uncertain when it was written at
+Rome; and the designation was left open. Its conveyance by Tychicus
+(vi. 21, 22) supplied the only limit to its distribution. Proconsular
+Asia was the richest and most peaceful province of the Empire, so
+populous that it was called "the province of five hundred cities."
+Ephesus was only the largest of many flourishing commercial and
+manufacturing towns.
+
+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 Colossae, 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_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But how are we to read the address, with the local definition wanting?
+There are two constructions open to us:--(1) We might suppose that a
+space was left blank in the original to be filled in afterwards by
+Tychicus with the names of the particular Churches to which he
+distributed copies, or to be supplied by the voice of the reader. But if
+that were so, we should have expected to find some trace of this variety
+of designation in the ancient witnesses. As it is, the documents either
+give Ephesus in the address, or supply no local name at all. Nor is
+there, so far as we are aware, any analogy in ancient usage for the
+proceeding suggested. Moreover, the order of the Greek words[23] is
+against this supposition.--(2) We prefer, therefore, to follow
+Origen[24] and Basil, with some modern exegetes, in reading the sentence
+straight on, as it stands in the Sinaitic and Vatican copies. It then
+becomes: _To the saints, who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus_.
+
+"The saints" is the apostle's designation for Christian believers
+generally,[25] as men consecrated to God in Christ (1 Cor. i. 2). The
+qualifying phrase "those who are indeed faithful in Christ Jesus," is
+admonitory. As Lightfoot says with reference to the parallel
+qualification in Colossians i. 2, "This unusual addition is full of
+meaning. Some members of the [Asian] Churches were shaken in their
+allegiance, even if they had not fallen from it. The apostle therefore
+wishes it to be understood that, when he speaks of the saints, he means
+those who are true and steadfast members of the brotherhood. In this way
+he obliquely hints at the defection." By this further definition "he
+does not directly exclude any, but he indirectly warns all." We are
+reminded that we are in the neighbourhood of the Colossian heresy.
+Beneath the calm tenor of this epistle, the ear catches an undertone of
+controversy. In chapter iv. 14 and vi. 10-20 this undertone becomes
+clearly audible. We shall find the epistle end with the note of warning
+with which it begins.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Salutation is according to St Paul's established form of greeting.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The translation given in this volume is based upon the Revised
+Version, but deviates from it in some particulars. These deviations will
+be explained in the exposition.
+
+[2] The case against authenticity is ably stated in Dr. S. Davidson's
+_Introduction to the N. T._; see also Baur's _Paul_, Pfleiderer's
+_Paulinism_, Hilgenfeld's _Einleitung_, Hatch's article on "Paul" in the
+_Encyclopaedia Britannica_. The case for the defence may be found in
+Weiss', Salmon's, Bleek's, or Dods' _N. T. Introduction_--the last
+brief, but to the point; in Reuss' _History of the N. T._; Milligan's
+article on "Ephesians" in _Encycl. Brit._; Gloag's _Introduction to the
+Pauline Epp._; Meyer's, or Beet's, or Eadie's _Commentary_; Sabatier's
+_The Apostle Paul_.
+
+[3] Rom. xi. 16-24; Acts xiii. 26; Gal. iii. 7, 14.
+
+[4] Gal. iii. 10-13; 2 Cor. v. 20, 21, etc.
+
+[5] Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. vi. 17.
+
+[6] See ch. i. 9-13, ii. 11-22, iii. 5-11, iv. 1-16, v. 23-32.
+
+[7] Gal ii. 20; Eph. v. 25.
+
+[8] Rom. i. 16; Eph. ii. 17-20.
+
+[9] 1 Tim. iii. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.
+
+[10] Eph. iii. 21, v. 32.
+
+[11] _Kritik d. Epheser-u. Kolosserbriefe auf Grund einer Analyse ihres
+Verwandtschaftsverhaeltnisses_ (Leipzig, 1872). A work more subtle and
+scientific, more replete with learning, and yet more unconvincing than
+this of Holtzmann, we do not know.
+
+Von Soden, the latest interpreter of this school and Holtzmann's
+collaborateur in the new _Hand-Commentar_, accepts Colossians in its
+integrity as the work of Paul, retracting previous doubts on the
+subject. Ephesians he believes to have been written by a Jewish disciple
+of Paul in his name, about the end of the first century.
+
+[12] Matt. xvi. 15-18; John xvii. 10: _I am glorified in them._
+
+[13] See his _Saint Paul_, Introduction, pp. xii.-xxiii.
+
+[14] See Col. ii. 15, 18, 20-23.
+
+[15] _E.g._, in Rom. i. 1-7, viii. 28-30, xi. 33-36, xvi. 25-27.
+
+[16] See the Winer-Moulton _N. T. Grammar_, p. 709: "It is in writers of
+great mental vivacity--more taken up with the thought than with the mode
+of its expression--that we may expect to find anacolutha most
+frequently. Hence they are especially numerous in the epistolary style
+of the apostle Paul."
+
+[17] Eph. iii. 1; Phil. i. 13; Philem. 9.
+
+[18] Ch. i. 15, iv. 20, 21.
+
+[19] Col. i. 4, ii. 1; Rom. xv. 15, 16.
+
+[20] "My brethren" in ch. vi. 10 is an insertion of the copyists. Even
+the closing benediction, ch. vi. 23, 24, is in the _third person_--a
+thing unexampled in St Paul's epistles.
+
+[21] Ch. vi. 21, 22; Col. iv. 7-9.
+
+[22] Compare Maclaren on _Colossians and Philemon_, p. 406, in this
+series.
+
+[23] =Tois hagiois tois ousin ... kai pistois en Christo Iesou.= The
+interposition of the heterogeneous attributive between =hagiois= and
+=pistois= is harsh and improbable--not to say, with Hofmann, "quite
+incredible." The two latest German commentaries to hand, that of Beck
+and of von Soden (in the _Hand-Commentar_), interpreters of opposite
+schools, agree with Hofmann in rejecting the local adjunct and regarding
+=pistois= as the complement of =tois ousin=.
+
+[24] Origen, in his fanciful way, makes of =tois ousin= a predicate by
+itself: "the saints _who are_," who possess real being like God Himself
+(Exod. iii. 14)--"called from non-existence into existence." He compares
+1 Cor. i. 28.
+
+[25] See, _e.g._, ver. 18, ii. 19, iii. 18, iv. 12, v. 3.
+
+
+
+
+PRAISE AND PRAYER.
+
+CHAPTER i. 3-19.
+
+        =Hous proegno, kai proorisen
+    symmorphous tes eikonos tou huiou autou,
+    eis to einai auto prototokon en pollois adelphois;
+      hous de proorisen, toutous kai ekalesen;
+      kai hous ekalesen, toutous kai edikaiosen;
+      hous de edikaiosen, toutous kai edoxasen.=
+
+    ROM. viii. 29, 30.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+_THE ETERNAL PURPOSE._
+
+
+We enter this epistle through a magnificent gateway. The introductory
+Act of Praise, extending from verse 3 to 14, is one of the most sublime
+of inspired utterances, an overture worthy of the composition that it
+introduces. Its first sentence compels us to feel the insufficiency of
+our powers for its due rendering.
+
+The apostle surveys in this thanksgiving the entire course of the
+revelation of grace. Standing with the men of his day, the new-born
+community of the sons of God in Christ, midway between the ages past and
+to come,[26] he looks backward to the source of man's salvation when it
+lay a silent thought in the mind of God, and forward to the hour when it
+shall have accomplished its promise and achieved our redemption. In this
+grand evolution of the Divine plan three stages are marked by the
+refrain, thrice repeated, _To the praise of His glory, of the glory of
+His grace_ (vv. 6, 12, 14). St Paul's psalm is thus divided into three
+strophes, or stanzas: he sings the glory of redeeming love in its past
+designs, its present bestowments, and its future fruition. The
+paragraph, forming but one sentence and spun upon a single golden
+thread, is a piece of thought-music,--a sort of _fugue_, in which from
+eternity to eternity the counsel of love is pursued by Paul's bold and
+exulting thought.
+
+Despite the grammatical involution of the style here carried to an
+extreme, and underneath the apparatus of Greek pronouns and participles,
+there is a fine Hebraistic lilt pervading the doxology. The refrain is
+in the manner of Psalms xlii.-xliii., and xcix., where in the former
+instance "health of countenance," and in the latter "holy is He" gives
+the key-note of the poet's melody and parts his song into three balanced
+stanzas. In such poetry the strophes may be unequal in length, each
+developing its own thought freely, and yet there is harmony in their
+combination. Here the central idea, that of God's actual bounty to
+believers, fills a space equal to that of the other two. But there is a
+pause within it, at verse 10, which in effect resumes the idea of the
+first strophe and works it in as a _motif_ to the second, carrying on
+both in a full stream till they lose themselves in the third and
+culminating movement. Throughout the piece there runs in varying
+expression the phrase "in Christ--in the Beloved--in Him--in whom,"
+weaving the verses into subtle continuity. The theme of the entire
+composition is given in verse 3, which does not enter into the threefold
+division we have described, but forms a prelude to it.
+
+    "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: who hath
+        blessed us,
+    In every blessing of the spirit, in the heavenly places, in Christ."
+
+_Blessed be God!_--It is the song of the universe, in which heaven and
+earth take responsive parts. "When the morning stars sang together and
+all the sons of God shouted for joy," this concert began, and continues
+still through the travail of creation and the sorrow and sighing of men.
+The work praises the Master. All sinless creatures, by their order and
+harmony, by the variety of their powers and beauty of their forms and
+delight of their existence, declare their Creator's glory. That praise
+to the Most High God which the lower creatures act instrumentally, it is
+man's privilege to utter in discourse of reason and music of the heart.
+Man is Nature's high priest; and above other men, the poet. Time will
+be, as it has been, when it shall be accounted the poet's honour and the
+crown of his art, that he should take the high praises of God into his
+mouth, making hymns to the glory of the Supreme Maker and giving voice
+to the dumb praise of inanimate nature and to the noblest thoughts of
+his fellows concerning the Blessed God.
+
+_Blessed be God!_--It is the perpetual strain of the Old Testament, from
+Melchizedek down to Daniel,--of David in his triumph, and Job in his
+misery. But not hitherto could men say, Blessed be _the God and Father
+of our Lord Jesus Christ_! He was "the Most High God, the God of
+heaven,"--"Jehovah, God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous
+things,"--"the Shepherd" and "the Rock" of His people,--"the true God,
+the living God, and an everlasting King"; and these are glorious titles,
+which have raised men's thoughts to moods of highest reverence and
+trust. But the name of _Father_, and _Father of our Lord Jesus Christ_,
+surpasses and outshines them all. With wondering love and joy
+unspeakable St Paul pronounced this _Benedictus_. God was not less to
+him the Almighty, the High and Holy One dwelling in eternity, than in
+the days of his youthful Jewish faith; but the Eternal and All-holy One
+was now his Father in Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name: and let the
+whole earth be filled with His glory!
+
+The apostle's psalm is a psalm of thanksgiving to God _blessing and
+blessed_. The second clause rhythmically answers to the first. True, our
+blessing of Him is far different from His blessing of us: ours in
+thought and words; His in mighty deeds of salvation. Yet in the fruit of
+lips giving thanks to His name there is a revenue of blessing paid to
+God which He delights in, and requires. "O Thou that inhabitest the
+praises of Israel," grant us to bless Thee while we live and to lift up
+our hands in Thy name!
+
+By three qualifying adjuncts the blessing which the Father of Christ
+bestowed upon us is defined: in respect of its _nature_, its _sphere_,
+and its _personal ground_.
+
+The blessings that prompt the apostle's praise are not such as those
+conspicuous in the Old Covenant: "Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and
+in the field; in the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and
+the increase of thy kine; blessed shall be thy basket, and thy
+kneading-trough" (Deut. xxviii. 3-5). The gospel pronounces beatitudes
+of another style: "Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed the meek, the
+merciful, the pure in heart, the persecuted." St Paul had small share
+indeed in the former class of blessings,--a childless, landless,
+homeless man. Yet what happiness and wealth are his! Out of his poverty
+he is making all the ages rich! From the gloom of his prison he sheds a
+light that will guide and cheer the steps of multitudes of earth's sad
+wayfarers. Not certainly in the earthly places where he finds himself is
+Paul the prisoner of Christ Jesus blessed; but "in spiritual blessing"
+and "in heavenly places" how abundantly! His own blessedness he claims
+for all who are in Christ.
+
+Blessing _spiritual_ in its nature is, in St Paul's conception of
+things, blessing in and of the Holy Spirit.[27] In His quickening our
+spirit lives; through His indwelling health, blessedness, eternal life
+are ours. In this verse justly the theologians recognize the Trinity of
+the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.--Blessing _in the heavenly
+places_ is not so much blessing coming from those places--from God the
+Father who sits there--as it is blessing which lifts us into that
+supernal region, giving to us a place and heritage in the world of God
+and of the angels. Two passages of the companion epistles interpret this
+phrase: "Your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. iii. 3); and again,
+"Our citizenship is in heaven" (Phil. iii. 20).--The decisive note of St
+Paul's blessedness lies in the words "in Christ." For him all good is
+summed up there. Spiritual, heavenly, and Christian: these three are
+one. In Christ dying, risen, reigning, God the Father has raised
+believing men to a new heavenly life. From the first inception of the
+work of grace to its consummation, God thinks of men, speaks to them and
+deals with them _in Christ_. To Him, therefore, with the Father be
+eternal praise!
+
+    "As He chose us in Him before the world's foundation,
+      That we should be holy and unblemished before Him:
+    When in love He foreordained us
+      To filial adoption through Jesus Christ for Himself,
+          According to the good pleasure of His will,--
+                To the praise of the glory of His grace" (vv. 4-6a).
+
+Here is St Paul's first chapter of Genesis. _In the beginning was the
+election of grace._ There is nothing unprepared, nothing unforeseen in
+God's dealings with mankind. His wisdom and knowledge are as deep as His
+grace is wide (Rom. xi. 33). Speaking of his own vocation, the apostle
+said: "It pleased God, who set me apart from my mother's womb, to reveal
+His Son in me" (Gal. i. 15, 16). He does but generalize this conception
+and carry it two steps further back--from the origin of the individual
+to the origin of the race, and from the beginning of the race to the
+beginning of the world--when he asserts that the community of redeemed
+men was chosen in Christ before the world's foundation.
+
+"The world" is a work of time, the slow structure of innumerable yet
+finite ages. Science affirms on its own grounds that the visible
+universe had a beginning, as it has its changes and its certain end. Its
+structural plan, its unity of aim and movement, show it to be the
+creation of a vast Intelligence. Harmony and law, all that makes science
+possible is the product of thought. Reason extracts from nature what
+Reason has first put there. The longer, the more intricate and grand the
+process, the farther science pushes back the beginning in our thoughts,
+the more sublime and certain the primitive truth becomes: "In the
+beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
+
+The world is a system; it has a method and a plan, therefore a
+foundation. But before the foundation, there was _the Founder_. And man
+was in His thoughts, and the redeemed Church of Christ. While yet the
+world was not and the immensity of space stretched lampless and
+unpeopled, _we_ were in the mind of God; His thought rested with
+complacency upon His human sons, whose "name was written in the book of
+life from the foundation of the world." This amazing statement is only
+the logical consequence of St Paul's experience of Divine grace, joined
+to his conviction of the infinite wisdom and eternal being of God.
+
+When he says that God "chose us in Christ _before the foundation of the
+world_"--or _before founding the world_--this is not a mere mark of
+time. It intimates that in laying His plans for the world the Creator
+had the purpose of redeeming grace in view. The kingdom which the
+"blessed children" of the Father of Christ "inherit," is the kingdom
+"_prepared_ for them _from the foundation of the world_" (Matt. xxv.
+34). Salvation lies as deep as creation. The provision for it is
+eternal. For the universe of being was conceived, fashioned, and built
+up "in Christ." The argument of Colossians i. 13-22 lies behind these
+words. The Son of God's love, in whom and for whom the worlds were made,
+always was potentially the Redeemer of men, as He was the image of God
+(Col. i. 14, 15). He looked forward to this mission from eternity, and
+was in spirit "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev.
+xiii. 8). Creation and redemption, Nature and the Church, are parts of
+one system; and in the reconciliation of the cross all orders of being
+are concerned, "whether the things upon the earth or the things in the
+heavens."
+
+Evil existed before man appeared on the earth to be tempted and to fall.
+Through the geological record we hear the voice of creation groaning for
+long aeons in its pain.
+
+            "Dragons of the prime,
+    That tare each other in their slime,"
+
+grim prophets of man's brutal and murderous passions, bear witness to a
+war in nature that goes back far towards the foundation of the world.
+And this rent and discord in the frame of things it was His part to
+reconcile "in whom and for whom all things were created." This universal
+deliverance, it seems, is dependent upon ours. "The creation itself
+lifts up its head, and is looking out for the revelation of the sons of
+God" (Rom. viii. 19). In founding the world, foreseeing its bondage to
+corruption, God prepared through His elect sons in Christ a deliverance
+the glory of which will make its sufferings to seem but a light thing.
+"In thee," said God to Abraham, "shall all the kindreds of the earth be
+blessed": so in the final "adoption,--to wit, the redemption of our
+body" (Rom. viii. 23), all creatures shall exult; and our mother earth,
+still travailing in pain with us, will remember her anguish no more.
+
+The Divine election of men in Christ is further defined in the words of
+verse 5: "Having in love predestined us," and "according to the good
+pleasure of His will." _Election_ is selection; it is the antecedent in
+the mind of God in Christ of the preference which Christ showed when He
+said to His disciples, "I have chosen you out of the world." It is,
+moreover, a _fore-ordination in love_: an expression which indicates on
+the one hand the disposition in God that prompted and sustains His
+choice, and on the other the determination of the almighty Will whereby
+the all-wise Choice is put into operation and takes effect. In this
+pre-ordaining control of human history God "determined the
+fore-appointed seasons and the bounds of human habitation" (Acts xvii.
+26). The Divine prescience--that "depth of the wisdom and knowledge of
+God"--as well as His absolute righteousness, forbids the treasonable
+thought of anything arbitrary or unfair cleaving to this
+pre-determination--anything that should override our free-will and make
+our responsibility an illusion. "Whom He did _foreknow_, He also did
+predestinate" (Rom. viii. 29). He foresees everything, and allows for
+everything.
+
+The consistence of foreknowledge with free-will is an enigma which the
+apostle did not attempt to solve. His reply to all questions touching
+the justice of God's administration in the elections of grace--questions
+painfully felt and keenly agitated then as they are now, and that
+pressed upon himself in the case of his Jewish kindred with a cruel
+force (Rom. ix. 3)--his answer to his own heart, and to us, lies in the
+last words of verse 5: "according to the good pleasure of His will." It
+is what Jesus said concerning the strange preferences of Divine grace:
+"Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight." What pleases Him
+can only be wise and right. What pleases Him, must content us.
+Impatience is unbelief. Let us wait to see the end of the Lord. In
+numberless instances--such as that of the choice between Jacob and Esau,
+and that of Paul and the believing remnant of Israel as against their
+nation--God's ways have justified themselves to after times; so they
+will universally. Our little spark of intelligence glances upon one spot
+in a boundless ocean, on the surface of immeasurable depths.
+
+The purpose of this loving fore-ordination of believing men in Christ is
+twofold; it concerns at once their _character_ and their _state_: "He
+chose us out--that we should be holy and without blemish in His sight,"
+and "unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ for Himself." These two
+purposes are one. God's sons must be holy; and holy men are His sons.
+For this end "we" were elected of God in the beginning. Nay, with this
+end in view the world was founded and the human race came into being, to
+provide God with such sons[28] and that Christ might be "the firstborn
+among many brethren" (Rom. viii. 28-30).
+
+"That we should be holy"--should be _saints_. This the readers are
+already: "To the saints" the apostle writes (ver. 1). They are men
+devoted to God by their own choice and will, meeting God's choice and
+will for them. Imperfect saints they may be, by no means as yet "without
+blemish"; but they are already, and abidingly, "sanctified in Christ
+Jesus" (1 Cor. i. 2) and "sealed" for God's possession "by the Holy
+Spirit" (vv. 13, 14). In this fact lies their hope of moral perfection
+and the impulse and power to attain it. Their task is to "perfect" their
+existing "holiness" (2 Cor. vii. 1), "cleansing themselves from all
+defilement of flesh and spirit." Let no Christian say, "I do not pretend
+to be a saint." This is to renounce your calling. You _are_ a saint if
+you are a true believer in Christ; and you are to be an unblemished
+saint.
+
+Thus the Church is at last to be presented, and every man in his own
+order, "faultless before the presence of His glory, with exceeding
+joy."[29] God could not invite us in His grace to anything inferior. A
+blemished saint--a smeared picture, a flawed marble--this is not like
+His work; it is not like Himself. Such saintship cannot approve itself
+"before Him." He must carry out His ideal, must fashion the new man as
+he was created in Christ after His own faultless image, and make human
+holiness a transcript of the Divine (1 Peter i. 16).
+
+Now, this Divine character is native to the sons of God. The ideal
+which God had for men was always the same. The father of the race was
+made in His image. In the Old Testament Israel receives the command:
+"You shall be holy, for I, Jehovah your God, am holy." But it was in
+Jesus Christ that the breadth of this command was disclosed, and the
+possibility of our personal obedience to it. The law of Christian
+sonship, manifest only in shadow in the Levitical sanctity, is now
+pronounced by Jesus: "You shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is
+perfect." Verses 4 and 5 are therefore strictly parallel: God elected us
+in Christ to be perfect saints; for He predestined us through Jesus
+Christ to be His sons.
+
+Sonship to Himself is the Christian status, the rank and standing which
+God confers on those who believe in His Son; it accrues to them by the
+fact that they are in Christ.[30] It is defined by the term _adoption_,
+which St Paul employs in this sense in Romans viii. 15, 23, as well as
+in Galatians iv. 5. Adoption was a peculiar institution of Roman law,
+familiar to Paul as a citizen of Rome; and it aptly describes to Gentile
+believers their relation to the family of God. "By adoption under the
+Roman law an entire stranger in blood became a member of the family into
+which he was adopted, exactly as if he had been born in it. He assumed
+the family name, partook in its system of sacrificial rites, and became,
+not on sufferance or at will, but to all intents and purposes a member
+of the house of his adopter.... This metaphor was St Paul's translation
+into the language of Gentile thought of Christ's great doctrine of the
+New Birth. He exchanges the physical metaphor of regeneration for the
+legal metaphor of adoption. The adopted becomes in the eye of the law a
+new creature. He was born again into a new family. By the aid of this
+figure the Gentile convert was enabled to realize in a vivid manner the
+fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of the faithful, the obliteration of
+past penalties, the right to the mystic inheritance. He was enabled to
+realize that upon this spiritual act 'Old things passed away and all
+things became new.'"[31]
+
+This exalted status belonged to men in the purpose of God from eternity;
+but as a matter of fact it was instituted "through Jesus Christ," the
+historical Redeemer. Whether previously (Jewish) servants in God's house
+or (Gentile) aliens excluded from it (ii. 12), those who believed in
+Jesus as the Christ received a spirit of adoption and dared to call God
+_Father_! This unspeakable privilege had been preparing for them through
+the ages past in God's hidden wisdom. Throughout the wild course of
+human apostasy the Father looked forward to the time when He might again
+through Jesus Christ make men His sons; and His promises and
+preparations were directed to this one end. The predestination having
+such an end, how fitly it is said: "_in love_ having foreordained us."
+
+Four times, in these three verses, with exulting emphasis, the apostle
+claims this distinction for "us." _Who_, then, are the objects of the
+primordial election of grace? Does St Paul use the pronoun
+distributively, thinking of individuals--you and me and so many others,
+the personal recipients of saving grace? or does he mean the Church, as
+that is collectively the family of God and the object of His loving
+ordination? In this epistle, the latter is surely the thought in the
+apostle's mind.[32] As Hofmann says: "The body of Christians is the
+object of this choice, not as composed of a certain number of
+individuals--a sum of 'the elect' opposed to a sum of the non-elect--but
+as the Church taken out of and separated from the world."
+
+On the other hand, we may not widen the pronoun further; we cannot allow
+that the sonship here signified is man's natural relation to God, that
+to which he was born by creation. This robs the word "adoption" of its
+distinctive force. The sonship in question, while grounded "in Christ"
+from eternity, is conferred "through" the incarnate and crucified "Jesus
+Christ"; it redounds "to the praise of the glory of His _grace_." Now,
+grace is God's redeeming love toward sinners. God's purpose of grace
+toward mankind, embedded, as one may say, in creation, is realized in
+the body of redeemed men. But this community, we rejoice to believe, is
+vastly larger than the visible aggregate of Churches; for how many who
+knew not His name, have yet walked in the true light which lighteth
+every man.
+
+There lies in the words "in Christ" a principle of exclusion, as well as
+of wide inclusion. Men cannot be in Christ against their will, who
+persistently put Him, His gospel and His laws, away from them. When we
+close with Christ by faith, we begin to enter into the purpose of our
+being. We find the place prepared for us before the foundation of the
+world in the kingdom of Divine love. We live henceforth "to the praise
+of the glory of His grace!"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[26] Ch. ii. 7, iii. 5, 21; Col. i. 26.
+
+[27] Vv. 13, 14; Rom. viii. 2-6, 16; 1 Cor. ii. 12; Gal v. 16, 22-25.
+
+[28] =eis auton=, _for Him_; not =auto=, _to Him_.
+
+[29] Ch. v. 25-27; Col. i. 27-29; Jude 24.
+
+[30] On _sonship_, see Chapters XV.-XVII. and XIX. in _The Epistle to
+the Galatians_ (Expositor's Bible).
+
+[31] From a valuable and suggestive paper by W. E. Ball, LL.D., on "St
+Paul and the Roman Law," in the _Contemporary Review_, August 1891.
+
+[32] See vv. 12, 13, where Jews and Gentiles, collectively, are
+distinguished; and ch. ii. 11, 12, iii. 2-6, 21, iv. 4, 5, v. 25-27.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+_THE BESTOWMENT OF GRACE._
+
+          "Which grace He bestowed on us, in the Beloved One:
+    In whom we have the redemption through His blood, the forgiveness
+        of our trespasses,
+                  According to the riches of His grace:
+        Which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence,
+            making known to us the mystery of His will,
+                  According to His good pleasure:
+          Which He purposed in Him, for dispensation in the fulness
+              of the times,
+          _Purposing_ to gather into one body all things in the Christ--
+          The things belonging to the heavens, and the things upon the
+              earth--yea, in Him,
+    In whom also we received our heritage, as we had been foreordained,
+                  According to purpose of Him who worketh all things
+                  According to the counsel of His will,--
+                      That we might be to the praise of His glory."[33]
+
+    EPH. i. 6_b_-12_a_.
+
+
+The blessedness of men in Christ is not matter of purpose only, but of
+reality and experience. With the word _grace_ in the middle of the sixth
+verse the apostle's thought begins a new movement. We have seen Grace
+hidden in the depths of eternity in the form of sovereign and fatherly
+election, lodging its purpose in the foundation of the world. From those
+mysterious depths we turn to the living world in our own breast. There,
+too, Grace dwells and reigns: "which grace He imparted to us, in the
+Beloved,--in whom we have redemption through His blood."
+
+The leading word of this clause we can only paraphrase; it has no
+English equivalent. St Paul perforce turns _grace_ into a verb; this
+verb occurs in the New Testament but once besides,--in Luke i. 28, the
+angel's salutation to Mary: "Hail thou that art highly favoured
+(made-an-object-of-grace)."[34] If we could employ our verb _to grace_
+in a sense corresponding to that of the noun _grace_ in the apostle's
+dialect and nearly the opposite of _to disgrace_, then _graced_ would
+signify what he means here, viz., _treated with grace_, made its
+recipients.
+
+God "showed us grace _in the Beloved_"--or, to render the phrase with
+full emphasis, "in that Beloved One"--even as He "chose us in Him before
+the world's foundation" and "in love predestined us for adoption." The
+grace is conveyed upon the basis of our relationship to Christ: on that
+ground it was conceived in the counsels of eternity. The Voice from
+heaven which said at the baptism of Jesus and again at the
+transfiguration, "This is my Son, the Beloved," uttered God's eternal
+thought regarding Christ. And that regard of God toward the Son of His
+love is the fountain of His love and grace to men.
+
+Christ is the Beloved not of the Father alone, but of the created
+universe. All that know the Lord Jesus must needs love and adore
+Him--unless their hearts are eaten out by sin. Not to love Him is to be
+anathema. "If any man love me," said Jesus, "my Father will love him."
+Nothing so much pleases God and brings us into fellowship with God so
+direct and joyous, as our love to Jesus Christ. About this at least
+heaven and earth may agree, that He is the altogether lovely and
+love-worthy. Agreement in this will bring about agreement in everything.
+The love of Christ will tune the jarring universe into harmony.
+
+1. Of grace bestowed, the first manifestation, in the experience of Paul
+and his readers, was _the forgiveness of their trespasses_ (comp. ii.
+13-18). This is "the redemption" that "we _have_." And it comes "through
+His _blood_." The epistles to the Galatians and Romans[35] expound at
+length the apostle's doctrine touching the remission of sin and the
+relation of Christ's death to human transgression. To _redemption_ we
+shall return in considering verse 14, where the word is used, as again
+in chapter iv. 30, in its further application.
+
+In Romans iii. 22-26 "the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" is
+declared to be the means by which we are acquitted in the judgement of
+God from the guilt of past transgressions. And this redemption consists
+in the "propitiatory sacrifice" which Christ offered in shedding His
+blood--a sacrifice wherein we participate "through faith." The language
+of this verse contains by implication all that is affirmed there. In
+this connexion, and according to the full intent of the word,
+redemption is _release by ransom_. The life-blood of Jesus Christ was
+the _price_ that He paid in order to secure our lawful release from the
+penalties entailed by our trespasses.[36] This Jesus Christ implied
+beforehand, when He spoke of "giving His life a ransom for many"; and
+when He said, in handing to His disciples the cup of the Last Supper:
+"This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for
+the remission of sins." Using another synonymous term, St Paul tells us
+that "Christ _bought us out of_ the curse of the law"; and he bases on
+this expression a strong practical appeal: "You are not your own, for
+you were bought with a price."[37] These sayings, and others like them,
+point unmistakably to the fact that our trespasses as men against God's
+inflexible law, apart from Christ's intervention, must have issued in
+our eternal ruin. By His death on the cross Christ has made such amends
+to the law, that the awful sentence is averted, and our complete release
+from the power of sin is rendered possible.
+
+On rising from the dead our Saviour commissioned the apostles to
+"proclaim in His name repentance and remission of sins to all nations"
+(Luke xxiv. 47). It was thus He proposed to save the world. This
+proclamation is the "good news" of the gospel. The announcement meets
+the first need of the serious and awakened human spirit. It answers the
+question which arises in the breast of every man who thinks earnestly
+about his personal relations to God and to the laws of his being. We
+cannot wonder that St Paul sets the remission of sins first amongst the
+bestowments of God's grace, and makes it the foundation of all the rest.
+
+Does it occupy the like position in modern Christian teaching? Do we
+realize the criminality of sin, the fearfulness of God's displeasure,
+the infinite worth of His forgiveness and the obligations under which it
+places us, as St Paul and his converts did? or even as our fathers did a
+few generations ago? "It is my impression," writes Dr. R. W. Dale,[38]
+"that both religious people and those who do not profess to be religious
+must be conscious that God's Forgiveness, if they ever think of it at
+all, does not create any deep and strong emotion.... The difference
+between the way in which we think of the Divine Forgiveness and the way
+in which it was thought of by David and Isaiah, by Christ Himself, by
+Peter, Paul, and John; by the saints of all Christian Churches in past
+times, both in the East and in the West; ... by the leaders of the
+Evangelical Revival in the last century--the difference, I say, between
+the way in which the Forgiveness of sins was thought of by them, and the
+way in which we think of it, is very startling. The difference is so
+great, it affects so seriously the whole system of the religious thought
+and life, that we may be said to have invented a new religion.... The
+difference between our religion and the religion of other times is
+this--that we do not believe that God has any strong resentment against
+sin or against those who are guilty of sin. And since His resentment has
+gone, His mercy has gone with it. We have not a God who is more merciful
+than the God of our fathers, but a God who is less righteous; and a God
+who is not righteous, a God who does not glow with fiery indignation
+against sin, is no God at all."
+
+These are solemn words, to be deeply pondered. They come from one of the
+most sagacious observers and justly revered teachers of our time. We
+have made a real advance in breadth and human sympathy; and there has
+been throughout our Churches a genuine and much needed awakening of
+philanthropic activity. But if we are _departing from the living God_,
+what will this avail us? If "the redemption through Christ's blood, the
+forgiveness of our trespasses," is no longer to us the momentous and
+glorious fact that it was to the apostles, then it is time to ask
+whether our God is in truth the same as theirs, whether He is still the
+God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--whether we are not, haply,
+fabricating for ourselves another gospel. Without a piercing sense of
+the shame and ruin involved in human sin, we shall not put its remission
+where St Paul does, at the foundation of God's benefits to men. Without
+this sentiment, we can only wonder at the passionate gratitude with
+which he receives the atonement and measures by its completeness the
+riches of God's grace.
+
+II. Along with this chief blessing of forgiveness, there came another to
+the apostolic Church. With the heart the mind, with the conscience the
+intellect was quickened and endowed: "which [grace] He shed abundantly
+upon us _in all wisdom and intelligence_."
+
+This sequel to verse 7 is somewhat of a surprise. The reader is apt to
+slur over verse 8, half sensible of some jar and incongruity between it
+and the context. It scarcely occurs to us to associate wisdom and good
+sense with the pardon of sin, as kindred bestowments of the gospel.
+Minds of the evangelical order are often supposed, indeed, to be wanting
+in intellectual excellencies and indifferent to their value. Is it not
+true that "not many wise after the flesh were called"? Do we not glory
+above everything in preaching a "simple gospel"?
+
+But there is another side to all this. "Christ was made of God unto us
+_wisdom_." This attribute the apostle even sets first when he writes to
+the wisdom-seeking Greeks, mocked by their worn-out and confused
+philosophies (1 Cor. i. 30). To a close observer of the primitive
+Christian societies few things must have been more noticeable than the
+powerful mental stimulus imparted by the new faith. These epistles are a
+witness to the fact. That such letters could be addressed to communities
+gathered mainly from the lower ranks of society--consisting of slaves,
+common artizans, poor women--shows that the moral regeneration effected
+in St Paul's converts was accompanied by an extraordinary excitement and
+activity of thought. In this the apostle recognised the work of the Holy
+Spirit, a mark of God's special favour and blessing. "I give thanks
+always for you," he writes to the Corinthians, "for the grace of God
+that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched
+by Him, in all word and all knowledge." The leaders of the apostolic
+Church were the profoundest thinkers of their day; though at the time
+the world held them for babblers, because their dialect was not of its
+schools. They drew from stores of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ,
+which none of the princes of this world knew.
+
+Of such wisdom our epistle is full, and God "has made it to abound" to
+the readers in these inspired pages. Paul's "understanding in the
+mystery of Christ" was always deepening. In his lonely prison musings
+the length and breadth of the Divine counsels are disclosed to him as
+never before. He sees the course of the ages and the universe of being
+illuminated by the light of the knowledge of Christ. And what he sees,
+all men are to see through him (iii. 9). Blessed be God who has given to
+His Church through His apostles, and through the great Christian
+teachers of every age, His precious gifts of wisdom and prudence, and
+made His grace richly to overflow from the heart into the mind and
+understanding of men!
+
+This intellectual gift is twofold: _phronesis_ as well as _sophia_,--the
+bestowment not only of deep spiritual thought, but of moral sagacity,
+good sense and thoughtfulness. This is a choice _charism_--a mercy of
+the Lord. For want of it how sadly is the fruit of other graces spoilt
+and wasted. How brightly it shines in St Paul himself! What luminous and
+wholesome views of life, what a fund of practical sense there is in the
+teaching of this letter.
+
+St Paul rejoices in these gifts of the understanding and claims them for
+the Church, having in his view the false knowledge, the "philosophy and
+vain deceit" that was making its appearance in the Asian Churches (Col.
+ii. 4, 8, etc.). Our safeguard against intellectual perils lies not in
+ignorance, but in deeper heart-knowledge. When the grace that bestows
+redemption through Christ's blood adds its concomitant blessing of
+enlightenment, when it elevates the mind as it cleanses the heart, and
+abounds to us in all wisdom and prudence, the winds of doctrine and the
+waves of speculation blow and beat in vain; they can but bring health to
+a Church thus established in its faith.
+
+Verses 9 and 10 describe the object of this new knowledge. They state
+the doctrine which gave this powerful mental impulse to the apostolic
+Church, disclosing to it a vast field of view, and supplying the most
+fertile and vigorous principles of moral wisdom. This impulse lay in the
+revelation of God's purpose to reconstitute the universe in Christ. The
+declaration of "the mystery of His will" comes in at this point
+episodically, and by the way; and we reserve it for consideration to the
+end of the present Chapter.
+
+But let us observe here that our wisdom and prudence lie in the
+knowledge of God's will. Truth is not to be found in any system of
+logical notions, in schemes and syntheses of the laws of nature or of
+thought. The human mind can never rest for long in abstractions. It will
+not accept for its basis of thought that which is less real and positive
+than itself. By its rational instincts it is compelled to seek a Reason
+and a Conscience at the centre of things,--a living God. It craves to
+know _the mystery of His will_.
+
+III. Verse 11 fills up the measure of the bestowment of grace on sinful
+men. The present anticipates the future; faith and love are lifted to a
+glorious hope. "In whom also--_i.e._, in Christ--_we received our
+heritage_, predestinated [to it], according to His purpose who works all
+things according to the counsel of His will."
+
+Following Meyer and other great interpreters, we prefer in this passage
+the rendering of the English Authorized Version (_we obtained an
+inheritance_) to that of the Revised (_we were made a heritage_).[39]
+"Foreordained" carries us back to verse 5--to the phrase "foreordained
+to sonship." The believer cannot be predestinated to sonship without
+being predestinated to an inheritance.[40] "If children, then heirs"
+(Rom. viii. 17). But while in the parallel passage we are designated
+heirs _with_ Christ, we appear in this place, according to the tenor of
+the context, as heirs _in_ Him. Christ is Himself the believer's wealth,
+both in possession and hope: all his desire is to gain Christ (Phil.
+iii. 8). The apostle gives thanks here in the same strain as in
+Colossians i. 12-14, "to the Father who qualified us [by making us His
+sons] to partake of the inheritance of the saints in the light." In that
+thanksgiving we observe the same connexion as in this between our
+_forgiveness_ (ver. 7) and our _enfeoffment_, or investment with the
+forfeited rights of sons of God (vv. 5, 11).[41]
+
+The heritage of the saints in Christ is theirs already, by actual
+investiture. The liberty of sons of God, access to the Father, the
+treasures of Christ's wisdom and knowledge, the sanctifying Spirit and
+the moral strength and joy that He imparts, these form a rich estate of
+which ancient saints had but foretastes and promises. In the
+all-controlling "counsel of His will," God wrought throughout the
+course of history to convey this heritage to us. We are children of "the
+fulness of the times," heirs of all the past. For us God has been
+working from eternity. On us the ends of the world have come. Thus from
+the summit of our exaltation in Christ the apostle looks backward to the
+beginning of Divine history.
+
+From the same point his gaze sweeps onward to the end. God's purpose
+embraces the ages to come with those that are past. His working will not
+cease till the whole counsel is fulfilled. What we have of our
+inheritance, though rich and real, holds in it the promise of infinitely
+more; and the Holy Spirit is the "earnest of our inheritance" (ver. 14).
+God intends "that we should be to the praise of His glory." As things
+are, His glory is but obscurely visible in His saints. "It doth not yet
+appear what we shall be,"--and it will not appear until the unveiling of
+the sons of God (Rom. viii. 18-25). One day God's glory in us will burst
+forth in its splendour. All beholders in heaven and earth will then sing
+_to the praise of His glory_, when it is seen in His redeemed and
+godlike sons.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 9 and 10 (_which He purposed ... upon the earth_) are, as we have
+said, a parenthesis or episode in the passage just reviewed. Neither in
+structure nor in sense would the paragraph be defective, had this clause
+been wanting. With the "in Him" repeated at the end of verse 10, St Paul
+resumes the main current of his thanksgiving, arrested for a moment
+while he dwells on "the mystery of God's will."
+
+This last expression (ver. 9), notwithstanding what he has said in
+verses 4 and 5, still needs elucidation. He will pause for an instant to
+set forth once more the eternal purpose, to the knowledge of which the
+Church is now admitted. The communication of this mystery is, he says,
+"according to God's good pleasure which He purposed in Christ [comp.
+ver. 4], for a dispensation of the fulness of the times, intending to
+gather up again all things in the Christ--the things in the heavens, and
+the things upon the earth."
+
+God formed in Christ the purpose, by the dispensation of His grace, in
+due time to re-unite the universe under the headship of Christ. This
+mysterious design, hitherto kept secret, He has "made known unto us."
+Its manifestation imparts a wisdom that surpasses all the wisdom of
+former ages.[42] Such is the drift of this profound deliverance.
+
+The first clause of verse 10 supplies a datum for its interpretation.
+The _fulness of the times_, in St Paul's dialect, can only be the time
+of Christ.[43] The dispensation which God designed of old is that in
+which the apostle himself is now engaged;[44] it is the dispensation, or
+administration (_economy_), of the grace and truth that came by Jesus
+Christ, whether God be conceived as Himself the Dispenser, or through
+the stewards of His mysteries. The Messianic end was to Paul's Jewish
+thought the denouement of antecedent history. How long this age would
+continue, into what epochs it might unfold itself, he knew not; but for
+him the fulness of the times had arrived. The Son of God was come; the
+kingdom of God was amongst men. It was the beginning of the end. It is
+a mistake to relegate this text to the dim and distant future, to some
+far-off consummation. We are in the midst of the Christian
+reconstruction of things, and are taking part in it. The decisive epoch
+fell when "God sent forth His Son." All that has followed, and will
+follow, is the result of this mission. Christ is all things, and in all;
+and we are already complete in Him.
+
+What, then, signifies this _gathering-into-one_ or _summing-up_ of all
+things in the Christ? Our _recapitulate_ is the nearest equivalent of
+the Greek verb, in its etymological sense. In Romans xiii. 8, 9 the same
+word is used, where the several commands of the second table of the
+Decalogue are said to be "comprehended in this word, namely, Thou shalt
+love thy neighbour as thyself." This summing up is not a generalization
+or compendious statement of the commands of God; it signifies their
+reduction to a fundamental principle. They are unified by the discovery
+of a law that underlies them all. And while thus theoretically
+explained, they are made practically effective: "For love is the
+fulfilling of the law."
+
+Similarly, St Paul finds in Christ the fundamental principle of the
+creation. For those who think with him, God has by the Christian
+revelation already brought all things to their unity. This summing
+up--the Christian inventory and recapitulation of the universe--the
+apostle has formally stated in Colossians i. 15-20: "Christ is God's
+image and creation's firstborn. In Him, through Him, for Him all things
+were made. He is before them all; and in Him they have their basis and
+uniting bond. He is equally the Head of the Church and the new creation,
+the firstborn out of the dead, that He might hold a universal
+presidence--charged with all the fulness, so that in Him is the ground
+of the reconciliation no less than of the creation of all things in
+heaven and earth." What can we desire more comprehensive than this? It
+is the theory and programme of the world revealed to God's holy apostles
+and prophets.
+
+The "gathering into one" of this text includes the "reconciliation" of
+Colossians i. 20, and more. It signifies, beside the removal of the
+enmities which are the effect of sin (ii. 14-16), the subjection of all
+powers in heaven and earth to the rule of Christ (vv. 21, 22),[45] the
+enlightenment of the angelic magnates as to God's dealings with men
+(iii. 9, 10),--in fine, the rectification and adjustment of the several
+parts of the great whole of things, bringing them into full accord with
+each other and with their Creator's will. What St Paul looks forward to
+is, in a word, the organization of the universe upon a Christian basis.
+This reconstitution of things is provided for and is being effected "in
+the Christ." He is the rallying point of the forces of peace and
+blessing. The organic principle, the organizing Head, the creative
+nucleus of the new creation is there. The potent germ of life eternal
+has been introduced into the world's chaos; and its victory over the
+elements of disorder and death is assured.
+
+Observe that the apostle says "in _the Christ_."[46] He is not speaking
+of Christ in the abstract, considered in His own Person or as He dwells
+in heaven, but in His relations to men and to time. The Christ manifest
+in Jesus (iv. 20, 21), the Christ of prophets and apostles, the Messiah
+of the ages, the Husband of the Church (v. 23), is the author and
+finisher of this grand restoration.
+
+Christ's work is essentially a work of _restoration_. We must insist,
+with Meyer, upon the significance of the Greek preposition in Paul's
+compound verb (_ana_-, equal to _re_-in _restore_ or _resume_). The
+Christ is not simply the climax of the past--the Son of man and the
+recapitulation of humanity, as man is of the creatures below him,
+summing up human development and lifting it to a higher stage--though He
+is all that. Christ _rehabilitates_ man and the world. He re-asserts the
+original ground of our being, as that exists in God. He carries us and
+the world forward out of sin and death, by carrying us back to God's
+ideal. The new world is the old world repaired, and in its reparation
+infinitely enhanced--rich in the memories of redemption, in the fruit of
+penitence and the discipline of suffering, in the lessons of the cross.
+
+_All things_ in heaven and earth it was God's good pleasure in the
+Christ to gather again into one. Is this a general assertion concerning
+the universe as a whole, or may we apply it with distributive exactness
+to each particular thing? Is there to be, as we fain would hope, no
+single exception to the "all things"--no wanderer lost, no exile finally
+shut out from the Holy City and the tree of life? Are all evil men and
+demons, willing or against their will, to be embraced somehow and at
+last--at last--in the universal peace of God?
+
+It is impossible that the first readers should have so construed Paul's
+words (comp. v. 5). He has not forgotten the "unquenchable fire," the
+"eternal punishment"; nor dare we. "If anything is certain about the
+teaching of Christ and His apostles, it is that they warned men not to
+reject the Divine mercy and so to incur irrevocable exile from God's
+presence and joy. They assumed that some men would be guilty of this
+supreme crime, and would be doomed to this supreme woe" (Dale). There is
+nothing in this text to warrant any man in presuming on the mercy or the
+sovereignty of God, nothing to justify us in supposing that,
+deliberately refusing to be reconciled to God in Christ, we shall yet be
+reconciled in the end, despite ourselves.
+
+St Paul assures us that God and the world will be reunited, and that
+peace will reign through all realms and orders of existence. He does
+not, and he could not say that none will exclude themselves from the
+eternal kingdom. Making men free, God has made it possible for them to
+contradict Him, so long as they have any being. The apostle's words have
+their note of warning, along with their boundless promise. There is no
+place in the future order of things for aught that is out of Christ.
+There is no standing-ground anywhere for the unclean and the unjust, for
+the irreconcilable rebel against God. "The Son of man shall send forth
+His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that
+offend and them that do iniquity."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[33] The arrangement above made of the lines of this intricate passage
+is designed to guide the eye to its elucidation. Our disposition of the
+verses has not been determined by any preconceived interpretation, but
+by the parallelism of expression and cadences of phrase. The rhythmical
+structure of the piece, it seems to us, supplies the key to its
+explanation, and reduces to order its long-drawn and heaped-up relative
+and prepositional clauses, which are grammatically so unmanageable.
+
+[34] =Chaire, kecharitomene.= It is impossible to reproduce in English
+the beautiful assonance--the _play_ of sound and sense--in Gabriel's
+greeting, as St Luke renders it.
+
+[35] See Rom. i. 16-18, iii. 19-v. 21, vi. 7, vii. 1-6, viii. 1-4,
+31-34, x. 6-9; 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4, 17, 56, 57; 2 Cor. v. 18-21; Gal. ii.
+14-iii. 14, vi. 12-14. The latter passages the writer has endeavoured to
+expound in Chapters X. to XII. and XXVIII. of his Commentary on
+_Galatians_ in this series.
+
+[36] It is an error to suppose, as one sometimes hears it said, that
+_trespasses_ or _transgressions_ are a light and comparatively trivial
+form of sin. Both words denote, in the language of Scripture, definite
+offences against known law, departures from known duty. Adam's sin was
+the typical "transgression" and "trespass" (Rom. v. 14, 15, etc.; comp.
+ii. 23; Gal. iii. 19).
+
+[37] Gal. iii. 13; 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.
+
+[38] See _The Evangelical Revival, and other Sermons_, pp. 149-170, on
+"The Forgiveness of Sins."
+
+[39] Bishop Ellicott, who advocates the latter rendering, objects to
+Meyer's interpretation that it is "doubtful in point of usage." _Pace
+tanti viri_, we must retort this objection upon the new translation. _To
+obtain by lot, to have (a thing) allotted to one_, is the meaning
+regularly given to =klerousthai= in the classical dictionaries; and in
+O.T. usage the _lot_ (=kleros=) becomes the _inheritance_ (the thing
+_allotted_). The verb is repeatedly used by Philo with the meaning _to
+obtain_, or _receive an inheritance_; whereas there seems to be no real
+parallel to the other rendering. It is true that =klerousthai= in the
+sense of the A.V. requires an object; but that is virtually supplied by
+=en ho=: "we had our inheritance allotted _in Christ_." Comp. Col. i.
+12, "the lot of the saints _in the light_," which signifies not the
+locality, but the nature and content of the saints' heritage.
+
+[40] See Gal. iii. 22--iv. 7; and Chapters XV.--XVII. in the
+_Expositor's Bible_ (Galatians), on Sonship and Inheritance in St Paul.
+
+[41] Compare Acts xxvi. 18, which also speaks to this association of
+ideas in St Paul's mind, with vers. 4, 5, 7, and 11 in this chapter.
+
+[42] Vv. 8, 9, ch. iii. 4, 5; comp. Col. ii. 2, 3; 1 Cor. ii. 6-9.
+
+[43] "The fulness of the time," Gal. iv. 4; "in due season," Rom. v. 6;
+"in its own times," 1 Tim. ii. 6. These are all synonymous expressions
+for the Messianic era. Comp. Heb. i. 2, ix. 26; 1 Pet. i. 20.
+
+[44] Ch. iii. 8, 9; Col. i. 25; 1 Cor. iv. 1; 1 Tim. i. 4, i. 7; 2 Tim.
+i. 9-11; and especially Rom. xvi. 25, 26.
+
+[45] Comp. ch. v. 5; 1 Cor. xv. 24-28; Phil. ii. 9-12; Heb. ii. 8; Rev.
+i. 5, xi. 15, xvii. 14; Dan. vii. 13, 14.
+
+[46] One wonders that our Revisers, so attentive to all points of Greek
+idiom, did not think it worth while to discriminate between _Christ_ and
+_the Christ_ in such passages as this. In Ephesians this distinction is
+especially conspicuous and significant. See vv. 12, 20 iii. 17, iv. 20,
+v. 23; similarly in 1 Cor. xv. 22; Rom. xv. 3.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+_THE FINAL REDEMPTION._
+
+          "[That we might be to the praise of His glory:]
+    We who had before hoped in the Christ, in whom also ye _have hoped_,
+      Since ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation,--
+    In whom indeed, when ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy
+        Spirit of the promise,
+      Which is the earnest of our inheritance, till the redemption of
+        _God's_ possession,--
+                                 To the praise of His glory."
+    EPH. i. 12-14.
+
+
+When the apostle reaches the "heritage" conferred upon us in Christ
+(ver. 11), he is on the boundary between the present and the future.
+Into that future he now presses forward, gathering from it his crowning
+tribute "to the praise of God's glory." We shall find, however, that
+this heritage assumes a twofold character, as did the conception of the
+inheritance of the Lord in the Old Testament. If the saints have their
+heritage in Christ, partly possessed and partly to be possessed, God has
+likewise, and antecedently, His inheritance in them, of which He too has
+still to take full possession.[47]
+
+Opening upon this final prospect, St Paul touches on a subject of
+supreme interest to himself and that could not fail to find a place in
+his great Act of Praise--viz., _the admission of the Gentiles_ to the
+spiritual property of Israel. The thought of the heirship of believers
+and of God's previous counsel respecting it (ver. 11), brought before
+his mind the distinction between Jew and Gentile and the part assigned
+to each in the Divine plan. Hence he varies the general refrain in verse
+12 by saying significantly, "that _we_ might be to the praise of His
+glory." This emphatic _we_ is explained in the opening phrase of the
+last strophe: "that have beforehand fixed our hope on the Christ,"--the
+heirs of Israel's hope in "Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets
+did write." With this "we" of Paul's Jewish consciousness the "ye also"
+of verse 13 is set in contrast by his vocation as Gentile apostle. This
+second pronoun, by one of Paul's abrupt turns of thought, is deprived of
+its predicating verb; but that is given already by the "hoped" of the
+last clause. "The Messianic hope, Israel's ancient heirloom, in its
+fulfilment is _yours_ as much as ours."
+
+This hope of Israel pointed Israelite and Gentile believer alike to the
+completion of the Messianic era, when the mystery of God should be
+finished and His universe redeemed from the bondage of corruption (vv.
+10, 14). By the "one hope" of the Christian calling the Church is now
+made one. From this point of view the apostle in chapter ii. 12
+describes the condition in which the gospel found his Gentile readers as
+that of men cut off from Christ, strangers to the covenants of
+promise,--in a word, "having no hope"; while he and his Jewish
+fellow-believers held the priority that belonged to those whose are the
+promises. The apostle stands precisely at the juncture where the wild
+shoot of nature is grafted into the good olive tree. A generation later
+no one would have thought of writing of "the Christ in whom _you_
+(Gentiles) _also_ have found hope"; for then Christ was the established
+possession of the Gentile Church.
+
+To these Christless heathen Christ and His hope came, when they "heard
+the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation." A great light had
+sprung up for them that sat in darkness; the good tidings of salvation
+came to the lost and despairing. "To the Gentiles," St Paul declared,
+addressing the obstinate Jews of Rome, "this salvation of God was sent:
+they indeed will hear it" (Acts xxviii. 28). Such was his experience in
+Ephesus and all the Gentile cities. There were hearing ears and open
+hearts, souls longing for the word of truth and the message of hope. The
+trespass of Israel had become the riches of the world. For this on his
+readers' behalf he gives joyful thanks,--that his message proved to be
+"the gospel of _your_ salvation."
+
+Salvation, as St Paul understands it, includes our uttermost
+deliverance, the end of death itself (1 Cor. xv. 26). He renders praise
+to God for that He has sealed Gentile equally with Jewish believers with
+the stamp of His Spirit, which makes them His property and gives
+assurance of absolute redemption.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are three things to be considered in this statement: _the seal_
+itself, _the conditions_ upon which, and _the purpose_ for which it is
+affixed.
+
+I. A seal is a token of proprietorship put by the owner upon his
+property;[48] or it is the authentication of some statement or
+engagement, the official stamp that gives it validity;[49] or it is the
+pledge of inviolability guarding a treasure from profane or injurious
+hands.[50] There is the protecting seal, the ratifying seal, and the
+proprietary seal. The same seal may serve each or all of these purposes.
+Here the thought of possession predominates (comp. ver. 4); but it can
+scarcely be separated from the other two. The witness of the Holy Spirit
+marks men out as God's _purchased right_ in Christ (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20).
+In that very fact it guards them from evil and wrong (iv. 30), while it
+ratifies their Divine sonship (Gal. iv. 6) and guarantees their personal
+share in the promises of God (2 Cor. i. 20-22). It is a bond between God
+and men; a sign at once of what we are and shall be to God, and of what
+He is and will be to us. It secures, and it assures. It stamps us for
+God's possession, and His kingdom and glory as our possession.
+
+This seal is constituted by _the Holy Spirit of the promise_,--in
+contrast with the material seal, "in the flesh, wrought by hand,"[51]
+which marked the children of the Old Covenant from Abraham downwards,
+previously to the fulfilment of the promise (Gal. iii. 14). We bear it
+in the inmost part of our nature, where we are nearest to God: "The
+Spirit witnesseth to our spirit." "The Israelites also were sealed, but
+by circumcision, like cattle and irrational animals. We were sealed by
+the Spirit, as sons" (Chrysostom). The stamp of God is on the
+consciousness of His children. "We know that Christ abides in us,"
+writes St John, "from the Spirit which He gave us" (1 Ep. iii. 24).
+Under this seal is conveyed the sum of blessing comprised in our
+salvation. Jesus promised, "Your heavenly Father will give His Holy
+Spirit to them that ask" (Luke xi. 13), as if there were nothing else to
+ask. Giving us this, God gives everything, gives us Himself! In
+substance or anticipation, this one bestowment contains all good things
+of God.
+
+The apostle writes "the Spirit of the promise, _the Holy_ [Spirit],"
+with emphasis on the word of quality; for the testifying power of the
+seal lies in its character. "Beloved, believe not every spirit; but try
+the spirits, whether they are of God" (1 John iv. 1). There are false
+prophets, deceiving and deceived; there are promptings from "the spirit
+that works in the sons of disobedience," diabolical inspirations, so
+plausible and astonishing that they may deceive the very elect. It is a
+most perilous error to identify the supernatural with the Divine, to
+suppose mere miracles and communications from the invisible sphere a
+sign of the working of God. Antichrist can mimic Christ by his "lying
+wonders and deceit of unrighteousness" (2 Thess. ii. 8-12). Jesus never
+appealed to the power of His works in proof of His mission, apart from
+their ethical quality. God's Spirit works after His kind, and makes ours
+a holy spirit. There is an objective and subjective witness--the obverse
+and reverse of the medal (2 Tim. ii. 19). To be sealed by the Holy
+Spirit is, in St Paul's dialect, the same thing as to be _sanctified_;
+only, the phrase of this text brings out graphically the promissory
+aspect of sanctification, its bearing on our final redemption.[52]
+
+When the sealing Spirit is called the Spirit _of promise_, does the
+expression look backward or forward? Is the apostle thinking of the past
+promise now fulfilled, or of some promise still to be fulfilled? The
+former, undoubtedly, is true. _The_ promise (the article is
+significant[53]) is, in the words of Christ, "the promise of the
+Father." On the day of Pentecost St Peter pointed to the descent of the
+Holy Spirit as God's seal upon the Messiahship of Jesus, fulfilling what
+was promised to Israel for the last days. When this miraculous effusion
+was repeated in the household of Cornelius, the Jewish apostle saw its
+immense significance. He asked, "Can any one forbid water that these
+should be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?"
+(Acts x. 47). This was the predicted criterion of the Messianic times.
+Now it was _given_, and with an abundance beyond hope,--_poured out_, in
+the full sense of Joel's words, _upon all flesh_.
+
+Now, if God has done so much--for this is the implied argument of verses
+13, 14--He will surely accomplish the rest. The attainment of past hope
+is the warrant of present hope. He who gives us His own Spirit, will
+give us the fulness of eternal life. The earnest implies the sum. In the
+witness of the Holy Spirit there is for the Christian man the power of
+an endless life, a spring of courage and patience that can never fail.
+
+II. But there are very definite conditions, upon which this assurance
+depends. "When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your
+salvation"--there is the outward condition: "when you believed"--there
+is the inward and subjective qualification for the affixing of the seal
+of God to the heart.
+
+How characteristic is this antithesis of _hearing_ and _faith_![54] St
+Paul delights to ring the changes upon these terms. The gospel he
+carried about with him was a message from God to men, the good news
+about Jesus Christ. It needs, on the one hand, to be effectively
+uttered, proclaimed so as to be heard with the understanding; and, on
+the other hand, it must be trustfully received and obeyed. Then the due
+result follows. There is salvation,--conscious, full.
+
+If they are to believe unto salvation, men must be made to _hear_ the
+word of truth. Unless the good news reaches their ears and their heart,
+it is no good news to them. "How shall they believe in Him of whom they
+have not heard? how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom. x. 14).
+The light may be true, and the eyes clear and open; but there is no
+vision till both meet, till the illuminating ray falls on the sensitive
+spot and touches the responsive nerve. How many sit in darkness, groping
+and wearying for the light, ready for the message if there were any to
+speak it to them! Great would Paul's guilt have been, if when Christ
+called him to preach to the heathen, he had refused to go, if he had
+withheld the gospel of salvation from the multitudes waiting to receive
+it at his lips. Great also is our fault and blame, and heavy the
+reproach against the Church to-day, when with means in her hand to make
+Christ known to almost the whole world, she leaves vast numbers of men
+within her reach in ignorance of His message. She is not the proprietor
+of the Christian truth: it is God's gospel; and she holds it as God's
+trustee for mankind,--that through her "the message might be fully
+preached, and that all the nations might hear" (2 Tim. iv. 17). She has
+St Paul's programme in hand still to complete, and loiters over it.
+
+The nature of the message constitutes our duty to proclaim it. It is
+"the word _of truth_." If there be any doubt upon this, if our certainty
+of the Christian truth is shaken and we can no longer announce it with
+full conviction, our zeal for its propagation naturally declines.
+Scepticism chills and kills missionary fervour, as the breath of the
+frost the young growth of spring. At home and amongst our own people
+evangelistic agencies are supported by many who have no very decided
+personal faith, from secondary motives,--with a view to their social and
+reformatory benefits, out of philanthropic feeling and love to "the
+brother whom we have seen." The foreign missions of the Church, like the
+work of the Gentile apostle, gauge her real estimate of the gospel she
+believes and the Master she serves.
+
+But if we have no sure word of prophecy to speak, we had better be
+silent. Men are not saved by illusion or speculation. Christianity did
+not begin by offering to mankind a legend for a gospel, or win the ear
+of the world for a beautiful romance. When the apostles preached Jesus
+and the resurrection, they declared what they knew. To have spoken
+otherwise, to have uttered cunningly devised fables or pious phantasies
+or conjectures of their own, would have been, in their view, to bear
+false witness against God. Before the hostile scrutiny of their
+fellow-men, and in prospect of the awful judgement of God, they
+testified the facts about Jesus Christ, the things that they had "heard,
+and seen with their eyes, and which their hands had handled concerning
+the word of life." They were as sure of these things as of their own
+being. Standing upon this ground and with this weapon of truth alone in
+their hands, they denounced "the wiles of error" and the "craftiness of
+men who lie in wait to deceive" (iv. 14).
+
+And they could always speak of this word of truth, addressing whatsoever
+circle of hearers or of readers, as "the good news of _your salvation_."
+The pronoun, as we have seen, is emphatic. The glory of Paul's apostolic
+mission was its universalism. His message was to every man he met. His
+latest writings glow with delight in the world-wide destination of his
+gospel.[55] It was his consolation that the Gentiles in multitudes
+received the Divine message to which his countrymen closed their ears.
+And he rejoiced in this the more, because he foresaw that ultimately the
+gospel would return to its native home, and at last amid "the fulness of
+the Gentiles all Israel would be saved" (Rom. xi. 13-32). At present
+Israel was not prepared to seek, while the Gentiles were seeking
+righteousness by the way of faith (Rom. ix. 30-33).
+
+For it is upon this question of _faith_ that the whole issue turns.
+Hearing is much, when one hears the word of truth and news of salvation.
+But faith is the point at which salvation becomes ours--no longer a
+possibility, an opportunity, but a fact: "in whom indeed, _when you
+believed_, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit." So characteristic is
+this act of the new life to which it admits, that St Paul is in the
+habit of calling Christians, without further qualification, simply
+_believers_ ("those who believe," or "who believed"). Faith and the gift
+of the Holy Spirit are associated in his thoughts, as closely as Faith
+and Justification. "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?"
+was the question he put to the Baptist's disciples whom he found at
+Ephesus on first arriving there (Acts xix. 2). This was the test of the
+adequacy of their faith. He reminds the Galatians that they "received
+the Spirit from the hearing of faith," and tells them that in this way
+the blessing and the promise of Abraham were theirs already (Gal. iii.
+2, 7, 14). Faith in the word of Christ admits the Spirit of Christ, who
+is in the word waiting to enter. Faith is the trustful surrender and
+expectancy of the soul towards God; it sets the heart's door open for
+Christ's incoming through the Spirit This was the order of things from
+the beginning of the new dispensation. "God gave to them," says St Peter
+of the first baptized Gentiles, "the like gift as He did also unto us,
+when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost fell on them,
+as on us at the beginning" (Acts xi. 15-18). Upon our faith in Jesus
+Christ, the Holy Spirit enters the soul and announces Himself by His
+message of adoption, crying in us to God, _Abba, Father_ (Gal. iv. 6,
+7).
+
+In the chamber of our spirit, while we abide in faith, the Spirit of the
+Father and the Son dwells with us, witnessing to us of the love of God
+and leading us into all truth and duty and divine joy, instilling a deep
+and restful peace, breathing an energy that is a fire and fountain of
+life within the breast, which pours out itself in prayer and labour for
+the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit is no mere gift to receive, or
+comfort to enjoy; He is an almighty Force in the believing soul and the
+faithful Church.
+
+III. The end for which the seal of God was affixed to Paul's Gentile
+readers, along with their Jewish brethren in Christ, appears in the
+last verse, with which the Act of Praise terminates: "sealed," he says,
+"with the Holy Spirit, which is the earnest of our inheritance, _until
+the redemption of the possession_."
+
+The last of these words is the equivalent of the Old Testament phrase
+rendered in Exodus xix. 5, and elsewhere, "_a peculiar treasure_ unto
+me"; in Deuteronomy vii. 6, etc., "a _peculiar_ people" (_i.e._, people
+of _possession_). The same Greek term is employed by the Septuagint
+translators in Malachi iii. 17, where our Revisers have substituted "a
+peculiar treasure" for the familiar, but misleading "jewels" of the
+older Version. St Peter in his first epistle (ii. 9, 10) transfers the
+title from the Jewish people to the new Israel of God, who are "an elect
+race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people _for God's own
+possession_." In that passage, as in this, the Revisers have inserted
+the word _God's_ in order to signify whose possession the term signifies
+in Biblical use. In the other places in the New Testament where the same
+Greek noun occurs,[56] it retains its primary active force, and denotes
+"_obtaining_ of the glory," etc., "_saving_ of the soul." The word
+signifies not the possessing so much as the _acquiring_ or _securing_ of
+its object. The Latin Vulgate suitably renders this phrase, _in
+redemptionem acquisitions_,--"till the redemption of the acquisition."
+
+God has "redeemed unto Himself a people"; He has "bought us with a
+price." His rights in us are both natural and _acquired_; they are
+redemptional rights, the recovered rights of the infinite love which in
+Jesus Christ saved mankind by extreme sacrifice from the doom of death
+eternal. This redemption "we have, in the remission of our trespasses"
+(ver. 7). But this is only the beginning. Those whose sin is cancelled
+and on whom God now looks with favour in Christ, are thereby redeemed
+and saved (ii. 5, 8).[57] They are within the kingdom of grace; they
+have passed out of death into life. They have but to persist in the
+grace into which they have entered, and all will be well. "Now," says
+the apostle to the Romans, "you are made free from sin and made servants
+to God; you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life."
+
+Our salvation is come; but, after all, it is still to come. We find the
+apostle using the words "save" and "redeem" in this twofold sense,
+applying them both to the commencement and the consummation of the new
+life.[58] The last act, in Romans viii. 23, he calls "the redemption of
+the body." This will reinstate the man in the integrity of his twofold
+being as a son of God. Hence our bodily redemption is there called an
+_adoption_. For as Jesus Christ by His resurrection was "marked out
+[_or_ instated] as Son of God in power" (Rom. i. 4), not otherwise will
+it be with His many brethren. Their reappearance in the new "body of
+glory" will be a "revelation" to the universe "of the sons of God."
+
+But this last redemption--or rather this last act of the one
+redemption--like the first, is through the blood of the cross. Christ
+has borne for us in His death the entire penalty of sin; the remission
+of that penalty comes to us in two distinct stages. The shadow of death
+is lifted off from our spirits now, in the moment of forgiveness. But
+for reasons of discipline it remains resting upon our bodily frame.
+Death is a usurper and trespasser in the bounds of God's heritage.
+Virtually and in principle, he is abolished; but not in effect. "I will
+ransom them from the power of the grave,"[59] the Lord said of His
+Israel, with a meaning deeper than His prophet knew. When that is done,
+then God will have redeemed, in point of fact, those possessions in
+humanity which He so much prizes, that for their recovery He spared not
+His Son.
+
+So long as mortality afflicts us, God cannot be satisfied on our
+account. His children are suffering and tortured; His people mourn under
+the oppression of the enemy. They sigh, and creation with them, under
+the burdensome and infirm tabernacle of the flesh, this body of our
+humiliation for which the hungry grave clamours. God's new estate in us
+is still encumbered with the liabilities in which the sin of the race
+involved us, with the "ills that flesh is heir to." But this
+mortgage--that we call, with a touching euphemism, _the debt of
+nature_--will at last be discharged. Soon shall we be free for ever from
+the law of sin and death. "And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and
+come with singing to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their
+heads: they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall
+flee away."
+
+To God, as He looks down upon men, the seal of His Spirit upon their
+hearts anticipates this full emancipation. He sees already in the
+redeemed spirit of His children what will be manifest in their glorious
+heavenly form. The same token is to ourselves as believing men the
+"earnest of our inheritance." Note that at this point the apostle drops
+the "you" by which he has for several sentences distinguished between
+Jewish and Gentile brethren. He identifies them with himself and speaks
+of "_our_ inheritance." This sudden resumption of the first person, the
+self-assertion of the filial consciousness in the writer breaking
+through the grammatical order, is a fine trait of the Pauline
+manner.[60]
+
+_Arrhabon_, the _earnest_ (_fastening penny_), is a Phoenician word of
+the market, which passed into Greek and Latin,--a monument of the daring
+pioneers of Mediterranean commerce. It denotes the part of the price
+given by a purchaser in making a bargain, or of the wages given by the
+hirer concluding a contract of service, by way of assurance that the
+stipulated sum will be forthcoming. Such pledge of future payment is at
+the same time a bond between those concerned, engaging each to his part
+in the transaction.
+
+The earnest is the seal, and something more. It is an instalment, a
+_token in kind_, a foretaste of the feast to come. In the parallel
+passage, Romans viii. 23, the same earnest is called "the firstfruit of
+the Spirit." What the earliest sheaf is to the harvest, that the
+entrance of the Spirit of God into a human soul is to the glory of its
+ultimate salvation. The sanctity, the joy, the sense of recovered life
+is the same in kind then and now, differing only in degree and
+expression.
+
+Of the "earnest of the Spirit" St Paul has spoken twice already, in 2
+Corinthians i. 22 and v. 5, where he cites this inner witness to assure
+us, in the first instance, that God will fulfil to us His promises, "how
+many soever they be"; and in the second, that our mortal nature shall be
+"swallowed up of life"--assimilated to the living spirit to which it
+belongs--and that "God has wrought us for this very thing." These
+earlier sayings explain the apostle's meaning here. God has made us His
+sons, in accordance with His purpose formed in the depths of eternity
+(ver. 5). As sons, we are His heirs in fellowship with Christ, and
+already have received rich blessings out of this heritage (ver. 11). But
+the richest part of it, including that which concerns the bodily form of
+our life, is still unredeemed, notwithstanding that the price of its
+redemption is paid.
+
+For this we wait till the time appointed of the Father,--the time when
+He will reclaim His heritage in us, and give us full possession of our
+heritage in Christ. We do not wait, as did the saints of former ages,
+ignorant of the Father's purpose for our future lot. "Life and
+immortality are brought to light through the gospel." We see beyond the
+chasm of death. We enjoy in the testimony of the Holy Spirit the
+foretaste of an eternal and glorious life for all the children of
+God--nay, the pledge that the reign of evil and death shall end
+throughout the universe.
+
+With this hope swelling their hearts, the apostle's readers once more
+triumphantly join in the refrain: TO THE PRAISE OF HIS GLORY.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[47] Exod. xix. 3-6; Deut. iv. 20, 21; 1 Kings viii. 51, 53; Ps.
+lxxviii. 71, etc. With the above comp. Gen. xv. 8; Numb. xviii. 20; Jos.
+xiii. 33; Ps. xvi. 5.
+
+[48] Ch. iv. 30. The "seal" of 2 Tim. ii. 19 has both the first and
+third of these meanings.
+
+[49] Rom. iv. 11; 1 Cor. ix. 2; John iii. 33, vi. 27.
+
+[50] Matt. xxvii. 66; Rev. v. 1, etc.
+
+[51] Ch. ii. 11; comp. Rom. i. 28, 29; Gal. v, 5, 6; Phil. iii. 2, 3.
+
+[52] Comp. Rom. viii. 9-11; 2 Cor. v. 1-5.
+
+[53] Acts i. 4, ii. 33, 39, xiii. 32, xxvi. 6; Rom. iv. 13-20; Gal. iii.
+14-29.
+
+[54] See Rom. x. 14-18; Gal. iii. 2, 5; Col. i. 6, 23; 1 Thess. ii. 13;
+2 Tim. i. 13.
+
+[55] 1 Tim. ii. 1-7, iv. 10; Tit. ii. 11.
+
+[56] 1 Thess. v. 9; 2 Thess. ii. 14; Heb. x. 39.
+
+[57] Comp. Chapter VIII.
+
+[58] For the former usage see, along with ver. 7 and ch. ii. 5, 8; Rom.
+iii, 24, x. 9; Titus iii. 5; 2 Tim. i. 9; Col. i. 14; Heb. ix. 15; for
+the latter, ch. iv. 30; Luke xxi. 28; Rom. v. 9, 10, viii. 23; Phil. ii.
+12; 1 Thess. v. 8, 9; 2 Tim. ii. 10, iv. 18. It may be doubted whether
+St Paul ever uses these terms to denote present salvation or redemption
+without the final issue being also in his thoughts. Perhaps he would
+have called the redemption of ver. 7, in contrast with that of Rom.
+viii. 23, "the redemption of the spirit."
+
+[59] Hosea xiii. 14; Isa. xxv. 8.
+
+[60] The same incoherence occurs in Gal. iv. 5-7: "that _we_ might
+receive the adoption of sons. And because _ye_ are sons, God sent forth
+the Spirit of His Son into _our_ hearts."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+_FOR THE EYES OF THE HEART._
+
+    "For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
+    which is among you, and which _ye shew_ toward all the saints, cease
+    not to give thanks for you, making mention _of you_ in my prayers:
+
+    "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may
+    give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of
+    Him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know
+    what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His
+    inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His
+    power toward us who believe, according to that working of the might
+    of His strength, which He wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him
+    from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly
+    _places_."--EPH. i. 15-20.
+
+
+_Because of this_: because you have heard the glad tidings, and
+believing it have been sealed with the Holy Spirit (vv. 13, 14). _I
+too_: I your apostle, with so great an interest in your salvation, in
+return give thanks for you. Thus St Paul, having extolled to the
+uttermost God's counsel of redemption unfolded through the ages, claims
+to offer especial thanksgiving for the faith of those who belong to his
+Gentile province and are, directly or indirectly, the fruit of his own
+ministry (iii. 1-13).
+
+The intermediate clause of verse 15, describing the readers' faith, is
+obscure. This form of expression occurs nowhere else in St Paul; but the
+construction is used by St Luke,--_e.g._, in Acts xxi. 21: "All the
+Jews _which are among_ the Gentiles," where it implies diffusion over a
+wide area. This being a circular letter, addressed to a number of
+Churches scattered through the province of Asia, of whose faith in many
+cases St Paul knew only by report, we can understand how he writes:
+"having heard of the faith that is [spread] amongst you."--_The love_,
+completing _faith_ in the ordinary text (as in Col. i. 4), is relegated
+by the Revisers to the margin, upon evidence that seems conclusive.[61]
+The commentators, however, feel so strongly the harshness of this
+ellipsis that, in spite of the ancient witnesses, they read, almost with
+one consent,[62] "_your love_ toward all the saints." The variation of
+the former clause prepares us, however, for something peculiar in this.
+In verse 13 we found St Paul's thought fixed on the decisive fact of his
+readers' _faith_. On this he still dwells lingeringly. The grammatical
+link needed between "faith" and "unto all the saints" is supplied in the
+Revised Version by _ye show_, after the analogy of Philemon 5. Perhaps
+it might be supplied as grammatically, and in a sense better suiting the
+situation, by _is come_. Then the co-ordinate prepositional phrases
+qualifying "faith" have both alike a local reference, and we paraphrase
+the clause thus: "since I heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is
+spread amongst you, and whose report has reached all the saints."
+
+We are reminded of the thanksgiving for the Roman Church, "that your
+faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world."[63] The success of the
+gospel in Asia gave encouragement to believers in Christ everywhere. St
+Paul loves in this way to link Church to Church, to knit the bonds of
+faith between land and land: in this letter most of all; for it is his
+catholic epistle, the epistle of the Church oecumenical.
+
+In verse 16 we pass from praise to prayer. God is invoked by a double
+title peculiar to this passage, as "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
+the Father of glory." The former expression is in no way difficult. The
+apostle often speaks, as in verse 3, of "the God and Father of our Lord
+Jesus Christ": intending to qualify the Divine Fatherhood by another
+epithet, he writes for once simply of "_the God_ of our Lord Jesus
+Christ." This reminds us of the dependence of the Lord Jesus upon the
+eternal Father, and accentuates the Divine sovereignty so conspicuous in
+the foregoing Act of Praise. Christ's constant attitude towards the
+Father was that of His cry of anguish on the cross, "My God, my God!"
+Yet He never speaks to men of _our_ God. To us God is "the God of our
+Lord Jesus Christ," as He was to the men of old time "the God of Abraham
+and of Isaac and of Jacob."
+
+The key to the designation _Father of glory_ is in Romans vi. 4: "Christ
+was raised from the dead through _the glory of the Father_." In the
+light of this august manifestation of God's power to save His lost sons
+in Christ, we are called to see light (vv. 19, 20). Its glory shines
+already about God's blessed name of Father, thrice glorified in the
+apostle's praise (vv. 3-14). The title is the counterpart of "the Father
+of compassions" in 2 Corinthians i. 3.
+
+And now, what has the apostle to ask of the Father of men under these
+glorious appellations? He asks "a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
+full-knowledge[64] of Him,--the eyes of your heart enlightened, in order
+that you may know," etc. This recalls the emphasis with which in verses
+8 and 9 he set "wisdom and intelligence" amongst the first blessings
+bestowed by Divine grace upon the Church. It was the gift which the
+Asian Churches at the present juncture most needed; this is just now the
+burden of the apostle's prayers for his people.
+
+The _spirit of wisdom and revelation_ desired will proceed from the Holy
+Spirit dwelling in these Gentile believers (ver. 13). But it must belong
+to their own spirit and direct their personal mental activity, the
+spirit of revelation becoming "the spirit of their mind" (iv. 23). When
+St Paul asks for "a spirit of wisdom and _revelation_," he desires that
+his readers may have amongst themselves a fountain of inspiration and
+share in the prophetic gifts diffused through the Church.[65] And "the
+knowledge--the full, deep knowledge of God" is the sphere "in" which
+this richer inspiration and spiritual wisdom are exercised and
+nourished. "Philosophy, taking man for its centre, says, _Know thyself_:
+only the inspired word, which proceeds from God, has been able to say,
+_Know God_."[66]
+
+The connexion of the first clause of verse 18 with the last of verse 17
+is not very clear in St Paul's Greek; there is a characteristic
+incoherence of structure. The continuity of thought is unmistakable. He
+prays that through this inspired wisdom his readers may have their
+reason enlightened to see the grandeur and wealth of their religion.
+This is a vision for "the eyes of the heart." It is disclosed to the eye
+behind the eye, to the heart which is the true discerner.
+
+                  "The seeing eyes
+    See best by the light in the heart that lies."
+
+Yonder is an ox grazing in the meadow on a bright summer's day. Round
+him is spread the fairest landscape,--a broad stretch of herbage
+embroidered with flowers, the river gleaming in and out amongst the
+distant trees, the hills on both sides bounding the quiet valley,
+sunshine and shadows chasing each other as they leap from height to
+height. But of all this what sees the grazing ox? So much lush pasture
+and cool shade and clear water where his feet may plash when he has done
+feeding. In the same meadow there stands a poet musing, or a painter
+busy at his easel; and on the soul of that gifted man there descends,
+through eyes outwardly discerning no more than those of the beast at his
+side, a vision of wonder and beauty which will make all time richer. The
+eyes of the man's heart are opened, and the spirit of wisdom and
+revelation is given him in the knowledge of God's work in nature.
+
+Like differences exist amongst men in regard to the things of religion.
+"So foolish was I and ignorant," says the Psalmist, speaking of his
+former dejection and unbelief, "I was as a beast before Thee!" There
+shall be two men sitting side by side in the same house of prayer, at
+the same gate of heaven. The one sees heaven opened; he hears the
+eternal song; his spirit is a temple filled with the glory of God. The
+other sees the place and the aspect of his fellow-worshippers; he hears
+the music of organ and choir, and the sound of some preacher's voice.
+But as for anything besides, any influence from another world, it is no
+more to him at that moment than is the music in the poet's soul or the
+colours on the painter's canvas to the ox that eateth grass.
+
+It is not the strangeness and distance of Divine things alone that cause
+insensibility; their familiarity has the same effect. We know all this
+gospel so well. We have read it, listened to it, gone over its points of
+doctrine a hundred times. It is trite and easy to us as a worn glove. We
+discuss without a tremor of emotion truths the first whisper and dim
+promise of which once lifted men's souls into ecstasy, or cast them down
+into depths of shame and bewilderment so that they forgot to eat their
+bread. The awe of things eternal, the mystery of our faith, the Spirit
+of glory and of God rest on us no longer. So there come to be, as one
+hears it said, _gospel-hardened_ hearers--and gospel-hardened preachers!
+The eyes see--and see not; the ears hear--and hear not; the lips speak
+without feeling; _the heart is waxen fat_. This is the nemesis of grace
+abused. It is the result that follows by an inevitable psychological
+law, where outward contact with spiritual truth is not attended with an
+inward apprehension and response. How do we need to pray, in handling
+these dread themes, for a true sense and savour of Divine things,--that
+there may be given, and ever given afresh to us "a spirit of wisdom and
+revelation in the knowledge of God."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three things the apostle desires that his readers may see with the
+heart's enlightened eyes: the _hope to which God calls them_, the
+_wealth that He possesses in them,_ and the _power which He is prepared
+to exert upon them as believing men_.
+
+I. What, then, is our _hope_ in God? What is the ideal of our faith? For
+what purpose has God called us into the fellowship of His Son? What is
+our religion going to do for us and to make of us?
+
+It will bring us safe home to heaven. It will deliver us from the
+present evil world, and preserve us unto Christ's heavenly kingdom. God
+forbid that we should make light of "the hope laid up for us in the
+heavens," or cast it aside. It is an anchor of the soul, both sure and
+steadfast. But is it _the_ hope of our calling? Is this what St Paul
+here chiefly signifies? We are very sure that it is not. But it is the
+one thing which stands for the hope of the gospel in many minds. "We
+trust that our sins are forgiven: we hope that we shall get to heaven!"
+The experience of how many Christian believers begins and ends there. We
+make of our religion a harbour of refuge, a soothing anodyne, an escape
+from the anguish of guilt and the fear of death; not a life-vocation, a
+grand pursuit. The definition we have quoted may suffice for the
+beginning and the end; but we need something to fill out that formula,
+to give body and substance, meaning and movement to the life of faith.
+
+Let the apostle tell us what he regarded, for himself, as the end of
+religion, what was the object of his ambition and pursuit. "One thing I
+do," he writes to the Philippians, opening to them all his heart,--"One
+thing I do. I press towards the mark for the prize of my high calling of
+God in Christ Jesus." And what, pray, was that mark?--"that I may gain
+Christ and be found in Him!--that I may know Him, and the power of His
+resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to
+His death, if by any means I may attain unto the final resurrection from
+the dead." Yes, Paul hopes for heaven; but he hopes for something else
+first, and most. It is through Christ that he sees heaven. To know
+Christ, to love Christ, to serve Christ, to follow Christ, to be like
+Christ, to be with Christ for ever!--that is what St Paul lived for.
+Whatever aim he pursues or affection he cherishes, Christ lies in it and
+reaches beyond it. In doing or in suffering, in his intellect and his
+heart, in his thoughts for himself or for others, Christ is all things
+to him and in all. When life is thus filled with Christ, heaven becomes,
+as one may say, a mere circumstance, and death but an incident upon the
+way,--in the soul's everlasting pursuit of Christ.
+
+Behold, then, brethren, the hope of our calling. God could not call us
+to any destiny less or lower than this. It would have been unworthy of
+Him,--and may we not say, unworthy of ourselves, if we are in truth His
+sons? From eternity the Father of spirits has predestined you and me to
+be holy and without blemish before Him,--in a word, to be conformed to
+the image of His Son. Every other hope is dross compared to this.
+
+II. Another vision for the heart's eyes, still more amazing than that we
+have seen: "what is," St Paul writes, "the riches of the glory of God's
+inheritance in the saints."
+
+We saw, in considering the eleventh and fourteenth verses, how the
+apostle, in characteristic fashion, plays upon the double aspect of the
+_inheritance_, regarding it now as the heritage of the saints in God and
+again as His heritage in them. The former side of this relationship was
+indicated in the "hope of the Divine calling,"--which we live and strive
+for as it is promised us by God; and the latter comes out, by way of
+contrast, in this second clause. Verse 18 repeats in another way the
+antithesis of verse 14 between our inheritance and God's acquisition. We
+must understand that God sets great store by us His human children, and
+counts Himself rich in our affection and our service. How deeply it must
+affect us to know this, and to see the glory that in God's eyes belongs
+to His possession in believing men.
+
+What presumption is all this, some one says. How preposterous to imagine
+that the Maker of the worlds interests Himself in atoms like
+ourselves,--in the ephemera of this insignificant planet! But moral
+magnitudes are not to be measured by a foot-rule. The mind which can
+traverse the immensities of space and hold them in its grasp, transcends
+the things it counts and weighs. As it is amongst earthly powers, so the
+law may hold betwixt sphere and sphere in the system of worlds, in the
+relations of bodies terrestrial and celestial to each other, that "God
+has chosen the weak things to put to shame the mighty, and the things
+that are not to bring to nought the things that are." Through the Church
+He is "making known to the potentates in the heavenly places His
+manifold wisdom" (iii, 10). The lowly can sing evermore with Mary in the
+Magnificat: "He that is mighty hath magnified me." If it be true that
+God spared not His Son for our salvation and has sealed us with the seal
+of His Spirit, if He chose us before the world's foundation to be His
+saints, He must set upon those saints an infinite value. We may despise
+ourselves; but He thinks great things of us.
+
+And is this, after all, so hard to understand? If the alternative were
+put to some owner of wide lands and houses full of treasure: "Now, you
+must lose that fine estate, or see your own son lost and ruined! You
+must part with a hundred thousand pounds--or with your best friend!"
+there could be no doubt in such a case what the choice would be of a man
+of sense and worth, one who sees with the eyes of the heart. Shall we
+think less nobly of God than of a right-minded man amongst
+ourselves?--Suppose, again, that one of our great cities were so full of
+wealth that the poorest were housed in palaces and fared sumptuously
+every day, though its citizens were profligates and thieves and cowards!
+What would its opulence and luxury be worth? Is it not evident that
+_character_ is the only possession of intrinsic value, and that this
+alone gives worth and weight to other properties? "The saints that are
+in the earth and the excellent" are earth's riches.
+
+So far as we can judge of His ways, the great God who made us cares
+comparatively little about the upholstery and machinery of the universe;
+but He cares immensely about men, about the character and destiny of
+men. There is nothing in all that physical science discloses for God to
+_love_, nothing kindred to Himself. "Hast thou considered my servant
+Job?" the Hebrew poet pictures Him saying before heaven and hell!--"Hast
+thou considered my servant Job?--a perfect man and upright: there is
+none like him in the earth." How proud God is of a man like that, in a
+world like this. Who can tell the value that the Father of glory sets
+upon the tried fidelity of His humblest servant here on earth; the
+intensity with which He reciprocates the confidence of one timid,
+trembling human heart, or the simple reverence of one little child that
+lisps His awful name? "He _taketh pleasure_ in them that fear Him, in
+those that hope in His mercy!" Beneath His feet all the worlds lie
+spread in their starry splendour, our sun with its train of planets no
+more than one glimmering spot of light amongst ten thousand. But amidst
+this magnificence, what is the sight that wins His tender fatherly
+regard? "To that man will I look, that is poor and of a contrite spirit,
+and that trembles at my word." Thus saith the High and Lofty One that
+inhabiteth eternity. The Creator rejoices in His works as at the
+beginning, the Lord of heaven and earth in His dominion. But these are
+not His "inheritance." That is in the love of His children, in the
+character and number of His saints. _We_ are to be the praise of His
+glory.
+
+Let us learn, then, to respect ourselves. Let us not take the world's
+tinsel for wealth, and spend our time, like the man in Bunyan's dream,
+scraping with "the muck-rake" while the crown of life shines above our
+head. The riches of a Church--nay, of any human community--lies not in
+its moneyed resources, but in the men and women that compose it, in
+their godlike attributes of mind and heart, in their knowledge, their
+zeal, their love to God and man, in the purity, the gentleness, the
+truthfulness and courage and fidelity that are found amongst them. These
+are the qualities which give distinction to human life, and are
+beautiful in the eyes of God and holy angels. "Man that is in honour and
+understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish."
+
+III. One thing more we need to understand, or what we have seen already
+will be of little practical avail. We may see glorious visions, we may
+cherish high aspirations; and they may prove to be but the dreams of
+vanity. Nay, it is conceivable that God Himself might have wealth
+invested in our nature, a treasure beyond price, shipwrecked and sunk
+irrecoverably through our sin. What means exist for realizing this
+inheritance? what power is there at work to recover these forfeited
+hopes, and that glory of God of which we have come so miserably short?
+
+The answer lies in the apostle's words: "That ye may know what is the
+exceeding greatness of His power toward us that believe,"--a power
+measured by "the energy of the might of His strength[67] which He
+wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at
+His right hand in the heavenly places." This is the power that we have
+to count upon, the force that is yoked to the world's salvation and is
+at the service of our faith. Its energy has turned the tide and reversed
+the stream of nature--in the person of Jesus Christ and in the course of
+human history. It has changed death to life. Above all, it certifies the
+forgiveness of sin and releases us from its liabilities; it transforms
+the law of sin and death into the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
+Jesus.
+
+We preachers hear it said sometimes: "You live in a speculative world.
+Your doctrines are ideal and visionary,--altogether too high for men as
+they are and the world as we find it. Human nature and experience, the
+coarse realities of life are all against you."
+
+What would our objectors have said at the grave-side of Jesus? "The
+beautiful dreamer, the sublime idealist! He was too good for a world
+such as ours. It was sure to end like this. His ideas of life were
+utterly impracticable." So they would have moralized. "And the good
+prophet talked--strangest fanaticism of all--of rising again on the
+third day! One thing at least we know, that the dead are dead and gone
+from us. No, we shall never see Jesus or His like again. Purity cannot
+live in this infected air. The grave ends all hope for men." But,
+despite human nature and human experience, He has risen again, He lives
+for ever! That is the apostle's message and testimony to the world. For
+those "who believe" it, all things are possible. A life is within our
+reach that seemed far off as earth from heaven. _You_ may become a
+perfect saint.
+
+From His open grave Christ breathed on His disciples, and through them
+on all mankind, the Holy Spirit. This is the efficient cause of
+Christianity,--the Spirit that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. The
+limit to its efficacy lies in the defects of our faith, in our failure
+to comprehend what God gave us in His Son. Is anything now too hard for
+the Lord? Shall anything be called impossible, in the line of God's
+promise and man's spiritual need? Can we put an arrest upon the working
+of this mysterious force, upon the Spirit of the new life, and say to
+it: Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?
+
+Look at Jesus where He was--the poor, tortured, wounded body, slain by
+our sins, lying cold and still in Joseph's grave: then lift up your eyes
+and see Him _where He is_,--enthroned in the worship and wonder of
+heaven! Measure by that distance, by the sweep and lift of that almighty
+Arm, the strength of the forces engaged to your salvation, the might of
+the powers at work through the ages for the redemption of humanity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[61] See Westcott and Hort's _New Testament in Greek_, vol. ii., pp.
+124, 125.
+
+[62] Dr. Beet abides by the critical text. He solves the difficulty by
+giving =pistis= a double sense: "the faith among you in the Lord Jesus,
+and the _faithfulness_ towards all the saints." See his Commentary on
+_Ephesians, etc._, pp. 284-6.
+
+[63] In 1 Thess. i. 7-9; 2 Thess. i. 4, the same thought enters into
+Paul's thanksgiving; comp. 2 Cor. ix. 2.
+
+[64] This is the emphatic =epignosis=, so frequent in the later
+epistles. See Lightfoot's _note_ on Col. i. 9; or Cremer's _Lexicon to
+N.T. Greek_.
+
+[65] See ch. iii. 3-5, iv. 11; and comp. 1 Cor. xiv. 26-40, etc.
+
+[66] Adolphe Monod: _Explication de l'epitre de S. Paul aux Ephesiens_.
+A deeply spiritual and suggestive Commentary.
+
+[67] In this amplitude of expression there is no idle heaping up of
+words. The four synonyms for _power_ have each a distinct force in the
+sentence. =Dynamis= is _power_ in general, as that which is able to
+effect some purpose; =energeia= is _energy_, power in effective action
+and operation; =kratos= is _might_, _mastery_, sovereign power,--in the
+New Testament used chiefly of the power of God; =ischys= is _force_,
+_strength_, power resident in some person and belonging to him. This is
+the order in which the words follow each other. Compare vi. 10 in the
+Greek.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOCTRINE.
+
+CHAPTER i. 20-iii. 13.
+
+    =Hypselon sphodra gemei ton noematon kai hyperonkon. Ha gar medamou
+    schedon ephthenxato, tauta entautha phesin.=
+
+    JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: _In epistolam ad Ephesios._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+_WHAT GOD WROUGHT IN THE CHRIST._
+
+    "He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand
+    in the heavenly _places_, far above all rule, and authority, and
+    power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this
+    world, but also in that which is to come: and He put all things in
+    subjection under His feet, and Him He gave--the head over all
+    things--to the Church which is His body,--the fulness of Him that
+    filleth all in all."--EPH. i. 20-23.
+
+
+The division that we make at verse 20, marking off at this point the
+commencement of the Doctrine of the epistle, may appear somewhat forced.
+The great doxology of the first half of the chapter is intensely
+theological; and the prayer which follows it, like that of the letter to
+the Colossians, melts into doctrine imperceptibly. The apostle teaches
+upon his knees. The things he has to tell his readers, and the things he
+has asked on their behalf from God, are to a great extent the same.
+Still the writer's attitude in the second chapter is manifestly that of
+teaching; and his doctrine there is so directly based upon the
+concluding sentences of his prayer, that it is necessary for logical
+arrangement to place these verses within the doctrinal section of the
+epistle.
+
+The resurrection of Christ made men sensible that a new force of life
+had come into the world, of incalculable potency. This power was in
+existence before. In prelusive ways, it has wrought in the world from
+its foundation, and since the fall of man. By the incarnation of the Son
+of God it took possession of human flesh; by His sacrificial death it
+won its decisive triumph. But the virtue of these acts of Divine grace
+lay in their hiding of power, in the self-abnegation of the Son of God
+who emptied Himself and took a servant's form, and became obedient unto
+death.
+
+With what a rebound did the "energy of the might of God's strength" put
+forth itself in Him, when once this sacrifice was accomplished! Even His
+disciples who had seen Jesus still the tempest and feed the multitude
+from a handful of bread and call back the spirit to its mortal frame,
+had not dreamed of the might of Godhead latent in Him, until they beheld
+Him risen from the dead. He had promised this in words; but they
+understood His words only when they saw the fact, when He actually stood
+before them "alive after His passion." The scene of Calvary--the cruel
+sufferings of their Master, His helpless ignominy and abandonment by
+God, the malignant triumph of his enemies--gave to this revelation an
+effect beyond measure astonishing and profound in its impression. From
+the stupor of grief and despair they were raised to a boundless hope, as
+Jesus rose from the death of the cross to glorious life and Godhead.
+
+Of the same nature was the effect produced by His manifestation to Paul
+himself. The Nazarene prophet known to Saul by report as an attractive
+teacher and worker of miracles, had made enormous pretensions,
+blasphemous if they were not true. He put Himself forward as the Messiah
+and the very Son of God! But when brought to the test, His power utterly
+failed. God disowned and forsook Him; and He "was crucified of
+weakness." His followers declared, indeed, that He had returned from the
+grave. But who could believe them, a handful of Galilean enthusiasts,
+desperately clinging to the name of their disgraced leader! If He has
+risen, why does He not show Himself to others? Who can accept a
+crucified Messiah? The new faith is a madness, and an insult to our
+common Judaism! Such were Saul's former thoughts of the Christ. But when
+his challenge was met and the Risen One confronted him in the way to
+Damascus, when from that Form of insufferable glory there came a voice
+saying, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest!" it was enough. Instantly
+the conviction penetrated his soul, "He liveth by the power of God."
+Saul's previous reasonings against the Messiahship of Jesus by the same
+rigorous logic were now turned into arguments for Him.
+
+It is "_the_ Christ," let us observe, in whom God "wrought raising Him
+from the dead": the Christ of Jewish hope (ver. 12), the centre and sum
+of the Divine counsel for the world (ver. 10),[68] the Christ whom in
+that moment never to be forgotten the humbled Saul recognized in the
+crucified Nazarene.
+
+The demonstration of the power of Christianity Paul had found in the
+resurrection of Jesus Christ. The power which raised Him from the dead
+is the working energy of our faith. Let us see what this mysterious
+power wrought in the Redeemer Himself; and then we will consider how it
+bears upon us. There are two steps indicated in Christ's exaltation: He
+was raised _from the death of the cross to new life amongst men_; and
+again from the world of men He was raised _to the throne of God in
+heaven_. In the enthronement of Jesus Christ at the Father's right
+hand, verses 22, 23 further distinguish two separate acts: there was
+conferred on Him _a universal Lordship_; and He was made specifically
+_Head of the Church_, being given to her for her Lord and Life, He who
+contains the fulness of the Godhead. Such is the line of thought marked
+out for us.
+
+
+I. _God raised the Christ from the dead._
+
+This assertion is the corner-stone of St Paul's life and doctrine, and
+of the existence of Christendom. Did the event really take place? There
+were Christians at Corinth who affirmed, "There is no resurrection of
+the dead." And there are followers of Jesus now who with deep sadness
+confess, like the author of _Obermann once more_:
+
+    "Now He is dead! Far hence He lies
+      In the lorn Syrian town;
+    And on His grave, with shining eyes,
+      The Syrian stars look down."
+
+If we are driven to this surrender, compelled to think that it was an
+apparition, a creation of their own passionate longing and heated fancy
+that the disciples saw and conversed with during those forty days, an
+apparition sprung from his fevered remorse that arrested Saul on the
+Damascus road--if we no longer believe in Jesus and the resurrection, it
+is in vain that we still call ourselves Christians. The foundation of
+the Christian creed is struck away from under our feet. Its spell is
+broken; its energy is gone.
+
+Individual men may and do continue to believe in Christ, with no faith
+in the supernatural, men who are sceptics in regard to His resurrection
+and miracles. They believe in Himself, they say, not in His legendary
+wonders; in His character and teaching, in His beneficent influence--in
+the _spiritual_ Christ, whom no physical marvel can exalt above His
+intrinsic greatness. And such trust in Him, where it is sincere, He
+accepts for all that it is worth, from the believer's heart. But this is
+not the faith that saved Paul, and built the Church. It is not the faith
+which will save the world. It is the faith of compromise and transition,
+the faith of those whose conscience and heart cling to Christ while
+their reason gives its verdict against Him. Such belief may hold good
+for the individuals who profess it; but it must die with them. No skill
+of reasoning or grace of sentiment will for long conceal its
+inconsistency. The plain, blunt sense of mankind will decide again, as
+it has done already, that Jesus Christ was either a blasphemer, or He
+was the Son of the eternal God; either He rose from the dead in very
+truth, or His religion is a fable. Christianity is not bound up with the
+infallibility of the Church, whether in Pope or Councils, nor with the
+inerrancy of the letter of Scripture: it stands or falls with the
+reality of the facts of the gospel, with the risen life of Christ and
+His presence in the Spirit amongst men.
+
+The fact of Christ's resurrection is one upon which modern science has
+nothing new to say. The law of death is not a recent discovery. Men were
+as well aware of its universality in the first century as they are in
+the nineteenth, and as little disposed as we are ourselves to believe in
+the return of the dead to bodily life. The stark reality of death makes
+us all sceptics. Nothing is clearer from the narratives than the utter
+surprise of the friends of Jesus at His reappearance, and their complete
+unpreparedness for the event. They were not eager, but "_slow_ of heart
+to believe." Their very love to the Master, as in the case of Thomas,
+made them fearful of self-deception. It is a shallow and an unjust
+criticism that dismisses the disciples as interested witnesses and
+predisposed to faith in the resurrection of their dead Master. Should we
+be thus credulous in the case of our best-beloved dead? The instinctive
+feeling that meets any thought of the kind, after the fact of death is
+once certain, is rather that of deprecation and aversion, such as Martha
+expressed when Jesus went to call her brother from his grave. In all the
+long record of human imposture and illusion, no resurrection story has
+ever found general credence outside of the Biblical revelation. No
+system of faith except our own has ever been built on the allegation
+that a dead man rose from the grave.
+
+Christ's was not the only resurrection; but it is the only _final_
+resurrection. Lazarus of Bethany left his tomb at the word of Jesus, a
+living man; but he was still a mortal man, doomed to see corruption. He
+returned from the grave on this side, as he had entered it, "bound hand
+and foot with grave-clothes." Not so with the Christ. He passed through
+the region of death and issued on the immortal side, escaped from the
+bondage of corruption. Therefore He is called the "firstfruits" and "the
+firstborn _out of_ the dead."[69] Hence the alteration manifest in the
+risen form of Jesus. He was "changed," as St Paul conceives those will
+be who await on earth their Lord's return (1 Cor. xv. 51). The mortal in
+Him was swallowed up of life. The corpse that was laid in Joseph's tomb
+was there no longer. From it another body has issued, recognized for the
+same person by look and voice and movement, but indescribably
+transfigured. Visible and tangible as the body of the Risen One
+was--"Handle me, and see," He said--it was superior to material
+limitations; it belonged to a state whose laws transcend the range of
+our experience, in which the body is the pliant instrument of the
+animating spirit. From the Person of the risen Saviour the apostle
+formed his conception of the "spiritual body," the "house from heaven"
+with which, as he teaches, each of the saints will be clothed--the
+wasted form that we lay down in the grave being transformed into the
+semblance of His "body of glory, according to the mighty working whereby
+He is able to subdue all things to Himself" (Phil. iii. 20, 21).
+
+The resurrection of the Christ inaugurated a new order of things. It was
+like the appearance of the first living organism amidst dead matter, or
+of the first rational consciousness in the unconscious world. He "is,"
+says the apostle, the "beginning, first-begotten out of the dead" (Col.
+i. 18). With the harvest filling our granaries, we cease to wonder at
+the firstfruits; and in the new heavens and earth Christ's resurrection
+will seem an entirely natural thing. Immortality will then be the normal
+condition of human existence.
+
+That resurrection, nevertheless, did homage to the fundamental law of
+science and of reason, that every occurrence, ordinary or extraordinary,
+shall have an adequate cause. The event was not more singular and unique
+than the nature of Him to whom it befell. Looking back over the Divine
+life and deeds of Jesus, St Peter said: "It was not possible that He
+should be holden of death." How unfitting and repugnant to thought, that
+the common death of all men should come upon Jesus Christ! There was
+that in His Person, in its absolute purity and godlikeness, which
+repelled the touch of corruption. He was "marked out," writes our
+apostle, "as Son of God, _according to His spirit of holiness_, by His
+resurrection from the dead" (Rom. i. 4). These two signs of Godhead
+agree in Jesus; and the second is no more superhuman than the first. For
+Him the supernatural was natural. There was a mighty working of the
+being of God latent in Him, which transcended and subdued to itself the
+laws of our physical frame, even more completely than they do the laws
+and conditions of the lower realms of nature.
+
+II. The power which raised Jesus our Lord from the dead could not leave
+Him in the world of sin and death. Lifting Him from hades to earth, by
+another step it exalted the risen Saviour above the clouds, and _seated
+Him at God's right hand in the heavens_.
+
+The forty days were a halt by the way, a condescending pause in the
+operation of the almighty power that raised Him. "I ascend," He said to
+the first that saw Him,--"I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my
+God and your God." He must see His own in the world again; He must "show
+Himself alive after His passion by infallible proofs," that their hearts
+may be comforted and knit together in the assurance of faith, that they
+may be prepared to receive His Spirit and to bear their witness to the
+world. Then He will ascend up where He was before, returning to the
+Father's bosom. It was impossible that a spiritual body should tarry in
+a mortal dwelling; impossible that the familiar relations of
+discipleship should be resumed. No new follower can now ask of Him,
+"Rabbi, where dwellest Thou," under what roof amid the homes of men? For
+He dwells with those that love Him always and everywhere, like the
+Father (John xiv. 23). From this time Christ will not be known after the
+flesh, but as the "Lord of the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18).
+
+"In the heavenlies" now abides the Risen One. This expression, so
+frequent in the epistle as to be characteristic of it,[70] denotes not
+locality so much as condition and sphere. It speaks of the bright and
+deathless world of God and the angels, of which the sky has always been
+to men the symbol. Thither Christ ascended in the eyes of His apostles
+on the fortieth day from His rising. Once before His death its
+brightness for a moment had irradiated His form upon the Mount of
+Transfiguration. Clad in the like celestial splendour He showed Himself
+to His future apostle Paul, as to one born out of due time, to make him
+His minister and witness. Since then, of all the multitudes that have
+loved His appearing, no other has looked upon Him with bodily eyes. He
+dwells with the Father in light unapproachable.
+
+But rest and felicity are not enough for Him. Christ sits at the right
+hand of power, that He may _rule_. In those heavenly places, it seems,
+there are thrones higher and lower, names more or less eminent, but His
+stands clear above them all. In the realms of space, in the epochs of
+eternity there is none to rival our Lord Jesus, no power that does not
+owe Him tribute. God "hath put all things under His feet." _The Christ_,
+who died on the cross, who rose in human form from the grave, is exalted
+to share the Father's glory and dominion, is filled with God's own
+fulness, and made without limitation or exception "Head over all
+things."
+
+In his enumeration of the angelic orders in verse 21, the apostle
+follows the phraseology current at the time, without giving any precise
+dogmatic sanction to it. The epistle to the Colossians furnishes a
+somewhat different list (ch. i. 16); and in 1 Corinthians xv. 24 we find
+the "principality, dominion, and power" without the "lordship." As
+Lightfoot says,[71] St Paul "brushes away all these speculations" about
+the ranks and titles of the angels, "without inquiring how much or how
+little truth there may be in them.... His language shows a spirit of
+impatience with this elaborate angelology." There is, perhaps, a passing
+reproof conveyed by this sentence to the "worshipping of the angels"
+inculcated at the present time in Colossae, to which other Asian Churches
+may have been drawn. "Paul's faith saw the Risen and Rising One passing
+through and beyond and above successive ranks of angelic powers, until
+there was in heaven no grandeur which He had not left behind. Then,
+after naming heavenly powers known to him, he uses a universal phrase
+covering 'not only' those known by men living on earth 'in the' present
+'age, but also' those names which will be needed and used to describe
+men and angels throughout the eternal future" (Beet).
+
+The apostle appropriates here two sentences of Messianic prophecy, from
+Psalms cx. and viii. The former was addressed to the Lord's Anointed,
+the King-Priest enthroned in Zion: "Sit thou on my right hand, until I
+make thine enemies thy footstool!" The latter text describes man in his
+pristine glory, as God formed him after His likeness and set him in
+command over His creation. This saying St Paul applies, with an
+unbounded scope, to the God-man raised from the dead, Founder of the new
+creation: "Thou madest Him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;
+Thou hast put all things under His feet." To the former of these
+passages St Paul repeatedly alludes; indeed, since our Lord quoted it in
+this sense, it became the standing designation of His heavenly
+dignity.[72] The words of Psalm viii. are brought in evidence again in
+Hebrews ii. 5-10, and expounded from a somewhat different standpoint. As
+the writer of the other epistle shows, this coronation belongs to the
+human race, and it falls to the Son of man to win it. St Paul in quoting
+the same Psalm is not insensible of its human reference. It was a
+prophecy for Jesus and His brethren, for Christ and the Church. So it
+forms a natural transition from the thought of Christ's dominion over
+the universe (ver. 21) to that of His union with the Church (ver.
+22_b_).
+
+III. The second clause of verse 22 begins with an emphasis upon the
+_object_ which the English Version fails to recognize: "and _Him_ He
+gave"--the Christ exalted to universal authority--"_Him_ God gave, Head
+over all things [as He is], to the Church which is His body,--the
+fulness of Him who fills all things in all."
+
+At the topmost height of His glory, with thrones and princedoms beneath
+His feet, _Christ is given to the Church_! The Head over all things, the
+Lord of the created universe, He--and none less or lower--is the Head of
+redeemed humanity. For the Church "is His body" (this clause is
+interjected by way of explanation): she is the vessel of His Spirit, the
+organic instrument of His Divine-human life. As the spirit belongs to
+its body, by the like fitness the Christ in His surpassing glory is the
+possession of the community of believing men. The body claims its head,
+the wife her husband. No matter where Christ is, however high in heaven,
+He belongs to us. Though the Bride is lowly and of poor estate, He is
+hers! and she knows it, and holds fast His heart. She recks little of
+the people's ignorance and scorn, if their Master is her affianced Lord,
+and she the best-beloved in His eyes.
+
+How rich is this gift of the Father to the Church in the Son of His
+love, the concluding words of the paragraph declare: "Him He gave ... to
+the Church ... [gave] the fulness of Him that fills all in all." In the
+risen and enthroned Christ God bestowed on men a gift in which the
+Divine plenitude that fills creation is embraced. For this last clause,
+it is clear to us, does not qualify "the Church which is His body," and
+expositors have needlessly taxed their ingenuity with the incongruous
+apposition of "body" and "fulness"; it belongs to the grand Object of
+the foregoing description, to "the Christ" whom God raised from the dead
+and invested with His own prerogatives. The two separate designations,
+"Head over all things" and "Fulness of the All-filler," are parallel,
+and alike point back to _Him_ who stands with a weight of gathered
+emphasis--heaped up from verse 19 onwards--at the front of this last
+sentence (ver. 22_b_). There has been nothing to prepare the reader to
+ascribe the august title of the _pleroma_, the Divine fulness, to the
+Church--enough for her, surely, if she is His body and He God's gift to
+her--but there has been everything to prepare us to crown the Lord Jesus
+with this glory. To that which God had wrought in Him and bestowed on
+Him, as previously related, verse 23 adds something more and greater
+still; for it shows what God makes the Christ to be, not to the
+creatures, to the angels, to the Church, _but to God Himself_![73]
+
+Our text is in strict agreement with the sayings about "the fulness" in
+Colossians i. 15-20 and ii. 9, 10; as well as with the later references
+of this epistle, in chapter iii. 19, iv. 13; and with John i. 16. This
+title belongs to Christ as God is in Him and communicates to Him all
+Divine powers. It was, in the apostle's view, a new and distinct act by
+which the Father bestowed on the incarnate Son, raised by His power from
+the dead, the functions of Deity. Of this glory Christ had of His own
+accord "emptied Himself" in becoming man for our salvation (Phil. ii. 6,
+7). Therefore when the sacrifice was effected and the time of
+humiliation past, it "was the Father's pleasure that all the fulness
+should make its dwelling in Him" (Col. i. 19). At no point did Christ
+exalt Himself, or arrogate the glory once renounced. He prayed, when the
+hour was come: "Now, Father, _glorify Thou me_ with Thine own self, with
+the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." It was for the
+Father to say, as He raised and enthroned Him: "Thou art my Son; I
+to-day have begotten Thee!" (Acts xiii. 33).
+
+Again there was poured into the empty, humbled and impoverished form of
+the Son of God the brightness of the Father's glory and the infinitude
+of the Father's authority and power. The majesty that He had foregone
+was restored to Him in undiminished measure. But how great a change
+meanwhile in Him who received it! This plenitude devolves not now on the
+eternal Son in His pure Godhead, but on the Christ, the Head and
+Redeemer of mankind. God who fills the universe with His presence, with
+His cherishing love and sustaining power, has conferred the fulness of
+all that He is upon our Christ. He has given Him, so replenished and
+perfected, to the body of His saints, that He may dwell and work in them
+for ever.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[68] See the note upon this definite article on p. 47.
+
+[69] =Prototokos ek ton nekron=, Col. i. 18: comp. Rom. vi. 13, x. 7,
+for the force of the preposition. Hence the peculiar =exanastasin te ek
+nekron= of Phil. iii. 10, 11,--the _out-and-out_ resurrection, which
+will utterly remove us from the sphere of death.
+
+[70] Ver. 3, ch. ii. 6, iii. 10, vi. 12; nowhere else in the New
+Testament. Comp., however, 1 Cor. xv. 40, 48; Phil. ii. 10; Heb. viii.
+5, ix. 23, xi. 16, xii. 22, where the adjective has the same kind of
+use.
+
+[71] _Note_ on Col. i. 16.
+
+[72] Matt. xxii. 41-46, also in Mark and Luke; Acts ii. 34, 35; Rom.
+viii. 34; Col. iii. 1; Heb. i. 13; 1 Peter iii. 22, etc.
+
+[73] The reader of the Old Testament, unless otherwise advertized, must
+inevitably have referred the words _who filleth all things in all_ to
+the Supreme God. See Jer. xxiii. 24; Isai. vi. 1, 3; Hag. ii. 7; Ps.
+xxxiii. 5, etc.; Exod. xxxi. 3. "That filleth all in all" is an
+attribute belonging to "the same God, that worketh all in all" (1 Cor.
+xii. 6). Comp. iv. 6.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+_FROM DEATH TO LIFE._
+
+    "And you _did He quicken_, when ye were dead through your trespasses
+    and sins, wherein aforetime ye walked according to the course of
+    this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the
+    spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience; among whom we
+    also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of
+    the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath,
+    even as the rest:--but God, being rich in mercy, for His great love
+    wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our
+    trespasses, quickened us together with the Christ (by grace have ye
+    been saved), and raised us up together and made us to sit together
+    in the heavenly _places_ in Christ Jesus."--EPH. ii. 1-6.
+
+
+We pass by a sudden transition, just as in Colossians i. 21, 22, from
+the thought of that which God wrought in Christ Himself to that which He
+works through Christ in believing men. So God raised, exalted, and
+glorified His Son Jesus Christ (i. 19-23)--_and you_! The finely woven
+threads of the apostle's thought are frequently severed, and awkward
+chasms made in the highway of his argument by our chapter and verse
+divisions. The words inserted in our Version (_did He quicken_) are
+borrowed by anticipation from verse 5; but they are more than supplied
+already in the foregoing context. "The same almighty Hand that was laid
+upon the body of the dead Christ and lifted Him from Joseph's grave to
+the highest seat in heaven, is now laid upon your soul. It has raised
+_you_ from the grave and death of sin to share by faith His celestial
+life."
+
+The apostle, in verse 3, pointedly includes amongst the "dead in
+trespasses and sins" himself and his Jewish fellow-believers as they
+"once lived," when they obeyed the motions and "volitions of the flesh,"
+and so were "by birth" not children of favour, as Jews presumed, but
+"children of anger, even as the rest."[74]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This passage gives us a sublime view of the event of our conversion. It
+associates that change in us with the stupendous miracle which took
+place in our Redeemer. The one act is a continuation of the other. There
+is an acting over again in us of Christ's crucifixion, resurrection and
+ascension, when we realize through faith that which was done for mankind
+in Him. At the same time, the redemption which is in Christ Jesus is no
+mere legacy, to be received or declined; it is not something done once
+for all, and left to be appropriated passively by our individual will.
+It is a "_power_ of God unto salvation," unceasingly operative and
+effective, that works "of faith and _unto faith_" that summons men to
+faith, challenging human confidence wherever its message travels and
+awakening the spiritual possibilities dormant in our nature.
+
+It is a supernatural force, then, which is at work upon us in the word
+of Christ. It is a resurrection-power, that turns death into life. And
+it is a power instinct with love. The love which went out towards the
+slain and buried Jesus when the Father stooped to raise Him from the
+dead, bends over us as we lie in the grave of our sins, and exerts
+itself with a might no less transcendent, that it may raise us from the
+dust of death to sit with Him in the heavenly places (vv. 4-6).
+
+Let us look at the two sides of the change effected in men by the
+gospel--at the death they leave, and the life into which they enter. Let
+us contemplate the task to which this unmatched power has set itself.
+
+I. _You that were dead_, the apostle says.
+
+Jesus Christ came into a dead world--He the one living man, alive in
+body, soul, and spirit--alive to God in the world. He was, like none
+besides, aware of God and of God's love, breathing in His Spirit,
+"living not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded from His
+mouth." "This," He said, "is life eternal." If His definition was
+correct, if it be life to know God, then the world into which Christ
+entered by His human birth, the world of heathendom and Judaism, was
+veritably dying or dead--"dead indeed unto God."
+
+Its condition was visible to discerning eyes. It was a world rotting in
+its corruption, mouldering in its decay, and which to His pure sense had
+the moral aspect and odour of the charnel-house. We realize very
+imperfectly the distress, the inward nausea, the conflict of disgust and
+pity which the fact of being in such a world as this and belonging to it
+caused in the nature of Jesus Christ, in a soul that was in perfect
+sympathy with God. Never was there loneliness such as His, the solitude
+of life in a region peopled with the dead. The joy which Christ had in
+His little flock, in those whom the Father had given Him out of the
+world, was proportionately great. In them He found companionship,
+teachableness, signs of a heart awakening towards God--men to whom life
+was in some degree what it was to Him. He had come, as the prophet in
+his vision, into "the valley full of dry bones," and He "prophesied to
+these slain, that they might live." What a comfort to see, at His first
+words, a shaking in the valley,--to see some who stirred at His voice,
+who stood upon their feet and gathered round Him--not yet a great army,
+but a band of living men! In their breasts, inspired from His, was the
+life of the future. "I am come," He said, "that they might have life."
+It was the work of Jesus Christ to breathe His vital spirit into the
+corpse of humanity, to reanimate the world.
+
+When St Paul speaks of his readers in their heathen condition as "dead,"
+it is not a figure of speech. He does not mean that they were like dead
+men, that their state resembled death; "nor only that they were in peril
+of death; but he signifies a real and present death" (Calvin). They
+were, in the inmost sense and truth of things, _dead men_. We are
+twofold creatures, two-lived,--spirits cased in flesh. Our human nature
+is capable, therefore, of strange duplicities. It is possible for us to
+be alive and flourishing upon one side of our being, while we are
+paralyzed or lifeless upon the other. As our bodies live in commerce
+with the light and air, in the environment of house and food and daily
+exercise of the limbs and senses under the economy of material nature,
+so our spirits live by the breath of prayer, by faith and love towards
+God, by reverence and filial submission, by communion with things unseen
+and eternal. "With Thee," says the Psalmist to his God, "is the fountain
+of life: in Thy light we see light." We must daily resort to that
+fountain and drink of its pure stream, we must faithfully walk in that
+light, or there is no such life for us. The soul that wants a true faith
+in God, wants the proper spring and principle of its being. It sees not
+the light, it bears not the voices, it breathes not the air of that
+higher world where its origin and its destiny lie.
+
+The man who walks the earth a sinner against God, becomes by the act and
+fact of his transgression a dead man. He has imbibed the fatal poison;
+it runs in his veins. The doom of sin lies on his unforgiven spirit. He
+carries death and judgement about with him. They lie down with him at
+night and wake with him in the morning; they take part in his
+transactions; they sit by his side in the feast of life. His works are
+"dead works"; his joys and hopes are all shadowed and tainted. Within
+his living frame he bears a coffined soul. With the machinery of life,
+with the faculties and possibilities of a spiritual being, the man lies
+crushed under the activity of the senses, wasted and decaying for want
+of the breath of the Spirit of God. In its coldness and
+powerlessness--too often in its visible corruption--his nature shows the
+symptoms of advancing death. It is dead as the tree is dead, cut off
+from its root; as the fire is dead, when the spark is gone out; dead as
+a man is dead, when the heart stops.
+
+As it is with the departed saints sleeping in Christ,--"put to death,
+indeed, in the flesh, but living in the spirit,"--so by a terrible
+inversion with the wicked in this life. They are put to death, indeed,
+in the spirit, while they live in the flesh. They may be and often are
+powerfully alive and active in their relations to the world of sense,
+while on the unseen and Godward side utterly paralyzed. Ask such a man
+about his business or family concerns; touch on affairs of politics or
+trade,--and you deal with a living mind, its powers and susceptibilities
+awake and alert. But let the conversation pass to other themes; sound
+him on questions of the inner life; ask him what he thinks of Christ,
+how he stands towards God, how he fares in the spiritual conflict,--and
+you strike a note to which there is no response. You have taken him out
+of his element. He is a practical man, he tells you; he does not live in
+the clouds, or hunt after shadows; he believes in hard facts, in things
+that he can grasp and handle. "The natural man perceiveth not the things
+of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him." They are pictures to
+the eye of the blind, heavenly music to the stone-deaf.
+
+And yet that hardened man of the world--starve and ignore his own spirit
+and shut up its mystic chambers as he will--cannot easily destroy
+himself. He has not extirpated his religious nature, nor crushed out,
+though he has suppressed, the craving for God in his breast. And when
+the callous surface of his life is broken through, under some unusual
+stress, some heavy loss or the shock of a great bereavement, one may
+catch a glimpse of the deeper world within of which the man himself was
+so little conscious. And what is to be seen there? Haunting memories of
+past sin, fears of a conscience fretted already by the undying worm,
+forms of weird and ghostly dread flitting amid the gloom and dust of
+death through that closed house of the spirit,--
+
+    "The bat and owl inhabit here:
+      The snake nests on the altar stone:
+    The sacred vessels moulder near:
+      The image of the God is gone!"
+
+In this condition of death the word of life comes to men. It is the
+state not of heathendom alone; but of those also, favoured with the
+light of revelation, who have not opened to it the eyes of the heart, of
+all who are "doing the desires of the flesh and the thoughts"--who are
+governed by their own impulses and ideas and serve no will above the
+world of sense.[75] Without distinction of birth or formal religious
+standing, "all" who thus live and walk are dead while they live. Their
+_trespasses and sins_ have killed them. From first to last Scripture
+testifies: "Your sins have separated between you and your God." We find
+a hundred excuses for our irreligion: there is the cause. There is
+nothing in the universe to separate any one of us from the love and
+fellowship of his Maker but his own unforsaken sin.
+
+It is true, there are other hindrances to faith, intellectual
+difficulties of great weight and seriousness, that press upon many
+minds. For such men Christ has all possible sympathy and patience. There
+is a real, though hidden faith that "lives in honest doubt." Some men
+have more faith than they suppose, while others certainly have much
+less. One has a name to live, and yet is dead; another, perchance, has a
+name to die, and yet is alive to God through Jesus Christ. There are
+endless complications, self-contradictions, and misunderstandings in
+human nature. "Many are first" in the ranks of religious profession and
+notoriety, "which shall be last, and the last first." We make the
+largest allowance for this element of uncertainty in the line that
+bounds faith from unfaith; "The Lord knoweth them that are His." No
+intellectual difficulty, no mere misunderstanding, will ultimately or
+for long separate between God and the soul that He has made.
+
+It is _antipathy_ that separates. "They did not like to retain God in
+their knowledge"; that is Paul's explanation of the ungodliness and vice
+of the ancient world. And it holds good still in countless instances.
+"Numbers in this bad world talk loudly against religion in order to
+encourage each other in sin, because they need encouragement. They know
+that they ought to be other than they are; but are glad to avail
+themselves of anything that looks like argument, to overcome their
+consciences withal" (Newman). The fashionable scepticism of the day too
+often conceals an inner revolt against the moral demands of the
+Christian life; it is the pretext of a carnal mind, which is "enmity
+against God, because it is not subject to His law." Christ's sentence
+upon unbelief as He knew it was this: "Light is come into the world; and
+men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." So
+said the keenest and the kindest judge of men. If we are refusing Him
+our faith, let us be very sure that this condemnation does not touch
+ourselves. Is there no passion that bribes and suborns the intellect? no
+desire in the soul that dreads His entrance? no evil deeds that shelter
+themselves from His accusing light?
+
+When the apostle says of his Gentile readers that they "once walked in
+the way of the age, according to the course of this world,[76] according
+to the prince of the power of the air," the former part of his statement
+is clear enough. The age in which he lived was godless to the last
+degree; the stream of the world's life ran in turbid course toward moral
+ruin. But the second clause is obscure. The "prince" (or "ruler") who
+guides the world along its career of rebellion is manifestly Satan, the
+spirit of darkness and hate whom St Paul entitles "the god of this
+world" (2 Cor. iv. 4), and in whom Jesus recognized, under the name of
+"the prince of the world," His great antagonist (John xiv. 30).
+
+But what has this spirit of evil to do with "the air"? The Jewish rabbis
+supposed that the terrestrial atmosphere was Satan's abode, that it was
+peopled by demons flitting about invisibly in the encompassing element.
+But this is a notion foreign to Scripture--certainly not contained in
+chapter vi. 12--and, in its bare physical sense, without point or
+relevance to this passage. There follows in immediate apposition to "the
+domain of the air, _the spirit_ that now works in the sons of
+disobedience." Surely, _the air_ here partakes (if it be only here) of
+the figurative significance of _spirit_ (i.e. _breath_). St Paul refines
+the Jewish idea of evil spirits dwelling in the surrounding atmosphere
+into an ethical conception of _the atmosphere of the world_, as that
+from which the sons of disobedience draw their breath and receive the
+spirit that inspires them. Here lies, in truth, the dominion of Satan.
+In other words, Satan constituted the _Zeitgeist_.
+
+As Beck profoundly remarks upon this text:[77] "The Power of the air is
+a fitting designation for the prevailing spirit of the times, whose
+influence spreads itself like a miasma through the whole atmosphere of
+the world. It manifests itself as a contagious nature-power; and a
+_spiritus rector_ works within it, which takes possession of the world
+of men, alike in individuals and in society, and assumes the direction
+of it. The form of expression here employed is based on the conception
+of evil peculiar to Scripture. In Scripture, evil and the principle of
+evil are not conceived in a purely spiritual way; nor could this be the
+case in a world of fleshly constitution, where the spiritual has the
+sensuous for its basis and its vehicle. Spiritual evil exists as a power
+immanent in cosmical nature."[78] Concerning great tracts of the earth,
+and large sections even of Christianized communities, we must still
+confess with St John: "The world lieth in the Evil One." The air is
+impregnated with the infection of sin;[79] its germs float about us
+constantly, and wherever they find lodgement they set up their deadly
+fever. Sin is the malarial poison native to our soil; it is an epidemic
+that runs its course through the entire "age of this world."
+
+Above this feverous, sin-laden atmosphere the apostle sees God's anger
+brooding in threatening clouds. For our trespasses and sins are, after
+all, not forced on us by our environment. Those offences by which we
+provoke God, lie in our nature; they are no mere casual acts, they
+belong to our bias and disposition. Sin is a constitutional malady.
+There exists a bad element in our human nature, which corresponds but
+too truly to the course and current of the world around us. This the
+apostle acknowledges for himself and his law-honouring Jewish kindred:
+"We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." So he wrote in
+the sad confession of Romans vii. 14-23: "I see a different law in my
+members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into
+captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."
+
+It is upon this "other law," the contradiction of His own, upon the
+sinfulness beneath the sin, that God's displeasure rests. Human law
+notes the overt act: "the Lord looketh upon the heart." There is
+nothing more bitter and humiliating to a conscientious man than the
+conviction of this penetrating Divine insight, this detection to himself
+of his incurable sin and the hollowness of his righteousness before God.
+How it confounds the proud Pharisee to learn that he _is_ as other men
+are,--and even as this publican!
+
+"The sons of disobedience" must needs be "children of wrath." All sin,
+whether in nature or practice, is the object of God's fixed displeasure.
+It cannot be matter of indifference to our Father in heaven that His
+human children are disobedient toward Himself. Children of His favour or
+anger we are each one of us, and at every moment. We "keep His
+commandments, and abide in His love"; or we do not keep them, and are
+excluded. It is His smile or frown that makes the sunshine or the gloom
+of our inner life. How strange that men should argue that God's love
+forbids His wrath! It is, in truth, the cause of it. I could neither
+love nor fear a God who did not care enough about me to be angry with me
+when I sin. If my child does wilful wrong, if by some act of greed or
+passion he imperils his moral future and destroys the peace and
+well-being of the house, shall I not be grieved with him, with an anger
+proportioned to the love I bear him? How much more shall your heavenly
+Father--how much more justly and wisely and mercifully!
+
+St Paul feels no contradiction between the words of verse 3 and those
+that follow. The same God whose wrath burns against the sons of
+disobedience while they so continue, is "rich in mercy" and "loved us
+even when we were dead in our trespasses!" He pities evil men, and to
+save them spared not His Son from death; but Almighty God, the Father of
+glory, hates and loathes the evil that is in them, and has determined
+that if they will not let it go they shall perish with it.
+
+II. Such was the death in which Paul and his readers once had lain. But
+God in His "great love" has "_made them to live_ along with the Christ."
+
+How wonderful to have witnessed a resurrection: to see the pale cheek of
+the little maid, Jairus' daughter, flush again with the tints of life,
+and the still frame begin to stir, and the eyes softly open--and she
+looks upon the face of Jesus! or to watch Lazarus, four days dead,
+coming out of his tomb, slowly, and as one dreaming, with hands and feet
+bound in the grave-clothes. Still more marvellous to have beheld the
+Prince of Life at the dawn of the third day issue from Joseph's grave,
+bursting His prison-gates and stepping forth in new-risen glory as one
+refreshed from slumber.
+
+But there are things no less divine, had we eyes for their marvel, that
+take place upon this earth day by day. When a human soul awakes from its
+trespasses and sins, when the love of God is poured into a heart that
+was cold and empty, when the Spirit of God breathes into a spirit lying
+powerless and buried in the flesh, there is as true a rising from the
+dead as when Jesus our Lord came out from His sepulchre. It was of this
+spiritual resurrection that He said: "The hour cometh, and now is, when
+the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear
+shall live." Having said that, He added, concerning the bodily
+resurrection of mankind: "Marvel not at this; for the hour cometh, in
+which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come
+forth!" The second wonder only matches and consummates the first (John
+v. 24-28).
+
+"This is life eternal, to know God the Father,"--the life, as the
+apostle elsewhere calls it, that is "life indeed." It came to St Paul by
+a new creation, when, as he describes it, "God who said, Light shall
+shine out of darkness, shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
+knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ." We are born
+again--the God-consciousness is born within us: an hour mysterious and
+decisive as that in which our personal consciousness first emerged and
+the soul knew itself. Now it knows God. Like Jacob at Peniel it says: "I
+have seen God face to face; and my life is preserved." God and the soul
+have met in Christ--and are reconciled.
+
+The words the apostle uses--_gave us life_--_raised us up_--_seated us
+in the heavenly places_--embrace the whole range of salvation. "Those
+united with Christ are through grace delivered from their state of
+death, not only in the sense that the resurrection and exaltation of
+Christ redound to their benefit as Divinely imputed to them; but by the
+life-giving energy of God they are brought out of their condition of
+death into a new and actual state of life. The act of grace is an act of
+the Divine power and might, not a mere judicial declaration" (Beck).
+This comprehensive action of the Divine grace upon believing men takes
+place by a constant and constantly deepening union of the soul with
+Christ. This is well expressed by A. Monod: "The entire history of the
+Son of man is reproduced in the man who believes in Him, not by a simple
+moral analogy, but by a spiritual communication which is the true secret
+of our justification as well as of our sanctification, and indeed of our
+whole salvation."
+
+There is no repetition in the three verbs employed, which are alike
+extended by the Greek preposition _with_ (_syn_). The first sentence
+(raised us up _with the Christ_) virtually includes everything; it shows
+us one with Christ who lives evermore to God. The second sentence
+gathers into its scope all believers--the _you_ of verse 1 and the _we_
+of verse 3: "He raised us up together, and together made us sit in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Nothing is more characteristic of our
+epistle than this turn of thought. To the conception of our _union with
+Christ_ in His celestial life, it adds that of our _union with each
+other in Christ_ as sharers in common of that life. Christ "reconciles
+us in one body unto God" (ver. 16). We sit not alone, but together in
+the heavenly places. This is the fulness of life; this completes our
+salvation.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[74] For the antithesis of "you" and "we," comp. vv. 11-18, ch. i, 12,
+13; also Rom. iii. 19, 23 (_For there is no distinction_), Gal. ii. 15.
+
+[75] =Poiountes ta thelemata tes sarkos kai ton dianoion= (ver. 3).
+
+[76] Perhaps this double rendering may bring out the force of =kata to
+aiona tou kosmou toutou=.
+
+[77] In the posthumous _Erklaerung des Briefes Pauli an die Epheser_--a
+valuable exposition, marked by Beck's theological acumen and lucidity.
+
+[78] The =physei= of verse 3 thus corresponds to the =exousia tou aeros=
+of verse 2. "Sin entered into _the world_" (=kosmos=), Rom. v. 12, which
+signifies more than the nature of individual men.
+
+[79] I John iii. 8; comp. John viii. 41-44.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+_SAVED FOR AN END._
+
+    "That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His
+    grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace have ye
+    been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, _it is_ the
+    gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory. For we are His
+    workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore
+    prepared that we should walk in them."--EPH. ii. 7-10.
+
+
+The plan which God has formed for men in Christ is of great dimensions
+every way,--in its length no less than in its breadth and height. He
+"raised us up and seated us together [Gentiles with Jews] in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that _in the ages which are coming on_
+He might show the surpassing riches of His grace." All the races of
+mankind and all future ages are embraced in the redeeming purpose, and
+are to share in its boundless wealth. Nor are the ages past excluded
+from its operations. God "afore prepared the good works in which" He
+summons us to walk. The highway of the new life has been in building
+since time began.
+
+Thus large and limitless is the range of "the purpose and grace given us
+in Christ Jesus before times eternal" (2 Tim. i. 9). But what strikes us
+most in this passage is the exuberance of the grace itself. Twice over
+the apostle exclaims, "By grace you are saved": once in verse 5, in an
+eager, almost jealous parenthesis, where he hastens to assure the
+readers of their deliverance from the fearful condition just described
+(vv. 1-3, 5). Again, deliberately and with full definition he states the
+same fact, in verse 8: "For by grace you are saved, through faith; and
+this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It does not come of
+works, to the end that none may boast."
+
+These words place us on familiar ground. We recognize the Paul of
+Galatians and Romans, the dialect and accent of the apostle of salvation
+by faith. But scarcely anywhere do we find this wonder-working grace so
+affluently described. "God being rich in mercy, for the great love
+wherewith He loved us--the exceeding riches of His grace, shown in
+kindness toward us--the gift of God." _Mercy_, _love_, _kindness_,
+_grace_, _gift_: what a constellation is here! These terms present the
+character of God in the gospel under the most delightful aspects, and in
+vivid contrast to the picture of our human state outlined in the
+beginning of the chapter.
+
+_Mercy_ denotes the Divine pitifulness towards feeble, suffering men,
+akin to those "compassions of God" to which the apostle repeatedly
+appeals.[80] It is a constant attribute of God in the Old Testament, and
+fills much the same place there that grace does in the New. "Of mercy
+and judgement" do the Psalmists sing--of mercy most. Out of the thunder
+and smoke of Sinai He declared His name: "Jehovah, a God full of
+compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and
+truth, keeping mercy for thousands." The dread of God's justice, the
+sense of His dazzling holiness and almightiness threw His mercy into
+bright relief and gave to it an infinite preciousness. It is the
+contrast which brings in "mercy" here, in verse 4, by antithesis to
+"wrath" (ver. 3).[81] These qualities are complementary. The sternest
+and strongest natures are the most compassionate. God is "_rich_ in
+mercy." The wealth of His Being pours itself out in the exquisite
+tendernesses, the unwearied forbearance and forgivingness of His
+compassion towards men. The Judge of all the earth, whose hate of evil
+is the fire of hell, is gentler than the softest-hearted mother,--rich
+in mercy as He is grand and terrible in wrath.
+
+God's mercy regards us as we are weak and miserable: His _love_ regards
+us as we are, in spite of trespass and offence, His offspring,--objects
+of "much love" amid much displeasure, "even when we were dead through
+our trespasses." What does the story of the prodigal son mean but this?
+and what Christ's great word to Nicodemus (John iii. 16)?--_Grace_ and
+_kindness_ are love's executive. Grace is love in administration, love
+counteracting sin and seeking our salvation. Christ is the embodiment of
+grace; the cross its supreme expression; the gospel its message to
+mankind; and Paul himself its trophy and witness.[82] The "overpassing
+riches" of grace is that affluence of wealth in which through Christ it
+"superabounded" to the apostolic age and has outdone the magnitude of
+sin (Rom. v. 20), in such measure that St Paul sees future ages gazing
+with wonder at its benefactions to himself and his fellow-believers.
+Shown "in _kindness_ toward us," he says,--in a condescending
+fatherliness, that forgets its anger and softens its old severity into
+comfort and endearment. God's kindness is the touch of His hand, the
+accent of His voice, the cherishing breath of His Spirit. Finally, this
+generosity of the Divine grace, this infinite goodwill of God toward
+men, takes expression in _the gift_--the gift of Christ, the gift of
+righteousness (Rom. v. 15-18), the gift of eternal life (Rom. vi. 23);
+or--regarded, as it is here, in the light of experience and
+possession--_the gift of salvation_.
+
+The opposition of _gift_ and _debt_, of gratuitous salvation through
+faith to salvation earned by works of law, belongs to the marrow of St
+Paul's divinity. The teaching of the great evangelical epistles is
+condensed into the brief words of verses 8 and 9. The reason here
+assigned for God's dealing with men by way of gift and making them
+absolutely debtors--"lest any one should boast"--was forced upon the
+apostle's mind by the stubborn pride of legalism; it is stated in terms
+identical with those of the earlier letters. Men will glory in their
+virtues before God; they flaunt the rags of their own righteousness, if
+any such pretext, even the slightest, remains to them. We sinners are a
+proud race, and our pride is oftentimes the worst of our sins. Therefore
+God humbles us by His compassion. He makes to us a free gift of His
+righteousness, and excludes every contribution from our store of merit;
+for if we could supply anything, we should inevitably boast as though
+all were our own. We must be content to receive mercy, love, grace,
+kindness--everything, without deserving the least fraction of the
+immense sum. How it strips our vanity; how it crushes us to the
+dust--"the weight of pardoning love!"
+
+Concerning the office of _faith_ in salvation we have already spoken in
+Chapter IV.[83] It is on the objective fact rather than the subjective
+means of salvation that the apostle lays stress in this passage. His
+readers do not seem to have realized sufficiently what God has given
+them and the greatness of the salvation already accomplished. They
+measured inadequately the power which had touched and changed their
+lives (i. 19). St Paul has shown them the depth to which they were
+formerly sunk, and the height to which they have been raised (vv. 1-6).
+He can therefore assure them, and he does it with redoubled emphasis:
+"You _are saved_; By grace you are saved men!"[84] Not, "You will be
+saved"; nor, "You were saved"; nor, "You are in course of
+salvation,"--for salvation has many moods and tenses,--but, in the
+perfect passive tense, he asserts the glorious accomplished _fact_. With
+the same reassuring emphasis in chapter i. 7 he declared, "We have
+redemption in His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses."
+
+Here is St Paul's doctrine of Assurance. It was laid down by Christ
+Himself when He said: "He that believeth on the Son of God hath eternal
+life." This sublime confidence is the ruling note of St John's great
+epistle: "We know that we are in Him.... We know that we have passed out
+of death into life.... This is the victory that overcometh the world,
+even our faith." It was this confidence of present salvation that made
+the Church irresistible. With its foundation secure, the house of life
+can be steadily and calmly built up. Under the shelter of the full
+assurance of faith, in the sunshine of God's love felt in the heart, all
+spiritual virtues bloom and flourish. But with a faith hesitant,
+distracted, that is sure of no doctrine in the creed and cannot plant a
+firm foot anywhere, nothing prospers in the soul or in the Church. Oh
+for the clear accent, the ringing, joyous note of apostolic assurance!
+We want a faith not loud, but deep; a faith not born of sentiment and
+human sympathy, but that comes from the vision of the living God; a
+faith whose rock and corner-stone is neither the Church nor the Bible,
+but Christ Jesus Himself.
+
+Greatly do we need, like the Asian disciples of Paul and John, to
+"assure our hearts" before God. With death confronting us, with the
+hideous evil of the world oppressing us; when the air is laden with the
+contagion of sin; when the faith of the strongest wears the cast of
+doubt; when the word of promise shines dimly through the haze of an
+all-encompassing scepticism and a hundred voices say, in mockery or
+grief, Where is now thy God? when the world proclaims us lost, our faith
+refuted, our gospel obsolete and useless,--then is the time for the
+Christian assurance to recover its first energy and to rise again in
+radiant strength from the heart of the Church, from the depths of its
+mystic life where it is hid with Christ in God.
+
+_You are saved!_ cries the apostle; not forgetting that his readers have
+their battle to fight, and many hazards yet to run (vi. 10-13). But they
+hold the earnest of victory, the foretaste of life eternal. In spirit
+they sit with Christ in the heavenly places. Pain and death, temptation,
+persecution, the vicissitudes of earthly history, by these God means to
+perfect that which He has begun in His saints--"if you continue in the
+faith, grounded and firm" (Col. i. 23). That condition is expressed, or
+implied, in all assurance of final salvation. It is a condition which
+excites to watchfulness, but can never cause misgiving to a loyal heart.
+God is for us! He justifies us, and counts us His elect. Christ Jesus
+who died is risen and seated at the right hand of God, and there
+intercedes for us. _Quis separabit?_[85]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the epistle of the Church and of humanity. It dwells on the
+grand, objective aspects of the truth, rather than upon its subjective
+experiences. It does not invite us to rest in the comforts and delights
+of grace, but to lift up our eyes and see whither Christ has translated
+us and what is the kingdom that we possess in Him. God "quickened us
+together with the Christ": He "raised us up, He made us to sit _in the
+heavenly places in Christ Jesus_." Henceforth "our citizenship is in
+heaven" (Phil. iii. 20).
+
+This is the inspiring thought of the third group of St Paul's epistles;
+we heard it in the first note of his song of praise (i. 3). It supplies
+the principle from which St Paul unfolds the beautiful conception of the
+Christian life contained in the third chapter of the companion letter to
+the Colossians: "Your life is hid with the Christ in God"; therefore
+"seek the things that are above, where He is." We live in two worlds at
+once. Heaven lies about us in this new mystic childhood of our spirit.
+There our names are written; thither our thoughts and hopes resort. Our
+treasure is there; our heart we have lodged there, with Christ in God.
+_He_ is there, the Lord of the Spirit, from whom we draw each moment
+the life that flows into His members. In the greatness of His love
+conquering sin and death, time and space, He is with us to the world's
+end. May we not say that we, too, are with Him and shall be with Him
+always? So we reckon in the logic of our faith and at the height of our
+high calling, though the soul creeps and drudges upon the lower levels.
+
+    "With Him we are gone up on high,
+      Since He is ours and we are His;
+    With Him we reign above the sky,
+      We walk upon our subject seas!"
+
+In his lofty flights of thought the apostle always has some practical
+and homely end in view. The earthly and heavenly, the mystical and the
+matter-of-fact were not distant and repugnant, but interfused in his
+mind. From the celestial heights of the life hidden with Christ in God
+(ver. 6), he brings us down in a moment and without any sense of
+discrepancy to the prosaic level of "good works" (ver. 10). The love
+which viewed us from eternity, the counsels of Him who works all things
+in all, enter into the humblest daily duties.
+
+Grace, moreover, sets us great tasks. There should be something to show
+in deed and life for the wealth of kindness spent upon us, some visible
+and commensurate result of the vast preparations of the gospel plan. Of
+this result the apostle saw the earnest in the work of faith wrought by
+his Gentile Churches.
+
+St Paul was the last man in the world to undervalue human effort, or
+disparage good work of any sort. It is, in his view, the end aimed at in
+all that God bestows on His people, in all that He Himself works in
+them. Only let this end be sought in God's way and order. Man's doings
+must be the fruit and not the root of his salvation. "Not _of_ works,"
+but "_for_ good works" were believers chosen. "This little word _for_"
+says Monod, "reconciles St Paul and St James better than all the
+commentators." God has not raised us up to sit idly in the heavenly
+places lost in contemplation, or to be the useless pensioners of grace.
+He sends us forth to "walk in the works, prepared for us,"--equipped to
+fight Christ's battles, to till His fields, to labour in the service of
+building His Church.
+
+The "workmanship" of our Version suggests an idea foreign to the
+passage. The apostle is not thinking of the Divine art or skill
+displayed in man's creation; but of the simple fact that "God made man"
+(Gen. i. 27). "We are His _making_, created in Christ Jesus." The
+"preparation" to which he refers in verse 10 leads us back to that
+primeval election of God's sons in Christ for which we gave thanks at
+the outset (i. 3). There are not two creations, the second formed upon
+the ruin and failure of the first; but one grand design throughout.
+Redemption is creation re-affirmed. The new creation, as we call it,
+restores and consummates the old. When God raised His Son from the dead,
+He vindicated His original purpose in raising man from the dust a living
+soul. He has not forsaken the work of His hands nor forgone His original
+plan, which took account of all our wilfulness and sin. God in making us
+meant us to do good work in His world. From the world's foundation down
+to the present moment He who worketh all in all has been working for
+this end--most of all in the revelation of His grace in Jesus Christ.
+
+Far backward in the past, amid the secrets of creation, lay the
+beginnings of God's grace to mankind. Far onward in the future shines
+its lustre revealed in the first Christian age. The apostle has gained
+some insight into those "times and seasons" which formerly were veiled
+from him. In his earliest letters, to the Thessalonians and Corinthians,
+St Paul echoes our Lord's warning, never out of season, that we should
+"watch, for the hour is at hand." _Maran atha_ is his watchword: "Our
+Lord cometh; the time is short." Nor does that note cease to the end.
+But when in this epistle he writes of "the ages that are coming on," and
+of "all the generations of the age of the ages" (iii. 21), there is
+manifestly some considerable period of duration before his eyes. He sees
+something of the extent of the world's coming history, something of the
+magnitude of the field that the future will afford for the unfolding of
+God's designs.
+
+In those approaching aeons he foresees that the apostolic dispensation
+will play a conspicuous part. Unborn ages will be blessed in the
+blessing now descending upon Jews and Gentiles through Christ Jesus. So
+marvellous is the display of God's kindness toward them, that all the
+future will pay homage to it. The overflowing wealth of blessing poured
+upon St Paul and the first Churches had an end in view that reached
+beyond themselves, an end worthy of the Giver, worthy of the magnitude
+of His plans and of His measureless love. If all this was theirs--this
+fulness of God exceeding the utmost they had asked or thought--it is
+because God means to convey it through them to multitudes besides! There
+is no limit to the grace that God will impart to men and to Churches who
+thus reason, who receive His gifts in this generous and communicative
+spirit. The apostolic Church chants with Mary at the Annunciation:
+"For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed!"
+
+Never was any prediction better fulfilled. This spot of history shines
+with a light before which every other shows pale and commonplace. The
+companions of Jesus, the humble fraternities of the first Christian
+century have been the object of reverent interest and intent research on
+the part of all centuries since. Their history is scrutinized from all
+sides with a zeal and industry which the most pressing subjects of the
+day hardly command. For we feel that these men hold the secret of the
+world's life. The key to the treasures we all long for is in their
+hands. As time goes on and the stress of life deepens, men will turn
+with yet fonder hope to the age of Jesus Christ. "And many nations will
+say: Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of
+the God of Jacob. And He will teach us of His ways; and we will walk in
+His paths."
+
+The stream will remember its fountain; the children of God will gather
+to their childhood's home. The world will hear the gospel in the
+recovered accents of its prophets and apostles.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[80] Rom. xii. 1; 2 Cor. i. 3; Phil. i. 8, ii. 1; comp. Luke i. 78. The
+=oiktirmoi tou Theou, splanchna kai oiktirmoi=, rendered in our Version
+"mercies of God," denotes something even more affecting,--God's sense of
+the woefulness of human life,--"the pitying tenderness Divine."
+
+[81] Comp. Rom. ix. 22, 23.
+
+[82] On _grace_, comp. _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's
+Bible), Chapter X.
+
+[83] Compare also, on Faith, _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's
+Bible), Chapters X.-XII. and XV.
+
+[84] =Este sesosmenoi=: for the peculiar emphasis of this form of the
+verb, implying a settled fact, an assured state, compare ver. 12, =ete
+... apellotriomenoi=; Col. ii. 10; Gal. ii. 11, iv. 3; 2 Cor. iv. 3,
+etc.
+
+[85] Rom. viii. 31-39; comp. vv. 9-17; also 1 Thess. v. 23, 24; 2 Thess.
+iii. 3-5; 1 Cor. i. 4-9; Phil. i. 6, iii. 13, 14; 2 Tim. i. 12, iv. 18,
+for St Paul's doctrine of Assurance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+_THE FAR AND NEAR._
+
+    "Wherefore remember, that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the flesh,
+    who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision
+    in the flesh, made by hands; that ye were at that time separate from
+    Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers
+    from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in
+    the world: but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometime were far off are
+    made nigh in the blood of Christ."--EPH. ii. 11-13.
+
+
+The apostle's _Wherefore_ sums up for his readers the record of their
+salvation rehearsed in the previous verses. "You were buried in your
+sins, sunk in their corruption, ruined by their guilt, living under
+God's displeasure and in the power of Satan. All this has passed away.
+The almighty Hand has raised you with Christ into a heavenly life. God
+has become your Father; His love is in your heart; by the strength of
+His grace you are enabled to walk in the way marked out for you from
+your creation. _Wherefore remember_: think of what you were, and of what
+you are!"
+
+To such recollections we do well to summon ourselves. The children of
+grace love to recall, and on fit occasions recount for God's glory and
+the help of their fellows, the way in which God led them to the
+knowledge of Himself. In some the great change came suddenly. He "made
+speed" to save us. It was a veritable resurrection, as signal and
+unlooked for as the rising of Christ from the dead. By a swift passage
+we were "translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of the
+Son of His love." Once living without God in the world, we were arrested
+by a strange providence--through some overthrow of fortune or shock of
+bereavement, or by a trivial incident touching unaccountably a hidden
+spring in the mind--and the whole aspect of life was altered in a
+moment. We saw revealed, as by a lightning flash at night, the emptiness
+of our own life, the misery of our nature, the folly of our unbelief,
+the awful presence of _God_--God whom we had forgotten and despised! We
+sought, and found His mercy. From that hour the old things passed away:
+we lived who had been dead,--made alive to God through Jesus Christ.
+
+This instant conversion, such as Paul experienced, this sharp and abrupt
+transition from darkness to light, was common in the first generation of
+Christians, as it is wherever religious awakening takes place in a
+society that has been largely dead to God. The advent of Christianity in
+the Gentile world was much after this fashion,--like a tropical sunrise,
+in which day leaps on the earth full-born. This experience gives a stamp
+of peculiar decision to the convictions and character of its subjects.
+The change is patent and palpable; no observer can fail to mark it. And
+it burns itself into the memory with an ineffaceable impression. The
+violent throes of such a spiritual birth cannot be forgotten.
+
+But if our entrance into the life of God was gradual, like the dawn of
+our own milder clime, where the light steals by imperceptible advances
+upon the darkness--if the glory of the Lord has thus risen upon us, our
+certainty of its presence may be no less complete, and our remembrance
+of its coming no less grateful and joyous. One leaps into the new life
+by a single eager bound; another reaches it by measured, thoughtful
+steps: but both are _there_, standing side by side on the common ground
+of salvation in Christ. Both walk in the same light of the Lord, that
+floods the sky from east to west. The recollections which the latter has
+to cherish of the leading of God's kindly light--how He touched our
+childish thought, and checked gently our boyish waywardness, and mingled
+reproof with the first stirrings of passion and self-will, and wakened
+the alarms of conscience and the fears of another world, and the sense
+of the beauty of holiness and the shame of sin,--
+
+    "Shaping to truth the froward will
+        Along His narrow way,"--
+
+such remembrances are a priceless treasure, that grows richer as we grow
+wiser. It awakens a joy not so thrilling nor so prompt in utterance as
+that of the soul snatched like a brand from the burning, but which
+passes understanding. Blessed are the children of the kingdom, those who
+have never roamed far from the fold of Christ and the commonwealth of
+Israel, whom the cross has beckoned onwards from their childhood. But
+however it was--by whatever means, at whatever time it pleased God to
+call you from darkness to His marvellous light, _remember_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But we must return to Paul and his Gentile readers. The old death in
+life was to them a sombre reality, keenly and painfully remembered. In
+that condition of moral night out of which Christ had rescued them,
+Gentile society around them still remained. Let us observe its features
+as they are delineated in contrast with the privileges long bestowed on
+Israel. The Gentile world was _Christless_, _hopeless_, _godless_. It
+had no share in the Divine polity framed for the chosen people; the
+outward mark of its uncircumcision was a true symbol of its irreligion
+and debasement.
+
+Israel had a _God_. Besides, there were only "those who are called
+gods." This was the first and cardinal distinction. Not their race, not
+their secular calling, their political or intellectual gifts, but their
+faith formed the Jews into a nation. They were "the people of God," as
+no other people has been--of _the_ God, for theirs was "the true and
+living God"--Jehovah, the I AM, the One, the Alone. The monotheistic
+belief was, no doubt, wavering and imperfect in the mass of the nation
+in early times; but it was held by the ruling minds amongst them, by the
+men who have shaped the destiny of Israel and created its Bible, with
+increasing clearness and intensity of passion. "All the gods of the
+nations are idols--vapours, phantoms, nothings!--but Jehovah made the
+heavens." It was the ancestral faith that glowed in the breast of Paul
+at Athens, amidst the fairest shrines of Greece, when he "saw the city
+wholly given to idolatry"--man's highest art and the toil and piety of
+ages lavished on things that were no gods; and in the midst of the
+splendour of a hollow and decaying Paganism he read the confession that
+God was "unknown."
+
+Ephesus had her famous goddess, worshipped in the most sumptuous pile of
+architecture that the ancient world contained. Behold the proud city,
+"temple-keeper of the great goddess Artemis," filled with wrath!
+Infuriate Demos flashes fire from his thousand eyes, and his brazen
+throat roars hoarse vengeance against the insulters of "her
+magnificence, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth"! Without
+God--_atheists_, in fact, the apostle calls this devout Asian
+population; and Artemis of Ephesus, and Athene, and Cybele of Smyrna,
+and Zeus and Asclepius of Pergamum, though all the world worship them,
+are but "creatures of art and man's device."
+
+The Pagans retorted this reproach. "Away with _the atheists_!" they
+cried, when Christians were led to execution. Ninety years after this
+time the martyr Polycarp was brought into the arena before the
+magistrates of Asia and the populace gathered in Smyrna at the great
+Ionic festival. The Proconsul, wishing to spare the venerable man, said
+to him: "Swear by the Fortune of Caesar; and say, Away with the
+atheists!" But Polycarp, as the story continues, "with a grave look
+gazing on the crowd of lawless Gentiles in the stadium and shaking his
+hand against them, then groaning and looking up to heaven, said, _Away
+with the atheists_!" Pagan and Christian were each godless in the eyes
+of the other. If visible temples and images, and the local worship of
+each tribe or city made a god, then Jews and Christians had none: if God
+was a Spirit--One, Holy, Almighty, Omnipresent--then polytheists were in
+truth atheists; their many gods, being many, were no gods; they were
+idols,--_eidola_, illusive shows of the Godhead.
+
+The more thoughtful and pious among the heathen felt this already. When
+the apostle denounced the idols and their pompous worship as "these
+vanities," his words found an echo in the Gentile conscience. The
+classical Paganism held the multitude by the force of habit and local
+pride, and by its sensuous and artistic charms; but such religious power
+as it once had was gone. In all directions it was undermined by mystic
+Oriental and Egyptian rites, to which men resorted in search of a
+religion and sick of the old fables, ever growing more debased, that had
+pleased their fathers. The majesty of Rome in the person of the Emperor,
+the one visible supreme power, was seized upon by the popular instinct,
+even more than it was imposed by state policy, and made to fill the
+vacuum; and temples to Augustus had already risen in Asia, side by side
+with those of the ancient gods.
+
+In this despair of their ancestral religions many piously disposed
+Gentiles turned to Judaism for spiritual help; and the synagogue was
+surrounded in the Greek cities by a circle of earnest proselytes. From
+their ranks St Paul drew a large proportion of his hearers and converts.
+When he writes, "Remember that you were at that time _without God_," he
+is within the recollection of his readers; and they will bear him out in
+testifying that their heathen creed was dead and empty to the soul. Nor
+did philosophy construct a creed more satisfying. Its gods were the
+Epicurean deities who dwell aloof and careless of men; or the supreme
+Reason and Necessity of the Stoics, the _anima mundi_, of which human
+souls are fleeting and fragmentary images. "Deism finds God only in
+heaven; Pantheism, only on earth; Christianity alone finds Him both in
+heaven and on earth" (Harless). The Word made flesh reveals _God in the
+world_.
+
+When the apostle says "without God _in the world_," this qualification
+is both reproachful and sorrowful. To be without God in the world that
+He has made, where His "eternal power and Godhead" have been visible
+from creation, argues a darkened and perverted heart.[86] To be without
+God in the world is to be in the wilderness, without a guide; on a
+stormy ocean, without harbour or pilot; in sickness of spirit, without
+medicine or physician; to be hungry without bread, and weary without
+rest, and dying with no light of life. It is to be an orphaned child,
+wandering in an empty, ruined house.
+
+In these words we have an echo of Paul's preaching to the Gentiles, and
+an indication of the line of his appeals to the conscience of the
+enlightened pagans of his time. The despair of the age was darker than
+the human mind has known before or since. Matthew Arnold has painted it
+all in one verse of those lines, entitled _Obermann once more_, in which
+he so perfectly expresses the better spirit of modern scepticism.
+
+    "On that hard Pagan world disgust
+      And secret loathing fell;
+    Deep weariness and sated lust
+      Made human life a hell."
+
+The saying by which St Paul reproved the Corinthians, "Let us eat and
+drink, for to-morrow we die," is the common sentiment of pagan epitaphs
+of the time. Here is an extant specimen of the kind: "Let us drink and
+be merry; for we shall have no more kissing and dancing in the kingdom
+of Proserpine. Soon shall we fall asleep, to wake no more." Such were
+the thoughts with which men came back from the grave-side. It is
+needless to say how depraving was the effect of this hopelessness. At
+Athens, in the more religious times of Socrates, it was even considered
+a decent and kindly thing to allow a criminal condemned to death to
+spend his last hours in gross sensual indulgence. There is no reason to
+suppose that the extinction of the Christian hope of immortality would
+prove less demoralizing. We are "saved by hope," said St Paul: we are
+ruined by despair. Pessimism of creed for most men means pessimism of
+conduct.
+
+Our modern speech and literature and our habits of feeling have been for
+so many generations steeped in the influence of Christ's teaching, and
+it has thrown so many tender and hallowed thoughts around the state of
+our beloved dead, that it is impossible even for those who are
+personally without hope in Christ to realize what its general decay and
+disappearance would mean. To have possessed such a treasure, and then to
+lose it! to have cherished anticipations so exalted and so dear,--and to
+find them turn out a mockery! The age upon which this calamity fell
+would be of all ages the most miserable.
+
+The hope of Israel which Paul preached to the Gentiles was a hope for
+the world and for the nations, as well as for the individual soul. "The
+commonwealth [or _polity_] of Israel" and "the covenants of promise"
+guaranteed the establishment of the Messianic kingdom upon earth. This
+expectation took amongst the mass of the Jews a materialistic and even a
+revengeful shape; but in one form or other it belonged, and still
+belongs to every man of Israel. Those noble lines of Virgil in his
+fourth Eclogue[87]--like the words of Caiaphas, an unintended Christian
+prophecy--which predicted the return of justice and the spread of a
+golden age through the whole world under the rule of the coming heir of
+Caesar, had been signally belied by the imperial house in the century
+that had elapsed. Never were human prospects darker than when the
+apostle wrote as Nero's prisoner in Rome. It was an age of crime and
+horror. The political world and the system of pagan society seemed to be
+in the throes of dissolution. Only in "the commonwealth of Israel" was
+there a light of hope and a foundation for the future of mankind; and of
+this in its wisdom the world knew nothing.
+
+The Gentiles were "alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,"--that is
+to say, treated as aliens and made such by their exclusion. By the very
+fact of Israel's election, the rest of mankind were shut out of the
+visible kingdom of God. They became mere _Gentiles_, or _nations_,--a
+herd of men bound together only by natural affinity, with no "covenant
+of promise," no religious constitution or destiny, no definite
+relationship to God, Israel being alone the acknowledged and organized
+"_people_ of Jehovah."
+
+These distinctions were summed up in one word, expressing all the pride
+of the Jewish nature, when the Israelites styled themselves "the
+Circumcision." The rest of the world--Philistines or Egyptians, Greeks,
+Romans, or Barbarians, it mattered not--were "the Uncircumcision." How
+superficial this distinction was in point of fact, and how false the
+assumption of moral superiority it implied in the existing condition of
+Judaism, St Paul indicates by saying, "those who are _called_
+Uncircumcision by that which is _called_ Circumcision, in flesh, wrought
+by human hands." In the second and third chapters of his epistle to the
+Romans he exposed the hollowness of Jewish sanctity, and brought his
+fellow-countrymen down to the level of those "sinners of the Gentiles"
+whom they so bitterly despised.
+
+The destitution of the Gentile world is put into a single word, when the
+apostle says: "You were at that time _separate from Christ_"--without a
+Christ, either come or coming. They were deprived of the world's one
+treasure,--shut out, as it appeared, for ever[88] from any part in Him
+who is to mankind all things and in all.--_Once far off!_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"But now in Christ Jesus ye were _made nigh_." What is it that has
+bridged the distance, that has transported these Gentiles from the
+wilderness of heathenism into the midst of the city of God? It is "the
+blood of Christ." The sacrificial death of Jesus Christ transformed the
+relations of God to mankind, and of Israel to the Gentiles. In Him God
+reconciled not a nation, but "a world" to Himself (2 Cor. v. 19). The
+death of the Son of man could not have reference to the sons of Abraham
+alone. If sin is universal and death is not a Jewish but a human
+experience, and if one blood flows in the veins of all our race, then
+the death of Jesus Christ was a universal sacrifice; it appeals to every
+man's conscience and heart, and puts away for each the guilt which comes
+between his soul and God.
+
+When the Greeks in Passion week desired to see Him, He exclaimed: "I, if
+I be lifted up from the earth, will draw _all_ unto me." The cross of
+Jesus was to draw humanity around it, by its infinite love and sorrow,
+by the perfect apprehension there was in it of the world's guilt and
+need, and the perfect submission to the sentence of God's law against
+man's sin. So wherever the gospel was preached by St Paul, it won
+Gentile hearts for Christ. Greek and Jew found themselves weeping
+together at the foot of the cross, sharing one forgiveness and baptized
+into one Spirit.
+
+The union of Caiaphas and Pilate in the condemnation of Jesus and the
+mingling of the Jewish crowd with the Roman soldiers at His execution
+were a tragic symbol of the new age that was coming. Israel and the
+Gentiles were accomplices in the death of the Messiah--the former of the
+two the more guilty partner in the counsel and deed. If this Jesus whom
+they slew and hanged on a tree was indeed the Christ, God's chosen, then
+what availed their Abrahamic sonship, their covenants and law-keeping,
+their proud religious eminence? They had killed their Christ; they had
+forfeited their calling. His blood was on them and on their children.
+
+Those who seemed nigh to God, at the cross of Christ were found far
+off,--that both together, the far and the near, might be reconciled and
+brought back to God. "He shut up all unto disobedience, that He might
+have mercy upon all."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[86] Rom. i. 19-23; comp. John i. 10: "He [the true Light] was _in the
+world_, and the world knew Him not."
+
+[87]
+
+    Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
+    Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
+    Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto.
+    Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum
+    Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo,
+    Casta, fave, Lucina.
+
+[88] Observe the perfect participle =apellotriomenoi=, which signifies
+an abiding fact or fixed condition. Similar is the turn of expression in
+ch. iii. 9, and in Col. i. 26, Rom. xvi. 25, Matt. xiii. 35.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+_THE DOUBLE RECONCILIATION._
+
+    "For He is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle
+    wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, _even_
+    the law of commandments _contained_ in ordinances, that He might
+    create in Himself of the twain one new man, _so_ making peace; and
+    might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross,
+    having slain the enmity thereby: and He came and preached good
+    tidings of peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that
+    were nigh: for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit
+    unto the Father."--EPH. ii. 14-18.
+
+
+_Peace, peace--to the far off, and to the near!_ Such was God's promise
+to His scattered people in the times of the exile (Isai. lvii. 19). St
+Paul sees that peace of God extending over a yet wider field, and
+terminating a longer and sadder banishment than the prophet had
+foreseen. Christ is "our peace"--not for the divided members of Israel
+alone, but for all the tribes of men. He brings about a universal
+pacification.
+
+There were two distinct, but kindred enmities to be overcome by Christ,
+in preaching to the world His good tidings of peace (ver. 17). There was
+the hostility of Jew and Gentile, which was removed in its cause and
+principle when Christ "in His flesh" (by His incarnate life and death)
+"abolished the law of commandments in decrees"--_i.e._, the law of Moses
+as it constituted a body of external precepts determining the way of
+righteousness and life. This abolition of the law by the evangelical
+principle "dissolved the middle wall of partition." The occasion of
+quarrel between Israel and the world was destroyed; the barrier
+disappeared that had for so long fenced off the privileged ground of the
+sons of Abraham (vv. 14, 15). But behind this human enmity, underneath
+the feud and rancour existing between the Jews and the nations, there
+lay the deeper quarrel of mankind with God. Both enmities centred in the
+law; both were slain by one stroke, in the reconciliation of the cross
+(ver. 16).
+
+The Jewish and Gentile peoples formed two distinct types of humanity.
+Politically, the Jews were insignificant and had scarcely counted
+amongst the great powers of the world. Their religion alone gave them
+influence and importance. Bearing his inspired Scriptures and his
+Messianic hope, the wandering Israelite confronted the vast masses of
+heathenism and the splendid and fascinating classical civilization with
+the proudest sense of his superiority. To his God he knew well that one
+day every knee would bow and every tongue confess. The circumstances of
+the time deepened his isolation and aggravated to internecine hate his
+spite against his fellow-men, the _adversus omnes alios hostile odium_
+stigmatized by the incisive pen of Tacitus. Within three years of the
+writing of this letter the Jewish war against Rome broke out, when the
+enmity culminated in the most appalling and fateful overthrow recorded
+in the pages of history. Now, it is this enmity at its height--the most
+inveterate and desperate one can conceive--that the apostle proposes to
+reconcile; nay, that he sees already slain by the sacrifice of the
+cross, and within the brotherhood of the Christian Church. It was slain
+in the heart of Saul of Tarsus, the proudest that beat in Jewish
+breast.
+
+In his earlier writings the apostle has been concerned chiefly to guard
+the position and rights of the two parties within the Church. He has
+abundantly maintained, especially in the epistle to the Galatians, the
+claims of Gentile believers in Christ against Judaic assumptions and
+impositions. He has defended the just prerogative of the Jew and his
+hereditary sentiments from the contempt to which they were sometimes
+exposed on the part of the Gentile majority.[89] But now that this has
+been done, and that Gentile liberties and Jewish dignity have been
+vindicated and safeguarded on both sides, St Paul advances a step
+further: he seeks to amalgamate the Jewish and Gentile section of the
+Church, and to "make of the twain one new man, so making peace." This,
+he declares, was the end of Christ's mission; this a chief purpose of
+His atoning death. Only by such union, only through the burying of the
+old enmity slain on the cross, could His Church be built up to its
+completeness. St Paul would have Gentile and Jewish believers everywhere
+forget their differences, efface their party lines, and merge their
+independence in the oneness of the all-embracing and all-perfecting
+Church of Jesus Christ, God's habitation in the Spirit. Instead of
+saying that a catholic ideal like this belongs to a later and
+post-apostolic age, we maintain, on the contrary, that a catholic mind
+like St Paul's, under the conditions of his time, could not fail to
+arrive at this conception.
+
+It was his confidence in the victory of the cross over all strife and
+sin that sustained St Paul through these years of captivity. As he
+looks out from his Roman prison, under the shadow of Nero's palace, the
+future is invested with a radiance of hope that makes the heart of the
+chained apostle exult within him. The world is lost, to all outward
+seeming: he knows it is saved! Jew and Gentile are about to close in
+mortal conflict: he proclaims peace between them, assured of their
+reconcilement, and knowing that in their reunion the salvation of human
+society is assured.
+
+The enmity of Jew and Gentile was representative of all that divides
+mankind. In it were concentrated most of the causes by which society is
+rent asunder. Along with religion, race, habits, tastes and culture,
+moral tendencies, political aspirations, interests of trade, all helped
+to widen the breach. The cleavage ran deep into the foundations of life;
+the enmity was the growth of two thousand years. It was not a case of
+local friction, nor a quarrel arising from temporary causes. The Jew was
+ubiquitous, and everywhere was an alien and an irritant to Gentile
+society. No antipathy was so hard to subdue. The grace that conquers it,
+can and will conquer all enmities.
+
+St Paul's view embraced, in fact, a world-wide reconcilement. He
+contemplates, as the Hebrew prophets themselves did, the fraternization
+of mankind under the rule of the Christ. After this scale he laid down
+the foundation of the Church, "wise master-builder" that he was. It was
+destined to bear the weight of an edifice in which all the races of men
+should dwell together, and every order of human faculty should find its
+place. His thoughts were not confined within the Judaic antithesis.
+"There is no Jew and Greek," he says in another place; yes, and "no
+barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, male or female. Ye are all one in
+Christ Jesus."[90] Birth, rank, office in the Church, culture, even sex
+are minor and subordinate distinctions, merged in the unity of redeemed
+souls in Christ. That which He "creates in Himself of the twain" is _one
+new man_--one incorporate humanity, neither Jew nor Gentile, Englishman
+nor Hindu, priest nor layman, male nor female; but simply _man_, and
+_Christian_.
+
+At the present time we are better able to enter into these views of the
+apostle than at any intervening period of history. In his day almost the
+whole visible world, lying round the Mediterranean shores, was brought
+under the government and laws of Rome. This fact made the establishment
+of one religious polity a thing quite conceivable. The Roman empire did
+not, as it proved, allow Christianity to conquer it soon enough and to
+leaven it sufficiently to save it. That huge construction, the mightiest
+fabric of human polity, fell and covered the earth with its ruins. In
+its fall it reacted disastrously upon the Church, and has bequeathed to
+it the corrupt and despotic unity of Papal Rome. Now, in these last
+days, the whole world is opened to the Church, a world stretching far
+beyond the horizon of the first century. Science and Commerce, those two
+strong-winged angels and giant ministers of God, are swiftly binding the
+continents together in material ties. The peoples are beginning to
+realize their brotherhood, and are feeling their way in many directions
+towards international union; while in the Churches a new, federal
+catholicity is taking shape, that must displace the false catholicism of
+external uniformity and the disastrous absolutism inherited from Rome.
+The spread of European empire and the marvellous expansion of our
+English race are carrying forward the world's unification with enormous
+strides,--towards some end or other. What end is this to be? Is the
+kingdom of the world about to become the kingdom of our Lord and His
+Christ? and are the nations preparing to be "reconciled in one body unto
+God"?
+
+If Christendom were worthy of her Master and her name, this question
+would be answered with no doubtful affirmative. The Church is well able,
+if she were prepared, to go up and possess the whole earth for her Lord.
+The way is open; the means are in her hand. Nor is she ignorant, nor
+wholly negligent of her opportunity and of the claims that the times
+impose upon her. She is putting forth new strength and striving to
+overtake her work, notwithstanding the weight of ignorance and sloth
+that burdens her. Soon the reconciling cross will be planted on every
+shore, and the praises of the Crucified sung in every human language.
+
+But there are dark as well as bright auguries for the future. The
+advance of commerce and emigration has been a curse and not a blessing
+to many heathen peoples. Who can read without shame and horror the story
+of European conquest in America? And it is a chapter not yet closed.
+Greed and injustice still mark the dealings of the powerful and
+civilized with the weaker races. England set a noble example in the
+abolition of negro slavery; but she has since inflicted, for purposes of
+gain, the opium curse on China, putting poison to the lips of its vast
+population. Under our Christian flags fire-arms are imported, and
+alcohol, amongst tribes of men less able than children to resist their
+evils. Is this "preaching peace to those far off"? It is likely that
+the commercial profits made in the destruction of savage races as yet
+exceed all that our missionary societies have spent in saving them. One
+of these days Almighty God may have a stern reckoning with modern Europe
+about these things. "When He maketh inquisition for blood, He will
+remember."
+
+And what shall we say of ourselves at home, in our relation to this
+great principle of the apostle? The old "middle wall of partition," the
+temple-barrier that sundered Jew and Gentile, is "broken down,"--visibly
+levelled by the hand of God when Jerusalem fell, as it had been
+virtually and in its principle destroyed by the work of Christ. But are
+there no other middle walls, no barriers raised within the fold of
+Christ? The rich man's purse, and the poor man's penury; aristocratic
+pride, democratic bitterness and jealousy; knowledge and refinement on
+the one hand, ignorance and rudeness on the other--how thick the veil of
+estrangement which these influences weave, how high the party walls
+which they build in our various Church communions!
+
+It is the duty of the Church, as she values her existence, with gentle
+but firm hands to pull down and to keep down all such partitions. She
+cannot abolish the natural distinctions of life. She cannot turn the Jew
+into a Gentile, nor the Gentile into a Jew. She will never make the poor
+man rich in this world, nor the rich man altogether poor. Like her
+Master, she declines to be "judge or divider" of our secular
+inheritance. But she can see to it that these outward distinctions make
+no difference in her treatment of the men as men. She can combine in her
+fellowship all grades and orders, and teach them to understand and
+respect each other. She can soften the asperities and relieve many of
+the hardships which social differences create. She can diffuse a
+healing and purifying influence upon the contentions of society around
+her.
+
+Let us labour unweariedly for this, and let our meeting at the Lord's
+table be a symbol of the unreserved communion of men of all classes and
+conditions in the brotherhood of the redeemed sons of God. "_He_ is our
+peace"; and if He is in our hearts, we must needs be sons of peace.
+"Behold the secret of all true union! It is not by others coming to us,
+nor by our going over to them; but it is by both them and ourselves
+coming to Christ" that peace is made (Monod).
+
+Thus within and without the Church the work of atonement will advance,
+with Christ ever for its preacher (ver. 17). He speaks through the words
+and the lives of His ten thousand messengers,--men of every order, in
+every age and country of the earth. The leaven of Christ's peace will
+spread till the lump is leavened. God will accomplish His purpose of the
+ages, whether in our time, or in another worthier of His calling. His
+Church is destined to be the home of the human family, the universal
+liberator and instructor and reconciler of the nations. And Christ shall
+sit enthroned in the loyal worship of the federated peoples of the
+earth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the question remains: What is the foundation, what the warrant of
+this grand idealism of the apostle Paul? Many a great thinker, many an
+ardent reformer before and since has dreamed of some such millennium as
+this. And their enthusiastic plans have ended too often in conflict and
+destruction. What surer ground of confidence have we in Paul's
+undertaking than in those of so many gifted visionaries and
+philosophers? The difference lies here: his expectation rests on the
+word and character of God; his instrument of reform is the cross of
+Jesus Christ.
+
+God is the centre of His own universe. Any reconciliation that is to
+stand, must include Him first of all. Christ reconciled Jew and Gentile
+"both in one body _to God_." There is the meeting point, the true focus
+of the orbit of human life, that can alone control its movements and
+correct its wild aberrations. Under the shadow of His throne of justice,
+in the arms of His fatherly love, the kindreds of the earth will at last
+find reconciliation and peace. Humanitarian and secularist systems make
+the simple mistake of ignoring the supreme Factor in the scheme of
+things; they leave out the All in all.
+
+"Be ye _reconciled to God_," cries the apostle. For Almighty God has had
+a great quarrel with this world of ours. The hatred of men towards each
+other is rooted in the "carnal mind which is enmity against God." The
+"law of commandments contained in ordinances," in whose possession the
+Jew boasted over the lawless and profane Gentile, in reality branded
+both as culprits.
+
+The secret disquiet and dread lurking in man's conscience, the pangs
+endured in his body of humiliation, the groaning frame of nature declare
+the world unhinged and out of course. Things have gone amiss, somehow,
+between man and his Creator. The face of the earth and the field of
+human history are scarred with the thunderbolts of His displeasure. God,
+the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the King of the ages, is not the
+amiable, almighty Sentimentalist that some pious people would make Him
+out to be. The men of the Bible felt and realized, if we do not, the
+grave and tremendous import of the Lord's controversy with all flesh. He
+is unceasingly at war with the sins of men. "God is _love_"--oh yes;
+but then He is also "a consuming fire"! There is no anger so crushing as
+the anger of love, for there is none so just; no wrath to be feared like
+"the wrath of the Lamb." God is not a man, weak and passionate, whom a
+spark of anger might set all on fire, burning out His justice and
+compassion. "In His wrath He remembers mercy." Within that infinite
+nature there is room for an absolute loathing and resentment towards
+sin, in consistence with an immeasurable pity and yearning towards His
+sinful children. Hence the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+Look at it from what side you will (and it has many sides), propound it
+in what terms you may (and it translates itself anew into the dialect of
+every age), you must not explain the cross of Christ away nor cause its
+offence to cease. "The atonement has always been a scandal and a folly
+to those who did not receive it; it has always contained something which
+to formal logic is false and to individualistic ethics immoral; yet in
+that very element which has been branded as immoral and false, has
+always lain the seal of its power and the secret of its truth." The Holy
+One of God, the Lamb without spot and blemish, He died by His own
+consent a sinner's death. That sacrifice, undergone by the Son of God
+and Son of man dying as man for men, in love to His race and in
+obedience to the Divine will and law, gave an infinite satisfaction to
+God in His relation to the world, and there went up to the Divine throne
+from the anguish of Calvary a "savour of sweet smell." The moral glory
+of the act of Jesus Christ in dying for His guilty brethren outshone its
+horror and disgrace; and it redeemed man's lost condition, and clothed
+human nature with a new character and aspect in the eyes of God
+Himself. "Now therefore there is no more condemnation to them that are
+in Christ Jesus." The mercy of God, if we may so say, is set free to act
+in forgiveness and restoration, without any compromise of justice and
+inflexible law. No peace without this: no peace that did not _satisfy
+God_, and satisfy that law, deep as the deepest in God, that binds
+suffering to wrong-doing and death to sin.
+
+Perhaps you say: This is immoral, surely, that the just should suffer
+for the unjust; that one commits the offence, and another bears the
+penalty.--Stay a moment: that is only half the truth. We are more than
+individuals; we are members of a race; and vicarious suffering runs
+through life. Our sufferings and wrong-doings bind the human family
+together in an inextricable web. We are _communists in sin and death_.
+It is the law and lot of our existence. And Christ, the Lord and centre
+of the race, has come within its scope. He bound Himself to our sinking
+fortunes. He became co-partner in our lost estate, and has redeemed it
+to God by His blood. If He was true and perfect man, if He was the
+creative Head and Mediator of the race, the eternal Firstborn of many
+brethren, He could do no other. He who alone had the right and the
+power,--"_One_ died for all." He took upon His Divine heart the sin and
+curse of the world, He fastened it to His shoulders with the cross; and
+He bore it away from Caiaphas' hall and Pilate's judgement-seat, away
+from guilty Jerusalem; He took away the sin of the world, and expiated
+it once for all. He quenched in His blood the fires of wrath and hate it
+kindled. He slew _the enmity_ thereby.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still, we are individuals, as you said, not lost after all in the
+world's solidarity. Here your personal right and will must come in. What
+Christ has done for you is yours, so far as you accept it. He has died
+your death beforehand, trusting that you would not repudiate His act,
+that you would not let His blood be spilt in vain. But He will never
+force His mediation upon you. He respects your freedom and your manhood.
+Do you now endorse what Jesus Christ did on your behalf? Do you renounce
+the sin, and accept the sacrifice? Then it is yours, from this moment,
+before the tribunal of God and of conscience. By the witness of His
+Spirit you are proclaimed a forgiven and reconciled man. Christ
+crucified is yours--if you will have Him, if you will identify your
+sinful self with the sinless Mediator, if as you see Him lifted up on
+the cross you will let your heart cry out, "Oh my God, He dies for
+_me_!"
+
+Coming "in one Spirit to the Father," the reconciled children join hands
+again with each other. Social barriers, caste feelings, family feuds,
+personal quarrels, national antipathies, alike go down before the virtue
+of the blood of Jesus.
+
+            "Neither passion nor pride
+              His cross can abide,
+    But melt in the fountain that streams from His side!"
+
+"Beloved," you will say to the man that hates or has wronged you
+most,--"Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."
+In these simple words of the apostle John lies the secret of universal
+peace, the hope of the fraternization of mankind. Nations will have to
+say this one day, as well as men.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[89] See to this effect such passages as Rom. i. 16 (_to the Jew
+first_), ix. 4, 5; and especially xi. 13-32.
+
+[90] Gal. iii. 28; Col. iii. 11. Comp. John x. 16, xi. 52. See _The
+Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's Bible), Chapter XV.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+_GOD'S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY._
+
+    "So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are
+    fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God, being
+    built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus
+    Himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building,
+    fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in
+    whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the
+    Spirit."--EPH. ii. 19-22.
+
+
+Not unfrequently it is the last word or phrase of the paragraph that
+gives us the clue to St Paul's meaning and discloses the point at which
+he has aimed all along. So in this instance. "For a habitation of God in
+the Spirit": behold the goal of God's ways with mankind! For this end
+the Divine grace has wrought through countless ages and has made its
+great sacrifice. For this end Jew and Gentile are being gathered into
+one and compacted into a new humanity.
+
+I. The Church is a house built for an _Occupant_. Its quality and size,
+and the mode of its construction are determined by its destination. It
+is built to suit the great Inhabitant, who says concerning the new Zion
+as He said of the old in figure: "This is my rest for ever! Here will I
+dwell, for I have desired it." God, who is spirit, cannot be satisfied
+with the fabric of material nature for His temple, nor does "the Most
+High dwell in houses made by men's hands." He seeks our spirit for His
+abode, and
+
+                            "Doth prefer
+    Before all temples the upright heart and pure."
+
+In the collective life and spirit of humanity God claims to reside, that
+He may fill it with His glory and His love. "Know you not," cries the
+apostle to the once debased Corinthians, "that you are God's temple, and
+that the Spirit of God dwells in you?"
+
+Nothing that is bestowed upon man terminates in himself. The deliverance
+of Jewish and Gentile believers from their personal sins, their
+re-instatement into the broken unity of mankind and the destruction in
+them of their old enmities, of the antipathies generated by their common
+rebellion against God--these great results of Christ's sacrifice were
+means to a further end. "Hallowed be Thy name" is our first petition to
+the Father in heaven; "Glory to God in the highest" is the key-note of
+the angels' song, that runs through all the harmonies of "peace on
+earth," through every strain of the melody of life. Religion is the
+mistress, not the handmaid in human affairs. She will never consent to
+become a mere ethical discipline, an instrument and subordinate stage in
+social evolution, a ladder held for men to climb up into their
+self-sufficiency.
+
+The old temptation of the Garden, "Ye shall be as gods," has come upon
+our age in a new and fascinating form, "You shall be as gods," it is
+whispered: "nay, you _are_ God, and there is no other. The supernatural
+is a dream. The Christian story is a fable. There is none to fear or
+adore above yourselves!" Man is to worship his collective self, his own
+humanity. "I am the Lord thy God," the great idol says, "that brought
+thee up out of animalism and savagery, and me only shalt thou
+serve!--Love and faithful service to one's kind, a holy passion for the
+welfare of the race, for the relief of human ignorance and poverty and
+pain, this is the true religion; and you need no other. Its obligation
+is instinctive, its benefits immediate and palpable; and it gives a
+consecration to individual life that dignifies and chastens, while it
+calls into exercise all our faculties."
+
+Yes, we willingly admit, such human service is "religion pure and
+undefiled, _before our God and Father_." If service is rendered to our
+kind as worship to the Father of men; if we reverence in each man the
+image of God and the shrine of His Spirit; if we are seeking to cleanse
+and adorn in men the temple where the Most High shall dwell, the
+humblest work done for our fellows' good is done for Him. The best human
+charity is rendered for the love of God. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy
+God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. This," said Jesus, "is
+the first and great commandment. And the second is _like unto it_: Thou
+shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all
+the law and the prophets." On these two hangs the welfare of men and
+nations.
+
+But the first commandment must come first. The second law of Jesus never
+has been or will be kept to purpose without the first. Humanitarian
+sentiments, dreams of universal brotherhood, projects of social reform,
+may seem for the moment to gain by their independence of religion a
+certain zest and emphasis; but they are without root and vitality. Their
+energy fails, or spends itself in revolt; their glow declines, their
+purity is stained. The leaders and first enthusiasts trained in the
+school of Christ, whose spirit, in vain repudiated, lives on in them,
+find themselves betrayed and alone. The coarse selfishness and
+materialism of the human heart win an easy triumph over a visionary
+altruism. "Without me," says Jesus Christ, "ye can do nothing."
+
+In the light of God's glory man learns to reverence his nature and
+understand the vocation of his race. The love of God touches the deep
+and enduring springs of human action. The kingdom of Christ and of God
+commands an absolute devotion; its service inspires unfaltering courage
+and invincible patience. There is a grandeur and a certainty, of which
+the noblest secular aims fall short, in the hopes of those who are
+striving together for the faith of the gospel, and who work to build
+human life into a dwelling-place for God.
+
+II. God's temple in the Church of Jesus Christ, while it is one, is also
+manifold. "In whom _each several building_ [or _every part of the
+building_[91]], while it is compacted together, grows into a holy temple
+in the Lord."
+
+The image is that of an extensive pile of buildings, such as the ancient
+temples commonly were, in process of construction at different points
+over a wide area. The builders work in concert, upon a common plan. The
+several parts of the work are adjusted to each other; and the various
+operations in process are so harmonized, that the entire construction
+preserves the unity of the architect's design. Such an edifice was the
+apostolic Church--one, but of many parts--in its diverse gifts and
+multiplied activities animated by one Spirit and directed towards one
+Divine purpose.
+
+Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome--what a various scene of
+activity these centres of Christian life presented! The Churches
+founded in these great cities must have differed in many features. Even
+in the communities of his own province the apostle did not, so far as we
+can judge, impose a uniform administration. St Peter and St Paul carried
+out their plans independently, only maintaining a general understanding
+with each other. The apostolic founders, inspired by one and the
+self-same Spirit, could labour at a distance, upon material and by
+methods extremely various, with entire confidence in each other and with
+an assurance of the unity of result which their teaching and
+administration would exhibit. The many buildings rested on the one
+foundation of the apostles. "Whether it were I or they," says our
+apostle, "so we preach, and so you believed." Where there is the same
+Spirit and the same Lord, men do not need to be scrupulous about visible
+conformity. Elasticity and individual initiative admit of entire harmony
+of principle. The hand may do its work without irritating and
+obstructing the eye; and the foot run on its errands without mistrusting
+the ear.
+
+Such was the catholicism of the apostolic age. The true reading of verse
+21, as it is restored by the Revisers, is an incidental witness to the
+date of the epistle. A churchman of the second century, writing under
+Paul's name in the interests of catholic unity as it was then
+understood, would scarcely have penned such a sentence without attaching
+to the subject the definite article: he must have written "all the
+building," as the copyists from whom the received text proceeds very
+naturally have done. From that time onwards, as the system of the
+ecclesiastical hierarchy was developed, external unity was more and more
+strictly imposed. The original "diversity of operations" became a rigid
+uniformity. The Church swallowed up the Churches. Finally, the spiritual
+bureaucracy of Rome gathered all ecclesiastical power into one centre,
+and placed the direction of Western Christendom in the hands of a single
+priest, whom it declared to be the Vicar of Jesus Christ and endowed
+with the Divine attribute of infallibility.
+
+Had not Jerusalem been overthrown and its Church destroyed, the
+hierarchical movement would probably have made that city, rather than
+Rome, its centre. This was in fact the tendency, if not the express
+purpose of the Judaistic party in the Church. St Paul had vindicated in
+his earlier epistles the freedom of the Gentile Christian communities,
+and their right of non-conformity to Jewish usage. In the words "each
+several building, fitly framed together," there is an echo of this
+controversy. The Churches of his mission claim a standing side by side
+with those founded by other apostles. For himself and his Gentile
+brethren he seems to say, in the presence of the primitive Church and
+its leaders: "As they are Christ's, so also are we."
+
+The co-operation of the different parts of the body of Christ is
+essential to their collective growth. Let all Churches beware of
+crushing dissent. Blows aimed at our Christian neighbours recoil upon
+ourselves. Undermining their foundation, we shake our own. Next to
+positive corruption of doctrine and life, nothing hinders so greatly the
+progress of the kingdom of God as the claim to exclusive legitimacy made
+on behalf of ancient Church organizations. Their representatives would
+have every part of God's temple framed upon one pattern. They refuse a
+place on the apostolic foundation to all Churches, however numerous,
+however rich in faith and good works, however strong the historical
+justification for their existence, however clear the marks they bear of
+the Spirit's seal, which do not conform to the rule they themselves have
+received. Their rites and ministry, they assert, are those alone
+approved by Christ and authorized by His apostles, within a given area.
+They refuse the right hand of fellowship to men who are doing Christ's
+work by their side; they isolate their flocks, as far as possible, from
+intercourse with the Christian communities around them.
+
+This policy on the part of any Christian Church, or Church party, is
+contrary to the mind of Christ and to the example of His apostles. Those
+who hold aloof from the comity of the Churches and prevent the many
+buildings of God's temple being fitly framed together, must bear their
+judgement, whosoever they be. They prefer conquest to peace, but that
+conquest they will never win; it would be fatal to themselves. Let the
+elder sister frankly allow the birthright of the younger sisters of
+Christ's house in these lands, and be our example in justice and in
+charity. Great will be her honour; great the glory won for our common
+Lord.
+
+"Every building fitly framed together _groweth into a holy temple_ in
+the Lord." The subject is distributive; the predicate collective. The
+parts give place to the whole in the writer's mind. As each several
+piece of the structure, each cell or chapel in the temple, spreads out
+to join its companion buildings and adjusts itself to the parts around
+it, the edifice grows into a richer completeness and becomes more fit
+for its sacred purpose. The separate buildings, distant in place or
+historical character, approximate by extension, as they spread over the
+unoccupied ground between them and as the connecting links are
+multiplied. At last a point is reached at which they will become
+continuous. Growing into each other step by step and forming across the
+diminishing distance a web of mutual attachment constantly thickening,
+they will insensibly, by a natural and vital growth, become one in
+visible communion as they are one in their underlying faith.
+
+When each organ of the body in its own degree is perfect and holds its
+place in keeping with the rest, we think no longer of their individual
+perfection, of the charm of this feature or of that; they are forgotten
+in the beauty of the perfect frame. So it will be in the body of Christ,
+when its several communions, cleansed and filled with His Spirit, each
+honouring the vocation of the others, shall in freedom and in love by a
+spontaneous movement be gathered into one. Their strength will then be
+no longer weakened and their spirit chafed by internal conflict. With
+united forces and irresistible energy, they will assail the kingdom of
+darkness and subjugate the world to Christ.
+
+For this consummation our Saviour prayed in the last hours before His
+death: "that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in
+Thee, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that Thou
+didst send me" (John xvii. 21). Did He fear that His little flock of the
+Twelve would be parted by dissensions? Or did He not look onward to the
+future, and see the "offences that must come," the alienations and
+fierce conflicts that would arise amongst His people, and the blood that
+would be shed in His name? Yet beyond these divisions, on the horizon of
+the end of the age, He foresaw the day when the wounds of His Church
+would be healed, when the sword that He had brought on the earth would
+be sheathed, and through the unity of faith and love in His people all
+mankind would at last come to acknowledge Him and the Father who had
+sent Him.
+
+III. To appearance, we are many rather than one who bear the name of
+Christ. But we are one notwithstanding, if below the variety of
+superstructure our faith rests upon the witness of the apostles, and the
+several buildings have Christ Jesus Himself for chief corner-stone. The
+_one foundation_ and the _one Spirit_ constitute the unity of God's
+temple in the Church.
+
+"The apostles and prophets" are named as a single body, _the prophets_
+being doubtless, in this passage and in chapters iii. 5 and iv. 11, the
+existing prophets of the apostolic Church, whose inspired teaching
+supplemented that of the apostles and helped to lay down the foundation
+of revealed truth. That foundation has been, through the providence of
+God, preserved for later ages in the Scriptures of the New Testament, on
+which the faith of Christians has rested ever since. Such a prophet
+Barnabas was in the first days (Acts xiii. 1), and such was the unknown,
+but deeply inspired writer of the epistle to the Hebrews; such prophets,
+again, were SS. Mark and Luke, the Evangelists. Prophecy was not a
+stated gift of office. Just as there were "teachers" in the early Church
+whose knowledge and eloquence did not entitle them to bear rule, so
+prophecy was frequently exercised by private persons and carried with it
+no such official authority as belonged in the highest degree to the
+apostles.
+
+It is thought surprising that St Paul should write thus, in so general
+and distant a fashion, of the order to which he belonged (comp. iii. 5).
+This, it is said, is the language of a later generation, which looks
+back with reverence to the inspired Founders. But this letter is
+written, as we observed at the outset, from a peculiarly objective and
+impersonal standpoint. It differs in this respect from other epistles of
+St Paul. He is addressing a number of Churches, with some of which his
+personal relations were slight and distant. He is contemplating the
+Church in its most general character. He is not the only founder of
+Churches; he is one of a band of colleagues, working in different
+regions. It is natural that he should use the plural here. He sets his
+successors an example of the recognition due to fellow-labourers whose
+work bears the seal of Christ's Spirit.
+
+These men have laid _the foundation_--Peter and Paul, John and James,
+Barnabas and Silas, and the rest. They are our spiritual progenitors,
+the fathers of our faith. We see Jesus Christ through their eyes; we
+read His teaching, and catch His Spirit in their words. Their testimony,
+in its essential facts, stands secure in the confidence of mankind. Nor
+was it their word alone, but the men themselves--their character, their
+life and work--laid for the Church its historical foundation. This
+"glorious company of the apostles" formed the first course in the new
+building, on whose firmness and strength the stability of the entire
+structure depends. Their virtues and their sufferings, as well as the
+revelations made through them, have guided the thoughts and shaped the
+life of countless multitudes of men, of the best and wisest men in all
+ages since. They have fixed the standard of Christian doctrine and the
+type of Christian character. At our best, we are but imitators of them
+as they were of Christ.
+
+In regard to the chief part of their teaching, both as to its meaning
+and authority, the great bulk of Christians in all communions are
+agreed. The keen disputes which engage us upon certain points, testify
+to the cardinal importance which is felt on all hands to attach to the
+words of Christ's chosen apostles. Their living witness is in our midst.
+The self-same Spirit that wrought in them, works amongst men and dwells
+in the communion of saints. He still reveals the things of Christ, and
+guides into truth the willing and obedient.
+
+So "the firm foundation of God standeth"; though men, shaken themselves,
+seem to see it tremble. On that basis we may labour confidently and
+loyally, with those amongst whom the Master has placed us. Some of our
+fellow-workmen disown and would hinder us: that shall not prevent us
+from rejoicing in their good work, and admiring the gold and precious
+stones that they contribute to the fabric. The Lord of the temple will
+know how to use the labour of His many servants. He will forgive and
+compose their strife, who are jealous for His name. He will shape their
+narrow aims to His larger purposes. Out of their discords He will draw a
+finer harmony. As the great house grows to its dimensions, as the
+workmen by the extension of their labours come nearer to each other and
+their sectional plans merge in Christ's great purpose, reproaches will
+cease and misunderstandings vanish. Over many who followed not with us
+and whom we counted but as "strangers and sojourners," as men whose
+place within the walls of Zion was doubtful and unauthorized, we shall
+hereafter rejoice with a joy not unmixed with self-upbraiding, to find
+them in the fullest right our fellow-citizens amongst the saints and of
+the household of God.
+
+The Holy Spirit is the supreme Builder of the Church, as He is the
+supreme witness to Jesus Christ (John xv. 26, 27). The words _in the
+Spirit_, closing the verse with solemn emphasis, denote not the mode of
+God's habitation--that is self-evident--but the agency engaged in
+building this new house of God. With one "chief corner-stone" to rest
+upon and one Spirit to inspire and control them, the apostles and
+prophets laid their foundation and the Church was "builded together" for
+a habitation of God. Hence its unity. But for this sovereign influence
+the primitive founders of Christianity, like later Church leaders, would
+have fallen into fatal discord. Modern critics, reasoning upon natural
+grounds and not understanding the grace of the Holy Spirit, assume that
+they did thus quarrel and contend. Had this been so, no foundation could
+ever have been laid; the Church would have fallen to pieces at the very
+beginning.
+
+In the hands of these faithful and wise stewards of God's dispensation,
+"the stone which the builders rejected was made the head of the corner."
+Their work has been tried by fire and by flood; and it abides. The rock
+of Zion stands unworn by time, unshaken by the conflict of ages,--amidst
+the movements of history and the shifting currents of thought the one
+foundation for the peace and true welfare of mankind.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[91] =Pasa oikodome=, according to the well-established critical
+reading. For =pas= without the article, implying a various whole,
+compare =pases ktiseos= in Col. i. 15; =pasa graphe=, 2 Tim. iii. 16;
+=en pase anastrophe=, 1 Peter i. 15; and =Theos pases charitos=, 1 Peter
+v. 10.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+_THE SECRET OF THE AGES._
+
+    "For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of
+    you Gentiles,--if so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of
+    that grace of God which was given me toward you; how that by
+    revelation was made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in
+    few words, whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding
+    in the mystery of Christ), which in other generations was not made
+    known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto His
+    holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; _to wit_, that the
+    Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and
+    fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
+    whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of that grace
+    of God which was given me according to the working of His power.
+    Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace
+    given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of
+    Christ; and to bring to light what is the dispensation of the
+    mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God who created all
+    things."--EPH. iii. 1-9.
+
+
+Verses 2-13 are in form a parenthesis. They interrupt the prayer which
+appears to be commencing in the first verse and is not resumed until
+verse 14. This intervening period is parenthetical, however, in
+appearance more than in reality. The matter it contains is so weighty
+and so essential to the argument and structure of the epistle, that it
+is impossible to treat it as a mere _aside_. The writer intends, at the
+pause which occurs after the paragraph just concluded (ii. 22), to
+interpose a few words of prayer before passing on to the next topic.
+But in the act of doing so, this subject of which his mind is
+full--viz., that of his own relation to God's great purpose for
+mankind--forces itself upon him; and the prayer that was on his lips is
+pent up for a few moments longer, until it flows forth again, in richer
+measure, in verses 14-19.
+
+Like chapter i. 3-14, this passage is an extreme instance of St Paul's
+amorphous style. His sentences are not composed; they are spun in a
+continuous thread, an endless chain of prepositional, participial, and
+relative adjuncts. They grow under our eyes like living things, putting
+forth new processes every moment, now in this and now in that direction.
+Within the main parenthesis we soon come upon another parenthesis
+including verses 3_b_ and 4 ("as I wrote afore," etc.); and at several
+points the grammatical connexion is uncertain. In its general scope,
+this intricate sentence resolves itself into a statement of _what God
+has wrought in the apostle_ toward the accomplishment of His great plan.
+It thus completes the exposition given already of that which _God
+wrought in Christ for the Church_, and that which _He has wrought
+through Christ in Gentile believers_ in fulfilment of the same end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 1-9 speak (1) of the mystery itself--God's gracious intention
+toward the human race, unknown in earlier times; and (2) of the man to
+whom, above others, it was given to make known the secret.
+
+I. _The mystery_ is defined twice over. First, it consists in the fact
+that "in Christ Jesus through the gospel the Gentiles are co-heirs and
+co-incorporate and co-partners in the promise" (ver. 6); and secondly,
+it is "the unsearchable riches of Christ" (ver. 8). The latter phrase
+gathers to a point what is diversely expressed in the former.
+
+Christ is, to St Paul, the centre and the sum of the mysteries of Divine
+truth, of the whole enigma of existence. In the parallel epistle he
+calls Him "the mystery of God--in whom are all the treasures of wisdom
+and knowledge hidden" (Col. ii. 2, 3: R.V.). The mystery of God,
+discovered in Christ, was hidden out of the sight and reach of previous
+times. Now, by the preaching of the gospel, it is made the common
+property of mankind (Col. i. 25-28).
+
+In close connexion with these statements, St Paul speaks there, as he
+does here, of his own heavy sufferings endured on this account and the
+joy they gave him. He is the instrument of a glorious purpose worthy of
+God; he is the mouthpiece of a revelation waiting to be spoken since the
+world began, that is addressed to all mankind and interests heaven along
+with earth. The greatness of his office is commensurate with the
+greatness of the truth given him to announce.
+
+The mystery, as we have said, consists in _Christ_. This we learned from
+chapter i. 4, 5, and 9, 10. In Christ the Eternal lodged His purpose and
+laid His plans for the world. It is His fulness that the fulness of the
+times dispenses. The Old Testament, the reservoir of previous
+revelation, had Him for its close-kept secret, "held in silence through
+eternal times" (Rom. xvi. 25-27). The drift of its prophecies, the focus
+of its converging lights, the veiled magnet towards which its spiritual
+indications pointed, was "Christ." He "was the spiritual rock that
+followed" Israel in its wanderings, from whose springs the people
+drank, as it answered to the touch of one and now another of the holy
+men of old. The revelation of Jesus Christ gives unity, substance, and
+meaning to the history of Israel, which is otherwise a pathway without
+goal, a problem without solution. Priest and prophet, law and sacrifice;
+the kingly Son of David, and the suffering Servant of Jehovah; the Seed
+of the woman with bruised foot bruising the serpent's head; the Lord
+whom His people seek, suddenly coming to His temple; the Stone hewn from
+the mountains without hands, that grows till it fills the earth--the
+manifold representations of Israel's ideal, centre in the Lord Jesus
+Christ. The lines of the great figure drawn on the canvas of
+prophecy--disconnected as they seemed and without a plan, giving rise to
+a thousand dreams and speculations--are filled out and drawn into shape
+and take life and substance in Him. They are found to be parts of a
+consistent whole, sketches and studies of this fragment or of that
+belonging to the consummate Person and the comprehensive plan manifest
+in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
+
+But while Christ gathers into Himself the accumulated wealth of former
+revelation, His fulness is not measured thereby or exhausted. He solves
+the problems of the past; He unseals the ancient mysteries. But He
+creates new and deeper problems, some explained in the continued
+teaching of His Spirit and His providence, others that remain, or emerge
+from time to time to tax the faith and understanding of His Church.
+There are the mysteries surrounding His own Person, with which the Greek
+Church struggled long--His eternal Sonship, His pre-incarnate relation
+to mankind and the creatures, the final outcome of the mediatorial reign
+and its subordination to the absolute sovereignty of God. These depths
+St Paul sounded with his plummet; but he found them unfathomable.
+Theological science has explored and defined them, and illuminated them
+on many sides, but cannot reach to their inmost mystery. Then there is
+the problem of the atonement, with all the cognate difficulties touching
+the origin of sin, its heredity and its personal guilt, touching the
+adjustment of law and grace, the method of justification, the extent and
+efficacy of Christ's redeeming work, touching the future destiny and
+eternal state of souls. Another class of questions largely occupies the
+minds of thoughtful men to-day. They are studying the relation of Christ
+and His Church to nature and the outward world, the bearings of
+Christian truth upon social conditions, the working of the Spirit of God
+in communities, and the place of man's collective life in the progress
+and upbuilding of the kingdom of Christ.
+
+For such inquiries the Spirit of wisdom and revelation is given to those
+who humbly seek His light. He is given afresh in every age. Out of
+Christ's unsearchable riches ever-new resources are forthcoming at His
+Church's need, new treasures lying hidden in the old for him who can
+extract them. But His riches, however far they are investigated, remain
+unsearchable, and inexhaustible however largely drawn upon. God's ways
+may be tracked further and further in each generation; they will remain
+to the end, as they were to the mind of Paul at the limit of his bold
+researches, "past finding out." The inspired apostle confesses himself a
+child in Divine learning: "We know in part," he says, "we prophesy in
+part." Oh the depths of "hidden wisdom" unimagined now, that are in
+store for us in Christ, "foreordained before the worlds unto our
+glory!"
+
+The particular aspect of the mystery of Christ with which the apostle is
+concerned, is that of His relationship to the Gentile world. "The grace
+of God," he says in verse 2, "was given me _for you_." Such is "the
+dispensation" in which God is now engaged. Upon this lavish and
+undreamed-of scale He is dealing forth salvation to men. St Paul
+describes this revelation of God's goodness to the Gentiles by three
+parallel but distinct terms in verse 6. They "are fellow-heirs"--a word
+that carries us back to chapter i. 11-13, and assures the Gentile
+readers of their final redemption and heavenly glory.[92] They "are of
+the same body"--which sums up all that we have learnt from chapter ii.
+11-22. And they "are fellow-partakers of the promise"--receiving upon a
+footing of equal privilege with Jewish believers the gift of the Spirit
+and the blessings promised to Israel in the Messianic kingdom.
+
+In virtue of the dispensation committed to him, St Paul formally
+proclaims the incorporation of the Gentiles into the body of Christ,
+their investiture with the franchise of faith. The forgiveness of sins
+is theirs, the light of God's smile, the breath of His Spirit, the
+worship and fellowship of His Church, the tasks and honours of His
+service. The incarnation of Christ is theirs; His life, teaching, and
+miracles; His cross is theirs, His resurrection and ascension, and His
+second coming, and the glories of His heavenly kingdom--all made their
+own on the bare condition of a penitent and obedient faith. The past is
+theirs--is ours, along with the present and the future. The God of
+Israel is our God. Abraham is our father, though his sons after the
+flesh acknowledge us not. Their prophets prophesied of the grace that
+should come unto us. Their poets sing the songs of Zion to Gentile
+peoples in a hundred tongues. They lead our prayers and praises. In
+their words we find expression for our heart-griefs and joys. At the
+wedding-feast or by the grave-side, amidst "the multitude that keep holy
+day" and in "dry lands" where the soul thirsts for God's ordinances, we
+carry the Psalmists with us and the teachers of Israel.
+
+What a boundless wealth we Gentiles, taught by Jesus Christ, have
+discovered in the Jewish Bible! When will the Jewish people understand
+that their greatness is in Him, that the light which lightens the
+Gentiles is their true glory? When will they accept their part in the
+riches of which they have made all the world partakers? The mystery of
+our participation in their Christ has now been "revealed to the sons of
+men" long enough. Is it not time that they themselves should see it,
+that the veil should be lifted from the heart of Israel? The disclosure
+was in the first instance so astounding, so contrary to their cherished
+expectations, that one can scarcely wonder if it was at first rejected.
+But God the King of the ages has been asserting and re-asserting the
+fact in the course of history ever since. How vain to fight against Him!
+how useless to deny the victory of the Nazarene!
+
+II. But there was in Israel an election of grace,--men of unveiled heart
+to whom the mystery of ages was disclosed. "The secret of Jehovah is
+with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant." Such is
+the rule of revelation. To the like effect Christ said: "The pure in
+heart shall see God. He that willeth to do His will shall know of the
+doctrine."
+
+The light of God's universal love had come into the world; but where it
+fell on cold or impure hearts, it shone in vain. The mystery "was made
+manifest to His _saints_," writes the apostle in Colossians i. 26. So in
+this passage: "revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets in the
+Spirit." The pure eye sees the true light. This was the condition which
+made it possible for Paul himself and his partners in the gospel to be
+the bearers of this august revelation. It needed sincere and devoted
+men, willing to be taught of God, willing to surrender every prejudice
+and the preconceptions of flesh and blood, in order to receive and
+convey to the world thoughts of God so much larger and loftier than the
+thoughts of men. To such men--true disciples, loyal at all costs to God
+and truth, holy and humble of heart--Jesus Christ gave His great
+commission and bade them "go and make disciples of all the nations."
+
+The secret was further disclosed to Peter, when he was taught at the
+house of Cornelius "not to call any man common or unclean." He saw, and
+the Church of Jerusalem saw and confessed that God "gave the like gift"
+to uncircumcised Gentiles as to themselves and had "purified their
+hearts by faith." Many prophetic voices, unrecorded, confirmed this
+revelation. Of all this Paul is thinking here. It is to his predecessors
+in the knowledge of the truth rather than to himself that he refers when
+he speaks of "holy apostles and prophets" in verse 5. His readers would
+naturally turn to them in coming to this plural expression. The original
+apostles of Jesus and witnesses of His truth first attested the doctrine
+of universal grace; and that they did so was a fact of vital importance
+to Paul and the Gentile Church. The significance of this fact is shown
+by the stress which is laid upon it and the prominence given to it in
+the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles.
+
+The apostle frequently alludes to revelations made to himself; he never
+claims that this chief matter was _revealed_ personally to himself. It
+was an open secret when Saul entered the Church. "Whereof," he says, in
+verse 7, "I _became minister_"; again, "to me was this grace given, to
+_preach to the Gentiles_ Christ's unsearchable riches." The leaders of
+the Jewish Christian Church knew well that their message was meant for
+all the world. But the abstract knowledge of a truth is one thing; the
+practical power to realize it is another. Until the new apostle came
+upon the field, there was no man ready for this great task and equal to
+it. It was at this crisis that Paul was raised up. Then "it pleased God
+to reveal His Son" in him, that he might "preach Him among the
+Gentiles."
+
+The effect of this summons upon Paul himself was overwhelming, and
+continued to be so till the end of life. The immense favour humbles him
+to the dust. He strains language, heaping comparative upon superlative,
+to describe his astonishment as the import of his mission unfolds
+itself: "To me, less than the least of all the saints, was this grace
+given." That Saul the Pharisee and the persecutor, the most unworthy and
+most unlikely of men, should be the chosen vessel to bear Christ's
+riches to the Gentile world, how shall he sufficiently give thanks for
+this! how express his wonder at the unfathomable wisdom and goodness
+that the choice displays in the mind of God! But we can see well that
+this choice was precisely the fittest. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, steeped
+in Jewish traditions and glorying in his sacred ancestry, none knew
+better than the apostle Paul how rich were the treasures stored in the
+house of Abraham that he had to make over to the Gentiles. A true son of
+that house, he was the fittest to lead in the aliens, to show them its
+precious things and make them at home within its walls.
+
+To himself the office was an unceasing delight. The universalism of the
+gospel--a commonplace of our modern rhetoric--had burst upon his mind in
+its unspoilt freshness and undimmed splendour. He is sailing out into an
+undiscovered ocean, with a boundless horizon. A new heaven and earth are
+opened to him in the revelation that the Gentiles are partakers of the
+promise in Christ Jesus. He is entranced, as he writes, with the
+largeness of the Divine purpose, with the magnificent sweep and scope of
+the designs of grace. These verses give us the warm and genuine
+impression made upon the hearts of its first recipients by the
+disclosure of the universal destination of the gospel of Christ.
+
+St Paul's work, in carrying out the dispensation of this mystery, was
+twofold. It was both external and internal. He was a "herald and
+apostle"; he was also "teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth" (1
+Tim. ii. 7). He had in the former capacity to carry the good tidings
+from one end to the other of the Roman empire, to spread it abroad as
+far as his feet could travel and his voice reach, and thus "to fulfil
+the gospel of Christ." But there was another, mental task, as necessary
+and still more difficult, which likewise fell to his lot. He had to
+_think out_ the gospel. It was his office to unfold and apply it to the
+wants of a new world, to solve by its aid the problems that confronted
+him as evangelist and pastor,--questions that contained the seed and
+beginning of the intellectual difficulties of the Church in future
+times. He had to free the gospel from the swaddling-bands of Judaism,
+to emancipate the spirit from the letter of a mechanical and legal
+interpretation. On the other hand, he had equally to guard the truth as
+it is in Jesus from the dissolving influences of Gentile scepticism and
+theosophy. Fighting his way through fierce and incessant opposition on
+both sides, the apostle Paul led the mind of the Church onwards and
+guides it still in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God. These
+noble epistles are the fruit and record of St Paul's theological work.
+Through them he has left a deeper mark on the conscience of the world
+than any one man besides, except the Master of truth who was more than
+man.
+
+The apostle was not unaware of the vast influence he now possessed, and
+that must accrue to him in the future from the transcendent interest of
+the doctrines committed to his charge. There is no false modesty about
+this splendidly gifted man. It is his not only to "preach to the
+Gentiles the good news of Christ's unsearchable riches"; but more than
+that, "to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery that
+has been hidden away from the ages in God who created all things." The
+great secret was out while Saul of Tarsus was still a persecutor and
+blasphemer. But as to the _management_ and _dispensation_ of the
+mystery, the practical handling of it, as to the mode and way in which
+God would convey and apply it to the world at large, and as to the
+bearings and consequences of this momentous truth,--the apostle Paul,
+and no one but he, had all this to expound and set in order. He was, in
+fact, the architect of Christian doctrine.
+
+Theologically, Peter and John himself were Paul's debtors; and are
+included amongst the "all men" of verse 9 (if this reading of the text
+is correct). St John had, it is true, a more direct intuition into the
+mind of Christ and rose to an even loftier height of contemplation; but
+the labours and the logic of St Paul provided the field into which he
+entered in his ripe old age spent at Ephesus. John, who absorbed and
+assimilated everything that belonged to Christ and found for everything
+its principle and centre in the Master of his youth--"the way, the
+truth, and the life"--passed through the school of Paul. With the rest,
+he learnt through the new apostle to see more perfectly "what is the
+dispensation of the mystery hidden from the ages in God."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well persuaded is our apostle that all readers of this letter in the
+Asian towns, if they have not known it before, will now "perceive" his
+"understanding in the mystery of Christ." All ages have discerned it
+since. And the ages to come will measure its value better than we can do
+now.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[92] See Gal. iii. 7, v. 5; Rom. viii. 14-25; 1 Peter i. 4, 5.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+_EARTH TEACHING HEAVEN._
+
+    "To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the
+    heavenly _places_ might be made known through the Church the
+    manifold wisdom of God, according to the purpose of the ages which
+    He formed in the Christ, _even_ Jesus our Lord: in whom we have
+    boldness and access in confidence through our faith in Him.
+    Wherefore I ask that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which
+    are your glory."--EPH. iii. 10-13.
+
+
+_The mystery hidden since the ages began, in God who created all
+things_: so the last paragraph concluded. The added phrase "through
+Jesus Christ" is a comment of the pious reader, that has been
+incorporated in the received text; but it is wanting in the oldest
+copies, and is out of place. The apostle is not concerned with the
+prerogatives of Christ, but with the scope of the Christian economy. He
+is displaying the breadth and grandeur of the dispensation of grace, the
+infinite range of the Divine plans and operations of which it forms the
+centre. Its secret was cherished in the Eternal Mind. Its foundations
+are laid in the very basis of the world. And the disclosure of it now
+being made brings new light and wisdom to the powers of the celestial
+realms.
+
+"There is nothing covered," said Jesus, "which shall not be revealed,
+and hidden which shall not be known." The mysteries which God sets
+before His intelligent creatures, are promises of knowledge; they are
+drafts, to be honoured in due time, upon the treasures of wisdom hidden
+in Christ. So this great secret of the destiny of the Gentile world was
+"from all ages hidden, in order that now through the Church it might be
+made known," and by its means God's wisdom, to these sublime
+intelligences. This intention was a part of the "plan of the ages"
+formed in Christ (ver. 11). God designed by our redemption to bless
+higher races along with our own. The elder sons of God, those "morning
+stars" of creation, are schooled and instructed by what is transpiring
+here upon earth.
+
+To some this will appear to be mere extravagance. They see in such
+expressions the marks of an unrestrained enthusiasm, of theological
+speculation pushed beyond its limits and unchecked by any just knowledge
+of the physical universe. This censure would be plausible and it might
+seem that the apostle had extended the mission of the gospel beyond its
+province, were it not for what he says in verse 11: This "purpose of the
+ages" God "made in _the Christ_, even _Jesus our Lord_." Jesus Christ
+links together angels and men. He draws after Him to earth the eyes of
+heaven. Christ's coming to this world and identification with it unite
+to it enduringly the great worlds above us. The scenes enacted upon this
+planet and the events of its religious history have sent their shock
+through the universe. The incarnation of the Son of God gives to human
+life a boundless interest and significance. It is idle to oppose to this
+conviction the fact of the littleness of the terrestrial globe.
+Spiritual and physical magnitudes are incommensurable. You cannot
+measure a man's soul by the size of his dwelling-house. Science teaches
+us that the most powerful forces may exist and operate within the
+narrowest space. A microscopic cell may contain the potential life of a
+world. If our earth is but a grain of sand to the astronomer, it has
+been the home of Godhead. It is the world for which God spared not to
+give His own Son!
+
+Here, then, lies the centre of the apostle's thoughts in this paragraph:
+_God's all-comprehending purpose in Christ_. The magnitude and
+completeness of this plan are indicated by the fact that it embraces in
+its purview _the angelic powers and their enlightenment_. So
+understanding it, our _human faith gains confidence and courage_ (vv.
+12, 13).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. The textual critics restore the definite article which later copyists
+had dropped before the word _Christ_ in verse 11. We have already
+remarked the frequency of "the Christ" in this epistle.[93] Once besides
+this peculiar combination of the names of our Saviour occurs--in
+Colossians ii. 6, where Lightfoot renders it _the Christ, even Jesus the
+Lord_. So it should be rendered in this place. St Paul sets forth the
+purpose of "God who created all things." He is looking back through "the
+ages" during which the Divine plan was kept secret. God was all the time
+designing His work of mercy, pointing meanwhile the hopes of men by
+token and promise to the Coming One. The Messiah was the burden of those
+prophetic ages. That inscrutable Christ of the Old Testament, the veiled
+mystery of Jewish hope, stands manifested before us and challenges our
+faith in the glorious person of "Jesus our Lord." This singular turn of
+expression identifies the ideal and the real, the promise and
+fulfilment, the dream of Old Testament prophecy and the fact of New
+Testament history. For Jesus our Lord is the very Christ to whom the
+generations before His coming looked forward out of their twilight with
+wistful expectancy.
+
+Not without meaning is He called "Jesus _our Lord_." The "principalities
+and powers" of the heavenly places are in our view (ver. 10). These
+potentates some of the Asian Christians were fain to worship. "See ye do
+it not," Paul seems to say. "Jesus, the Christ of God, is alone our
+Lord; not these. He is our Lord _and theirs_ (i. 21, 22). As our Lord He
+commands their homage, and gives them lessons through His Church in
+God's deep counsels." Everything that the apostle says tends to exalt
+our Redeemer and to enhance our confidence in Him. His position is
+central and supreme, in regard alike to the ages of time and the powers
+of the universe. In His hand is the key to all mysteries. He is the
+Alpha and Omega, the beginning, middle, and end of God's ways. He is the
+centre of Israel, Israel of the world and the human ages; while the
+world of men is bound through Him to the higher spheres of being, over
+which He too presides.
+
+There is a splendid intellectual courage, an incredible boldness and
+reach of thought in St Paul's conception of the sovereignty of Christ.
+Remember that He of whom these things are said, but thirty years before
+died a felon's death in the sight of the Jewish people. It is not _our_
+Lord Jesus Christ, whose name is hallowed by the lips of millions and
+glorified by the triumphs of centuries upon centuries past, but the
+Nazarene with the obscurity of His life and the cruel shame of Calvary
+fresh in the recollection of all men. With what immense force had the
+facts of His glorification wrought upon men's minds--His resurrection
+and ascension, the witness of His Spirit and the virtue of His
+gospel--for it to be possible to speak of Him thus, within a generation
+of His death! While "the foolishness of preaching" such a Christ and the
+weakness in which He was crucified were patent to all eyes, unrelieved
+by the influence of time and the glamour of success, how was it that the
+first believers raised Jesus to this limitless glory and dominion? It
+was through the conviction, certified by outward fact and inward
+experience, that "He liveth by the power of God." Thus Peter on the day
+of Pentecost: "By the right hand of God exalted, He hath shed forth this
+which ye now see and hear." The resurrection from the dead, the
+demonstration of the Spirit proved Jesus Christ to be that which He had
+claimed to be, the Saviour of men and the eternal Son of God.
+
+The supremacy here assigned to Christ is a consequence of the exaltation
+described at the close of the first chapter. There we see the height,
+here the breadth and length of His dominion. If He is raised from the
+grave so high that all created powers and names are beneath His feet, we
+cannot wonder that the past ages were employed in preparing His way,
+that the basis of His throne lies in the foundation of the world.
+
+II. The universe is one. There is a solidarity of rational and moral
+interests amongst all intelligences. Granting the existence of such
+beings as the angels of Scripture, we should expect them to be
+profoundly concerned in the redeeming work of Christ. They are the
+"watchers" and "holy ones" spoken of by the later Isaiah and Daniel,
+whom the Lord has "set upon the walls of Jerusalem" and who survey the
+affairs of nations. Such was "the angel who talked" with Zechariah in
+his vision, and whom the prophet overheard pleading for Jerusalem. In
+the Apocalypse, again, we find the angels acting as God's unseen
+executive. We decline to believe that these superhuman creatures are
+nothing more than apocalyptic machinery, that they are creations of
+fancy employed to give a livelier aspect to spiritual truth. "Cannot I
+pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve
+legions of angels?" So Jesus said, in the most solemn hour of His life.
+And who can forget His tender words concerning the little children,
+whose "angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven"?
+
+The apostle Paul, who denounces "worship of the angels" in the fellow
+epistle to this, earnestly believed in their existence and their
+interest in human affairs. If he did not write the words of Hebrews i.
+14, he certainly held that "they are ministering spirits sent forth to
+do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation." Most
+clearly is their relationship to the Church affirmed by the words of the
+revealing angel to the apostle John: "I am a fellow-servant with thee
+and with thy brethren the prophets, and with them that keep the words of
+this book."
+
+Christ's service is the high school of wisdom for the universe. These
+princes of heaven win by their ministry to Christ and His Church a great
+reward. Their intelligence, however lofty its range, is finite. Their
+keen and burning intuition could not penetrate the mystery of God's
+intentions toward this world. The revelations of the latter days--the
+incarnation, the cross, the publication of the gospel, the outpouring
+of the Spirit--were full of surprises to the heavenly watchers. They
+sang at Bethlehem; they hid their faces and shrouded heaven in blackness
+at the sight of Calvary. They bent down with eager observation and
+searching thought "desiring to look into" the things made known to men
+(1 Peter i. 12),--close and sympathetic students of the Church's
+history. The apostle felt that there were other eyes bent upon him than
+those of his fellow-men, and that he was acting in a grander arena than
+the visible world. "We are a spectacle," he says, "_to angels_ and to
+men." So he enjoins faithfulness on Timothy, and with Timothy on all who
+bear the charge of the gospel, "before God and Christ Jesus, and the
+elect angels." What is public opinion, what the applause or derision of
+the crowd, to him who lives and acts in the presence of these august
+spectators?
+
+"Through the Church," we are told, the angels of God are "now" having
+His "manifold wisdom made known" to them. It is not from the abstract
+scheme of salvation, from the theory or theology of the Church that they
+get this education, but through the living Church herself. The Saviour's
+mission to earth created a problem for them, the development of which
+they follow with the most intense and sympathetic interest. With what
+solicitude they watch the conflict between good and evil and the varying
+progress of Christ's kingdom amongst men! Many things, doubtless, that
+engage our attention and fill a large space in our Church records, are
+of little account with them; and much that passes in obscurity, names
+and deeds unchronicled by fame, are written in heaven and pondered in
+other spheres. No brave and true blow is struck in Christ's battle, but
+it has the admiration of these high spectators. No advance is made in
+character and habit, in Christian intelligence and efficiency and the
+application of the gospel to human need, but they notice and approve.
+When the cause of the Church and the salvation of mankind go forward,
+when righteousness and peace triumph, the morning stars sing together
+and the sons of God shout for joy. The joy that there is in the presence
+of the angels of God over the repenting sinner, is not the joy of
+sympathy or pity only; it is the delight of growing wisdom, of deepening
+insight into the ways of God, into the heart of the Father and the love
+that passes knowledge.
+
+One would suppose from what the apostle hints, that our world presents a
+problem unique in the kingdom of God, one which raises questions more
+complicated and crucial than have elsewhere arisen. The heavenly
+princedoms are learning through the Church "the _manifold_ wisdom of
+God." His love, in its pure essence, those happy and godlike beings
+know. They have lived for ages in its unclouded light. His power and
+skill they may see displayed in proportions immensely grander than this
+puny globe of ours presents. God's justice, it may be, and the thunders
+of His law have issued forth in other regions clothed with a splendour
+of which the scenes of Sinai were but a faint emblem. It is in the
+combination of the manifold principles of the Divine government that the
+peculiarity of the human problem appears to lie. The delicate and
+continuous balancing of forces in God's plan of dealing with this world,
+the reconciliation of seeming incompatibilities, the issue found from
+positions of hopeless contradiction, the accord of goodness with
+severity, of inflexible rectitude and truth with fatherly compassion,
+afford to the greatest minds of heaven a spectacle and a study
+altogether wonderful. So amongst ourselves the child of a noble house,
+reared in cultured ease and shielded from moral peril, in visiting the
+homes of poverty in the crowded city finds a new world opened to him,
+that can teach him Divine lessons if he has the heart to learn. His mind
+is awakened, his sympathies enriched. He hears the world's true voice,
+"the still, sad music of humanity." He measures the heights and depths
+of man's nature. A host of questions are thrust upon him, whose urgency
+he had scarcely guessed; and wide ranges of truth are lighted up for
+him, which before were distant and unreal. The highest have ever to
+learn from the lowest in Christ's school, the seeming-wise from the
+simple; even the pure and good, from contact with the fallen whom they
+seek to save.
+
+And "the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places" are, it
+seems, willing to learn from those below them. As they traced the course
+of human history in those "eternal times" during which the mystery lay
+wrapped in silence, the angel watchers were too wise to play the
+sceptic, too cautious to criticize an unfinished plan and arraign a
+justice they could not yet understand. With a dignified patience they
+waited the uplifting of the curtain and the unravelling of the entangled
+plot. They looked for the coming of the Promised One. So in due time
+they witnessed and, for their reward, assisted in His manifestation.
+With the same docility these high sharers of our theological inquiries
+still wait to see the end of the Lord and to take their part in the
+denouement of the time-drama, in the revelation of the sons of God. Let
+us copy their long patience. God has not made us to mock us. "What thou
+knowest not now," said the great Revealer, the Master of all mysteries,
+to His disciple, "thou shalt know hereafter."
+
+These wise elder brothers of ours, rich in the lore of eternity, foresee
+the things to come as we cannot do. They are far above the smoke and
+dust of the earthly conflict. The doubts that shake the strongest souls
+amongst us, the cries of the hour which confuse and deceive us, do not
+trouble them. They behold us in our weakness, our fears and our
+divisions; but they also look on Him who "sits expecting till His
+enemies are made His footstool." They see how calmly He sits, how
+patiently expectant, while the sound of clashing arms and the rage and
+tumult of the peoples go up from the earth. They mark the steadiness
+with which through century after century, in spite of refluent waves,
+the tide of mercy rises, and still rises on the shores of earth.
+Thrones, systems, civilizations have gone down; one after another of the
+powers that strove to crush or to corrupt Christ's Church has
+disappeared; and still the name of Jesus lives and spreads. It has
+traversed every continent and sea; it stands at the head of the living
+and moving forces of the world. Those who come nearest to the angelic
+point of view, and judge of the progress of things not by the froth upon
+the surface but by the trend of the deeper currents, are the most
+confident for the future of our race. The kingdom of Satan will not fall
+without a struggle--a last struggle, perhaps more furious than any in
+the past--but it is doomed, and waning to its end. So far has the
+kingdom of Christ advanced, so mightily does the word of God grow and
+prevail in the earth, that faith may well assure itself of the promised
+triumph. Soon we shall shout: "Alleluia! The Lord God Omnipotent
+reigneth!"
+
+III. Suddenly, according to his wont, the apostle drops down from the
+heights of contemplation to the level of ordinary fact. He descends in
+verse 12 from the thought of the eternal purpose and the education of
+the angels to the struggling Church. The assurance of its life in the
+Spirit corresponds to the grandeur of that Divine order to which it
+belongs. "In whom," he says--in this Christ, the revealed mystery of
+ages past, the Teacher of angels and archangels--"we have our freedom
+and confident access to God through faith in Him."
+
+If it be "Jesus our Lord" to whom these attributes belong, and He is not
+ashamed of us, well may we draw near with _confidence_ to the Father,
+unashamed in the presence of His holy angels. We have no need to be
+abashed, if we approach the Divine Majesty with a true faith in Christ.
+His name gives the sinner access to the holiest place. The cherubim
+sheathe their swords of flame. The heavenly warders at this passport
+open the golden gates. We "come unto Mount Sion, the city of the living
+God, and to an innumerable company of angels." Not one of these
+mightinesses and ancient peers of heaven, not Gabriel or Michael
+himself, would wish or dare to bar our entrance.
+
+"We _have_ boldness and access," says the apostle, as in chapter i. 7:
+"We have redemption in His blood." He insists upon the conscious fact.
+This freedom of approach to God, this sonship of faith, is no hope or
+dream of what may be; it is a present reality, a filial cry heard in a
+multitude both of Gentile and Jewish hearts (comp. ii. 18).
+
+This sentence exhibits the richness of synonyms characteristic of the
+epistle. There is _boldness_ and _access_, _confidence_ as well as
+_faith_. The three former terms Bengel nicely distinguishes: "libertatem
+_oris_ in orando," and "admissionem in fiducia _in re_, et
+_corde_"--freedom of _speech_ (in prayer), of _status_, and of
+_feeling_. The second word (as in chapter ii. 18 and Romans v. 2)
+appears to be active rather than passive in its force, denoting
+_admittance_ rather than _access_. So that while the former of the
+parallel terms (_boldness_) describes the liberty with which the
+new-born Church of the redeemed address themselves to God the Father and
+the unchecked freedom of their petitions, the latter (_admittance_)
+takes us back to the act of Christ by which He introduced us to the
+Father's presence and gave us the place of sons in the house. Being thus
+admitted, we may come with confidence of heart, though we be less than
+the least of saints. Accepted in the Beloved, we are within our right if
+we say to the Father:--
+
+    "Yet in Thy Son divinely great,
+    We claim Thy providential care.
+    Boldly we stand before Thy seat;
+    Our Advocate hath placed us there!"
+
+"Wherefore," concludes the imprisoned apostle, "I beg you not to lose
+heart at my afflictions for you." Assuredly Paul did not pray that _he_
+should not lose heart, as some interpret his meaning. But he knew how
+his friends were fretting and wearying over his long captivity. Hence he
+writes to the Philippians: "I would have you know that the things which
+have happened to me have turned out rather to the furtherance of the
+gospel." Hence, too, he assures the Colossians earnestly of his joy in
+suffering for their sake (ch. i. 24).
+
+The Church was fearful for Paul's life and distressed by his prolonged
+sufferings. It missed his cheering presence and the inspiration of his
+voice. But if the Church is so dear to God as the pages of this letter
+show, and grounded in His eternal purposes, then let all friends of
+Christ take courage. The ark freighted with such fortunes cannot sink.
+St Paul is a martyr for Christ, and for Gentile Christendom! Every
+stroke that falls upon him, every day added to the months of his
+imprisonment helps to show the worth of the cause he has espoused and
+gives to it increased lustre: "my afflictions for you, which are your
+glory."
+
+Those that love him should _boast_ rather than grieve over his
+afflictions. "We make our boast in you amongst the Churches of God," he
+wrote to the distressed Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 4), "for your patience
+and faith in all your persecutions and afflictions"; so he would have
+the Churches think of him. When good men suffer in a good cause, it is
+not matter for pity and dread, but rather for a holy pride.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[93] See note on p. 47; also pp. 83, 189.
+
+
+
+
+_PRAYER AND PRAISE._
+
+CHAPTER iii. 14-21.
+
+    =To hyperechon tes gnoseos Christou Iesou tou Kyriou mou.=--PHIL.
+    iii. 8.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+_THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST._
+
+    "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every
+    family in heaven and upon earth is named, that He would grant you,
+    according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened
+    with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that the Christ may
+    dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted
+    and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the
+    saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth."--EPH.
+    iii. 14-18.
+
+
+In verse 14 the prayer is resumed which the apostle was about to offer
+at the beginning of the chapter, when the current of his thoughts
+carried him away. The supplication is offered "for this cause" (vv. 1,
+14),--it arises out of the teaching of the preceding pages. Thinking of
+all that God has wrought in the Christ, and has accomplished by means of
+His gospel in multitudes of Gentiles as well as Jews, reconciling them
+to Himself in one body and forming them together into a temple for His
+Spirit, the apostle bows his knees before God on their behalf. So much
+he had in mind, when at the end of the second chapter he was in act to
+pray for the Asian Christians that they might be enabled to enter into
+this far-reaching purpose. Other aspects of the great design of God rose
+upon the writer's mind before his prayer could find expression. He has
+told us of his own part in disclosing it to the world, and of the
+interest it excites amongst the dwellers in heavenly places,--thoughts
+full of comfort for the Gentile believers troubled by his imprisonment
+and continued sufferings. These further reflections add new meaning to
+the "For this cause" repeated from verse 1.
+
+The prayer which he offers here is no less remarkable and unique in his
+epistles than the act of praise in chapter i. Addressing himself to God
+as the Father of angels and of men, the apostle asks that He will endow
+the readers in a manner corresponding to _the wealth of His glory_--in
+other words, that the gifts He bestows may be worthy of the universal
+Father, worthy of the august character in which God has now revealed
+Himself to mankind. According to this measure, St Paul beseeches for the
+Church, in the first instance, two gifts, which after all are
+one,--viz., _the inward strength of the Holy Spirit_ (ver. 16), and _the
+permanent indwelling of Christ_ (ver. 17). These gifts he asks on his
+readers' behalf with a view to their gaining two further blessings,
+which are also one,--viz., _the power to understand the Divine plan_
+(ver. 18) as it has been expounded in this letter, and so _to know the
+love of Christ_ (ver. 19). Still, beyond these there rises in the
+distance a further end for man and the Church: _the reception of the
+entire fulness of God_. Human desire and thought thus reach their limit;
+they grasp at the infinite.
+
+In this Chapter we will strive to follow the apostle's prayer to the end
+of the eighteenth verse, where it arrives at its chief aim and touches
+the main thought of the epistle, expressing the desire that all
+believers may have power to realize the full scope of the salvation of
+Christ in which they participate.
+
+Let us pause for a moment to join in St Paul's invocation: "I bow my
+knees to the Father, of whom [not _the whole family_, but] _every
+family_ in heaven and upon earth is named." The point of St Paul's
+original phrase is somewhat lost in translation. The Greek word for
+_family_ (_patria_) is based on that for _father_ (_pater_). A
+distinguished father anciently gave his name to his descendants; and
+this paternal name became the bond of family or tribal union, and the
+title which ennobled the race. So we have "the sons of Israel," the
+"sons of Aaron" or "of Korah"; and in Greek history, the Atridae, the
+Alcmaeonidae, who form a family of many kindred households--a _clan_, or
+_gens_, designated by their ancestral head. Thus Joseph (in Luke ii. 4)
+is described as "being of the house and family [_patria_] of David"; and
+Jesus is "the Son of David." Now Scripture speaks also of _sons of God_;
+and these of two chief orders. There are those "in heaven," who form a
+race distinct from ourselves in origin--divided, it may be, amongst
+themselves into various orders and dwelling in their several homes in
+the heavenly places.
+
+Of these are "the sons of God" whom the Book of Job pictures appearing
+in the Divine court and forming a "family in heaven." When Christ
+promises (Luke xx. 36) that His disciples in their immortal state will
+be "equal to the angels," because they are "sons of God," it is implied
+that the angels are already and by birthright sons of God. Hence in
+Hebrews xii. 22, 23 the angels are described as "the festal gathering
+and assembly of _the firstborn_ enrolled in heaven." We, the sons of
+Adam, with our many tribes and kindreds, through Jesus Christ our Elder
+Brother constitute a new family of God. God becomes our Name-father, and
+permits us also to call ourselves His sons through faith. Thus the
+Church of believers in the Son of God constitutes the "family on earth
+named" from the same Father who gave His name to the holy angels, our
+wise and strong and brilliant elder brothers. They and we are alike
+God's offspring. Heaven and earth are kindred spheres.
+
+This passage gives to God's Fatherhood the same extension that chapter
+i. 21 has given to Christ's Lordship. Every order of creaturely
+intelligence acknowledges God for the Author of its being, and bows to
+Christ as its sovereign Lord. In God's name of Father the entire wealth
+of love that streams forth from Him through endless ages and unmeasured
+worlds is hidden; and in the name of sons of God there is contained the
+blessedness of all creatures that can bear His image.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. What, therefore, shall the universal Father be asked to give to His
+needy children upon earth? They have newly learnt His name; they are
+barely recovered from the malady of their sin, fearful of trial, weak to
+meet temptation. _Strength_ is their first necessity: "I bow my knees to
+the Father of heaven and earth, praying that He may grant you, according
+to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by the entering of the
+Spirit into your inward man." The apostle asked them in verse 13, in
+view of the greatness of his own calling, to be of good courage on his
+account; now he entreats God so to reveal to them His glory and to pour
+into their hearts His Spirit, that no weakness and fear may remain in
+them. The _strengthening_ of which he speaks is the opposite of the
+_faintness of heart_, the failure of courage deprecated in verse 13.
+Using the same word, the apostle bids the Corinthians "Quit themselves
+like men, _be strong_" (1 Ep. xvi. 13). He desires for the Asian
+believers a manful heart, the strength that meets battle and danger
+without quailing.
+
+The source of this strength is not in ourselves. We are to be
+"strengthened _with_ [or _by_] _power_,"--by "the power" of God "working
+in us" (ver. 20), the very same "power, exceeding great," that raised
+Jesus our Lord from the dead (i. 19). This superhuman might of God
+operating in men is always referred to the Holy Spirit: "by power made
+strong," he says, "_through the Spirit_." Nothing is more familiar in
+Scripture than the conception of the indwelling Spirit of God as the
+source of moral strength. The special power that belongs to the gospel
+Christ ascribes altogether to this cause. "Ye shall receive power," He
+said to His disciples, "after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you."
+Hence is derived the vigour of a strong faith, the valour of the good
+soldier of Christ Jesus, the courage of the martyrs, the cheerful and
+indomitable patience of multitudes of obscure sufferers for
+righteousness' sake. There is a great truth expressed when we describe a
+brave and enterprising man as a _man of spirit_. All high and commanding
+qualities of soul come from this invisible source. They are
+inspirations. In the human will, with its _vis vivida_, its elasticity
+and buoyancy, its steadfastness and resolved purpose, is the highest
+type of force and the image of the almighty Will. When that will is
+animated and filled with "the Spirit," the man so possessed is the
+embodiment of an inconceivable power. Firm principle, hope and
+constancy, self-mastery, superiority to pleasure and pain,--all the
+elements of a noble courage are proper to the man of the Spirit. Such
+power is not neutralized by our infirmities; it asserts itself under
+their limiting conditions and makes them its contributories. "My grace
+is sufficient for thee," said Christ to His disabled servant; "for
+power is perfected in weakness." In privation and loneliness, in old age
+and bodily decay, the strength of God in the human spirit shines with
+its purest lustre. Never did St Paul rise to such a height of moral
+ascendency as at the time when he was "smitten down" and all but
+destroyed by persecution and affliction. "That the excellency of the
+power," he says, "may be of God, and not from ourselves" (2 Cor. iv.
+7-11).
+
+The apostle points to "the inner man" as the seat of this invigoration,
+thinking perhaps of its secrecy. While the world buffets and dismays the
+Christian, new vigour and joy are infused into his soul. The surface
+waters and summer brooks of comfort fail; but there opens in the heart a
+spring fed by the river of life proceeding from the throne of God.
+Beneath the toil-worn frame, the mean attire and friendless condition of
+the prisoner Paul--a mark for the world's scorn--there lives a strength
+of thought and will mightier than the empire of the Caesars, a power of
+the Spirit that is to dominate the centuries to come. Of this omnipotent
+power dwelling in the Church of God, the apostle prays that every one of
+his readers may partake.
+
+II. Parallel to the first petition, and in substance identical with it,
+is the second: "that the Christ may make His dwelling through faith in
+your hearts." Such, it seems to us, is the relation of verses 16 and 17.
+Christ's residence in the heart is to be viewed neither as the result,
+nor the antecedent of the strength given by the Spirit to the inward
+man: the two are simultaneous; they are the same things seen in a
+varying light.
+
+We observe in this prayer the same vein of Trinitarian thought which
+marks the doxology of chapter i., and other leading passages in this
+epistle.[94] The Father, the Spirit, and the Christ are unitedly the
+object of the apostle's devout supplication.
+
+As in the previous clause, the verb of verse 17 bears emphasis and
+conveys the point of St Paul's entreaty; he asks that "the Christ may
+_take up His abode_,--may _settle_ in your hearts." The word signifies
+to _set up one's house_ or _make one's home_ in a place, by way of
+contrast with a temporary and uncertain sojourn (comp. ii. 19). The same
+verb in Colossians ii. 9 asserts that in Christ "_dwells_ all the
+fulness of the Godhead"; and in Colossians i. 19 it declares, used in
+the same tense as here, how it was God's "pleasure that all the fulness
+should _make its dwelling_ in Him" now raised from the dead, who had
+emptied and humbled Himself to fulfil the purpose of the Father's love.
+So it is desired that Christ should take His seat within us. He is never
+again to stand at the door and knock, nor to have a doubtful and
+disputed footing in the house. Let the Master come in, and claim His
+own. Let Him become the heart's fixed tenant and full occupier. Let Him,
+if He will thus condescend, make Himself at home within us and there
+rest in His love. For He promised: "If any man love me, my Father will
+love him; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
+
+And "_the_ Christ," not Christ alone. Why does the apostle say this?
+There is a reason for the definite article, as we have found
+elsewhere.[95] The apostle is asking for his Asian brethren something
+beyond that possession of Christ which belongs to every true
+Christian,--more even than the permanence and certainty of this
+indwelling indicated by the verb. "The Christ" is Christ in the
+significance of His _name_. It is Christ not only possessed, but
+understood,--Christ realized in the import of His work, in the light of
+His relationship to the Father and the Spirit, and to men. It is the
+Christ of the Church and the ages--known and accepted for all this--that
+St Paul would fain have dwelling in the heart of each of his Gentile
+disciples. He is endeavouring to raise them to an adequate comprehension
+of the greatness of the Redeemer's person and offices; he longs to have
+their minds possessed by his own views of Christ Jesus the Lord.
+
+_The heart_, in the language of the Bible, never denotes the emotional
+nature by itself. The antithesis of "heart and head," the divorce of
+feeling and understanding in our modern speech is foreign to Scripture.
+The heart is our interior, conscious self--thought, feeling, will in
+their personal unity. It needs the whole Christ to fill and rule the
+whole heart,--a Christ who is the Lord of the intellect, the Light of
+the reason, no less than the Master of the feelings and desires.
+
+The difference in significance between "Christ" or "Christ Jesus" and
+"the Christ" in such a sentence as this, is not unlike the difference
+between "Queen Victoria" and "the Queen." The latter phrase brings Her
+Majesty before us in the grandeur and splendour of her Queenship. We
+think of her vast dominion, of her line of royal and famous ancestry, of
+her beneficent and memorable reign. So, to know the Christ is to
+apprehend Him in the height of His Godhead, in the breadth of His
+humanity, in the plenitude of His nature and His powers. And this is the
+object to which the teaching and the prayers of St Paul for the Churches
+at the present time are directed. Understanding in this larger sense the
+indwelling of the Christ for which he prays, we see how naturally his
+supplication expands into the "height and depth" of the ensuing verse.
+
+But however large the mental conception of Christ that St Paul desires
+to impart to us, it is to be grasped "through faith." All real
+understanding and appropriation of Christ, the simplest and the most
+advanced, come by this channel,--through the faith of the heart in which
+knowledge, will and feeling blend in that one act of trustful
+apprehension of the truth concerning Jesus Christ by which the soul
+commits itself to Him.
+
+How much is contained in this petition of the apostle that we need to
+ask for ourselves, Christ Jesus dwells now as then in the hearts of all
+who love Him. But how little do we know our heavenly Guest! how poor a
+Christ is ours, compared to the Christ of Paul's experience! how slight
+and empty a word is His name to multitudes of those who bear it! If men
+have once attained a sense of His salvation, and are satisfied of their
+interest in His atonement and their right to hope for eternal life
+through Him, their minds are at rest. They have accepted Christ and
+received what He has to give them; they turn their attention to other
+things. They do not love Christ enough to study Him. They have other
+mental interests,--scientific, literary, political or industrial; but
+the knowledge of Christ has no intellectual attraction for them. With St
+Paul's passionate ardour, the ceaseless craving of his mind to "know
+Him," these complacent believers have no sympathy whatever. This, they
+think, belongs only to a few, to men of metaphysical bias or of
+religious genius like the great apostle. Theology is regarded as a
+subject for specialists. The laity, with a lamentable and disastrous
+neglect, leave the study of Christian doctrine to the ministry. The
+Christ cannot take His due place in His people's heart, He will not
+reveal to them the wealth of His glory, while they know so little and
+care to know so little of Him. How many can be found, outside the ranks
+of the ordained, that make a sacrifice of other favourite pursuits to
+meditate on Christ? what prosperous merchant, what active man of affairs
+is there who will spare an hour each day from his other gains "for the
+excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord"?--"If at the
+present time the religious life of the Church is languid, and if in its
+enterprises there is little of audacity and vehemence, a partial
+explanation is to be found in that decline of intellectual interest in
+the contents of the Christian Faith which has characterized the last
+hundred or hundred and fifty years of our history."[96]
+
+It is a knowledge that when pursued grows upon the mind without limit.
+St Paul, who knew so much, for that reason felt that all he had attained
+was but in the bud and beginning. "The Christ" is a subject infinite as
+nature, large and wide as history. With our enlarged apprehension of
+Him, the heart enlarges in capacity and moral power. Not unfrequently,
+the study of Christ in Scripture and experience gives to unlettered men,
+to men whose mind before their conversion was dull and uninformed, an
+intellectual quality, a power of discernment and apprehension that
+trained scholars might envy. By such thoughtful, constant fellowship
+with Him the vigour of spirit and courage in affliction are sustained,
+that the apostle first asked from God on behalf of his anxious Gentile
+friends.
+
+III. The prayers now offered might suffice, if St Paul were concerned
+only for the individual needs of those to whom he writes and their
+personal advancement in the new life. But it is otherwise. _The Church_
+fills his mind. Its lofty claims at every turn he has pressed on our
+attention. This is God's holy temple and the habitation of His Spirit;
+it is the body in which Christ dwells, the bride that He has chosen. The
+Church is the object that draws the eyes of heaven; through it the
+angelic powers are learning undreamed-of lessons of God's wisdom. Round
+this centre the apostle's intercession must needs revolve. When he asks
+for his readers added strength of heart and a richer fellowship with
+Christ, it is in order that they may be the better able to enter into
+the Church's life and to apprehend God's great designs for mankind.
+
+This object so much absorbs the writer's thoughts and has been so
+constantly in view from the outset, that it does not occur to him, in
+verse 18, to say precisely _what_ that is whose "breadth and length and
+height and depth" the readers are to measure. The vast building stands
+before us and needs not to be named; we have only not to look away from
+it, not to forget what we have been reading all this time. It is _God's
+plan for the world in Christ_; it is the purpose of the ages realized in
+the building of His Church. This conception was so impressive to the
+original readers and has held their attention so closely since the
+apostle unfolded it in the course of the second chapter, that they would
+have no difficulty in supplying the ellipsis which has given so much
+trouble to the commentators since.
+
+If we are asked to interpret the four several magnitudes that are
+assigned to this building of God, we may say with Hofmann[97]: "It
+stretches _wide_ over all the world of the nations, east and west. In
+its _length_, it reaches through all time unto the end of things. In
+_depth_, it penetrates to the region where the faithful sleep in death
+[comp. iv. 9]. And it rises to heaven's _height_, where Christ lives."
+In the like strain Bernardine a Piconio, most genial and spiritual of
+Romanist interpreters: "_Wide_ as the furthest limits of the inhabited
+world, _long_ as the ages of eternity through which God's love to His
+people will endure, _deep_ as the abyss of misery and ruin from which He
+has raised us, _high_ as the throne of Christ in the heavens where He
+has placed us." Such is the commonwealth to which we belong, such the
+dimensions of this city of God built on the foundation of the
+apostles,--"that lieth four-square."
+
+Do we not need to be _strong_--to "gain full strength," as the apostle
+prays, in order to grasp in its substance and import this immense
+revelation and to handle it with practical effect? Narrowness is
+feebleness. The greatness of the Church, as God designed it, matches the
+greatness of the Christ Himself. It needs a firm spiritual faith, a
+far-seeing intelligence, and a charity broad as the love of Christ to
+comprehend this mystery. From many believing eyes it is still hidden.
+Alas for our cold hearts, our weak and partial judgements! alas for the
+materialism that infects our Church theories, and that limits God's free
+grace and the sovereign action of His Spirit to visible channels and
+ministrations "wrought by hand." Those who call themselves Churchmen
+and Catholics contradict the titles they boast when they bar out their
+loyal Christian brethren from the covenant rights of faith, when they
+deny churchly standing to communities with a love to Christ as warm and
+fruitful in good works, a gospel as pure and saving, a discipline at
+least as faithful as their own. Who are we that we dare to forbid those
+who are doing mighty works in the name of Christ, because they follow
+not with us? When we are fain to pull down every building of God that
+does not square with our own ecclesiastical plans, we do not apprehend
+"what is the breadth!"
+
+We draw close about us the walls of Christ's wide house, as if to
+confine Him in our single chamber. We call our particular communion "the
+Church," and the rest "the sects"; and disfranchise, so far as our word
+and judgement go, a multitude of Christ's freemen and God's elect, our
+fellow-citizens in the New Jerusalem--saints, some of them, whose feet
+we well might deem ourselves unworthy to wash. A Church theory that
+leads to such results as these, that condemns Nonconformists to be
+strangers in the House of God, is self-condemned. It will perish of its
+own chillness and formalism. Happily, many of those who hold the
+doctrine of exclusive Roman or Anglican, or Baptist or Presbyterian
+legitimacy, are in feeling and practice more catholic than in their
+creed.
+
+"With _all_ the saints" the Asian Christians are called to enter into St
+Paul's wider view of God's work in the world. For this is a collective
+idea, to be shared by many minds and that should sway all Christian
+hearts at once. It is the collective aim of Christianity that St Paul
+wants his readers to understand, its mission to save humanity and to
+reconstruct the world for a temple of God. This is a calling for _all
+the saints_; but only for _saints_,--for men devoted to God and renewed
+by His Spirit. It was "revealed to His _holy_ apostles and prophets"
+(ver. 5); and it needs men of the same quality for its bearers and
+interpreters.
+
+But the first condition for this largeness of sympathy and aim is that
+stated at the beginning of the verse, thrown forward there with an
+emphasis that almost does violence to grammar: "in love being fast
+rooted and grounded." Where Christ dwells abidingly in the heart, love
+enters with Him and becomes the ground of our nature, the basis on which
+our thought and action rest, the soil in which our purposes grow. _Love_
+is the mark of the true Broad Churchman in all Churches, the man to whom
+Christ is all things and in all, and who, wherever he sees a Christlike
+man, loves him and counts him a brother.
+
+When such love to Christ fills all our hearts and penetrates to their
+depths, we shall have strength to shake off our prejudices, strength to
+master our intellectual difficulties and limitations. We shall have the
+courage to adopt Christ's simple rule of fellowship: "Whosoever shall
+do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister,
+and mother."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[94] See ch. i. 17, ii. 18, 22, and especially ch. iv. 4-6.
+
+[95] See pp. 47, 83, 169.
+
+[96] _Lectures on Ephesians_, pp. 235-8. No one who has read Dr. R. W.
+Dale's noble Lectures on this epistle, can write upon the same subject
+without being deeply in his debt.
+
+[97] _Der Brief Pauli an die Epheser_, p. 138. Hofmann is one of those
+writers from whom one constantly learns, although one must as often
+differ from him as agree with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+_KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE._
+
+    "[I pray] that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong
+    to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and
+    height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth
+    knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God."--EPH.
+    iii. 17-19.
+
+
+We were compelled to pause before reaching the end of the apostle's
+comprehensive prayer. But we must not let slip the thread of its
+connexion. Verse 19 is the necessary sequel and counterpart of verse 18.
+The catholic love which embraces "all the saints" and "comprehends" in
+its wide dimensions the extent of the Redeemer's kingdom, admits us to a
+deeper knowledge of Christ's own love. The breadth and length, the
+height and depth of the work of Christ in men and the ages give us a
+worthier conception of the love that inspired and sustains it. "In the
+Church" at once "and in Christ Jesus" God's glory is revealed. Our
+Church views react upon our views of Christ and our sense of His love.
+Bigotry and exclusiveness towards His brethren chill the heart towards
+Himself. Our sectarianism stints and narrows our apprehensions of the
+Divine grace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. St Paul prays that we may "_know_ [not _comprehend_] the love of
+Christ"; for it "passes knowledge." Amongst the Greek words denoting
+mental activity, that here employed signifies knowledge in the
+acquisition rather than possession--_getting to know_. Hence it is
+rightly, and often used of things Divine that "we know in part," our
+knowledge of which falls short of the reality while it is growing up to
+it. Thus understood, the contradiction of the apostle's wish disappears.
+We know the unknowable, just as we "clearly see the invisible things of
+God" (Rom. i. 20). The idea is conveyed of an object that invites our
+observation and pursuit, but which at every step outreaches
+apprehension, each discovery revealing depths within it unperceived
+before. Such was the knowledge of Christ to the soul of St Paul. To the
+Philippians the aged apostle writes: "I do not reckon myself to have
+apprehended Him. I am in pursuit! I forget the past; I press on eagerly
+to the goal. I have but one object in view and sacrifice everything for
+it,--that I may _win Christ_!"
+
+In all the mystery of Christ, there is nothing more wonderful and past
+finding out than His love. For nigh thirty years Paul has been living in
+daily fellowship with the love of Christ, his heart full of it and all
+the powers of his mind bent upon its comprehension: he cannot understand
+it yet! At this moment it amazes him more than ever.
+
+Great as the Christian community is, and large as the place and part
+assigned to it by this epistle, that is still finite and a creation of
+time. The apostle's doctrine of the Church is not beyond the
+comprehension of a mind sufficiently loving and enlightened. But though
+we had followed him so far and had well and truly apprehended the
+mystery he has revealed to us, the love of Christ is still beyond us.
+Our principles of judgement and standards of comparison fail us when
+applied to this subject. Human love has in many instances displayed
+heroic qualities; it can rise to a divine height of purity and
+tenderness; but its noblest sacrifices will not bear to be put by the
+side of the cross of Christ. No picture of that love but shows poor and
+dull compared with the reality; no eloquence lavished upon it but lowers
+the theme. Our logical framework of doctrine fails to enclose and hold
+it; the love of Christ defies analysis and escapes from all our
+definitions. Those who know the world best, who have ranged through
+history and philosophy and the life of living men and have measured most
+generously the possibilities of human nature, are filled with a
+wondering reverence when they come to know the love of Christ. "Never
+man spake like this man," said one; but verily never man loved like
+Jesus Christ. He expects to be loved more than father or mother; for His
+love surpasses theirs. We cannot describe His love, nor delineate its
+features as Paul saw them when he wrote these lines. Go to the Gospels,
+and behold it as it lived and wrought for men. Stand and watch at the
+cross. Then if the eyes of your heart are open, you will see the great
+sight--the love that passeth knowledge.
+
+When, turning from Christ Himself in His own person and presence, before
+whom praise is speechless, we contemplate the manifestations of His love
+to mankind; when we consider that its fountain lies in the bosom of the
+Eternal; when we trace its footsteps prepared from the world's
+foundation, and perceive it choosing a people for its own and making its
+promises and raising up its heralds and forerunners; when at last it can
+hide and refrain itself no longer, but comes forth incarnate with lowly
+heart to take our infirmities and carry our diseases--yea, to put away
+our sin by the sacrifice of itself; when we behold that same Love which
+the hands of men had slain, setting up its cross for the sign of its
+covenant of peace with mankind, and enthroned in the majesty of heaven
+waiting even as a bridegroom joyously for the time when its ransomed
+shall be brought home, redeemed from iniquity and gathered unto itself
+from all the kindreds of the earth; and when we see how this mystery of
+love, in its sufferings and glories and its deep-laid plans for all the
+creatures, engages the ardent study and sympathy of the heavenly
+principalities,--in view of these things, who can but feel himself
+unworthy to know the love of Christ or to speak one word on its behalf?
+Are we not ready to say like Peter, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful
+man, O Lord"?
+
+This is a revelation that searches every man's soul who looks into it.
+What is there so confounding to our reason and our human
+self-complacency as the discovery: "He loved me; He gave Himself up for
+me"--that He should do it, and should _need_ to do it! It was this that
+went to Saul's heart, that gave the mortal blow to the Jewish pride in
+him, strong as it was with the growth of centuries. The bearer of this
+grace and the ambassador of Christ's love to the Gentiles, he feels
+himself to be "less than the least of all the saints." We carry in our
+hands to show to men a heavenly light, which throws our own unloveliness
+into dark relief.
+
+II. The _love of Christ_ connects together, in the apostle's thoughts,
+_the greatness of the Church_ and _the fulness of God_. The two former
+conceptions--Christ's love and the Church's greatness--go together in
+our minds; knowing them, we are led onwards to the realization of the
+last.
+
+The "fulness [_pleroma_] of God," and the "filling" (or "completing") of
+believers in Christ are ideas characteristic of this group of epistles.
+The first of these expressions we have discussed already in its
+connexion with Christ, in chapter i. 23; we shall meet with it again as
+"the fulness of Christ" in chapter iv. 13. The phrase before us is, in
+substance, identical with that of the latter text. Christ contains the
+Divine plenitude; He embodies it in His person, and conveys it to the
+world by His redemption. St Paul desires for the Asian Christians that
+they may receive it; it is the ultimate mark of his prayer. He wishes
+them to gain the total sum of all that God communicates to men. He would
+have them "filled"--their nature made complete both in its individual
+and social relations, their powers of mind and heart brought into full
+exercise, their spiritual capacities developed and replenished--"filled
+unto all the plenitude of God."
+
+This is no humanistic or humanitarian ideal. The mark of Christian
+completeness is on a different and higher plane than any that is set up
+by culture. The ideal Christian is a greater man than the ideal citizen
+or artist or philosopher: he may include within himself any or all of
+these characters, but he transcends them. He may conform to none of
+these types, and yet be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Our race cannot
+rest in any perfection that stops short of "the fulness of God." When we
+have received all that God has to give in Christ, when the community of
+men is once more a family of God and the Father's will is done on earth
+as in heaven, then and not before will our life be complete. That is the
+goal of humanity; and the civilization that does not lead to it is a
+wandering from the way. "You are complete in Christ," says the apostle.
+The progress of the ages since confirms the saying.
+
+The apostle prays that his readers may know the love of Christ. This is
+a part of the Divine plenitude; nor is there anything in it deeper. But
+there is more to know. When he asks for "_all_ the fulness," he thinks
+of other elements of revelation in which we are to participate. God's
+_wisdom_, His _truth_, His _righteousness_, along with His _love_ in its
+manifold forms,--all the qualities that, in one word, go to make up His
+_holiness_, are communicable and belong to the image stamped by the Holy
+Spirit on the nature of God's children. "Ye shall be holy, for I am
+holy" is God's standing command to His sons. So Jesus bids His
+disciples, "Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." St Paul's
+prayer "is but another way of expressing the continuous aspiration and
+effort after holiness which is enjoined in our Lord's precept"
+(Lightfoot).
+
+While the holiness of God gathers up into one stream of white radiance
+the revelation of His character, "the fulness of God" spreads it abroad
+in its many-coloured richness and variety. The term accords with the
+affluence of thought that marks this supplication. The might of the
+Spirit that strengthens weak human hearts, the greatness of the Christ
+who is the guest of our faith, His wide-spreading kingdom and the vast
+interests it embraces and His own love surpassing all,--these objects of
+the soul's desire issue from the fulness of God; and they lead us in
+pursuing them, like streams pouring into the ocean, back to the eternal
+Godhead. The mediatorial kingdom has its end; Christ, when He has "put
+down all rule and authority," will at last "yield it up to His God and
+Father"; and "the Son Himself will be subjected to Him that put all
+things under Him, that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 24-28). This
+is the crown of the Redeemer's mission, the end which His love to the
+Father seeks. But when that end is reached, and the soul with immediate
+vision beholds the Father's glory, the Plenitude will be still new and
+unexhausted; the soul will then begin its deepest lessons in the
+knowledge of God which is life eternal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+St Paul is conscious of the extreme boldness of the prayer he has just
+uttered. But he protests that, instead of going beyond God's purposes,
+it falls short of them. This assurance rises, in verses 20 and 21, into
+a rapture of praise. It is a cry of exultation, a true song of triumph,
+that breaks from the apostle's lips:--
+
+    "Now unto Him that is able to do above all things,--
+    Yea, far exceedingly beyond what we ask or think,--
+              According to the power that worketh in us:
+    To Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus,
+    Unto all generations of the age of the ages.--Amen!"
+
+    (vv. 20, 21).
+
+Praise soars higher than prayer. When St Paul has reached in
+supplication the summit of his desires, he sees the plenitude of God's
+gifts still by a whole heaven outreaching him. But it is only from these
+mountain-tops hardly won in the exercise of prayer, in their still air
+and tranquil light, that the boundless realms of promise are visible.
+God's giving surpasses immeasurably our thought and asking; but there
+must be the asking and the thinking for it to surpass. He puts always
+more into our hand and better things than we expected--when the
+expectant hand is reached out to Him.
+
+Man's desires will never overtake God's bounty. Hearing the prayer just
+offered, unbelief will say: "You have asked too much. It is preposterous
+to expect that raw Gentile converts, scarcely raised above their heathen
+debasement, should enter into these exalted notions of yours about
+Christ and the Church and should be filled with the fulness of God!
+Prayer must be rational and within the bounds of possibility, offered
+'with the understanding' as well as 'with the spirit,' or it becomes
+mere extravagance."--The apostle gives a twofold answer to this kind of
+scepticism. He appeals to the Divine omnipotence. "With men," you say,
+"this is impossible." Humanly speaking, St Paul's Gentile disciples were
+incapable of any high spiritual culture; they were unpromising material,
+with "not many wise or many noble" amongst them, some of them before
+their conversion stained with infamous vices. Who is to make saints and
+godlike men out of such human refuse as this! But "with God," as Jesus
+said, "all things are possible." _Faex urbis, lux orbis_: "the scum of
+the city is made the light of the world!" The force at work upon the
+minds of these degraded pagans--slaves, thieves, prostitutes, as some of
+them had been--is the love of Christ; it is the power of the Holy Ghost,
+the might of the strength which raises the dead to life eternal.
+
+Let us therefore praise Him "who is able to do beyond all
+things"--beyond the best that His best servants have wished and striven
+for. Had men ever asked or thought of such a gift to the world as Jesus
+Christ? Had the prophets foreseen one tenth part of His greatness? In
+their boldest dreams did the disciples anticipate the wonders of the
+day of Pentecost and of the later miracles of grace accomplished by
+their preaching? How far exceedingly had these things already surpassed
+the utmost that the Church asked or thought.
+
+St Paul's reliance is not upon the "ability" alone, upon the abstract
+omnipotence of God. The force upon which he counts is lodged in the
+Church, and is in visible and constant operation. "According to the
+power _that worketh in us_" he expects these vast results to be
+achieved. This power is the same as that he invoked in verse 16,--the
+might of the Spirit of God in the inward man. It is the spring of
+courage and joy, the source of religious intelligence (i. 17, 18) and
+personal holiness, the very power that raised the dead body of Jesus to
+life, as it will raise hereafter all the holy dead to share His
+immortality (Rom. viii. 11). St Paul was conscious at this time in a
+remarkable degree of the supernatural energy working within his own
+mind. It is of this that he speaks to the Colossians, in language very
+similar to that of our text, when he says: "I toil hard, striving
+according to His energy that works in me in power." As he labours for
+the Church in writing that epistle, he is sensible of another Power
+acting within his spirit and distinguished from it by his consciousness,
+which tasks his faculties to the utmost to follow its dictates and
+express its meaning.
+
+The presence of this mysterious power of the Spirit St Paul constantly
+felt when engaged in prayer,--"The Spirit helpeth our infirmities"; He
+"makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered" (Rom.
+viii. 26, 27). On this point the experience of earnest Christian
+believers in all ages confirms that of St Paul. The sublime prayer to
+which he has just given utterance, is not his own. There is more in it
+than the mere Paul, a weak man, would have dared to ask or think. He who
+inspires the prayer will fulfil it. The Searcher of hearts knows better
+than the man who conceived it, infinitely better than we who are trying
+for our own help to interpret it, all that this intercession means. God
+will hear the pleading of His Spirit. The Power that prompts our
+prayers, and the Power that grants their answer are the same. The former
+is limited in its action by human infirmity; the latter knows no limit.
+Its only measure is the fulness of God. To Him who works in us all good
+desires, and works far beyond us to bring our good desires to good
+effect, be the glory of all for ever!
+
+In such measure, then, shall glory be to God "in the Church and in
+Christ Jesus." We see how the Church takes up the foreground of Paul's
+horizon. This epistle has taught us that God desires far more than our
+individual salvation, however complete that might be. Christ came not to
+save men only, but mankind. It is "in the Church" that God's consummate
+glory will be seen. No man in his fragmentary self-hood, no number of
+men in their separate capacity can conceivably attain "unto the fulness
+of God." It will need all humanity for that,--to reflect the full-orbed
+splendour of Divine revelation. Isolated and divided from each other, we
+render to God a dimmed and partial glory. "With one accord, with one
+mouth" we are called to "glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
+Christ." Wherefore the apostle bids us "receive one another, as Christ
+also received us, to the glory of God" (Rom. xv. 6, 7).
+
+The Church, being the creation of God's love in Christ and the
+receptacle of His communicative fulness, is the vessel formed for His
+praise. Her worship is a daily tribute to the Divine majesty and bounty.
+The life of her people in the world, her witness for Christ and warfare
+against sin, her ceaseless ministries to human sorrow and need proclaim
+the Divine goodness, righteousness and truth. From the heavenly places
+where she dwells with Christ, she reflects the light of God's glory and
+makes it shine into the depths of evil at her feet. It was the Church's
+voice that St John heard in heaven as "the voice of a great multitude,
+and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders,
+saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigneth!" Each
+soul new-born into the fellowship of faith adds another note to make up
+the multitudinous harmony of the Church's praise to God.
+
+Nor does the Church by herself alone render this praise and honour unto
+God. The display of God's manifold wisdom in His dealings with mankind
+is drawing admiration, as St Paul believed, from the celestial spheres
+(ver. 10). The story of earth's redemption is the theme of endless songs
+in heaven. All creation joins in concert with the redeemed from the
+earth, and swells the chorus of their triumph. "I heard," says John in
+another place, "a voice of many angels round about the throne, and the
+living creatures, and the elders, saying with a great voice, Worthy is
+the Lamb that hath been slain! And every created thing which is in the
+heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all
+things that are in them, heard I saying:
+
+    Unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb,
+    Be blessing and honour and glory and dominion--
+                                          For ever and ever."
+
+But the Church is the centre of this tribute of the universe to God and
+to His Christ.
+
+_The Church and Christ Jesus_ are wedded in this doxology, even as they
+were in the foregoing supplication (vv. 18, 19). In the Bride and the
+Bridegroom, in the Redeemed and the Redeemer, in the many brethren and
+in the Firstborn is this perfect glory to be paid to God. "In the midst
+of the congregation" Christ the Son of man sings evermore the Father's
+praise (Heb. ii. 12). No glory is paid to God by men which is not due to
+Him; nor does He render to the Father any tribute in which His people
+are without a share. "The glory which thou hast given me I have given
+them," said Jesus to the Father praying for His Church, "that they may
+be one, even as we are one" (John xvii. 22). Our union with each other
+in Christ is perfected by our union with Him in realizing the Father's
+glory, in receiving and manifesting the fulness of God.
+
+The duration of the glory to be paid to God by Christ and His Church is
+expressed by a cumulative phrase in keeping with the tenor of the
+passage to which it belongs: "unto all generations of the age of the
+ages." It reminds us of "the ages to come" through which the apostle in
+chapter ii. 7 foresaw that God's mercy to his own age would be
+celebrated. It carries our thoughts along the vista of the future, till
+time melts into eternity. When the apostle desires that God's praise may
+resound in the Church "unto _all generations_," he no longer supposes
+that the mystery of God may be finished speedily as men count years. The
+history of mankind stretches before his gaze into its dim futurity. The
+successive "generations" gather themselves into that one consummate
+"age" of the kingdom of God, the grand cycle in which all "the ages" are
+contained. With its completion time itself is no more. Its swelling
+current, laden with the tribute of all the worlds and all their
+histories, reaches the eternal ocean.
+
+The end comes: God is all in all. At this furthest horizon of thought,
+Christ and His own are seen together rendering to God unceasing glory.
+
+
+
+
+_THE EXHORTATION._
+
+CHAPTER iv. 1--vi. 20.
+
+
+_ON CHURCH LIFE._
+
+CHAPTER iv. 1-16.
+
+    "It is good we return unto the ancient bond of unity in the Church
+    of God, which was _one faith_, _one baptism_, and not _one
+    hierarchy_, _one discipline_; and that we observe the league of
+    Christians, as it was penned by our Saviour Christ, which is in
+    substance of doctrine this: _He that is not with us is against us_;
+    and in things indifferent and but of circumstance this: _He that is
+    not against us is with us_."--LORD BACON: _Certain Considerations
+    touching the better Pacification and Edification of the Church of
+    England_, addressed to King James I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+_THE FUNDAMENTAL UNITIES._
+
+    "I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily
+    of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and
+    meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; giving
+    diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
+
+              "There is one body, and one Spirit,
+    Even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling;
+                One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
+                  One God and Father of all,
+        Who is over all, and through all, and in all."
+
+    EPH. iv. 1-6.
+
+
+This Encyclical of St Paul to the Churches of Asia is the most formal
+and deliberate of his writings since the great epistle to the Romans. In
+entering upon its hortatory and practical part we are reminded of the
+transition from doctrine to exhortation in that epistle. Here as in
+Romans xi., xii. the apostle's theological teaching, brought with
+measured steps to its conclusion, has been followed by an act of worship
+expressing the profound and holy joy which fills his spirit as he views
+the purposes of God thus displayed in the gospel and the Church. In this
+exalted mood, as one sitting in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, St
+Paul surveys the condition of his readers and addresses himself to their
+duties and necessities. His homily, like his argument, is inwoven with
+the golden thread of devotion; and the smooth flow of the epistle
+breaks ever and again into the music of thanksgiving.
+
+The apostle resumes the words of self-description dropped in chapter
+iii. 1. He appeals to his readers with pathetic dignity: "I the prisoner
+in the Lord"; and the expression gathers new solemnity from that which
+he has told us in the last chapter of the mystery and grandeur of his
+office. He is "_the_ prisoner"--the one whose bonds were known through
+all the Churches and manifest even in the imperial palace (Phil. i.
+12-14). It was "in the Lord" that he wore this heavy chain, brought upon
+him in Christ's service and borne joyfully for His people's sake. He is
+now a martyr apostle. If his confinement detained him from his Gentile
+flock, at least it should add sacred force to the message he was able to
+convey. The tone of the apostle's letters at this time shows that he was
+sensible of the increased consideration which the afflictions of the
+last few years had given to him in the eyes of the Church. He is
+thankful for this influence, and makes good use of it.
+
+His first and main appeal to the Asian brethren, as we should expect
+from the previous tenor of the letter, is an exhortation to _unity_. It
+is an obvious conclusion from the doctrine of the Church that he has
+taught them. The "oneness of the Spirit" which they must "earnestly
+endeavour to preserve," is the unity which their possession of the Holy
+Spirit of itself implies. "Having access in one Spirit to the Father,"
+the antipathetic Jewish and Gentile factors of the Church are
+reconciled; "in the Spirit" they "are builded together for a habitation
+of God" (ii. 18-22). This unity when St Paul wrote was an actual and
+visible fact, despite the violent efforts of the Judaizers to destroy
+it. The "right hands of fellowship" exchanged between himself and
+James, Peter, and John at the conference of Jerusalem were a witness
+thereto (Gal. ii. 7-10). But it was a union that needed for its
+maintenance the efforts of right-thinking men and sons of peace
+everywhere. St Paul bids all who read his letter help to keep Christ's
+peace in the Churches.
+
+The conditions for such pursuing and preserving of peace in the fold of
+Christ are briefly indicated in verses 1 and 2. There must be--
+
+(1) _A due sense of the dignity of our Christian calling_: "Walk
+worthily," he says, "of the calling where with you were called." This
+exhortation, of course, includes much besides in its scope; it is the
+preface to all the exhortations of the three following chapters, the
+basis, in fact, of every worthy appeal to Christian men; but it bears in
+the first instance, and pointedly, upon Church unity. Levity of temper,
+low and poor conceptions of religion militate against the catholic
+spirit; they create an atmosphere rife with causes of contention.
+"Whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal and
+walk as men?"
+
+(2) Next to low-mindedness amongst the foes of unity comes _ambition_:
+"Walk with all lowliness of mind and meekness," he continues. Between
+the low-minded and the lowly-minded there is a total difference. The man
+_of lowly mind_ habitually feels his dependence as a creature and his
+unworthiness as a sinner before God. This spirit nourishes in him a
+wholesome self-distrust, and watchfulness over his temper and
+motives.--The _meek_ man thinks as little of his personal claims, as the
+humble man of his personal merits. He is willing to give place to others
+where higher interests will not suffer, content to take the lowest room
+and to be in men's eyes of no account. How many seeds of strife and
+roots of bitterness would be destroyed, if this mind were in us all.
+Self-importance, the love of office and power and the craving for
+applause must be put away, if we are to recover and keep the unity of
+the Spirit in the bond of peace.
+
+(3) When St Paul adds "with longsuffering, forbearing one another in
+love," he is opposing a cause of division quite different from the
+last,--to wit, _impatience and resentfulness_. A high Christian ideal
+and a strict self-judgement will render us more sensitive to wrong-doing
+in the world around us. Unless tempered with abundant charity, they may
+lead to harsh and one-sided censure. Gentle natures, reluctant to
+condemn, are sometimes slow and difficult in forgiveness. Humbleness and
+meekness are choice graces of the Spirit. But they are self-regarding
+virtues at the best, and may be found in a cold nature that has little
+of the patience which bears with men's infirmities, of the sympathetic
+insight that discovers the good often lying close to their faults.
+"Above all things"--above kindness, meekness, longsuffering,
+forgivingness--"put on love, which is the bond of perfectness" (Col.
+iii. 14). Love is the last word of St Paul's definition of the Christian
+temper in verse 2; it is the sum and essence of all that makes for
+Christian unity. In it lies a charm which can overcome both the lighter
+provocations and the grave offences of human intercourse,--offences that
+must needs arise in the purest society composed of infirm and sinful
+men. "Bind thyself to thy brother. Those who are bound together in love,
+bear all burdens lightly. Bind thyself to him, and him to thee. Both are
+in thy power; for whomsoever I will, I may easily make my friend"
+(Chrysostom).
+
+Verses 1-3 exhibit the temper in which the unity of the Church is to be
+maintained. Verses 4-6 set forth the basis upon which it rests. This
+passage is a brief summary of Christian doctrine. It defines the
+"foundation of the apostles and prophets" asserted in chapter ii.
+20,--the groundwork of "every building" in God's holy temple, the
+foundation upon which Paul's Gentile readers, along with the Jewish
+saints, were growing into one holy temple in the Lord. Seven elements of
+unity St Paul enumerates: one _body_, _Spirit_, _hope_; one _Lord_,
+_faith_ and _baptism_; one _God and Father of all_. They form a chain
+stretching from the Church on earth to the throne and being of the
+universal Father in heaven.
+
+Closely considered, we find that the seven unities resolve themselves
+into three, centring in the names of the Divine Trinity--the Spirit, the
+Lord, and the Father. The Spirit and the Lord are each accompanied by
+two kindred uniting elements; while the one God and Father, placed
+alone, in Himself forms a threefold bond to His creatures--by His
+sovereign power, pervasive action, and immanent presence: "Who is over
+all, and through all, and in all" (comp. i. 23).
+
+The rhythm of expression in these verses suggests that they belonged to
+some apostolic Christian song. Other passages in Paul's later epistles
+betray the same character;[98] and we know from chapter v. 19 and
+Colossians iii. 16 that the Pauline Church was already rich in psalmody.
+This epistle shows that St Paul was touched with the poetic as well as
+the prophetical afflatus. He expected his people to sing; and we see no
+reason why he should not, like Luther and the Wesleys afterwards, have
+taught them to do so by giving voice to the joy of the new-found faith
+in "hymns and spiritual songs." These lines, we could fancy, belonged to
+some chant sung in the Christian assemblies; they form a brief metrical
+creed, the confession of the Church then and in all ages.
+
+I. _One body_ there is, _and one Spirit_.
+
+The former was a patent fact. Believers in Jesus Christ formed a single
+body, the same in all essentials of religion, sharply distinguished from
+their Jewish and their Pagan neighbours. Although the distinctions now
+existing amongst Christians are vastly greater and more numerous, and
+the boundaries between the Church and the world at many points are much
+less visible, yet there is a true unity that binds together those "who
+profess and call themselves Christians" throughout the world. As against
+the multitudes of heathen and idolaters; as against Jewish and
+Mohammedan rejecters of our Christ; as against atheists and agnostics
+and all deniers of the Lord, we are "one body," and should feel and act
+as one.
+
+In missionary fields, confronting the overwhelming forces and horrible
+evils of Paganism, the servants of Christ intensely realize their unity;
+they see how trifling in comparison are the things that separate the
+Churches, and how precious and deep are the things that Christians hold
+in common. It may need the pressure of some threatening outward force,
+the sense of a great peril hanging over Christendom to silence our
+contentions and compel the soldiers of Christ to fall into line and
+present to the enemy a united front. If the unity of believers in
+Christ--their oneness of worship and creed, of moral ideal and
+discipline--is hard to discern through the variety of human forms and
+systems and the confusion of tongues that prevails, yet the unity is
+there to be discerned; and it grows clearer to us as we look for it. It
+is visible in the universal acceptance of Scripture and the primitive
+creeds, in the large measure of correspondence between the different
+Church standards of the Protestant communions, in our common Christian
+literature, in the numerous alliances and combinations, local and
+general, that exist for philanthropic and missionary objects, in the
+increasing and auspicious comity of the Churches. The nearer we get to
+the essentials of truth and to the experience of living Christian men,
+the more we realize the existence of one body in the scattered limbs and
+innumerable sects of Christendom.
+
+There is "one body and one Spirit": one body because, and so far as
+there is one Spirit. What is it constitutes the unity of our physical
+frame? Outward attachment, mechanical juxtaposition go for nothing. What
+I grasp in my hand or put between my lips is no part of _me_, any more
+than if it were in another planet. The clothes I wear take the body's
+shape; they partake of its warmth and movement; they give its outward
+presentment. They are not of the body for all this. But the fingers that
+clasp, the lips that touch, the limbs that move and glow beneath the
+raiment,--these are the body itself; and everything belongs to it,
+however slight in substance, or uncomely or unserviceable, nay, however
+diseased and burdensome, that is vitally connected with it. The life
+that thrills through nerve and artery, _the spirit_ that animates with
+one will and being the whole framework and governs its ten thousand
+delicate springs and interlacing cords,--it is this that makes _one
+body_ of an otherwise inert and decaying heap of matter. Let the spirit
+depart, it is a body no more, but a corpse. So with the body of Christ,
+and its members in particular. Am I a living, integral part of the
+Church, quickened by its Spirit? or do I belong only to the raiment and
+the furniture that are about it? "If any man have not the Spirit of
+Christ, he is none of His."
+
+He who has the Spirit of Christ, will find a place within His body. The
+Spirit of Jesus Christ is a communicative, sociable spirit. The child of
+God seeks out his brethren; like is drawn to like, bone to bone and
+sinew to its sinew in the building up of the risen body. By an instinct
+of its life, the new-born soul forms bonds of attachment for itself to
+the Christian souls nearest to it, to those amongst whom it is placed in
+God's dispensation of grace. The ministry, the community through which
+it received spiritual life and that travailed for its birth claim it by
+a parental right that may not be disowned, nor at any time renounced
+without loss and peril.
+
+Where the Spirit of Christ dwells as a vitalizing, formative principle,
+it finds or makes for itself a body. Let no man say: I have the spirit
+of religion; I can dispense with forms. I need no fellowship with men; I
+prefer to walk with God.--God will not walk with men who do not care to
+walk with His people. He "loved the world"; and we must love it, or we
+displease Him. "This commandment have we from Him, that he who loves God
+love his brother also."
+
+The oneness of communion amongst the people of Christ is governed by a
+unity of aim: "Even as also you were called in _one hope_ of your
+calling." Our fellowship has an object to realize, our calling a prize
+to win. All Christian organization is directed to a practical end. The
+old Pagan world fell to pieces because it was "without hope"; its
+golden age was in the past. No society can endure that lives upon its
+memories, or that contents itself with cherishing its privileges.
+Nothing holds men together like work and hope. This gives energy,
+purpose, progress to the fellowship of Christian believers. In this
+imperfect and unsatisfying world, with the majority of our race still in
+bondage to evil, it is idle for us to combine for any purpose that does
+not bear on human improvement and salvation. The Church of Christ is a
+society for the abolition of sin and death. That this will be
+accomplished, that God's will shall be done on earth as in heaven, is
+_the hope of our calling_. To this hope we "were called" by the first
+summons of the gospel. "Repent," it cried, "for the kingdom of heaven is
+at hand!"
+
+For ourselves, in our personal quality, Christianity holds out a
+splendid crown of life. It promises our complete restoration to the
+image of God, the redemption of the body with the spirit from death, and
+our entrance upon an eternal fellowship with Christ in heaven. This
+hope, shared by us in common and affecting all the interests and
+relationships of daily life, is the ground of our communion. The
+Christian hope supplies to men, more truly and constantly than Nature in
+her most exalted forms,
+
+    "The anchor of their purest thoughts, the nurse,
+    The guide, the guardian of their heart, and soul
+    Of all their moral being."
+
+Happy are the wife and husband, happy the master and servants, happy the
+circle of friends who live and work together as "joint-heirs of the
+grace of life." Well says Calvin here: "If this thought were fixed in
+our minds, this law laid upon us, that the sons of God may no more
+quarrel than the kingdom of heaven can be divided, how much more careful
+we should be in cultivating brotherly goodwill! What a dread we should
+have of dissensions, if we considered, as we ought to do, that those who
+separate from their brethren, exile themselves from the kingdom of God."
+
+But the hope of our calling is a hope for mankind,--nay, for the entire
+universe. We labour for the regeneration of humanity. "We look for a new
+heavens and earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness;" for the actual
+gathering into one in Christ of all things in all worlds, as they are
+already gathered in God's eternal plan. Now if it were merely a personal
+salvation that we had to seek, Christian communion might appear to be an
+optional thing, and the Church no more than a society for mutual
+spiritual benefit. But seen in this larger light, Church membership is
+of the essence of our calling. As children of the household of faith, we
+are heirs to its duties with its possessions. We cannot escape the
+obligations of our spiritual any more than of our natural birth. One
+Spirit dwelling in each, one sublime ideal inspiring us and guiding all
+our efforts, how shall we not be one body in the fellowship of Christ?
+This hope of our calling it is our calling to breathe into the dead
+world. Its virtue alone can dispel the gloom and discord of the age.
+From the fountain of God's love in Christ springing up in the heart of
+the Church, there shall pour forth
+
+    "One common wave of thought and joy,
+    Lifting mankind again!"
+
+II. The first group of unities leads us to the second. If one Spirit
+dwells within us, it is _one Lord_ who reigns over us. We have one hope
+to work for; it is because we have _one faith_ to live by. A common
+fellowship implies a common creed.
+
+Thus Christ Jesus the Lord takes His place fourth in this list of
+unities, between hope and faith, between the Spirit and the Father. He
+is the centre of centres, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, the
+Christ in the midst of the ages. United with Christ, we are at unity
+with God and with our fellow-men. We find in Him the fulcrum of the
+forces that are raising the world, the corner-stone of the temple of
+humanity.
+
+But let us mark that it is the one _Lord_ in whom we find our unity. To
+think of Him as Saviour only is to treat Him as a means to an end. It is
+to make ourselves the centre, not Christ. This is the secret of much of
+the isolation and sectarianism of modern Churches. Individualism is the
+negation of Church life. Men value Christ for what they can get from Him
+for themselves. They do not follow Him and yield themselves up to Him,
+for the sake of what He is. "Come unto me, all ye that are burdened, and
+I will give you rest": they listen willingly so far. But when He goes on
+to say "Take my yoke upon you," their ears are deaf. There is a subtle
+self-seeking and self-pleasing even in the way of salvation.
+
+From this springs the disloyalty, the want of affection for the Church,
+the indifference to all Christian interests beyond the personal and
+local, which is worse than strife; for it is death to the body of
+Christ. The name of the "one Lord" silences party clamours and rebukes
+the voices that cry, "I am of Apollos, I of Cephas." It recalls
+loiterers and stragglers to the ranks. It bids each of us, in his own
+station of life and his own place in the Church, serve the common cause
+without sloth and without ambition.
+
+Christ's Lordship over us for life and death is signified by our
+_baptism_ in His name. We have received, most of us in infancy through
+our parents' reverent care, the token of allegiance to the Lord Christ.
+The baptismal water that He bade all nations receive from His apostles,
+has been sprinkled upon you. Shall this be in vain? Or do you now, by
+the faith of your heart in Christ Jesus the Lord, endorse the faith of
+your parents and the Church exercised on your behalf? If so, your faith
+saves you. Your obedience is at once accepted by the Lord to whom it is
+tendered; and the sign of God's redemption of the race which greeted you
+at your entrance into life, assumes for you all its significance and
+worth. It is the seal upon your brow, now stamped upon your heart, of
+your eternal covenant with Christ.
+
+But it is the seal of a _corporate_ life in Him. Christian baptism is no
+private transaction; it attests no mere secret vow passing between the
+soul and its Saviour. "For in one Spirit we were all baptized _into one
+body_, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made
+to drink of one Spirit" (1 Cor. xii. 13). Our baptism is the sign of a
+common faith and hope, and binds us at once to Christ and to His Church.
+
+_One_ baptism there has been through all the ages since the ascending
+Lord said to His disciples: "Go, make disciples of all the nations,
+baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
+Holy Spirit." The ordinance has been administered in different ways and
+under varying regulations; but with few exceptions, it has been observed
+from the beginning by every Christian community in fulfilment of the
+word of Christ, and in acknowledgement of His dominion. Those who
+insist on the sole validity of this or that mode or channel of
+administration, recognize at least the intention of Churches baptizing
+otherwise than themselves to honour the one Lord in thus confessing His
+name; and so far admit that there is in truth "one baptism." Wherever
+Christ's sacraments are observed with a true faith, they serve as
+visible tokens of His rule.
+
+In this rule lies the ultimate ground of union for men, and for all
+creatures. Our fellowship in the faith of Christ is deep as the nature
+of God; its blessedness rich as His love; its bonds strong and eternal
+as His power.
+
+III. The last and greatest of the unities still remains. Add to our
+fellowship in the one Spirit and confession of the one Lord, our
+adoption by the _one God and Father of all_.
+
+To the Gentile converts of the Asian cities this was a new and
+marvellous thought. "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians," they had been
+used to shout; or haply, "Great is Aphrodite of the Pergamenes," or
+"Bacchus of the Philadelphians." Great they knew was "Jupiter Best and
+Greatest" of conquering Rome; and great the _numen_ of the Caesar, to
+which everywhere in this rich and servile province shrines were rising.
+Each city and tribe, each grove or fountain or sheltering hill had its
+local _genius_ or _daimon_, requiring worship and sacrificial honours.
+Every office and occupation, every function in life--navigation,
+midwifery, even thieving--was under the patronage of its special deity.
+These petty godships by their number and rivalries distracted the pious
+heathen with continual fear lest one or other of them might not have
+received due observance.
+
+With what a grand simplicity the Christian conception of "the one God
+and Father" rose above this vulgar pantheon, this swarm of motley
+deities--some gay and wanton, some dark and cruel, some of supposed
+beneficence, all infected with human passion and baseness--which filled
+the imagination of the Graeco-Asiatic pagans. What rest there was for the
+mind, what peace and freedom for the spirit in turning from such deities
+to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
+
+Here is no jealous Monarch regarding men as tribute-payers, and needing
+to be served by human hands. He is the Father of men, pitying us as His
+children and giving us all things richly to enjoy. Our God is no local
+divinity, to be honoured here but not there, tied to His temple and
+images and priestly mediators; but the "one God and Father of all, who
+is above all, and through all, and in all." This was the very God whom
+the logic of Greek thought and the practical instincts of Roman law and
+empire blindly sought. Through ages He had revealed Himself to the
+people of Israel, who were now dispersed amongst the nations to bear His
+light. At last He declared His full name and purpose to the world in
+Jesus Christ. So the gods many and lords many have had their day. By His
+manifestation the idols are utterly abolished. The proclamation of one
+God and Father signifies the gathering of men into one family of God.
+The one religion supplies the basis for one life in all the world.
+
+God is _over all_, gathering all worlds and beings under the shadow of
+His beneficent dominion. He is _through all_, and _in all_: an
+Omnipresence of love, righteousness and wisdom, actuating the powers of
+nature and of grace, inhabiting the Church and the heart of men. You
+need not go far to seek Him; if you believe in Him, you are yourself His
+temple.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[98] See ch. v. 14; 1 Tim. i. 17, ii. 5, 6, vi. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii.
+11-13.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+_THE MEASURE OF THE GIFT OF CHRIST._
+
+    "But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the
+    measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore He saith: 'When He ascended
+    on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.' Now
+    this, 'He ascended,' what is it but that He also descended into the
+    lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that
+    ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.
+    And He gave some _to be_ apostles; and some, prophets; and some
+    evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of
+    the saints for work of ministration, for the building up of the body
+    of Christ."--EPH. iv. 7-12.
+
+
+In verse 7 the apostle passes from the unities of the Church to its
+diversities, from the common foundation of the Christian life to the
+variety presented in its superstructure. "To each single one of us was
+the grace given." The great gift of God in Christ is manifold in its
+distribution. Its manifestations are as various and fresh as the
+idiosyncrasies of human personality. There is no capacity of our nature,
+no element of human society which the gospel of Christ cannot sanctify
+and turn to good account.
+
+All this the apostle keeps in view and allows for in his doctrine of the
+Church. He does not merge man in humanity, nor sacrifice the individual
+to the community. He claims for each believer direct fellowship with
+Christ and access to God. The earnestness with which in his earlier
+epistles St Paul insisted on the responsibilities of conscience and on
+the personal experience of salvation, leads him now to press the claims
+of the Church with equal vigour. He understands well that the person has
+no existence apart from the community, that our moral nature is
+essentially social and the religious life essentially fraternal. Its
+vital element is "the _communion_ of the Holy Spirit." Hence, to gather
+the real drift of this passage we must combine the first words of verse
+7 with the last of verse 12: "To each single one of us was the grace
+given--in order to build up the body of Christ." God's grace is not
+bestowed upon us to diffuse and lose itself in our separate
+individualities; but that it may minister to one life and work towards
+one end and build up one great body in us all. The diversity subserves a
+higher unity. Through ten thousand channels, in ten thousand varied
+forms of personal influence and action, the stream of the grace of God
+flows on to the accomplishment of the eternal purpose.
+
+Like a wise master in his household and sovereign in his kingdom, the
+Lord of the Church distributes His manifold gifts. His bestowments and
+appointments are made with an eye to the furtherance of the state and
+house that He has in charge. As God dispenses His wisdom, so Christ His
+gifts "according to plan" (iii. 11). The purpose of the ages, God's
+great plan for mankind, determines "the measure of the gift of Christ."
+Now, it is to illustrate this _measure_, to set forth the style and
+scale of Christ's bestowments within His Church, that the apostle brings
+in evidence the words of Psalm lxviii. 18. He interprets this ancient
+verse as he cites it, and weaves it into the texture of his argument.
+In the original it reads thus:
+
+    "Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led Thy captivity captive,
+    Thou hast received gifts among men,--
+    Yea, among the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell with
+        them." (R.V.)
+
+Let us go back for a moment to the occasion of the old Hebrew song.
+Psalm lxviii, is, as Ewald says, "the greatest, most splendid and
+artistic of the temple-songs of Restored Jerusalem." It celebrates
+Jehovah's entry into Zion. This culminating verse records, as the
+crowning event of Israel's history, the capture of Zion from the rebel
+Jebusites and the Lord's ascension in the person of His chosen to take
+His seat upon this holy hill. The previous verses, in which fragments of
+earlier songs are embedded, describe the course of the Divine Leader of
+Israel through former ages. In the beat and rhythm of the Hebrew lines
+one hears the footfall of the Conqueror's march, as He "arises and His
+enemies are scattered" and "kings of armies flee apace," while nature
+trembles at His step and bends her wild powers to serve His
+congregation. The sojourn in the wilderness, the scenes of Sinai, the
+occupancy of Canaan, the wars of the Judges were so many stages in the
+progress of Jehovah, which had Zion always for its goal. To Zion, the
+new and more glorious sanctuary, Sinai must now give place. Bashan and
+all mountains towering in their pride in vain "look askance at the hill
+which God has desired for His abode," where "Jehovah will dwell for
+ever." So the day of the Lord's desire has come! From the Kidron valley
+David leads Jehovah's triumph up the steep slopes of Mount Zion. A train
+of captives defiles before the Lord's anointed, who sits down on the
+throne that God gives him and receives in His name the submission of the
+heathen. The vanquished chiefs cast their spoil at his feet; it is laid
+up in treasure to build the future temple; while, upon this happy day of
+peace, "the rebellious also" share in Jehovah's grace and become His
+subjects.
+
+In this conquest David "gave to men" rather than "received"--gave even
+to his stubborn enemies (witness his subsequent transaction with Araunah
+the Jebusite for the site of the temple); for that which he took from
+them served to build amongst them God's habitation: "that," as the
+Psalmist sings, "the Lord God might dwell with them." St Paul's
+adaptation of the verse is both bold and true. If he departs from the
+letter, he unfolds the spirit of the prophetic words. That David's
+_giving_ signified a higher _receiving_, Jewish interpreters themselves
+seem to have felt, for this paraphrase was current also amongst them.
+
+The author of this Hebrew song has in no way exaggerated the importance
+of David's victory. The summits of the elect nation's history shine with
+a supernatural and prophetic light. The spirit of the Christ in the
+unknown singer "testified beforehand of the glory that should follow"
+His warfare and sufferings. From this victorious height, so hardly won,
+the Psalmist's verse flashes the light of promise across the space of a
+thousand years; and St. Paul has caught the light, and sends it on to us
+shining with a new and more spiritual brightness. David's "going up on
+high" was, to the apostle's mind, a picture of the ascent of Christ, his
+Son and Lord. David rose from deep humiliation to a high dominion; his
+exaltation brought blessing and enrichment to his people; and the spoil
+that he won with it went to build God's house amongst rebellious men.
+All this was true in parable of the dispensation of grace to mankind
+through Jesus Christ; and His ascension disclosed the deeper import of
+the words of the ancient Scripture. "Wherefore God saith" (and St Paul
+takes the liberty of putting in his own words _what_ He
+saith)--"wherefore He saith: He ascended on high; He led captivity
+captive; He gave gifts to men."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three short clauses of the citation supply, in effect, a threefold
+measure of the gifts of Christ to His Church. They are gifts _of the
+ascended Saviour_. They are gifts bestowed _from the fruit of His
+victory_. And they are gifts _to men_. Measure them, first, by the
+height to which He has risen--from what a depth! Measure them, again, by
+the spoils He has already won. Measure them, once more, by the wants of
+mankind, by the need He has undertaken to supply.--As He is, so He
+gives; as He has, so He gives; as He has given, so He will give till we
+are filled unto all the fulness of God.
+
+I. Think first, then, of Him. Think of what, and _where_ He is! Consider
+"what is the height" of His exaltation; and then say, if you can, "what
+is the breadth" of His munificence.
+
+We know well how He gave as a poor and suffering man upon earth--gave,
+with what affluence, pity and delight, bread to the hungry thousands,
+wine to the wedding-feast, health to the sick, sight to the blind,
+pardon to the sinful, sometimes life to the dead! Has His elevation
+altered Him? Too often it is so with vain and weak men like ourselves.
+Their wealth increases, but their hearts contract. The more they have to
+give, the less they love to give. They go up on high as men count it,
+and climb to places of power and eminence; and they forget the friends
+of youth and the ranks from which they sprang--low-minded men. Not so
+with our exalted Friend. "It is not one that went down, and another that
+went up," says Theodoret. "He that descended, _it is He_ also that
+ascended up far above all the heavens!" (ver. 10). Jesus of Nazareth is
+on the throne of God,--"the same yesterday and to-day!" But now the
+resources of the universe are at His disposal. Out of that treasure He
+can choose the best gifts for you and me.
+
+Mere authority, even Omnipotence, could not suffice to save and bless
+moral beings like ourselves; nor even the best will joined to
+Omnipotence. Christ gained by His humiliation, in some sense, a new
+fulness added to the fulness of the Godhead. This gain of His sufferings
+is implied in what the apostle writes in Colossians i. 19 concerning the
+risen and exalted Redeemer: "It was well-pleasing that _all_ the fulness
+should make its dwelling in Him." His plenitude is that of the Ascended
+One _who had descended_. "If He ascended, what does it mean but that He
+also descended into the under regions of the earth?" (ver. 9). If He
+went up, why then He had been down!--down to the Virgin's womb and the
+manger cradle, wrapping His Godhead within the frame and the brain of a
+little child; down to the home and the bench of the village carpenter;
+down to the contradiction of sinners and the level of their scorn; down
+to the death of the cross,--to the nether abyss, to that dim populous
+underworld into which we look shuddering over the grave's edge! And from
+that lower gulf He mounted up again to the solid earth and the light of
+day and the world of breathing men; and up, and up again, through the
+rent clouds and the ranks of shouting angels, and under the lifted heads
+of the everlasting doors, until He took His seat at the right hand of
+the Majesty in the heavens.
+
+Think of the regions He has traversed, the range of being through which
+the Lord Jesus passed in descending and ascending, "that He might fill
+all things." Heaven, earth, hades--hades, earth, heaven again are His;
+not in mere sovereignty of power, but in experience and communion of
+life. Each He has annexed to His dominion by inhabitation and the right
+of self-devoting love, as from sphere to sphere He "travelled in the
+greatness of His power, mighty to save." He is Lord of angels; but still
+more of men,--Lord of the living, and of the dead. To them that sleep in
+the dust He has proclaimed His accomplished sacrifice and the right of
+universal judgement given Him by the Father.
+
+Nor did Abraham alone and Moses and Elijah have the joy of "seeing His
+day," but all the holy men of old, who had embraced its promise and
+"died in faith," who looked forward through their imperfect sacrifices
+"which could never quite take away sins" to the better thing which God
+provided for us, and for their perfection along with us.[99] On the two
+side-posts of the gate of death our great High Priest sprinkled His
+atoning blood. He turned the abode of corruption into a sweet and quiet
+sleeping chamber for His saints. Then at His touch those cruel doors
+swung back upon their hinges, and He issued forth the Prince of life,
+with the keys of death and hades hanging from His girdle. From the
+depths of the grave to the heaven of heavens His Mastership extends.
+With the perfume of His presence and the rich incense of His sacrifice
+Jesus Christ has "filled all things." The universe is made for us one
+realm of redeeming grace, the kingdom of the Son of God's love.
+
+    "So there crowns Him the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown;
+    And His love fills infinitude wholly, nor leaves up nor down
+    One spot for the creature to stand in!"[100]
+
+So "Christ is all things, and in all." And we are nothing; but we have
+everything in Him.
+
+How, pray, will He give who has thus given Himself,--who has thus
+endured and achieved on our behalf? Let our hearts consider; let our
+faith and our need be bold to ask. One promise from His lips is enough:
+"If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it."
+
+II. A second estimate of the gifts to be looked for from Christ, we
+derive from _His conquests already won_. David as he entered Zion's
+gates "led captivity captive,"--led, that is in Hebrew phrase, a great,
+a notable captivity. Out of the gifts thus received he enriched his
+people. The resources that victory placed at his disposal, furnished the
+store from which to build God's house. In like fashion Christ builds His
+Church, and blesses the human race. With the spoils of His battle He
+adorns His bride. The prey taken from the mighty becomes the strength
+and beauty of His sanctuary. The prisoners of His love He makes the
+servants of mankind.
+
+This "captivity" implies a warfare, even as the ascent of Christ a
+previous descending. The Son of God came not into His earthly kingdom as
+kings are said to have come sometimes disguised amongst their subjects,
+that they might learn better of their state and hear their true mind;
+nor as the Greeks fabled of their gods, who wandered unknown on earth
+seeking adventure and wearied haply of the cloying felicities of heaven,
+suffering contempt and doing to men hard service. He came, the Good
+Shepherd, to seek lost sheep. He came, the Mighty One of God, to destroy
+the works of the devil, to drive out "the strong one armed" who held the
+fortress of man's soul. He had a war to wage with the usurping prince of
+the world. In the temptations of the wilderness, in the strife with
+disease and demoniac powers, in the debate with Scribes and Pharisees,
+in the anguish of Gethsemane and Calvary that conflict was fought out;
+and by death He abolished him who holds the power of death, by His blood
+He "bought us for God." But with the spoils of victory, He bears the
+scars of battle,--tokens glorious for Him, humbling indeed to us, which
+will tell for ever how they pierced His hands and feet!
+
+For Him pain and conflict are gone by. It remains to gather in the spoil
+of His victory of love, the harvest sown in His tears and His blood. And
+what are the trophies of the Captain of our salvation? what the fruit of
+His dread passion? For one, there was the dying thief, whom with His
+nailed hands the Lord Jesus snatched from a felon's doom and bore from
+Calvary to Paradise. There was Mary the Magdalene, out of whom He had
+cast seven demons, the first to greet Him risen. There were the three
+thousand whom on one day, in the might of His Spirit, the ascended Lord
+and Christ took captive in rebel Jerusalem, "lifted from the earth" that
+He might draw all men unto Him. And there was the writer of this letter,
+once His blasphemer and persecutor. By a look, by a word, Jesus
+arrested Saul at the height of his murderous enmity, and changed him
+from a Pharisee into an apostle to the Gentiles, from the destroyer into
+the wise master-builder of His Church.
+
+St Paul's own case suggested, surely, the application he makes of this
+ancient text of the Psalter and lighted up its Messianic import. In the
+glory of His triumph Jesus Christ had appeared to make him captive, and
+put him at once to service. From that hour Paul was led along
+enthralled, the willing bond-slave of the Lord Jesus and celebrant of
+His victory. "Thanks be unto God," he cries, "who ever triumphs over us
+in the Christ, and makes manifest through us the savour of His knowledge
+in every place."[101]
+
+Such, and of such sort are the prisoners of the war of Jesus; such the
+gifts that through sinners pardoned and subdued He bestows upon
+mankind,--"patterns to those who should hereafter believe." Time would
+fail to follow the train of the captives of the love of Christ, which
+stretches unbroken and ever multiplying through the centuries to this
+day. We, too, in our turn have laid our rebel selves at His feet; and
+all that we surrender to Him, by right of conquest He gives over to the
+service of mankind.
+
+    "His love the conquest more than wins;
+      To all I shall proclaim:
+    Jesus the King, the Conqueror reigns;
+      Bow down to Jesu's name!"
+
+He gives out of the spoil of His war with evil,--gives what He receives.
+Yet He gives not _as_ He receives. Everything laid in His hands is
+changed by their touch. Publicans and Pharisees become apostles.
+Magdalenes are made queens and mothers in His Israel. From the dregs of
+our streets He raises up a host of sons to Abraham. From the ranks of
+scepticism and anti-Christian hate the Lord Christ wins new champions
+and captains for His cause. He coins earth's basest metal into heaven's
+fine gold. He takes weak things of the earth and foolish, to strike the
+mightiest blows of battle.
+
+What may we not expect from Him who has led captive such a captivity!
+What surprises of blessing and miracles of grace there are awaiting us,
+that shall fill our mouth with laughter and our tongue with
+singing--gifts and succours coming to the Church from unlooked-for
+quarters and reinforcements from the ranks of the enemy. And what
+discomfitures and captivities are preparing for the haters of the
+Lord,--if, at least, the future is to be as the past; and if we may
+judge from the apostle's word, and from his example, of the measure of
+the gift of Christ.
+
+III. A third line of measurement is supplied in the last word of verse
+8, and is drawn out in verses 11 and 12. "He gave gifts _to men_--He
+gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and
+teachers, with a view to the full equipment of the saints for work of
+ministration, for building up of the body of Christ." Yes, and some
+martyrs, some missionaries, some Church rulers and Christian statesmen,
+some poets, some deep thinkers and theologians, some leaders of
+philanthropy and helpers of the poor; all given for the same end--to
+minister to the life of His Church, to furnish it with the means for
+carrying on its mission, and to enable every saint to contribute his
+part to the commonwealth of Christ according to the measure of Christ's
+gift to each.
+
+Comparison with verse 16 that follows and with verse 7 that precedes,
+seems to us to make it clear that we should read, without a comma, the
+second and third clauses of verse 12 as continuations of the first. The
+"work of ministering" and the "building up of the body of Christ" are
+not assigned to special orders of ministry as their exclusive calling.
+Such honour have all His saints. It is the office of the clergy to see
+that the laity do their duty, of "the ministry" to make each saint a
+minister of Christ, to guide, instruct and animate the entire membership
+of Christ's body in the work He has laid upon it. Upon this plan the
+Christian fellowship was organized and officered in the apostolic times.
+Church government is a means to an end. Its primitive form was that best
+suited to the age; and even then varied under different circumstances.
+It was not precisely the same at Jerusalem and at Corinth; at Corinth in
+58, and at Ephesus in 66 A.D. That is the best Church system, under any
+given conditions, which serves best to conserve and develope the
+spiritual energy of the body of Christ.
+
+The distribution of Church office indicated in verse 11 corresponds
+closely to what we find in the Pastoral epistles. The apostle does not
+profess to enumerate all grades of ministry. The "deacons" are wanting;
+although we know from Philippians i. 1 that this order already existed
+in Pauline Churches. _Pastors_ (shepherds)--a title only employed here
+by the apostle--is a fitting synonym for the "bishops" (_i.e._,
+overseers) of whom he speaks in Acts xx. 28, Philippians i. 1, and
+largely in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, whose functions were
+spiritual and disciplinary as well as administrative. Addressing the
+Ephesian elders at Miletus four years before, St Paul bade them
+"shepherd the Church of God."
+
+In 1 Peter v. 1, 2 the same charge is laid by the Jewish apostle upon
+his "fellow-elders," that they should "shepherd the flock of God, making
+themselves examples" to it; Christ Himself he has previously called
+"Shepherd and Bishop of souls" (1 Pet. ii. 25). The expression is
+derived from the words of Jesus recorded in John x., concerning the true
+and false shepherd of God's flock, and Himself the Good Shepherd,--words
+familiar and dear to His disciples.
+
+The office of _teaching_, as in 1 Timothy v. 17, is conjoined with that
+of shepherding. From that passage we infer that the freedom of teaching
+so conspicuous in the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xiv. 26, etc.) was still
+recognized. Teaching and ruling are not made identical, nor inseparable
+functions, any more than in Romans xii. 7, 8; but they were frequently
+associated, and hence are coupled together here.--Of apostolic
+_evangelists_ we have examples in Timothy and the second Philip;[102]
+men outside the rank of the apostles, but who, like them, preached the
+gospel from place to place. The name apostles (equivalent to our
+_missionaries_) served, in its wider sense, to include ministers of this
+class along with those directly commissioned by the Lord Jesus.[103]
+
+The _prophets_,[104] like the apostles and evangelists, belonged to the
+Church at large, rather than to one locality. But their gift of
+inspiration did not carry with it the claim to rule in the Church. This
+was the function of the apostles generally, and of the pastor-bishops,
+or elders, locally appointed.
+
+The first three orders (apostles, prophets, evangelists) linked Church
+to Church and served the entire body; the last two (pastors and
+teachers) had charge of local and congregational affairs. The apostles
+(the Twelve and Paul), with the prophets, were the founders of the
+Church. Their distinctive functions ceased when the foundation was laid
+and the deposit of revealed truth was complete. The evangelistic and
+pastoral callings remain; and out of them have sprung all the variety of
+Christian ministries since exercised. Evangelists, with apostles or
+missionaries, bring new souls to Christ and carry His message into new
+lands. Pastors and teachers follow in their train, tending the
+ingathered sheep, and labouring to make each flock that they shepherd
+and every single man perfect in Christ Jesus.
+
+Marvellous were Christ's "gifts for men" bestowed in the apostolic
+ministry. What a gift to the Christian community, for example, was Paul
+himself! In his natural endowments, so rich and finely blended, in his
+training and early experience, in the supernatural mode of his
+conversion, everything wrought together to give to men in the apostle
+Paul a man supremely fitted to be Christ's ambassador to the Pagan
+world, and for all ages the "teacher of the Gentiles in faith and
+truth." "A _chosen vessel_ unto me," said the Lord Jesus, "to bear my
+name."
+
+Such a gift to the world was St Augustine: a man of the most powerful
+intellect and will, master of the thought and life of his time. Long an
+alien from the household of faith, he was saved at last as by miracle,
+and utterly subdued to the will of Christ. In the awful crisis of the
+fifth century, when the Roman empire was breaking up and the very
+foundations of life seemed to be dissolved, it was the work of this
+heroic man to reassert the sovereignty of grace and to re-establish
+faith in the Divine order of the world.
+
+Such another gift to men was Martin Luther, the captive of justifying
+grace, won from the monastery and the bondage of Rome to set Germany and
+Europe free. What a soul of fire, what a voice of power was his! to
+whose lips our Lord Christ set the great trumpet of the Reformation; and
+he blew a blast that waked the sleeping peoples of the North, and made
+the walls of Babylon rock again to their foundation. Such a gift to
+Scotland was John Knox, who from his own soul breathed the spirit of
+religion into the life of a nation, and gave it a body and organic form
+in which to dwell and work for centuries.
+
+Such a gift to England was John Wesley. Can we conceive a richer boon
+conferred by the Head of the Church upon the English race than the
+raising up of this great evangelist and pastor and teacher, at such a
+time as that of his appearance? Standing at the distance of a hundred
+years, we are able to measure in some degree the magnitude of this
+bestowment. In none of the leaders and commanders whom Christ has given
+to His people was there more signally manifest that combination of
+faculties, that concurrence of providences and adjustment to
+circumstances, and that transforming and attempering influence of grace
+in all--the "effectual working in the measure of each single part" of
+the man and his history, which marks those special gifts that Christ is
+wont to bestow upon His people in seasons of special emergency and
+need.
+
+We are passing into a new age, such as none of these great men dreamed
+of, an age as exigent and perilous as any that have gone before it. The
+ascendency of physical science, the political enfranchisement of the
+masses, the universal spread of education, the emancipation of critical
+thought, the gigantic growth of the press, the enormous increase and
+aggregation of wealth, the multiplication of large cities, the
+world-wide facilities of intercourse,--these and other causes more
+subtle are rapidly transforming human society. Old barriers have
+disappeared; while new difficulties are being created, of a magnitude to
+overtask the faith of the strongest. The Church is confronted with
+problems larger far in their dimensions than those our fathers knew.
+Demands are being made on her resources such as she has never had to
+meet before. Shall we be equal to the needs of the coming times?--Nay,
+that is not the question; but will _He_?
+
+There is nothing new or surprising to the Lord Jesus in the progress of
+our times and the developments of modern thought, nothing for which He
+is not perfectly prepared. He has taken their measure long ere this, and
+holds them within His grasp. The government is upon His shoulders--"the
+weight of all this unintelligible world"--and He can bear it well. He
+has gifts in store for the twentieth century, when it arrives, as
+adequate as those He bestowed upon the first or fifth, upon the
+sixteenth or the eighteenth of our era. There are Augustines and Wesleys
+yet to come. Hidden in the Almighty's quiver are shafts as polished and
+as keen as any He has used, which He will launch forth in the war of the
+ages at the appointed hour. The need, the peril, the greatness of the
+time will be the measure of the gift of Christ.
+
+There is a danger, however, in waiting for great leaders and in looking
+for signal displays of Christ's power amongst men. His "kingdom comes
+not with observation," so that men should say, Lo here! or Lo there! It
+steals upon us unforeseen; it is amongst us before we know. "We looked,"
+says Rutherford, "that He should take the higher way along the
+mountains; and lo, He came by the lower way of the valleys!" While men
+listen to the earthquake and the wind rending the mountains, a still,
+small voice speaks the message of God to prepared hearts. Rarely can we
+measure at the first the worth of Christ's best gifts. When the fruit
+appears, after long patience, the world will haply discover when and how
+the seed was sown. But not always then.
+
+    "The sower, passing onward, was not known;
+    And all men reaped the harvest as their own."
+
+Those who are most ready to appraise their fellows are constantly at
+fault. Our last may prove Christ's first; our first His last! "Each of
+us shall give account of himself to God": each must answer for his own
+stewardship, and the grace that was given to each. "Let us not therefore
+judge one another any more." But let every man see to it that his part
+in the building of God's temple is well and faithfully done. Soon the
+fire will try every man's work, of what sort it is.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[99] Comp. Hebrews x. 1, 2, 10-14 with xi. 13-16, 39, 40, xii. 23, 24;
+also vi. 12.
+
+[100] The words of David in Browning's _Saul_, turned from the future
+tense into the present.
+
+[101] 2 Cor. ii. 14; comp. Eph. ii. 6, 7.
+
+[102] 2 Tim. iv. 5; Acts viii. 26-40, xxi. 8.
+
+[103] In Acts xiv. 4, 14, _Barnabas and Paul_ are "apostles"; 1 Thess.
+ii. 6, _Paul and Silas and Timothy_. Comp. Rom. xvi. 7; 2 Cor. viii. 23,
+xi. 13; Phil. ii. 25; Rev. ii. 2.
+
+[104] Comp. ch. ii. 20, iii. 5 for the association of _prophets_ with
+_apostles_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+_THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH._
+
+    "Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the full
+    knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure
+    of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no more
+    children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of
+    doctrine in the sport of men, in craftiness, unto the scheme of
+    error; but dealing truly, in love may grow up in all things into
+    Him, which is the head, _even_ Christ; from whom all the body fitly
+    framed and knit together, through that which every juncture
+    supplieth, according to the working in _due_ measure of each several
+    part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself
+    in love."--EPH. iv. 13-16.
+
+
+We must spend a few moments in unravelling this knotty paragraph and
+determining the relation of its involved clauses to each other, before
+we can expound it. This passage is enough to prove St Paul's hand in the
+letter. No writer of equal power was ever so little of a literary
+craftsman. His epistles read, as M. Renan says, like "a rapid
+conversation stenographed." Sometimes, as in several places in
+Colossians ii., his ideas are shot out in disjointed clauses, hardly
+more continuous than shorthand notes; often, as in this epistle, they
+pour in a full stream, sentence hurrying after sentence and phrase
+heaped upon phrase with an exuberance that bewilders us. In his spoken
+address the interpretation of tone and gesture, doubtless, supplied the
+syntactical adjustments so often wanting in Paul's written composition.
+
+The gifts pertaining to special office in the Church were bestowed to
+promote its corporate efficiency and to further its general growth (vv.
+11, 12). Now, the purpose of these endowments sets a _limit_ to their
+use. "Christ gave apostles, prophets," and the rest--"_till we all
+arrive_ at our perfect manhood and reach the stature of His fulness."
+Such is the connexion of verse 13 with the foregoing context. The aim of
+the Christian ministry is to make itself superfluous, to raise men
+beyond its need. Knowledge and prophesyings, apostolates and pastorates,
+the missions of the evangelist and the schools of the teacher will one
+day cease; their work will be done, their end gained, when all believers
+are brought "to the unity of faith, to the full knowledge of the Son of
+God." The work of Christ's servants can have no grander aim, no further
+goal lying beyond this. Verse 14, therefore, does not disclose an
+ulterior purpose arising out of that affirmed in the previous sentence;
+it restates the same purpose. To make men of us (ver. 13) and to prevent
+our being children (ver. 14) is the identical object for which apostles,
+prophets, pastors, teachers are called to office. The goal marked out
+for all believers in the knowledge and the moral likeness of Christ
+(ver. 13), is set up that it may direct the Church's course through
+dangers shunned and enemies vanquished (ver. 14) to the attainment of
+her corporate perfection (vv. 15, 16). The whole thought of this section
+turns upon the idea of "the perfecting of the saints" in verse 12. Verse
+16 looks backward to this; verse 7 looked forward to it.
+
+So much for the general construction of the period. As to its particular
+words and phrases, we must observe:--
+
+(1) The "perfect [full-grown] man" of verse 13 is the _individual_, not
+the generic man, not "the one [collective] new man" of chapter ii. 15.
+The Greek words for _man_ in these two places differ.[105] The apostle
+proposes to the Christian ministry the end that he was himself pursuing,
+viz., to "present _every man_ perfect in Christ."[106]
+
+(2) "_Sleight_ of men" (A.V. and R.V.) does not seem to us to express
+the precise meaning of the word so translated in verse 14. _Kubeia_
+(from _kubos_, a cube, or die) occurs only here in the New Testament; in
+classical Greek it appears in its literal sense of _dice-play_,
+_gambling_. The interpreters have drawn from this the idea of
+_trickery_, _cheating_--the common accompaniment of gambling. But the
+kindred verb (_to play dice_, _to gamble_) has another well-established
+use in Greek, namely, _to hazard_: this supplies for St Paul's noun the
+signification of _sport_ or _hazarding_, preferred by Beza among the
+older expositors and by von Soden amongst the newest. _In the sport of
+men_, says von Soden: "conduct wanting in every kind of earnestness and
+clear purpose. These men _play_ with religion, and with the welfare of
+Christian souls." This metaphor accords admirably with that of the
+restless waves and uncertain winds[107] just preceding it; while it
+leads fittingly to the further qualification "in craftiness," which is
+almost an idle synonym after "sleight."
+
+(3) Another rare word is found in this verse, not very precisely
+rendered as "wiles"--a translation suiting it better in chapter vi. 11.
+Here the noun is singular in number: _methodeia_. It signifies
+_methodizing_, _reducing to a plan_; and then, in a bad sense,
+_scheming_, _plotting_. "Error" is thus personified: it "schemes," just
+as in 2 Thessalonians ii. 7 it "works." Amid the restless speculations
+and the unscrupulous perversions of the gospel now disturbing the infant
+faith of the Asian Churches, the apostle saw the outline of a great
+system of error shaping itself. There was a method in this madness.
+_Unto the scheme of error_--into the meshes of its net--those were being
+driven who yielded to the prevailing tendencies of speculative thought.
+With all its cross currents and capricious movements, it was bearing
+steadily in one direction. Reckless pilots steered ignorant souls this
+way and that over the wind-swept seas of religious doubt; but they
+brought them at last to the same rocks and quicksands.
+
+(4) As the contrast between manhood and childhood links verses 13 and
+14, so it is by the contrast of error and craftiness with _truth_ that
+we pass from verse 14 to verse 15. "_Speaking_ truth" insufficiently
+renders the opening word of the latter verse. The "_dealing_ truly" of
+the Revised margin is preferable. In Galatians iv. 16 the apostle
+employs the same verb, signifying not truth of speech alone, but of deed
+and life (comp. Eph. v. 9). The expression resembles that of 1 John iii.
+19: "We are _of the truth_, and shall assure our hearts before Him,"
+where truth and love are found in the like union.
+
+(5) The last difficulty of this kind we have to deal with, lies in the
+connexion of the clauses of verse 16. "Through every joint of supply" is
+an incongruous adjunct to the previous clause, "fitly framed and knit
+together," although the rendering "joint" gives this connexion a
+superficial aptness. The apostle's word means _juncture_ rather than
+_joint_.[108] The _points of contact_ between the members of Christ's
+body form the channels of supply through which the entire frame receives
+nourishment. The clause "through every juncture of the supply"--an
+expression somewhat obscure at the best--points forwards, not backwards.
+It describes the means by which the Church of Christ, compacted in its
+general framework by those larger ligatures which its ministry furnishes
+(vv. 11, 12), builds up its inward life,--through a communion wherein
+"each single part" of the body shares, and every tie that binds one
+Christian soul to another serves to nourish the common life of grace. We
+may paraphrase the sentence thus: "Drawing its life from Christ, the
+entire body knit together in a well-compacted frame, makes use of every
+link that unites its members and of each particular member in his place
+to contribute to its sustenance, thus building itself up in love
+evermore."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These difficult verses unfold to us three main conceptions: _The goal of
+the Church's life_ (ver. 13), _the malady which arrests its development_
+(ver. 14), and _the means and conditions of its growth_ (vv. 15, 16).
+
+I. The mark at which the Church has to arrive is set forth, in harmony
+with the tenor of the epistle, in a twofold way,--in its _collective_
+and its _individual_ aspects. We must all "unitedly attain the oneness
+of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God"; and we must attain,
+each of us, "a perfect manhood, the measure of the stature of the
+fulness of Christ."
+
+The "one faith" of the Church's foundation (ver. 5) is, at the same
+time, its end and goal. The final unity will be the unfolding of the
+primal unity; the implicit will become explicit; the germ will be
+reproduced in the developed organism. "The faith" is still, in St Paul,
+the _fides qua credimus_, not _quam credimus_; it is the living faith of
+all hearts in the same Christ and gospel.[109] When "we all" believe
+heartily and understandingly in "the word of truth, the gospel of our
+salvation," the goal will be in sight. All our defects are, at the
+bottom, deficiencies of faith. We fail to apprehend and appropriate the
+fulness of God in Christ. Faith is the essence of the heart's life: it
+forms the common consciousness of the body of Christ.
+
+While faith is the central organ of the Church's life, _the Son of God_
+is its central object. The dangers assailing the Church and the
+divisions threatening its unity, touched His Person; and whatever
+touches the Head, vitally affects the health of the body and the
+well-being of every member in it. Many had believed in Jesus as the
+Christ and received blessing from Him, whose knowledge of Him as the Son
+of God was defective. This ignorance exposed their faith to perversion
+by the plausible errors circulating in the Churches of Asia Minor.[110]
+The haze of speculation dimmed His glory and distorted His image.
+Dazzled by the "philosophy and empty deceit" of specious talkers, these
+half-instructed believers formed erroneous or uncertain views of Christ.
+And a divided Christ makes a divided Church. We may hold divergent
+opinions upon many points of doctrine--in regard to Church order and the
+Sacraments, in regard to the nature of the future judgement, in regard
+to the mode and limits of inspiration, in regard to the dialect and
+expression of our spiritual life--and yet retain, notwithstanding, a
+large measure of cordial unity and find ourselves able to co-operate
+with each other for many Christian purposes. But when our difference
+concerns the Person of Christ, it is felt at once to be fundamental.
+There is a gulf between those who worship and those who do not worship
+the Son of God.
+
+"Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in
+him and he in God" (1 John iv. 15). This is the touchstone of catholic
+truth that the apostles have laid down; and by this we must hold fast.
+The kingship of the Lord Jesus is the rallying-point of Christendom. In
+His name we set up our banners. There are a thousand differences we can
+afford to sink and quarrels we may well forget, if our hearts are one
+towards Him. Let me meet a man of any sect or country, who loves and
+worships my Lord Christ with all his mind and strength, he is my
+brother; and who shall forbid us "with one mind and one mouth to glorify
+the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"? It is nothing but our
+ignorance of Him, and of each other, that prevents us doing this
+already. Let us set ourselves again to the study of Christ. Let us
+strive "all of us" to "attain to the full knowledge of the Son of God";
+it is the way to reunion. As we approach the central revelation, and the
+glory of Christ who is the image of God shines in its original
+brightness upon our hearts, prejudices will melt away; the opinions and
+interests and sentiments that divide us will be lost in the transcendent
+and absorbing vision of the one Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+    "Names and sects and parties fall:
+    Thou, O Christ, art all in all!"
+
+The second and third _unto_ of verse 13 are parallel with the first, and
+with each other. A truer faith and better knowledge of Christ uniting
+believers to each other, at the same time develope in each of them a
+riper character. Jesus Christ was the "perfect man." In Him our nature
+attained, without the least flaw or failure, its true end,--which is to
+glorify God. In His fulness the plenitude of God is embodied; it is made
+human, and attainable to faith. In Jesus Christ humanity rose to its
+ideal stature; and we see what is the proper level of our nature, the
+dignity and worth to which we have to rise. We are "predestinated to be
+conformed to the image of God's Son." All the many brethren of Jesus
+measure themselves against the stature of the Firstborn; and they will
+have to say to the end with St Paul: "Not as though I had attained,
+either were already perfect. I follow after; I press towards the mark."
+A true heart that has seen perfection, will never rest short of it.
+
+"Till we arrive--till we _all_ arrive" at this, the work of the
+Christian ministry is incomplete. Teachers must still school us, pastors
+shepherd us, evangelists mission us. There is work enough and to spare
+for them all--and will be, to all appearance, for many a generation to
+come. The goal of the regenerate life is never absolutely won; it is hid
+with Christ in God. But there is to be a constant approximation to it,
+both in the individual believer and in the body of Christ's people. And
+a time is coming when that goal will be practically attained, so far as
+earthly conditions allow. The Church after long strife will be reunited,
+after long trial will be perfected; and Christ will "present her to
+Himself" a bride worthy of her Lord, "without spot or wrinkle or any
+such thing." Then this world will have had its use, and will give place
+to the new heavens and earth.
+
+II. The goal that the apostle marked out, did not appear to him to be in
+immediate prospect. The childishness of so many Christian believers
+stood in the way of its attainment. In this condition they were exposed
+to the seductions of error, and ready to be driven this way and that by
+the evil influences active in the world of thought around them. So long
+as the Church contains a number of unstable souls, so long she will
+remain subject to strife and corruption. When he says in verse 14, "that
+we may be _no longer children_ tossed to and fro," etc., this implies
+that many Christian believers at that time were of this childish sort,
+and were being so distracted and misled. The apostle writes on purpose
+to instruct these "babes" and to raise them to a more manly style of
+Christian thought and life.[111]
+
+It is a grievous thing to a minister of Christ to see those who for the
+time ought to be teachers, fit for the Church's strong meat and the
+harder tasks of her service, remaining still infantile in their
+condition, needing to be nursed and humoured, narrow in their views of
+truth, petty and personal in their aims, wanting in all generous feeling
+and exalted thought. Some men, like St Paul himself, advance from the
+beginning to a settled faith, to a large intelligence and a full and
+manly consecration to God. Others remain "babes in Christ" to the end.
+Their souls live, but never thrive. They suffer from every change in the
+moral atmosphere, from every new wind of doctrine. These invalids are
+objects full of interest to the moral pathologist; they are marked not
+unfrequently by fine and delicate qualities. But they are a constant
+anxiety to the Church. Till they grow into something more robust they
+must remain to crowd the Church's nursery, instead of taking part in her
+battle like brave and strenuous men.
+
+The appearance of false doctrine in the Asian Churches made their
+undeveloped condition a matter for peculiar apprehension to the apostle.
+The Colossian heresy, for example, with which he is dealing at this
+present moment, would have no attraction for ripe and settled
+Christians. But such a "scheme of error" was exactly suited to catch men
+with a certain tincture of philosophy and in general sympathy with
+current thought, who had embraced Christianity under some vague sense
+of its satisfaction for their spiritual needs, but without an
+intelligent grasp of its principles or a thorough experience of its
+power.
+
+St Paul speaks of "every wind of _the_ doctrine," having in his mind a
+more or less definite form of erroneous teaching, a certain "plan of
+error." Reading this verse in the light of the companion letter to
+Colossae and the letters addressed to Timothy when at Ephesus a few years
+later, we can understand its significance. We can watch the storm that
+was rising in the Graeco-Asiatic Churches. The characteristics of early
+Gnosticism are well defined in the miniature picture of verse 14. We
+note, in the first place, its protean and capricious form, half
+Judaistic, half philosophical--ascetic in one direction, libertine in
+another: "tossed by the waves, and carried about with every wind." In
+the next place, its intellectual spirit,--that of a loose and reckless
+speculation: "in the hazarding of men,"--not in the abiding truth of
+God. Morally, it was vitiated by "craftiness." And in its issue and
+result, this new teaching was leading "to the scheme of error" which the
+apostle four years ago had sorrowfully predicted, in bidding farewell to
+the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts xx.). This scheme was no other than
+the gigantic Gnostic system, which devastated the Eastern Churches and
+inflicted deep and lasting wounds upon them.
+
+The struggle with legalism was now over and past, at least in its
+critical phase. The apostle of the Gentiles had won the battle with
+Judaism and saved the Church in its first great conflict. But another
+strife is impending (comp. vi. 10); a most pernicious error has made its
+appearance within the Church itself. St Paul was not to see more than
+the commencement of the new movement, which took two generations to
+gather its full force; but he had a true prophetic insight, and he saw
+that the strength of the Church in the coming day of trial lay in the
+depth and reality of her knowledge of the Son of God.
+
+At every crisis in human thought there emerges some prevailing method of
+truth, or of error, the resultant of current tendencies, which unites
+the suffrages of a large body of thinkers and claims to embody the
+spirit of the age. Such a method of error our own age has produced as
+the outcome of the anti-Christian speculation of modern times, in the
+doctrines current under the names of Positivism, Secularism, or
+Agnosticism. While the Gnosticism of the early ages asserted the
+infinite distance of God from the world and the intrinsic evil of
+matter, modern Agnosticism removes God still further from us, beyond the
+reach of thought, and leaves us with material nature as the one positive
+and accessible reality, as the basis of life and law. Faith and
+knowledge of the Son of God it banishes as dreams of our childhood. The
+supernatural, it tells us, is an illusion; and we must resign ourselves
+to be once more without God in the world and without hope beyond death.
+
+This materialistic philosophy gathers to a head the unbelief of the
+century. It is the living antagonist of Divine revelation. It supplies
+the appointed trial of faith for educated men of our generation, and the
+test of the intellectual vigour and manhood of the Church.
+
+III. In the midst of the changing perils and long delays of her history,
+the Church is called evermore to press towards the mark of her calling.
+The conditions on which her progress depends are summed up in verses 15
+and 16.
+
+To the craft of false teachers St Paul would have his Churches oppose
+the weapons only of _truth and love_. "Holding the truth in love," they
+will "grow up in all things into Christ." Sincere believers, heartily
+devoted to Christ, will not fall into fatal error. A healthy life
+instinctively repels disease. They "have an anointing from the Holy One"
+which is their protection (1 John ii. 20-29). In all that belongs to
+godliness and a noble manhood, such natures will expand; temptation and
+the assaults of error stimulate rather than arrest their growth. And
+with the growth and ripening in her fellowship of such men of God, the
+whole Church grows.
+
+Next to the moral condition lies the spiritual condition of
+advancement,--viz., the full recognition of _the supremacy and
+sufficiency of Christ_. Christ assumes here two opposite relations to
+the members of His body. He is the Head _into_ (or _unto_) which we grow
+in all things; but at the same time, _from_ whom all the body derives
+its increase (ver. 16). He is the perfect ideal for us each; He is the
+common source of life and progress for us all. In our individual efforts
+after holiness and knowledge, in our personal aspirations and struggles,
+Jesus Christ is our model, our constant aim: we "grow into Him" (ver.
+15). But as we learn to live for others, as we merge our own aims in the
+life of the Church and of humanity we feel, even more deeply than our
+personal needs had made us do, our dependence upon Him. We see that the
+forces which are at work to raise mankind, to stay the strifes and heal
+the wounds of humanity, emanate from the living Christ (ver. 16). He is
+the head of the Church and the heart of the world.
+
+The third, practical condition of Church growth is brought out by the
+closing words of the paragraph. It is _organization_: "all the body
+fitly framed [comp. ii. 21] and knit together." Each local _ecclesia_,
+or assembly of saints, will have its stated officers, its regulated and
+seemly order in worship and in work. And within this fit frame, there
+must be the warm union of hearts, the frank exchange of thought and
+feeling, the brotherly counsel in all things touching the kingdom of
+God, by which Christian men in each place of their assembling are "knit
+together." From these local and congregational centres, the Christian
+fellowship spreads out its arms to embrace all that love our Lord Jesus
+Christ.
+
+A building or a machine is _fitted_ together by the adjustment of its
+parts. A body needs, besides this mechanical construction, a pervasive
+life, a sympathetic force _knitting_ it together: "knit together in
+love," the apostle says in Colossians ii. 2; and so it is "in love" that
+this "body builds up itself." The tense of the participles in the first
+part of verse 16 is present (continuous); we see a body in process of
+incorporation, whose several organs, imperfectly developed and
+imperfectly co-operant, are increasingly drawn to each other and bound
+more firmly in one as each becomes more complete in itself. The perfect
+Christian and the perfect Church are taking shape at once. Each of them
+requires the other for its due realization.
+
+The rest of the sentence, following the comma that we place at "knit
+together," has its parallel in Colossians ii. 19: "All the body, through
+its junctures and bands being supplied and knit together, increaseth
+with the increase of God." According to St Paul's physiology, the
+"bands" knit the body together, but the "junctures" are its means of
+supply. Each point of contact is a means of nourishment to the frame.
+In touch with each other, Christians communicate the life flowing from
+the common Head. The apostle would make _Christian intercourse a
+universal means of grace_. No two Christian men should meet anywhere,
+upon any business, without themselves and the whole Church being the
+better for it.
+
+"Wherever two or three are met together in my name," said Jesus, "there
+am I in the midst." In the multitude of these obscure and humble
+meetings of brethren who love each other for Christ's sake, is the grace
+supplied, the love diffused abroad, by which the Church lives and
+thrives. The vitality of the Church of Christ does not depend so much
+upon the large and visible features of its construction--upon Synods and
+Conferences, upon Bishops and Presbyteries and the like, influential and
+venerable as these authorities may be; but upon the spiritual
+intercourse that goes on amongst the body of its people. "Each several
+part" of Christ's great body, "according to the measure" of its
+capacity, is required to receive and to transmit the common grace.
+
+However defective in other points of organization, the society in which
+this takes place fulfils the office of an ecclesiastical body. It will
+grow into the fulness of Christ; it "builds up itself in love." The
+primary condition of Church health and progress is that there shall be
+an unobstructed flow of the life of grace from point to point through
+the tissues and substance of the entire frame.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[105] =Eis hena kaino anthropon= (_homo_), ch. ii. 15; similarly in iv.
+22, 24; Rom. vi. 6; 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47, etc. Here =eis andra teleion=
+(_vir_); comp. 1 Cor. xiii. 11; James iii. 2. To call the Church =aner=
+would be highly incongruous, in view of ch. v. 23, etc.; comp. 2 Cor.
+xi. 2.
+
+[106] Col. i. 22, 28, 29; 2 Tim. ii. 10.
+
+[107] For this association of metaphor, comp. Shakespeare: _Julius
+Caesar_, Act V., Scene 1:--
+
+    "Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark!
+    The storm is up; and all is on the hazard!"
+
+[108] Vulgate: _per omnem juncturam ministrationis_. St Paul's word here
+is =dia pases haphes=, _through every touching_. See Lightfoot's
+valuable note on the medical and philosophical use of the word by Greek
+authors, in his Commentary on Colossians (ii. 19).
+
+[109] Comp. ch. i. 13: "in whom you also [Gentiles, along with us Jews]
+found hope"; also Rom. iii. 29, 30; Tit. i. 4, "my true child according
+to _a common faith_."
+
+[110] See the connexion of thought in Col. ii. 8-10, 18, 19.
+
+[111] Compare 1 Cor. ii. 6, iii. 1-3, xiv. 20, xvi. 13; Gal. iv. 19;
+Heb. v. 11-14.
+
+
+
+
+ON CHRISTIAN MORALS.
+
+CHAPTER iv. 17--v. 21.
+
+    =En kainoteti zoes peripatesomen.=--ROM. vi. 4.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+_THE WALK OF THE GENTILES._
+
+    "This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer
+    walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being
+    darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God
+    because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening
+    of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to
+    lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness."--EPH. iv.
+    17-19.
+
+
+Christ has called into existence and formed around Him already a new
+world. Those who are members of His body, are brought into another order
+of being from that to which they had formerly belonged. They have
+therefore to walk in quite another way--"no longer as the Gentiles." St
+Paul does not say "as the other Gentiles" (A.V.); for his readers,
+though Gentiles by birth (ii. 11), are now of the household of faith and
+the city of God. They hold the franchise of the "commonwealth of
+Israel." As at a later time the apostle John in his Gospel, though a
+born Jew, yet from the standpoint of the new Israel writes of "the Jews"
+as a distant and alien people, so St Paul distinguishes his readers from
+"the Gentiles" who were their natural kindred.
+
+When he "testifies," with a pointed emphasis, "that _you_ no longer walk
+as do indeed the Gentiles," and when in verse 20 he exclaims, "But
+_you_ did not thus learn the Christ," it appears that there were those
+bearing Christ's name and professing to have learnt of Him who did thus
+walk. This, indeed, he expressly asserts in writing to the Philippians
+(ch. iii. 18, 19): "Many walk, of whom I told you oftentimes, and now
+tell you even weeping,--the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose god is
+their belly, and their glory in their shame, who mind earthly things."
+We cannot but associate this warning with the apprehension expressed in
+verse 14 above. The reckless and unscrupulous teachers against whose
+seductions the apostle guards the infant Churches of Asia Minor,
+tampered with the morals as well as with the faith of their disciples,
+and were drawing them back insidiously to their former habits of
+life.[112]
+
+The connexion between the foregoing part of this chapter and that on
+which we now enter, lies in the relation of the new life of the
+Christian believer to the new community which he has entered. The old
+world of Gentile society had formed the "old man" as he then existed,
+the product of centuries of debasing idolatry. But in Christ that world
+is abolished, and a "new man" is born. The world in which the Asian
+Christians once lived as "Gentiles in the flesh," is dead to them.[113]
+They are partakers of the regenerate humanity constituted in Jesus
+Christ. From this idea the apostle deduces the ethical doctrine of the
+following paragraphs. His ideal "new man" is no mere ego, devoted to
+his personal perfection; he is part and parcel of the redeemed society
+of men; his virtues are those of a member of the Christian order and
+commonwealth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The representation given of Gentile life in the three verses before us
+is highly condensed and pungent. It is from the same hand as the lurid
+picture of Romans i. 18-32. While this delineation is comparatively
+brief and cursory, it carries the analysis in some respects deeper than
+does that memorable passage. We may distinguish the main features of the
+description, as they bring into view in turn the _mental_, _spiritual_,
+and _moral_ characteristics of the existing Paganism. Man's intellect
+was confounded; religion was dead; profligacy was flagrant and
+shameless.
+
+I. "The Gentiles walk," the apostle says, "in _vanity of their
+mind_"--with reason frustrate and impotent; "being _darkened in their
+understanding_"--with no clear or settled principles, no sound theory of
+life. Similarly, he wrote in Romans i. 21: "They were frustrated in
+their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened." But here he
+seems to trace the futility further back, beneath the "reasonings" to
+the "reason" (_nous_) itself. The Gentile mind was deranged at its
+foundation. Reason seemed to have suffered a paralysis. Man has
+forfeited his claim to be a rational creature, when he worships objects
+so degraded as the heathen gods, when he practises vices so detestable
+and ruinous.
+
+The men of intellect, who held themselves aloof from popular beliefs,
+for the most part confessed that their philosophies were speculative and
+futile, that certainty in the greatest and most serious matters was
+unattainable. Pilate's question, "What is truth?"--no jesting question
+surely--passed from lip to lip and from one school of thought to
+another, without an answer. Five centuries before this time the human
+intellect had a marvellous awakening. The art and philosophy of Greece
+sprang into their glorious life, like Athene born from the head of Zeus,
+full-grown and in shining armour. With such leaders as Pericles and
+Phidias, as Sophocles and Plato, it seemed as though nothing was
+impossible to the mind of man. At last the genius of our race had
+blossomed; rich and golden fruit would surely follow, to be gathered
+from the tree of life. But the blossoms fell, and the fruit proved as
+rottenness. Grecian art had sunk into a meretricious skill; poetry was
+little more than a trick of words; philosophy, a wrangling of the
+schools. Rome towered in the majesty of her arms and laws above the
+faded glory of Greece. She promised a more practical and sober ideal, a
+rule of world-wide justice and peace and material plenty. But this dream
+vanished, like the other. The age of the Caesars was an age of
+disillusion. Scepticism and cynicism, disbelief in goodness, despair of
+the future possessed men's minds. Stoics and Epicureans, old and new
+Academics, Peripatetics and Pythagoreans disputed the palm of wisdom in
+mere strife of words. Few of them possessed any earnest faith in their
+own systems. The one craving of Athens and the learned was "to hear some
+new thing," for of the old things all thinking men were weary. Only
+rhetoric and scepticism flourished. Reason had built up her noblest
+constructions as if in sport, to pull them down again. "On the whole,
+this last period of Greek philosophy, extending into the Christian era,
+bore the marks of intellectual exhaustion and impoverishment, and of
+despair in the solution of its high problem" (Doellinger). The world
+itself admitted the apostle's reproach that "by wisdom it knew not God."
+It knew nothing, therefore, to sure purpose, nothing that availed to
+satisfy or save it.
+
+Our own age, it may be said, possesses a philosophic method unknown to
+the ancient world. The old metaphysical systems failed; but we have
+relaid the foundations of life and thought upon the solid ground of
+nature. Modern culture rests upon a basis of positive and demonstrated
+knowledge, whose value is independent of religious belief. Scientific
+discovery has put us in command of material forces that secure the race
+against any such relapse as that which took place in the overthrow of
+the Graeco-Roman civilization. _Pessimism_ answers these pretensions made
+for physical science by her idolaters. Pessimism is the nemesis of
+irreligious thought. It creeps like a slow palsy over the highest and
+ablest minds that reject the Christian hope. What avails it to yoke
+steam to our chariot, if black care still sits behind the rider? to wing
+our thoughts with the lightning, if those thoughts are no happier or
+worthier than before?
+
+"Civilization contains within itself the elements of a fresh servitude.
+Man conquers the powers of nature, and becomes in turn their slave" (F.
+W. Robertson). Poverty grows gaunt and desperate by the side of lavish
+wealth. A new barbarism is bred in what science grimly calls the
+_proletariate_, a barbarism more vicious and dangerous than the old,
+that is generated by the inhuman conditions of life under the existing
+regime of industrial science.
+
+Education gives man quickness of wit and new capacity for evil or good;
+culture makes him more sensitive; refinement more delicate in his
+virtues or his vices. But there is no tendency in these forces as we
+see them now in operation, any more than in the classical discipline, to
+make nobler or better men. Secular knowledge supplies nothing to bind
+society together, no force to tame the selfish passions, to guard the
+moral interests of mankind. Science has given an immense impetus to the
+forces acting on civilized men; it cannot change or elevate their
+character. It puts new and potent instruments into our hands; but
+whether those instruments shall be tools to build the city of God or
+weapons for its destruction, is determined by the spirit of the
+wielders. In the midst of his splendid machinery, master of the planet's
+wealth and lord of nature's forces, the civilized man at the end of this
+boastful century stands with a dull and empty heart--without God. Poor
+creature, he wants to know whether "life is worth living"! He has gained
+the world, but lost his soul.
+
+In vanity of mind and darkness of reasoning men stumble onwards to the
+end of life, to the end of time. The world's wisdom and the lessons of
+its history give no hope of any real advance from darkness to light
+until, as Plato said, "We are able more safely and securely to make our
+journey, borne on some firmer vehicle, on some Divine word."[114] Such a
+vehicle those who believe in Christ have found in His teaching. The
+moral progress of the Christian ages is due to its guidance. And that
+moral progress has created the conditions and given the stimulus to
+which our material and scientific progress is due. Spiritual life gives
+permanence and value to all man's acquisitions. Both of this world and
+of that to come "godliness holds the promise." We are only beginning to
+learn how much was meant when Jesus Christ announced Himself as "the
+light of the world." He brought into the world a light which was to
+shine through all the realms of human life.
+
+II. The delusion of mind in which the nations walked, resulted in a
+settled state of _estrangement from God_. They were "alienated from the
+life of God."
+
+"Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel," St Paul said in chapter ii.
+12,[115] using, as he does here, the Greek perfect participle, which
+denotes an abiding fact. These two alienations generally coincide.
+Outside the religious community, we are outside the religious life. This
+expression gathers to a point what was said in verses 11, 12 of chapter
+ii., and further back in verses 1-3; it discloses the spring of the
+soul's malady and decay in its separation from the living God. When
+shall we learn that in God only is our life? We may exist without God,
+as a tree cast out in the desert, or a body wasting in the grave; but
+that is not _life_.
+
+Everywhere the apostle moved amongst men who seemed to him
+dead--joyless, empty-hearted, weary of an idle learning or lost in
+sullen ignorance, caring only to eat and drink till they should die like
+the beasts. Their so-called gods were phantasms of the Divine, in which
+the wiser of them scarcely even pretended to believe. The ancient
+natural pieties--not wholly untouched by the Spirit of God, despite
+their idolatry--that peopled with fair fancies the Grecian shores and
+skies, and taught the sturdy Roman his manfulness and hallowed his love
+of home and city, were all but extinguished. Death was at the heart of
+Pagan religion; corruption in its breath. Few indeed were those who
+believed in the existence of a wise and righteous Power behind the veil
+of sense. The Roman augurs laughed at their own auspices; the priests
+made a traffic of their temple ceremonies. Sorcery of all kinds was
+rife, as rife as scepticism. The most fashionable rites of the day were
+the gloomy and revolting mysteries imported from Egypt and Syria. A
+hundred years before, the Roman poet Lucretius expressed, with his
+burning indignation, the disposition of earnest and high-minded men
+towards the creeds of the later classic times:--
+
+    "Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret,
+    In terris oppressa gravi sub religione,
+    Quae caput e coeli regionibus ostendebat
+    Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,
+    Primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra
+    Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra."[116]
+
+    _De Rerum Natura_: Bk. I., 62-67.
+
+How alienated from the life of God were those who conceived such
+sentiments, and those whose creed excited this repugnance. And when
+amongst ourselves, as it occurs in some unhappy instances, a similar
+bitterness is cherished, it is matter of double sorrow,--of grief at
+once for the alienation prompting thoughts so dark and unjust towards
+our God and Father, and for the misshapen guise in which our holy
+religion has been presented to make this aversion possible.
+
+The phrase "alienated from the life of God" denotes an objective
+position rather than a subjective disposition, the state and place of
+the man who is far from God and and his true life. God exiles sinners
+from His presence. By a necessary law, their sin acts as a sentence of
+deprivation. Under its ban they go forth, like Cain, from the presence
+of the Lord. They can no longer partake of the light of life which
+streams forth evermore from God and fills the souls that abide in His
+love.
+
+And this banishment was due to the cause already described,--to the
+radical perversion of the Gentile mind, which is re-affirmed in the
+double prepositional clause of verse 18: "because of the ignorance that
+is in them, because of the hardening of their heart." The repeated
+preposition (_because of_) attaches the two parallel clauses to the same
+predicate. Together they serve to explain this sad estrangement from the
+Divine life; the second _because_ supplements the first. It is the
+ingrained "ignorance" of men that excludes them from the life of God;
+and this ignorance is no misfortune or unavoidable fate, it is due to a
+positive "hardening of the heart."
+
+Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, but of indevotion. If men knew
+God, they would certainly love and serve Him. St Paul agreed with
+Socrates and Plato in holding that virtue is knowledge. The debasement
+of the heathen world, he declares again and again, was due to the fact
+that it "knew not God."[117] The Corinthian Church was corrupted and its
+Christian life imperilled by the presence in it of some who "had not the
+knowledge of God" (1 Cor. xv. 33, 34). At Athens, the centre of heathen
+wisdom, he spoke of the Pagan ages as "the times of ignorance" (Acts
+xvii. 30); and found in this want of knowledge a measure of excuse. But
+the ignorance he censures is not of the understanding alone; nor is it
+curable by philosophy and science. It has an intrinsic
+ground,--"existing _in_ them."
+
+Since the world's creation, the apostle says, God's unseen presence has
+been clearly visible (Rom. i. 20). Yet multitudes of men have always
+held false and corrupting views of the Divine nature. At this present
+time, in the full light of Christianity, men of high intellect and wide
+knowledge of nature are found proclaiming in the most positive terms
+that God, if He exists, is unknowable. This ignorance it is not for us
+to censure; every man must give account of himself to God. There may be
+in individual cases, amongst the enlightened deniers of God in our own
+days, causes of misunderstanding beyond the will, obstructing and
+darkening circumstances, on the ground of which in His merciful and wise
+judgement God may "overlook" that ignorance, even as He did the
+ignorance of earlier ages. But it is manifest that while this veil
+remains, those on whose heart it lies cannot partake in the life of God.
+Living in unbelief, they walk in darkness to the end, knowing not
+whither they go.
+
+The Gentile ignorance of God was attended, as St Paul saw it, with an
+_induration of heart_, of which it was at once the cause and the effect.
+There is a wilful stupidity, a studied misconstruction of God's will,
+which has played a large part in the history of unbelief. The
+Israelitish people presented at this time a terrible example of such
+guilty callousness (Rom. xi. 7-10, 25). They professed a mighty zeal for
+God; but it was a passion for the deity of their partial and corrupt
+imagination, which turned to hatred of the true God and Father of men
+when He appeared in the person of His Son. Behind their pride of
+knowledge lay the ignorance of a hard and impenitent heart.
+
+In the case of the heathen, hardness of heart and religious ignorance
+plainly went together. The knowledge of God was not altogether wanting
+amongst them; He "left Himself not without witness," as the apostle told
+them (Acts xiv. 17). Where there is, amid whatever darkness, a mind
+seeking after truth and right, some ray of light is given, some gleam of
+a better hope by which the soul may draw nigh to God,--coming whence or
+how perhaps none can tell. The gospel of Christ finds in every new land
+souls waiting for God's salvation. Such a preparation for the Lord, in
+hearts touched and softened by the preventings of grace, its first
+messengers discovered everywhere,--a remnant in Israel and a great
+multitude amongst the heathen.
+
+But the Jewish nation as a whole, and the mass of the pagans, remained
+at present obstinately disbelieving. They had no perception of the life
+of God, and felt no need of it; and when offered, they thrust it from
+them. Theirs was another god, "the god of this world," who "blinds the
+minds of the unbelieving" (2 Cor. iv. 3, 4). And their "ungodliness and
+unrighteousness" were not to be pitied more than blamed. They might have
+known better; they were "holding down the truth in unrighteousness,"
+putting out the light that was in them and contradicting their better
+instincts. The wickedness of that generation was the outcome of a
+hardening of heart and blinding of conscience that had been going on for
+generations past.
+
+III. By two conspicuous features the decaying Paganism of the Christian
+era was distinguished,--its unbelief and its _licentiousness_. In his
+letter to the Romans St Paul declares that the second of these
+deplorable characteristics was the consequence of the former, and a
+punishment for it inflicted by God. Here he points to it as a
+manifestation of the hardening of heart which caused their ignorance of
+God: "Having lost all feeling, they gave themselves up to
+lasciviousness, so as to commit every kind of uncleanness in
+greediness."
+
+Upon that brilliant classic civilization there lies a shocking stain of
+impurity. St Paul stamps upon it the burning word _Aselgeia
+(lasciviousness)_, like a brand on the harlot's brow. The habits of
+daily life, the literature and art of the Greek world, the atmosphere of
+society in the great cities was laden with corruption. Sexual vice was
+no longer counted vice. It was provided for by public law; it was
+incorporated into the worship of the gods. It was cultivated in every
+luxurious and monstrous excess. It was eating out the manhood of the
+Greek and Latin races. From the imperial Caesar down to the horde of
+slaves, it seemed as though every class of society had abandoned itself
+to the horrid practices of lust.
+
+The "greediness" with which debauchery was then pursued, is at the
+bottom self-idolatry, self-deification; it is the absorption of the
+God-given passion and will of man's nature in the gratification of his
+appetites. Here lies the reservoir and spring of sin, the burning deep
+within the soul of him who knows no God but his own will, no law above
+his own desire. He plunges into sensual indulgence, or he grasps
+covetously at wealth or office; he wrecks the purity, or tramples on the
+rights of others; he robs the weak, he corrupts the innocent, he
+deceives and mocks the simple--to feed the gluttonous idol of self that
+sits upon God's seat within him. The military hero wading to a throne
+through seas of blood, the politician who wins power and office by the
+sleights of a supple tongue, the dealer on the exchange who supplants
+every competitor by his shrewd foresight and unscrupulous daring, and
+absorbs the fruit of the labour of thousands of his fellow-men, the
+sensualist devising some new and more voluptuous refinement of
+vice,--these are all the miserable slaves of their own lust, driven on
+by the insatiate craving of the false god that they carry within their
+breast.
+
+For the light-hearted Greeks, lovers of beauty and of laughter, self was
+deified as Aphrodite, goddess of fleshly desire, who was turned by their
+worship into _Aselgeia_,--she of whom of old it was said, "Her house is
+the way to Sheol." Not such as the chaste wife and house-keeping mother
+of Hebrew praise, but Lais with her venal charms was the subject of
+Greek song and art. Pure ideals of womanhood the classic nations had
+once known--or never would those nations have become great and famous--a
+Greek Alcestis and Antigone, Roman Cornelias and Lucretias, noble maids
+and matrons. But these, in the dissolution of manners, had given place
+to other models. The wives and daughters of the Greek citizens were shut
+up to contempt and ignorance, while the priestesses of vice--_hetaerae_
+they were called, or _companions_ of men--queened it in their voluptuous
+beauty, until their bloom faded and poison or madness ended their fatal
+days.
+
+Amongst the Jews whom our Lord addressed, the choice lay between "God
+and Mammon"; in Corinth and Ephesus, it was "Christ or Belial." These
+ancient gods of the world--"mud-gods," as Thomas Carlyle called
+them--are set up in the high places of our populous cities. To the
+slavery of business and the pride of wealth men sacrifice health and
+leisure, improvement of mind, religion, charity, love of country, family
+affection. How many of the evils of English society come from this root
+of all evil!
+
+Hard by the temple of Mammon stands that of Belial. Their votaries
+mingle in the crowded amusements of the day and rub shoulders with each
+other. Aselgeia flaunts herself, wise observers tell us, with increasing
+boldness in the European capitals. Theatre and picture-gallery and novel
+pander to the desire of the eye and the lust of the flesh. The daily
+newspapers retail cases of divorce and hideous criminal trials with
+greater exactness than the debates of Parliament; and the appetite for
+this garbage grows by what it feeds upon. It is plain to see whereunto
+the decay of public decency and the revival of the animalism of pagan
+art and manners will grow, if it be not checked by a deepened Christian
+faith and feeling.
+
+_Past feeling_ says the apostle of the brazen impudicity of his time.
+The loss of the religious sense blunted all moral sensibility. The
+Greeks, by an early instinct of their language, had one word for
+_modesty_ and _reverence_, for self-respect and awe before the Divine.
+There is nothing more terrible than the loss of shame. When immodesty is
+no longer felt as an affront, when there fails to rise in the blood and
+burn upon the cheek the hot resentment of a wholesome nature against
+things that are foul, when we grow tolerant and familiar with their
+presence, we are far down the slopes of hell. It needs only the kindling
+of passion, or the removal of the checks of circumstance, to complete
+the descent. The pain that the sight of evil gives is a divine shield
+against it. Wearing this shield, the sinless Christ fought our battle,
+and bore the anguish of our sin.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[112] "The persons here denounced," says Lightfoot on Phil. iii. 18,
+"are not the Judaizing teachers, but the antinomian reactionists.... The
+stress of Paul's grief lies in the fact that they degraded the true
+doctrine of liberty, so as to minister to their profligate and worldly
+living." Comp. 1 Peter iv. 3, 4; 2 Peter ii. 18-22.
+
+[113] Comp. Col. ii. 20-iii. 4; Gal. vi. 14, 15.
+
+[114] _Phaeao_: Sec. xxxv.
+
+[115] See p. 129.
+
+[116] "When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth, crushed
+down under the weight of religion, who showed her head from the quarters
+of heaven with hideous aspect lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece
+ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and first to
+withstand her to her face" (Munro).
+
+[117] 1 Thess. iv. 5; 2 Thess. i. 8; Gal. iv. 8, 9.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+_THE TWO HUMAN TYPES._
+
+    "But ye did not so learn the Christ; if so be that ye heard Him, and
+    were taught in Him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away, as
+    concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth
+    corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that ye be renewed in the
+    spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath
+    been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth."--EPH. iv.
+    20-24.
+
+
+_But as for you!_--The apostle points us from heathendom to Christendom.
+From the men of blinded understanding and impure life he turns to the
+cleansed and instructed. "Not thus did _you_ learn the Christ"--not to
+remain in the darkness and filth of your Gentile state.
+
+The phrase is highly condensed. The apostle, in this letter so exuberant
+in expression, yet on occasion is as concise as in Galatians. One is
+tempted, as Beza suggested[118] and Hofmann insists, to put a stop at
+this point and to read: "But with you it is not so:[119] you learned the
+Christ!" In spite of its abruptness, this construction would be
+necessary, if it were only "the Gentiles" of verse 17 with whose "walk"
+St Paul means to contrast that of his readers. But, as we have seen, he
+has before his eye a third class of men, unprincipled Christian teachers
+(ver. 14), men who had in some sense learnt of Christ and yet walked in
+Gentile ways and were leading others back to them.[120] Verse 20, after
+all, forms a coherent clause. It points an antithesis of solemn import.
+There are genuine, and there are supposed conversions; there are true
+and false ways of learning Christ.
+
+Strictly speaking, it is not _Christ_, but _the Christ_ whom St Paul
+presumes his readers to have duly learnt.[121] The words imply a
+comprehending faith, that knows who and what Christ is and what
+believing in Him means, that has mastered His great lessons. To such a
+faith, which views Christ in the scope and breadth of His redemption,
+this epistle throughout appeals; for its impartation and increase St
+Paul prayed the wonderful prayer of the third chapter. When he writes
+not simply, "You have believed in Christ," but "You have _learned the
+Christ_," he puts their faith upon a high level; it is the faith of
+approved disciples in Christ's school. For such men the "philosophy and
+vain deceit" of Colossae and the plausibilities of the new "scheme of
+error" will have no charm. They have found the treasures of wisdom and
+knowledge that are hidden in Christ.
+
+The apostle's confidence in the Christian knowledge of his readers is,
+however, qualified in verse 21 in a somewhat remarkable way: "If verily
+it is He whom you heard, and in Him that you were taught, as truth is in
+Jesus." We noted at the outset the bearing of this sentence on the
+destination of the letter. It would never occur to St Paul to question
+whether the _Ephesian_ Christians were taught Christ's true doctrine.
+If there were any believers in the world who, beyond a doubt, had heard
+the truth as in Jesus in its certainty and fulness, it was those amongst
+whom the apostle had "taught publicly and from house to house," "not
+shunning to declare all the counsel of God" and "for three years night
+and day unceasingly with tears admonishing each single one" (Acts xx.
+18-35). To suppose these words written in irony, or in a modest
+affectation, is to credit St Paul with something like an ineptitude.
+Doubt was really possible as to whether all his readers had heard of
+Christ aright, and understood the obligations of their faith. Supposing,
+as we have done, that the epistle was designed for the Christians of the
+province of Asia generally, this qualification is natural and
+intelligible.
+
+There are several considerations which help to account for it. When St
+Paul first arrived at Ephesus, eight years before this time, he "found
+certain disciples" there who had been "baptized into John's baptism,"
+but had not "received the Holy Spirit" nor even heard of such a thing
+(Acts xix. 1-7). Apollos formerly belonged to this company, having
+preached and "taught carefully the things about Jesus," while he "knew
+only the baptism of John" (Acts xviii. 25). One very much desires to
+know more about this Church of the Baptist's disciples in Asia Minor.
+Its existence so far away from Palestine testifies to the power of
+John's ministry and the deep impression that his witness to the
+Messiahship of Jesus made on his disciples. The ready reception of
+Paul's fuller gospel by this little circle indicates that their
+knowledge of Jesus Christ erred only by defect; they had received it
+from Judaea by a source dating earlier than the day of Pentecost. The
+partial knowledge of Jesus current for so long at Ephesus, may have
+extended to other parts of the province, where St Paul had not been able
+to correct it as he had done in the metropolis.
+
+Judaistic Christians, such as those who at Rome "preached Christ of envy
+and strife," were also disseminating an imperfect Christian doctrine.
+They limited the rights of uncircumcised believers; they misrepresented
+the Gentile apostle and undermined his influence. A third and still more
+lamentable cause of uncertainty in regard to the Christian belief of
+Asian Churches, was introduced by the rise of Gnosticizing error in this
+quarter. Some who read the epistle had, it might be, received their
+first knowledge of Christ through channels tainted with error similar to
+that which was propagated at Colossae. With the seed of the kingdom the
+enemy was mingling vicious tares. The apostle has reason to fear that
+there were those within the wide circle to which his letter is
+addressed, who had in one form or other heard a different gospel and a
+Christ other than the true Christ of apostolic teaching.
+
+Where does he find the test and touchstone of the true Christian
+doctrine?--In the historical Jesus: "as there is truth _in Jesus_." Not
+often, nor without distinct meaning, does St Paul use the birth-name of
+the Saviour by itself. Where he does, it is most significant. He has in
+mind the facts of the gospel history; he speaks of "the Jesus"[122] of
+Nazareth and Calvary. The Christ whom St Paul feared that some of his
+readers might have heard of was not the veritable _Jesus_ Christ, but a
+shadowy and notional Christ, lost amongst the crowd of angels, such as
+was now being taught to the Colossians. This Christ was neither the
+image of God, nor the true Son of man. He supplied no sufficient
+redemption from sin, no ideal of character, no sure guidance and
+authority to direct the daily walk. Those who followed such a Christ
+would fall back unchecked into Gentile vice. Instead of the light of
+life shining in the character and words of Jesus, they must resort to
+"the doctrines and commandments of men" (Col. ii. 8-23).
+
+Amongst the Gnostics of the second century there was held a distinction
+between the human (fleshly and imperfect) _Jesus_ and the Divine
+_Christ_, who were regarded as distinct beings, united to each other
+from the time of the baptism of Jesus to His death. The critics who
+assert the late and non-Pauline authorship of the epistle, assert that
+this peculiar doctrine is aimed at in the words before us, and that the
+identification of Christ with Jesus has a polemical reference to this
+advanced Gnostic error. The verses that follow show that the writer has
+a different and entirely practical aim. The apostle points us to our
+true ideal, to "the Christ" of all revelation manifest in "the Jesus" of
+the gospel. Here we see "the new man created after God," whose nature we
+must embody in ourselves. The counteractive of a false spiritualism is
+found in the incarnate life of the Son of God. The dualism which
+separated God from the world and man's spirit from his flesh, had its
+refutation in "the Jesus" of Paul's preaching, whom we see in the Four
+Gospels. Those who persisted in the attempt to graft the dualistic
+theosophy upon the Christian faith, were in the end compelled to divide
+and destroy the Christ Himself. They broke up into _Jesus and Christ_
+the unity of His incarnate Person.
+
+It is an entire mistake to suppose that the apostle Paul was indifferent
+to the historical tradition of Jesus; that the Christ he taught was a
+product of his personal inspiration, of his inward experience and
+theological reflection. This preaching of an abstract Christ, distinct
+from the actual Jesus, is the very thing that he condemns. Although his
+explicit references in the epistles to the teaching of Jesus and the
+events of His earthly life are not numerous, they are such as to prove
+that the Churches St Paul taught were well instructed in that history.
+From the beginning the apostle made himself well acquainted with the
+facts concerning Jesus, and had become possessor of all that the earlier
+witnesses could relate. His conception of the Lord Jesus Christ is
+living and realistic in the highest degree. Its germ was in the visible
+appearance of the glorified Jesus to himself on the Damascus road; but
+that expanding germ struck down its roots into the rich soil of the
+Church's recollections of the incarnate Redeemer as He lived and taught
+and laboured, as He died and rose again amongst men. Paul's Christ was
+the Jesus of Peter and of John and of our own Evangelists; there was no
+other. He warns the Church against all unhistorical, subjective Christs,
+the product of human speculation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Asian Christians who held a true faith, had received Jesus as the
+Christ. So accepting Him, they accepted a fixed standard and ideal of
+life for themselves. With Jesus Christ evidently set forth before their
+eyes, let them look back upon their past life; let them contrast what
+they had been with what they are to be. Let them consider what things
+they must "put off" and what "put on," so that they may "be found in
+Him."
+
+Strangely did the image of Jesus confront the pagan world; keenly its
+light smote on that gross darkness. There stood the Word made
+flesh--purity immaculate, love in its very self--shaped forth in no
+dream of fancy or philosophy, but in the veritable man Christ Jesus,
+born of Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate,--truth expressed
+
+            "In loveliness of perfect deeds,
+    More strong than all poetic thought."
+
+And this life of Jesus, living in those who loved Him (2 Cor. iv. 11),
+ended not when He passed from earth; it passed from land to land,
+speaking many tongues, raising up new witnesses at every step as it
+moved along. It was not a new system, a new creed, but _new men_ that it
+gave the world in Christ's disciples, men redeemed from all iniquity,
+noble and pure as sons of God. It was the sight of Jesus, and of men
+like Jesus, that shamed the old world, so corrupt and false and hardened
+in its sin. In vain she summoned the gates of death to silence the
+witnesses of Jesus. At last
+
+    "She veiled her eagles, snapped her sword,
+      And laid her sceptre down;
+    Her stately purple she abhorred,
+      And her imperial crown.
+    She broke her flutes, she stopped her sports,
+      Her artists could not please;
+    She tore her books, she shut her courts,
+      She fled her palaces;
+    Lust of the eye and pride of life--
+      She left it all behind,
+    And hurried, torn with inward strife,
+      The wilderness to find" (_Obermann once more_).
+
+The Galilean conquered! The new man was destined to convict and destroy
+the old. "God sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for
+sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. viii. 3). When Jesus lived, died,
+and rose again, an inconceivable revolution in human affairs had been
+effected. The cross was planted on the territory of the god of this
+world; its victory was inevitable. The "grain of wheat" fell into the
+ground to die: there might be still a long, cruel winter; many a storm
+and blight would delay its growth; but the harvest was secure. Jesus
+Christ was the type and the head of a new moral order, destined to
+control the universe.
+
+To see the new and the old man side by side was enough to assure one
+that the future lay with Jesus. Corruption and decrepitude marked every
+feature of Gentile life. It was gangrened with vice,--"wasting away in
+its deceitful lusts."
+
+St Paul had before his eyes, as he wrote, a conspicuous type of the
+decaying Pagan order. He had appealed as a citizen of the empire to
+_Caesar_ as his judge. He was in durance as _Nero's_ prisoner, and was
+acquainted with the life of the palace (Phil. i. 13). Never, perhaps,
+has any line of rulers dominated mankind so absolutely or held in their
+single hand so completely the resources of the world as did the Caesars
+of St Paul's time. Their name has ever since served to mark the summit
+of autocratic power. It was, surely, the vision of Tiberius sitting at
+Rome that Jesus saw in the wilderness, when "the devil showed Him all
+the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and said, All this hath been
+delivered to me, and to whomsoever I will I give it." The Emperor was
+the topstone of the splendid edifice of Pagan civilization, that had
+been rearing for so many ages. And Nero was the final product and
+paragon of the Caesarean house!
+
+At this epoch, writes M. Renan,[123] "_Nero and Jesus_, Christ and
+Antichrist, stand opposed, confronting each other, if I may dare to say
+so, like heaven and hell.... In face of Jesus there presents itself a
+monster, who is the ideal of evil as Jesus of goodness.... Nero's was an
+evil nature, hypocritical, vain, frivolous, prodigiously given to
+declamation and display; a blending of false intellect, profound
+wickedness, cruel and artful egotism carried to an incredible degree of
+refinement and subtlety.... He is a monster who has no second in
+history, and whose equal we can only find in the pathological annals of
+the scaffold.... The school of crime in which he had grown up, the
+execrable influence of his mother, the stroke of parricide forced upon
+him, as one might say, by this abominable woman, by which he had entered
+on the stage of public life, made the world take to his eyes the form of
+a horrible comedy, with himself for the chief actor in it. At the moment
+we have now reached [when St Paul entered Rome], Nero had detached
+himself completely from the philosophers who had been his tutors. He had
+killed nearly all his relations. He had made the most shameful follies
+the common fashion. A large part of Roman society, following his
+example, had descended to the lowest level of debasement. The cruelty of
+the ancient world had reached its consummation.... The world had touched
+the bottom of the abyss of evil; it could only reascend."
+
+Such was the man who occupied at this time the summit of human power and
+glory,--the man who lighted the torch of Christian martyrdom and at
+whose sentence St Paul's head was destined to fall, the Wild Beast of
+John's awful vision. Nero of Rome, the son of Agrippina, embodied the
+triumph of Satan as the god of this world. Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of
+Mary, reigned only in a few loving and pure hearts. Future history, as
+the scroll of the Apocalypse unfolded it, was to be the battle-field of
+these confronting powers, the war of Christ with Antichrist.
+
+Could it be doubtful, to any one who had measured the rival forces, on
+which side victory must fall? St Paul pronounces the fate of the whole
+kingdom of evil in this world, when he declares that "the old man" is
+"perishing, according to the lusts of deceit." It is an application of
+the maxim he gave us in Galatians vi. 8: "He that soweth to his own
+flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption." In its mad sensuality and
+prodigal lusts, the vile Roman world he saw around him was speeding to
+its ruin. That ruin was delayed; there were moral forces left in the
+fabric of the Roman State, which in the following generations
+re-asserted themselves and held back for a time the tide of disaster;
+but in the end Rome fell, as the ancient world-empires of the East had
+fallen, through her own corruption, and by "the wrath" which is
+"revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
+men." For the solitary man, for the household, for the body politic and
+the family of nations the rule is the same. "Sin, when it is finished,
+bringeth forth death."
+
+The passions which carry men and nations to their ruin are "lusts _of
+deceit_." The tempter is the liar. Sin is an enormous fraud. "You shall
+not die," said the serpent in the garden; "Your eyes will be opened, and
+you will be as God!" So forbidden desire was born, and "the woman _being
+deceived_ fell into transgression."
+
+    "So glistered the dire Snake, and into fraud
+    Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the tree
+    Of prohibition, root of all our woe."
+
+By its baits of sensuous pleasure, and still more by its show of freedom
+and power to stir our pride, sin cheats us of our manhood; it sows life
+with misery, and makes us self-despising slaves. It knows how to use
+God's law as an incitement to transgression, turning the very
+prohibition into a challenge to our bold desires. "Sin taking occasion
+by the commandment deceived me, and by it slew me." Over the pit of
+destruction play the same dancing lights that have lured countless
+generations,--the glitter of gold; the purple robe and jewelled coronet;
+the wine moving in the cup; fair, soft faces lit with laughter. The
+straying foot and hot desires give chase, till the inevitable moment
+comes when the treacherous soil yields, and the pursuer plunges beyond
+escape into sin's reeking gulfs. Then the illusion is over. The gay
+faces grow foul; the glittering prize proves dust; the sweet fruit turns
+to ashes; the cup of pleasure burns with the fire of hell. And the
+sinner knows at last that his greed has cheated him, that he is as
+foolish as he is wicked.
+
+Let us remember that there is but one way of escape from the
+all-encompassing deceit of sin. It is in "learning Christ." Not in
+learning _about_ Christ, but in learning _Him_. It is a common artifice
+of the great deceit to "wash the outside of cup and platter." The old
+man is improved and civilized; he is baptized in infancy and called a
+Christian. He puts off many of his old ways, he dresses himself in a
+decorous garb and style; and so deceives himself into thinking that he
+is new, while his heart is unchanged. He may turn ascetic, and deny this
+or that _to_ himself; and yet never deny _himself_. He observes
+religious forms and makes charitable benefactions, as though he would
+compound with God for his unforsaken sin. But all this is only a
+plausible and hateful manifestation of the lusts of deceit. To learn the
+Christ, is to learn the way of the cross. "Take my yoke upon you, and
+learn of me," He bids us; "for I am meek and lowly in heart." Till we
+have done this, we are not even at the beginning of our lesson.
+
+From the perishing old man the apostle turns, in verses 23, 24, to the
+new. These two clauses differ in their form of expression more than the
+English rendering indicates.[124] When he writes, "that ye be renewed in
+the spirit of your mind," it is a _continual rejuvenation_ that he
+describes; the verb is present in tense, and the newness implied is that
+of recency and youth, newness in point of age. But the "new man" to be
+"put on" (ver. 24) is of a _new kind and order_; and in this instance
+the verb is of the aorist tense signifying an event, not a continuous
+act. The new man is put on when the Christian way of life is adopted,
+when we enter personally into the new humanity founded in Christ. We
+"put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. xiii. 14), who covers and absorbs
+the old self, even as those who await in the flesh His second advent
+will "put on the house from heaven," when "the mortal" in them will be
+"swallowed up of life" (2 Cor. v. 2-4). Thus two distinct conceptions of
+the life of faith are placed before our minds. It consists, on the one
+hand, of a quickening, constantly renewed, in the springs of our
+individual thought and will; and it is at the same time the assumption
+of another nature, the investiture of the soul with the Divine character
+and form of its being.
+
+Borne on the stream of his evil passions, we saw "the old man" in his
+"former manner of life," hastening to the gulf of ruin. For the man
+renewed in Christ the stream of life flows steadily in the opposite
+direction, and with a swelling tide moves upward to God. His knowledge
+and love are always growing in depth, in refinement, in energy and joy.
+Thus it was with the apostle in his advancing age. The fresh impulses of
+the Holy Spirit, the unfolding to his spirit of the mystery of God, the
+fellowship of Christian brethren and the interests of the work of the
+Church renewed Paul's youth like the eagle's. If in years and toil he is
+old, his soul is full of ardour, his intellect keen and eager; the
+"outward man decays, but the inward man is renewed day by day."
+
+This new nature had a new birth. The soul reanimating itself perpetually
+from the fresh springs that are in God, had in God the beginning of its
+renovated life. We have not to create or fashion for ourselves the
+perfect life, but to _adopt_ it,--to realize the Christian ideal (ver.
+24). We are called to put on the new type of manhood as completely as we
+renounce the old (ver. 22). The new man is there before our eyes,
+manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom we live henceforth.
+When we "learn the Christ," when we have become His true disciples, we
+"put on" His nature and "walk in Him." The inward reception of His
+Spirit is attended by the outward assumption of His character as our
+calling amongst men.
+
+Now, the character of Jesus is human nature as God first formed it. It
+existed in His thoughts from eternity. If it be asked whether St Paul
+refers, in verse 24, to the creation of Adam in God's likeness, or to
+the image of God appearing in Jesus Christ, or to the Christian nature
+formed in the regenerate, we should say that, to the apostle's mind, the
+first and last of these creations are merged in the second. The Son of
+God's love is His primeval image. The race of Adam was created in Christ
+(Col. i. 15, 16). The first model of that image, in the natural father
+of mankind, was marred by sin and has become "the old man" corrupt and
+perishing. The new pattern replacing this broken type is the original
+ideal, displayed "in the likeness of sinful flesh"--wearing no longer
+the charm of childish innocence, but the glory of sin vanquished and
+sacrifice endured--in the Son of God made perfect through suffering.
+Through all there has been only one image of God, one ideal humanity.
+The Adam of Paradise was, within his limits, what the Image of God had
+been in perfectness from eternity. And Jesus in His human personality
+represented, under the changed circumstances brought about by sin, what
+Adam might have grown to be as a complete and disciplined man.
+
+The qualities which the apostle insists upon in the new man are two:
+"_righteousness_ and _holiness_ [or _piety_] of the truth." This is the
+Old Testament conception of a perfect life, whose realization the devout
+Zacharias anticipates when he sings how God has "shown mercy to our
+fathers, in remembrance of His holy covenant, ... that we being
+delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in
+holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life."
+Enchanting vision, still to be fulfilled! "Righteousness" is the sum of
+all that should be in a man's relations towards God's law; "holiness" is
+a right disposition and bearing towards God Himself. This is not St
+Paul's ordinary word for holiness (_sanctification_, _sanctity_), which
+he puts so often at the head of his letters, addressing his readers as
+"saints" in Christ Jesus. That other term designates Christian believers
+as devoted persons, claimed by God for His own;[125] it signifies
+holiness as a calling. The word of our text denotes specifically the
+holiness of temper and behaviour--"that becometh saints." The two words
+differ very much as _devotedness_ from _devoutness_.[126]
+
+A religious temper, a reverent mind marks the true child of grace. His
+soul is full of the loving fear of God. In the new humanity, in the type
+of man that will prevail in the latter days when the truth as in Jesus
+has been learnt by mankind, justice and piety will hold a balanced sway.
+The man of the coming times will not be atheistic or agnostic: he will
+be devout. He will not be narrow and self-seeking; he will not be
+pharisaic and pretentious, practising the world's ethics with the
+Christian's creed: he will be upright and generous, manly and godlike.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[118] Quid si post =houtos= distinctionem ascribas? _Vos autem non ita_
+(subaudi _facere convenit_), _qui didicistis_, etc.
+
+[119] Comp. Numb. xii. 7; Ps. i. 4; Luke xxii. 26, for this Hebraistic
+turn of expression.
+
+[120] Comp. Phil. iii. 2, 18; Titus i. 16.
+
+[121] See pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.
+
+[122] =Esti aletheia en to Iesou.= The article with the proper name is
+most significant. It points to the definite image of Jesus, in His
+actual person, that was made familiar by the preaching of Paul and the
+other apostles.
+
+[123] _L'Antechrist_, pp. i. ii. 1, 2. This is a powerful and impressive
+work, of whose value those who know only the _Vie de Jesus_ can have
+little conception. Renan's faults are many and deplorable; but he is a
+writer of genius and of candour. His rationalism teems with precious
+inconsistencies. One hears in him always the Church bells ringing under
+the sea, the witness of a faith buried in the heart and never silenced,
+to which he confesses touchingly in the Preface to his _Souvenirs_.
+
+[124] =ananeousthai de to pneumati tou noos hymon, kai endysasthai to
+kainon anthropon, to kata Theo ktisthenta.=
+
+[125] Comp. pp. 29, 30.
+
+[126] It is important to distinguish the Greek adjectives =hagios= and
+=hosios=, with their derivatives. See Cremer's _N. T. Lexicon_ on these
+words, and Trench's _N. T. Synonyms_, Sec. lxxxviii. Of the latter word, 1
+Thess. ii. 10; 1 Tim. i. 9, ii. 8; 2 Tim. iii. 3; Tit. i. 8 are the only
+examples in St Paul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+_DISCARDED VICES._
+
+    "Wherefore, having put away falsehood, 'speak ye truth each one with
+    his neighbour': for we are members one of another.
+
+    "'Be ye angry, and sin not': let not the sun go down upon your
+    provocation: neither give place to the devil.
+
+    "Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labour,
+    working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have
+    whereof to give to him that hath need.
+
+    "Let no worthless speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is
+    good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them
+    that hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were
+    sealed unto the day of redemption.
+
+    "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing
+    be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to
+    another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in
+    Christ forgave you. Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved
+    children; and walk in love, even as the Christ also loved you, and
+    gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an
+    odour of a sweet smell.
+
+    "But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not
+    even be named among you, as becometh saints; nor filthiness, nor
+    foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not befitting: but rather
+    giving of thanks. For this ye know of a surety, that no fornicator,
+    nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an idolater, hath any
+    inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no man deceive you
+    with empty words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of
+    God upon the sons of disobedience."--EPH. iv. 25--v. 6.
+
+
+The transformation described in the last paragraph (vv. 17-24) has now
+to be carried into detail. The vices of the old heathen self must be
+each of them replaced by the corresponding graces of the new man in
+Christ Jesus.
+
+The peculiarity of the instructions given by the apostle for this
+purpose does not lie in the virtues enjoined, but in the light in which
+they are set and the motives by which they are inculcated. The common
+conscience condemns lying and theft, malice and uncleanness; they were
+denounced with eloquence by heathen moralists. But the ethics of the New
+Testament differed in many respects from the best moral philosophy: in
+its direct appeal to the conscience, in its vigour and decision, in the
+clearness with which it traced our maladies to the heart's alienation
+from God; but most of all, in the remedy which it applied, the new
+principle of faith in Christ. The surgeon's knife lays bare the root of
+the disease; and the physician's hand pours in the healing balm.
+
+Let us observe at the outset that St Paul deals with the actual and
+pressing temptations of his readers. He recalls what they had been, and
+forbids them to be such again. The associations and habits of former
+life, the hereditary force of evil, the atmosphere of Gentile society,
+and added to all this, as we discover from chapter v. 6, the persuasions
+of the sophistical teachers now beginning to infest the Church, tended
+to draw the Asian Christians back to Gentile ways and to break down the
+moral distinctions that separated them from the pagan world.
+
+Amongst the discarded vices of the forsaken Gentile life, the following
+are here distinguished: _lying_, _theft_, _anger_, _idle speech_,
+_malice_, _impurity_, _greed_. These may be reduced to sins of temper,
+of word, and of act. Let us discuss them in the order in which they are
+brought before us.
+
+1. "The falsehood"[127] of verse 25 is the antithesis of "the truth"
+from which righteousness and holiness spring (ver. 24). In accepting the
+one, Paul's Gentile readers "had put off" the other. When these heathen
+converts became Christians, they renounced the great lie of idolatry,
+the system of error and deceit on which their lives were built. They
+have passed from the realm of illusion to that of truth. "Now," the
+apostle says, "let your daily speech accord with this fact: you have
+bidden farewell to falsehood; _speak_ truth each with his neighbour."
+The true religion breeds truthful men; a sound faith makes an honest
+tongue. Hence there is no vice more hateful than jesuitry, nothing more
+shocking than the conduct of those who defend what they call "the truth"
+by disingenuous arts, by tricks of rhetoric and the shifts of an
+unscrupulous partizanship. "Will you speak unrighteously for God, and
+talk deceitfully for Him?" _As Christ's truth is in me_ cries the
+apostle, when he would give the strongest possible assurance of the fact
+he wishes to assert.[128] The social conventions and make-believes, the
+countless simulations and dissimulations by which the game of life is
+carried on belong to the old man with his lusts of deceit, to the
+universal lie that runs through all ungodliness and unrighteousness,
+which is in the last analysis the denial of God.
+
+St Paul applies here the words of Zechariah viii. 16, in which the
+prophet promises to restored Israel better days on the condition that
+they should "speak truth each with his neighbour, and judge truth and
+the judgement of peace in their gates. And let none of you," he
+continues, "imagine evil in his heart against his neighbour; and love no
+false oath. For all these things do I hate, saith the Lord." Such is the
+law of the New Covenant life. No doubt, St Paul is thinking of the
+intercourse of Christians with each other when he quotes this command
+and adds the reason, "For we are _members one of another_." But the word
+_neighbour_, as Jesus showed, has in the Christian vocabulary no limited
+import; it includes the Samaritan, the heathen man and publican. When
+the apostle bids his converts "Follow what is good towards one another,
+and towards all" (1 Thess. v. 15), he certainly presumes the neighbourly
+obligation of truthfulness to be no less comprehensive.
+
+Believers in Christ represent a communion which in principle embraces
+all men. The human race is one family in Christ. For any man to lie to
+his fellow is, virtually, to lie to himself. It is as if the eye should
+conspire to cheat the hand, or the one hand play false to the other.
+Truth is the right which each man claims instinctively from his
+neighbour; it is the tacit compact that binds together all
+intelligences. Without neighbourly and brotherly love perfect
+truthfulness is scarcely possible. "Self-respect will never destroy
+self-seeking, which will always find in self-interest a side accessible
+to the temptations of falsehood" (Harless).
+
+2. Like the first precept, the second is borrowed from the Old
+Testament and shaped to the uses of the New. "_Be ye angry_, and sin
+not": so the words of Psalm iv. 4 stand in the Greek version and in the
+margin of our Revised Bible, where we commonly read, "Stand in awe, and
+sin not. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still." The
+apostle's further injunction, that anger should be stayed before
+nightfall, accords with the Psalmist's words; the calming effect of the
+night's quiet the apostle anticipates in the approach of evening. As the
+day's heat cools and its strain is relaxed, the fires of anger should
+die down. With the Jews, it will be remembered, the new day began at
+evening. Plutarch, the excellent heathen moralist contemporary with St
+Paul, gives this as an ancient rule of the Pythagoreans: "If at any time
+they happened to be provoked by anger to abusive language, before the
+sun set they would take each other's hands and embracing make up their
+quarrel." If Paul had heard of this admirable prescription, he would be
+delighted to recognize and quote it as one of those many facts of
+Gentile life which "show the work of the law written in their hearts"
+(Rom. ii. 15). The passion which outlives the day, on which the angry
+man sleeps and that wakes with him in the morning, takes root in his
+breast; it becomes a settled rancour, prompting ill thoughts and deeds.
+
+There is no surer way of tempting the devil to tempt us than to brood
+over our wrongs. Every cherished grudge is a "place given" to the
+tempter, a new entrenchment for the Evil One in his war against the
+soul, from which he may shoot his "fire-tipped darts" (vi. 16). Let us
+dismiss with each day the day's vexations, commending as evening falls
+our cares and griefs to the Divine compassion and seeking, as for
+ourselves, so for those who may have done us wrong forgiveness and a
+better mind. We shall rise with the coming light armed with new patience
+and charity, to bring into the world's turmoil a calm and generous
+wisdom that will earn for us the blessing of the peacemakers, who shall
+be called sons of God.
+
+Still the apostle says: "_Be angry_, and sin not." He does not condemn
+anger in itself, nor wholly forbid it a place within the breast of the
+saint. Wrath is a glorious attribute of God,--perilous, indeed, for the
+best of men; but he who cannot be angry has no strength for good. The
+apostle knew this holy passion, the flame of Jehovah that burns
+unceasingly against the false and foul and cruel. But he knew its
+dangers--how easily an ardent soul kindled to exasperation forgets the
+bounds of wisdom and love; how strong and jealous a curb the temper
+needs, lest just indignation turn to sin, and Satan gain over us a
+double advantage, first by the wicked provocation and then by the
+uncontrolled resentment it excites.
+
+3. From anger we pass to _theft_.
+
+The eighth commandment is put here in a form indicating that some of the
+apostle's readers had been habitual sinners against it. Literally his
+words read: "Let him _that steals_ play the thief no more." The Greek
+present participle does not, however, necessarily imply a pursuit now
+going on, but an habitual or characteristic pursuit, that by which the
+agent was known and designated: "Let the thief no longer steal!" From
+the lowest dregs of the Greek cities--from its profligate and criminal
+classes--the gospel had drawn its converts (comp. 1 Cor. vi. 9-11). In
+the Ephesian Church there were converted thieves; and Christianity had
+to make of them honest workmen.
+
+The words of verse 28, addressed to a company of thieves, vividly show
+the transforming effect of the gospel of Christ: "Let him toil, working
+with his hands what is good, that he may have wherewith to give to him
+that is in need." The apostle brings the loftiest motives to bear
+instantly upon the basest natures, and is sure of a response. He makes
+no appeal to self-interest, he says nothing of the fear of punishment,
+nothing even of the pride of honest labour. Pity for their fellows, the
+spirit of self-sacrifice and generosity is to set those pilfering and
+violent hands to unaccustomed toil. The appeal was as wise as it was
+bold. Utilitarianism will never raise the morally degraded. Preach to
+them thrift and self-improvement, show them the pleasures of an ordered
+home and the advantages of respectability, they will still feel that
+their own way of life pleases and suits them best. But let the divine
+spark of charity be kindled in their breast--let the man have love and
+pity and not self to work for, and he is a new creature. His indolence
+is conquered; his meanness changed to the noble sense of a common
+manhood. Love never faileth.
+
+4. We have passed from speech to temper, and from temper to act; in the
+warning of verses 29, 30 we come back to speech again.
+
+We doubt whether _corrupt talk_ is here intended. That comes in for
+condemnation in verses 2 and 3 of the next chapter. The Greek adjective
+is the same that is used of the "_worthless_ fruit" of the "_worthless_
+[_good-for-nothing_] tree" in Matthew xii. 33; and again of the "_bad_
+fish" of Matthew xiii. 48, which the fisherman throws away not because
+they are corrupt or offensive, but because they are useless for food. So
+it is against _inane_, inept and useless talk that St Paul sets his
+face. Jesus said that "for _every idle word_ men must give account to
+God" (Matt. xii. 36).
+
+Jesus Christ laid great stress upon the exercise of the gift of speech.
+"By thy words," He said to His disciples, "thou shalt be justified, and
+by thy words condemned." The possession of a human tongue is an immense
+responsibility. Infinite good or mischief lies in its power. (With the
+tongue we should include the pen, as being the tongue's deputy.) Who
+shall say how great is the sum of injury, the waste of time, the
+irritation, the enfeeblement of mind and dissipation of spirit, the
+destruction of Christian fellowship that is due to thoughtless speech
+and writing? The apostle does not simply forbid injurious words, he puts
+an embargo on all that is not positively useful. It is not enough to
+say: "My chatter does nobody harm; if there is no good in it, there is
+no evil." He replies: "If you cannot speak to profit, be silent till you
+can."
+
+Not that St Paul requires all Christian speech to be grave and serious.
+Many a true word is spoken in jest; and "grace" may be "given to the
+hearers" by words clothed in the grace of a genial fancy and playful
+wit, as well as in the direct enforcement of solemn themes. It is the
+mere talk, whether frivolous or pompous--spoken from the pulpit or the
+easy chair--the incontinence of tongue, the flux of senseless,
+graceless, unprofitable utterance that St Paul desires to arrest: "let
+it not proceed out of your mouth." Such speech must not "escape the
+fence of the teeth." It is an oppression to every serious listener; it
+is an injury to the utterer himself. Above all, it "grieves the Holy
+Spirit."
+
+The witness of the Holy Spirit is the seal of God's possession in
+us;[129] it is the assurance to ourselves that we are His sons in
+Christ and heirs of life eternal. From the day it is affixed to the
+heart, this seal need never be broken nor the witness withheld, "until
+the day of redemption." Dwelling within the Church as the guard of its
+communion, and loving us with the love of God, the Spirit of grace is
+hurt and grieved by foolish words coming from lips that He has
+sanctified. As Israel in its ancient rebellions "vexed His Holy Spirit"
+(Isai. lxiii. 10), so do those who burden Christian fellowship and who
+enervate their own inward life by speech without worth and purpose. As
+His fire is quenched by distrust (1 Thess. v. 19), so His love is vexed
+by folly. His witness grows faint and silent; the soul loses its joyous
+assurance, its sense of the peace of God. When our inward life thus
+declines, the cause lies not unfrequently in our own heedless speech. Or
+we have listened willingly and without reproof to "words that may do
+hurt," words of foolish jesting or idle gossip, of mischief and
+backbiting. The Spirit of truth retires affronted from His desecrated
+temple, not to return until the iniquity of the lips is purged and the
+wilful tongue bends to the yoke of Christ. Let us grieve before the Holy
+Spirit, that He be not grieved with us for such offences. Let us pray
+evermore: "Set a watch, O Jehovah, before my mouth; keep the door of my
+lips."
+
+5. In his previous reproofs the apostle has glanced in various ways at
+love as the remedy of our moral disorders and defects. Falsehood, anger,
+theft, misuse of the tongue involve disregard of the welfare of others;
+if they do not spring from positive ill-will, they foster and aggravate
+it. It is now time to deal directly with this evil that assumes so many
+forms, the most various of our sins and companion to every other: "Let
+all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing be put
+away from you, with all malice."
+
+The last of these terms is the most typical. _Malice_ is badness of
+disposition, the aptness to envy and hatred, which apart from any
+special occasion is always ready to break out in bitterness and wrath.
+_Bitterness_ is malice sharpened to a point and directed against the
+exasperating object. _Wrath_ and _anger_ are synonymous, the former
+being the passionate outburst of resentment in rage, the latter the
+settled indignation of the aggrieved soul: this passion was put under
+restraint already in verses 26, 27. _Clamour_ and _railing_ give audible
+expression to these and their kindred tempers. Clamour is the loud
+self-assertion of the angry man, who will make every one hear his
+grievance; while the railer carries the war of the tongue into his
+enemy's camp, and vents his displeasure in abuse and insult.
+
+These sins of speech were rife in heathen society; and there were some
+amongst Paul's readers, doubtless, who found it hard to forgo their
+indulgence. Especially difficult was this when Christians suffered all
+manner of evil from their heathen neighbours and former friends; it cost
+a severe struggle to be silent and "keep the mouth as with a bridle"
+under fierce and malicious taunts. Never to return evil for evil and
+railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing,--this was one of the
+lessons most difficult to flesh and blood.
+
+_Kindness_ in act, _tenderheartedness_ of feeling are to take the place
+of malice with its brood of bitter passions. Where injury used to be met
+with reviling and insult retorted in worse insult, the men of the new
+life will be found "forgiving one another, even as God in Christ
+forgave" them. Here we touch the spring of Christian virtue, the master
+motive in the apostle's theory of life. The cross of Jesus Christ is
+the centre of Pauline ethics, as of Pauline theology. The sacrifice of
+Calvary, while it is the ground of our salvation, supplies the standard
+and incentive of moral attainment. It makes life _an imitation of God_.
+
+The commencement of the new chapter at this point makes an unfortunate
+division; for its first two verses are in close consecution with the
+last verse of chapter iv. By kindness and pitifulness of heart, by
+readiness to forgive, God's "beloved children" will "show themselves
+imitators" of their Father. The apostle echoes the saying of his Master,
+in which the law of His kingdom was laid down: "Love your enemies, and
+do good, and lend never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and
+you shall be called children of the Highest: for He is kind to the
+thankless and evil. Be ye therefore pitiful, as your Father is pitiful"
+(Luke vi. 35, 36). Before the cross of Jesus was set up, men could not
+know how much God loved the world and how far He was ready to go in the
+way of forgiveness. Yet Christ Himself saw the same love displayed in
+the Father's daily providence. He bids us imitate Him who makes His sun
+shine and His rain fall on the just and unjust, on the evil and the
+good. To the insight of Jesus, nature's impartial bounties in which
+unbelief sees only moral indifference, spoke of God's compassion; they
+proceed from the same love that gave His Son to taste death for every
+man.
+
+In chapter iv. 32-v. 2 the Father's love and the Son's self-sacrifice
+are spoken of in terms precisely parallel. They are altogether one in
+quality. Christ does not by His sacrifice persuade an angry Father to
+love His children; it is the Divine compassion in Christ that dictates
+and carries into effect the sacrifice. At the same time it was "an
+_offering_ and a _sacrifice_ to God." God is love; but love is not
+everything in God. Justice is also Divine, and absolute in its own
+realm. Law can no more forgo its rights than love forget its
+compassions. Love must fulfil all righteousness; it must suffer law to
+mark out its path of obedience, or it remains an effusive, ineffectual
+sentiment, helpless to bless and save. Christ's feet followed the stern
+and strait path of self-devotion; "He humbled Himself and became
+obedient," He was "born under law." And the law of God imposing death as
+the penalty for sin, which shaped Christ's sacrifice, made it acceptable
+to God. Thus it was "an odour of a sweet smell."
+
+Hence the love which follows Christ's example, is love wedded with duty.
+It finds in an ordered devotion to the good of men the means to fulfil
+the all-holy Will and to present in turn its "offering to God." Such
+love will be above the mere pleasing of men, above sentimentalism and
+indulgence; it will aim higher than secular ideals and temporal
+contentment. It regards men in their kinship to God and obligation to
+His law, and seeks to make them worthy of their calling. All human
+duties, for those who love God, are subordinate to this; all commands
+are summed up in one: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The
+apostle pronounced the first and last word of his teaching when he said:
+_Walk in love, as the Christ also loved us._
+
+6. Above all others, one sin stamped the Gentile world of that time with
+infamy,--its _uncleanness_.
+
+St Paul has stigmatized this already in the burning words of verse 19.
+There we saw this vice in its intrinsic loathsomeness; here it is set
+in the light of Christ's love on the one hand (ver. 2), and of the final
+judgement on the other (vv. 5, 6). Thus it is banished from the
+Christian fellowship in every form--even in the lightest, where it
+glances from the lips in words of jest: "Fornication and all
+uncleanness, let it not even be named among you." Along with
+"filthiness, foolish talk and jesting" are to be heard no more. Passing
+from verse 2 to verse 3 by the contrastive _But_, one feels how
+repugnant are these things to the love of Christ. The perfume of the
+sacrifice of Calvary, so pleasing in heaven, sweetens our life on earth;
+its grace drives wanton and selfish passions from the heart, and
+destroys the pestilence of evil in the social atmosphere. Lust cannot
+breathe in the sight of the cross.
+
+The "good-for-nothing speech" of chapter iv. 29 comes up once more for
+condemnation in the _foolish speech_ and _jesting_ of this passage. The
+former is the idle talk of a stupid, the latter of a clever man. Both,
+under the conditions of heathen society, were tainted with foulness.
+Loose speech easily becomes low speech. Wit, unchastened by reverence,
+finds a tempting field for its exercise in the delicate relations of
+life, and displays its skill in veiled indecencies and jests that
+desecrate the purer feelings, while they avoid open grossness.
+
+St Paul's word for "jesting" is one of the singular terms of this
+epistle. By etymology it denotes a _well-turned_ style of expression,
+the versatile speech of one who can touch lightly on many themes and
+aptly blend the grave and gay. This social gift was prized amongst the
+polished Greeks. But it was a faculty so commonly abused, that the word
+describing it fell into bad odour: it came to signify banter and
+persiflage; and then, still worse, the kind of talk here indicated,--the
+wit whose zest lies in its flavour of impurity. "The very profligate old
+man in the _Miles Gloriosus_ of Plautus (iii. I. 42-52), who prides
+himself, and not without reason, upon his wit, his elegance and
+refinement [_cavillator lepidus_, _facetus_], is exactly the
+=eutrapelos=. And keeping in mind that =eutrapelia=, being only once
+expressly and by name forbidden in Scripture, is forbidden to Ephesians,
+it is not a little notable to find him urging that all this was to be
+expected from him, being as he was an Ephesian by birth:--
+
+    Post _Ephesi sum natus_; non enim in Apulia, non Animulae."[130]
+
+In place of senseless prating and wanton jests--things unbefitting to a
+rational creature, much more to a saint--the Asian Greeks are to find in
+_thanksgiving_ employment for their ready tongue. St Paul's rule is not
+one of mere prohibition. The versatile tongue that disported itself in
+unhallowed and frivolous utterance, may be turned into a precious
+instrument for God's service. Let the fire of Divine love touch the
+jester's lips, and that mouth will show forth His praise which once
+poured out dishonour to its Maker and shame to His image in man.
+
+7. At the end of the Ephesian catalogue of vices, as at the beginning
+(iv. 19), uncleanness is joined with _covetousness_, or _greed_.
+
+This, too, is "not even to be named amongst you, as becometh saints."
+_Money! property!_ these are the words dearest and most familiar in the
+mouths of a large class of men of the world, the only themes on which
+they speak with lively interest. But Christian lips are cleansed from
+the service both of Belial and of Mammon. When his business follows the
+trader from the shop to the fireside and the social circle, and even
+into the Church, when it becomes the staple subject of his conversation,
+it is clear that he has fallen into the low vice of covetousness. He is
+becoming, instead of a man, a money-making machine, an "idolater" of
+
+    "Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
+    From heaven."
+
+The apostle classes the covetous man with the fornicator and the
+unclean, amongst those who by their worship of the shameful idols of the
+god of this world exclude themselves from their "inheritance in the
+kingdom of Christ and of God."
+
+A serious warning this for all who handle the world's wealth. They have
+a perilous war to wage, and an enemy who lurks for them at every step in
+their path. Will they prove themselves masters of their business, or its
+slaves? Will they escape the golden leprosy,--the passion for
+accumulation, the lust of property? None are found more dead to the
+claims of humanity and kindred, none further from the kingdom of Christ
+and God, none more "closely wrapped" within their "sensual fleece" than
+rich men who have prospered by the idolatry of gain. Dives has chosen
+and won his kingdom. He "receives in his lifetime his good things";
+afterwards he must look for "torments."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[127] =Dio apothemenoi to pseudos.= Despite the commentators, we must
+hold to it that _the lie_, _the falsehood_ is objective and concrete;
+not _lying_, or _falsehood_ as a subjective act, habit, or
+quality,--which would have been rather =pseudologia= (comp. =morologia=,
+v. 4; and 1 Tim. iv. 2, =pseudologon=), or =to pseudes=. So in Rom. i.
+25, =to pseudos= is "the [one great] lie" which runs through all
+idolatry; and in 2 Thess. ii. 11 it denotes "the lie" which Antichrist
+imposes on those ready to believe it,--viz., that he himself is God.
+Accordingly, we take the participle =apothemenoi= to signify not what
+the readers are to do, but what they _had done_ in renouncing
+heathenism. The apostle requires consistency: "Since you are now of the
+truth, be truth-speaking men."
+
+[128] 2 Cor. i. 18, 19, xi. 10.
+
+[129] See ch. i. 13, 14, and 18 (last clause).
+
+[130] Trench: _N. T. Synonyms_, Sec. xxxiv.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+_DOCTRINE AND ETHICS._
+
+    "We are members one of another....
+
+    "Let the thief labour ... that he may have whereof to give to him
+    that hath need....
+
+    "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the
+    day of redemption....
+
+    "Forgive each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Be ye
+    imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as the
+    Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a
+    sacrifice to God....
+
+    "No fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an
+    idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and
+    God."--EPH. iv. 25-v. 6.
+
+
+The homily that we have briefly reviewed in the last Chapter demands
+further consideration. It affords a striking and instructive example of
+St Paul's method as a teacher of morals, and makes an important
+contribution to evangelical ethics. The common vices are here prohibited
+on specifically Christian grounds. The new nature formed in Christ casts
+them off as alien and dead things; they are the sloughed skin of the old
+life, the discarded dress of the old man who was slain by the cross of
+Christ and lies buried in His grave.
+
+The apostle does not condemn these sins as being contrary to God's law:
+that is taken for granted. But the legal condemnation was ineffectual
+(Rom. viii. 3). The wrath revealed from heaven against man's
+unrighteousness had left that unrighteousness unchastened and defiant.
+The revelation of law, approved and echoed by conscience, taught man his
+guilt; it could do no more. All this St Paul assumes; he builds on the
+ground of law and its acknowledged findings.
+
+Nor does the apostle make use of the principles of philosophical ethics,
+which in their general form were familiar to him as to all educated men
+of the day. He says nothing of the rule of nature and right reason, of
+the intrinsic fitness, the harmony and beauty of virtue; nothing of
+expediency as the guide of life, of the inward contentment that comes
+from well-doing, of the wise calculation by which happiness is
+determined and the lower is subordinated to the higher good. St Paul
+nowhere discountenances motives and sanctions of this sort; he
+contravenes none of the lines of argument by which reason is brought to
+the aid of duty, and conscience vindicates itself against passion and
+false self-interest. Indeed, there are maxims in his teaching which
+remind us of each of the two great schools of ethics, and that make room
+in the Christian theory of life both for the philosophy of experience
+and that of intuition. The true theory recognizes, indeed, the
+experimental and evolutional as well as the fixed and intrinsic in
+morality, and supplies their synthesis.
+
+But it is not the apostle's business to adjust his position to that of
+Stoics and Epicureans, or to unfold a new philosophy; but to teach the
+way of the new life. His Gentile disciples had been untruthful,
+passionate in temper, covetous, licentious: the gospel which he preached
+had turned them from these sins to God; from the same gospel he draws
+the motives and convictions which are to shape their future life and to
+give to the new spirit within them its fit expression. St Paul has no
+quarrel with ethical science, much less with the inspired law of his
+fathers; but both had proved ineffectual to keep men from iniquity, or
+to redeem them fallen into it. Above them both, above all theories and
+all external rules he sets the law of the Spirit of life in Christ.
+
+The originality of Christian ethics, we repeat, does not lie in its
+detailed precepts. There is not one, it may be, even of the noblest
+maxims of Jesus that had not been uttered by some previous moralist.
+With the New Testament in our hands, it may be possible to collect from
+non-Christian sources--from Greek philosophers, from the Jewish Talmud,
+from Egyptian sages and Hindoo poets, from Buddha and Confucius--a moral
+anthology which thus sifted out of the refuse of antiquity, like
+particles of iron drawn by the magnet, may bear comparison with the
+ethics of Christianity. If Christ is indeed the Son of man, we should
+expect Him to gather into one all that is highest in the thoughts and
+aspirations of mankind. Addressing the Athenians on Mars' Hill, the
+apostle could appeal to "certain of your own poets" in support of his
+doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. The noblest minds in all ages witness
+to Jesus Christ and prove themselves to be, in some sort, of His
+kindred.
+
+      "They are but broken lights of Thee;
+    And Thou, O Lord, art more than they!"
+
+It is Christ in us, it is the personal fellowship of the soul with Him
+and with the living God through Him, that forms the vital and
+constitutive factor of Christianity. Here is the secret of its moral
+efficacy. The Christ is the centre root and of the race; He is the
+image of God in which we were made. The life-blood of mankind flowed in
+Him as in its heart, and poured forth from Him as from its fountain in
+sacrifice for the common sin. Jesus gathered into Himself and restored
+the virtue of humanity broken into a thousand fragments; but He did much
+more than this. While He re-created in His personal character our lost
+manhood, by His death and resurrection He has gained for that ideal a
+transcendent power that seizes upon men and regenerates and transforms
+them. "With unveiled face beholding in the mirror the glory of the Lord,
+we are changed into the same image, [receiving the glory that we see] as
+from the Lord of the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18).
+
+There is, therefore, an evangelical ethics, a Christian science of life.
+"The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" has a system and method
+of its own. It has a rational solution and explanation to render for our
+moral problems. But its solution is given, as St Paul and as his Master
+loved to give it, in practice, not in theory. It teaches the art of
+living to multitudes to whom the names of ethics and moral science are
+unknown. Those who understand the method of Christ best are commonly too
+busy in its practice to theorize about it. They are physicians tending
+the sick and the dying, not professors in some school of medicine. Yet
+professors have their use, as well as practitioners. The task of
+developing a Christian science of life, of exhibiting the truth of
+revelation in its theoretical bearings and its relations to the thought
+of the age, forms a part of the practical duties of the Church and
+touches deeply the welfare of souls. For other times this work has been
+nobly accomplished by Christian thinkers. Shall we not pray the Lord of
+the harvest that He will thrust forth into this field fit labourers;
+that He will raise up men mighty through God to overthrow every high
+thing that exalts itself against His knowledge, and wise to build up to
+the level of the times the great fabric of Christian ethics and
+discipline?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There emerge in this exhortation four distinct principles, which lay at
+the basis of St Paul's views of life and conduct.
+
+I. In the first place, the fundamental truth of _the Fatherhood of God_,
+"Be imitators of God," he writes, "as beloved children." And in chapter
+iv. 24: "Put on the new man, which _was created after God_."
+
+Man's life has its law, for it has its source, in the nature of the
+Eternal. Behind our race-instincts and the laws imposed on us in the
+long struggle for existence, behind those imperatives of practical
+reason involved in the structure of our intelligence, is the presence
+and the active will of Almighty God our heavenly Father. His image we
+see in the Son of man.
+
+Here is the fountainhead of truth, from which the two great streams of
+philosophical thought upon morals have diverged. If man is the child of
+a Being absolutely good, then moral goodness belongs to the essence of
+his nature; it is discoverable in the instincts of his reason and will.
+Were not our nature warped by sin, such reasoning must have commanded
+immediate assent and led to consistent and self-evident results. Again,
+if man is the _child_ of God, the finite of the Infinite, his moral
+character must, presumably, have been in the beginning germinal rather
+than complete, needing--even apart from sin and its
+malformations--development and education, the discipline of a fatherly
+providence, inculcating the lessons and forming the habits which belong
+to his ripe manhood and full-grown stature. Intuitional morals bear
+witness to the God of creation; experimental morals to the God of
+providence and history. The Divine Fatherhood is the keystone of the
+arch in which they meet.
+
+The command to "be imitators of God" makes _personality_ the sovereign
+element in life. If consciousness is a finite and passing phenomenon, if
+God be but a name for the sum of the impersonal laws that regulate the
+universe, for the "stream of tendency" in the worlds, _Father_ and
+_love_ are meaningless terms applied to the Supreme and religion
+dissolves into an impalpable mist. Is the universe governed by personal
+will, or by impersonal force? Is reason, or is gravitation the index to
+the nature of the Absolute? This is the vital question of modern
+thought. The latter is the answer given by a large, if not a
+preponderant body of philosophical opinion in our own day,--as it was
+given, virtually, by the natural philosophers of Greece in the dawn of
+science. Man's triumphs over nature and the splendour of his discoveries
+in the physical realm bewilder his reason. The scientists, like other
+conquerors, have been intoxicated with victory. The universe, it seemed,
+was about to yield to them its last secrets; they were prepared to
+analyze the human soul and resolve the conception of God into its
+material elements. Religion and conscience, however, prove to be
+intractable subjects in the physical laboratory; they are coming out of
+the crucible unchanged and refined. We are able by this time to take a
+more sober measure of the possibilities of the scientific method, and to
+see what inductive logic and natural selection can do for us, and what
+they cannot do. We can walk in the light of the new revelation, without
+being dazzled by it. Things are less altered than we thought. The old
+boundaries reappear. The spirit resumes its place, and rules a wider
+realm than before. Reason refuses to be the victim of its own success,
+and to immolate itself for the deification of material law. "Forasmuch
+as we are God's offspring," we ought not to think, and we will not think
+that the Godhead is like to blind forces and reasonless properties of
+matter. Love, thought, will in us raise our being above the realm of the
+impersonal; and these faculties point us upward to Him from whom they
+came, the Father of the spirits of all flesh.
+
+The great tide of joy, the victorious energy which the sense of God's
+love brings into the life of a Christian, is evidence of its reality.
+The believer is a child walking in the light of his Father's
+smile--dependent, ignorant, but the object of an Almighty love. A
+thousand tokens speak to him of the Divine care; his tasks and trials
+are sweetened by the confidence that they are appointed for wise ends
+beyond his present knowledge. To another in that same house there is no
+heavenly Father, no unseen hand that guides, no gleam of a brighter and
+purer day lighting up its dull chambers. There are human companions,
+weak, erring and wearying like oneself. There is work to do, with the
+night coming swiftly; and the brave heart girds itself to duty, finding
+in the service of man its motive and employment--but, alas, with how
+poor success and how faint a hope!
+
+It is not the loss of strength for human service, nor the dying out of
+joy which unbelief entails, that is its chief calamity; but the
+unbelief itself. The sun in the soul's heaven is put out. The personal
+relationship to the Supreme which gave dignity and worth to our
+individual being, which imparted sacredness and enduring power to all
+other ties, is destroyed. The heart is orphaned; the temple of the
+spirit desolate. The mainspring of life is broken.
+
+    "Make haste to answer me, O Jehovah; my spirit faileth!
+              Hide not Thy face from me,
+      Lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit!"
+
+II. _The solidarity of mankind in Christ_ furnishes the apostle with a
+powerful lever for raising the ethical standard of his readers. The
+thought that "we are members one of another" forbids deceit. That he may
+"have whereof to give to the needy" is the purpose that provokes the
+thief to industry. The desire to "give grace" to the hearers and to
+"build them up" in truth and goodness imparts seriousness and elevation
+to social intercourse. The irritations and injuries we inflict on each
+other, with or without purpose, furnish occasion for us to "be kind one
+to another, good-hearted, _forgiving yourselves_"--for this is the
+expression the apostle uses in chapter iv. 32, and in Colossians iii.
+13. Self is so merged in the community, that in dealing censure or
+forgiveness to an offending brother the Christian man feels as though he
+were dealing with himself--as though it were the hand that forgave the
+foot for tripping, or the ear that pardoned some blunder of the eye.
+
+_Showing-grace_ is what the apostle literally says here, speaking both
+of human and Divine forgiveness.[131] In this lies the charm and power
+of true forgiveness. The forgiver after the order of grace does not
+pardon like a judge moved by magnanimity or pity for transgressors, but
+in love to his own kind and desire for their amendment. He identifies
+himself with the wrong-doer, weighs his temptation and all that drew him
+into error. Such forgiveness, while it never ignores the wrong, admits
+every qualifying circumstance and just extenuation. This is the kind of
+pardon that touches the sinner's heart; for it goes to the heart of the
+sin, isolating it from all other feelings and conditions that are not
+sin; it takes the wrong upon itself in understanding and perception; it
+puts its finger upon the aching, festering spot where the criminality
+lies and applies to that its healing balm.
+
+"Even as God in Christ forgave you." And how did God forgive? Not by a
+grand imperial decree, as of some monarch too exalted to resent the
+injuries of men or to inquire into their futile proceedings. Had such
+forgiveness been possible to Divine justice, it could have wrought in us
+no real salvation. Our forgiveness is that of God in Christ. The
+Forgiver has sat down by the prisoner's side, has felt his misery and
+the force of his temptations, and in everything but the actual sin has
+made Himself one with the sinner, even to bearing the extreme penalty of
+his guilt. In the act of making sacrifice, Jesus prayed for those that
+slew Him: "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!" This
+intercession breathed the spirit of the new forgiveness. There is a real
+remission of sins, a release granted justly and upon due satisfaction;
+but it is the act of justice charged with love, of a justice as tender
+and considerate as it is strong, and which eagerly takes account of all
+that bespeaks in the offender a possibility of better things. It is a
+forgiveness that does justice to the humanity as well as the criminality
+in the sinner.
+
+To proclaim by word and deed this forgiveness of God to the sinful world
+is the vocation of the Church. And where she does thus declare it, by
+whatever means or ministry, Christ's promise to her is verified:
+"Whose-soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them." We may so
+reconcile men to ourselves, as to bring them back to God. Has some one
+done you a wrong? there is your opportunity of saving a soul from death
+and hiding a multitude of sins. Thus Christ used the great wrong we all
+did Him. It is your privilege to show the wrong-doer that you and he are
+made one by the blood of Christ.
+
+"Walk in love," St Paul says, "as the Christ also loved us and gave up
+Himself for us a sacrifice." When the apostle writes _the Christ_, he
+points us along the whole line of the revelation of the cross.[132] We
+think of the Christhood of Jesus, of the Christliness of such love as
+this. Christ's was a representative and exemplary love, with its
+forerunners and its followers all walking in one path. "The Christ loved
+_and gave_"; for love that does not give, that prompts to no effort and
+puts itself to no sacrifice, is but a luxury of the heart,--useless and
+even selfish. And He "gave up _Himself_"--the only gift that could
+suffice. The rich who bestow many gifts in furtherance of humanitarian
+and religious work and still do not bestow themselves, their sympathetic
+thought, their presence and personal aid, are withholding the best
+thing, the one thing required to make their bounties efficacious. In
+what we give and forgive, it is the accent of sympathy, the giving of
+the heart with it that adds grace to the act. "Though I dole out all my
+goods, though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it
+profiteth me nothing." We do a thousand things to serve and benefit our
+fellow-men, and yet evade the real sacrifice,--which is simply to love
+them.
+
+In studying this epistle, we have felt increasingly that the Church is
+the centre of humanity. The love born and nourished in the household of
+faith goes out into the world with a universal mission. The solidarity
+of moral interests that is realized there, embraces all the kindreds of
+the earth. The incarnation of Christ knits all flesh into one redeemed
+family. The continents and races of mankind are members one of another,
+with Jesus Christ for head. We are brothers and sisters of humanity: He
+our elder brother, and God our common Father in heaven,--His Father and
+ours.
+
+Auguste Comte writes in his _System of Positive Polity_: "The promises
+of supernatural religion appealed exclusively to man's selfish
+instincts.... The sympathetic instincts found no place in the
+theological synthesis."[133] It would be impossible to affirm anything
+more completely at variance with the truth, anything more absolutely
+opposed to the doctrine of Christ and the theological synthesis of the
+apostles. And yet it was upon this ground that the great French thinker
+renounced Christianity, proposing his new religion of humanity as a
+substitute for a selfish and effete supernaturalism! Why did he not go
+to the New Testament itself to find out what Christianity means? "To
+combine permanently concert with independence," Comte excellently says,
+"is the capital problem of society, a problem which religion alone can
+solve, by love primarily, then by faith on a basis of love."[134]
+Precisely so; and this is the solution offered by Jesus Christ. His
+self-sacrificing love is the basis on which our faith rests; and that
+faith works by love in all those who truly possess it. This is the
+evangelical theory. The morale of the Church, it is true, has fallen
+shamefully below its doctrine; but this doctrine is, after all, the one
+fruitful and progressive moral force in the world; and it is certain to
+be carried into effect.
+
+In the darkest hour of Israel's oppression and of international hate,
+one of her great prophets thus described the triumph of supernatural
+religion: "In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria,
+a blessing in the midst of the earth; for that the LORD of hosts hath
+blessed them, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work
+of my hands, and Israel my inheritance" (Isai. xix. 24, 25). This is our
+programme still.
+
+III. Another of St Paul's ruling ideas lying at the basis of Christian
+ethics, is his conception of _man's future destiny_. The apostle warns
+his readers that they "grieve not the Holy Spirit, in whom they were
+sealed till the day of redemption." He tells them that "the impure and
+the covetous have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God."
+
+There is thus disclosed a world beyond the world, a life growing out of
+life, an eternal and invisible kingdom of whose possession the Spirit
+that lives in Christian men is the earnest and firstfruits. This kingdom
+is the joint inheritance of the sons of God, brethren with Christ and in
+Christ, who are conformed to His image and found worthy to "stand before
+the Son of man." Those are excluded from the inheritance, who by their
+moral nature are alien to it: "Without are dogs, sorcerers,
+whoremongers, idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie."
+This revelation has had a most powerful influence on the progress of
+ethics. It has given a momentous importance to individual conduct, a new
+grandeur to the moral issues of the present life. "Man's life," viewed
+in the light of the Christian gospel, "has duties that are alone great,
+that go up to Heaven, and down to Hell." The tangled skein is at last to
+be unravelled, the mysterious problem of mortal life will have its
+solution at the judgement-seat of Jesus Christ.
+
+It is true that the wicked flourish and spread themselves like green
+trees in the sunshine; and the covetous boast of their hearts' desire.
+To see this was the trial of ancient faith; and the good man had to
+charge himself constantly that he should not fret because of evil-doers.
+It required an heroic faith to believe in God's kingdom and
+righteousness, when the visible course of things made all against them,
+and there was no clear light beyond. God's saints had to learn first
+that God is Himself the sufficient good, and must be trusted to do
+right. But this was the faith of defence rather than of victory,--of
+endurance, not enthusiasm. In the knowledge of Christ's victory over
+death and entrance on our behalf into the heavenly world, "in hope of
+life eternal which God who cannot lie hath promised," men have fought
+against their own sins, have struggled for the right and spent
+themselves to save their fellows with a vigour and success never
+witnessed before, and in numbers far exceeding those that all other
+creeds and systems have enlisted in the holy cause of humanity.
+
+Human reason had guessed and hope had dreamed of the soul's
+immortality. Christianity gives this hope certainty, and adds to it the
+assurance of the resurrection of the body. Man's entire nature is thus
+redeemed. Chastity takes its due place amongst the virtues, and becomes
+the mark of a Christian as distinguished from a pagan life. "The body is
+not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. God
+who raised up the Lord Jesus, will raise us also through His power. Your
+bodies are limbs of Christ, ... a temple of the Holy Spirit which you
+have from God.... Glorify God in your body." So St Paul exhorts the
+Christians of Corinth (1 Ep. vi.), living in the centre and shrine of
+heathen vice. This doctrine of the sanctity of the body has been the
+salvation of the family. It has saved civilization from perishing
+through sexual corruption, and is still our chief defence against this
+fearful evil.
+
+Our bodily dress, we now learn, is one with the spirit that it infolds.
+We shall lay it aside only to resume it,--transfigured, but with a form
+and impress continuous with its present being. This identical self, the
+same both in its outward and inward personality, will appear before the
+tribunal of Christ, that it may "receive the things done in the body."
+This announcement gives reasonableness and distinctness to the
+expectation of future judgement. The judgement assumes, with its solemn
+grandeur, a matter-of-fact reality, an immediate bearing on the daily
+conduct of life, which lends a powerful reinforcement to the conscience,
+while it supplies a fitting and glorious conclusion to our course as
+moral beings.
+
+IV. Finally, _the atonement of the cross_ stamps its own character and
+spirit on the entire ethics of Christianity. The Fatherhood of God, the
+unity and solidarity of mankind, the issues of eternal life or death
+awaiting us in the unseen world--all the great factors and fundamentals
+of revealed religion gather about the cross of Christ; they lend to it
+their august significance, and gain from it new import and
+impressiveness.
+
+The fact that Christ "gave Himself up for us an offering and sacrifice
+to God"--gave Himself, as it is put elsewhere, "for our sins"--throws an
+awful light upon the nature of human transgression. The blood spilt in
+the strife with our sin and shed to wash out its stain, reveals its
+foulness and malignity. All that inspired men had taught, that good men
+had believed and felt and penitent men confessed in regard to the evil
+of human sin, is more than verified by the sacrifice which the Holy One
+of God has undergone in order to put it away. It was felt that "the
+blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins," that the
+sacrifices man could offer for himself, or the creatures on his behalf,
+were ineffectual; the guilt was too real to be expiated in this fashion,
+the wound too deep to be healed by those poor appliances. But who had
+suspected that such a remedy as this was needed, and forthcoming? How
+deep the resentment of eternal Justice against the transgressions of
+men, if the blood of God's own Son alone could make propitiation! How
+rank the offence against the Divine holiness, if to purge its
+abomination the vessel containing the most sweet fragrance of His
+sinless nature must be broken! What tears of contrition, what cleansing
+fires of hate against our own sins, what scorn of their baseness, what
+stern resolves against them are awakened by the sight of the cross of
+our Lord Jesus Christ!
+
+This negative side of the ethical bearing of Christ's sacrifice is
+implied in the words of the apostle in the second verse, and in the
+contrast indicated between its sweet savour and those unclean things
+whose very names it should banish from our midst (ver. 3). On its
+positive effects--the love and self-devotion it inspires, the conformity
+of our lives to its example--we have dwelt already. Let us add, however,
+that the sacrifice of Christ demands from us, above all, _devotion to
+Christ Himself_. Our first duty as Christians is to love Christ, to
+serve and follow Christ. "He died for all," says the apostle, "that the
+living should live no longer to themselves, but to Him that died for
+them and rose again." When Mary of Bethany poured on the Saviour's head
+her box of precious ointment, the Master accepted the tribute and
+approved the act; and the poor have been gainers by it a thousand times
+the pence which Judas deemed wasted on the head he was watching to
+betray. There is no conflict between the claims of Christ and those of
+philanthropy, between the needs of His worship and the needs of the
+destitute and suffering in our streets. Every new subject won to the
+kingdom of Christ is another helper won for His poor. Every act of love
+rendered to Him deepens the channel of sympathy by which relief and
+blessing come to sorrowful humanity.
+
+Let the gospel of Christ's kingdom be preached in word and deed to all
+nations, let the love of Christ be brought to bear upon the great masses
+of mankind, and the time of the world's salvation will be come. Its sin
+will be hated, forsaken, forgiven. Its social evils will be banished;
+its weapons of war turned to ploughshares and pruning hooks. Its
+scattered races and nations will be reunited in the obedience of faith,
+and formed into one Christian confederacy and commonwealth of the
+peoples, a peaceful kingdom of the Son of God's love.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[131] =Charizomenoi eautois, kathos kai ho Theos en Christo echarisato
+hymin.= So in Col. ii. 13, iii. 13; Rom. viii. 32; 2 Cor. ii. 7, 10;
+Luke vii. 42, 43.
+
+[132] Comp. pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.
+
+[133] Vol. iv., pp. 22, 41 (Eng. Trans.).
+
+[134] Comte, vol. iv., p. 30.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+_THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT._
+
+    "Be not ye therefore partakers with them; for ye were once darkness,
+    but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the
+    fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth),
+    proving what is well-pleasing unto the Lord; and have no fellowship
+    with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them.
+    For the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even
+    to speak of; but all things when they are reproved are made manifest
+    by the light: for everything that is made manifest is light.
+    Wherefore He saith:--
+
+    'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;
+      And the Christ shall shine upon thee.'"
+
+    EPH. v. 7-14.
+
+
+The contrast between the Christian and heathen way of life is now,
+finally, to be set forth under St Paul's familiar figure of _the light
+and the darkness_. He bids his Gentile readers not to be
+"joint-partakers with them"--with the sons of disobedience upon whom
+God's wrath is coming (ver. 6)--for he has hailed them already, in
+chapter iii. 6, as "joint-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus
+through the gospel." "Once" indeed they shared in the lot of the
+disobedient; but for them the darkness has past, and the true light now
+shineth.
+
+In wrath or promise, in hope of life eternal or in the fearful looking
+for of judgement they, and we, must partake. This future participation
+depends upon present character. "Do not," the apostle entreats, "cast
+in your lot again with the unclean and covetous. Their ways you have
+renounced, and their doom you have exchanged for the heritage of the
+saints. Let no vain words deceive you into supposing that you may keep
+your new inheritance, and yet return to your old sins. Show yourselves
+worthy of your calling. Walk as children of the light, and you will
+possess the eternal kingdom." Each man carries with him into the next
+state of being the entail of his past life. That heritage depends on his
+own choice; yet not upon his individual will working by itself, but on
+the grace and will of God working with him, as that grace is accepted or
+rejected. He has light: he must walk in it; and he will reach the realm
+of light. Thus the apostle, in verses 7 and 8, concludes his warning
+against relapse into heathen sin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Verses 9 and 10 delineate _the character of the children of the light_:
+verses 11-14 set forth _their influence upon the surrounding darkness_.
+Into these two divisions the exposition of this paragraph naturally
+falls.
+
+I. "The fruit _of the light_" (not _of the Spirit_) is the true text of
+verse 9, as it stands in the older Greek copies, Versions, and Fathers.
+Calvin showed his judgement and independence in preferring this reading
+to that of the received Greek text. Similarly Bengel,[135] and most of
+the later critics. The sentence is parenthetical, and contains a
+singular and instructive figure. It is one of those sparks from the
+anvil, in which great writers not unfrequently give us their finest
+utterances,--sentences that get a peculiar point from the eagerness with
+which they are struck off in the heat and clash of thought, as the mind
+reaches forward to some thought lying beyond. The clause is an epitome,
+in five words, of Christian virtue, whose qualities, origin and method
+are all defined. It sums up exquisitely the moral teaching of the
+epistle. Galatians v. 22, 23 (_the fruit of the Spirit_) and Philippians
+iv. 8 (_Whatsoever things are true_, etc.) are parallel to this passage,
+as Pauline definitions, equally perfect, of the virtues of a Christian
+man. This has the advantage of the others in brevity and epigrammatic
+point.
+
+"You are light in the Lord," the apostle said; "walk as children of the
+light." But his readers might ask: "What does this mean? It is poetry:
+let us have it translated into plain prose. How shall we walk as
+children of the light? Show us the path."--"I will tell you," the
+apostle answers: "the fruit of the light is in all goodness and
+righteousness and truth. Walk in these ways; let your life bear this
+fruit; and you will be true children of the light of God. So living, you
+will find out what it is that pleases God, and how joyful a thing it is
+to please Him (ver. 10). Your life will then be free from all complicity
+with the works of darkness. It will shine with a brightness clear and
+penetrating, that will put to shame the works of darkness and transform
+the darkness itself. It will speak with a voice that all must hear,
+bidding them awake from the sleep of sin to see in Christ their light of
+life." Such is the setting in which this delightful definition stands.
+
+But it is more than a definition. While this sentence declares what
+Christian virtue is, it signifies also whence it comes, how it is
+generated and maintained. It asserts the connexion that exists between
+Christian character and Christian faith. The fruit cannot be grown
+without the tree, any more than the tree can grow soundly without
+yielding its proper fruit. _Right is the fruit of light._
+
+The principle that religion is the basis of moral virtue, is one that
+many moralists disputed in St Paul's time; and it has fallen into some
+discredit in our own. In philosophical theory, and to a large extent in
+popular maxim and belief, it is assumed that faith and morals, character
+and creed, are not only distinct but independent things and that there
+is no necessary connexion between the two. Christians are themselves to
+blame for this fallacy, through the discrepancy not seldom visible
+between their creed and life. Our narrowness of view and the harshness
+of our ethical judgements have helped to foster this grave error.
+
+Great Christian teachers have spoken of the virtues of the heathen as
+"splendid sins." But Christ and His apostles never said so. He said:
+"Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold." And they said: "In
+every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted
+of Him." The Christian creed has no jealousy in regard to human
+excellence. "Whatsoever things are true and honourable and just and
+pure," wherever and in whomsoever they are found, our faith honours and
+delights in them, and accepts them to the utmost of their worth. But
+then it claims them all for its own,--as the fruit of the one "true
+light which lighteth every man." Wherever this fruit appears, we know
+that that light has been, though its ways are past finding out. Through
+secret crevices, by subtle refractions and multiplied reflections, the
+true light reaches many a life lying far outside its visible course.
+
+All goodness has one source; for, said Jesus, "there is none good but
+one, that is God." The channels may be tortuous, obstructed and obscure:
+the stream is always one. There is nothing more touching, and nothing
+more encouraging to our faith in God's universal love and His will that
+all men should be saved, than to see, as we do sometimes under
+conditions most adverse and in spots the most unlikely, features of
+moral beauty and Christlike goodness appearing like springs in the
+desert or flowers blooming in Alpine snows,--signs of the universal
+light,
+
+    "Which yet in the absolutest drench of dark
+    Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam
+    To the despair of hell!"
+
+The action of God's grace in Christ is by no means limited to the sphere
+of its recognized working. All the more earnestly on this account do we
+vindicate this grace against those who deny its necessity or the
+permanence of its moral influence. The fruit, in the main, they approve.
+But they would cut down the plant from which it came; they seek to
+quench the light under which it grew. They are like men who should take
+you to some lofty tree that has flourished for ages rooted in the rock,
+and who should say: "See how wide its branches and how stout its stem,
+how firmly it stands upon its native soil! Let us cut it loose from
+those dark and ugly roots--that mysterious theology, those superstitions
+of the past. The human mind has outgrown them. Virtue can support itself
+on its own proper basis. It is time to assert the dignity of man, and to
+proclaim the independence of morality." If these men have their way, and
+if European society renounces the authority of God, how quickly will
+that tree of the Lord's planting, the vast growth of Christian virtue
+and beneficence, wither to its topmost bough; and the next storm will
+bring it to the ground, with all its stately strength and summer beauty.
+Unbelief in God lays the axe at the root of human society. Our life--the
+life of individuals, of families and nations--is rooted in the unseen
+and hid with Christ in God. Thence it draws its vitality and virtue,
+through those spiritual fibres by which we are linked to God and lay
+hold on eternal life. Since Christ Jesus our forerunner entered the
+heavenly places, the anchor of human hopes has been cast within the
+veil; if that anchor drags, there is no other that will hold. The rocks
+are plain to see on which our richly freighted ship of life will
+founder. Without the religion of Jesus Christ, our civilization is not
+worth a hundred years' purchase.
+
+Moral effects do not follow upon their causes as rapidly as physical
+effects: they follow as certainly. We live largely upon the accumulated
+ethical capital of our forefathers. When that is spent, we are left to
+our intrinsic poverty of soul, to our faithlessness and feebleness. The
+scepticism of one generation bears fruit in the immorality of the next,
+or the next after that; the unbelief and cynicism of the teacher in the
+vice of his disciple. Such fruit of blasting and mildew the decay of
+faith has never failed to bear.
+
+The corresponding truth will be at once acknowledged. There is no real
+religion without virtue. If the godly man is not a good man, if he is
+not a sincere and pure-hearted man, "that man's religion is vain": no
+matter what his professions or his emotions, no matter what his
+services to the Church. He is one of those to whom Jesus Christ will
+say: "I know you not; depart from me, all ye that work iniquity." There
+is a flaw in him somewhere, a rift within the lute that spoils all its
+music. "A good tree cannot bring forth corrupt fruit."
+
+In Christ's garden there forms in clustered beauty and perfectness the
+ripe growth of virtue, which in the sunshine of His love and under the
+freshening breath of His Spirit sends forth its spices and "yieldeth its
+fruit every month." In it there abide _goodness_, _righteousness_,
+_truth_--these three; and who shall say which of them is greatest?
+
+I. _Goodness_ stands first, as the most visible and obvious form of
+Christian excellence,--that which every one looks for in a religious
+man, and which every one admires when it is to be seen. Righteousness,
+regarded by itself, is not so readily appreciated. There is something
+austere and forbidding in it. "For a righteous man scarcely would one
+die"--you respect, even revere him; but you do not love him: "but for
+the good man peradventure, one would even dare to die."
+
+Christian goodness is the sanctification of the heart and its
+affections, renewed and governed by the love of God in Christ. It is,
+notwithstanding, but seldom inculcated in the New Testament;[136]
+because it is referred to its spring and principle in _love_. Goodness
+is love embodied. Now love, as the Christian knows it, is of God. "We
+love," says the apostle John, "because He first loved us.... He loved
+us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." This is the
+faith that makes good men,--the best the world has ever known, the best
+that it holds now. Vanity, selfishness, evil temper and desire are
+shamed and burnt out of the soul by the holy fire of the love of God in
+Jesus Christ our Lord. In the warm, tender light of the cross the heart
+is softened and cleansed, and expanded to the widest charity. It becomes
+the home of all generous instincts and pure affections. So "the fruit of
+the light is in all goodness."
+
+2. And _righteousness_.
+
+This second and central definition applies a searching test to all
+spurious forms of goodness, superficial or sentimental,--to the goodness
+of mere good manners, or good nature. The principle of righteousness,
+fully understood, includes everything in moral worth, and is often used
+to denote in one word the entire fruit of God's grace in man. For
+righteousness is the sanctification of the conscience. It is loyalty to
+God's holy and perfect law. It is no mere outward keeping of formal
+rules, such as the legal righteousness of Judaism, no submission to
+necessity or calculation of advantages: it is a love of the law in a
+man's inmost spirit; it is the quality of a heart one with that law,
+reconciled to it as it is reconciled to God Himself in Jesus Christ.
+
+At the bottom, therefore, righteousness and goodness are one. Each is
+the counterface and complement of the other. Righteousness is to
+goodness as the strong backbone of principle, the firm hand and the
+vigorous grasp of duty, the steadfast foot that plants itself on the
+eternal ground of the right and true and stands against a world's
+assault. Goodness without righteousness is a weak and fitful sentiment:
+righteousness without goodness is a dead formality. He cannot love God
+or his neighbour truly, who does not love God's law; and he knows
+nothing aright of that law, who does not know that it is the law of
+love.
+
+This also, this above all is "the fruit of the light." Two watchwords we
+have from the lips of Jesus, two mottoes of His own life and
+mission,--the one given at the end, the other at the beginning of His
+course: "Greater _love_ hath none than this, that one lay down his life
+for his friends"; and, "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all
+_righteousness_." By a double flame was He consumed a sacrifice upon the
+cross,--by the passion of His zeal for God's righteousness, and by the
+passion of His pity for mankind. In that twofold light we see light, and
+become "light in the Lord." Therefore the fruit of the light, the moral
+product of a true faith in the gospel, is in all _goodness and
+righteousness_.
+
+There is a danger of merging the latter in the former of these
+attributes. Evangelical piety is credited with an excess of the
+sentimental and emotional disposition, cultivated at the expense of the
+more sterling elements of character. High principle, scrupulous honour,
+stern fidelity to duty are no less essential to the image of Christ in
+the soul than are warm feeling and zealous devotion to His service.
+_Jesus Christ the righteous_, as His apostles loved to call Him, is the
+pattern of a manly faith, up to which we must grow in all things. "_He_
+is the propitiation for our sins." Never was there an act of such
+unswerving integrity and absolute loyalty to the law of right as the
+sacrifice of Calvary. God forbid that we should magnify love at the
+expense of law, or make good feeling a substitute for duty.
+
+3. _Truth_ comes last in this enumeration, for it signifies the inward
+reality and depth of the other two.
+
+Truth does not mean veracity alone, the mere truth of the lips. Heathen
+honesty goes as far as this. Men of the world expect as much from each
+other, and brand the liar with their contempt. Truth of words requires a
+reality behind itself. The acted falsehood is excluded, the hinted and
+intended lie no less than that expressly uttered. Beyond all this, it is
+the truth of the man that God requires--speech, action, thought, all
+consistent, harmonious and transparent, with the light of God's truth
+shining through them. Truth is the harmony of the inward and the
+outward, the correspondence of what the man is in himself with that
+which he appears and wishes to appear to be.
+
+Now, it is only children of the light, only men thoroughly good and
+upright who can, in this strict sense, be men of truth. So long as any
+malice or iniquity is left in our nature, we have something to conceal.
+We cannot afford to be sincere. We are compelled to pay, by very shame,
+the degrading tribute which vice renders to virtue, the homage of
+hypocrisy. But find a man whose intellect, whose heart and will, tried
+at whatever point, ring sound and true, in whom there is no affectation,
+no make-believe, no pretence or exaggeration, no discrepancy, no discord
+in the music of his life and thought, "an Israelite indeed, in whom is
+no guile"--there is a saint for you, and a man of God; there is one whom
+you may "grapple to your soul with hoops of steel."
+
+Truth is the hall-mark of entire sanctification; it is the highest and
+rarest attainment of the Christian life. It is equally the charm of an
+innocent, unspoilt childhood, and of a ripe and purified old age. The
+apostle John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," is the most perfect
+embodiment, after his Master, of this consummating grace. In him
+righteousness and love were blended in the translucence of an utter
+simplicity and truth.
+
+We must beware of giving a subjective and merely personal aspect to this
+divine quality. While truth is the unity of the outward and inward, of
+heart and act and word in the man, it is at the same time the agreement
+of the man with the reality of things as they exist in God. The former
+kind of truth rests upon the latter; the subjective upon the objective
+order. The truth of God makes us true. We magnify our own sincerity,
+until it becomes vitiated and pretentious. In our eagerness to realize
+and express our own convictions, we give too little pains to form them
+upon a sound basis; we make a great virtue of _speaking out_ what is in
+our hearts, but take small heed of what _comes in_ to the heart, and
+speak out of a loose self-confidence and idolatry of our own opinions.
+So the Pharisees were true, who called Christ an impostor. So every
+careless slanderer, and scandalmonger credulous of evil, who believes
+the lies he propagates. "Imagination has pictured to itself a domain in
+which every one who enters should be compelled to speak only what he
+thought, and pleased itself by calling such domain the Palace of Truth.
+A palace of veracity, if you will; but no temple of the truth. A place
+where each one would be at liberty to utter his own crude unrealities,
+to bring forth his delusions, mistakes, half-formed, hasty judgements;
+where the depraved ear would reckon discord harmony, and the depraved
+eye mistake colour; the depraved moral taste take Herod or Tiberius for
+a king, and shout beneath the Redeemer's cross, 'Himself He cannot
+save!' A temple of the truth? Nay, only a palace echoing with veracious
+falsehoods, a Babel of confused sounds, in which egotism would rival
+egotism, and truth would be each man's own lie."[137] In the pride of
+our veracity, we miss the verity of things; we are true only to our
+blind self, false to the light of God. "Every one that is of the truth
+heareth my voice:" so said He who was Truth incarnate, making His word a
+law for all true men.
+
+"In _all_ goodness and righteousness and truth," says the apostle. Let
+us seek them all. We are apt to become specialists in virtue, as in
+other departments of life. Men will endeavour even to compensate by
+extreme efforts in one direction for deficiencies in some other
+direction, which they scarcely desire to make good. So they grow out of
+shape, into oddities and moral malformations. There is a want of balance
+and of finish about a multitude of Christian lives, even of those who
+have long and steadily pursued the way of faith. We have sweetness
+without strength, and strength without gentleness, and truth spoken
+without love, and words of passionate zeal without accuracy and
+heedfulness.
+
+All this is infinitely sad, and infinitely damaging to the cause of our
+religion.
+
+    "It is the little rift within the lute
+    That by-and-by will make the music mute,
+      And ever widening slowly silence all;
+    The little rift within the lover's lute,
+    Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
+      That rotting inward slowly moulders all."
+
+Let us judge ourselves, that we be not judged by the Lord. Let us count
+no wrong a trifle. Let us never imagine that our defects in one kind
+will be atoned for by excellencies in another. Our friends may say
+this, in charity, for us; it is a fatal thing when a man begins to say
+so to himself. "May the God of peace sanctify you fully. May your whole
+spirit, soul, and body in blameless integrity be preserved to the coming
+of the Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. v. 23).
+
+II. The _effect_ upon surrounding darkness of the light of God in
+Christian lives is described in verses 11-14, in words which it remains
+for us briefly to examine.
+
+Verse 12 distinguishes "the things secretly done" by the Gentiles, "of
+which it is a shame even to speak," from the open and manifest forms of
+evil in which they invite their Christian neighbours to join (ver. 11).
+Instead of doing this and "having fellowship with the unfruitful works
+of darkness," they must "rather reprove them." Silent absence, or
+abstinence is not enough. Where sin is open to rebuke, it should at all
+hazards be rebuked. On the other hand, St Paul does not warrant
+Christians in prying into the hidden sins of the world around them and
+playing the moral detective. Publicity is not a remedy for all evils,
+but a great aggravation of some, and the surest means of disseminating
+them. "It is a shame"--a disgrace to our common nature, and a grievous
+peril to the young and innocent--to fill the public prints with the
+nauseous details of crime and to taint the air with its putridities.
+
+"But all things," the apostle says--whether it be those open works of
+darkness, profitless of good, which expose themselves to direct
+conviction, or the depths of Satan that hide their infamy from the light
+of day--"all things being reproved by the light, are made manifest"
+(ver. 13). The fruit of the light convicts the unfruitful works of
+darkness. The daily life of a Christian man amongst men of the world is
+a perpetual reproof, that tells against secret sins of which no word is
+spoken, of which the reprover never guesses, as well as against open and
+unblushing vices.
+
+"This is the condemnation," said Jesus, "that light is come into the
+world." And this condemnation every one who walks in Christ's steps, and
+breathes His Spirit amid the corruptions of the world, is carrying on,
+more frequently in silence than by spoken argument. Our unconscious and
+spontaneous influence is the most real and effective part of it. Life is
+the light of men--words only as the index of the life from which they
+spring. Just so far as our lives touch the conscience of others and
+reveal the difference between darkness and light, so far do we hold
+forth the word of life and carry on the Holy Spirit's work in convincing
+the world of sin. "Let your light so shine."
+
+This manifestation leads to a transformation: "For everything that is
+made manifest _is light_" (ver. 13). "You are light in the Lord," St
+Paul says to his converted Gentile readers,--you who were "once
+darkness," once wandering in the lusts and pleasures of the heathen
+around you, without hope and without God. The light of the gospel
+disclosed, and then dispelled the darkness of that former time; and so
+it may be with your still heathen kindred, through the light you bring
+to them. So it will be with the night of sin that is spread over the
+world. The light which shines upon sin-laden and sorrowful hearts,
+shines on them to change them into its own nature. _The manifested is
+light_: in other words, if men can be made to see the true nature of
+their sin, they will forsake it. If the light can but penetrate their
+conscience, it will save them. "Wherefore He saith:--
+
+    Awake, O sleeper; and arise from out of the dead!
+      And the Christ shall dawn upon thee!"
+
+The speaker of this verse can be no other than God, or the Spirit of God
+in Scripture. The sentence is no mere quotation. It re-utters, in the
+style of Mary's or Zechariah's song, the promise of the Old Covenant
+from the lips of the New. It gathers up the import of the prophecies
+concerning the salvation of Christ, as they sounded in the apostle's
+ears and as he conveyed them to the world. Isaiah lx. 1-3 supplies the
+basis of our passage, where the prophet awakens Zion from the sleep of
+the Exile and bids her shine once more in the glory of her God and show
+forth His light to the nations: "Arise," he cries, "shine, for thy light
+is come!" There are echoes in the verse, besides, of Isaiah li. 17,
+xxvi. 19; perhaps even of Jonah i. 6: "What meanest thou, O sleeper?
+arise, and call upon thy God!" We seem to have here, as in chapter iv.
+4-6, a snatch of the earliest Christian hymns. The lines are a free
+paraphrase from the Old Testament, formed by weaving together Messianic
+passages--belonging to such a hymn as might be sung at baptisms in the
+Pauline Churches. Certainly those Churches did not wait until the second
+century to compose their hymns and spiritual songs (comp. ver. 19). Our
+Lord's sublime announcement (John v. 25), already verified, that "the
+hour had come when the dead should hear the voice of the Son of God, and
+they that heard should live," gave the key to the prophetic sayings
+which promised through Israel the light of life to all nations.
+
+With this song on her lips the Church went forth, clad in the armour of
+light, strong in the joy of salvation; and darkness and the works of
+darkness fled before her.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[135] Mr. Wesley adopted this and other emendations from Bengel, "that
+great light of the Christian world," in the translation accompanying his
+_Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament_. He there supplied the
+Methodist preachers with many of the most valuable improvements made in
+the Revised Version, a hundred years before the time.
+
+[136] The word belongs to Paul's vocabulary; it is found besides in 2
+Thess. i. 11; Rom. xv. 14; and Gal. v. 22. See the Commentary on this
+last epistle in the _Expositor's Bible_, pp. 384, 385.
+
+[137] F. W. Robertson: _Sermons_ (First Series), xix., on "The Kingdom
+of the Truth."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+_THE NEW WINE OF THE SPIRIT._
+
+    "Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise;
+    redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not
+    foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
+
+    "And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with
+    the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and
+    spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the
+    Lord; giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord
+    Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; subjecting yourselves one to
+    another in the fear of Christ."--EPH. v. 15-21.
+
+
+Very solemnly did the moral homily to the Asian Christians begin in
+chapter iv. 17: "This therefore I say and testify in the Lord, that you
+must no longer walk as the Gentiles walk." So much has now been said and
+testified in the intervening paragraphs, by way both of dehortation and
+exhortation. Here the apostle pauses; and casting his eye over the whole
+pathway of life he has marked out in this discourse, he bids his
+readers: "Look then carefully how you walk. Show that you are not fools,
+but wise to observe your steps and to seize your opportunities in these
+evil times,--days so perilous that you need your best wisdom and
+knowledge of God's will to save you from fatal stumbling."
+
+So far St Paul's renewed exhortation, in verses 15-17, inculcates care
+and wary discretion,--the skill that in the strategy of life finds its
+vantage in unequal ground, that makes opposing winds help forward the
+seafarer. In this sober wisdom it is likely the Asian Christians were
+deficient. In many ways, both directly and indirectly, the need of
+increased thoughtfulness on the readers' part has been indicated. But
+there is another side to the Christian nature: it has its moods of
+exhilaration, as well as of caution and reflection; ardent emotion,
+eager speech and exultant song are things proper to a high religious
+life. For these the apostle makes room in verses 18-20, while the three
+foregoing verses enjoin the circumspection and vigilance that become the
+good soldier of Christ Jesus.
+
+A striking contrast thus arises between the _sobriety_ and the
+_excitement_ that mark the life of grace. We see with what strictness we
+must watch over ourselves, and guard the character and interests of the
+Church; and with what joyousness and holy freedom we may take our part
+in its communion. Temperament and constitution modify these injunctions
+in their personal application. The Holy Spirit does not enable us all to
+speak with equal fervour and freedom, nor to sing with the same
+tunefulness. His power operates in the limbs of Christ's body "according
+to the measure of each single part." But the self-same Spirit works in
+both these contrasted ways,--in the sanguine and the melancholic
+disposition, in the demonstrative and in the reserved, in the quick play
+of fancy and the brightness and impulsiveness of youth no less than in
+the sober gait and solid sense of riper age. Let us see how the two
+opposite aspects of Christian experience are set out in the apostle's
+words.
+
+I. First of all, upon the one side, _heedfulness_ is enjoined. The
+children of light must use the light to see their way. To "stumble at
+noonday" is a proof of folly or blindness. So misusing our light, we
+shall quickly lose it and return to the paths of darkness.
+
+According to the preferable (Revised) order of the words, the qualifying
+adverb "carefully" belongs to the "look," not to the "walk." The
+circumspect _look_ precedes the wise step. The spot is marked on which
+the foot is to be planted; the eye ranges right and left and takes in
+the bearings of the new position, forecasting its possibilities. "Look
+before you leap," our sage proverb says. According to the carefulness of
+the look, the success of the leap is likely to be.
+
+There is no word in the epistle more apposite than this to
+
+                        "our day
+    Of haste, half-work, and disarray."
+
+We are too restless to think, too impatient to learn. Everything is
+sacrificed to speed. The telegraph and the daily newspaper symbolize the
+age. The public ear loves to be caught quickly and with new sensations:
+a premium is set on carelessness and hurry. Earnest men, eager for the
+triumph of a good cause, push forward with unsifted statements and
+unweighed denunciations, that discredit Christian advocacy and wound the
+cause of truth and charity. Time, thus wronged and driven beyond her
+pace, has her revenge; she deals hardly with these light judgements of
+the hour. They are as the chaff which the wind carrieth away. After all,
+it is still truth that lives; thorough work that lasts; accuracy that
+hits the mark. And the time-servers are "unwise," both intellectually
+and morally. They are most unwise who think to succeed in life's high
+calling without self-distrust, and without scrupulous care and pains in
+all work they do for the kingdom of God.
+
+In the evil of his own times St Paul sees a special reason for
+heedfulness: "Walk not as unwise, but as wise, buying up the
+opportunity, _because the days are evil_." In Colossians iv. 5 the
+parallel sentence shows that in giving this caution he is thinking of
+the relation of Christians to the world outside: "Walk in wisdom toward
+those without, buying up the opportunity." Evil days they were, when
+Paul lay in Nero's prison; when that wild beast was raging against
+everything that resisted his mad will or reproved his monstrous vices.
+With supreme power in the hands of such a creature of Satan, who could
+tell what fires of persecution were kindling for the people of Christ,
+or what terrible revelation of God's anger against the present evil
+world might be impending. At Ephesus the spirit of heathenism had shown
+itself peculiarly menacing. Here, too, in the rich and cultivated
+province of Asia where the currents of Eastern and Western thought met,
+heresy and its corruptions made their first decided appearance in the
+Churches of the Gentiles. Conflicts are approaching which will try to
+the uttermost the strength of the Christian faith and the temper of its
+weapons (vi. 10-16).
+
+As wise men, reading thoughtfully the signs of the times, the Asian
+Christians will "redeem the [present] season." They will use to the
+utmost the light given them. They will employ every means to increase
+their knowledge of Christ, to confirm their faith and the habits of
+their spiritual life. They are like men expecting a siege, who
+strengthen their fortifications and furbish their weapons and practise
+their drill and lay up store of supplies, that they may "stand in the
+evil day." Such wisdom Ecclesiastes preaches to the young man: "Remember
+now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come."
+
+Within a year after this epistle was penned, Rome was burnt and the
+crime of its burning washed out, at Nero's caprice, in Christian blood.
+In four years more St Paul and St Peter had died a martyr's death at
+Rome; and Nero had fallen by the assassin's hand. At once the Empire was
+convulsed with civil war; and the year 68-69 was known as that of the
+Four Emperors. Amid the storms threatening the ruin of the Roman State,
+the Jewish war against Rome was carried on, ending in the year 70 with
+the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish temple and
+nationality. These were the days of tribulation of which our Lord spoke,
+"such as had not been since the beginning of the world" (Matt. xxiv. 21,
+22). The entire fabric of life was shaken; and in the midst of
+earthquake and tempest, blood and fire, Israel met its day of judgement
+and the former age passed away. In the year 63, when the apostle wrote,
+the sky was everywhere red and lowering with signs of coming storm. None
+knew where or how the tempest might break, or what would be its issue.
+
+When men amid evil days and portents of danger must be told not to be
+"foolish" nor "drunken with wine," one is disposed to tax them with
+levity. It was difficult for these Asian Greeks to take life seriously,
+and to realize the gravity of their situation. St Paul appeals to them
+by their duty, still more than by their danger: "Be not foolish, but
+understand what _the will of the Lord_ is." As he bade the Thessalonians
+consider that chastity was not matter of choice and of their own
+advantage only, it was "God's will" (1 Ep. iv. 3), so the Ephesians
+must understand that Christ is no mere adviser, nor the Christian life
+an optional system that men may adopt when and so far as it suits them.
+He is our Lord; and it is our business to understand, in order that we
+may execute, His designs. For this Christ's servants require a watchful
+eye and an alert intelligence. They must be no dullards nor simpletons,
+who would enter into the Divine Master's plans; no triflers, no
+creatures of sentiment and impulse, who are to be the agents of His
+will. He can and does employ every sincere heart that gives itself in
+love to Him. But His nobler tasks are for the wise taught by His Spirit,
+for those who can "understand," with penetrating sympathy and breadth of
+comprehension, "what the will of the Lord is." Hence the distinction of
+St Paul himself, and of John the beloved disciple, amongst His ministers
+and witnesses,--men great in mind as they were in heart, whose thoughts
+about Christ were as grand as their love to Him was fervent.
+
+Nowhere does the apostle say so much of "the will of God" in regard to
+the dispensation of grace as he does in this epistle.[138] For he sees
+life and salvation here in their largest bearings and proportions. He
+prayed at the outset that the Gentile readers might realize the value
+that God puts upon them, and the mighty forces He has set at work for
+their salvation (i. 18-20); and again, that they might comprehend the
+vast dimensions of His plan for the building of the Church (iii. 18).
+Now that he has shown the relation of this eternal purpose to the
+character and everyday life of the converted Gentiles, "the will of God"
+becomes matter of immediate import; it is revealed in its bearing upon
+conduct, upon the affairs of business and society. It is not the
+purpose, the promises, the doctrine of the Lord alone, but "the _will_
+of the Lord" that they have to understand, as it touches their spirit
+and behaviour day by day. They must realize the practical demands of
+their religion,--how it is to make them truthful, gracious, pure and
+wise. They must translate creed into life and act. Such is the wisdom
+which their apostle strives to instil into the Asian Christians. Their
+first need was spiritual enlightenment; their second need was moral
+intelligence. Might they only have sense to understand and loyalty to
+obey the will of Christ.--And oh may we!
+
+II. There were converted thieves in the Ephesian Church, who still
+needed to be warned against their old propensities (iv. 28); there were
+men who had been sorcerers and fortune-tellers (Acts xix. 18, 19). It
+appears that there were in this circle converted _drunkards_ also, men
+to whom the apostle is obliged to say: "Be not drunk with wine, wherein
+is riot."
+
+In view of the following context (vv. 19-21), and remembering how the
+Lord's table was defiled by excess at Corinth (1 Cor. xi. 17-34), it
+seems to us probable that the warning of verse 18 had special reference
+to the Christian assemblies. The institution of the common meal, the
+_Agape_ or Lovefeast accompanying the Lord's Supper, suited the manners
+of the early Christians, and was long continued. The cities of Asia
+Minor were full of trade-guilds and clubs for various social and
+religious purposes, in which the common supper, or club-feast, furnished
+usually by each member bringing his contribution to the table, was a
+familiar bond of fellowship. This afforded to the Church a natural and
+pleasant means of intercourse; but it must be purified from sensual
+indulgence. _Wine_ was its chief danger.
+
+The eastern coast of the Aegean is an ancient home of the vine. And the
+Greeks of the Asian towns, on those bright shores and under their genial
+sky, were a light-hearted, sociable race. They sought the wine-cup not
+for animal indulgence, but as a zest to good-fellowship and to give a
+freer flow to social joys. This was the influence that ruled their
+feasts, that loosened their tongues and inspired their gaiety. Hence
+their wit was prone to become ribaldry (ver. 4); and their songs were
+the opposite of the "spiritual songs" that gladden the feasts of the
+Church (ver. 19). The quick imagination and the social instincts of the
+Ionian Greeks, the aptness for speech and song native to the land of
+Homer and Sappho, were gifts not to be repressed but sanctified. The
+lyre is to be tuned to other strains; and poetry must draw its
+inspiration from a higher source. Dionysus and his reeling Fauns give
+place to the pure Spirit of Jesus and the Father. "The Aonian mount"
+must now pay tribute to "Sion hill"; and the fountain of Castalia yields
+its honours to
+
+            "Siloa's brook that flowed
+    Fast by the oracle of God."
+
+Our nature craves excitement,--some stimulus that shall set the pulses
+dancing and thrill the jaded frame, and lift the spirit above the
+taskwork of life and the dreary and hard conditions which make up the
+daily lot of multitudes. It is this craving that gives to strong drink
+its cruel fascination. Alcohol is a mighty magician. The tired labouring
+man, the household drudge shut up in city courts refreshed by no
+pleasant sight or cheering voice, by its aid can leave fretted nerves
+and aching limbs and dull care behind, and taste, if it be only for a
+feverish moment, of the joy of bounding life. Can such cravings be
+hindered from seeking their relief? The removal of temptation will
+accomplish little, unless higher tastes are formed and springs of purer
+pleasure opened to the masses for whom our civilization makes life so
+drab and colourless. "One finds traces of the primitive greatness of our
+nature even in its most deplorable errors. Just as impurity proceeds at
+the bottom from an abuse of the craving for love, so drunkenness betrays
+a certain demand for ardour and enthusiasm, which in itself is natural
+and even noble.... Man loves to _feel_ himself alive; he would fain live
+twice his life at once; and he would rather draw excitement from
+horrible things than have no excitement at all" (Monod).
+
+For the drunkards of Ephesus the apostle finds a cure in the joys of the
+Holy Ghost. The mightiest and most moving spring of feeling is in the
+spirit of man kindred to God. There is a deep excitement and
+refreshment, a "joy that human thought transcends," in the love of God
+shed abroad in the heart and the communion of true saints, which makes
+sensuous delights cheap and poor. Toil and care are forgotten, sickness
+and trouble seem as nothing; we can glory in tribulation and laugh in
+the face of death, when the strong wine of God's consolations is poured
+into the soul.
+
+"Be filled with the Spirit," says the apostle--or more strictly, "filled
+_in_ the Spirit"; since the Holy Spirit of God is the element of the
+believer's life, surrounding while it penetrates his nature: it is the
+atmosphere that he breathes, the ocean in which he is immersed. As a
+flood fills up the river-banks, as the drunkard is filled with the wine
+that he drains without limit, so the apostle would have his readers
+yield themselves to the tide of the Spirit's coming and steep their
+nature in His influence. The Greek imperative, moreover, is present, and
+"describes this influence as ever going forth from the Spirit" (Beet).
+This is to be a continual replenishment. Paul has prayed that we may "be
+filled unto all the fulness of God" (iii. 19), and has bidden us grow
+"to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (iv. 13) in
+whom we "are made full" (Col. ii. 9): in the replenishment of the Spirit
+the fulness of God in Christ is sensibly imparted. God's fulness is the
+hidden and eternal spring of all that can fill our nature; Christ's
+fulness is its revelation and renewed communication to the race; the
+Holy Spirit's fulness is its abiding energy within the soul and within
+the Church. Thus possessed, the Church is truly the body of Christ (iv.
+4), and the habitation of God (ii. 21, 22).
+
+The words of verses 19, 20 show that St Paul is thinking of that
+presence of the Spirit in the Christian community, which is the spring
+of its affections and activities. The Spirit of Jesus, the Son of man,
+is a kindly and gracious Spirit, the guardian of brotherhood and
+friendship, the inspirer of pure social joys and genial converse. The
+joy in the Holy Ghost that in its warmth and freshness filled the hearts
+of the first Christians, soared upward on the wings of song. Their very
+talk was music: they "spoke to each other in psalms and hymns and
+spiritual songs, singing and making melody with their heart to the
+Lord." Love loves to sing. Its joys
+
+            "from out our hearts arise,
+    And speak and sparkle in our eyes,
+      And vibrate on our tongue."
+
+All exalted sentiment tends to rhythmical expression. There is a
+mystical alliance, which is amongst the most significant facts in our
+constitution, between emotion and art. The rudest natures, touched by
+high feeling, will shape themselves to some sort of beauty, to some
+grace and refinement of expression. Each new stirring of the pulse of
+man's common life has been marked by a re-birth of poetry and art. The
+songs of Mary and Zechariah were the parents and patterns of a multitude
+of holy canticles. In the Psalms of Scripture the New Testament Church
+found already an instrument of wide compass strung and tuned for her
+use. We can imagine the delight with which the Gentile Christians would
+take up the Psalter and draw out one and another of its pearls, and
+would in turn recite them at their meetings, and adapt them to their
+native measures and modes of song. After a while, they began to mix with
+the praise-songs of Israel newer strains--"hymns" to the glory of Christ
+and the Father, such as that with which this epistle opens, needing but
+little change in form to make it a true poem, and such as those which
+break in upon the dread visions of the Apocalypse; and added to these,
+"spiritual songs" of a more personal and incidental character, like
+Simeon's _Nunc dimittis_ or Paul's swan-song in his last letter to
+Timothy. In verse 14 above we detected, as we thought, an early Church
+paraphrase of the Old Testament. In later epistles addressed to Ephesus,
+there are fragments of just such artless chants as the Asian Christians,
+exhorted and taught by their apostle, were wont to sing in their
+assemblies: see 1 Timothy iii. 16, and 2 Timothy ii. 11-13.
+
+Upon this congenial soil, we trace the beginnings of Christian
+psalmody. The parallel text of Colossians (iii. 16) discloses in the
+songs of the Pauline Churches a didactic as well as a lyric character.
+The apostle bids his readers "_teach and admonish_ one another by
+psalms, hymns, spiritual songs." The form of the sentence of chapter iv.
+4-6 in this letter, and of 1 Timothy iii. 16, suggests that these
+passages were destined for use as a chanted rehearsal of Christian
+belief. Thus "the word of Christ dwelling richly" in the heart, poured
+itself freely from the lips, and added to its grave discourse the charms
+of gladdening and spirit-stirring song.
+
+As in their heathen days they were used to "speak to each other," in
+festive or solemn hours, with hymns to Artemis of the Ephesians, or
+Dionysus giver of the vine, or to Persephone sad queen of the dead--in
+songs merry and gay, too often loose and wanton; in songs of the dark
+underworld and the grim Furies and inexorable Fate, that told how life
+fleets fast and we must pluck its pleasures while we may;--so now the
+Christians of Ephesus and Colossae, of Pergamum and of Smyrna would sing
+of the universal Father whose presence fills earth and sky, of the Son
+of His love, His image amongst men, who died in sacrifice for their sins
+and asked grace for His murderers, of the joys of forgiveness and the
+cleansed heart, of life eternal and the treasure laid up for the just in
+the heavenly places, of Christ's return in glory and the judgement of
+the nations and the world quickly to dissolve and perish, of a
+brotherhood dearer than earthly kindred, of the saints who sleep in
+Jesus and in peace await His coming, of the Good Shepherd who feeds His
+sheep and leads them to fountains of living water calling each by his
+name, of creation redeemed and glorified by His love, of pain and
+sorrow sanctified and the trials that make perfect in Christ's
+discipline, of the joy that fills the heart in suffering for Him, and
+the vision of His face awaiting us beyond the grave. So reciting and
+chanting--now in single voice, now in full chorus--singing the Psalms of
+David to their Greek music, or hymns composed by their leaders, or
+sometimes improvised in the rapture of the moment, the Churches of
+Ephesus and of the Asian cities lauded and glorified "the name of our
+Lord Jesus Christ" and the counsels of redeeming love. So their worship
+and fellowship were filled with gladness. Thus in their great Church
+meetings, and in smaller companies, many a joyous hour passed; and all
+hearts were cheered and strengthened in the Lord.
+
+"Singing and _playing_," says the apostle. For music aided song; voice
+and instrument blended in His praise whose glory claims the tribute of
+all creatures. But it was "with the heart," even more than with voice or
+tuneful strings, that melody was made. For this inward music the Lord
+listens. Where other skill is wanting and neither voice nor hand can
+take its part in the concert of praise, He hears the silent gratitude,
+the humble joy that wells upward when the lips are still or the full
+heart cannot find expression.
+
+But the Spirit who dwelt in the praises of the new Israel, was not
+confined to its public assemblings. The people of Christ should be
+"_always giving thanks_, for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus
+Christ." It is one of St Paul's commonest injunctions. "In _everything_
+give thanks," he wrote to the Thessalonians in his earliest extant
+letter (1 Ep. v. 18). "For all things," he says to the
+Ephesians,--"though fallen on evil days." Do we not "know that to them
+that love God all things work together for good"--evil days as well as
+good days? Nothing comes altogether amiss to the child of God. In the
+heaviest loss, the severest pain, the sharpest sting of injury--"in
+everything" the ingenuity of love and the sweetness of patience will
+find some token of mercy. If the evil is to our eyes all evil and we can
+see in it no reason for thanksgiving, then faith will give thanks for
+that which we "know not now, but shall know hereafter."
+
+_Always_, the apostle says,--_for all things_! No room for a moment's
+discontent. In this perfecting of praise he had himself undergone a long
+schooling in his four years' imprisonment. Now, he tells us, he "has
+learnt the secret of contentment, in whatsoever state" (Phil. iv. 12).
+Let us try to learn it from him. These words, which we treat, almost
+unconsciously, as the exaggeration of homiletical appeal, state no more
+than the sober possibility, the experience attained by many a Christian
+in circumstances of the greatest suffering and deprivation. The love of
+God in Jesus Christ our Lord suffices for the life and joy of man's
+spirit.
+
+The twenty-first verse, which seems to belong to a different line of
+thought, in reality completes the foregoing paragraph. In the Corinthian
+Church, as we remember, with its affluence of spiritual gifts, there
+were so many ready to prophesy, so many to sing and recite, that
+confusion arose and the Church meetings fell into disedifying uproar (1
+Cor. xiv. 26-34). The apostle would not have such scenes occur again.
+Hence when he urges the Asian Christians to seek the full inspiration of
+the Spirit and to give free utterance in song to the impulses of their
+new life, he adds this word of caution: "being subject to one another in
+fear of Christ." He reminds them that "God is not the author of
+confusion." His Spirit is a spirit of seemliness and reverence. "In fear
+of Christ," the unseen witness and president of its assemblies, the
+Church will comport herself with the decorum that befits His bride. The
+spirits of the prophets will be subject to the prophets. The voices of
+the singers and the hands of them that play upon the strings of the harp
+or the keys of the organ, will keep tune with the worship of Christ's
+congregation. Each must consider that it is his part to serve and not
+rule in the service of God's house.
+
+In our common work and worship, in all the offices of life this is the
+Christian law. No man within Christ's Church, however commanding his
+powers, may set himself above the duty of submitting his judgement and
+will to that of his fellows. In mutual subjection lies our freedom, with
+our strength and peace.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[138] See ch. i. 5-11, ii. 21, iii. 11, v. 10, vi. 6; comp. Col. i. 9,
+27, iv. 12; Phil. ii. 13,--epistles of the same group.
+
+
+
+
+_ON FAMILY LIFE._
+
+CHAPTER v. 22-vi. 9.
+
+    =Thelo de hymas eidenai hoti pantos andros he kephale ho Christos
+    estin, kephale de gynaikos ho aner, kephale de tou Christou ho
+    Theos.=--1 COR. xi. 3.
+
+    "And pure Religion breathing household laws."
+
+    W. WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+_CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE._
+
+    "Wives, _be in subjection_ to your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
+    For the husband is the head of the wife, as the Christ also is the
+    head of the Church, _being_ Himself the saviour of the body. But as
+    the Church is subject to the Christ, so let the wives also _be_ to
+    their husbands in everything.
+
+    "Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the
+    Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her,
+    having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He
+    might present the Church to Himself a glorious _Church_, not having
+    spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and
+    without blemish.
+
+    "Even so ought husbands also to love their wives as their own
+    bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man ever
+    hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the
+    Christ also the Church; because we are members of His body. 'For
+    this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave
+    to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh.' This mystery is
+    great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the Church.
+    Nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his own wife even as
+    himself; and _let_ the wife _see_ that she fear her husband."--EPH.
+    v. 22-33.
+
+
+In mutual subjection the Christian spirit has its sharpest trials and
+attains its finest temper. "Be subject one to another," was the last
+word of the apostle's instructions respecting the "walk" of the Asian
+Churches. By its order and subjection the gifts of all the members of
+Christ's body are made available for the upbuilding of God's temple. The
+inward fellowship of the Spirit becomes a constructive and organizing
+force, reconstituting human life and framing the world into the kingdom
+of Christ and God. "In fear of Christ" the loyal Christian man submits
+himself to the community; not from the dread of human displeasure, but
+knowing that he must give account to the Head of the Church and the
+Judge of the last day, if his self-will should weaken the Church's
+strength and interrupt her holy work. "For the Lord's sake" His freemen
+submit to every ordinance of men. This is such a fear as the servant has
+of a good master (vi. 5), or the true wife for a loving husband (ver.
+33),--not that which "perfect love casts out," but which it deepens and
+sanctifies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of this subjection to Christ the relationship of marriage furnishes an
+example and a mirror. St Paul passes on to the new topic without any
+grammatical pause, verse 22 being simply an extension of the participial
+clause that forms verse 21: "Being in subjection to one another in fear
+of Christ--ye wives to your own husbands, as to the Lord." The relation
+of the two verses is not that of the particular to the general, so much
+as that of image and object, of type and antitype. Submission to Christ
+in the Church suggests by analogy that of the wife to her husband in the
+house. Both have their origin in Christ, in whom all things were
+created, the Lord of life in its natural as well as in its spiritual and
+regenerate sphere (Col. i. 15-17). The bond that links husband and wife,
+lying at the basis of collective human existence, has in turn its ground
+in the relation of Christ to humanity.
+
+The race springs not from a unit, but from a united pair. The history of
+mankind began in wedlock. The family is the first institution of
+society, and the mother of all the rest. It is the life-basis, the
+primitive cell of the aggregate of cities and bodies politic. In the
+health and purity of household life lies the moral wealth, the vigour
+and durability of all civil institutions. The mighty upgrowth of nations
+and the great achievements of history germinated in the nursery of home
+and at the mother's breast. Christian marriage is not an expedient--the
+last of many that have been tried--for the satisfaction of desire and
+the continuance of the human species. The Institutor of human life laid
+down its principle in the first frame of things. Its establishment was a
+great prophetic mystery (ver. 32). Its law stands registered in the
+eternal statutes. And the Almighty Father watches over its observance
+with an awful jealousy. Is it not written: "Fornicators and adulterers
+God will judge"; and again, "The Lord is an avenger concerning all these
+things"?
+
+St Paul rightly gives to this subject a conspicuous place in this
+epistle of Christ and the Church. The corner-stone of the new social
+order which the gospel was to establish in the world lies here. The
+entire influence of the Church upon society depends upon right views on
+the relationship of man and woman and on the ethics of marriage.
+
+In wedlock there are blended most completely the two principles of
+association amongst moral beings,--viz., authority and love, submission
+and self-surrender.
+
+I. On the one side, _submission to authority_.
+
+"Wives, be in subjection, as to the Lord,"--as is fitting in the Lord
+(Col. iii. 18). Again, in 1 Timothy ii. 11, 12, the apostle writes: "I
+suffer not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion," or (as the word may
+rather signify) "to act independently of the man." Were these directions
+temporary and occasional? Were they due, as one hears it suggested, to
+the uneducated and undeveloped condition of women in the apostle's time?
+Or do they not affirm a law that is deeply seated in nature and in the
+feminine constitution? The words of 1 Corinthians xi. 2-15 show that, in
+the apostle's view of life, this subordination is fundamental. "The head
+of woman is the man," as "the head of every man is the Christ" and "the
+head of Christ is God." "The woman," he says, "is of the man," and "was
+created because of the man." Whether these sentences square with our
+modern conceptions or not, there they stand, and their import is
+unmistakable.[139] They teach that in the Divine order of things it is
+the man's part to lead and rule, and the woman's part to be ruled. But
+the Christian woman will not feel that there is any loss or hardship in
+this. For in the Christian order, ambition is sin. To obey is better
+than to rule. She remembers who has said: "I am amongst you as he that
+serveth." The children of the world strive for place and power; but "it
+shall not be so amongst you."
+
+Such subordination implies no inferiority, rather the opposite. A free
+and sympathetic obedience--which is the true submission--can only
+subsist between equals. The apostle writes: "Children, obey; ...
+Servants, obey" (vi. 1, 5); but "Wives, submit yourselves to your own
+husbands, as to the Lord." The same word denotes submission within the
+Church, and within the house. It is here that Christianity, in contrast
+with Paganism, and notably with Mohammedanism, raises the weaker sex to
+honour. In soul and destiny it declares the woman to be man, endowed
+with all rights and powers inherent in humanity. "In Christ Jesus there
+is no male and female," any more than there is "Jew and Greek" or "bond
+and free." The same sentence which broke down the barriers of Jewish
+caste, and in course of time abolished slavery, condemned the odious
+assumptions of masculine pride. It is one of the glories of our faith
+that it has enfranchised our sisters, and raises them in spiritual
+calling to the full level of their brothers and husbands. Both sexes are
+children of God by the same birthright; both receive the same Holy
+Spirit, according to the prediction quoted by St Peter on the day of
+Pentecost: "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.... Yea, on my
+servants and on my handmaidens in those days will I pour out of my
+Spirit, saith the Lord" (Acts ii. 17, 18). This one point of headship,
+of public authority and guidance, is reserved. It is the point on which
+Christ forbids emulation amongst His people.
+
+Christian courtesy treats the woman as "the glory of the man"; it
+surrounds her from girlhood to old age with protection and deference.
+This homage, duly rendered, is a full equivalent for the honour of
+visible command. When, as it happens not seldom in the partnership of
+life, the superior wisdom dwells with the weaker vessel, the golden gift
+of persuasion is not wanting, by which the official ruler is guided, to
+his own advantage, and his adviser accomplishes more than she could do
+by any overt leadership. The chivalry of the Middle Ages, from which the
+refinement of European society takes its rise, was a product of
+Christianity grafted on the Teutonic nature. Notwithstanding the folly
+and excess that was mixed with it, there was a beautiful reverence in
+the old knightly service and championship of women. It humanized the
+ferocity of barbarous times. It tamed the brute strength of warlike
+races and taught them honour and gentleness. Its prevalence marked a
+permanent advance in civilization.
+
+Shall we say that this law of St Paul is that laid down specifically for
+_Christian_ women? is it not rather a law of nature--the intrinsic
+propriety of sex, whose dictates are reinforced by the Christian
+revelation? The apostle takes us back to the creation of mankind for the
+basis of his principles in dealing with this subject (ver. 31). The new
+commandments are the old which were in the world from the beginning,
+though concealed and overgrown with corruption. Notwithstanding the
+debasement of marriage under the non-Christian systems, the instincts of
+natural religion taught the wife her place in the house and gave rise to
+many a graceful and appropriate custom expressive of the honour due from
+one sex to the other. So the apostle regarded the man's bared and
+cropped head and the woman's flowing tresses as symbols of their
+relative place in the Divine order (1 Cor. xi. 13-15). These and such
+distinctions--between the dignities of strength and of beauty--no
+artificial sentiment and no capricious revolt can set aside, while the
+world stands. St Paul appeals to the common sense of mankind, to that
+which "nature itself teaches," in censuring the forwardness of some
+Corinthian women who appeared to think that the liberty of the gospel
+released them from the limitations of their nature.
+
+Some earnest promoters of women's rights have fallen into the error that
+Christianity, to which they owe all that is best in their present
+status, is the obstacle in the way of their further progress. It is an
+obstacle to claims that are against nature and against the law of
+God,--claims only tolerable so long as they are exceptional. But the
+barriers imposed by Christianity, against which these people fret, are
+their main protection. "The moment Christianity disappears, the law of
+strength revives; and under that law women can have no hope except that
+their slavery may be mild and pleasant." To escape from the "bondage of
+Christian law" means to go back to the bondage of paganism.
+
+"As unto the Lord" gives the pattern and the principle of the Christian
+wife's submission. Not that, as Meyer seems to put it, the husband in
+virtue of marriage "represents Christ to the wife." Her relation to the
+Lord is as full, direct, and personal as his. Indeed, the clause
+inserted at the end of verse 23 seems expressly designed to guard
+against this exaggeration. The qualification that Christ is "Himself
+Saviour of the body," thrown in between the two sentences comparing the
+marital headship to that which Christ holds towards the Church, has the
+effect of limiting the former.[140] The subjection of the Christian wife
+to her husband reserves for Christ the first place in the heart and the
+undiminished rights of Saviourship. St Paul indicates a real, and not
+unfrequent danger. The husband may eclipse Christ in the wife's soul,
+and be counted as her all in all. Her absorption in him may be too
+complete. Hence the brief guarding clause: "He Himself [and no other]
+Saviour of the body [to which all believers alike belong]." As the
+Saviour of the Church, Christ holds an unrivalled and unqualified
+lordship over every member of the same.
+
+"Nevertheless, as the Church is subject to the Christ, so also wives
+[should be] to their husbands in everything" (ver. 24). Again, in verse
+33: "Let the wife see that she fear her husband"--with the reverent and
+confiding fear which love makes sweet. As the Christian wife obeys the
+Lord Christ in the spiritual sphere, in the sphere of marriage she is
+subject to her husband. The ties that bind her to Christ, bind her more
+closely to the duties of home. These duties illustrate for her the
+submissive love that Christ's people, and herself as one of them, owe to
+their Divine Head. Her service in the Church, in turn, will send her
+home with a quickened sense of the sacredness of her domestic calling.
+It will lighten the yoke of obedience; it will check the discontent that
+masculine exactions provoke; and will teach her to win by patience and
+gentleness the power within the house that is her queenly crown.
+
+II. The apostle alludes to submission as the wife's duty; for she might,
+possibly, be tempted to think this superseded by the liberty of the
+children of God. Love he need not enjoin upon her; but he writes:
+"Husbands, _love your wives_, even as the Christ also loved the Church
+and gave up Himself for her" (comp. Col. iii. 18, 19).
+
+The danger of selfishness lies on the masculine side. The man's nature
+is more exacting; and the self-forgetfulness and solicitous affection of
+the woman may blind him to his own want of the truest love. Full of
+business and with a hundred cares and attractions lying outside the
+domestic circle, he too readily forms habits of self-absorption and
+learns to make his wife and home a convenience, from which he takes as
+his right the comfort they have to give, imparting little of devotion
+and confidence in return. This lack of love denies the higher rights of
+marriage; it makes the wife's submission a joyless constraint. Along
+with this selfishness and the uneasy conscience attending it, there
+supervenes sometimes an irritability of temper that chafes over domestic
+troubles and makes a grievance of the most trifling mishap or
+inadvertence, ignoring the wife's patient affection and anxiety to
+please. Too often in this way husbands grow insensibly into family
+tyrants, forgetting the days of youth and the kindness of their
+espousals. "There are many," says Bengel (on this point unusually
+caustic), "who out of doors are civil and kind to all; when at home,
+toward their wives and children, whom they have no need to fear, they
+freely practise secret bitterness."
+
+"Love your wives, _even as the Christ loved the Church_." What a glory
+this confers upon the husband's part in marriage! His devotion pictures,
+as no other love can, the devotion of Christ to His redeemed people. His
+love must therefore be a spiritual passion, the love of soul to soul,
+that partakes of God and of eternity. Of the three Greek words for
+love,--_eros_, familiar in Greek poetry and mythology, denoting the
+flame of sexual passion, is not named in the New Testament; _philia_,
+the love of friendship, is tolerably frequent, in its verb at least; but
+_agape_ absorbs the former and transcends both. This exquisite word
+denotes love in its spiritual purity and depth, the love of God and of
+Christ, and of souls to each other in God. This is the specific
+Christian affection. It is the attribute of God who "loved the world and
+gave His Son the Only-begotten," of "the Christ" who "loved the Church
+and gave up Himself for her." Self-devotion, not self-satisfaction, is
+its note. Its strength and authority it uses as material for sacrifice
+and instruments of service, not as prerogatives of pride or titles to
+enjoyment. Let this mind be in you, O husband, toward your wife, which
+was also in Christ Jesus, who was meek and lowly in heart, counting it
+His honour to serve and His reward to save and bless.
+
+From verse 26 we gather that Christ is the husband's model, not only in
+the rule of self-devotion, but in the end toward which that devotion is
+directed: "that He might sanctify the Church,--that He might present her
+to Himself a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle,--_that she might
+be holy and without blemish_." The perfection of the wife's character
+will be to the religious husband one of the dearest objects in life. He
+will desire for her that which is highest and best, as for himself. He
+is put in charge of a soul more precious to him than any other, over
+which he has an influence incomparably great. This care he cannot
+delegate to any priest or father-confessor. The peril of such delegation
+and the grievous mischiefs that arise when there is no spiritual
+confidence between husband and wife, when through unbelief or
+superstition the head of the house hands over his priesthood to another
+man, are painfully shown by the experience of Roman Catholic countries.
+The irreligion of laymen, the carelessness and unworthiness of fathers
+and husbands are responsible for the baneful influences of the
+confessional. The apostle bade the Corinthian wives, who were eager for
+religious knowledge, to "ask their husbands at home" (1 Cor. xiv. 35).
+Christian husbands should take more account of their office than they
+do; they should not be strangers to the spiritual trials and experiences
+of the heart so near to them. It might lead them to walk more worthily
+and to seek higher religious attainments, if they considered that the
+shepherding of at least one soul devolves upon themselves, that they are
+unworthy of the name of husband without such care for the welfare of the
+soul linked to their own as Christ bears toward His bride the Church.
+Those who have no father or husband to look to, or who look in vain to
+this quarter for spiritual help, St Paul refers, beside the light and
+comfort of Scripture and the public ministry and fellowship of the
+Church, to the "aged women" who are the natural guides and exemplars of
+the younger in their own sex (Titus ii. 3-5).
+
+The selfishness of the stronger sex, supported by the force of habit and
+social usage, was hard to subdue in the Greek Christian Churches.
+Through some eight verses St Paul labours this one point. In verse 28 he
+adduces another reason, added to the example of Christ, for the love
+enjoined. "So ought men indeed to love their wives as their own bodies.
+He that loveth his wife loveth himself." The "So" gathers its force from
+the previous example. In loving us Christ does not love something
+foreign and, as it were, outside of Himself. "We are members of His
+body" (ver. 30). It is the love of the Head to the members, of the Son
+of man to the sons of men, whose race-life is founded in Him. Jesus
+Christ laid it down as the highest law, under that of love to God: "Thou
+shalt love thy neighbour _as thyself_." His love to us followed this
+rule. His life was wrapped up in ours. By such community of life
+self-love is transfigured, and exalted into the purest self-forgetting.
+
+Thus it is with true marriage. The wedding of a human pair makes each
+the other's property. They are "one flesh" (ver. 31); and so long as
+the flesh endures there remains this consciousness of union, whose
+violation is deadly sin. As the Church is not her own, nor Christ His
+own since He became man with men, so the husband and wife are no longer
+independent and self-complete personalities, but incorporated into a new
+existence common to both. Their love must correspond to this fact. If
+the man loves himself, if he values his own limbs and tends and guards
+from injury his bodily frame (ver. 29), he must do the same equally by
+his wife; for her life and limbs are as a part of his own. This the
+apostle lays down as an obvious duty. Nature teaches the obligation, by
+every manly instinct.
+
+The saying the apostle quotes in verse 31 dates from the origin of the
+human family; it is taken from the lips of the first husband and father
+of the race, while as yet unstained by sin (Gen. ii. 23, 24). Christ
+infers from it the singleness and indelibility of the marriage covenant.
+But this doctrine, natural as it is, was not inferred by natural
+religion. The cultivated Greek took a wife for the production of
+children. Her rights put no restriction upon his appetite. Love was not
+in the marriage contract. If she received the maintenance due to her
+rank and the mistress-ship of the house, and was the mother of his
+lawful children, she had all that a free-born woman could demand. The
+slave-woman had no rights. Her body was at her owner's disposal. Nothing
+in Christianity appeared more novel and more severe, in comparison with
+the dissolute morals of the time, than the Christian view of marriage.
+Even Christ's Jewish disciples seemed to think the state of wedlock
+intolerable under the condition He imposed. This want of reverence and
+constancy between the sexes was a main cause of the degeneracy of the
+age. All virtues disappear with this one. Roman manliness and
+uprightness, Greek courtesy and courage, filial piety, civic worth,
+loyalty in friendship--the qualities that once in a high degree adorned
+the classic nations, were now rare amongst men. In the most exalted
+ranks infamous vices flourished; and purity of life was a cause for
+odium and suspicion.
+
+Amidst this seething mass of corruption the Spirit of life in Christ
+Jesus created new hearts and new homes. It kindled a pure fire on the
+desecrated hearth. It taught man and woman a chaste love; and their
+alliances were formed "in sanctification and honour, not in the passion
+of lust as it is with the Gentiles who know not God" (1 Thess. iv. 3-6).
+Every Christian house, thus based on an honourable and religious union,
+became the centre of a leaven that wrought upon the corrupt society
+around. It held forth an example of wedded loyalty and domestic joy
+beautiful and strange in that loveless Pagan world. Children grew up
+trained in pure and gentle manners. From that hour the hope of a better
+day began. The influence of the new ideal, filtrating everywhere into
+the surrounding heathenism and assimilating even before it converted the
+hostile world, raised society, though gradually and with many relapses,
+from the extreme debasement of the age of the Caesars. Never subsequently
+have the morals of civilized mankind sunk to a level quite so low. The
+Christian conception of love and marriage opened a new era for mankind.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[139] See Dr. Maclaren's admirable words on this subject in _Colossians
+and Philemon_ (Expositor's Bible), pp. 336-40; and Dr. Dale's _Lectures
+on Ephesians_, Lect. xix., "Wives and Husbands."
+
+[140] In verse 24 St Paul resumes with =alla=, the _but_ of opposition
+and not mere contrast, indicating a case where the claims of husband and
+Saviour may, conceivably, be in competition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+CHRIST AND HIS BRIDE.
+
+    "The Christ is the head of the Church, _being_ Himself the Saviour
+    of the body.... The Church is subject to the Christ in
+    everything....
+
+    "The Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He
+    might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with
+    the word, that He might present the Church to Himself a glorious
+    _Church_, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she
+    should be holy and without blemish....
+
+    "The Christ [nourisheth and cherisheth] the Church; because we are
+    members of His body. 'For this cause shall a man leave his father
+    and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become
+    one flesh.' This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ
+    and of the Church."--EPH. v. 23-32.
+
+
+We have extracted from the apostle's homily upon marriage the sentences
+referring to Christ and His Church, in order to gather up their
+collective import. The main topic of the epistle here again asserts
+itself; and under the figure of marriage St Paul brings to its
+conclusion his doctrine on the subject of the Church. This passage
+answers, theologically, a purpose similar to that of the allegory of
+Hagar and Sarah in the epistle to the Galatians: it lights up for the
+imagination the teaching and argument of the former part of the epistle;
+it shows how the doctrine of Christ and the Church has its counterpart
+in nature, as the struggle between the legal and evangelical spirit had
+its counterpart in the patriarchal history. The three detached
+paragraphs present us three considerations, of which we shall treat the
+second first in order of exposition: Christ's _love to the Church_; His
+_authority over the Church_; and _the mystery of the Church's origin in
+Him_.
+
+I. "Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the Church,
+and gave up Himself for her." This is parallel to the declaration of
+Galatians ii. 20: "He loved me; He gave up Himself for me." The
+sacrifice of the cross has at once its personal and its collective
+purpose. Both are to be kept in mind.
+
+On the one hand, we must value infinitely and joyfully assert our
+individual part in the redeeming love of the Son of God; but we must
+equally admit the sovereign rights of the Church in the Redeemer's
+passion. Our souls bow down before the glory of the love with which He
+has from eternity sought her for His own. There is in some Christians an
+absorption in the work of grace within their own hearts, an
+individualistic salvation-seeking that, like all selfishness, defeats
+its end; for it narrows and impoverishes the inner life thus sedulously
+cherished. The Church does not exist simply for the benefit of
+individual souls; it is an eternal institution, with an affiance to
+Christ, a calling and destiny of its own; within that universal sphere
+our personal destiny holds its particular place.
+
+It is "the Christ" who stands, throughout this context (vv. 23-29), over
+against "the Church" as her Lover and Husband; whereas in the context of
+Galatians ii. 20 we read "Christ"--the bare personal name--repeated
+again and again without the distinguishing article. _Christ_ is the
+Person whom the soul knows and loves, with whom it holds communion in
+the Spirit. _The Christ_ is the same regarded in the wide scope of His
+nature and office,--the Christ of humanity and of the ages. "The Christ"
+of this epistle expands the Saviour's title to its boundless
+significance, and gives breadth and length to that which in "Christ" is
+gathered up into a single point.[141]
+
+This Christ "gave Himself up for the Church,"--yielded Himself to the
+death which the sins of His people merited and brought upon Him. Under
+the same verb, the apostle says in Romans iv. 25: He "_was delivered_
+because of our trespasses, and raised up because of our
+justification"--the sacrifice being there regarded on its passive side.
+Here, as in Galatians ii. 20, the act is made His own,--a voluntary
+surrender. "No man taketh my life from me," He said (John x. 18). In His
+case alone amongst the sons of men, death was neither natural nor
+inevitable. His surrender of life was an absolute sacrifice. He "laid
+down His life for His friends," as no other friend of man could do--the
+One who died for all. The love measured by this sacrifice is
+proportionately great.
+
+The sayings of verses 25-27 set the glory of the vicarious death in a
+vivid light. Of such worth was the person of the Christ, of such
+significance and moral value His sacrificial death, that it weighed
+against the trespass, not of a man--Paul or any other--but of a world of
+men. He "purchased through His own blood," said Paul to the Ephesian
+elders, "the Church of God" (Acts xx. 28)--the whole flock that feeds in
+the pastures of the Great Shepherd, that has passed or will pass through
+the gates of His fold. Great was the honour and glory with which he was
+crowned, when led as victim to the altar of the world's atonement (Heb.
+ii. 9). Who will not say, as the meek Son of man treads so willingly
+His mournful path to Calvary, "Worthy is the Lamb!" Is not the heavenly
+Bridegroom worthy of the bride, that He consents to win by the sacrifice
+of Himself!
+
+He is worthy; and _she must be made worthy_. "He gave up Himself, that
+He might sanctify her,--that He might Himself present to Himself a
+glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or anything of the
+kind,--that she may be holy and without blemish." The sanctification of
+the Church is the grand purpose of redeeming grace. This was the design
+of God for His sons in Christ before the world's foundation, "that we
+should be holy and unblemished before Him" (i. 4). This, therefore, was
+the end of Christ's mission upon earth; this was the intention of His
+sacrificial death. "For their sakes," said Jesus concerning His
+disciples, "I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in
+truth" (John xvii. 19). His purchase of the Church is no selfish act. To
+God His Father Christ devotes every spirit of man that is yielded to
+Him. As the Priest of mankind it was His office thus to consecrate
+humanity, which is already in purpose and in essence "sanctified through
+the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Heb. x. 10).
+
+Only in this passage, where the apostle is thinking of the preparation
+of the Church for its perfect union with its Head, does he name Christ
+as our _Sanctifier_; in 1 Corinthians i. 2 he comes near this
+expression, addressing his readers as men "sanctified in Christ Jesus."
+In the epistle to the Hebrews this character is largely ascribed to Him,
+being the function of His priesthood. One in nature with the sanctified,
+Jesus our great Priest "sanctifies us through His own blood," so that
+with cleansed consciences we may draw near to the living God.[142] As
+Christ the Priest stands towards His people, so Christ the Husband
+towards His Church. He devotes her with Himself to God. He cleanses her
+that she may dwell with Him for ever, a spotless bride, dead unto sin
+and living unto God through Him.
+
+"That He might sanctify her, _having cleansed her_ in the laver of water
+by the word." The Church's purification is antecedent in thought to her
+sanctification through the sacrifice of Christ; and it is a means
+thereto. "Ye were washed, ye were sanctified," writes the apostle in 1
+Corinthians vi. 11, putting the two things in the same order. It is the
+order of doctrine which he has laid down in the epistle to the Romans,
+where sanctification is built on the foundation laid in justification
+through the blood of Christ. Through the virtue of the sacrificial death
+the Church in all her members was washed from the defilements of sin,
+that she might enter upon God's service. Of the same initial
+purification of the heart St John writes in his first epistle (i. 7-9):
+"The blood of Jesus, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin.... He is
+faithful and just, that He should forgive us our sins and cleanse us
+from all unrighteousness." This is "the redemption through Christ's
+blood," for which St Paul in his first words of praise called upon us to
+bless God (i. 7). It is the special distinction of the New Covenant,
+which renders possible its other gifts of grace, that "the worshippers
+once cleansed" need have "no further consciousness of sins" (Heb. x. 2,
+14-18). In the theological use here made of the idea of _cleansing_, St
+Paul comes into line with St John and the epistle to the Hebrews. The
+purification is nothing else than that which he has elsewhere styled
+_justification_. He employs the terms synonymously in the later epistle
+to Titus (ii. 14; iii. 7).
+
+"Having cleansed" is a phrase congruous with the figure of _the laver_,
+or _bath_ (comp. again Tit. iii. 5-7),--an image suggested, as one would
+think, by the bride-bath of the wedding-day in the ancient marriage
+customs. To this St Paul sees a counterpart in baptism, "the laver of
+water in the word." The cleansing and withal refreshing virtues of water
+made it an obvious symbol of regeneration. The emblem is twofold; it
+pictures at once the removal of guilt, and the imparting of new
+strength. One goes into the bath exhausted, and covered with dust; one
+comes out clean and fresh. Hence the baptism of the new believer in
+Christ had, in St Paul's view, a double aspect.[143] It looked backward
+to the old life of sin abandoned, and forward to the new life of
+holiness commenced. Thus it corresponded to the burial of Jesus (Rom.
+vi. 4), the point of juncture between death and resurrection. Baptism
+served as the visible and formal expression of the soul's passage
+through the gate of forgiveness into the sanctified life.
+
+Along with this older teaching, a further and kindred significance is
+now given to the baptismal rite. It denotes the soul's affiance to its
+Lord. As the maiden's bath on the morning of her marriage betokened the
+purity in which she united herself to her betrothed, so the baptismal
+laver summons the Church to present herself "a chaste virgin unto
+Christ" (2 Cor. xi. 2). It signifies and seals her forgiveness, and
+pledges her in all her members to await the Bridegroom in garments
+unspotted from the world, with the pure and faithful love which will not
+be ashamed before Him at His coming. For this end Christ set up the
+baptismal laver.
+
+Upon our construction of the text, the words "that He might sanctify
+her" express a purpose complete in itself--viz., that of the Church's
+consecration to God. Then follow the means to this sanctification:
+"having cleansed her in the water-bath through the word,"--which
+washing, at the same time, has its purpose on the part of the Lord who
+appointed it--viz., "that He might present her to Himself" a glorious
+and spotless Church.
+
+At the end of verse 27 the sentence doubles back upon itself, in Paul's
+characteristic fashion. The twofold aim of Christ's sacrifice of love on
+the Church's behalf--viz., her consecration to God, and her spotless
+purity fitting her for perfect union with her Lord--is restated in the
+final clause, by way of contrast with the "spots and wrinkles and
+such-like things" that are washed out: "but that she may be holy and
+without blemish."
+
+We passed by, for the moment, the concluding phrase of verse 26, with
+which the apostle qualifies his reference to the baptismal cleansing; we
+are by no means forgetting it. "Having cleansed her," he writes, "by the
+laver of water _in_ [_the_] _word_." This adjunct is deeply significant.
+It impresses on baptism a spiritual character, and excludes every
+theurgic conception of the rite, every doctrine that gives to it in the
+least degree a mechanical efficacy. "Without the word the sacrament
+could only influence man by magic, outward or inward" (Dorner). The
+"word" of which the apostle speaks,[144] is that of chapter vi. 17,
+"God's word--the Spirit's sword"; of Romans x. 8, "the word of faith
+which we proclaim"; of Luke i. 37, "the word from God which shall not be
+powerless"; of John xvii. 8, etc., "the words" that the Father had
+given to the Son, and the Son in turn to men. It is the Divine
+utterance, spoken and believed. In this accompaniment lies the power of
+the laver. The baptismal affusion is the outward seal of an inward
+transaction, that takes place in the spirit of believing utterers and
+hearers of the gospel word. This saving word receives in baptism its
+concrete expression; it becomes the _verbum visibile_.
+
+The "word" in question is defined in Romans x. 8, 9: "If thou shalt
+confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God
+raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved!" Let the hearer respond,
+"I do so confess and believe," on the strength of this confession he is
+baptized, and in the conjoint act of faith and baptism--in the
+_obedience_ of faith signified by his baptism--he is saved from his past
+sins and made an heir of life eternal. The rite is the simplest and most
+universal in application one can conceive. In heathen countries baptism
+recovers its primitive significance, as the decisive act of rupture with
+idolatry and acceptance of Christ as Lord, which in our usage is often
+overlaid and forgotten.
+
+This interpretation gives a key to the obscure text of St Peter upon the
+same subject (1 Ep. iii. 21): "Baptism saves you--not the putting away
+of the filth of the flesh, but the questioning with regard to God of a
+good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." The vital
+constituent of the rite is not the application of water to the body, but
+the challenge which the word makes therein to the conscience respecting
+the things of God,--the inquiry thus conveyed, to which a sincere
+believer in the resurrection of Christ makes joyful and ready answer. It
+is, in fine, _the appeal to faith_ contained in baptism that gives to
+the latter its saving worth.
+
+The "word" that makes Christian ordinances valid, is not the past
+utterance of God alone, which may remain a dead letter, preserved in the
+oracles of Scripture or the official forms of the Church, but that word
+alive and active, re-spoken and transmitted from soul to soul by the
+breath of the Holy Spirit. Without this animating word of faith, baptism
+is but the pouring or sprinkling of so much water on the body; the
+Lord's Supper is only the consumption of so much bread and wine.
+
+All the nations will at last, in obedience to Christ's command, be
+baptized into the thrice-holy Name; and the work of baptism will be
+complete. Then the Church will issue from her bath, cleansed more
+effectually than the old world that emerged with Noah from the deluge.
+Every "spot and wrinkle" will pass from her face: the worldly passions
+that stained her features, the fears and anxieties that knit her brow or
+furrowed her cheek, will vanish away. In her radiant beauty, in her
+chaste and spotless love, Christ will lead forth His Church before His
+Father and the holy angels, "as a bride adorned for her husband." From
+eternity He set His love upon her; on the cross He won her back from her
+infidelity at the price of His blood. Through the ages He has been
+wooing her to Himself, and schooling her in wise and manifold ways that
+she might be fit for her heavenly calling. Now the end of this long task
+of redemption has arrived. The message goes forth to Christ's friends in
+all the worlds: "Come, gather yourselves to the great supper of God!
+The marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready!
+He hath given her fine linen bright and pure, that she may array
+herself. Let us rejoice and exult, and give to Him the glory!" Through
+what cleansing fires, through what baptisms even of blood she has still
+to pass ere the consummation is reached, He only knows who loved her and
+gave Himself for her. He will spare to His Church nothing, either of
+bounty or of trial, that her perfection needs.
+
+II. Concerning Christ's lordly _authority_ over His Church we have had
+occasion to speak already in other places. A word or two may be added
+here.
+
+We acknowledge the Church to be "subject to Christ in everything." We
+proclaim ourselves, like the apostle, "slaves of Christ Jesus." But this
+subjection is too often a form rather than a fact. In protesting our
+independence of Popish and priestly lords of God's heritage, we are
+sometimes in danger of ignoring our dependence upon Him, and of
+dethroning, in effect, the one Lord Jesus Christ. Christian communities
+act and speak too much in the style of political republics. They assume
+the attitude of self-directing and self-responsible bodies.
+
+The Church is no democracy, any more than it is an aristocracy or a
+sacerdotal absolutism: it is a _Christocracy_. The people are not rulers
+in the house of God; they are the ruled, laity and ministers alike. "One
+is your Master, even the Christ; and all ye are brethren." We
+acknowledge this in theory; but our language and spirit would oftentimes
+be other than they are, if we were penetrated by the sense of the
+continual presence and majesty of the Lord Christ in our assemblies.
+Royalties and nobilities, and the holders of popular power--all whose
+"names are named in this world," along with the principalities in
+heavenly places, when they come into the precincts of the Church must
+lay aside their robes and forget their titles, and speak humbly as in
+the Master's presence. What is it to the glorious Church of Jesus Christ
+that Lord So-and-so wears a coronet and owns half a county? or that
+Midas can fill her coffers, if he is pleased and humoured? or that this
+or that orator guides at his will the fierce democracy? He is no more
+than a man who will die, and appear before the judgement-seat of Christ.
+The Church's protection from human tyranny, from schemes of ambition,
+from the intrusion of political methods and designs, lies in her sense
+of the splendour and reality of Christ's dominion, and of her own
+eternal life in Him.
+
+III. We come now to the profound mystery disclosed, or half-disclosed at
+the end of this section, that of _the origination of the Church from
+Christ_, which accounts for His love to the Church and His authority
+over her. He nourishes and cherishes the Church, we are told in verses
+29, 30, "because we are members of His body."
+
+Now, this membership is, in its origin, as old as creation. God "chose
+us in Christ before the world's foundation" (i. 4). We were created in
+the Son of God's love, antecedently to our redemption by Him. Such is
+the teaching of this and the companion epistle (Col. i. 14-18). Christ
+recovers through the cross that which pertains inherently to Him, which
+belonged to Him by nature and is as a part of Himself. From this
+standpoint the connexion of verses 30 and 31 becomes intelligible.[145]
+It is not, strictly speaking, "on account of this"; but "in
+correspondence with this"[146] says the apostle, suiting the original
+phrase to his purpose. The derivation of Eve from the body of Adam, as
+that is affirmed in the mysterious words of Genesis, is analogous to the
+derivation of the Church from Christ. The latter relationship existed in
+its ideal, and as conceived in the purpose of God, prior to the
+appearance of the human race. In St Paul's theory, the origin of woman
+in man which forms the basis of marriage in Scripture, looked further
+back to the origin of humanity in Christ Himself.
+
+The train of thought that the apostle resumes here he followed in 1
+Corinthians xi. 3-12: "I would have you know that the head of every man
+is the Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of
+Christ is God.... Man is the image and glory of God: but the woman is
+the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of
+the man." So it is with Christ and His bride the Church.
+
+"The LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept;
+and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof:
+and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man, made He a woman,
+and brought her to the man. And the man said,
+
+        This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:
+        She shall be called Woman [_Isshah_], because she was taken out
+            of Man [_Ish_].
+    Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall
+            cleave unto his wife:
+          And they shall be one flesh" (Gen. ii. 21-24).
+
+Thus the first father of our race prophesied, and sang his wedding song.
+In some mystical, but real sense, marriage is a _reunion_, the
+reincorporation of what had been sundered. Seeking his other self, the
+complement of his nature, the man breaks the ties of birth and founds a
+new home. So the inspired author of the passage in Genesis explains the
+origin of marriage, and the instinct which draws the bridegroom to his
+bride.
+
+But our apostle sees within this declaration a deeper truth, kept secret
+from the foundation of the world. When he speaks of "this great
+_mystery_," he means thereby not marriage itself, but _the saying of
+Adam about it_. This text was a standing problem to the Jewish
+interpreters. "But for my part," says the apostle, "I refer it to Christ
+and to the Church." St Paul, who has so often before drawn the parallel
+between Adam and Christ, by the light of this analogy perceives a new
+and rich meaning in the old dark sentence. It helps him to see how
+believers in Christ, forming collectively His body, are not only grafted
+into Him (as he puts it in the epistle to the Romans), but were derived
+from Him and formed in the very mould of His nature.
+
+What is affirmed in Colossians i. 16, 17 concerning the universe in
+general, is true in its perfect degree of redeemed humanity: "_In Him_
+were created all things," as well as "through Him and for Him." Eve was
+created in Adam; and Adam in Christ. We are "partakers of a Divine
+nature," by our spiritual origin in Him who is the image of God and the
+root of humanity. The union of the first human pair and every true
+marriage since, being in effect, as Adam puts it, a restoration and
+redintegration, symbolizes the fellowship of Christ with mankind. This
+intention was in the mind of God at the institution of human life; it
+took expression in the prophetic words of the Book of Genesis, whose
+deeper sense St Paul is now able for the first time to unfold.
+
+In our union through grace and faith with Christ crucified, we realize
+again the original design of our being. Christ has purchased by His
+blood no new or foreign bride, but her who was His from eternity,--the
+child who had wandered from the Father's house, the betrothed who had
+left her Lord and Spouse. In regard to this "mystery of our coherence in
+Christ," Richard Hooker says, in words that suggest many aspects of this
+doctrine: "The Church is in Christ, as Eve was in Adam. Yea, by grace we
+are every one of us in Christ and in His Church, as by nature we are in
+our first parents. God made Eve of the rib of Adam. And His Church He
+frameth out of the very flesh, the very wounded and bleeding side of the
+Son of man. His body crucified and His blood shed for the life of the
+world are the true elements of that heavenly being which maketh us such
+as Himself is of whom we come. For which cause the words of Adam may be
+fitly the words of Christ concerning His Church, 'flesh of my flesh and
+bone of my bones--a true native extract out of mine own body,' So that
+in Him, even according to His manhood, we according to our heavenly
+being are as branches in that root out of which they grow."[147]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[141] Compare pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.
+
+[142] Heb. ii. 9-12, ix. 14, 15, x. 5-22, xiii. 12.
+
+[143] See Rom. vi. 1-11; Col. ii. 11, 12; 1 Cor. x. 2, xii. 13.
+
+[144] =En rhemati=. =Logos= is word as expressive of _thought_. =Rhema=,
+the utterance of a living voice,--a _sentence_, _pronouncement_,
+_message_; it is the Greek term employed in all the passages here cited.
+
+[145] The words "of His flesh and of His bones," following "members of
+His body" in the A.V., appear to be an ancient gloss adopted by the
+Greek copyists, which was suggested by Gen. ii. 23. They are unsuitable
+to the idea of a spiritual union, and interrupt rather than help the
+apostle's exposition.
+
+[146] St Paul changes the =Heneken toutou= of the original to =Anti
+toutou=, which conveys the idea that marriage has its counterpart in the
+fact that we are members of Christ.
+
+[147] _Ecclesiastical Polity_; v. 56 7.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+_THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD._
+
+    "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 'Honour
+    thy father and mother,' which is a first commandment, _given_ in
+    promise,--'that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long
+    on the earth.' And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath:
+    but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord.
+
+    "Servants, be obedient to them that according to the flesh are your
+    lords, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto
+    the Christ; not in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as
+    servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul; with good
+    will doing service, as unto the Lord, and not unto men: knowing that
+    whatsoever good thing each one doeth, the same shall he receive
+    again from the Lord, whether _he be_ bond or free. And, ye lords, do
+    the same things unto them, and forbear threatening: knowing that
+    both their Lord and yours is in heaven, and there is no respect of
+    persons with Him."--EPH. vi. 1-9.
+
+
+The Christian family is the cradle and the fortress of the Christian
+faith. Here its virtues shine most brightly; and by this channel its
+influence spreads through society and the course of generations.
+Marriage has been placed under the guardianship of God; it is made
+single, chaste and enduring, according to the law of creation and the
+pattern of Christ's union with His Church. With parents thus united,
+family honour is secure; and a basis is laid for reverence and
+discipline within the house.
+
+I. Thus the apostle turns, in the opening words of chapter vi., from the
+husband and wife to the _children_ of the household. He addresses them
+as present in the assembly where his letter is read. St Paul accounted
+the children "holy," if but one parent belonged to the Church (1 Cor.
+vii. 14). They were baptized, as we presume, with their fathers or
+mothers, and admitted, under due precautions,[148] to the fellowship of
+the Church so far as their age allowed. We cannot limit this exhortation
+to children of adult age. The "discipline and admonition of the Lord"
+prescribed in verse 4, belong to children of tender years and under
+parental control.
+
+_Obedience_ is the law of childhood. It is, in great part, the child's
+religion, to be practised "in the Lord." The reverence and love, full of
+a sweet mystery, which the Christian child feels towards its Saviour and
+heavenly King, add new sacredness to the claims of father and mother.
+Jesus Christ, the Head over all things, is the orderer of the life of
+boys and girls. His love and His might guard the little one in the
+tendance of its parents. The wonderful love of parents to their
+offspring, and the awful authority with which they are invested, come
+from the source of human life in God.
+
+The Latin _pietas_ impressed a religious character upon filial duty.
+This word signified at once dutifulness towards the gods, and towards
+parents and kindred. In the strength of its family ties and its deep
+filial reverence lay the secret of the moral vigour and the unmatched
+discipline of the Roman commonwealth. The history of ancient Rome
+affords a splendid illustration of the fifth commandment.
+
+_For this is right_, says the apostle, appealing to the instincts of
+natural religion. The child's conscience begins here. Filial obedience
+is the primary form of duty. The loyalties of after life take their
+colour from the lessons learnt at home, in the time of dawning reason
+and incipient will. Hard indeed is the evil to remove, where in the
+plastic years of childhood obedience has been associated with base fear,
+with distrust or deceit, where it has grown sullen or obsequious in
+habit. From this root of bitterness there spring rank growths of hatred
+toward authority, jealousies, treacheries, and stubbornness. Obedience
+rendered "in the Lord" will be frank and willing, careful and constant,
+such as that which Jesus rendered to the Father.
+
+St Paul reminds the children of the law of the Ten Words, taught to them
+in their earliest lessons from Scripture. He calls the command in
+question "_a first_ [or _chief_] commandment"--just as the great rule,
+"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," is _the_ first commandment; for this
+is no secondary rule or minor precept, but one on which the continuance
+of the Church and the welfare of society depend. It is a law fundamental
+as birth itself, written not on the statute-book alone but on the tables
+of the heart.
+
+Moreover, it is a "command _in promise_"--that takes the form of
+promise, and holds out to obedience a bright future. The two
+predicates--"first" and "in promise"--as we take it, are distinct. To
+merge them into one blunts their meaning. This commandment is primary in
+its importance, and promissory in its import. The promise is quoted from
+Exodus xx. 12, as it stands in the Septuagint, where the Greek
+Christian children would read it. But the last clause is abbreviated; St
+Paul writes "upon _the earth_" in place of "the good land which the Lord
+thy God giveth thee." This blessing is the heritage of dutiful children
+in every land. Those who have watched the history of godly families of
+their acquaintance, will have seen the promise verified. The obedience
+of childhood and youth rendered to a wise Christian rule, forms in the
+young nature the habits of self-control and self-respect, of diligence
+and promptitude and faithfulness and kindliness of heart, which are the
+best guarantees for happiness and success in life. Through parental
+nurture "godliness" secures its "promise of the life that now is."
+
+Children are exhorted to submission: fathers to _gentleness_. "Do not,"
+the apostle says, "anger your children"; in the corresponding place in
+Colossians, "Do not irritate your children, lest they be disheartened"
+(ch. iii. 21). In these parallel texts two distinct verbs are rendered
+by the one English word "provoke." The Colossian passage warns against
+the chafing effect of parental exactions and fretfulness, that tend to
+break the child's spirit and spoil its temper. Our text warns the father
+against angering his child by unfair or oppressive treatment. From this
+verb comes the noun "wrath" (or "provocation") used in chapter iv. 26,
+denoting that stirring of anger which gives peculiar occasion to the
+devil.
+
+Not that the father is forbidden to cross his child's wishes, or to do
+anything or refuse anything that may excite its anger. Nothing is worse
+for a child than to find that parents fear its displeasure, and that it
+will gain its ends by passion. But the father must not be exasperating,
+must not needlessly thwart the child's inclinations and excite in order
+to subdue its anger, as some will do even of set purpose, thinking that
+in this way obedience is learnt. This policy may secure submission; but
+it is gained at the cost of a rankling sense of injustice.
+
+Household rule should be equally firm and kind, neither provoking nor
+avoiding the displeasure of its subjects, inflicting no severity for
+severity's sake, but shrinking from none that fidelity demands. With
+much parental fondness, there is sometimes in family government a want
+of seriousness and steady principle, an absence in father or mother of
+the sense that they are dealing with moral and responsible beings in
+their little ones, and not with toys, which is reflected in the caprice
+and self-indulgence of the children's maturer life. Such parents will
+give account hereafter of their stewardship with an inconsolable grief.
+
+It is almost superfluous to insist on the apostle's exhortation to treat
+children kindly. For them these are days of Paradise, compared with
+times not far distant. Never were the wants and the fancies of these
+small mortals catered for as they are now. In some households the danger
+lies at the opposite extreme from that of over-strictness. The children
+are idolized. Not their comfort and welfare only, but their humours and
+caprices become the law of the house. They are "nourished" indeed, but
+not "in the discipline and admonition of the Lord." It is a great
+unkindness to treat our children so that they shall be strangers to
+hardship and restriction, so that they shall not know what real
+obedience means, and have no reverence for age, no habits of deference
+and self-denial. It is the way to breed monsters of selfishness,
+pampered creatures who will be useless and miserable in adult life.
+
+"Discipline and admonition" are distinguished as positive and negative
+terms. The first is the "training up of the child in the way that he
+should go"; the second checks and holds him back from the ways in which
+he should not go. The former word (_paideia_)--denoting primarily
+_treating-as-a-boy_--signifies very often "chastisement";[149] but it
+has a wider sense, embracing instruction besides.[150] It includes the
+whole course of training by which the boy is reared into a
+man.--_Admonition_ is a still more familiar word with St Paul.[151] It
+may be reproof bearing upon errors in the past; or it may be warning,
+that points out dangers lying in the future. Both these services parents
+owe to their children. Admonition implies faults in the nature of the
+child, and wisdom in the father to see and correct them.
+
+"Foolishness," says the Hebrew proverb, "is bound up in the heart of a
+child." In the Old Testament discipline there was something over-stern.
+The "hardness of heart" censured by the Lord Jesus, which allowed of two
+mothers in the house, put barriers between the father and his offspring
+that rendered "the rod of correction" more needful than it is under the
+rule of Christ. But correction, in gentler or severer sort, there must
+be, so long as children spring from sinful parents. The child's
+conscience responds to the kindly and searching word of reproof, to the
+admonition of love. This faithful dealing with his children wins for the
+father in the end a deep gratitude, and makes his memory a guard in
+days of temptation and an object of tender reverence.
+
+The child's "obedience _in the Lord_" is its response to "the discipline
+and admonition _of the Lord_" exercised by its parents. The discipline
+which wise Christian fathers give their children, is the Lord's
+discipline applied through them. "Correction and instruction should
+proceed from the Lord and be directed by the Spirit of the Lord, in such
+a way that it is not so much the father who corrects his children and
+teaches them, as the Lord through him" (Monod). Thus the Father of whom
+every family on earth is named, within each Christian house works all in
+all. Thus the chief Shepherd, through His under-shepherds, guides and
+feeds the lambs of His flock. By the gate of His fold fathers and
+mothers themselves have entered; and the little ones follow with them.
+In the pastures of His word they nourish them, and rule them with His
+rod and staff. To their offspring they become an image of the Good
+Shepherd and the Father in heaven. Their office teaches them more of
+God's fatherly ways with themselves. From their children's humbleness
+and confidence, from their simple wisdom, their hopes and fears and
+ignorances, the elders learn deep and affecting lessons concerning their
+own relations to the heavenly Father.
+
+St Paul's instruction to fathers applies to all who have the charge of
+children: to schoolmasters of every degree, whose work, secular as it
+may be called, touches the springs of moral life and character; to
+teachers in the Sunday school, successors to the work that Christ
+assigned to Peter, of shepherding His lambs. These instructors supply
+the Lord's nurture to multitudes of children, in whose homes Christian
+faith and example are wanting. The ideas which children form of Christ
+and His religion, are gathered from what they see and hear in the
+school. Many a child receives its bias for life from the influence of
+the teacher before whom it sits on Sunday. The love and meekness of
+wisdom, or the coldness or carelessness of the one who thus stands
+between Christ and the infant soul, will make or mar its spiritual
+future.
+
+II. From the children of the house the apostle proceeds to address the
+_servants_--slaves as they were, until the gospel unbound their chains.
+The juxtaposition of children and slaves is full of significance; it is
+a tacit prophecy of emancipation. It brings the slave within the
+household, and gives a new dignity to domestic service.[152]
+
+The Greek philosophers regarded slavery as a fundamental institution,
+indispensable to the existence of civilized society. That the few might
+enjoy freedom and culture, the many were doomed to bondage. Aristotle
+defines the slave as an "animated tool," and the tool as an "inanimate
+slave." Two or three facts will suffice to show how utterly slaves were
+deprived of human rights in the brilliant times of the classic humanism.
+In Athens it was the legal rule to admit the evidence of a slave only
+upon torture, as that of a freeman was received upon oath. Amongst the
+Romans, if a master had been murdered in his house, the whole of his
+domestic servants, amounting sometimes to hundreds, were put to death
+without inquiry. It was a common mark of hospitality to assign to a
+guest a female slave for the night, like any other convenience. Let it
+be remembered that the slave population outnumbered the free citizens of
+the Roman and Greek cities by many times; that they were frequently of
+the same race, and might be even superior in education to their masters.
+Indeed, it was a lucrative trade to rear young slaves and train them in
+literary and other accomplishments, and then to let them out in these
+capacities for hire. Let any one consider the condition of society which
+all this involved, and he will have some conception of the degradation
+in which the masses of mankind were plunged, and of the crushing tyranny
+that the world laboured under in the boasted days of republican liberty
+and Hellenic art.
+
+No wonder that the new religion was welcome to the slaves of the Pagan
+cities, and that they flocked into the Church. Welcome to them was the
+voice that said: "Come unto me, all ye that are burdened and heavy
+laden"; welcome the proclamation that made them Christ's freedmen,
+"brethren beloved" where they had been "animated tools" (Philem. 16). In
+the light of such teaching, slavery was doomed. Its re-adoption by
+Christian nations, and the imposition of its yoke on the negro race, is
+amongst the great crimes of history,--a crime for which the white man
+has had to pay rivers of his blood.
+
+The social fabric, as it then existed, was so entirely based upon
+slavery, that for Christ and the apostles to have proclaimed its
+abolition would have meant universal anarchy. In writing to Philemon
+about his converted slave Onesimus, the apostle does not say, "Release
+him," though the word seems to be trembling on his lips. In 1
+Corinthians vii. 20-24 he even advises the slave who has the chance of
+manumission to remain where he is, content to be "the Lord's freedman."
+To the Christian slave what mattered it who ruled over his perishing
+body! his spirit was free, death would be his discharge and
+enfranchisement. No decree is issued to abolish bond-service between man
+and man; but it was destroyed in its essence by the spirit of Christian
+brotherhood. It melted away in the spread of the gospel, as snow and
+winter melt before the face of spring.
+
+"Ye slaves, obey your lords according to the flesh." The apostle does
+not disguise the slave's subservience; nor does he speak in the language
+of pity or of condescension. He appeals as a man to men and equals, on
+the ground of a common faith and service to Christ. He awakens in these
+degraded tools of society the sense of spiritual manhood, of conscience
+and loyalty, of love and faith and hope. As in Colossians iii. 22-iv. 1,
+the apostle designates the earthly master not by his common title
+(_despotes_), but by the very word (_kyrios_) that is the title of the
+_Lord_ Christ, giving the slave in this way to understand that he has,
+in common with his master (ver. 9), a higher Lord in the spirit. "Ye are
+slaves to the Lord Christ!" (Col. iii. 24). St Paul is accustomed to
+call himself "a slave of Christ Jesus."[153] Nay, it is even said, in
+Philippians ii. 7, that Christ Jesus "took the form of a slave!"
+
+How much there was, then, to console the Christian bondman for his lot.
+In self-abnegation, in the willing forfeiture of personal rights, in his
+menial and unrequited tasks, in submission to insult and injustice, he
+found a holy joy. His was a path in which he might closely follow the
+steps of the great Servant of mankind. His position enabled him to
+"adorn the Saviour's doctrine" above other men (Tit. ii. 9, 10).
+Affectionate, gentle, bearing injury with joyful courage, the Christian
+slave held up to that hardened and jaded Pagan age the example which it
+most required. God chose the base things of the world to bring to nought
+the mighty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The relations of servant and master will endure, in one shape or other,
+while the world stands. And the apostle's injunctions bear upon servants
+of every order. We are all, in our various capacities, servants of the
+community. The moral worth of our service and its blessing to ourselves
+depend on the conditions that are here laid down.
+
+1. There must be _a genuine care for our work_.
+
+"Obey," he says, "with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart,
+as unto the Christ." The fear enjoined is no dread of human displeasure,
+of the master's whip or tongue. It is the same "fear and trembling" with
+which we are bidden to "work out our own salvation" (Phil. ii. 12). The
+inward work of the soul's salvation and the outward work of the busy
+hands labouring in the mine or at the loom, or in the lowliest domestic
+duties,--all alike are to be performed under a solemn responsibility to
+God and in the presence of Christ, the Lord of nature and of men, who
+understands every sort of work, and will render to each of His servants
+a just and exact reward. No man, whether he be minister of state or
+stable-groom, will dare to do heedless work, who lives and acts in that
+august Presence,--
+
+    "As ever in the great Task-master's eye."
+
+2. The sense of Christ's Lordship ensures _honesty in work_.
+
+So the apostle continues: "Not with _eye-service_, as _men-pleasers_."
+Both these are rare compound words,--the former indeed occurring only
+here and in the companion letter, being coined, probably, by the writer
+for this use. It is the common fault and temptation of servants in all
+degrees to observe the master's eye, and to work busily or slackly as
+they are watched or not. Such workmen act as they do, because they look
+to men and not to God. Their work is without conscience and
+self-respect. The visible master says "Well done!" But there is another
+Master looking on, who says "Ill done!" to all pretentious doings and
+works of eye-service,--who sees not as man sees, but judges with the act
+the motive and intent.
+
+              "Not on the vulgar mass
+              Called 'work' must sentence pass,
+    Things done, which took the eye and had the price."
+
+In His book of accounts there is a stern reckoning in store for
+deceitful dealers and the makers-up of unsound goods, in whatever
+handicraft or headcraft they are engaged.
+
+Let us all adopt St Paul's maxim; it will be an immense economy. What
+armies of overlookers and inspectors we shall be able to dismiss, when
+every servant works as well behind his master's back as to his face,
+when every manufacturer and shopkeeper puts himself in the purchaser's
+place and deals as he would have others deal with him. It was for the
+Christian slaves of the Greek trading cities to rebuke the Greek spirit
+of fraud and trickery, by which the common dealings of life in all
+directions were vitiated.
+
+3. To the carefulness and honesty of the slave's daily labour he must
+even add _heartiness_: "as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from
+the soul, with good will doing service, as to the Lord and not to men."
+
+They must do _the will of God_ in the service of men, as Jesus Christ
+Himself did it,--and with His meekness and fortitude and unwearied love.
+Their work will thus be rendered from inner principle, with thought and
+affection and resolution spent upon it. That alone is the work of a man,
+whether he preaches or ploughs, which comes from the soul behind the
+hands and the tongue, into which the workman puts as much of his soul,
+of himself, as the work is capable of holding.
+
+4. Add to all this, the servant's _anticipation of the final reward_. In
+each case, "whatsoever one may do that is good, this he will receive
+from the Lord, whether he be a bondman or a freeman." The complementary
+truth is given in the Colossian letter: "He who does wrong, will receive
+back the wrong that he did."
+
+The doctrine of equal retribution at the judgement-seat of Christ
+matches that of equal salvation at the cross of Christ. How trifling and
+evanescent the differences of earthly rank appear, in view of these
+sublime realities. There is a "Lord in heaven," alike for servant and
+for master, "with whom is no respect of persons" (ver. 9). This grand
+conviction beats down all caste-pride. It teaches justice to the mighty
+and the proud; it exalts the humble, and assures the down-trodden of
+redress. No bribery or privilege, no sophistry or legal cunning will
+avail, no concealment or distortion of the facts will be possible in
+that Court of final appeal. The servant and the master, the monarch and
+his meanest subject will stand before the bar of Jesus Christ upon the
+same footing. And the poor slave, wonderful to think, who was faithful
+in the "few things" of his drudging earthly lot, will receive the "many
+things" of a son of God and a joint-heir with Christ!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_And_, _ye lords_, do the same things towards them"--be as good to your
+slaves as they are required to be towards you. A bold application this
+of Christ's great rule: "What you would that men should do to you, do
+even so to them." In many instances this rule suggested _liberation_,
+where the slave was prepared for freedom. In any case, the master is to
+put himself in his dependant's place, and to act by him as he would
+desire himself to be treated if their positions were reversed.
+
+Slaves were held to be scarcely human. Deceit and sensuality were
+regarded as their chief characteristics. They must be ruled, the
+moralists said, by the fear of punishment. This was the only way to keep
+them in their place. The Christian master adopts a different policy. He
+"desists from threatening"; he treats his servants with even-handed
+justice, with fit courtesy and consideration. The recollection is ever
+present to his mind, that he must give account of his charge over each
+one of them to his Lord and theirs. So he will make, as far as in him
+lies, his own domain an image of the kingdom of Christ.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[148] We cannot absolutely _prove_ infant baptism from the New Testament
+texts adduced on its behalf; but they afford a strong presumption in its
+favour, which is confirmed on the one hand by the analogy of
+circumcision, and on the other by the immemorial usage of the early
+Church. Titus i. 6 shows that stress was laid on the faith of children,
+and that discrimination was used in their recognition as Church members.
+
+[149] 1 Cor. xi. 32; Heb. xii. 5, 11, etc.
+
+[150] Acts vii. 22, xxii. 3; Rom. ii. 20; 2 Tim. ii. 25, iii. 14.
+
+[151] 1 Cor. x. 11; Col. i. 28, iii. 16; 1 Thess. v. 14, etc.
+
+[152] The word _family_ (Latin _familia_) denoted originally the
+servants of the establishment, the domestic slaves. Its modern usage is
+an index to the elevating influence of Christianity upon social
+relations.
+
+[153] Rom. i. 1; 2 Cor. iv. 5; Gal. i. 10, etc.
+
+
+
+
+_ON THE APPROACHING CONFLICT._
+
+CHAPTER vi. 10-20.
+
+    =Idou ho Satanas exetesato hymas, tou siniasai hos to siton.=
+
+    LUKE xxii. 31.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+_THE FOES OF THE CHURCH._
+
+    "From henceforth be strong in the Lord, and in the might of His
+    strength. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+    stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not
+    against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the
+    powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the
+    spiritual _hosts_ of wickedness, in the heavenly _places_."--EPH.
+    vi. 10-12.
+
+
+We follow the Revised reading of the opening word of this paragraph, and
+the preferable rendering given by the Revisers in their margin. The
+adverb is the same that is found in Galatians vi. 17 ("_Henceforth_ let
+no man trouble me"); not that used in Philippians iii. 1 and elsewhere
+("_Finally_, my brethren," etc.). The copyists have conformed our text,
+seemingly, to the latter passage. We are recalled to the circumstances
+and occasion of the epistle. High as St Paul soars in meditation, he
+does not forget the situation of his readers. The words of chapter iv.
+14 showed us how well aware he is of the dangers looming before the
+Asian Churches.
+
+The epistle to the Colossians is altogether a letter of conflict (see
+ch. ii. 1 ff.). In writing that letter St Paul was wrestling with
+spiritual powers, mighty for evil, which had commenced their attack upon
+this outlying post of the Ephesian province. He sees in the sky the
+cloud portending a desolating storm. The clash of hostile arms is heard
+approaching. This is no time for sloth or fear, for a faith half-hearted
+or half-equipped. "You have need of your best manhood and of all the
+weapons of the spiritual armoury, to hold your ground in the conflict
+that is coming upon you. _Henceforth be strong in the Lord, and in the
+might of His strength._"
+
+It is the apostle's call to arms!--"Be strengthened in the Lord," he
+says (to render the imperative literally: so in 2 Timothy ii. I). _Make
+His strength your own._ The strength he bids them assume is _power_,
+_ability_, strength adequate to its end.[154] "The might of His
+strength" repeats the combination of terms we found in chapter i. 19.
+That sovereign power of the Almighty which raised Jesus our Lord from
+the dead, belongs to the Lord Christ Himself. From its resources He will
+clothe and arm His people. "In the Lord," says Israel evermore, "is
+righteousness and strength. The rock of my salvation and my refuge is in
+God." The Church's strength lies in the almightiness of her risen Lord,
+the Captain of her warfare.
+
+"The _panoply_ of God" (ver. II) reminds us of the saying of Jesus in
+reference to His casting out of demons, recorded in Luke xi. 21, 22--the
+only other instance in the New Testament of this somewhat rare Greek
+word. The Lord Jesus describes Himself in conflict with Satan, who as
+"the strong one armed keeps his possessions in peace,"--until there
+"come upon him the stronger than he," who "conquers him and takes away
+his panoply wherein he trusted, and divides his spoils." In this text
+the situation is reversed; and the "full armour" belongs to Christ's
+servants, who are equipped to meet the counter-attack of Satan and the
+powers of evil. There is a Divine and a Satanic panoply--arms tempered
+in heaven and in hell, to be wielded by the sons of light and of
+darkness respectively (comp. Rom. xiii. 12). The weapons of warfare on
+the two sides are even as the two leaders that furnish them--"the strong
+one armed" and the "Stronger than he." Mightier are faith and love than
+unbelief and hate; "greater is He that is in you than he that is in the
+world."
+
+Let us review the forces marshalled against us,--their _nature_, their
+_mode of assault_, and _the arena of the contest_.
+
+1. The Asian Christians had to "stand against _the wiles_ [_schemes_, or
+_methods_[155]] _of the devil_."
+
+Unquestionably, the New Testament assumes the personality of Satan. This
+belief runs counter to modern thought, governed as it is by the tendency
+to depersonalize existence. The conception of evil spirits given us in
+the Bible is treated as an obsolete superstition; and the name of the
+Evil One with multitudes serves only to point a profane or careless
+jest. To Jesus Christ, it is very certain, Satan was no figure of
+speech; but a thinking and active being, of whose presence and influence
+He saw tokens everywhere in this evil world (comp. ii. 2). If the Lord
+Jesus "speaks what He knows, and testifies what He has seen" concerning
+the mysteries of the other world, there can be no question of the
+existence of a personal devil. If in any matter He was bound, as a
+teacher of spiritual truth, to disavow Jewish superstition, surely
+Christ was so bound in this matter. Yet instead of repudiating the
+current belief in Satan and the demons, He earnestly accepts it; and it
+entered into His own deepest experiences. In the visible forms of sin
+Jesus saw the shadow of His great antagonist. "From the Evil One" He
+taught His disciples to pray that they might be delivered. The victims
+of disease and madness whom He healed, were so many captives rescued
+from the malignant power of Satan. And when Jesus went to meet His
+death, He viewed it as the supreme conflict with the usurper and
+oppressor who claimed to be "the prince of this world."[156]
+
+Satan is the consummate form of depraved and untruthful intellect. We
+read of his "thoughts," his "schemes," his subtlety and deceit and
+impostures;[157] of his slanders against God and man,[158] from which,
+indeed, the name devil (_diabolus_) is given him. Falsehood and hatred
+are his chief qualities. Hence Jesus called him "the manslayer" and "the
+father of falsehood" (John viii. 44). He was the first sinner, and the
+fountain of sin (1 John iii. 8). All who do unrighteousness or hate
+their brethren are, so far, his offspring (1 John iii. 10). With a realm
+so wide, Satan might well be called not only "the prince," but the very
+"god of this world" (2 Cor. iv. 4). Plausibly he said to Jesus, in
+showing Him the kingdoms of the world, at the time when Tiberius Caesar
+occupied the imperial throne: "All this authority and glory are
+delivered unto me. To whomsoever I will, I give it." His power is
+exercised with an intelligence perhaps as great as any can be that is
+morally corrupt; but it is limited on all sides. In dealing with Jesus
+Christ he showed conspicuous ignorance.
+
+Chief amongst the wiles of the devil at this time was the "scheme of
+error," the cunningly woven net of the Gnostical delusion, in which the
+apostle feared that the Asian Churches would be entangled. Satan's
+empire is ruled with a settled policy, and his warfare carried on with a
+system of strategy which takes advantage of every opening for
+attack.[159] The manifold combinations of error, the various arts of
+seduction and temptation, the ten thousand forms of the deceit of
+unrighteousness constitute "the wiles of the devil."
+
+Such is the gigantic opponent with whom Christ and the Church have been
+in conflict through all ages. But Satan does not stand alone. In verse
+12 there is called up before us an imposing array of spiritual powers.
+They are "the angels of the devil," whom Jesus set in contrast with the
+angels of God that surround and serve the Son of man (Matt. xxv. 41).
+These unhappy beings are, again, identified with the "demons," or
+"unclean spirits," having Satan for their "prince," whom our Lord
+expelled wherever He found them infesting the bodies of men.[160] They
+are represented in the New Testament as fallen beings, expelled from a
+"principality" and "habitation of their own" (Jude 6) which they once
+enjoyed, and reserved for the dreadful punishment which Christ calls
+"the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." They are here
+entitled _principalities_ and _powers_ (or _dominions_), after the same
+style as the angels of God, to whose ranks, as we are almost compelled
+to suppose, these apostates once belonged.
+
+In contrast with the "angels of light" (2 Cor. xi. 14) and "ministering
+spirits" of the kingdom of God (Heb. i. 14), the angels of Satan have
+constituted themselves _the world-rulers of this darkness_. We find the
+compound expression _cosmo-krator_ (world-ruler) in later rabbinical
+usage, borrowed from the Greek and applied to "the angel of death,"
+before whom all mortal things must bow. Possibly, St Paul brought the
+term with him from the school of Gamaliel. Satan being the god of this
+world and swaying "the dominion of darkness,"[161] according to the same
+vocabulary his angels are "the rulers of the world's darkness"; and the
+provinces of the empire of evil fall under their direction.
+
+The darkness surrounding the apostle in Rome and the Churches in
+Asia--"this darkness," he says--was dense and foul. With Nero and his
+satellites the masters of empire, the world seemed to be ruled by demons
+rather than by men. The frightful wish of one of the Psalmists was
+fulfilled for the heathen world: "Set a wicked man over him, and let
+Satan stand at his right hand."
+
+The last of St Paul's synonyms for the satanic forces, "the spiritual
+[powers] of wickedness," may have served to warn the Church against
+reading a political sense into the passage and regarding the civil
+constitution of society and the visible world-rulers as objects for
+their hatred. Pilate was a specimen, by no means amongst the worst, of
+the men in power. Jesus regarded him with pity. His real antagonist
+lurked behind these human instruments. The above phrase, "spirituals of
+wickedness," is Hebraistic, like "judge" and "steward of
+unrighteousness,"[162] and is equivalent to "wicked spirits." The
+adjective "spiritual," which does duty for a substantive--"the
+spiritual [forces, or elements] of wickedness"[163]--brings out the
+collective character of these hostile powers.
+
+St Paul's demonology[164] is identical with that of Jesus Christ. The
+two doctrines stand or fall together. The advent of Christ appears to
+have stirred to extraordinary activity the satanic powers. They asserted
+themselves in Palestine at this particular time in the most open and
+terrifying manner. In an age of scepticism and science like our own, it
+belongs to "the wiles of the devil" to work obscurely. This is dictated
+by obvious policy. Moreover, his power is greatly reduced. Satan is no
+longer the god of this world, since Christianity rose to its ascendant.
+The manifestations of demonism are, at least in Christian lands, vastly
+less conspicuous than in the first age of the Church. But those are more
+bold than wise who deny their existence, and who profess to explain all
+occult phenomena and phrenetic moral aberrations by physical causes. The
+popular idolatries of his own day, with their horrible rites and inhuman
+orgies, St Paul ascribed to devilry. He declared that those who sat at
+the feast of the idol and gave sanction to its worship, were partaking
+of "the cup and the table of demons" (1 Cor. x. 20, 21). Heathen
+idolatries at the present time are, in many instances, equally
+diabolical; and those who witness them cannot easily doubt the truth of
+the representations of Scripture upon this subject.
+
+II. The conflict against these spiritual enemies is essentially a
+_spiritual_ conflict. "Our struggle is not against blood and flesh."
+
+They are not human antagonists whom the Church has to fear,--mortal men
+whom we can look in the face and meet with equal courage, in the contest
+where hot blood and straining muscle do their part. The fight needs
+mettle of another kind. The foes of our faith are untouched by carnal
+weapons. They come upon us without sound or footfall. They assail the
+will and conscience; they follow us into the regions of spiritual
+thought, of prayer and meditation. Hence the weapons of our warfare,
+like those which the apostle wielded (2 Cor. x. 2-5), "are not carnal,"
+but spiritual and "mighty toward God."
+
+It is true that the Asian Churches had visible enemies arrayed against
+them. There were the "wild beasts" with whom St Paul "fought at
+Ephesus," the heathen mob of the city, sworn foes of every despiser of
+their great goddess Artemis. There was Alexander the coppersmith, ready
+to do the apostle evil, and "the Jews from Asia," a party of whom all
+but murdered him in Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 27-36); there was Demetrius the
+silversmith, instigator of the tumult which drove him from Ephesus, and
+"the craftsmen of like occupation," whose trade was damaged by the
+progress of the new religion. These were formidable opponents, strong in
+everything that brings terror to flesh and blood. But after all, these
+were of small account in St Paul's view; and the Church need never
+dread material antagonism. The centre of the struggle lies elsewhere.
+The apostle looks beyond the ranks of his earthly foes to the power of
+Satan by which they are animated and directed,--"impotent pieces of the
+game he plays." From this hidden region he sees impending an attack more
+perilous than all the violence of persecution, a conflict urged with
+weapons of finer proof than the sharp steel of sword and axe, and with
+darts tipped with a fiercer fire than that which burns the flesh or
+devours the goods.
+
+Even in outward struggles against worldly power, our wrestling is not
+simply against blood and flesh. Calvin makes a bold application of the
+passage when he says: "This sentence we should remember so often as we
+are tempted to revengefulness, under the smart of injuries from men. For
+when nature prompts us to fling ourselves upon them with all our might,
+this unreasonable passion will be checked and reined in suddenly, when
+we consider that these men who trouble us are nothing more than darts
+cast by the hand of Satan; and that while we stoop to pick up these, we
+shall expose ourselves to the full force of his blows." _Vasa sunt_,
+says Augustine of human troublers, _alius utitur_; _organa sunt, alius
+tangit_.
+
+The crucial assaults of evil, in many instances, come in no outward and
+palpable guise. There are sinister influences that affect the spirit
+more directly, fires that search its inmost fibres, a darkness that
+sweeps down upon the very light that is in us threatening its
+extinction. "Doubts, the spectres of the mind," haunt it; clouds brood
+over the interior sky and fierce storms sweep down on the soul, that
+rise from beyond the seen horizon. "Jesus was led of the Spirit into the
+wilderness, to be tempted of the devil." Away from the tracks of men
+and the seductions of flesh and blood the choicest spirits have been
+tested and schooled. So they are tempered in the spiritual furnace to a
+fineness which turns the edge of the sharpest weapons the world may use
+against them.
+
+Some men are constitutionally more exposed than others to these interior
+assaults. There are conditions of the brain and nerves, tendencies lying
+deep in the organism, that give points of vantage to the enemy of souls.
+These are the opportunities of the tempter; they do not constitute the
+temptation itself, which comes from a hidden and objective source.
+Similarly in the trials of the Church, in the great assaults made upon
+her vital truths, historical conditions and the external movements of
+the age furnish the material for the conflicts through which it has to
+pass; but the spring and moving agent, the master will that dominates
+these hostile forces is that of Satan.
+
+The Church was engaged in a double conflict--of the flesh and of the
+spirit. On the one hand, it was assailed by the material seductions of
+heathenism and the terrors of ruthless persecution. On the other hand,
+it underwent a severe intellectual conflict with the systems of error
+that were rooted in the mind of the age. These forces opposed the
+Christian truth from without; but they became much more dangerous when
+they found their way within the Church, vitiating her teaching and
+practice, and growing like tares among the wheat. It is of heresy more
+than persecution that the apostle is thinking, when he writes these
+ominous words. Not blood and flesh, but the mind and spirit of the Asian
+believers will bear the brunt of the attack that the craft of the devil
+is preparing for the apostolic Church.
+
+III. The last clause of verse 12, _in the heavenly places_, refuses to
+combine with the above description of the powers hostile to the Church.
+The heavenly places are the abode of God and the blessed angels. This is
+the region where the Father has blessed us in Christ (i. 3); where He
+seated the Christ at His own right hand (i. 20), and has in some sense
+seated us with Christ (ii. 6); and where the angelic princedoms dwell
+who follow with keen and studious sympathy the Church's fortunes (iii.
+10). To locate the devil and his angels _there_ seems to us highly
+incongruous; the juxtaposition is out of the question with St Paul.
+Chapter ii. 2 gives no real support to this view: supposing "the air" to
+be literally intended in that passage, it belongs to _earth_ and not to
+heaven.[165] Nor do the parallels from other Scriptures adduced supply
+any but the most precarious basis for an interpretation against which
+the use of the exalted phrase in our epistle revolts.
+
+No; Satan and his hosts do not dwell with Christ and the holy angels "in
+the heavenly places." But the Church dwells there already, by her faith;
+and it is in the heavenly places of her faith and hope that she is
+assailed by the powers of hell. This final prepositional clause should
+be separated by a comma from the words immediately foregoing; it forms a
+distinct predicate to the sentence contained in verse 12. It specifies
+the _locality_ of the struggle; it marks out the battle-field. "Our
+wrestling is ... in the heavenly places."[166] So we construe the
+sentence, following the ancient Greek commentators.
+
+The life of the Church "is hid with the Christ in God"; her treasure is
+laid up in heaven. She is assailed by a philosophy and vain deceit that
+perverts her highest doctrines, that clouds her vision of Christ and
+limits His glory, and threatens to drag her down from the high places
+where she sits with her ascended Lord.[167] Such was, in effect, the aim
+of the Colossian heresy, and of the great Gnostical movement to which
+this speculation was a prelude, that for a century and more entangled
+Christian faith in its metaphysical subtleties and false mysticism. The
+epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians strike the leading note of the
+controversies of the Church in this region during its first ages. Their
+character was thoroughly transcendental. "The heavenly things" were the
+subject-matter of the great conflicts of this epoch.
+
+The questions of religious controversy characteristic of our own times,
+though not identical with those of Colossae or Ephesus, concern matters
+equally high and vital. It is not this or that doctrine that is now at
+stake--the nature or extent of the atonement, the procession of the Holy
+Spirit from the Son with the Father, the verbal or plenary inspiration
+of Scripture; but the personal being of God, the historical truth of
+Christianity, the reality of the supernatural,--these and the like
+questions, which formed the accepted basis and the common assumptions of
+former theological discussions, are now brought into dispute. Religion
+has to justify its very existence. Christianity must answer for its
+life, as at the beginning. God is denied. Worship is openly renounced.
+Our treasures in heaven are proclaimed to be worthless and illusive.
+The entire spiritual and celestial order of things is relegated to the
+region of obsolete fable and fairy tales. The difficulties of modern
+religious thought lie at the foundation of things, and touch the core of
+the spiritual life. Unbelief appears, in some quarters, to be more
+serious and earnest than faith. While we quarrel over rubrics and
+ritual, thoughtful men are despairing of God and immortality. The
+Churches are engaged in trivial contentions with each other, while the
+enemy pushes his way through our broken ranks to seize the citadel.
+
+"The apostle incites the readers," says Chrysostom, "by the thought of
+the prize at stake. When he has said that our enemies are powerful, he
+adds thereto that these are great possessions which they seek to wrest
+from us. When he says _in the heavenly places_, this implies _for the
+heavenly things_. How it must rouse and sober us to know that the hazard
+is for great things, and great will be the prize of victory. Our foe
+strives to take _heaven_ from us." Let the Church be stripped of all her
+temporalities, and driven naked as at first into the wilderness. She
+carries with her the crown jewels; and her treasure is unimpaired, so
+long as faith in Christ and the hope of heaven remain firm in her heart.
+But let these be lost; let heaven and the Father in heaven fade with our
+childhood's dreams; let Christ go back to His grave--then we are utterly
+undone. We have lost our all in all!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[154] =Endynamousthe= [from =dynamis=] =en Kyrio kai en to kratei tes
+ischyos autou.= See the note on these synonyms, on p. 76. Comp., for
+this verb, Col. i. II; 2 Tim. iv. 17; Phil. iv. 13: =Panta ischyo en to
+endynamounti me=,--"I have strength for everything in Him that _enables_
+me."]
+
+[155] Comp. remark on =methodeia= (iv. 14), p. 247.
+
+[156] John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11: comp. Luke iv. 5-7; Heb. ii. 14.
+
+[157] 2 Cor. ii. 11, xi. 3; 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10; 2 Tim. ii. 26, etc.
+
+[158] Rev. xii, 7-10; Gen. iii. 4, 5; Zech. iii. 1; Job i.
+
+[159] Ch. iv. 27; 2 Cor. ii. 11; Luke xxii. 31.
+
+[160] Luke x. 17-20, xi. 14-26.
+
+[161] Col. i. 13: comp. Acts xxvi. 18, etc.
+
+[162] Luke xvi. 8, xviii. 6.
+
+[163] =Ta pneumatika tes ponerias.=
+
+[164] Mr. Moule aptly observes, in his excellent and most useful
+Commentary on Ephesians in the _Cambridge Bible for Schools and
+Colleges_: St Paul's "testimony to the real and objective existence" of
+evil spirits "gains in strength when it is remembered that the epistle
+was addressed (at least, among other designations) to Ephesus, and that
+Ephesus (see Acts xix.) was a peculiarly active scene of asserted
+magical and other dealings with the unseen darkness. Supposing that the
+right line to take in dealing with such beliefs and practices had been
+to say that the whole basis of them was a fiction of the human mind, not
+only would such a verse as this [vi. 12] not have been written, but, we
+may well assume, something would have been written strongly
+contradictory to the thought of it" (p. 176).
+
+[165] See p. 103.
+
+[166] The objection against the common rendering taken from the absence
+of the Greek article (=ta=) before the phrase =en tois epouraniois=,
+required to link it to =ta pneumatika tes ponerias=, is not decisive.
+
+[167] Col. ii. 8-10, iii. 1-4; Phil. iii. 20, 21: comp. Eph. i. 3, ii.
+6, 18, iv. 10, 15; Heb. vi. 19, 20, etc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+_THE DIVINE PANOPLY._
+
+    "Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
+    withstand in the evil day, and, having conquered all, to stand.
+    Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put
+    on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with
+    the readiness of the gospel of peace; withal taking up the shield of
+    faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of
+    the evil _one_. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of
+    the Spirit, which is the word of God: with all prayer and
+    supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching
+    thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the
+    saints."--EPH. vi. 13-18.
+
+
+_Stand_ is the watchword for this battle, the apostle's order of the
+day: "that you may be able to _stand_ against the stratagems of the
+devil, ... that you may be able to _withstand_ in the evil day, and
+mastering all your enemies[168] to _stand_.... _Stand_ therefore,
+girding your loins about with truth." The apostle is fond of this
+martial style, and such appeals are frequent in the letters of this
+period.[169] The Gentile believers are raised to the heavenly places of
+fellowship with Christ, and invested with the lofty character of sons
+and heirs of God: let them hold their ground; let them maintain the
+honour of their calling and the wealth of their high estate, standing
+fast in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. _Pro aris et focis_ the
+patriot draws his sword, and manfully repels the invader. Even so the
+good soldier of Christ Jesus contends for his heavenly city and the
+household of faith. He defends the dearest interests and hopes of human
+life.
+
+This defence is needed, for an "evil day" is at hand! This emphatic
+reference points to something more definite than the general day of
+temptation that is co-extensive with our earthly life. St Paul foresaw a
+crisis of extreme danger impending over the young Church of Christ. The
+prophecies of Jesus taught His disciples, from the first, that His
+kingdom could only prevail by means of a severe conflict, and that some
+desperate struggle would precede the final Messianic triumph. This
+prospect looms before the minds of the New Testament writers, as "the
+day of Jehovah" dominated the imagination of the Hebrew prophets. Paul's
+apocalypse in 1 and 2 Thessalonians is full of reminiscences of Christ's
+visions of judgement. It culminates in the prediction of the evil day of
+Antichrist, which is to usher in the second, glorious coming of the Lord
+Jesus. The consummation, as the apostle was then inclined to think,
+might arrive within that generation (1 Thess. iv. 15, 17), although he
+declares its times and seasons wholly unknown. In his later epistles,
+and in this especially, it is clear that he anticipated a longer
+duration for the existing order of things; and "the evil day" for which
+the Asian Churches are to prepare can scarcely have denoted, to the
+apostle's mind, the final day of Antichrist, though it may well be an
+epoch of similar nature and a token and shadow of the last things.
+
+In point of fact, a great secular crisis was now approaching. The six
+years (64-70 after Christ) extending from the fire of Rome to the fall
+of Jerusalem, were amongst the most fateful and calamitous recorded in
+history. This period was, in a very real sense, the day of judgement for
+Israel and the ancient world. It was a foretaste of the ultimate doom of
+the kingdom of evil amongst men; and through it Christ appears to have
+looked forward to the end of the world. Already "the days are evil" (v.
+16); and "the evil day" is at hand--a time of terror and despair for all
+who have not a firm faith in the kingdom of God.
+
+Two chief characteristics marked this crisis, as it affected the people
+of Christ: _persecution from without_, and _apostasy within the Church_
+(Matt. xxiv. 5, 8-12). To the latter feature St Paul refers
+elsewhere.[170] Of persecution he took less account, for this was indeed
+his ordinary lot, and had already visited his Churches; but it was
+afterwards to assume a more violent and appalling form.
+
+When we turn to the epistle to the Seven Churches (Rev. ii., iii.)
+written in the next ensuing period, we find a fierce battle raging,
+resembling that for which this letter warns the Asian Churches to
+prepare. The storm which our apostle foresees, had then burst. The
+message addressed to each Church concludes with a promise to "him that
+overcometh." To the faithful it is said: "I know thy endurance." The
+angel of the Church of Pergamum dwells where is "the throne of Satan,"
+and where "Antipas the faithful martyr was killed." There also, says the
+Lord Jesus, "are those who hold the teaching of Balaam, and the teaching
+of the Nicolaitans," with whom "I will make war with the sword of my
+mouth" (comp. Eph. vi. 17). Laodicea has shrunk from the trial, and
+grown rich by the world's friendship. Thyatira "suffers the woman
+Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce" the
+servants of Christ. Sardis has but "a few names that have not defiled
+their garments." Even Ephesus, though she had tried the false teachers
+and found them wanting (surely Paul's epistles to Timothy had helped her
+in this examination), has yet "left her first love." The day of trial
+has proved an evil day to these Churches. Satan has been allowed to sift
+them; and while some good wheat remains, much of the faith of the
+numerous and prosperous communities of the province of Asia has turned
+out to be faulty and vain. The presentiments that weighed on St Paul's
+mind when four years ago he took leave of the Ephesian elders at
+Miletus, and which reappear in this passage, were only too well
+justified by the course of events. Indeed, the history of the Church in
+this region has been altogether mournful and admonitory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But it is time to look at the _armour_ in which St Paul bids his readers
+equip themselves against the evil day. It consists of seven weapons,
+offensive or defensive--if we count prayer amongst them: the _girdle of
+truth_, the _breastplate of righteousness_, the _shoes of readiness to
+bear the message of peace_, the _shield of faith_, the _helmet of
+salvation_, the _sword of the word_, and the continual _cry of prayer_.
+
+1. In girding himself for the field, the first thing the soldier does is
+to fasten round his waist the military _belt_. With this he binds in his
+under-garments, that there may be nothing loose or trailing about him,
+and braces up his limbs for action. Peace admits of relaxation. The
+girdle is unclasped; the muscles are unstrung. But everything about the
+warrior is tense and firm; his dress, his figure and movements speak of
+decision and concentrated energy. He stands before us an image of
+resolute conviction, of _a mind made up_. Such a picture the words "girt
+about with truth" convey to us.
+
+The epistle is pervaded by the sense of the Church's need of
+intellectual conviction. Many of the Asian believers were children,
+half-enlightened and irresolute, ready to be "tossed to and fro and
+carried about with every wind of doctrine" (iv. 14). They had "heard the
+truth as it is in Jesus," but had an imperfect comprehension of its
+meaning.[171] They required to add to their faith knowledge,--the
+knowledge won by searching thought respecting the great truths of
+religion, by a thorough mental appropriation of the things revealed to
+us in Christ. Only by such a process can truth brace the mind and knit
+its powers together in "the full assurance of the understanding in the
+knowledge of the mystery of God, which is Christ" (Col. ii, 2, 3).
+
+Such is the faith needed by the Church, now as then, the faith of an
+intelligent, firm and manly assurance. There is in such faith a security
+and a vigour of action that the faith of mere sentiment and emotional
+impression, with its nerveless grasp, its hectic and impulsive fervours,
+cannot impart. The luxury of agnosticism, the languors of doubt, the
+vague sympathies and hesitant eclecticism in which delicate and cultured
+minds are apt to indulge; the lofty critical attitude, as of some
+intellectual god sitting above the strife of creeds, which others find
+congenial--these are conditions of mind unfit for the soldier of Christ
+Jesus. He must have sure knowledge, definite and decided purposes--a
+soul girdled with truth.
+
+2. Having girt his loins, the soldier next fastens on his _breastplate_,
+or cuirass.
+
+This is the chief piece of his defensive armour; it protects the vital
+organs. In the picture drawn in 1 Thessalonians v. 8, the breastplate is
+made "of faith and love." In this more detailed representation, faith
+becomes the outlying defensive "shield," while righteousness serves for
+the innermost defence, the rampart of the heart. But, in truth, the
+Christian righteousness is compounded of faith and love.
+
+This attribute must be understood in its full Pauline meaning. It is the
+state of one who is right with God and with God's law. It is the
+righteousness both of standing and of character, of imputation and of
+impartation, which begins with justification and continues in the new,
+obedient life of the believer. These are never separate, in the true
+doctrine of grace. "The righteousness that is of God by faith," is the
+soul's main defence against the shafts of Satan. It wards off deadly
+blows, both from this side and from that. Does the enemy bring up
+against me my old sins? I can say: "It is God that justifieth; who is he
+that condemneth?"--Am I tempted to presume on my forgiveness, and to
+fall into transgression once more? From this breastplate the arrow of
+temptation falls pointless, as it resounds: "He that doeth righteousness
+is righteous. He that is born of God doth not commit sin." The
+completeness of pardon for past offence and the integrity of character
+that belong to the justified life, are woven together into an
+impenetrable mail.
+
+3. Now the soldier, having girt his loins and guarded his breast, must
+look well to his feet. There are lying ready for him _shoes_ of wondrous
+make.
+
+What is the quality most needed in the soldier's shoes? Some say, it is
+_firmness_; and they so translate the Greek word employed by the
+apostle, occurring only here in the New Testament, which in certain
+passages of the Septuagint seems to acquire this sense, under the
+influence of Hebrew idiom.[172] But firmness was embodied in the girdle.
+_Expedition_ belongs to the shoes. The soldier is so shod that he may
+move with alertness over all sorts of ground.
+
+Thus shod with speed and willingness were "the beautiful feet" of those
+that brought over desert and mountain "the good tidings of peace," the
+news of Israel's return to Zion (Isai. lii. 7-9). With such swift
+strength were the feet of our apostle shod, when "from Jerusalem round
+about unto Illyricum" he had "fulfilled the gospel of Christ," and is
+"ready," as he says, "to preach the glad tidings to you also that are in
+Rome" (Rom. i. 15). This readiness belonged to His own holy feet, who
+"came and preached peace to the far off and the near" (ii. 17),--when,
+for example, sitting a weary traveller by the well-side at Sychar, He
+found refreshment in revealing to the woman of Samaria the fountain of
+living water. Such readiness befits His servants, who have heard from
+Him the message of salvation and are sent to proclaim it everywhere.
+
+The girdle and breastplate look to one's own safety. They must be
+supplemented by the evangelic zeal inseparable from the spirit of
+Christ. This is, moreover, a safeguard of Church life. Von Hofmann says
+admirably upon this point: "The objection [brought against the above
+interpretation] that the apostle is addressing the faithful at large,
+who are not all of them called to preach the gospel, is mistaken. Every
+believer should be prepared to witness for Christ so often as
+opportunity affords, and needs a _readiness_ thereto. The knowledge of
+Christ's peace qualifies him to convey its message. He brings it with
+him into the strife of the world. And it is the consciousness that he
+possesses himself such peace and has it to communicate to others, which
+enables him to walk firmly and with sure step in the way of faith." When
+we are bidden to "_stand_ in the evil day," that does not mean to stand
+idle or content to hold our ground. Attack is often the best mode of
+defence. We keep our faith by spreading it. We defend ourselves from our
+opponents by converting them to the gospel, which breathes everywhere
+reconciliation and fraternity. Our Foreign Missions are our grand modern
+apologetic; and God's peacemakers are His mightiest warriors.
+
+4. With his body girt and fenced and his feet clad with the gospel
+shoes, the soldier reaches out his left hand to "take up withal the
+_shield_," while his right hand grasps first the helmet which he places
+on his head, and then the sword that is offered to him in the word of
+God.
+
+The shield signified is not the small round buckler, or target, of the
+light-armed man; but the door-like shield,[173] measuring four feet by
+two-and-a-half and rounded to the shape of the body, that the Greek
+hoplite and the Roman legionary carried. Joined together, these large
+shields formed a wall, behind which a body of troops could hide
+themselves from the rain of the enemy's missiles. Such is the office of
+faith in the conflicts of life: it is the soldier's main defence, the
+common bulwark of the Church. Like the city's outer wall, faith bears
+the brunt and onset of all hostility. On this shield of faith the darts
+of Satan are caught, their point broken and their fire quenched. These
+military shields were made of wood, covered on the outside with thick
+leather, which not only deadened the shock of the missile, but protected
+the frame of the shield from the "fire-tipped darts" that were used in
+the artillery of the ancients. These flaming arrows, armed with some
+quickly burning and light combustible, if they failed to pierce the
+warrior's shield, fell in a moment extinguished at his feet.
+
+St Paul can scarcely mean by his "fiery darts" incitements to passion in
+ourselves, inflammatory temptations that seek to rouse the inward fires
+of anger or lust. For these missiles are "fire-pointed darts _of the
+Evil One_." The fire belongs to the enemy who shoots the dart. It
+signifies the malignant hate with which Satan hurls slanders and threats
+against the people of God through his human instruments. A bold faith
+wards off and quenches this fire even at a distance, so that the soul
+never feels its heat. The heart's confidence is unmoved and the Church's
+songs of praise are undisturbed, while persecution rages and the enemies
+of Christ gnash their teeth against her. Such a shield to him was the
+faith of Stephen the proto-martyr.
+
+    "I heard the defaming of many; there was terror on every side.
+    But I trusted in Thee, O Jehovah: I said, Thou art my God!"
+
+To "take up the shield of faith," is it not, like the Psalmist, to meet
+injuries and threats, the boasts of unbelief and of worldly power, the
+poisoned arrows of the deceitful and the bitter words of unjust
+reproach, with faith's quiet counter-assertion? "Who shall separate us
+from the love of Christ?" says the apostle in the midst of tribulation.
+"God is my witness, whom I serve in the gospel of His Son," he answers
+when his fidelity is questioned. No shaft of malice, no arrow of fear
+can pierce the soul that holds such a shield.
+
+5. At this point (ver. 17), when the sentence beginning at verse 14 has
+drawn itself out to such length, and the relative clause of verse 16_b_
+makes a break and eddy in the current of thought, the writer pauses for
+a moment. He resumes the exhortation in a form slightly changed and with
+rising emphasis, passing from the participle to the finite verb: "And
+take _the helmet of salvation_."
+
+The word _take_, in the original, differs from the _taking up_ of verses
+13 and 16. It signifies the _accepting_ of something offered by the hand
+of another. So the Thessalonians "_accepted_ the word" brought them by
+St Paul (1 Thess. i. 6) and Titus "_accepted_ the consolation" given him
+by the Corinthians (2 Cor. viii. 17)--in each case a welcome gift. God's
+hand is stretched out to bestow on His chosen warrior the helmet of
+salvation and the sword of His word, to complete his equipment for the
+perilous field. We accept these gifts with devout gratitude, knowing
+from what source they come and where the heavenly arms were fashioned.
+
+The "helmet of salvation" is worn by the Lord Himself, as He is depicted
+by the prophet coming to the succour of His people (Isai. lix. 17). This
+helmet, on the head of Jehovah, is the crest and badge of their Divine
+champion. Given to the human warrior, it becomes the sign of his
+protection by God. The apostle does not call it "the _hope_ of
+salvation," as he does in 1 Thessalonians v. 8, thinking of the
+believer's assurance of victory in the last struggle. Nor is it the
+sense and assurance of past salvation that here guards the Christian
+soldier. The presence of his Saviour and God in itself constitutes his
+highest safeguard.
+
+    "O Jehovah my Lord, the strength of my salvation,
+    Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle."
+
+The warrior's head rising above his shield was frequently open to
+attack. The arrow might shoot over the shield's edge, and inflict a
+mortal blow. Our faith, at the best, has its deficiencies and its
+limits; but God's salvation reaches beyond our highest confidence in
+Him. His overshadowing presence is the crown of our salvation, His love
+its shining crest.
+
+Thus the equipment of Christ's soldier is complete; and he is arrayed in
+the full armour of light. His loins girt with truth, his breast clad
+with righteousness, his feet shod with zeal, his head crowned with
+safety, while faith's all-encompassing shield is cast about him, he
+steps forth to do battle with the powers of darkness, "strong in the
+Lord, and in the might of His strength."
+
+6. It only remains that "the _sword_ of the Spirit" be put into his
+right hand, while his lips are open in continual prayer to the God of
+his strength.
+
+The "cleansing word" of chapter v. 26, by whose virtue we passed through
+the gate of baptism into the flock of Christ, now becomes the guarding
+and smiting word, to be used in conflict with our spiritual foes. Of the
+Messiah it was said, in language quoted by the apostle against
+Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 8): "He shall smite the earth with the rod of
+His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked"
+(Isai. xi. 4). Similarly, in Hosea the Lord tells how He has "hewed" the
+unfaithful "by His prophets, and slain them by the words of His mouth"
+(Hos. vi. 5). From such sayings of the Old Testament the idea of the
+sword of the Divine word is derived. We find it again in Hebrews iv. 12:
+"The word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword";
+and in the "sword, two-edged, sharp," which John in the Revelation saw
+"coming out of the mouth of the Son of man": it belongs to Him whose
+name is "the word of God," and with it "He shall smite the
+nations."[174]
+
+This sword of the inspired word Paul himself wielded with supernatural
+effect, as when he rebuked Elymas the sorcerer, or when he defended his
+gospel against the Judaizers of Galatia and Corinth. In his hand it was
+even as
+
+                      "The sword
+    Of Michael, from the armoury of God,
+        ... tempered so that neither keen
+    Nor solid might resist that edge."
+
+With what piercing reproofs, what keen thrusts of argument, what
+double-edged irony and dexterous sword-play did this mighty combatant
+smite the enemies of the cross of Christ! In times of conflict never may
+such leaders be wanting to the Church, men using weapons of warfare not
+carnal, but mighty to "cast down strongholds," to "bring down every high
+thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and make captive
+every thought to Christ's obedience."
+
+In her struggle with the world's gigantic lusts and tyrannies, the
+Israel of God must be armed with this lofty and lightning-like power,
+with the flaming sword of the Spirit. No less in the secret, internal
+conflicts of the religious life, the sword of the word is the decisive
+weapon. The Son of man put it to proof in His combat in the wilderness.
+Satan himself sought to wrest this instrument to his purpose. With pious
+texts in his mouth he addressed our Lord, like an angel of light, fain
+to deceive Him by the very Scripture He had Himself inspired! until,
+with the last thrust of quotation, Jesus unmasked the tempter and drove
+him from the field, saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"
+
+7. We have surveyed the Christian soldier with his harness on. From head
+to foot he is clothed in arms supernatural. No weapon of defence or
+offence is lacking, that the spiritual combat needs. Nothing seems to be
+wanting: yet everything is wanting, if this be all. Our text began: "Be
+strong in the Lord." It is _prayer_ that links the believer with the
+strength of God.
+
+What avails Michael's sword, if the hand that holds it is slack and
+listless? what the panoply of God, if behind it beats a craven heart? He
+is but a soldier in semblance who wears arms without the courage and the
+strength to use them. The life that is to animate that armed figure, to
+beat with high resolve beneath the corslet, to nerve the arm as it lifts
+the strong shield and plies the sharp sword, to set the swift feet
+moving on their gospel errands, to weld the Church together into one
+army of the living God, comes from the inspiration of God's Spirit
+received in answer to believing prayer. So the apostle adds: "With all
+prayer and supplication praying at every time in the Spirit."
+
+There is here no needless repetition. "Prayer" is the universal word for
+reverent address to God; and "supplication" the entreaty for such help
+as "on every occasion"--at each turn of the battle, in each emergency of
+life--we find ourselves to need. And Christian prayer is always "in the
+Spirit,"--being offered in the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, who
+is the element of the believer's life in Christ, who helps our
+infirmities and, virtually, intercedes for us (Rom. viii. 26, 27). When
+the apostle continues, "_watching_ [or _keeping awake_] thereunto," he
+reminds us, as perhaps he was thinking himself, of our Lord's warning to
+the disciples sleeping in Gethsemane: "Watch and pray, lest ye enter
+into temptation." The "perseverance" he requires in this wakeful
+attention to prayer, is the resolute persistence of the suppliant, who
+will neither be daunted by opposition nor wearied by delay.[175]
+
+The word "supplication" is resumed at the end of verse 18, in order to
+enlist the prayers of the readers for the service of the Church at
+large: "with wakeful heed thereto, in all persistence and _supplication
+for all the saints_." Prayer for ourselves must broaden out into a
+catholic intercession for all the servants of our Master, for all the
+children of the household of faith. By the bands of prayer we are knit
+together,--a vast multitude of saints throughout the earth, unknown by
+face or name to our fellows, but one in the love of Christ and in our
+heavenly calling, and all engaged in the same perilous conflict.
+
+"All the saints," St Paul said (i. 15), were interested in the faith of
+the Asian believers; they were called "with all the saints" to share in
+the comprehension of the immense designs of God's kingdom (iii. 18).
+The dangers and temptations of the Church are equally far-reaching; they
+have a common origin and character in all Christian communities. Let our
+prayers, at least, be catholic. At the throne of grace, let us forget
+our sectarian divisions. Having access in one Spirit to the Father, let
+us realize in His presence our communion with all His children.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[168] Comp. Rom. viii. 37, xvi. 20. _To bring down_, _overpower_,
+_conquer_ is the military sense of =katergazomai=,--not found elsewhere
+in the New Testament, but, as it seems to us, unmistakable here. It
+occurs in Ezek. xxxiv. 4 (LXX), and 1 Esdr. iv. 4.
+
+[169] Col. i. 23, ii. 5; Phil. i. 27-30, iv. 1: comp. 1 Thess. v. 8;
+Rom. xiii. 11-14; 1 Cor. xvi. 13; 2 Cor. x. 3-6.
+
+[170] 2 Thess. ii. 3; Acts xx. 29, 30; 1 Tim. iv. 1; 2 Tim. iii. 1.
+
+[171] Ch. 1. 17-23, iii. 16-19, iv. 13-15, 20-24.
+
+[172] =Hetoimasia= is adopted by the Greek translators as the equivalent
+of the Hebrew word for _foundation_, or _base_, in Ps. lxxxix. 14; Ezra
+ii. 68, iii. 3; Dan. xi. 7, 20, 21. See, however, the note of Meyer, who
+thinks that they misunderstood the Hebrew.
+
+[173] =Thyreos=: Latin _scutum_; only here in N.T.
+
+[174] Rev. i. 16, ii. 12, xix. 13-15.
+
+[175] =En pase proskarteresei=: _in every kind of persistence_,--a
+perseverance that tries all arts and holds its ground at every point.
+The verb =proskartereo= appears in the parallel passages: Col. iv. 2;
+Rom. xii. 12; also in Acts i. 14.
+
+
+
+
+THE CONCLUSION.
+
+CHAPTER vi. 19-24.
+
+    =Pepeismai gar hoti oute thanatos oute zoe oute angeloi oute archai
+    oute enestota oute mellonta oute dynameis oute hypsoma oute bathos
+    oute tis ktisis hetera dynesetai hemas chorisai apo tes agapes tou
+    Theou tes en Christo Iesou to Kyrio hemon=--ROM. viii. 38, 39.
+
+    "Love for Christ is immortal."--R. W. DALE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+_REQUEST: COMMENDATION: BENEDICTION._
+
+    "And [pray] on my behalf, that the word may be given unto me in
+    opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the
+    gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may
+    speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
+
+    "But that ye also may know my affairs, how I do, Tychicus, the
+    beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known
+    to you all things: whom I have sent unto you for this very purpose,
+    that ye may know our state, and that he may comfort your
+    hearts."--EPH. vi. 19-22.
+
+
+The apostle has bidden his readers apply themselves with wakeful and
+incessant earnestness to prayer (ver. 18). For this is, after all, the
+chief arm of the spiritual combat. By this means the soul draws
+reinforcements of mercy and hope from the eternal sources (ver. 10). By
+this means the Asian Christians will be able not only to carry on their
+own conflict with vigour, but to help all the saints (ver. 18); and
+through their aid the whole Church of God will be sustained in its war
+with the prince of this world.
+
+The apostle Paul himself stood in the forefront of this battle. He was
+suffering for the cause of common Christendom; he was a mark for the
+attack of the enemies of the gospel.[176] On him, more than on any other
+man, the safety and progress of the Church depended (Phil. i. 25). In
+this position he naturally says: "Watching unto prayer in all
+perseverance and supplication for all the saints--_and for me_." If his
+heart should fail him, or his mouth be closed, if the word of
+inspiration ceased to be given him and the great teacher of the Gentiles
+in faith and truth no longer spoke as he ought to speak, it would be a
+heavy blow and sore discouragement to the friends of Christ throughout
+the world. "My afflictions are your glory (iii. 13). My unworthy
+testimony to Christ is showing forth His praise to all men and
+angels.[177] Pray for me then, that I may speak and act in this hour of
+trial in a manner worthy of the dispensation given to me."
+
+Strong and confident as the apostle Paul was, he felt himself to be
+nothing without prayer. It is his habit to expect the support of the
+intercessions of all who love him in Christ.[178] He knew that he was
+helped by this means, on numberless occasions and in wonderful ways. He
+asks his present readers to entreat that "the word[179] may be given me
+when I open my mouth, so that I may freely make known the mystery of the
+gospel, on which behalf I serve as ambassador in bonds, that in it I may
+speak freely, as I ought to speak." This sentence hangs upon the verb
+"may-be-given." Jesus said to His apostles: "It shall be _given_ you in
+that hour what you shall speak, when brought before rulers and kings"
+(Matt x. 18-20). The apostle stands now before the Roman world. He has
+appealed to Caesar, and awaits his trial. If he has not yet appeared at
+the Emperor's tribunal, he will shortly have to do so. Christ's
+ambassador is about to plead in chains before the highest of human
+courts. It is not his own life or freedom that he is concerned about;
+the ambassador has only to consider how he shall represent his
+Sovereign's interests. The importance which Paul attached to this
+occasion, is manifest from the words written to Timothy (2 Ep. iv. 17)
+referring to his later trial. St Paul has this special need in his
+thoughts, in addition to the help from above continually required in the
+discharge of his ministry, under the hampering conditions of his
+imprisonment (comp. Col. iv. 3, 4).
+
+The Church must entreat on Paul's behalf that the word he utters may be
+God's, and not his own. It is in vain to "open the mouth," unless there
+is this higher prompting and through the gates of speech there issues a
+Divine message, unless the speaker is the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit
+rather than of his individual thought and will. "The words that I speak
+unto you," Jesus said, "I speak not of myself." The bold apostle intends
+to open his mouth; but he must have the true "word given" him to say. We
+should pray for Christ's ambassadors, and especially for the more public
+and eloquent pleaders of the Christian cause, that it may be thus with
+them. Rash and vain words, that bear the stamp of the mere man who
+utters them and not of the Spirit of his Master, do a hurt to the cause
+of the gospel proportioned to the blessing that comes from such lips
+when they speak the word given to them.
+
+Such inspiration would enable the apostle to "make known the mystery of
+the gospel _with freedom and confidence of speech_": the expression
+rendered "with boldness"[180] means all this. Before the emperor Nero,
+or the slave Onesimus, he will be able with the same aptness and dignity
+and self-command to declare his message and to vindicate his Master's
+name. "The mystery of the gospel" is no other secret than that which
+this epistle unfolds (iii. 3-9), the great fact that Jesus Christ is the
+Saviour and the Lord of the whole world. Jesus proclaimed Himself to
+Pilate, who represented at Jerusalem the imperial rule, as the King of
+all who are of the truth; and the apostle Paul has the like message to
+convey to the head of the Empire. It needed the greatest boldness and
+the greatest wisdom in the ambassador of the Messianic King to play his
+part at Rome; an unwise word might make his own life forfeit, and bring
+incalculable dangers on the Church.
+
+St Paul's trial, we suppose, passed off successfully, as he at this time
+anticipated.[181] The Roman government was perfectly aware that the
+political charge against their prisoner was frivolous; and Nero, if he
+personally gave Paul a hearing on this earlier trial, in all probability
+viewed his spiritual pretensions on his Master's behalf with
+contemptuous tolerance. If he did so, the toleration was not due to any
+want of courage or clearness on the defendant's part. It is possible
+even that the courage and address of the advocate of the "new
+superstition" pleased the tyrant, who was not without his moments of
+good humour nor without the instincts of a man of taste. The apostle, we
+may well believe, made an impression on the supreme court at Rome
+similar to that made on his judges in Caesarea.
+
+St Paul's bonds in Christ have now become widely "manifest" in Rome
+(Phil. i. 13). He pleads in circumstances of disgrace. But God brings
+good for His servants out of evil. As he said at a later time, so he
+could say now: "They have bound me; but they cannot bind the word of
+God."[182] He was "not ashamed of the gospel" in the prospect of coming
+to Rome years before (Rom. i. 16); and he is not ashamed now, though he
+has come in chains as an evil-doer. Through the intercessions of
+Christ's people all these injuries of Satan are turning to his salvation
+and to the "furtherance of the gospel"; and Paul rejoices and triumphs
+in them, well assured that Christ will be magnified whether by his life
+or death, whether by his freedom or his chains (Phil. i. 12-26). The
+prayers which the imprisoned apostle asks from the Church were
+fulfilled. For we read in the last verses of the Acts of the Apostles,
+which put into a sentence the history of this period: "He received all
+that came to him, preaching the kingdom and teaching the things
+concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, _with all boldness_, none forbidding
+him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The paragraph relating to Tychicus is almost identical with that of
+Colossians iv. 7, 8. It begins with a "But" connecting what follows with
+the statement the apostle has just made respecting his position at Rome.
+As much as to say: "I want your prayers, set as I am for the defence of
+the gospel and in circumstances of difficulty and peril. But Tychicus
+will tell you more about me than I can convey by letter. I am sending
+him, in fact, for this very purpose."
+
+St Paul knew the great anxiety of the Christians of Asia on his account.
+Epaphras of Colossae had "shown him the love in the Spirit" that was
+felt towards him even by those in this region who had never seen him in
+the flesh (Col. i. 8). The tender heart of the apostle is touched by
+this assurance. So he sends Tychicus to visit as many of the Asian
+Churches as he may be able to reach, bringing news that will cheer their
+hearts and relieve their discouragement (iii. 13).[183] The note sent at
+this time to Philemon indicates the hopeful tidings that Tychicus was
+able to convey to Paul's friends in the East: "I trust that through your
+prayers I shall be given to you" (Philem. 22). To the Philippians he
+writes, perhaps a little later, in the same strain: "I trust in the Lord
+that I myself shall come shortly" (Phil. ii. 24). He anticipates, with
+some confidence, his speedy acquital and release: it is not likely that
+this expectation, on the part of such a man as St Paul, was
+disappointed. The good news went round the Asian and Macedonian
+Churches: "Paul is likely soon to be free, and we shall see and hear him
+again!"
+
+In the parallel epistle he writes, "that you may know" (Col. iv. 8);
+here it is, "that you _also_ may know my affairs." The added word is
+significant. The writer is imagining his letter read in the various
+assemblies which it will reach. He has the other epistle in his mind,
+and remembering that he there introduced Tychicus in similar terms, he
+says to this wider circle of Asian disciples: "That you also, as well as
+the Churches of the Lycus valley, may know how things are with me, I
+send Tychicus to give you a full report." It is not necessary, however,
+to look beyond the last two verses for the reference of the _also_ of
+verse 21: "I have asked your prayers on my behalf; and I wish you in
+turn to know how things go with me." Possibly, there were some matters
+connected with St Paul's trial at Rome that could not be fitly or safely
+communicated by letter. Hence he adds: "He shall make known unto you all
+things." When he writes "that ye may know my affairs, how I do," we
+gather that Tychicus was to communicate to those he visited everything
+about the beloved apostle that would be of interest to his Asian
+brethren.
+
+The apostle commends Tychicus in language identical in the two letters,
+except that in Colossians "fellow-servant" is added to the honourable
+designations of "beloved brother and faithful minister," under which he
+is here introduced. We find him first associated with St Paul in Acts
+xx. 4, where "Tychicus and Trophimus" represent Asia in the number of
+those who accompanied the apostle on his voyage to Jerusalem, when he
+carried the contributions of his Gentile Churches to the relief of the
+Christian poor in Jerusalem. Trophimus, his companion, is called a
+"Greek" and an "Ephesian" (Acts xxi. 28, 29). Whether Tychicus belonged
+to the same city or not, we cannot tell. He was almost certainly a
+Greek. The Pastoral epistles show Tychicus still in the apostle's
+service in his last years. He appears to have joined St Paul's staff and
+remained with him from the time that he accompanied him to Jerusalem in
+the year 59. From 2 Timothy iv 9-12 we gather that Tychicus was sent to
+Ephesus to relieve Timothy, when St Paul desired the presence of the
+latter at Rome. It is evident that he was a man greatly valued by the
+apostle and endeared to him.
+
+Tychicus was well known in the Asian Churches, and suitable therefore to
+be sent upon this errand. And the commendation given to him would be
+very welcome to the circle to which he belonged. The apostle has great
+tact in these personal matters, the tact which belongs to delicate
+feeling and a generous mind. He calls his messenger "the beloved
+brother" in his relation to the Church in general, and "faithful
+minister in the Lord" in his special relation to himself. So he
+describes Epaphroditus to the Philippians as "your apostle and minister
+of my need." In conveying these letters and messages, this worthy man
+was Paul's apostle and minister of his need in regard to the Asian
+Churches. He is a "_minister in the Lord_," inasmuch as this office lies
+within the range of his service to the Lord Christ.
+
+We observe that in writing to the Colossians the apostle applies to
+Onesimus, the converted slave, the honourable epithets applied here to
+this long-tried friend: "the faithful and beloved brother" (Col. iv. 9).
+Every Christian believer should be in the eyes of his fellows a "beloved
+brother." And every true servant of Christ and His people is a "faithful
+minister in the Lord," be his rank high or low, and whether official
+hands have been laid upon his head or not. We are apt, by a trick of
+words, to limit to the order which we suitably call "the ministry"
+expressions that the New Testament applies to the common ministry of
+Christ's saints (comp. iv. 12). This devoted servant of Christ is
+employed just now as a newsman and letter-carrier. But what a high
+responsibility it was, to be the bearer to the Asian cities, and to the
+Church for all time, of the epistles of Paul the apostle to the
+Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon. Had Tychicus been careless or
+dishonest, had he lost these precious documents or tampered with them,
+how great the loss to mankind! We cannot read them without feeling our
+debt to this beloved brother and faithful servant of the Church. Those
+who travel upon Christ's business, who link distant communities to each
+other and convey from one to another the Holy Spirit's fellowship and
+grace, are "the messengers of the Churches and the glory of Christ" (2
+Cor. viii. 23).
+
+
+THE BENEDICTION.
+
+    "Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith,
+      From God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
+    Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ
+                                In incorruption" (vv. 23, 24).
+
+Grace and Peace were the first words of the epistle,--the apostle's
+salutation to all his Churches. In _Peace and Grace_ he breathes out his
+final blessing. The benediction is fuller than in most of the epistles,
+and exhibits several peculiar features.
+
+To the Thessalonians (2 Ep. iii. 16) St Paul wished: "Peace continually,
+in all ways, from the Lord of peace Himself"; and he commends the Romans
+twice to "the God of peace" (ch. xv. 33, xvi. 20): the Corinthians he
+bids to "live in peace," so that "the God of love and peace" may be with
+them (2 Cor. xiii. 11). There is nothing in the least degree strange or
+un-Pauline in the wishes here expressed, except the fact that they are
+put in the third person--"_Peace to the brethren_," etc.--instead of
+being addressed directly to the readers in the second person, as in all
+other of the apostle's extant closing benedictions. This peculiarity, as
+we observed in the first Chapter, is in accordance with the encyclical
+and impersonal stamp of the epistle.[184] It is Paul's most catholic
+benediction, his blessing upon "all the Israel of God" (comp. Gal. vi.
+16).
+
+"With faith," that "love" is desired whereby, according to the Pauline
+ethics of salvation, faith works (Gal. v. 6), the love which as a
+vitalizing organic force creates the new man, formed in all his doings
+and dispositions after the image of Jesus Christ. From chapter iv. 1-3
+we have learnt how "peace" and "love" attend each other. Love is the
+source of the forbearance, the mutual consideration and self-sacrifice,
+without which there is no peace within the Church. Peace springs from
+love: love waits on faith. Amongst brethren in Christ, members of the
+same household of faith, peace and love have their home. These are the
+sons of peace: with good will and good hope, entering or quitting their
+abode, we say, "Peace be to this house!"
+
+The peace that the apostle looks for amongst Christian brethren is the
+fruit of peace with God through Christ. Such "peace guarding the
+thoughts and heart" of each Christian man, nothing contrary thereto will
+arise amongst them. Calm and quiet hearts make a peaceful Church. There
+are no clashing interests, no selfish competitions, no strife as to who
+shall be greatest. Differences of opinion and taste are kept within the
+bounds of mutual submission. The awe of God's presence with His people,
+the remembrance of the dear price at which His Church was purchased, the
+sense of Christ's Lordship in the Spirit and of the sacredness of our
+brotherhood in Him, check all turbulence and rivalry and teach us to
+seek the things that make for peace.
+
+"Peace _and love_," the apostle desires. Love includes peace, and more;
+for it labours not to prevent contention only, but to help and enrich in
+all ways the body of Christ. By such "toil of love" faith is made
+complete. We are bidden indeed, in certain matters, to "have faith to
+ourselves before God" (Rom. xiv. 22). This maxim holds where one has a
+special faith in regard to such things as eating flesh or drinking wine,
+in which any one of us may without offence differ from his brethren. But
+it is a poor faith that dwells upon questions of this nature, and makes
+its religion of them. The essentials of faith, as we saw them delineated
+in chapter iv. 1-6, are things that unite and not distinguish us.
+
+As faith grows and deepens, it makes new channels in which love may
+flow. "We are bound to thank God always for you," writes St Paul to the
+Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 3), "for that your faith groweth exceedingly,
+and the love of each one of you all toward one another multiplieth."
+This is the sound and true growth of faith. Where an intenser faith
+makes men disputatious and exclusive; where it fails to breed meekness
+and courtesy, we cannot but suspect its quality. Such faith may be
+sincere; but it is mixed with a lamentable ignorance, and a resistance
+to the Holy Spirit that is likely to end in grave offence. "Contending
+earnestly for the faith" does not mean contending angrily, with the
+weapons of satire and censoriousness. It is well to remember that we are
+not the judges of our brethren. There are many questions raised and
+discussed amongst us, which we may safely leave to the judgement of the
+last day. It is too easy to fill the air with matters of contention, and
+to excite a sore and suspicious temper destructive of peace, and in
+which nothing but fault-finding will flourish. If we must contend, we
+may surely debate quietly on secondary matters, while we are one in
+Christ. If we have not _love with faith_, our faith is worthless (1 Cor.
+xiii. 2).
+
+Deep beneath the peace that dwells in the Church and the love that
+fills each believer's heart, is the eternal fountain of _grace_. "Grace
+be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ," says the apostle.
+Grace is theirs already; and they desire nothing so much as its
+increase. Their love to Christ is the fruit of the grace of God that is
+with them. This wish includes all good wishes; it surpasses both our
+deservings and desires. All that God prepared for us in His eternal
+counsels, and that Christ purchased by His redeeming love, all of good
+that our nature can receive now and for ever, is embraced in this one
+word: _Grace be with you._
+
+"With all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ," Paul says; for it is to
+lovers of Christ that God gives the continuance of His grace. If our
+love to Christ fails, grace leaves us. God cannot look with favour upon
+the man who has no love to His Son Jesus Christ. In giving his blessing
+to the Corinthians, St Paul was compelled to write with his own hand:
+"If any man love not the Lord, let him be anathema." The blessing
+involves the anathema. God's love is not a love of indifference, an
+indiscriminate, immoral affection. It is a love of choice and
+predilection--"If any man love me," said Jesus, "my Father will love
+him." Is not the condition reasonable,--and the inference inevitable?
+The Father cannot grant His grace to those who have seen and hated Him
+in His Son and image. By that hatred they refuse His grace, and cast it
+from them.
+
+On the other hand, a sincere love to the Lord Jesus Christ opens the
+heart to all the rich and purifying influences of Divine grace. The
+sinful woman, stained with false and foul love, who washed the Saviour's
+feet with her tears, attained in that act to a height of purity
+undreamed of by the virtuous Pharisee. This new and holy flame burns
+out impure passion from the soul: it kindles lofty thoughts; it makes
+crooked natures straight, and timid and weak natures brave and strong.
+"To them that love God, we know, all things work together for good." To
+them that love Christ, all things contribute blessing; all conditions
+and events of life become means of grace. If we love Christ, we shall
+love His people,--the Church, the bride of Christ from whom He will
+never be parted in our thoughts. If we love Christ, we shall love the
+work He has laid upon us, and the word He has taught us, and the
+sacramental pledges He has given us in remembrance of Him and assurance
+of His coming. If we love Him, we shall "keep His commandments," and He
+will keep His promise to send us the "other Helper, to be with us for
+ever, even the Spirit of truth." The gift of the Holy Spirit is the
+all-sufficiency of grace.[185] Here is the innermost sanctuary of our
+religion, the fountain and beginning of the soul's eternal life,--in the
+love which joins it to the Lord in one spirit.
+
+_In incorruption_ is the last and sealing word of this letter, which we
+have been so long studying together. It "stands as the crown and climax
+of this glorious epistle" (Alford). Like so many other words of the
+epistle, at first sight its interpretation is not clear. The apostle has
+used the term in several other passages, as synonymous with
+_immortality_[186] and denoting the state of the blessed after the
+resurrection, when they will stand before God complete in body and in
+spirit, with all that is mortal in them swallowed up of life--"raised in
+incorruption." But there is nothing in this context to lead up to the
+idea of personal, bodily immortality. Those who construe the apostle's
+words in this sense, place a comma before the final clause and treat it
+as a qualification of the main predicate of the sentence: "Grace be with
+all them that love our Lord,--grace [culminating] in incorruption"--or
+in other words, "grace crowned with glory!" But it must be admitted that
+this is somewhat strained.
+
+The rendering of our ordinary version, "in sincerity" (in the Revised
+rendering, "uncorruptness"), gives an ethical sense to the word that is
+scarcely borne out by usage. It is a different, though kindred
+expression that St Paul employs to express "uncorruptness" in Titus ii.
+7.[187]
+
+It appears to us that the term "incorruption," in its ordinary
+significance, applies fitly to the believer's love for the Lord, when
+the word is read in accordance with the symbolism of the epistle. This
+love is the life of the body of Christ. In it lies the Church's
+immortality. The gates of death prevail not against her, rooted and
+grounded as she is in love to the risen and immortal Christ. "May that
+love be maintained," the apostle says, "in its deathless power. Let it
+be an unspoilt and unwasting love."
+
+Of earthly love we often say with sadness:--
+
+    "Space is against thee: it can part!
+    Time is against thee: it can chill!"
+
+Not so with the love of Christ. Neither death nor life parts the soul
+from Him. Our love to the Lord Jesus Christ seats us with Him in the
+heavenly places,--above the realm of decay, above this wasting flesh and
+perishing world.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[176] Col. i. 24--ii. 1; Phil. i. 16.
+
+[177] Ch. ii. 7, iii. 10; Phil. i. 20; 2 Tim. iv. 17.
+
+[178] I Thess. v. 25; 2 Thess. iii. 1; Rom. xv. 30-32; Col. iv. 3, etc.
+
+[179] Out of the instances in which the English Version renders =logos=
+in St Paul by _utterance_, the Revisers have substituted _word_ for
+_utterance_ only in Col. iv. 3. One wishes they had done so throughout.
+For =logos= surely implies the _content_, the _import_ of what is said.
+This passage reminds us of John xvii. 14: "I have given them Thy word";
+and xiv. 24: "The word which ye hear is not mine, but His."
+
+[180] =En parresia=: comp. iii. 12; Phil. i. 20; Philem. 8; 2 Cor. vii.
+4; 1 Thess. ii. 2, etc.
+
+[181] Phil. i. 25, 26, ii. 23, 24; Philem. 22.
+
+[182] 2 Tim. i. 7-12, ii. 3-10.
+
+[183] Comp. Phil. i. 24-26.
+
+[184] See pp. 13-17.
+
+[185] Ch. i. 14, iv. 30. See Chapter IV., above.
+
+[186] Rom. ii. 7; 1 Cor. xv. 42, 50, 53, 54; 2 Tim. i. 10. See Alford's
+excellent note on this passage.
+
+[187] =Aphthoria=: =aphtharsia= is deleted in the critical texts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+
+THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS (_Expositor's Bible_). Crown 8vo, cloth.
+
+COMMENTARY ON COLOSSIANS (_Pulpit Commentary_).
+
+COMMENTARY ON I. & II. THESSALONIANS (_Cambridge Bible for Schools and
+Colleges_).
+
+AN ESSAY ON THE PASTORAL EPISTLES (SABATIER'S _The Apostle Paul_).
+
+THE EPISTLES OF PAUL THE APOSTLE: _a Sketch of their Origin and
+Contents._
+
+
+
+
+THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.
+
+_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each vol._
+
+
+FIRST SERIES, 1887-8.
+
+  Colossians.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D.
+
+  St. Mark.
+  By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
+
+  Genesis.
+  By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
+
+  1 Samuel.
+  By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
+
+  2 Samuel.
+  By the same Author.
+
+  Hebrews.
+  By Principal T. C. EDWARDS, D.D.
+
+
+SECOND SERIES, 1888-9.
+
+  Galatians.
+  By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+
+  The Pastoral Epistles.
+  By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
+
+  Isaiah I.--XXXIX.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  The Book of Revelation.
+  By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.
+
+  1 Corinthians.
+  By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
+
+  The Epistles of St. John.
+  By Most Rev. the Archbishop of Armagh.
+
+
+THIRD SERIES, 1889-90.
+
+  Judges and Ruth.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  Jeremiah.
+  By Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.
+
+  Isaiah XL.--LXVI.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  St. Matthew.
+  By Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.
+
+  Exodus.
+  By Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
+
+  St. Luke.
+  By Rev. H. BURTON, M.A.
+
+
+FOURTH SERIES, 1890-1.
+
+  Ecclesiastes.
+  By Rev. SAMUEL COX, D.D.
+
+  St. James and St. Jude.
+  By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
+
+  Proverbs.
+  By Rev. R. F. HORTON, D.D.
+
+  Leviticus.
+  By Rev. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D.
+
+  The Gospel of St. John.
+  By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  The Acts of the Apostles.
+  By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+
+FIFTH SERIES, 1891-2.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. I.
+
+  1 and 2 Thessalonians.
+  By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
+
+  The Book of Job.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  Ephesians.
+  By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
+
+  The Gospel of St. John.
+  By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  The Acts of the Apostles.
+  By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+
+SIXTH SERIES, 1892-3.
+
+  1 Kings.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  Philippians.
+  By Principal RAINY, D.D.
+
+  Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
+  By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
+
+  Joshua.
+  By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. II.
+
+  The Epistles of St. Peter.
+  By Prof. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.
+
+
+SEVENTH SERIES, 1893-4.
+
+  2 Kings.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  Romans.
+  By H. C. G. MOULE, M.A., D.D.
+
+  The Books of Chronicles.
+  By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
+
+  2 Corinthians.
+  By JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
+
+  Numbers.
+  By R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
+
+  The Psalms.
+  By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. III.
+
+
+EIGHTH SERIES, 1895-6.
+
+  Daniel.
+  By Very Rev. the Dean of Canterbury.
+
+  The Book of Jeremiah.
+  By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
+
+  Deuteronomy.
+  By Prof. ANDREW HARPER, B.D.
+
+  The Song of Solomon and Lamentations.
+  By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
+
+  Ezekiel.
+  By Prof. JOHN SKINNER, M.A.
+
+  The Book of the  Twelve Prophets.
+  By Prof. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Two Vols.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians, by G. G. Findlay
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: EPHESIANS ***
+
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