Father and concerning men. All the qualities and acts and experiences of Christ assume an infinite importance when interpreted in this twofold relation. St. Paul contemplates in Christ the full mind of the Father; he sees in his filial nature our sonship to God, in his death our death to the old natural state, in his resurrection our rising again to a new life, in his ascension our exaltation to a heavenly sphere of existence, in his reign the pledge of a perfect triumph of order over disorder, of good over evil. The Son, making God the Father known to men; the Son, explaining men to themselves, and restoring them to a right relation towards God and one another, is the centre of thought in these Epistles. Nothing can be more orderly, nothing, in the higher sense, more systematic, than the reference of everything in heaven and earth, of all divinity and all morality, of the perfect ideal of God and the lamentable aberrations of men, to the one nature and life of Christ, which we may trace throughout these writings. St. Paul had always, from the time of his conversion, worshipped the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Lord of men; but at the time when he wrote these letters, the conception of Christ as gathering up in himself all that has ever come forth from the creative mind of the one God and Father seems to have been most distinct to his thoughts, and to have filled the whole capacity of his intellect most completely. There is such a vastness, however, in this conception, that it is susceptible of very various applications; and the clear differences between the profound and magnificent ideas of the one and the other of these Epistles make it almost impossible for an earnest student to look upon either as a copyist's imitation of the other.

INTRODUCTION TO THE EPISTLE TO THE

EPHESIANS.

THIS Epistle professes to be written by St. Paul. It not only begins with a salutation given in his name, but it contains a long and remarkable passage (iii. 1—13) in which he describes the commission he had received as the Apostle of the Gentiles, and appeals to the sufferings of his imprisonment as adding weight to his exhortations and reflecting dignity upon the common cause. No other Epistle bears a more distinct profession of being St. Paul's than this does. It has been maintained, nevertheless, by distinguished critics (including De Wette and Ewald) that this is not a genuine work of St. Paul.

Those who cannot read the Epistle to the Ephesians without being awed by the peculiar loftiness, by the grandeur of conception, by the profound insight, by the eucharistic inspiration, which they recognise in it, will require strong evidence to persuade them that it was written by some other man who wished it to pass as St. Paul's. Apart from the question of the morality of the act, imitators do not pour out their thoughts in the free and fervid style of this Epistle. Nor can we easily imagine how such an imitation could have been successful either near the time of St. Paul, or at any subsequent period. It is not conceivable that it should have made its appearance without exciting wonder and inquiry. In the lifetime of St. Paul the pious fraud would not have been attempted. Within a few years after his death, the difficulty of deceiving his friends and the

*

Church in such a matter must have been very great. At a later time, the estimation in which St. Paul's writings were held would have ensured the careful scrutiny of any previously unknown work put forward in his name. And there are no signs that the genuineness of the Epistle to the Ephesians was ever doubted in the Church. The external testimonies to it are neither inadequate nor obscure. Not to lay stress on the apparent allusions in Polycarp and Ignatius, there are formal quotations from this Epistle, as St. Paul's to the Ephesians, in Irenæus and Clement of Alexandria,† which prove that in their time, that is, in the latter part of the second century, this work was universally received as genuine. Some recent critics are the only persons who have ever suspected it to be spurious. These considerations then, the profession of being St. Paul's wrought into the texture of the Epistle, its wonderfully genuine air, the difficulty of imposing a spurious Epistle of St. Paul upon the Church, the positive external testimony of ancient writers, and the absence of any doubt in the Church,—are in favour of the genuineness of this Epistle.

The arguments on the other side may be reduced to three. (1) We miss the characteristics which we should expect in any letter of St. Paul's, and especially in a letter to the Christians of Ephesus. (2) There are differences between the thoughts and the style of this work and those of St. Paul's other writings. (3) There is a suspicious resemblance between this and the Epistle to the Colossians.

(1) It is certainly very strange that in writing to the Ephesians St. Paul should have omitted all references to

* Τοῦτο δὲ καὶ ὁ Παῦλος λέγει· πᾶν γὰρ τὸ φανερούμενον φῶς ἐστίν (Eph. v. 13). Irenaeus adv. Hær. i. 8. 5. Καθῶς ὁ μακάριος Παυλός φησιν, ἐν τῇ πρὸς Ἐφεσίους ἐπιστολῇ· ὅτι μέλη ἐσμὲν τοῦ σώματος, ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐκ τῶν OoTéwv auToû (Eph. v. 30.) Ibid. v. 2, 3.

+ After quoting a passage from the 2d Epistle to the Corinthians, Clement adds, σαφέστατα δὲ Εφεσίοις γράφων ἀπεκάλυψε τὸ ζητούμενον ὧδέ πως λέγων μέχρι καταντήσωμεν οἱ πάντες κ.τ.λ. (Eph. iv. 1315), Paed. i. 18. See also Strom. iv. 65.

particular members of the Church at Ephesus, and to particular circumstances affecting it. If there was one Church with which St. Paul was personally intimate, we might say it was the Church at Ephesus. Labours, dangers, and successes had united their threefold influence in endearing to him the body of believers in that city. We should read two chapters in the Acts, the 19th and 20th, to revive the recollection of the character of St. Paul's connexion with Ephesus. It was quite impossible for him, whose memory of all fellowship in trial and affection was so strong and enduring, to forget those for whom he had suffered and striven so much, and who had loved him in return so heartily. In writing to the Corinthians, when he wants an example of the worst things he has endured, he refers to his fight with wild beasts" at Ephesus. In that most touching address which he made to the Ephesian elders at Miletus, he says himself, "Remember that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears." And his parting from them is thus described, "When he had thus spoken, he kneeled down, and prayed with them all. And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more. And they accompanied him to the ship." Can it be, we ask, that in writing to the Christians of a place where there had been so much to stir his speculative intellect, his moral energies, his affectionate sympathy, so much to raise his office and his endowments in his own eyes, he should show a forgetfulness which is so singularly unlike him, and should never once refer to any particular person or to any local circumstance?

The closest scrutiny of the Epistle has discovered little to modify the impression of strangeness thus made upon us. It is true that the history in the Acts exhibits a prevalence at Ephesus of magical delusions, an activity of superstition,

which some of the special doctrine in the Epistle to the Ephesians is well calculated to meet. The thought of evil spiritual powers working in the invisible world (Eph. ii. 2, vi. 12) might be suggested by the exorcising of evil spirits and the use of magical formulas of which we read in the Acts (xix. 13, 19). Some coincidences also may be found between the language of the address to the elders at Miletus and that of the Epistle. But these correspondences are slight in themselves, and do not at all fill up the place of the personal allusions which might have been expected and are wanting.

One important hint which the text of the Epistle supplies for a solution of this difficulty, is to be found in the absence from some MSS. of the words év 'Epéo in the salutation. If these are removed, there remains no evidence that this Epistle was written to the Ephesians at all. It still professes to be written by St. Paul; but, for anything we know, it might have been addressed to Christians who had never seen him. Now St. Basil* says that there was a tradition that these two words should be omitted, and that he had so read the passage in ancient MSS. There are more doubtful intimations to the same effect in Jerome and Tertullian. In accordance with this evidence, these words are omitted in the original writing in two of the most important MSS.--the Vatican and the Sinaitic. An attempt was made, as we find in St. Basil and St. Jerome, to read the passage as if it were complete without ἐν Ἐφέσῳ or any substitute for these words, by laying an emphasis on Toîs οὖσιν. But no one will suppose that the author intended this. The question suggested by the partial omission of ἐν Ἐφέσῳ has been whether the Epistle might not have been written for other communities besides the Church at Ephesus. If it was to be sent even to one other church, as that of Laodicea; and still more, if it was to be read to several of *Cont. Eunom. ii. 19.