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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/32016-8.txt b/32016-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e175c4 --- /dev/null +++ b/32016-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7066 @@ +Project Gutenberg's St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, by Charles Gore + +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: St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians + A Practical Exposition + +Author: Charles Gore + +Release Date: April 17, 2010 [EBook #32016] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO EPHESIANS *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + +_St. Paul's_ + +_Epistle to the Ephesians_ + + +_A Practical Exposition_ + + +BY THE + +RIGHT REV. CHARLES GORE, M.A., D.D. + +LORD BISHOP OF WORCESTER + + + + +FIFTH IMPRESSION + +TWELFTH THOUSAND + + + + +LONDON + +JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET + +1902 + + + + +_A Series of Simple Expositions_ + +_of_ + +_Portions of the New Testament_ + + +BY THE + +RIGHT REV. DR. GORE. + + +THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. _Crown 8vo_, 3/6. + +THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. _Crown 8vo_, 3/6. + +THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 2 _Vols., Crown 8vo_, 3/6 _each_. + + + + +Oxford + +HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY + + + + +TO + +JAMES L. HOUGHTELING + +OF CHICAGO + +THE FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF THE BROTHERHOOD + +OF ST. ANDREW + +AND TO ALL THE BROTHERHOOD + +WHICH IN MORE SENSES THAN ONE + +HE REPRESENTS + + + + +{vi} + +PREFACE + +The favourable reception accorded to an exposition of the Sermon on the +Mount has encouraged me to attempt another practical explanation of a +portion of the New Testament, in the interest of such readers as are +intelligent indeed, but neither are nor hope to become critical +scholars. An immense deal has been done of late to assist New +Testament scholarship, but while the studies of the scholar make +progress, the ordinary Christian 'reading of the Bible' is, I fear, at +best at a standstill. This little book then is intended to make one of +St. Paul's epistles as intelligible as may be to the ordinary reader, +and so to enable him to make a practical religious use of it, 'to read, +mark, learn and inwardly digest' it. + +{viii} + +The method pursued, in the main, has been to let each section of the +epistle be preceded by an analysis or paraphrase of the teaching it +contains, in which it is hoped that no element in the teaching is left +unnoticed, and followed by such further explanations of particular +phrases, or practical reflections, as seem to be needed. + +I have avoided as far as possible all discussion of rival views, and +given simply what are, in my judgement, the best explanations. + +I have ventured to dedicate this book to the President of the +Brotherhood of St. Andrew, because (see app. note D, p. 264) that +society represents surely a brave attempt to realize some of the chief +practical lessons which this epistle is intended to enforce. + +CHARLES GORE. + +WESTMINSTER ABBEY, + _Christmas_, 1897. + + + + +{ix} + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +INTRODUCTION . . . Study of the New Testament . . . . . . . . . 1 + The gospel of the Catholic Church . . . . . . 6 + The Roman Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 + Ephesus and the Ephesians . . . . . . . . . . 34 + The letter--to whom written . . . . . . . . . 43 + + +THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. + + SALUTATION (i. 1-2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 + + DIVISION I (i. 3-iv. 17) + + § 1 (i. 3-14) St. Paul's leading thoughts: + life in Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 + predestination . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 + the elect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 + the divine secret disclosed . . . . . . 72 + grace not merit . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 + + § 2 (i. 15-23) St. Paul's prayer . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 + + § 3 (ii. 1-10) Sin and redemption . . . . . . . . . . . 89 + + § 4 (ii. 11-22) Salvation in the Church . . . . . . . . . 102 + + § 5 (iii) Paul the apostle of catholicity . . . . . 121 + his second prayer . . . . . . . . . . . 133 + + § 6 (iv. 1-16) The unity of the Church . . . . . . . . . 140 + + +{x} + +DIVISION II (iv. 17-vi. 24): + + Doctrine and conduct . . . . . . . . . . 172 + + § 1 (iv. 17-24) Christianity a new life . . . . . . . . . 178 + + § 2 (iv. 25-32) The new life a corporate life . . . . . . 184 + + § 3 (v. 1-14) The new life an imitation of God . . . . 192 + and a life in the light . . . . . . . . 194 + + § 4 (v. 15-21) The new life a buying up of an + opportunity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 + + § 5 (v. 22-vi. 9) The law of subordination and authority . 211 + husbands and wives (v. 22-33) . . . . . 212 + parents and children (vi. 1-4) . . . . 228 + masters and slaves (vi. 5-9) . . . . . 233 + + § 6 (vi. 10-20) The personal spiritual struggle . . . . . 237 + +CONCLUSION (vi. 21-24) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 + + +APPENDED NOTES:-- + + A. The Roman Empire recognized by Christians as a + Divine Preparation for the Spread of the Gospel . . . . . 251 + + B. The (so-called) 'Letters of Heracleitus' . . . . . . . . . 253 + + C. The Jewish Doctrine of Works in _The Apocalypse of Baruch_ 257 + + D. The Brotherhood of St. Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 + + E. The Conception of the Church Catholic in St. Paul in + its Relation to Local Churches . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 + + F. The Ethics of Catholicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 + + G. The Lambeth Conference and Industrial Problems . . . . . . 274 + + + + +{1} + +THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS + + +_Introduction._ + +i. + +[Sidenote: _Introduction_] + +There are two great rivers of Europe which, in their course, offer a +not uninstructive analogy to the Church of God. The Rhine and the +Rhone both take their rise from mountain glaciers, and for the first +hundred or hundred and fifty miles from their sources they run turbid +as glacier streams always are, and for the most part turbulent as +mountain torrents. Then they enter the great lakes of Constance and +Geneva. There, as in vast settling-vats, they deposit all the +discolouring elements which have hitherto defiled their waters, so that +when they re-emerge from the western ends of the lakes to run their +courses in central and southern Europe their {2} waters have a +translucent purity altogether delightful to contemplate. After this +the two rivers have very different destinies, but either from fouler +affluents or from the commercial activity upon their surfaces or along +their banks they lose the purity which characterized their second +birth, and become as foul as ever they were among their earlier +mountain fastnesses; till after all vicissitudes they lose themselves +to north or south in the vast and cleansing sea. + +The history of these rivers offers, I say, a remarkable parallel to the +history of the Church of God. For that too takes its rude and rough +beginnings high up in wild and remote fastnesses of our human history. +Such books of the Old Testament as those of Judges and Samuel and Kings +represent the turbid and turbulent running of this human nature of +ours, divinely directed indeed, but still unpurified and unregenerate. +But in the great lake of the humanity of Jesus all its acquired +pollution is cut off. In Him, virgin-born, our manhood is seen as +indeed the pure mirror of the divine glory; and when at Pentecost the +Church of God issues anew, by a second birth of that glorified manhood, +for its second course in this world, it issues unmixed with alien +influences, substantially {3} pure and unsullied. After a time its +history gains in complexity but its character loses in purity, so that +there are epochs of the history of the Church when its moral level is +possibly not higher than that which is represented in the roughest +books of the Old Testament: and through the whole of its later history +the Church is strangely fused with the world again, until they issue +both together into eternity. + +Men from all parts of the world visit Constance and Geneva, and delight +to look at the two famous rivers issuing pure and abundant from the +quiet lakes. An analogous pleasure belongs to the study of such books +of the New Testament as the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul's Epistle +to the Ephesians, which give us respectively the fortunes and the +theory of the Church at its origin. Later epochs of Church history +have possibly more richly diversified interests--such as the period of +the Councils, or the Middle Ages, or the Reformation. But the interest +of the earliest Church unmixed with the world, its principles fresh, +its inspirations strong, its native hue free from discolouring +elements, preoccupies us with a fascination which is unrivalled. The +divine society is young and inexperienced, but what it is and is meant +{4} to be we can see there better than anywhere else. We return, when +our minds are aching and our eyes are dim with the complexity and +obscurity of our latter-day problem, to learn insight and simplicity +again at those pure sources. + +And to the Christian believer these books are not only documents of +great historical importance as illustrative of a unique period: they +also represent to us in different forms the highest level of that +action of the divine Spirit upon the mind of man which we call +inspiration. St. Paul for instance, in this Epistle to the Ephesians +claims, as we shall find, to be an 'inspired' man, a recipient of +divine revelation, and makes a similar claim for the apostles and +prophets generally. 'By revelation,' he says, 'God made known unto me +the mystery (or divine secret), as I wrote afore in few words, whereby, +when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the mystery of +Christ; which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as +it hath now been revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets in the +Spirit.' Inspiration is a term not easily susceptible of definition. +We are inclined in our generation to recognize its limits more frankly +than has been done in the past, and {5} its compatibility even with +positive error on subjects which are matter of ordinary human inquiry +and not of divine revelation[1]; but its positive meaning in the region +of divine revelation--in what concerns God's moral will, purpose, +character and being, and the consequent moral and spiritual +significance of our human life--ought not to be less apparent to us +than formerly. Thus when we call a writer of the New Testament +'inspired' we must mean at least this: that the same divine Spirit who +put the message of God in the hearts of the prophets of old, and who +worked His perfect work without let and hindrance in the manhood of +Christ, is here so working upon the will and imagination, the memory +and intelligence, of one of Christ's commissioned witnesses as that he +shall interpret and not misinterpret the mind and person of his Master. +Practically, an inspired writer of the New Testament means a writer +under whom we can put ourselves to school to 'learn Christ' with {6} +whole-hearted confidence and faith. This, of course, gives an +additional reason of the most cogent force why we should continually +recur to the sacred books of the New Testament. If Christianity is to +be deterred from a fatal return to nature--that is to the religious or +irreligious tendencies of mankind when left to itself--or if it is to +be recalled when it has lapsed, this can only be by an appeal to +Scripture constantly reiterated and pressed home. There is for ever +the testing-ground alike of doctrine, of moral character, and of +ecclesiastical tendency; there is the only perfect image of the mind of +Christ. + + +ii. + +The Epistle to the Ephesians gives us St. Paul's gospel of the Catholic +Church. So far from being a man of one idea, St. Paul fascinates and +sometimes bewilders us by the intricacy and variety of his thoughts; +but like the innumerable leaves and twigs of some finely-grown tree +which emerge, all of them, through branches and boughs, out of one +great trunk, strong and straight, and one deep and firmly-set root, so +it is with the infinitely various topics and suggestions of St. Paul. +They run back {7} into a few dominant thoughts, which in their turn +have one trunk-line of developement and one root. The root is the +conviction, finally smitten into the soul of St. Paul at the moment of +his conversion on the road to Damascus, that Jesus is the Christ; and +the trunk-line of development is that which is involved in St. Paul's +special commission to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, that is to +say, the principle that the Christ is the saviour of Gentiles as of +Jews and on an equal basis--or in other words, that the Christian +church is catholic. + +When St. Paul acknowledged that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, this +of course meant that he remained no less than formerly an adherent of +the Jewish faith, and that he 'worshipped' without any breach of +continuity, 'the God of his fathers.' So he is fond of insisting[2]. +Thus to him the Church of Christ is still 'the commonwealth of Israel,' +God's ancient church, though reconstructed[3]. For the religion of +Israel had had for its main motive the hope of the Christ. All that +St. Paul now believed was that this hope had been realized, and +realized to the shame of Israel in One whom they had rejected {8} and +crucified. But if to believe that Jesus was the Christ involved no +breach with the religion of Israel, yet it did involve the recognition +that it had been reconstituted on a new basis, and in a way that +suggested to existing Israelites nothing less than a revolution. The +church of God had, in St. Paul's present belief, widened out from being +the church of one nation into being a catholic society, a society for +all mankind. + +If St. Paul's epistles are taken in those groups into which they +naturally divide themselves, we find that in the first group, that of +the two epistles to the Thessalonians, all his favourite topics are +present as it were in the germ, but nothing that is specially +characteristic of him is yet developed. The free admission of the +Gentiles into the Church is, with the accompanying hostility of the +Jews, assumed[4], but not much insisted upon; but in the interval +between these epistles and that to the Galatians the subject had gained +fresh and poignant interest. A party of Christians having their centre +at Jerusalem had been trying--in spite of the decision of the apostolic +council at Jerusalem--to reimpose upon the consciences of {9} Gentile +Christians, and with especial success in the Galatian province, the +obligation of circumcision; or in other words had been trying to make +it evident that the Church of God was as much as ever the people of the +Jews, and that Gentiles could only become Christians by becoming also +Jewish proselytes pledged to keep the law of Moses. In view of this +attempt St. Paul re-embarks upon his great campaign for the catholicity +of the Church, and in his epistles of the second group[5] (especially +those to the Galatians and the Romans) the catholicity of Christianity +is vindicated controversially upon the basis of the principle of +_justification by faith, not by works of the law_. + +The meaning and real importance of this doctrine ought not to be hard +for us to understand. To be justified means to be accepted or +acquitted by God. The Judaizers--that is the Christian representatives +of the narrower religious spirit of Israel--held that, as God's +covenant was with the Jews only, so men could obtain acceptance simply +by the observance of that Mosaic law which was to the Jew at once the +expression of the divine selection of his race, and the grounds of his +arrogant {10} contempt for all who had not 'Abraham to their +father[6].' But St. Paul had made trial of that theory, and had found +it wanting. The observance of the law and the glorying in Jewish +privileges had brought him no peace with God: had in fact served only +to produce and deepen a sense of inner alienation from God and +conviction of sin. Thus in acknowledging the messiahship of that Jesus +whom the chosen people had rejected and surrendered to be crucified, he +was abandoning utterly and for ever the standing-ground of Jewish +pride: he was acknowledging that the only divine function of the law +was to convince men of sin, and of their need of pardon and salvation: +he was taking his stand as a sinner among the Gentiles, and humbly +welcoming the unmerited boon of pardon and acceptance from the hand of +the divine mercy in Christ Jesus. When St. Paul in familiar arguments, +from the witness of the Old Testament itself, and from the moral +experience of men, convicts the law of inadequacy as an instrument of +justification, his reasoning is full of a strong feeling and conviction +bred of his own experiences. The true means of justification, he has +come to perceive, is faith, that is, {11} the simple acceptance of the +divine favour freely offered, and this is something that belongs to no +special race, but to all men as such. For all men everywhere, to whom +the light comes, can know that they are sinners in the sight of God, +and can accept simply from the hand of the divine bounty the unmerited +boon of forgiveness and acceptance in Christ. Thus, if faith and faith +alone is that whereby men are justified or commended to God, then at +once the catholic basis of the reconstituted Church is secured. All +men can belong to it who can feel their need and hear the Gospel and +take God at His word. This is the great principle vindicated in the +compressed and fiery arguments of the Epistle to the Galatians, and +then subsequently developed in the calmer and orderly procedure of the +Epistle to the Romans. + +But in the next group of epistles, written out of that captivity at +Rome the record of which closes the Acts of the Apostles, the same +doctrine of the catholicity of the Church is developed from a different +point of view. Now it is the thought of the person of Christ which has +come to occupy the foreground. All along St. Paul had believed that +Christ was the Son of God, the divine mediator of creation, who in +these {12} latter days had for our sakes humbled Himself to be made +man[7]. But this thought of Christ's person is elaborated and brought +into prominence in the third group of epistles[8], especially in the +Epistle to the Colossians. A tendency derived from Jewish sources was +manifesting itself among some of the Asiatic Christians to exalt +angelic beings, conceived probably as representing divine attributes +and powers, into objects of religious worship[9]. There is a certain +spurious humility which has in many ages, and not least in the +Christian Church, led men to shrink from direct approach to the high +and holy God and to resort to lower mediators, as more suitable to +their defiled condition and weakness. This sort of spurious humility +was already detected by St. Paul, in company with other Judaizing and +falsely ascetic tendencies, as a peril of the Asiatic churches, and +especially of the Colossians. + +But he will make no terms with it. Christ he teaches is the only and +the universal mediator, the one and only reconciler of all things to +the Father. And He is this because of the {13} position that belongs +to His person in the universe as a whole. He, as the Father's image or +counterpart, is His unique agent in all the work of creation. All +created things whatever, from the lowest to the highest, seen or +unseen, be they thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, are +the work of His hand. All were created through Him and have Him for +their end or goal, and He is the sustaining life of the whole universe +in all its parts. 'In Him all things consist' or have their unity in a +system. And because He occupies this position in the whole universe, +therefore a similar position and sovereignty belong to Him in the +spiritual kingdom of redemption. There too He is, through His manhood +and His sacrificial death upon the cross, the unique author of the +reconciliation with God. He is by His spirit the inherent life of the +redeemed, and the goal of all their perfecting. There is, in fact, no +divine quality, or attribute, or activity of God towards His creatures +which is not His. In Him it pleased the Father that all the fulness of +divine attributes and offices should dwell, and in Him as Son of God +made man dwells all this fulness bodily. The divine attributes, that +is, are not committed to a number of different mediators. {14} They +exist and are exercised in Him and in Him alone. It follows therefore +as a matter of course from this position of Christ in the universe and +in the church that the redemption effected by Him must be universal in +range and must extend equally and impartially to all. There 'cannot be +Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian and Scythian, +bond and free, but Christ is all and in all.' + +Thus in the Epistle to the Colossians[10] the doctrine of the +catholicity of Christianity is again vindicated controversially, and +logically based upon the catholic character of Christ and upon His +universal function in creation and redemption; and in the contemporary +Epistle to the Ephesians, without note of controversy, the doctrine of +the catholic church, the brotherhood of all men in Christ, the doctrine +which is, we may truly say, the culmination of all St. Paul's teaching, +is allowed to develope itself in all its glory on the assumed basis of +that teaching about Christ's person which had made any narrower idea of +the church already seem incongruous and impossible. In the earlier +dispensation in which the covenant of God was with one people, St. Paul +can see only a preparatory process through {15} which the eternal +purpose of God could at last be realized, and out of which His eternal +secret could at last be disclosed. That purpose so long kept secret, +and now revealed, is to gather together all nations and classes of men +into the one Church of God, one organized body, one brotherhood in +which all men are to find their salvation, and through which is to be +realized an even wider purpose for the whole universe. In this +doctrine of the catholic church St. Paul finds the expression of all +the length and breadth and height and depth of the divine love. Its +length, for it represents an age-long purpose slowly worked out; its +breadth, for it is a society of all men and for the whole universe; its +depth, for God has reached a hand of mercy down to the lowest gulfs of +sin and alienation from God; its height, for in this society men are +carried up into nothing less than union with God, to no lower seat than +the heavenly places in Christ. + +I have spoken of St. Paul's great arguments for the catholicity of the +Gospel as two. The first appears mainly as a polemic against the idea +of justification by works of the law. The second as a positive +argument about the person of Christ and the results which flow from the +right appreciation of it. But in fact there is {16} a necessary +connexion between the two. The narrow Judaism of the Galatian +reactionaries did in fact logically involve a narrow and therefore a +false conception of the person of Christ. As Dr. Hort expresses +it[11], 'to accept Jesus as the Christ without any adequate enlargement +of what was included in the Messiahship could hardly fail to involve +either limitation of His nature to the human sphere, or at most a +counting Him among the angels.' This logical connexion was in fact +verified in history. The Judaizers of the earliest period of Christian +history who insisted on circumcision for all Christians pass into the +Ebionites of the second century who rejected the Church's doctrine of +the person of Christ, as the eternal Son of God. And conversely it +would be scarcely possible to accept the doctrine of the universal +Christ, both divine and human, as St. Paul developes it, without +perceiving that men must be made acceptable to Him and to His Father by +something deeper and wider than any particular set of observances or +'works.' The relation therefore between the argument of St. Paul's +epistles to the Galatians and the Romans on the one side, and that of +his epistles to the Colossians and {17} the Ephesians on the other is +one of unity rather than of contrast. + +The relation of these two groups of epistles may be expressed also in +another way. The argument of the earlier epistles is directed towards +the Judaizers. Its purpose is to vindicate the right of the Gentiles +to an equal place and position with the Jews in the kingdom of God. +But at the time of the later group this right had been secured. On the +basis of their acknowledged title the ingress of Gentiles into the +churches of Asia had been even alarmingly rapid. Now it is time for +St. Paul to address himself to these emancipated Gentiles and to exhort +them in their turn not to relapse into unworthy and narrow conceptions +of their redeemer, or into conduct unworthy of their new position: they +must 'walk worthily of the vocation wherewith they are called.' + +Our present political situation in England offers an analogy which may +bring home to us the position of the Gentile Christians and the +function of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The time is past for us when +there is any necessity to contend that a vote should be given to all +responsible men. So far at least as the male population is concerned, +the title of the citizen {18} to the vote has been substantially +acknowledged; but the time is by no means past when the newly +enfranchised citizens need to be stimulated to realize what their +enfranchisement carries with it of privilege and responsibility. And +we may express this by saying that if our English political Epistle to +the Galatians has been written and has done its work, our Epistle to +the Ephesians is still surely very much needed. + +It is very strange, or at least would be strange if we were not +acquainted with the historical circumstances that have accounted for +it, that St. Paul has been, out of all proportion to the facts of the +case, identified in popular estimation with only the earlier of the two +great arguments described above, with that which has given the basis to +Protestantism, and not that which is, in fact, the charter of the +Catholic Church. + +We are all familiar with the fact that St. Paul taught the doctrine of +justification by faith, and insisted therefore on the necessity and +privilege of personal acceptance on the part of each individual of the +promises of God in Christ. We all know how, when this aspect of things +has been ignored and over-ridden--when an almost Jewish doctrine of the +merit of good works[12] {19} has been current in Christendom--it has +afforded a pretext for a Protestant reaction of the most +individualistic kind, of the kind which pays no regard to outward unity +or catholic authority. But certainly in St. Paul's own teaching there +is nothing individualistic in justifying faith. It is that by which +man wins admittance into the body of Christ; and the body of Christ is +an organized society, a catholic brotherhood. Salvation, as we shall +see, is as much social or ecclesiastical as it is individual; and +perhaps there is nothing more wanted to correct our ideas of what St. +Paul understood by justifying faith than an impartial study of the +Epistle to the Ephesians. It is true that this great epistle only +freely developes thoughts which were already unmistakably in St. Paul's +mind when he wrote his epistles to the Corinthians, and even those to +the Thessalonians. Already the social organization of the Church is a +prominent topic, and the ethics of Christianity are social ethics. But +now, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the idea of the Church has become +the dominant idea, and the ethical teaching can be justly characterized +in no other way than as a Christian socialism. + + +{20} + +iii. + +But it is time to examine somewhat more closely the circumstances under +which St. Paul wrote this epistle and their bearing upon its contents. +It was written by him during that imprisonment at Rome[13] the record +of which brings to an end the Acts of the Apostles. He can therefore +put into his appeals all the force which naturally belongs to one who +has sacrificed himself for his principles. 'I, Paul,' he writes, 'the +prisoner of Jesus Christ, on behalf of you Gentiles.' He speaks of +himself as 'an ambassador in a chain' bound, as he was no doubt, to the +soldier which kept him. But the fact that he is a prisoner does not +occupy a great place in his mind. In part this is because his +imprisonment was not of a highly restrictive character. The Acts +conclude by telling us that he was allowed to dwell in his own hired +dwelling and to receive all that came to him without let or hindrance +to his preaching. And the tone of the 'epistles of the first +captivity' is cheerful as to the present and hopeful for the +future[14]. But it is more important to notice that {21} the thought +of being in prison is apparently swallowed up in St. Paul's imagination +by other considerations. For, in the first place, St. Paul was, under +whatever restraints, at Rome. He had reached his goal--a new centre of +evangelization which was also the centre of the world. Step by step +the centre of Christian evangelization had passed toward Rome as its +goal. From Jerusalem, which told unmistakably that 'the salvation was +of the Jews,' it had moved to Antioch, where in a Greek city Jew met +Gentile on equal terms. From Antioch, under St. Paul's leadership, it +had passed to Corinth and Ephesus. These were indeed thoroughly +Gentile cities, and leading cities of the Empire, but they were +provincial. No imperial movement could rest satisfied till it +established itself at the centre of the great imperial +organization--till it had got to Rome. + +If we are to understand at all adequately the world in which St. Paul +wrote, the thought of the Roman Empire and of the unity which it was +giving the world must be clearly before our minds: and it will not be a +digression if we pause to dwell upon it at this point when we are +considering the significance of St. Paul's situation as at once a +prisoner and an evangelist in the great capital. + +{22} + +The Roman Empire brought the world, that is the whole of the known +world which was thought worth considering, into a great unity of +government. What had once been independent kingdoms had now become +provinces of the empire, and the whole of the Roman policy was directed +towards drawing closer the unity, and educating the provinces in Roman +ideas[15]. + +If we seek to define Roman unity a little more closely the following +elements will be found perhaps the most important for our purpose. (1) +It was a unity of government strongly centralized at Rome in the person +of the emperor. The letters of a provincial governor like Pliny to his +master Trajan at Rome reveal to us how even trivial matters, such as +the formation of a guild of firemen in Pliny's province of Bithynia, +were referred up to the emperor. Roman government was in fact personal +and centralized in a very complete sense, and had the uniformity which +accompanies such a condition. (2) This centralized personal government +is, of course, only possible where there is a well-organized system of +inter-communication between the widely-separated parts of a great {23} +empire. And there was this to an amazing extent in the Roman empire. +We find evidence of it in the great roads representing a highly +developed system of travelling. 'It is not too much to say that +travelling was more highly developed and the dividing power of distance +was weaker under the Empire than at any time before or since until we +come down to the present century.' This is what gives such a modern +and cosmopolitan flavour to the lives of men of the Empire as unlike +one another in other respects as Strabo and Jerome. We find the +evidence of such a system of inter-communication also, and not less +impressively, in the multiplied proofs afforded to us that every +movement of thought in the Empire must needs pass to Rome and establish +itself there. The rapid arrival of all oriental tendencies or beliefs +at Rome was, of course, what from the point of view of conservative +Romans meant the destruction of all that they valued in character and +ideals. 'The Orontes had poured itself into the Tiber.' But it was +none the less a fact of the utmost significance for the world's +progress. (3) The unity of the Empire depended largely on the use +which was made of Greek civilization and Greek language. The Empire +{24} may be rightly described, if we are considering its eastern half, +as Greek no less than Roman from the first. Everywhere it was the +Greek language which was the instrument of Roman government, and Greek +civilization, tempered by somewhat barbarous Roman 'games,' which was +put into competition with local customs whether social or +religious[16]. (4) Lastly, to a very real extent the Empire was aiming +at the establishment of a universal religion. Independent local gods +and local cults suited well enough a number of independent little +tribes and kingdoms, but it was felt instinctively that the one empire +involved also one religion, and with more or less of deliberate +intention the one religion was provided in the worship of the emperor, +or, perhaps we should say, of the Empire. + +This worship of the emperor has been among us a very byword for what is +monstrous and unintelligible. It bewilders us when we hear of +something like it in our own Indian empire. And yet a little +imagination ought to show us that where a pure monotheism has not +taught men the moral purity and personal character of God--where +religion is either pantheism, the deification of the one life, or +idolatry, the deification {25} of separate forms of life--the worship +of the imperial authority is intelligible enough. Here was a vast +power, universal in its range, mostly beneficent, and yet awful in its +limitless and arbitrary power of chastisement; what should it be but +divine, like nature, and an object to be appealed to, propitiated, +worshipped? At any rate the cultus of the emperor spread in the Roman +world, and particularly in the Asiatic provinces. It could ally itself +with the current pantheistic philosophy and also with popular local +cults: for it was tolerant of all and could embrace them all, or in +some cases it could identify itself with them--the emperor being +regarded as a special manifestation of the local god. And it made +itself popular through games--wild beast shows and gladiatorial +contests--which it was the business of its high priests or presidents +to provide or to organize. Thus it was that the Roman world came to be +organized by provinces for the purposes of the imperial religion, and +the provincial presidents, whom we hear of in the Acts as 'Asiarchs' or +'chiefs of Asia,' and from other sources as existing in the other +provinces--Galatarchs, Bithyniarchs, Syriarchs, and so on--were also +the high priests of the worship of the Caesars, by which it was sought +{26} to make religion, like everything else, contribute to cement +imperial unity[17]. + +Now there can be no doubt at all, if we look back from the fourth or +fifth centuries of our era, to how vast an extent this Roman unity had +been made an engine for the propagation of the Church. And the +Christians--the Spanish poet Prudentius, for instance, or Pope Leo the +Great[18]--betray a strong consciousness of the place held by the +empire in the divine preparation for Christ. For long periods the +Roman authority was tolerant of Christianity and suffered its +propagation to go on in peace; and at the times when it became alarmed +at its subversive tendencies, and turned to become its persecutor, +still the Church could not be prevented from using the imperial +organization, its roads and its means of communication. Again, every +step in the progress of the Greek language facilitated the spread of +the new religion, the propagation of which was through Greek; and +conversely Christianity became an instrument for spreading the use of +this language which previously was making but a poor struggle against +the languages {27} of Asia Minor; for it is apparently a simple mistake +to suppose that even the apostles were miraculously dispensed from the +difficulties of acquiring new languages, and were enabled to speak all +languages as it were by instinct. Even the imperial religion provided +a framework to facilitate the organization of that still more imperial +religion which it found indeed absolutely incompatible with its +prerogatives, but in which it might have found an efficient substitute +to accomplish its own best ends. Thus the early Christian apologist +Tatian pleads that Christianity alone could supply what was manifestly +needed for a united world, a universal moral law and a universal +gratuitous education or philosophy, open to rich and poor, men and +women, alike[19]. So strong in fact was in many respects the affinity +of the Empire and the Church that the apologists are not infrequently +able to claim, and that plausibly, that if the Roman authorities were +ready to recognize it, they would find in the Church their most +efficient ally. + +And there is no doubt that all this tendency to use the empire as the +ally and instrument of the Church began with St. Paul. The closer St. +Paul's evangelistic travels are examined the {28} more apparent does it +become that he, the apostle who was also the Roman citizen, was by the +very force of circumstances, but also probably deliberately, working +the Church on the lines of the empire. 'The classification adopted in +Paul's own letters of the churches which he founded, is according to +provinces--Achaia, Macedonia, Asia, and Galatia; the same fact is +clearly visible in the narrative of Acts. It guides and inspires the +expressions from the time when the apostle landed at Perga. At every +step any one who knows the country recognizes that the Roman division +is implied[20].' Nor can we fail to be struck with the regularity with +which St. Paul, wherever he mentions the Empire, takes it on its best +side and represents it as a divine institution whose officers are God's +ministers for justice and order and peace[21]. It is from this point +of view alone that he will have Christians think of it and pray for +it[22]. There is the confidence of the true son of the empire in his +'I appeal unto Caesar[23].' + +Further than this, when St. Paul is addressing himself to Gentiles who +had received no leavening of Jewish monotheism, it is most striking +{29} how he throws himself back on those common philosophical and +religious ideas which were permeating the thought of the Empire. 'The +popular philosophy inclined towards pantheism, the popular religion was +polytheistic, but Paul starts from the simplest platform common to +both. There exists something in the way of a divine nature which the +religious try to please and the philosophers try to understand[24].' +Close parallels to St. Paul's language in his two recorded speeches at +Lystra and at Athens, can be found in the writings of the contemporary +Stoic philosopher Seneca[25], and in the so-called 'Letters of +Heracleitus' written by some philosophic student nearly contemporary +with St. Paul at Ephesus[26]. In exposing the folly of idolaters he +was only doing what a contemporary philosopher was doing also, and +repeating ideas which he might have learnt almost as readily in the +schools of his native city Tarsus--which Strabo speaks of as the most +philosophical place in the world, and the place where philosophy was +most of all an indigenous plant[27]--as at the {30} feet of Gamaliel in +Jerusalem. Certainly Paul the apostle to the Gentiles was also Saul of +Tarsus and the citizen of the Roman Empire in whose mind the idea and +sentiment of the empire lay already side by side with the idea of the +catholic church. + +Such a statement as has just been given of the relation of the Roman +organization to the Church is undoubtedly true. And it is also +indisputable that St. Paul was in fact the pioneer in using the empire +for the purposes of the Church. But it is more questionable to what +extent the idea of the empire as the handmaid of the Church was +consciously and deliberately, or only unconsciously or instinctively, +present to his mind; and in particular it is questionable how far the +peculiar exaltation of the epistles of the first captivity is due to +St. Paul's realization that in getting to Rome, the capital and centre +of the Empire, he had reached a goal which was {31} also a fresh and +unique starting-point for the evangelization of the world. + +To some extent this must certainly have been the case[28]. While he is +at Ephesus[29] preaching, he already has Rome in view, and a sense of +unaccomplished purpose till he has visited it, 'I must also see Rome.' +When a little later he writes to the Romans, the name of Rome is a name +both of attraction and of awe. He is eager to go to Rome, but he seems +to fear it at the same time. So much as in him lies, he is ready to +preach the gospel to them also that are at Rome. Even in face of all +that that imperial name means, he is not ashamed of the Gospel[30]. + +Later the divine vision at Jerusalem assures him that, as he has borne +witness concerning Christ at Jerusalem, so he must bear witness also at +Rome[31]. The confidence of this divine purpose mingles with and +reinforces the confidence of the Roman citizen in his appeal to Caesar. +The sense of the divine hand upon him to take him to Rome is +strengthened by another vision amid the terrors of the sea voyage[32]. +At his first contact with the Roman {32} brethren 'he thanked God and +took courage[33].' This sense of thankfulness and encouragement +pervades the whole of the first captivity so far as it is represented +in his letters. He had reached the goal of his labours and a fresh +starting-point for a wide-spreading activity. + +Certainly no one can mistake the glow of enthusiasm which pervades the +epistles of the first captivity generally, but especially the Epistle +to the Ephesians. It is conspicuously, and beyond all the other +epistles, rapturous and uplifted. And this is not due--as is the +cheerful thankfulness of the Epistle to the Philippians, at least in +part--to the specially intimate relations of St. Paul to the +congregations he was addressing, or to the specially satisfactory +character of their Christian life. On the contrary, St. Paul perceived +that the Asiatic churches, and especially Ephesus, were threatened by +very ominous perils. 'Very grievous wolves were entering in, not +sparing the flock; and among themselves men were arising, speaking +perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them[34].' St. +Paul's rapturous tone must be accounted for by causes independent of +the Ephesian or Asiatic Christians in particular. {33} Among these +causes, as we have just seen, must be reckoned the fact, the +significance of which we have been dwelling upon, that St. Paul had now +reached Rome, the centre of the Gentile world. But it must also be +remembered that St. Paul had seen a great conflict fought out and won +for the catholicity of Christianity, and that now for the first time +there was a pause and freedom to take advantage of it. + +A great conflict had been fought and won. The backbone of the earlier +Jewish opposition to the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles on +equal terms had been broken. They had in fact swept into the Church in +increasing numbers. Their rights were recognized and their position +uncontested. There is now, in the comparative quiet of the 'hired +house' where St. Paul was confined, a period of pause in which he can +fitly sum up the results which have been won, and let the full meaning +of the catholic brotherhood be freely unfolded. It is time to pass +from the rudiments of the Christian gospel, the vindication of its most +elementary principles and liberties, the 'milk for babes,' to expound +the spiritual wisdom of the full-grown Christian manhood, the 'solid +meat for them of riper years.' + +{34} + +It is this sense of pause in conflict and free expansion in view of a +vast opportunity, which in great part at least interprets the glow and +glory of St. Paul's epistle. + + +iv. + +The Epistle to the Ephesians might, so far as its contents are +concerned, have been addressed to any of the predominantly Gentile +churches; but to none more fitly than to Ephesus and to the churches of +Asia, where the progress of Gentile Christianity had been so rapid, and +where St. Paul's ministry had been so unusually prolonged. Let us +attempt to answer the questions--what was Ephesus? what was the +history, and what were the circumstances of the Ephesian church? + +Ephesus had a double importance as a Greek and as an Asiatic city. A +colony of Ionians from Athens had early settled on some hills which +rose out of a fertile plain near the mouth of the Cayster. This was +the origin of the Greek city of Ephesus. Its position gave it +admirable commercial advantages. It became the greatest mart of +exchange[35] between East {35} and West in Asia Minor, and though its +commerce was threatened by the filling up of its harbour, it had not +decayed in St. Paul's time. + +Among Greek cities it also occupied a not inconspicuous place in the +history of art, and at an earlier period of philosophy also. Here was +one of the chief homes of the Homeric tradition; hence in the person of +Callinus the Greek elegy is reputed to have had its origin, and in the +person of Hipponax the satire. It was the home of Heracleitus, one of +the greatest of the early philosophers, and of Apelles and Parrhasius, +the masters of painting[36]. + +And the greatest artists in sculpture--Phidias and Polycletus, Scopas +and Praxiteles--had adorned with their works the temple of Artemis, +which, in itself one of the wonders of the world, the masterpiece of +Ionic architecture, became also, like some great Christian cathedral, a +very museum of sculpture and painting. + +If Greek artists built and decorated the temple of Artemis, they +attempted no doubt to represent the goddess under the form which her +Greek name suggested, the beautiful huntress-goddess; but the Greeks +never in fact succeeded in {36} affecting the thoroughly Asiatic and +oriental character of a worship which had nothing Greek about it except +the name. The interest of Ephesus as an Asiatic city centred about +that ancient worship which had its home in the plain below the Greek +settlement. It was there before the Greeks came, it held its own +throughout and in spite of all Greek and Roman influences; all through +the history of Ephesus it gave its main character to the city--the +noted home of superstition and sorcery. + +The Artemis of Ephesus was, as Jerome remarks[37], not the +huntress-goddess with her bow, but the many-breasted symbol of the +productive and nutritive powers of nature, the mother of all life, free +and untamed like the wild beasts who accompanied her. The grotesque +and archaic idol believed to have fallen down from heaven was a stiff, +erect mummy covered with many breasts and symbols of wild beasts. Her +worship was organized by a hierarchy of eunuch priests--called by a +Persian name Megabyzi--and 'consecrated' virgins. It was associated, +like other worships of the same divinity called indifferently Artemis +or Cybele or Ma, with ideals of life which from the point {37} of view +of any fixed moral order, Roman or Greek no less than Jewish or +Christian, was lawless and immoral. + +It is very well known how the Asiatic nature-worships flooded the Roman +empire, and even at Rome itself became by far more popular than the +traditional state religion. And among these Asiatic worships none was +more popular than the worship of Artemis of Ephesus, whose temple was +the wonder of the world, and who not only was worshipped publicly at +Ephesus, but was the object of a cult both public and private in +widely-separated parts of the empire. Such a temple and such a worship +would naturally collect a base and corrupt population; but what would +in any case have been bad was rendered worse by the fact that the area +round the temple was an asylum of refuge from the law, and that, as the +area of 'sanctuary' was extended at different times, the collection of +criminals became greater and greater. It had reached a point where it +threatened the safety of the city, and not long before St. Paul's time +the Emperor Augustus had found it necessary to curtail the area. The +history of our own Westminster is enough to assure us that a religious +asylum brings social degradation in its train. + +{38} + +Such was the commercial and religious importance of the beautiful, +wealthy, effeminate, superstitious, and most immoral city which became +for three years the centre of St. Paul's ministry. On his second +missionary journey St. Paul was making his way to Asia, and no doubt to +Ephesus, when he with his companions were hindered by the Holy Ghost +and turned across the Hellespont to Macedonia[38]. On his return to +Syria, he could not be satisfied without at least setting foot in +Ephesus and making a beginning of preaching there in the synagogue[39]; +but he was hastening back to Jerusalem, and, with a promise of return, +left his work there to Priscilla and Aquila. On his third missionary +journey Ephesus was the centre of his prolonged work. It was +accordingly the only city of the first rank which, so far as any +trustworthy evidence goes, had as the founder of its Church in the +strictest sense--that is, as the first gatherer of converts as well as +organizer of institutions--either St. Paul or any other apostle[40]. + +St. Paul's first activity on arriving at Ephesus illustrates the stress +he laid on the gift of the Holy Ghost as the central characteristic of +{39} Christianity. He was brought in contact with the twelve imperfect +disciples who had been baptized only with John the Baptist's baptism, +and had not so much as heard whether the Holy Ghost was given. St. +Paul baptized them anew with Christian baptism, and bestowed upon them +the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of his hands[41]. Then it +is recorded how he began his preaching as usual with the Jews in the +synagogue. The Jews of Asia Minor were regarded by the Jews of +Jerusalem as corrupted and Hellenized[42]. But at any rate they +exhibited the same antagonism to the preaching of Christianity as their +stricter brethren. Thus St. Paul, when he had given them their chance, +abandoned their synagogue and established himself in the lecture-room +of Tyrannus, where he taught for two years and more[43]. And this +became the centre of an evangelization which, even if St. Paul himself +did not visit other Asiatic towns, yet spread by the agency of his +companions over the whole of the Roman {40} province of Asia--to the +churches of the Lycus, Colossae, Laodicea, Hierapolis, and probably to +the rest of the 'seven churches' to which St. John wrote in his +Apocalypse. + +Ephesus was full of superstitions of all sorts as would be expected, +and St. Paul's miracles were such as would not unnaturally have led the +magicians to regard him as a greater master in their own craft. So +among others the Jewish chief priest Sceva's seven sons began to use +the central name of Paul's preaching as a new and most efficient +formula for exorcism. 'We adjure thee by Jesus whom Paul preaches.' +But it is frequently noticeable that St. Paul refused to allow himself +to use superstition as a handmaid of religion. The providential +disaster which befell these exorcists gave St. Paul an opportunity of +striking an effective blow where it was most needed against exorcism +and magic. The Christian converts came and confessed their +participation in the black arts, and burnt their books of incantations, +in spite of their value. The whole transaction must have impressed +vividly in the minds of the Ephesians the contrast between Christianity +and superstition. + +St. Paul had already encountered opposition as well as success at +Ephesus, for when, writing {41} from Ephesus, he speaks to the +Corinthians[44] of having 'fought with beasts' there, the reference is +probably to what had befallen him in the earlier part of his residence +through the plots of the Jews; that long Epistle to the Corinthians can +hardly have been written _after_ the famous tumult recorded in the +Acts. But that tumult, raised by the manufacturers of the silver +shrines of Artemis, was of course the most important persecution which +befell St. Paul at Ephesus. The narrative of it[45] is exceedingly +instructive. We notice the friendliness of the Asiarchs, i.e. the +presidents of the provincial 'union' and priests of the imperial +worship, and the opinion of the town clerk, that St. Paul must be +acquitted of any insults to the religious beliefs of the Ephesians[46]. +Christianity had not, it appears, yet excited the antipathy of the +religious or civil authorities of the Empire, but it had begun to +threaten the pockets of those who were concerned in supplying the needs +of the worshippers who thronged to the great {42} temple at Ephesus. +We need not inquire exactly how the little silver shrines of Artemis +were used; but they were much sought after, and their production gave +occupation to an important trade. The trade was threatened by the +spread of Christianity. The philosophers despised indeed the +idolatrous rites, but they despised also the people who practised them, +and had no hope or idea of converting them[47]. St. Paul was the first +teacher at Ephesus who touched the fears of the idol makers by bringing +a pure religion to the hearts of the ordinary people. Hence the tumult +against the teachers of the new religion, raised not by the civil or +religious authorities of Ephesus, but simply by the trade interest. + +As soon as it was over St. Paul left Ephesus not to return there again. +But on his way back to Jerusalem he came not to Ephesus but to Miletus, +and sending for the Ephesian presbyters thither, he made them a +farewell speech[48], which is in conspicuous harmony with the features +of his later Epistle to the Ephesians. Already the doctrines of a +divine purpose or {43} counsel now revealed, of the Church in general +as the object of the divine self-sacrifice and love, and of the Holy +Ghost as accomplishing her sanctification and developing her structure, +appear to be prominent in his mind, and to have become familiar topics +with the Ephesian Christians. 'I shrank not from declaring unto you +the whole counsel of God. Take heed unto yourselves and to all the +flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the +church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.... And now I +commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to +build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all them that are +sanctified.' These words from St. Paul's speech to the Ephesian +presbyters are in remarkable affinity with the teaching of our epistle. + + +v. + +We have been assuming that this epistle was addressed to Ephesus, but +there are reasons to believe that it was not addressed to Ephesus only, +but rather generally to the churches of the Roman province of Asia, of +which Ephesus was the chief. The reasons for thinking this are {44} +partly internal to the epistle. St. Paul's personal relations to +individual Ephesian Christians must have been many and close, and we +know his habit of introducing personal allusions and greetings into his +epistles; but the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians is destitute of +them altogether, contrasting in this respect even with the Epistle to +the Colossians, written at the same time to a church which St. Paul +himself never visited. This would be a most inexplicable fact if the +Epistle to the Ephesians were really a letter to this one particular +church. More than this, St. Paul speaks in several passages in a way +which implies that he and those he wrote to were dependent on what they +had heard for mutual knowledge--'having heard of the faith in the Lord +Jesus that is among you'--'if so be ye have heard of the dispensation +of the grace of God which was given me to youward.' Such language is +much more natural if he is writing to others besides the Ephesians. +And this evidence internal to the substance of the epistle coincides +with evidence of the manuscripts. Very early manuscripts, some of +those which remain to us and some which are reported to us by primitive +scholars, omit the words 'in Ephesus' from St. Paul's opening greeting +'To the saints {45} and faithful brethren which are [in Ephesus].' +This fact, coupled with the absence of personal reminiscences in the +epistle, has suggested the idea that it was in fact a circular letter +to the saints and faithful brethren at a number of churches of the +Roman province of Asia, and that where the words 'in Ephesus' stand in +our text, there was perhaps a blank left in the epistle as St. Paul +dictated it, which was intended to be filled up in each church where it +was read. This is a view which has to a certain extent a special +interest for us in Westminster because, if it was first suggested by +the Genevan commentator Beza, it was elaborated by Archbishop Ussher, +who is identified with our Abbey by residence and by the memorable +record of his entombment in our abbey church with Anglican rites by the +command of Cromwell. It follows naturally from such a view that when +St. Paul writes to the Colossians and bids them send their letter to +Laodicea, and read that which comes from Laodicea[49], the letter which +they should expect from Laodicea would be none other than the so-called +Epistle to the Ephesians which was to be read by them as well as the +other Asiatic Christians. + + +{46} + +vi. + +Enough perhaps has now been said to give a general idea of the +conditions under which this great epistle was written; and the topics +of the epistle have been already indicated. Its central theme is that +of the great catholic society, the renovated Israel, the Church of God. +In this catholic brotherhood St. Paul sees the realization of an +age-long purpose of God, the fulfilment of a long-secret counsel, now +at last disclosed to His chosen prophets. He sees nothing incongruous +in finding in the yet young and limited societies of Christian +disciples the consummation of the divine purpose for the world, for +these societies represent the breaking down of all barriers and the +bringing of all men to unity with one another through a recovered unity +with God, through Christ and in His Spirit. Therefore the work which +the Church is to accomplish is nothing less than a universal work, a +work not even limited to humanity; it is the bringing back of all +things visible or invisible into that unity which lies in God's +original purpose of creation. St. Paul long ago had spoken to the +Corinthians of a spiritual wisdom which they were not yet ready to +listen {47} to. But now St. Paul seems to feel--for reasons which we +have tried in part to interpret--that the time has come when all the +depth and richness of the divine secret may be spoken out. No wonder +that the subject stirs his imagination and gives to his whole tone an +uplifting and a glory without parallel in his other writings. And yet +it would be altogether false to attach to this epistle any associations +such as are commonly connected with flights of imagination or the +language of rhapsody. For the epistle has the most direct bearing on +matters of practical life. If St. Paul glorifies the Christian ideal +it is in order that all that weight of glory may be brought to bear +upon the Asiatic Christians to force them to see that their personal +and social conduct must have a purity, a liberality, a wisdom, a love, +a power, commensurate with the greatness of those motives which are +acting upon them in their new Christian state. + + + +[1] The Committee of the Conference of Bishops at Lambeth, 1897, in a +report commended by the bishops as a body to the 'consideration of all +Christian people,' write: 'Your committee do not hold that a true view +of Holy Scripture forecloses any legitimate question about the literary +character or literal accuracy of different parts or statements of the +Old Testament.' + +[2] Acts xxiv 14; xxvi. 6, 7, 22, 23; 2 Tim i. 3. + +[3] Eph. ii. 12-19. + +[4] 1 Thess. ii. 14-16. + +[5] Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans. + +[6] See app. note C, p. 257. + +[7] Acts ix. 20; 1 Cor. viii. 6; Rom. ix. 5; 2 Cor. viii. 9; Gal. iv. 4. + +[8] Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, Philemon. + +[9] Col. ii. 18: 'by a voluntary humility (or 'taking delight in +humility') and worshipping of the angels.' + +[10] See i. 13-20; ii. 2, 3, 9-23; iii. 11. Cf. i. 27-28. + +[11] Hort, _Judaistic Christianity_ (Macmillan, 1894), p. 125. + +[12] Cf. app. note C, p. 257. + +[13] Cf. Hort, _Prolegomena to Romans and Ephesians_ (Macmillan, 1895), +p. 100. + +[14] Col. iv. 2-4; Philemon 22; Phil. i. 12-14. + +[15] Ramsay, _Paul the Traveller_ (Hodder and Stoughton, 1895), pp. 130 +ff. + +[16] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 132. + +[17] See Mommsen, _Provinces of Roman Empire_ (Eng. trans.), i. 344 +ff.; Lightfoot, _Ign. and Polyc._ iii. pp. 404 ff. + +[18] App. note A, p. 251. + +[19] Tatian, _Ad Graecos_, 28, 32. + +[20] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 135. + +[21] Rom. xiii. 1-7; cf. ii. Thess. ii. 6. + +[22] 1 Tim. ii. 1, 2. + +[23] Acts xxv. 12. + +[24] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 147. + +[25] Lightfoot, _Galatians_, 'St. Paul and Seneca,' pp. 287 ff. + +[26] See app. note B, p. 253. + +[27] 'The zeal of its inhabitants for philosophy and general culture is +such that they have surpassed even Athens and Alexandria and all other +cities where schools of philosophy can be mentioned. And its +pre-eminence in this respect is so great because there the students are +all townspeople, and strangers do not readily settle there.' Strabo, +xiv. v. 13. I do not suppose that St. Paul received any formal +education in Greek schools at Tarsus. But I think we must assume that +at some period St. Paul had sufficient contact with Gentile educated +opinion, whether at Tarsus or elsewhere, to be acquainted with +widely-spread religious and philosophical tendencies. + +[28] Cf. Hort, _Christian Ecclesia_, p. 143. + +[29] Acts xix. 21. + +[30] Rom. i. 15, 16. + +[31] Acts xxiii. 11. + +[32] Acts xxvii. 24. + +[33] Acts xxviii. 15. + +[34] Acts xx. 29, 30. + +[35] Among other articles of commerce, tents made in Ephesus had a +special reputation, and St. Paul and Aquila had special opportunities +there for the exercise of their trade. Acts xx. 34. + +[36] Strabo. xiv. 1, 25. + +[37] Migne, _P. L._ xxvi. 441. + +[38] Acts xvi. 6-10. + +[39] Acts xviii. 19. + +[40] Hort, _Prolegomena_, p. 83. + +[41] Acts xix. 1-7. + +[42] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 143. + +[43] 'From the fifth to the tenth hour' (11 a.m. to 4 p.m.), an early +addition to the text of the Acts tells us; i. e. after work hours, when +the school would naturally be vacant and St. Paul would have finished +his manual labour at tent-making. Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 276. + +[44] 1 Cor. xv. 32. + +[45] Acts xix. 23 ff. + +[46] Prof. Ramsay asserts that instead of 'robbers of temples' (Acts +xix. 37), we should translate 'disloyal to the established government.' +_l.c._ p. 282. But the word is used in the former sense in special +connexion with Ephesus by Strabo, xiv. 1, 22, and Pseudo-Heracleitus, +_Ep._ 7, p. 64 (Bernays). + +[47] See app. note B, p. 253, on the contemporary 'letters of +Heracleitus.' + +[48] Acts xx. 17 ff. + +[49] Col. iv. 16. + + + + +{48} + +THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS + +CHAPTER I. 1-2. + +Salutation. + +[Sidenote: _Salutation_] + +St. Paul begins this, in common with his other epistles, with a brief +salutation to a particular church or group of churches, in which is +expressed in summary the authority he has for writing to them, the +light in which he regards them, and the central wish for them which he +has in his heart. + + +Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the saints +which are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you +and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. + + +Here, then, we have three compressed thoughts. + +1. The particular person Paul writes this letter because he is not +only a believer in Christ but also an 'apostle of Christ Jesus through +the will of God.' The word apostle is a more or less general word for +a delegate, as when St. Paul {49} speaks of the 'apostles (or +messengers) of the churches[1];' but by an apostle in its highest +sense, 'an apostle of Jesus Christ,' St. Paul meant one of those, +originally twelve in number, who had received personally from the risen +Christ a particular commission to represent Him to the world. This +particular and personal commission he claimed to have received, in +common with the twelve, though later than they--at the time of his +conversion. 'Am I not an apostle?' he cries. 'Have I not seen Jesus +our Lord[2]?' 'He appeared to me also as unto one born out of due +time[3].' 'In nothing was I behind the very chiefest apostles[4].' +And as his claim to the apostolate was challenged by his Judaizing +opponents he had to insist upon it, to insist that it is not a +commission from or through Peter and the other apostles, or dependent +upon them for its exercise, but a direct commission, like theirs, from +the Head of the Church Himself. He is, he writes to the Galatians, +'Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor (like those subsequently ordained +by himself or the other apostles, like a Timothy, or a Titus, or like +the later clergy) through man,' but directly through, {50} as well as +from, the risen Jesus whom his eyes had seen, and His eternal Father[5]. + +It is surely a consolation to us of the Church of England, who belong +to a church subject to constant attack on the score of apostolic +character, to remember that St. Paul's apostolate was attacked with +some excuse, and that he had to spend a great deal of effort in +vindicating it, and was in no way ashamed of doing so, because he +perceived that a certain aspect of the life and truth of the Church was +bound up with its recognition. + +2. And he writes to the Asiatic Christians as 'saints' and 'faithful +in Christ Jesus.' 'Saint' does not mean primarily what we understand +by it--one pre-eminent in moral excellence; but rather one consecrated +or dedicated to the service and use of God. The idea of consecration +was common in all religions, and frequently, as in the Asiatic worships +at Ephesus and elsewhere, carried with it associations quite the +opposite of those which we assign to holiness. But the special +characteristic of the Old Testament religion had been the righteous and +holy character which it ascribed to Jehovah. Consecration to Him, +therefore, is seen to require {51} personal holiness, and this +requirement is only deepened in meaning under the Gospel. But still +'the saints' means primarily the 'consecrated ones'; and all Christians +are therefore saints--'called as saints' rather than 'called to be +saints,' in virtue of their belonging to the consecrated body into +which they were baptized; saints who because of their consecration are +therefore bound to live holily[6]. 'The saints' in the Acts of the +Apostles[7] is simply a synonym for the Church. St. Paul then writes +to the Asiatic Christians as 'consecrated' and 'faithful in Christ +Jesus,' i. e. believing members incorporated by baptism; and he writes +to them for no other purpose than to make them understand what is +implied in their common consecration and common faith. + +3. And his good wishes for them he sums up in the terms 'Grace and +peace in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Grace is that free +and unmerited favour or good-will of God towards man which takes shape +in a continuous outflow of the very riches of God's {52} inmost being +and spirit into the life of man through Christ; and peace of heart, +Godward and manward, 'central peace subsisting at the heart of endless +agitation' is that by the possession and bestowal of which Christianity +best gives assurance of its divine origin. + +We notice that these divine gifts are ascribed to 'God our Father and +the Lord Jesus Christ.' St. Paul does not generally call Christ by the +title God, partly, no doubt, from long engrained habit of language, but +partly also because nothing was more important than that no language +should be used in the first propagation of Christianity which could +give excuse for confusing the Christian belief in the threefold Name +with the worship of many gods. But, from the first, Christ, in St. +Paul's language, is exalted as Lord into a simply divine supremacy, and +associated most intimately with all the most exclusively divine +operations in the world without, and in the heart of man within. +Moreover, St. Paul refuses absolutely to tolerate any association of +other, however exalted, beings with Christ in lordship or mediatorship, +all created beings whatever being simply the work of His hands[8]. +There remains, therefore, no room to {53} question that St. Paul +believed Christ to be strictly divine: to be Himself no creature, no +highest archangel, but one who, with the Holy Spirit alone, is truly +proper and essential to the divine being; and it affords us, therefore, +no manner of surprise that from time to time St. Paul actually calls +Christ God, as in the Epistle to the Romans 'who is over all, God +blessed for ever[9],' and probably in the Epistle to Titus 'our great +God and saviour Jesus Christ[10].' + + + +[1] 2 Cor. viii. 23. + +[2] 1 Cor. ix. 1. + +[3] 1 Cor. xv. 8. + +[4] 2 Cor. xii. 11. + +[5] Gal. i. 1. + +[6] Tertullian, _de An._ 39, rightly interprets 1 Cor. vii. 14, 'now +are they [the children of whose parents one was a Christian] holy,' as +meaning, now are they already consecrated and marked out for baptismal +sanctification by the prerogative of their birth. + +[7] Acts ix. 13, 33. + +[8] Cf. 1 Cor. viii. 6; Col. i. 16. + +[9] Rom. ix. 5. + +[10] Tit. ii. 13. + + + + +{54} + +DIVISION I. CHAPTERS I. 3-IV. 17. + +§ I. CHAPTER i. 3-14. + +_St. Paul's leading thoughts._ + +[Sidenote: _St. Paul's leading thoughts_] + +Before we read the opening paragraph of St. Paul's letter we had better +review the great thoughts which are prominent in his mind as he writes. +My ambition is to make my readers feel that ideas which, because they +have become Christian commonplaces or because they have been blackened +by controversy, have by this time a ring of unreality about them, or of +theological remoteness, or of controversial bitterness, are in fact, if +we will 'consider them anew,' ideas the most important, the most +practical, and the most closely adapted to the moral needs of the plain +man. + + +i. + +St. Paul writes to the Christians as 'in Christ,' 'in the beloved,' +'blessed with all spiritual benediction in the heavenly places in +Christ,' 'adopted {55} as sons through Jesus Christ.' We are all of us +perfectly familiar with the idea of Christ as, so to speak, a personal +and individual redeemer, as the holy and righteous one, the beloved and +accepted Son, who is risen from the dead and exalted to supreme +sovereignty in heaven. But popular theology has not been quite so +familiar with the idea that Christ was and is all this in our manhood, +not simply because He was God as well as man (true as this is); but +because as man He was anointed with the Holy Spirit of God: that it was +in the power of that Spirit that He lived His life of holiness and +wrought His miracles of power: that it was in the power of that Spirit +that He taught and suffered and died and was glorified. Nor has +popular Christianity been familiar with the resulting truth: that by +that divine Spirit which possessed Him as man, the life of Christ is +extended beyond Himself to take in those who believe in Him, and make +them members of 'the church which is his body.' Yet, in fact, this +extension is implied even in the name Christ. The king Messiah, the +Christ of the Old Testament, is but the central figure of a whole +kingdom associated with Him, and all the characteristic phrases for +Christ in the New Testament {56} express the same idea. He is the +'first-born among many brethren[1]'; He is the 'first fruits[2]' of a +great harvest; He is the 'head of the body[3]'; He is the 'bridegroom' +inseparable from 'the bride[4]'; He is the second Adam, that is, head +of a new humanity[5]. Thus if the heavens closed around the ascending +Christ, and hid Him from view, they opened again around the descending +Spirit, descending into the heart of the Christian society to +perpetuate Christ's life and presence there. This historical ascent +and descent only embody in unmistakable facts the truth that the +life-giving Spirit, who made the manhood of Christ so satisfying to our +moral aspirations, is also and with the same reality, though not with +the same perfection or freedom, living and working in that great +society which He founded to represent Him on earth. Because this +society is possessed by the Spirit, therefore it lives in the same life +as Christ, it and all its individual members are 'in Christ.' In one +place, indeed, St. Paul includes the Church, the body, with its head +under the one name 'the Christ[6].' + +[Sidenote: _Life in Christ_] + +It is because the Church thus shares Christ's {57} life that it is +already spoken of as sharing His exaltation. We 'sit together in the +heavenly places with Christ' for no other reason than because, though +we are on earth, our life is bound up invisibly but in living reality +with the life of the glorified Christ, and we have in Him free access +into the courts of heaven. For this reason again, as the fulness of +the divine attributes dwells in the glorified Christ--all the fulness +of the Godhead bodily, so the same fulness is attributed, ideally at +least, to the Church too. It too is 'the fulness of him that filleth +all in all.' To St. Paul's mind there is one true human life in which +men are one with one another because they are at one with God. That +true human life is Christ's life, which He once lived on earth, and +which He is at present living in the glory of God, and which is +fulfilled with all the completeness of the divine life itself. But +that true human life is also shared by each and every member of His +Church, without exception, without reference to race or learning, or +wealth, or sex, or age. + +I have said that this is ideally the case. This identification of +Christ with the Church, that is to say, is not yet fully realized. The +Church is not yet glorified, not yet morally perfected nor {58} full +grown in the divine attributes. Its particular members may be living +deceitful and dishonourable lives. This is to say in other words that +God's work in 'redemption of his own possession,' His acquirement of a +people to Himself, is not yet complete. The purchase-money is paid, +but it has not yet taken full effect. But redemption is an +accomplished fact in the sense that all the conditions of the final +success are already there. The ideal may be freely realized in every +Christian because he has received the 'earnest' or pledge of the +Spirit, the pledge, that is, of all that is to be accomplished in him. +And this Spirit was received by each Christian at a particular and +assignable moment. We know what stress St. Paul laid at Ephesus on +proper Christian baptism and the laying on of hands which followed +it[7]. By baptism men were spoken of as incorporated into Christ. +With the laying on of hands was associated the bestowal of the Spirit. +Henceforth a Christian had no need to ask for the Spirit as if He were +not already bestowed upon him; he had only to bring into practical use +spiritual forces and powers which the divine bounty had already put at +his disposal. + +{59} + +If we compare this set of ideas with those that have been current in +our popular theology, we shall find that the main difference lies in +this, that here the stress is laid on the work of Christ _in_ man by +His Spirit, while the theology which has been popular among us has laid +the stress rather on the 'vicarious' work of Christ outside us and +_for_ us, by making a propitiation for our sins. Now in fact this +latter doctrine is an unmistakable part of St. Paul's teaching in this +epistle and elsewhere. And all the mistakes to which it has led are +due to its not having been kept in proper relation to the set of ideas +which I have just been endeavouring to expound. 'Christ for us,' the +sacrifice of propitiation has been separated from 'Christ in us,' our +new life; whereas really the sacrifice was but a necessary removal of +an obstacle, preliminary to the new life. + +It was a necessary preliminary that Christ should put us on a fresh +basis, should enable us to break from our past and make a fresh start +in the divine acceptance. This He did by making atonement for our +sins, offering as a propitiatory sacrifice His life, even to the +shedding of His blood, that the Father might be enabled to forgive our +sins. This transaction is always {60} represented in the New Testament +as being the act of the Father as well as of the Son, for the divine +persons are not separable--neither an act by which the Son forces the +unwilling hand of the Father, nor an act in which the Father lays an +undeserved burden upon an unwilling Son--and the idea of propitiation +seems to St. Paul, as indeed it has seemed to men generally, a +thoroughly natural idea. Only in one place does he make any suggestion +as to why such a preliminary sacrifice of propitiation was necessary. +There[8] he seems to find the moral necessity for it in the fact that +through long ages God's 'forbearance' had left men to work through +their own resources and so to find out their need of Him. 'He suffered +all nations to walk in their own ways.' He 'winked at' or 'overlooked +times of ignorance.' He 'passed over sins[9].' This was part of His +educative process. One result of it, however, was a lowering of the +moral ideas entertained of the divine character. Thus God's +righteousness, which means holiness and compassion combined, needed to +be declared especially at that crisis of the divine dealings when God +was coming out towards {61} men, whom He had educated by His seeming +absence to feel their need of Him, with the offer of His love. The +free bounty of His mercy must not be misunderstood as if it were +indifference or laxity about moral wickedness. Thus the proclamation +of His compassion must be associated with something which would make +unmistakable the severity of His holiness and His moral claim. This +twofold end is what Christ accomplishes. Thus if He is the revealer of +the compassion of the Father, He also vindicates the divine character +by a great act of moral reparation, made in man's name and on man's +behalf, to the divine holiness which our sins have ignored and +outraged. This great act of reparation is consummated in the +bloodshedding of the Christ. The sacrifice of consummate obedience is +carried to its extreme point and accepted in its perfection. God in +Christ receives from man, and that publicly, a perfect reparation: an +acknowledgement without fault or drawback: a perfect sacrifice. Now +God can forgive the sins of men freely and without moral risk, if they +come to Him in the name of Christ. To come to God in the name of +Christ means, of course, to come in conscious moral identification of +one's self with Christ, with {62} His Spirit and His motives. The +faith which simply accepts the bounty of forgiveness through Christ's +sacrifice, must pass necessarily into the faith which corresponds +obediently with the divine love. Thus the purpose of the atonement is +never expressed as being that we should be let off punishment, or +simply that we should be forgiven, but rather that, being forgiven, we +should be united to Christ in His life[10]. The propitiation which +Christ offered is only the removal of a preliminary obstacle to our +fellowship with Him in the life of God. The work of Christ 'for us' +has no meaning or efficacy till it has begun to pass into the work of +Christ 'in us' by His assimilating Spirit. It was only as baptized +into Christ and sharing His Spirit that Christians could accept the +forgiveness of their sins through the shedding of Christ's blood. The +sacrament of new life is also the sacrament of absolution, and the +washing away of sins. Nothing in fact can be plainer in this Epistle +to the Ephesians than that 'the redemption through Christ's blood, even +the forgiveness of trespasses[11]' was only a preliminary removal of +{63} obstacles to that fellowship with God in Christ by His Spirit +which is the secret of the Church. + + +ii. + +[Sidenote: _Predestination_] + +St. Paul's mind is full of the idea of predestination. He delights to +contemplate the eternal purpose of God as lying behind what seems to us +the painfully slow method by which divine results are actually won. +What age-long processes have been necessary both among the Jews and +among the Gentiles before this young church, this divine society of man +with God has become possible! What slow working through 'times of +ignorance,' what infinite delay in the divine forbearance--as we should +now say, what age-long processes of developement! But St. Paul is +quite certain that the result is no afterthought, no accident of the +moment; but that from end to end of the universe there reaches a method +of the divine wisdom, and that here in the catholic church it has +arrived at an issue. 'God chose us in Christ before the foundation of +the world that we should be holy and without blemish (as spotless +victims) before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as +sons through Jesus Christ unto himself.' 'Fore-ordained {64} to be a +heritage according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after +the counsel of his will.' So he asseverates and repeats and insists. +There are, we may say, two ideas commonly associated with +predestination which St. Paul gives us no warrant for asserting. The +one is the predestination of individuals to eternal loss or +destruction. That God should create any single individual with the +intention of eternally destroying or punishing him is a horrible idea, +and, without prying into mysteries, we may say boldly that there is no +warrant for it in the Old or New Testaments. God is indeed represented +as predestinating men, like Jacob and Esau, to a higher or lower place +in the order of the world or the church. There are 'vessels' made by +the divine potter to purposes of 'honour,' and 'vessels' made to +purposes (comparatively) of 'dishonour[12]': there are more honourable +and less honourable limbs of the body[13]. But this does not prejudice +the eternal prospects of those who in this world hold the less +advantageous posts. With God is no respect of persons. Again God is +represented as predestinating men to moral hardness of heart where such +hardness is a judgement on previous wilfulness. Thus {65} men may be +predestined to temporary rejection of God, as in St. Paul's mind the +majority of the contemporary Jews were. That was their judgement, and +their punishment[14]. It was however not God's first intention for +them nor His last. Those chapters of St. Paul[15] which contain the +most terrible things about the present reprobation of the Jews contain +also the most emphatic repudiation of the idea that moral reprobation +was God's first idea for them, or His last. 'The gifts and calling of +God,' that is, His good gifts and calling, says St. Paul, speaking of +the now 'reprobate' Jews, are 'without repentance[16].' God's present +reprobation of them is only a process towards a fresh opportunity. +'God hath shut up all into disobedience that he might have mercy upon +all[17].' Men may baffle the original divine purpose, and that, so far +as their own blessedness is concerned, even finally: they may become +finally 'reprobate': but the divine purpose for them at its root +remains a purpose for good. 'God will have all men to be saved and to +come to the knowledge of the truth[18].' + +{66} + +And once again, the idea of a predestination for good, taking effect +necessarily and irrespective of men's co-operation, is an idea which +has been intruded unjustifiably into St. Paul's thought. It exalts his +whole being to consider that he is co-operating with God, and that the +conditions under which he lives represent a divine purpose with which +he is called to work. It is this which makes him feel it is worth +while working: it is this which nerves and sustains him in all +sufferings, and enlarges his horizon in all restraints: but he never +suggests that it does not lie within the mysterious power of his own +will to withdraw himself from co-operation with God. It is at least +conceivable to him that he should himself be rejected[19]. In that +famous list of external forces which he feels are unable to tear him +from the grasp of the divine love, his own will is not included[20], +nor could be included without gross inconsistency. + +Beyond all question there is here one problem which remains for all +time unsolved and insoluble--the relation of divine fore-knowledge[21] +{67} to human freedom. If we men are free to choose, how can it be, or +can it really be the case at all, that God knows beforehand actually +how each individual will behave in each particular case? This is a +problem which we cannot fathom any more than we can fathom any of the +problems which require for their solution an experience of what an +absolute and eternal consciousness can mean. But the problem belongs +to metaphysics. It inheres in the idea of eternity and God. The Bible +neither creates it nor solves it. We may say it does not touch it. + +Certainly when St. Paul dwells upon the thought of divine +predestination he dwells upon it in order to emphasize that, through +all the vicissitudes of the world's history, a divine purpose runs; and +especially that God works out His universal purposes through specially +selected agents 'his elect,' on whom His choice rests for special ends +in accordance with an eternal design and intention. And the sense of +co-operating with an eternal purpose of God inspires and strengthens +him. For God will not drop His work by the way. Whom He did foreknow +or mark out beforehand for His divine purposes, them He also +foreordained or predestinated to sonship, and in due time called into +the number {68} of His elect, and justified them, that is, pardoned +their sins and gave them a new standing-ground in Christ, and glorified +or will glorify them by the gradual operation of His grace[22]. The +steps or moments of the divine action recognized in the Epistle to the +Romans are practically the same as those alluded to in the Epistle to +the Ephesians. There also is the eternal choice, and the +predestination to sonship, and at a particular time the call into the +Church, and the justification or remission of sins through the blood of +Christ, and the gradual promotion through sanctification to glory. And +the moral fruit of contemplating God's eternal purpose for His elect, +and the stages of His work upon them, is to be cheerful confidence of a +right sort. God will not drop them by the way, nor the work which they +are 'called' to accomplish. 'God who hath begun a good work will +perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ[23].' Wherever St. Paul +recognizes a movement towards good in the single soul or in the world, +he knows that it is no accidental or passing phase: it has its roots in +the eternal will, and unless we resist it in wilful obstinacy, the +eternal will shall at last {69} carry it on to perfection. 'There +shall never be one lost good.' + +It is not out of place to notice in this connexion how closely akin is +St. Paul's thought to the modern philosophy of evolution. Only to St. +Paul the slow process of cosmic or human evolution is in no kind of +opposition to the idea of divine design. + + +iii. + +[Sidenote: _The elect_] + +This predestinated body, the Church, is what in another word St. Paul +calls the 'elect' or 'chosen.' The idea of election has had a very +false turn given to it, partly through mistakes which have been already +alluded to, partly because the idea of election has been separated from +another idea with which in the Bible it is most closely associated, the +idea of a universal purpose to which the elect minister. No thought +can be more prominent in the Old Testament than the thought that some +men out of multitudes have been chosen by God to be in a special +relation of intimacy with Him. 'You only have I known, O Israel, of +all the families of the earth.' But this election to special knowledge +of God, and special spiritual opportunity, {70} carries with it a +corresponding responsibility. It is no piece of favouritism on God's +part. The greater our opportunity the more is required of us. 'You +only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore will I +visit upon you all your iniquities[24].' The fact is that the +principle of inequality in capacity and opportunity runs through the +whole world both in individuals and in societies. A great genius or a +great nation has special privileges and opportunities, but also, in the +sight of God who judges men according to their opportunities, special +responsibilities. But also (and this is by far the most important +point) the special vocation of every elect individual or body is for +the sake of others[25]. It is God's method to work through the few +upon the many. That is the law of ministry which binds all the world +of strong and weak, of rich and poor, of learned and ignorant, into +one. Thus Abraham had been chosen alone, but it was that, through his +seed, all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Israel was +exclusively the people of God, but it was in order that all nations +should learn from them at last the word of God. The apostles were {71} +the first 'elect' in Christ with a little Jewish company. 'We'--so St. +Paul speaks of the Jewish Christians--'we who had before hoped in +Christ.' But it was to show the way to all the Gentiles ('ye also, who +have heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation,') who +were also to constitute 'God's own possession' and His 'heritage.' The +purpose to be realized is a universal one: it is the re-union of man +with man, as such, by being all together reunited to God in one body. +And this idea is to have application even beyond the bounds of +humanity. Unity is the principle of all things as God created the +world. 'In Christ,' St. Paul writes to the Colossians, 'all things +consist' or 'hold together in one system[26].' It is only sin, whether +in man or in the dimly-known spiritual world which lies beyond, which +has spoiled this unity, and in separating the creatures from God has +separated them from one another. And the Church of the reconciliation +is God's elect body to represent a divine purpose of restoration far +wider than itself--extending in fact to all creation. It is the divine +purpose, with a view to 'a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to +sum up' or 'bring together again in unity' all things in {72} Christ; +the things in the heaven, the dim spiritual forces of which we have +only glimpses, and the things upon the earth which we know so much +better. + +This great and rich idea of the election of the Church as a special +body to fulfil a universal purpose of recovery, cannot be expressed +better than in the very ancient prayer which forms part of the paschal +ceremonies of the Latin liturgy. 'O God of unchangeable power and +eternal light, look favourably on Thy whole Church, that wonderful and +sacred mystery, and by the tranquil operation of Thy perpetual +providence, carry out the work of man's salvation; and let the whole +world feel and see that things which were cast down are being raised +up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and all things +are returning to perfection through Him, from whom they took their +origin, even through our Lord Jesus Christ.' + + +iv. + +[Sidenote: _The divine secret disclosed_] + +This universal reconciliation through a catholic church was God's +eternal purpose, but it was kept secret from the ages and the +generations, only at last to be disclosed to His {73} apostles and +prophets. The word 'mystery' in the New Testament means mostly a +divine secret which has now been disclosed. Just as the secret of +Nebuchadnezzar's dream, i.e. the purpose of God in the then order of +the world, was imparted to Daniel, so now the great disclosure of the +divine mystery or secret has been made, primarily indeed to apostles +and prophets, but through them to the whole body of the faithful. The +faithful must of course begin by receiving that simplest spiritual +nourishment which is milk for babes. They are to welcome the divine +forgiveness of their sins in Christ, and the gift of new life through +Him in their baptism and the laying-on of hands. They are to be taught +the rudimentary truths and moral lessons which are the first principles +of the oracles of Christ. But they are not to stop with this. They +are, and they are all of them without exception[27], intended to grow +up to the full apprehension of the wisdom of the 'perfect' or perfectly +initiated. They are to dwell upon the divine secret, now revealed, of +God's purpose for the universe through the church till their whole +heart and intellect and imagination is enlightened and enriched by it. + + +{74} + +v. + +[Sidenote: _It is all of grace_] + +And is the greatness of this exaltation and knowledge vouchsafed to the +Church to be a renewed occasion of pride--that spiritual pride, the +fatal results of which had already become apparent through the +rejection of the Jews? No: unless through a complete mistake, the very +opposite must be the result. The strength of human pride, as St. Paul +had seen long ago, lay in the idea that man could have merit of his +own, face to face with God: could have good works which were his own +and not God's, and which gave him a claim upon God. That Jewish +doctrine of merit[28] had been convicted of utter falsity in St. Paul's +own spiritual experience. He had found himself brought to acknowledge, +like any sinner of the Gentiles, his simple dependence upon the divine +compassion for forgiveness and acceptance. This spiritual experience +of St. Paul was only the realizing through one channel of what is, in +fact, an elementary truth about human nature. The idea of human +independence is demonstrably a false idea. As a matter of fact, man +draws his life, physical and spiritual, from {75} sources beyond +himself--from the one source, God. In constant dependence on God he +lives necessarily from moment to moment, whether to breathe, or think, +or will. The freedom of will which he has is not really originative or +creative power, but a capacity of voluntary correspondence with what is +given him from beyond himself. In that power of correspondence, or +refusal to correspond, man's liberty begins and ends. He creates +nothing. It is not that man does something and then God does the rest. +The truth is that when we track man's good action to its root in his +will, we find for certain that God has been beforehand with him. The +good he does is in correspondence with moral and physical laws and +forces of the universe, or, in other words, with divine powers and +purposes lent and suggested to him. To attempt independence of God, to +have schemes and plans absolutely one's own, is to work arbitrarily and +ignorantly, and ultimately to fail and to know that one has failed. +Thus men, when they realize the facts of their condition, must depend, +and rejoice to depend, wholly upon God as for forgiveness where they +have done wrong, so also for suggestion and power that they may do +anything aright. There is {76} then no room for human pride. It is a +mistake. We come back to recognize, what St. Paul realized in his own +deep spiritual experience and taught the Church at the beginning. +Whatever is good in the world is all of divine initiation and of divine +grace. It is all, not to our glory, but (as St. Paul three times +repeats in the opening paragraphs of our epistle) 'to the praise of his +glory,' or 'to the praise of the glory of his grace which he freely +bestows on us' out of His pure love and goodwill. + + +[Sidenote: _St. Paul's leading thoughts_] + +These are the great leading thoughts which are in St. Paul's mind as he +begins to write to the Asiatic Christians. His heart, his imagination, +his intellect is full of the thought of the catholic society as it +exists in Christ, the extension of His life; of this society as the +outcome of an eternal and slow-working purpose of God; of this society, +as serving universal divine ends for humanity and for the universe; of +this society, as affording a sphere in which all men's faculties may be +enlightened and delighted with the depth and largeness of the divine +purpose; while his whole being is kept, safe from all the delusions of +pride, in continual and conscious dependence upon divine grace. {77} +With these thoughts reflected in our minds we shall find that we have +the main clue to the whole of the Epistle to the Ephesians, and more +particularly to all the words of the opening chapter, which St. Paul +begins with a great ascription of praise to God for the blessing of the +Church. + + +Blessed _be_ the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath +blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly _places_ in +Christ: even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, +that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having +foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto +himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of +the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved: +in whom we have our 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, having made known unto us +the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he +purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum +up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon +the earth; in him, _I say_, in whom also we were made a heritage, +having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh +all things after the counsel of his will; to the end that we should be +unto the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ: in +whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your +salvation,--in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy +Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance, unto the +redemption of _God's_ own possession, unto the praise of his glory. + + + +[1] Rom. viii. 29. + +[2] 1 Cor. xv. 23. + +[3] Eph. iv. 15, 16. + +[4] Eph. v. 32; Rev. xxi. 9. + +[5] 1 Cor. xv. 45; Rom. v. 12-19. + +[6] 1 Cor. xii. 12. + +[7] Acts xix. 1-7. + +[8] Rom. iii. 24-26. I have tried to develope St. Paul's hint. + +[9] Rom. iii. 25; Acts xiv. 16; Acts xvii. 30. + +[10] The earliest and simplest expression of the matter is that in St. +Paul's earliest epistle (1 Thess. v. 10), Christ 'died for us ... that +we should live together with him.' + +[11] Eph. i. 7; cf. ii. 13 ff. + +[12] Rom. ix. 21. + +[13] 1 Cor. xii. 22 ff. + +[14] Cf. St. Matt. xiii. 13-15; St. John xii. 39, 40. We are not (Rom. +ix. 17) told _why_ Pharaoh was brought out on the stage of history as +an example of God's hardening judgement. But no doubt there was a +moral reason. + +[15] Rom. ix-xi. + +[16] Rom. xi. 29. + +[17] Rom. xi. 33. + +[18] 1 Tim. ii. 4. + +[19] 1 Cor. ix. 27. + +[20] Rom. viii. 38, 39 + +[21] I am using the word here not in its Bible sense, for in the Bible +God is said to 'know' men in the sense of fixing His choice or approval +upon them; and to 'foreknow' is therefore to approve or choose +beforehand, as suitable instruments for a divine purpose. I am using +the word in its ordinary sense. + +[22] Rom. viii. 28-30. + +[23] Phil. i. 6. + +[24] Amos iii. 2. + +[25] On the Jewish idea of election, cf. app. note C, p. 261. + +[26] Col. i. 1. + +[27] Col. i. 28. + +[28] See app. note C, p. 257. + + + + +{78} + +DIVISION I. § 2. CHAPTER I. 15-23. + +_St. Paul's Prayer._ + +St. Paul follows up this first expression of the great thoughts that +fill his mind with a deep and comprehensive thanksgiving for that large +measure of correspondence with the divine purpose which is reported +from the Asiatic churches, and with a prayer for their full +enlightenment in heart and intellect. He prays that they may rise to +the true science of what their Christian calling, as fellow-inheritors +with the saints of the divine blessing, really means; and to an +adequate expectation of what God intends to do in them, on the analogy +of what He has already done in Christ their head. + + +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 {79} of the glory of his inheritance in +the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward +who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might +which he wrought in Christ, when 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 gave him to be head +over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him +that filleth all in all. + + +There is very little further explanation needed for this passage. But +three phrases may be noted:-- + +(1) St. Paul calls the Father 'the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,' as +our Lord Himself calls Him 'my God' (John xx. 17) in His resurrection +state. It is no doubt of Christ _as man_ that the Father is God; but +this relation of the Son as man to the Father depends upon an eternal +subordination in which the Son, even as God, stands to the Father from +whom He derives His divine life. The essential subordination of the +Son (and Spirit) to the Father as the one fount of Godhead, is +continually suggested in the New Testament; but it involves no +inferiority in Godhead, or subsequence in time--'nothing before or +after, nothing greater or less,' as the _Quicunque vult_ says. And it +conveys to us the moral lesson that a subordinate position is not to be +resented as if it were a dishonour. + +(2) The spirit of 'wisdom and revelation' vouchsafed to us is to enable +us to apprehend in a measure the divine 'wisdom and prudence[1]' +manifested in God's work of creation and redemption. The humility +which is content to correspond patiently and teachably with the method +of God is, as Francis Bacon was at pains to teach, of the essence of +all fruitful human science. + +(3) The expression 'the fulness' or 'the fulness of the Godhead[2]' +means the sum total of the divine attributes, which, instead of being +spread over different angelic mediators, as the Colossians were +disposed to imagine, are, by the divine will, all concentrated and +combined in the glorified Christ. And here St. Paul teaches the +Ephesian Christians that all that belongs to the glorified Christ is to +belong also to the Church, which is His body. It is Christ who gives +to all creatures whatever various gifts of life they have. He 'filleth +all in all'; that is, 'He filleth the whole universe with all variety +of {81} gifts.' But something much more than various gifts--the sum +total of all He is--He pours, or intends to pour, into the Church, so +that the Church as well as the Christ shall embody, and thus be +identified with, the fulness of the divine attributes. At present the +Church is this only ideally, or in the divine intention: the actually +existing Church has still much need of growth that her members 'may be +filled (as they are not at present) up to the measure of the divine +fulness'; or, in other words, up to 'the measure of the stature of the +fulness of the Christ[3].' + +The fulness, according to St. Paul's doctrine, is to be sought first in +the eternal God; then in the glorified Christ; then, through Him, in +the fully developed Church; and, finally, through the Church, in a +sense in the universe as a whole, when the work of redemption is done +and God is at last 'all in all' throughout His creation. + +It may be noticed that St. Paul, in this doctrine of 'the fulness,' is +thinking rather of the divine attributes as manifested, than as they +are in themselves: and of Christ, not as the eternal {82} Son of God, +but, more particularly, as incarnate and glorified. It was the 'good +pleasure' of the Father to fill the exalted Christ, the first-begotten +from the dead, with the fulness of divine glory and power as the reward +of the humility and love which He showed when He 'emptied himself in +taking the form of a servant[4].' This bestowal was no doubt a giving +anew to Him, as man and as head of the Church, what was eternally His +as Son of the Father. + +There is another interpretation adopted by Chrysostom in ancient times, +and by Dr. Hort among moderns, of the phrase 'the church which is his +body, the fulness of him who filleth all in all.' According to them +the Church is regarded as making the Christ complete. It is in this +sense the 'fulfilment' of Christ, because without the Church He would +be a head without its members: and then the rest of the sentence should +be translated differently--'the church which is his body, the +fulfilment of him who is fulfilled in all ways with all things.' But +this is decidedly less agreeable to the general use of the expression +'the fulness' in the epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians[5]. + +{83} + +[Sidenote: _Some practical lessons_] + +We may also pause to recognize one or two ways in which St. Paul's view +of the Christian religion, as exhibited in the opening of this epistle, +suggests special deficiencies among ourselves. + +(1) St. Paul's Christianity is a religion of thankfulness. This +epistle is a burst of exuberant praise. Yet he was himself a prisoner, +and the church of Ephesus, with the other Asiatic churches, was sorely +threatened with moral and spiritual perils of all kinds. The secret of +this thankfulness is that he looks straight away from himself and his +surroundings up to God. He measures the value of human life and work +not by what immediate experience suggests, but by what he knows of the +purpose of God. In spite of all the obstacles opposed by human +wilfulness and weakness and sin, he knows that His purpose will effect +itself: therefore he 'rejoices in the Lord always,' and no discouraging +circumstances can quench the springs of his rejoicing. Our +Christianity is apt to be of a very 'dutiful' kind. We mean to do our +duty, we attend church and go to our communions. But our hearts are +full of the difficulties, the hardships, {84} the obstacles which the +situation presents, and we go on our way sadly, downhearted and +despondent. We need to learn or learn anew from St. Paul that true +Christianity is inseparable from deep joy; and the secret of that joy +lies in a continual looking away from all else--away from sin and its +ways, and from the manifold hindrances to the good we would do--up to +God, His love, His purpose, His will. In proportion as we do look up +to Him we shall rejoice, and in proportion as we rejoice in the Lord +will our religion have tone and power and attractiveness. + +(2) St. Paul appeals to the Asiatic Christians not to become something +they are not, or to acquire some spiritual gift that they have not +received, but simply to realize what they already are, and to claim the +privileges of their baptized state. They are already 'adopted as +sons[6].' They have, like the Galatians, received 'the Spirit of +adoption.' The point now is that they should realize and put into +practice what already belongs to them. This mode of appeal is based on +the doctrine--in spite of its many perversions the most valuable +doctrine--of baptismal {85} regeneration. The false method of +appeal--as if careless Christians needed to _become_ sons of God--which +involves a false idea of 'regeneration,' has been so much identified +with popular Protestantism, that I cannot do better than quote some +very apposite remarks by the late Congregationalist teacher, Dr. Dale, +of blessed memory, from his noble commentary on this very epistle to +the Ephesians:-- + + +'This adoption of which Paul speaks is something more than a mere legal +and formal act, conveying certain high prerogatives. We are "called +the sons of God" because we are really made His sons by a new and +supernatural birth. Regeneration is sometimes described as though it +were merely a change in a man's principles of conduct in his character, +his tastes, his habits. The description is theologically false, and +practically most pernicious and misleading. If regeneration were +nothing more than this, we should have to speak of a man as being more +or less regenerate, according to the extent of his moral reformation; +but this would be contrary to the idiom of New Testament thought. That +a great change in the moral region of a man's nature will certainly +follow regeneration is true; this change, however, is not regeneration +itself, but the effect of regeneration; and the moral change which +regeneration produces varies in many ways in different men. In some +the change is immediate, decisive, and apparently complete. In others +it is extremely gradual, and may be for a long time hardly discernible. +In some regenerate men grave sins remain for a time unforsaken, perhaps +unrecognized. Look at these Ephesian Christians. {86} The Apostle has +to tell them that they must put away falsehood and speak the truth; +that they must give up thieving, and foul talk, and covetousness, and +gross sensual sin. + +'He addresses them as "saints." He describes them as having been +chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and foreordained +by God unto adoption as sons unto Himself; and yet he knows that they +are in danger of committing these base and flagrant offences. It was +hard for them to escape from the vices of heathenism. They were +regenerate; but as yet, in some of them, the moral effects of +regeneration were very incomplete, the change which regeneration was +ultimately certain to produce in their moral life had only begun, and +it was checked and hindered by a thousand hostile influences. + +'The simplest and most obvious account of regeneration is the truest. +When a man is regenerated he receives a new life and receives it from +God. In itself regeneration is not a change in his old life, but the +beginning of a new life which is conferred by the immediate and +supernatural act of the Holy Spirit. The man is really "born again." +A higher nature comes to him than that which he inherited from his +human parents; he is "begotten of God," "born of the Spirit."' + + +This passage, especially as coming from Dr. Dale, supplies a very +valuable corrective to still current religious mistakes. But surely we +have no ground for saying that the moral effects 'certainly' follow +regeneration, or follow it in all cases. It is not 'ultimately certain +to produce' them in all persons, but only in those who {87} exhibit, +sooner or later, the moral correspondence of a converted will. + +(3) Most Christians who have reacted from Calvinism and its false +doctrine of predestination have ceased to think about the truth which +it represents. But we need to make a right instead of a wrong use of +these great ideas of predestination and election, and thus to get rid +of all the miserable narrowness and hopelessness which settles down +upon us when we allow ourselves to think of religion as mainly a +process of saving our own souls, and when we live only in our present +feelings. + +What can be more inspiring and strengthening than to believe that there +is an eternal purpose of God working itself out in the universe through +all its stages and parts; that this eternal purpose includes us, and +has fastened upon us individually and brought us into Christ and His +Church, to make true men of us; and that it has done all this not for +our own sakes only, but to disclose something more of God's glory and +for the fulfilment of great and universal purposes, which are to +radiate out even from us? Wherever St. Paul sees the hand of God in +present experience, at once his mind works back to an eternal will and +therefore also {88} forward to an eternal and adequate result. And +this backward and forward look transfigures the present with a new +glory and a fresh hope. So will it be with us if this same +characteristically Christian way of looking at any apparent movement of +God in the present, in our own souls or in the world outside us, +becomes habitually and instinctively ours. God never acts on a sudden +impulse or without purpose of continuance. Certainly He can be trusted +not to stop and leave things unfinished. When He hath begun any good +work He will assuredly perfect it, if we will let Him. + + + +[1] i. 8. + +[2] See Col. i. 19; ii. 9; cf. ii. 3, 'in Christ are all the treasures +of wisdom and knowledge hidden.' + +[3] Eph. iii. 19; iv. 13. It is not certain that by Him 'who filleth +all in all' St. Paul does not mean the Father rather than the Son. But +iv. 10 supports the interpretation given above. + +[4] Col. i. 19; Phil. ii. 9-11. + +[5] And the word rendered 'filleth' may have a middle and not a passive +sense, the idea being perhaps suggested that God 'fills all things for +his own purpose.' + +[6] That is, they were 'predestined to an adoption' (Eph. i. 5) which +it is implied they have already received. + + + + +{89} + +DIVISION I. § 3. CHAPTER II. 1-10. + +_Sin and redemption._ + +[Sidenote: _The depth of sin_] + +In the first chapter of the epistle, St. Paul has had before his eyes +the glory of God's redemptive work--the wonder of His purpose of pure +love for the universe through the Church. His imagination has kindled +at the thought of the length, the breadth, the height of the divine +operation:--the length, for it is an eternal purpose slowly worked out +through the ages; the breadth, for it is to extend over the whole +universe; the height, for it is to carry men up to no lower point than +the throne of Christ in the heavenly places. But now he stops to call +the attention of his converts to what we may call a 'fourth dimension' +of the divine operation--its depth. How wonderfully low God had +stooped, in order to reach the point to which man had sunk! The +Asiatic Christians are bidden to ponder anew, and by {90} contrast to +their present experience, the life which they had once lived before +they knew Christ or were found in Him. + +Let us read the apostle's words, and then consider them in detail:-- + + +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. + + +We naturally put as a parallel to these and other verses of this +epistle (iv. 17-19) the terrible passage in Romans i, where St. Paul +describes the developement of sin in the Gentile world; how it had its +origin in the refusal of the human will to recognize God, how out of +the perversion of will it spread to the blinding of the understanding, +and then to giving an overmastering power and an unnatural distortion +to the passions, so that a state of moral lawlessness was produced and +maintained. + +What are we to say as to the truth of these accounts of the moral +condition of the heathen world? No doubt there is a good deal to be +{91} said on the other side. Roman simplicity and virtue, and the +sanctity of domestic life, had not, as contemporary inscriptions and +historical records make perfectly evident, faded out of the Roman +Empire, and philanthropy and love of the poor were recognized +excellences. Nor had philosophic virtue vanished from the schools[1]. +And all this St. Paul would not be slow to recognize. In the Epistle +to the Romans[2] itself he speaks in language, such as a Stoic might +have used, of those who, uninstructed by any special divine law, were a +law unto themselves, in that they showed the practical effect of the +law written in their hearts. We must therefore recognize that St. Paul +is, in the passage we are now considering, speaking ideally; that is to +say, he is speaking of the general tendency of the heathen life, just +as he speaks ideally of the Christian church in view of its general +tendency; and he is speaking of it as he mostly knew it himself in the +notoriously corrupt cities of the east, Antioch and Ephesus. Ephesus, +in particular, had an extraordinarily bad character for vice as much as +for superstition; and what {92} St. Paul says of the heathen life does +not in fact make up a stronger indictment or present a blacker picture +than what is said by a Stoic philosopher, perhaps his contemporary, who +wrote at Ephesus, under the shelter of the name of the great Ephesian +of ancient days, Heracleitus[3]. Moreover, St. Paul appeals +unhesitatingly to the actual experience of these Asiatic Christians, +and there is no reason to doubt that their consciences would have +responded to what he said to them about the old life out of which they +had been brought. + +Let us now analyze a little more exactly this account St. Paul gives of +the state of sin which he saw around him in contemporary society. + +(1) 'Ye walked according to the course of this world.' By 'this world' +St. Paul, like the other New Testament writers, means practically human +society as it organizes itself for its own purposes of pleasure or +profit without thought of God, or at least without thought of God as He +truly is. These Asiatic Christians, then, had formerly ordered their +life and conduct according to the demands and expectations of the +worldly world, obeying its motives, governed {93} by its fashions and +its laws, and indifferent to those considerations which it repudiated +or ignored. + +(2) But to belong to the world in this sense is, in St. Paul's mind, to +belong to the kingdom of Satan. The worldly world had its origin from +a false desire of independence on man's part. He did not want to be +controlled by God; he wanted to live his own life for himself. But in +liberating himself according to his wishes from the control of God he +fell, according to St. Paul's belief, under another control. Rebellion +had been in the universe before man. There are invisible rebel +spirits, of whose real existence and influence St. Paul had no more +doubt than any other Jew who was not a Sadducee. And, indeed, our Lord +had so spoken of good and evil spirits as to assure His disciples of +their existence and influence. These rebel wills are unseen by us and +in most respects unknown, but they organize and give a certain +coherence and continuity to evil in the world. There thus arises a +sort of kingdom of evil over against the kingdom of God, and those who +will not surrender themselves to God and His kingdom, become perforce +servants of Satan and his kingdom. It is in view of this truth that +St. Paul {94} tells these Asiatic Christians that they used to walk +according 'to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now +worketh in the sons of disobedience.' (These evil spirits were, by a +natural way of thinking, located in the air, according to the +contemporary Jewish ideas; and the idea is, if nothing more, a +convenient metaphor for a subtle and pervading influence.) This view +of their old life, as a bondage to evil spirits, is one which would be +as easily realized by inhabitants of Asiatic cities, where men were +largely occupied in finding charms against bad spirits, as by modern +Indian converts from devil-worship. Christianity recognizes a basis of +reality in the superstition from which at the same time it delivers men. + +(3) The main characteristic of this old godless life had been +lawlessness, but St. Paul here, as in his Epistle to the Romans, +associates Jews with Gentiles, 'we' with 'you,' in the same +condemnation. The spirits, or real selves of the Christians, had been, +in their former state, dominated by their appetites or their +imaginations. They were occupied in doing what their flesh or their +thoughts suggested. It is noticeable that St. Paul puts 'the mind' +side by side with 'the flesh' as a cause of sin, the intellectual {95} +side by side with the sensual and emotional nature. We often in fact, +in our age, have experience of people who are not 'sensual' in the +ordinary sense, but who live lives which have no goodness, no +perseverance, no order, no fruitfulness in them, because they are the +slaves of the ideas of their own mind as they present themselves, now +one, now another; unregulated ideas being in fact, just as much as +unregulated passions, fluctuating, arbitrary, and tyrannous. Nothing +is more truly needed to-day than the discipline of the imagination. + +(4) Men living such a life of bondage are described further as 'dead +through their trespasses and sins.' St. Paul means by death to +describe any state of intellectual and moral insensibility. He would +have the Christian 'dead' to the motives and voices of the worldly and +sensual world. So in the same way he reminds the Asiatic Christians +that to all that life of God in which they were now fruitfully living, +they had at one time been insensible or dead--that is, blind to those +things which now seemed most apparent, unterrified at what would now +seem most horrible, unmoved by what now seemed most fascinating. And +if this was their state viewed in itself, in their relation to God {96} +they were, like the Jews also, 'children of wrath.' This expression is +used in our catechism to describe 'original sin,' that is to say, that +moral disorder or weakness which belongs to our nature as we inherit +it, before we have had the opportunity of personal wrong doing. But +the application of the phrase by St. Paul is to describe rather the +state of _actual_ sin in which Jew and Gentile alike 'naturally' lived. +It implies not that God hated them, for in the whole context St. Paul +is emphasizing 'the great love wherewith he loved them'; but that there +was a necessary moral incompatibility between them as they then were, +and God as He essentially and permanently is. God is so necessarily +holy that His being is, and must be, intolerable to the unholy. It +must be the case that at the bare idea of the divine coming, 'sinners +in Zion' should be 'afraid,' and should say one to another, 'who among +us shall dwell with the devouring fire, who among us shall dwell with +everlasting burnings[4]?' God necessarily presents Himself as a terror +to the godless; and from the point of view of God that means that our +sinful nature is the subject of His necessary wrath. He resents the +{97} perversion, the spoiling, of His own handiwork in us. He cannot +tolerate uncleanness, rebellion, unbelief. This wrath of God, in the +case of those whose wills are set to 'hate the light,' is directed +against men's persons. But so far as sin is only in our natures, and +is something of which we are the unwilling subjects, it appeals only to +God's compassion to lead Him to apply effective remedies. His wrath is +so far against sin, not against sinners; and none could know better +than these Asiatic Christians what lengths of resourcefulness and +self-sacrifice the divine compassion had gone in order to redeem men +from its tyranny. Thus St. Paul continues:-- + + +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 Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and raised us up with him, +and made us to sit with him in the heavenly _places_, in Christ Jesus: +that in the ages to come he might shew 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. + + +[Sidenote: _The method of redemption_] + +Here is St. Paul's description of the method of God in dealing with men +when they were in {98} that state of sin, the conditions of which he +has just summarised. We take note of the chief points in the method. + +(1) St. Paul has in mind here, as always, the divine predestination. +There was an eternal purpose in the divine mind to make St. Paul and +those to whom he wrote such as they were now on the way to become; it +was a purpose not merely general, but extending to details. It +belongs, in fact, to the divine perfection, that God does nothing, and +purposes nothing, in mere vague generality. The universal range and +scope of the divine activity as over all creatures whatsoever, hinders +not at all its perfect application to detail. Thus God had +'predestined,' or held in His eternal purpose, not merely the state of +Christians as a whole or even of the Asiatic Christians in particular, +but the details of conduct which He willed them individually to +exhibit. It is the particular 'good works' which God 'prepared +beforehand in order that they should walk in them[5].' + +(2) What God predestined He accomplished first in summary 'in Christ +Jesus.' In Him all that God meant to do for man was exhibited {99} and +accomplished as God's own and perfect handiwork, as an effective and +final disclosure. Men are to look for everything, for every kind of +development and progress, in Christ, but for nothing outside or beyond +Him. All is there--'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' all +'the fulness of the Godhead,' all the perfections of mankind, the +reconciliation of all seeming opposites. All is brought to the highest +possible level of attainment, 'the heavenly place.' + +(3) What had been summarily realized in Christ is progressively +realized in those who are 'in Him.' Undeterred by their condition of +moral and spiritual death, God, out of the heart of His rich mercy, +simply because of the great love He bore to men, has brought them, by +one act of regeneration, into the new life of His Son; has 'quickened +them together with Christ,' that is, has introduced them, at a definite +moment of initiation, into the life which has once for all triumphed +over death, and been glorified in the heavenly places; and has +introduced them into this life in order that, by the gradual +assimilation of its forces, future ages might witness in them all the +wealth of the goodness which had lain hid in the original act {100} of +incorporation. Meanwhile, while their growth is yet imperfect, God +sees those who are Christ's as 'in Christ': imputes His merits to them, +so we may legitimately say: that is, sees them and deals with them in +view of the fact that Christ's Spirit is at work in them; sees them and +deals with them 'not as they are, but as they are becoming.' _This_ +doctrine of imputation, instead of being full of moral unreality, is in +accordance with all that is deepest in the philosophy of evolution. +For are we not continually being taught that in order to take a true +view of the value of any single thing, we must view it not as it is at +a particular moment, but in the light of its tendency? We must ask not +merely 'what,' but 'whence' and 'whither.' + +(4) It is all pure grace--the free outpouring of unmerited love. The +Christians are 'God's workmanship,' His new creation. He, in Christ, +had wrought the work all by Himself. They, the subjects of it, had +contributed nothing. It remained for them only to welcome and to +correspond. This is the summing up of man's legitimate attitude +towards God. This is faith. It is at its first stage simply the +acceptance of a divine mercy in all its undeserved and unconditional +largeness; but it passes at once, as {101} soon as ever the nature of +the divine gift is realized, into a glad co-operation with the divine +purpose. + +This then is, in outline, the method of the great salvation, of which +the Asiatic Christians had been and were the subjects. + + + +[1] On the virtuous aspect of the contemporary empire, see Renan, _Les +Apôtres_, pp. 306 ff. + +[2] Rom. ii. 14. + +[3] See app. note B, p. 255. + +[4] Is. xxxiii. 14, 15. + +[5] Cf. app. note C, p. 263, for a similar thought in a contemporary +Jewish book. + + + + +{102} + +DIVISION I. § 4. CHAPTER II. 11-22. + +_Salvation in the church._ + +[Sidenote: _The salvation social_] + +God's deliverance or 'salvation' of mankind is a deliverance of +individuals indeed, but of individuals in and through a society; not of +isolated individuals, but of members of a body. + +It is and has been a popular religious idea that the primary aim of the +gospel is to produce saved individuals; and that it is a matter of +secondary importance that the saved individuals should afterwards +combine to form churches for their mutual spiritual profit, and for +promoting the work of preaching the gospel. But this way of conceiving +the matter is a reversal of the order of ideas in the Bible. 'The +salvation' in the Bible is supposed usually 'to reach the individual +through the community[1].' God's dealings with us in redemption thus +follow the lines of His dealings with us in our natural developement. +For man stands {103} out in history as a 'social animal.' His +individual developement, by a divine law of his constitution, is only +rendered possible because he is first of all a member of some society, +tribe, or nation, or state. Through membership in such a society +alone, and through the submissions and limitations on his personal +liberty which such membership involves, does he become capable of any +degree of free or high developement as an individual. This law, then, +of man's nature appears equally in the method of his redemption. Under +the old covenant it was to members of the 'commonwealth of Israel' that +the blessings of the covenant belonged. Under the new covenant St. +Paul still conceives of the same commonwealth as subsisting (as we +shall see directly), and as fulfilling no less than formerly the same +religious functions. True, it has been fundamentally reconstituted and +enlarged to include the believers of all nations, and not merely one +nation; but it is still the same commonwealth, or polity, or church; +and it is still through the church that God's 'covenant' dealings reach +the individual. + +It is for this reason that St. Paul goes on to describe the state of +the Asiatic Christians, {104} before their conversion, as a state of +alienation from the 'commonwealth of Israel.' They were 'Gentiles in +the flesh,' that is by the physical fact that they were not Jews; and +were contemptuously described as the uncircumcised by those who, as +Jews, were circumcised by human hands. And he conceives this to be +only another way of describing alienation from God and His manifold +covenants of promise, and from the Messiah, the hope of Israel and of +mankind. They were without the Church of God, and therefore presumably +without God and without hope. + + +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, +alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the +covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. +But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the +blood of Christ. + + +This alienation of Gentiles from the divine covenant was represented in +the structure of the temple at Jerusalem by a beautifully-worked marble +balustrade, separating the outer from the inner court, upon which stood +columns at regular intervals, bearing inscriptions, some in Greek and +some in Latin characters, to warn {105} aliens not to enter the holy +place. One of the Greek inscriptions was discovered a few years ago, +and is now to be read in the Museum of Constantinople. It runs thus: +'No alien to pass within the balustrade round the temple and the +enclosure. Whosoever shall be caught so doing must blame himself for +the penalty of death which he will incur.' + +This 'middle wall of partition' was vividly in St. Paul's memory. He +was in prison at Rome at the time of his writing this epistle, in part +at least because he was believed to have brought Trophimus, an +Ephesian, within the sacred enclosure at Jerusalem. 'He brought Greeks +also into the temple, and hath defiled the holy place.' + +It was this 'middle wall of partition,' representing the exclusiveness +of Jewish ordinances, which St. Paul rejoiced to believe Christ had +abolished. He had made Jew and Gentile one by bringing both alike to +God in one body and on a new basis. + +There were in fact two partitions in the Jewish temple of great +symbolical importance. There was the veil which hid the holy of +holies, and symbolized the alienation of man from God[2]; and there was +'the middle wall of partition' {106} already described, representing +the exclusion of the world from the privileges of the people of God. +The Pharisaic Jews ignored the spiritual lessons of the first +partition, and devoutly believed in the permanence of the second. But +Saul, while yet a Pharisee, had felt the reality of the first, and had +found in his own experience that the abolition of this first barrier by +Christ involved also the annihilation of the second. + +[Sidenote: _The breaking down of partitions_] + +It is in the Epistle to the Colossians that he lays stress upon the +abolition in Christ of the enmity between man and God. 'It was the +good pleasure of the Father ... through him to reconcile all things +unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.' 'You, +being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh +... did he quicken together with Christ, having forgiven us all our +trespasses; having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was +against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out of the +way, nailing it to the cross.' So with the help of various metaphors +does St. Paul strive to express the mighty truth that, by the shedding +of Christ's blood, that is to say by His sacrifice of perfected +obedience, the way had been opened for the forgiveness of our sins and +our {107} reconciliation to God in one life, one Spirit. But the +symbols and instruments of that former alienation from God which St. +Paul had experienced so bitterly, were to his mind the 'ordinances' of +the Jewish law. These, he had come to feel, had no other function than +to awaken and deepen the sense of sin which they were powerless to +overcome. They were nothing but 'a bond written against us'; a +continual record of condemnation. To trust in the observance of +ordinances was to remain an unreconciled sinner, alienated in mind and +unpurified in heart. On the other hand, to have faith in Jesus and +receive from Him the unmerited gift of the divine pardon and the Spirit +of sonship was, for a Jew, to cast away all that trust in the +observance of the ordinances of his nation which was so dear to his +heart. It was at once to place himself among the sinners of the +Gentiles. For in Jesus Christ all men were indeed brought near to God, +but not as meritorious Jews; rather as common men and common sinners, +needing and accepting all alike the undeserved mercy of a heavenly +Father. Thus it was that Christ, in breaking down one partition, had +broken down the other also. In opening the way to God by a simple +human trust in a {108} heavenly Father, and not by the complicated +arrangements of a special law, He had put all men on the same level of +need and of acceptance. He had not indeed abolished the covenant or +the covenant people, but He had enlarged its area and altered its +basis: there was still to be one visible body or people of the +covenant, but membership in it was to be open to all, Jew and Gentile +alike, who would feel their need of and put their trust in Jesus. This +is what St. Paul proceeds to express, and little more need be added to +explain his words. In the 'blood' or 'blood-shedding' of Jesus--that +is, His self-sacrifice for men, His obedience carried to the point of +the surrender of His life--a way had been opened to the Father that was +purely human, that belonged to the Gentiles who had been 'far off' as +well as to Jews who were already 'nigh' in the divine covenant. And in +being brought near to God by faith, and not by Jewish ordinances, Jew +and Gentile had been reconciled on a common basis--the two had been +made one in 'the flesh,' that is, the manhood of Christ, for no other +reason than because the 'law of commandments contained in (special +Jewish) ordinances,' which had hitherto been the basis of separation, +was now once for all {109} 'abolished.' Henceforth there was one new +man, or new manhood, in Christ, in which all men were, potentially at +least, reconciled to God and to one another by His self-sacrifice upon +the cross. And to the knowledge of this new manhood all men were being +gradually brought by the 'preaching of peace' or of the gospel, which +had its origin from Jesus crucified and risen, and which, even now that +Jesus was invisibly acting through His apostolic and other ministers, +St. Paul attributes directly to Him. + +[Sidenote: _The admission of Gentiles_] + + +But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the +blood of Christ. 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 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. + + +Now we can turn from the negative to the positive statement, and +observe what St. Paul says of the new privileges of the once heathen +converts. He pictures them under four metaphors, each describing a +social state. + +{110} + +(1) They are citizens in the holy state, the commonwealth of the people +consecrated to God--citizens with full rights, and no longer strangers +or unenfranchised residents (sojourners). + +(2) More intimately still, they belong to the family or household of +God. + +(3) They are being built all together into a sanctuary for God to dwell +in--a holy structure of which the foundation stones are the apostles, +and the Christian prophets who were their companions; and of which the +corner-stone, determining the lines of the building and compacting it +into one, is Jesus Christ, according to the word of God by Isaiah, +'Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation stone, a tried stone, a precious +corner stone of sure foundation.' + +(4) But the metaphor of the building passes into the metaphor of the +growing plant. Christ is, as St. Peter says, 'a _living_ stone[3].' +He not only determines the lines of the spiritual structure, but He +pervades the whole of it as a presence and spirit, so that every other +human 'stone' is also alive and growing with His life. + + +So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are +fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the {111} 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. + + +These are indeed metaphors expressive of glorious realities, which have +no doubt become dulled in meaning through a conventional Christianity, +which involves no sacrifice and therefore attains no sense of +blessedness, but which a little meditation may easily restore to +something of their original freshness. + +(1) The idea of the chosen people all through the Old Testament is that +they are as a whole consecrated to God. Priests and kings appointed by +God to their several offices may indeed fulfil special functions in the +national life, yet the fundamental idea is never lost that the entire +nation is holy, 'a kingdom of priests.' It is because this is true +that the prophets can appeal as they do to the people in general, as +well as to priests and rulers, as sharing altogether the responsibility +of the national life. Now the whole of this idea is transferred, only +deepened and intensified, to the Christian Church. That too has its +divinely-ordained ministers, its differentiation of functions in the +one body, but the whole {112} body is priestly, and all are +citizens--not merely residents but citizens, that is, intelligent +participators in a common corporate life consecrated to God. How truly +realized this idea was in the early Christian communities, St. Paul's +letters are our best witnesses. They are really--except the pastoral +epistles--letters to the churches and not to the clergy. It is the +whole body which is at Thessalonica and Corinth to concern itself with +the exercise of moral discipline[4]--the whole body in the Galatian +churches and at Colossae who are to concern themselves with the +apprehension and protection of the full Christian truth. They are all +to be 'perfectly initiated' in Christ Jesus, full participators in the +affairs of the divine society[5]. Whatever needs to be said afterwards +about the special functions of special officers, this is the first +thing to be said and recognized; and it gives us a profound sense of +the distance we have fallen from our ideal. The laity, it is generally +understood among us, are to come to church and perhaps to communion, +are to accept the ministries of religion at marriages and funerals, and +are to subscribe a little money to religious objects; but they may +leave it to the clergy, as a matter of course, to carry on {113} the +business of religion--that is, worship and doctrine, for discipline has +been dropped out--and confine themselves to a certain amount of +irresponsible criticism of the sermons of the clergy and their +proceedings generally. + +[Sidenote: _The catholic church_] + +For this state of things--this very false sacerdotalism--the +responsibility is generally laid at the door of 'clerical arrogance.' +It is not necessary to consider how large a factor in the result +clerical arrogance has really been, for certainly what alone has given +the clergy the opportunity to put themselves in false isolation, and +what has been an immensely more powerful factor in the general result, +has been the spiritual apathy of the mass of church members, an apathy +which began as soon as the Christian profession began to cost men +little or nothing. + +Are we to set to work to revive St. Paul's ideal of the life of a +Church? If so, what we need is not more Christians, but better +Christians. We want to make the moral meaning of church membership +understood and its conditions appreciated. We want to make men +understand that it costs something to be a Christian; that to be a +Christian, that is a Churchman, is to be an intelligent participator in +a corporate life consecrated to God, and to concern {114} oneself +therefore, as a matter of course, in all that touches the corporate +life--its external as well as its spiritual conditions. For the houses +people live in, their wages, their social and commercial relations to +one another, their amusements, the education they receive, the +literature they read, these, no less truly than religious forces +strictly so called, affect intimately the health and well-being of any +society of men. We Christians are fellow-citizens together in the +commonwealth that is consecrated to God, a commonwealth of mortal men +with bodies as well as souls. + +(2) But St. Paul also describes the Church as the 'household of God.' +When our Lord was speaking to St. Peter about the ministry which was +being entrusted to the apostles, He said to him, 'Who then is the +faithful and wise steward whom his Lord shall set over his household to +give them their portion of food in due season[6]?' This description +opens to us part of the meaning of the divine household. A household +is a place where a family is provided for, where there is a regular and +orderly supply of ordinary needs. And the Church is the divine +household in which God has provided stewards to make {115} regular +spiritual provision for men, so that they shall feel and know +themselves members of a family, understood, sympathized with, helped, +encouraged, disciplined, fed. What in fact are the sacraments and +sacramental rites, what are baptism, confirmation and communion, +marriage and ordination, the administration of the word of God, the +dealings with the penitent, the sick, the dead, but the 'portions of +food in due season,' the orderly distribution of the bread of life in +the family or household of God? + +But there is another idea which, in St. Paul's mind, attaches itself +strongly to the idea of the 'divine family.' It is that in this +household we are sons and not servants--that is intelligent +co-operators with God, and not merely submissive slaves. It is +noticeable how often he speaks with horror of Christians allowing +themselves again to be 'subject to ordinances,' or to 'the weak and +beggarly rudiments,' the alphabet of that earlier education when even +children are treated as slaves under mere obedience. 'Ye observe days, +and months, and seasons, and years, I am afraid of you[7].' 'Why do ye +subject yourselves to ordinances, handle not, taste not, touch not[8].' +It is perfectly true to say that what {116} St. Paul is deprecating is +a return to Jewish or pagan observances. But this is not all. He +demands not a change of observance only, but a change of spirit. Their +attitude towards observances as such is to be different. Not that St. +Paul does not insist on that readiness to obey reasonable authority +which is a condition of corporate life, or would hesitate to lay stress +upon corporate religious acts in the Christian body. The truth is very +far from that. 'We have no such custom, neither the churches of God,' +is an argument which ought to be sufficient to suppress eccentricity. +To 'keep the traditions' is a mark of a good Christian[9]. 'A man that +is heretical' (or rather 'factious') after the first and second +admonition is to be 'refused'[10]. Government is to be a constant +element in the Christian life. But the character of authority and of +obedience is to be changed. The authority is to be reasonable +authority, and the obedience intelligent obedience. Passive obedience +to an authority which does not explain itself, whether in a spiritual +director or in the Church as a whole, St. Paul would have thought of +meanly as a Christian virtue. And the multiplication of authoritative +observances he would have dreaded as a {117} bondage. Our Lord was +very unwilling to give His disciples, when He was on earth, much +direction. And St. Paul is true to his Master's spirit. Our life +should be ordered by principles, rather than directed in detail. For +to rely upon direction from outside dwarfs our sense of personal +responsibility, and personal relationship to the divine Spirit. A +certain amount of confusion, hesitation, difference, due to men feeling +their way, due to their different individualities having free scope, +St. Paul would apparently have thought preferable to that sort of order +which is the product of a very strong and exacting external government, +and to an undue exaltation of the virtue of passive obedience. + +(3) St. Paul describes the Church as a sanctuary which is gradually to +be built for God to dwell in. We remember how our Lord had said of the +temple at Jerusalem, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will +raise it up.' 'He spake,' St. John explains, 'of the temple of his +body[11].' That--His own humanity proved triumphant over death--was to +be henceforth the tabernacle of God's presence among men. Where that +is God is, and the true worship of the Father in spirit and in truth. +But that body, raised again {118} the third day and become 'quickening +Spirit' as the body of the risen Christ, takes within its influence the +whole circle of believers. The 'body of Christ,' which is God's +temple, comes to mean the Church which lives in Christ's life, and +worships in Christ's Spirit. This is still the Church of the fathers +of the old covenant, but fundamentally reconstituted. God, as St. +James perceived[12], was fulfilling His promise to 'build again the +tabernacle of David which had fallen.' It was being built anew upon +the apostles and their companions the prophets, the immediate +ambassadors of Christ, as foundation-stones of the renewed building, +who themselves have their positions determined and secured by Christ +Jesus as chief corner-stone. It was a spiritual fabric combining, like +a Gothic cathedral, various parts or 'several buildings,' with their +distinctive characteristics, all however united in one construction, +one great sanctuary of a redeemed humanity in which God dwells. + +The metaphor suggests the combination of national and individual +differences in real unity. It encourages us to pay due regard to the +free developement of our own characters and capacities, but also to +develope ourselves as parts of {119} a greater whole, always +remembering that the work of a Christian individual or a local church +is in God's sight measured, not by its isolated result, but by the +contribution it makes to the life of the whole body. An eccentric +individuality, a schismatic developement is, even in proportion to its +strength, a source of weakness to the whole. By its relation to the +whole life of the Church all Christian effort must be both invigorated +and restrained. + +The metaphor suggests further that the social organization of the +Church is an organization for worship. It is a house and a +citizenship, because it is also a sanctuary. The strength of corporate +Christianity is to be measured by the vitality of corporate worship. A +church life in which the eucharist is not the centre, for all the +vigour which it may show in learning, or preaching, or philanthropy, is +after all but a maimed life. + +(4) But the Church, as a visible organization of men, can be what it +is--the city of God, His household and His sanctuary--only because it +is pervaded by Christ's life and spirit. The 'stones of the building' +are not merely placed side by side of one another, or held together by +any external agency of government; they {120} are as branches of a +living tree, limbs of a living body. In this recurrent thought, which +will be presented to us in another form when St. Paul comes to speak of +the head and the body, is the interpretation of all his theory of the +Church. It is verily and indeed the extension of the life of Christ. + + +How are we to receive this great and manifold ideal of what the Church +means[13]? It is by meditating upon it till St. Paul's +conceptions--and not any lower or narrower ones, Roman or Anglican or +Nonconformist--become vivid to our minds. Then, knowing what we aim at +restoring, we shall seek, in each parish and ecclesiastical centre, to +concentrate almost more than to extend the Church, to give it +spiritual, moral, and social reality, rather than to multiply a +membership which means little. For if men can understand the meaning +of the Church, as the city of God, the family of God, the sanctuary of +God, in the world, there is little fear that whatever is good in +humanity will fail of allegiance to her. The kings of the earth will +bring their glory and honour into her, and the nations of the earth +shall walk in her light. + + + +[1] Sanday and Headlam's _Romans_, pp. 122-124. + +[2] Hebr. ix. 8. + +[3] 1 Peter ii. 4. + +[4] 1 Thess. v. 14; 1 Cor. v.-vi. 11. + +[5] Col. i. 28. + +[6] Luke xii. 42. + +[7] Gal. iv. 11; v. 1. + +[8] Col. ii. 20-22. + +[9] Cor. xi. 2, 16. + +[10] Tit. iii. 10. + +[11] John ii. 19-21. + +[12] Acts xv. 16. + +[13] See app. note D, p. 264, on the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. + + + + +{121} + +DIVISION I. § 5. CHAPTER III. + +_Paul the apostle of catholicity._ + +[Sidenote: _Paul the apostle of catholicity_] + +St. Paul has unfolded the dimensions of the revelation of God given in +the catholic church. The interests of the whole of mankind and of the +whole universe which it is to subserve--that is its breadth: the +eternal and slowly realized intention of God of which it is the +expression--that is its length: the spiritual elevation up to which it +takes men--that is its height: the gulf of sin and misery from which it +rescues them--that is its depth. And now he is about to press upon the +Asiatic Christians the moral obligations which this great catholic +brotherhood involves. He begins his exhortation and enforces it by +reminding them of what he was enduring as a prisoner for Christ's +sake--'For this cause (i.e. seeing that all this is true), I, Paul, the +prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you, the Gentiles.' But when he +has thus made a beginning, he pauses to add weight {122} to his appeal +by emphasizing a personal but very important consideration. The +particular truth of the catholicity of the Church had been in quite a +special sense entrusted to him, Paul, personally, as apostle of the +Gentiles. He assumes that they have heard of this, his special +commission, and that it was the subject of a special revelation to +himself[1]. Indeed the fact must have formed part of his teaching at +Ephesus and throughout Asia, for his mind was full of it; he had +contended for it against strong opposition in his epistle to the +Galatians[2]; he had asserted it in his speech on the occasion of his +being made a prisoner at Jerusalem: and he had quite recently explained +it 'in brief compass' in the letter to the Colossians which was +intended to have, in part at least, the same readers as his present +epistle[3]. This special revelation then and accompanying commission +justifies him in particular, and more than any of {123} the other +apostles, in pressing upon his converts the doctrine which forms the +special topic of this epistle. + +But to think of his special office as apostle of a catholic society, is +to think also of its extraordinary difficulty. + +[Sidenote: _The difficulty of catholicity_] + +When we set ourselves in our own later age to rehabilitate the sense of +church membership, we feel at once the strength of the forces against +us; we realize how much the feeling of blood-kinship in the family +counts for, or the wider kinship of national life, or the common +interests of our professions or our classes, compared to the feeble +sense of fellowship which comes from a church membership which is so +largely conventional. Most assuredly we feel the difficulty of what we +have in hand. But we cannot feel it more intensely than St. Paul felt +the difficulty involved in the very idea of a human brotherhood in +which national distinctions were obliterated. After all, the degree of +unity impressed by the Roman Empire upon the different nations it +embraced was superficial. On the whole it left men to walk in their +own ways. In particular it did not succeed in breaking down the +barriers of Jewish isolation. A society in which men should be neither +Jews nor {124} Gentiles, Greeks nor barbarians, bond nor free, but all +should be welded into one manhood by the pressure of a common and +constraining bond of brotherhood--a society in which even the savage +and brutal Scythian should have equal fellowship with Greeks and +Jews[4]--represented what had never yet been accomplished, and what the +most sanguine might reasonably have thought impossible. The history of +the Church, though not yet much more than thirty years old, had served +already to emphasize the difficulty of the undertaking. We read the +record of the first Jerusalem Church with its communism of love and +sympathy, and it seems the perfect realization of the Christian spirit +of brotherhood. So it was, but under comparatively easy conditions. +For all that community were Jews with common traditions, sympathies, +habits, ways of looking at things. They could behave as brethren, in +the glow of their fresh enthusiasm at finding that the long-expected +kingdom of Christ was now an actual fact, and its triumph to be +immediately expected, without any real bridging of the gulfs which yawn +between different sorts of men. That these gulfs still remained to be +bridged soon appeared. It became manifest that {125} Gentiles, +'sinners of the Gentiles,' had to be received into Christian +brotherhood upon equal terms, and without their accepting the Jewish +law and customs. The Council at Jerusalem attempted a compromise by +requiring of the Gentile converts certain accommodations to Jewish +manners. But the compromise did not avail to overcome the difficulty. +St. Paul found the centre of opposition to the equal admission of the +Gentiles in that very Church of Jerusalem which had been previously +foremost in the race of love. In fact, the true difficulty of the law +of brotherhood only then appeared when the obligation to fuse +inveterate national distinctions began to be enforced. Then indeed +flesh and blood rebelled. Without going any further than this single +piece of Christian experience, there is every reason why St. John +should warn Christians that the old commandment, 'ye shall love one +another,' is constantly, with every change of circumstance, becoming 'a +new commandment,' involving new difficulties, and challenging afresh +the efforts of the human will[5]. The same difficulty, only in a less +acute form, is in St. Paul's mind, and makes him measure and weigh his +words, when he writes to Philemon {126} to beg him to receive his +former runaway slave, 'no longer as a slave, but as a brother +beloved[6].' + +And we cannot but pause and ask, in view of all the moral discipline +for men of various kinds which St. Paul sees to be involved in the +simple obligation to belong to one Christian body[7],--what would have +been his feelings if he had heard of the doctrine which cuts at the +root of all this discipline by declaring that religion is only +concerned with the relation of the soul to God, and that Christians may +combine as they please in as many religious bodies as suits their +varying tastes? + +This difficulty in the very idea of a catholic brotherhood of men +explains the extraordinary earnestness with which St. Paul proceeds to +emphasize that indeed this, and nothing less than this, is the divine +mystery (or 'secret'), which, held back from all eternity in the mind +of God, was only now being disclosed through Christ's consecrated +messengers, and specially through St. Paul himself, the apostle of the +Gentiles. The incredible nature of the idea clogs St. Paul's language, +and almost makes shipwreck of his grammar. All the depth of Christian +doctrine is necessary as background {127} to recommend and justify this +otherwise entirely 'supernatural' ideal--this marvellous climax of the +workings and revelations of God. The spectacle of a catholic +brotherhood, with all that it promises of universal unity beyond +itself, is a lesson even to the angels of what the manifold wisdom of +God can conceive and accomplish. + +We have got into a habit of talking about the 'brotherhood of man' as +if it was an easy and obvious truth. All our experience of our English +relations with races of a different colour to our own, nay, all our +experience of class divisions at home, might have served to check this +easy-going sort of language. If we will consent to pause and reflect +on the actual difficulty of behaving or feeling as brethren should +behave and feel towards men of other races and of other educations and +habits than our own, we may be more inclined to believe that it is only +through some fundamental eradication of selfishness and inherent +narrowness that it can be made possible; only when we begin to live +from some centre greater than ourselves. And that is the moral meaning +of the constant doctrine of the New Testament, that only through being +reconciled to God can we be reconciled to one {128} another--only in +Christ that men can permanently and satisfactorily learn to love one +another, when racial and educational and personal antipathies make for +separation and not for unity. + +Now perhaps we are in a position to read with greater intelligence what +St. Paul wrote about 'the dispensation of the divine mystery,' i.e. +'the stewardship of the divine secret,' of the brotherhood of all men +in Christ or the catholicity of the Church, which had been committed to +him by the 'revelation' which followed his conversion to Christ[8]. + +The doctrine of the brotherhood of men is in fact as much a peculiarly +Christian doctrine as that of divine sonship, and both alike are, in +the New Testament language, represented as realized only within the +community of the baptized. The facts of New Testament language compel +us to say and to recognize this[9]. But {129} we are bound to +recognize also that they are truths which, when they are heard, are +welcomed by the natural conscience everywhere. For as all men are +'God's offspring[10],' by the very fact of their creation as men, so +they are fitted to receive the privilege of sonship: and as they are +'made of one[11],' so they are fitted to realize the privilege of +brotherhood. It is but to say the same thing in other words, if we +insist that Christians are the elect body, to realize and express among +men an idea of human nature which is the only true idea, and which, +overlaid and forgotten as it may have been, has never ceased to stir in +man's heart and conscience everywhere. The elect are elected for no +other purpose than to make manifest what all men are capable of +becoming, and, if they will obey God, are destined to become. + + +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 to you-ward; 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 {130} 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 make all men see what is the +dispensation of the mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God +who created all things; to the intent that now unto the principalities +and the powers in the heavenly _places_ might be made known through the +church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose +which he purposed in Christ 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. + + +There are a few points in this passage which still require explanation. + +[Sidenote: _Paul the apostle of catholicity_] + +1. What is St. Paul referring to when he says 'As I wrote afore in few +words whereby, when ye read[12], ye can perceive my understanding in +the mystery of Christ' or (if I may venture to retranslate it) 'as I +wrote before in brief, by {131} comparison with which, as ye read, ye +can perceive my understanding in the secret of the Christ'? It is +generally supposed that he is referring to the verses in the first +chapter of this epistle (i. 9, 10, &c.), in which he speaks of the +'mystery' or 'secret' of the divine will now disclosed. But his point +appears to be rather that he had elsewhere written in brief about his +own special commission to preach the Gentile gospel; and the more +probable reference seems to be to the Epistle to the Colossians which +was written almost simultaneously with this epistle, probably just +previously, and was intended to be read at some at least, if not all, +of the same churches as this circular epistle, that is to say at +Laodicea and Colossae at least, and probabfxly more widely. In that +epistle (i. 25 ff.) he had really dwelt on his special commission in +almost the same terms as here, and comparison with what he said there +would indeed assist those he was now addressing to understand his +knowledge in the 'revealed secret of the Christ.' + +2. How can St. Paul, who insists continually that he is one of the +apostles, call them, without self-complacency, God's holy apostles? +The answer to this is that 'holiness' means 'consecration.' Any one is +'holy' or a 'saint' (the {132} same word) who is consecrated to God in +any special way. Such consecration lays upon him an obligation to +moral goodness, which is what we mean by holiness, but it precedes the +fulfilment of the obligation. All Christians are holy (or 'saints') +because they are Christians, all apostles because they are apostles. +As for St. Paul's personal estimate of himself as an individual, we +have it just below. In view of his past sins, when he was 'kicking +against the pricks,' and, albeit in ignorance, persecuting the Church, +he calls himself 'less than the least of all the holy.' + +3. St. Paul conceives his function to be to 'make men see,' or 'bring +into the light' a long hidden secret of God now in part disclosed to +the apostles, and to be by them disclosed to the world--in part, for +its contents are still 'unsearchable' in their depth and in the +'manifoldness' of divine wisdom which they imply. But what is +disclosed is no afterthought of God. It is an eternal purpose; and it +is all of a piece with the original idea of creation: it is a 'secret +... hidden in God who created all things.' Redemption in fact +interprets to angels and men what God's purpose in creation originally +was. To minister to this disclosure is enough for any {133} man. It +makes all St. Paul's tribulations only such as it is worth while to +bear; and the Gentiles, in their turn, should find their glory in his +tribulations as an evidence of how much he thought it worth while to +suffer in what is their cause no less truly than his. + +[Sidenote: St. Paul's second prayer] + +Here, as in the first chapter, the consideration of the glory, and +consequently the difficulty, of the gospel which St. Paul has to +deliver leads him off--just at the point where he seems to be resuming +the uncompleted sentence with which he began--into a prayer that the +Asiatic Christians may have strength given them to apprehend the wealth +of their spiritual position and opportunity. He invokes God as the +universal 'father (_pater_) from whom every family (_patria_)--every +company of men knit together by common relation to one father--is +named,' because this has direct reference to his purpose. All men +recognize family, or blood relations and obligations. St. Paul reminds +them that every conceivable society on earth or in heaven which is +bound by the ties of a common fatherhood, derives its 'name' and +therefore its significance from a larger relationship, an all-embracing +relationship of which these lower ones are but shadows--the +relationship to the one Father: {134} and he calls upon the one Father +to strengthen men to transcend all narrownesses of family or blood, and +rise to realize their position in the great family, the great +brotherhood under the one Father. To do this a strengthening of the +inner man, or inner life, by the divine Spirit is indeed needed. +Christ must be not only possessed by Christians, but realized. He must +dwell in their hearts by the realizing power of an active personal +faith. Where this is so--where faith is vigorous--there life must be +rooted and founded on love. Christian faith involves love. For it is +faith in a Father and His Son and His Spirit; and love, and nothing but +love, is the gift of the Father in the Son by the Spirit. This love +then will strengthen them, in the fellowship of the saints or +consecrated ones altogether, to apprehend God's work and purpose in all +its dimensions--breadth and length and depth and height--and to know +Christ's love (which yet passes knowledge and remains unknowable), and +to find their whole being, not as separate individuals, but as one body +praying and working and thinking together, expanded to take in the +fulness of what God is, the full complement of the divine life. To be +thus enlightened and enlarged is what St. Paul {135} understands by +being a 'good catholic': that is what he prays all these Asiatic +Christians may become. + +And his prayer passes into a doxology--an ascription of glory to God +because He is able to realize even what passes our power to conceive or +to ask for; and that without doing more for us than He has already +pledged Himself to do and actually begun to accomplish in us. And this +glory he would have eternally ascribed to God in the Church which lives +by His life; and also (where alone God can never fail of His full +rights) in Him in whom alone God's life is perfectly realized, and +worship perfectly rendered Him under conditions of manhood, in Jesus +the Christ. + + +For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family +in heaven and on 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 Christ may dwell in your hearts +through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, +may be strong to apprehend 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. +Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we +ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him _be_ +the glory in the {136} church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations +for ever and ever. Amen. + + +St. Augustine, with his eye on the imperfections of the Church, +speaks[13] of 'the glory of love ... alive but yet frost-bound. The +root is alive, but the branches are almost dry. There is a heart alive +within, and within are leaves and fruits; but they are waiting for a +summer.' That is surely what we feel. The world cries out for +brotherhood. We are perpetually explaining that brotherhood can only +become actual, in the long run, where men know themselves to be, and in +fact are, sons of God. We are continually pointing out that external +legislative social reforms can only effect good where there exists, to +respond to them and to use them, some strength and purity of inward +character: that outward reforms without moral redemption would effect +evil rather than good. All this is true and it is necessary to explain +it. But the convincing demonstration begins at that point where +Christianity makes man feel, and see in fact, that it contains in +itself the remedy for social evils, because it has the spirit of love: +where the Church is so actually presented as that men should feel and +know that this is a true human {137} brotherhood. It is the social, +human, brotherly power of the Church which is what is at the present +moment best calculated to win the consciences and convince the +intellects of men. But this actual living spirit of self-sacrificing +love--this spirit of real brotherhood--how 'frost-bound' it is! How +large the area of the Church, how many its institutions, where it is +not (to say the least) the most obvious thing represented! In fact, +social reform, and that the most thorough and the most permanent, +requires nothing more than that professing Christians should be better +Christians, Christians who really believe what St. Paul and St. John +say about the love of the brethren. Come then, O breath of the divine +Spirit, and breathe upon these bones of the Christian Church, that they +may live! + +And outside the area of nominal Christianity how 'frost-bound' our +evangelizing love. Surely the Church of England, as part of the +expansive British nation, has an apostleship to the nations comparable +to St. Paul's. Yet missionary zeal, as directed towards the natives of +India, or Japan, or Africa, is a very restricted thing; noticeably +restricted it must be confessed among those who most love the name of +Catholic: and almost non-existent in the great majority of those who +are {138} yet members of the national Church. But it cannot be too +deeply felt that to St. Paul the reconciliation of men with God is +inseparable from the reconciliation of man with man. The atonement +with God that is not an atonement among men he would not own. A peace +with God that leaves us content that Hindoos and Japanese and Africans +should not be of our religion is a false peace. A Christian who is not +really in heart and will a missionary is not a Christian at all. +Missionary effort is not a speciality of a few Christians, though, like +every other part of Christian life, it has its special organs. It is +an essential, never to be forgotten, part of all true Christian living, +and thinking, and praying. + +The missionary obligation of the Church depends, no doubt, chiefly on +the command of Christ, 'Go ye and make disciples of all the nations.' +But it is made intelligible when we realize that Christianity is really +a catholic religion, and that only in proportion as its catholicity +becomes a reality is its true power and richness exhibited. Each new +race which is introduced into the Church not only itself receives the +blessings of our religion, but reacts upon it to bring out new and +unsuspected aspects and {139} beauties of its truth and influence. It +has been so when Greeks, and Latins, and Teutons, and Kelts, and Slavs +have each in turn been brought into the growing circle of believers. +How impoverished was the exhibition of Christianity which the Jewish +Christians were capable of giving by themselves! How much of the +treasures of wisdom and power which lie hid in Christ awaited the Greek +intellect, and the Roman spirit of government, and the Teutonic +individuality, and the temper and character of the Kelt and the Slav, +before they could leap into light! And can we doubt that now again not +only would Indians, and Japanese, and Africans, and Chinamen be the +better for Christianity, but that Christianity would be unspeakably +also the richer for their adhesion--for the gifts which the subtlety of +India, and the grace of Japan, and the silent patience of China are +capable of bringing into the city of God. + +Come, then, O breath of the divine Spirit, and breathe upon the dead +bones of the Christian churches that forget that they are evangelists +of the nations, that they may live and stand upon their feet, an +exceeding great army, an army with banners. + + + +[1] Acts xxii. 17-21. 'While I prayed in the temple, I fell into a +trance, and saw him saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly +out of Jerusalem.... Depart: for I will send thee forth far hence unto +the Gentiles.' + +[2] Gal. i. 15. 'It was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, +_even_ from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to +reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles.' + +[3] Col. i. 24-29; iv. 3, 4. + +[4] Col. iii. 11. + +[5] 1 John ii. 7, 8. + +[6] Phil. 16. + +[7] Eph. iv. 1-3. + +[8] Acts xxii. 21; xxvi. 17, 18. + +[9] Thus the limitation of the term 'brotherhood' to Christians is +implied in 1 Pet. ii. 17, 'Honour all men. Love the brotherhood;' and +in 2 Pet. i. 7, 'In your love of the brethren supply love' (i.e. in the +narrower and closer circle of believers, learn the wider and all +embracing attitude towards men as men); and in 1 Cor. v. 11, 'Any man +that is named a brother.' The word brother is throughout the New +Testament used of _Christians_ only, except where, in the Acts, it is +used by Jews of Jews. Our Lord's language about brotherhood applies to +the circle of the disciples, except Matt. xxv. 40, 'One of these my +brethren,' i.e. the wretched. + +[10] Acts xvii. 28. + +[11] Acts xvii. 26. + +[12] Dr. Hort thinks 'read' is a technical word for reading the +Scriptures, and that this reading of the Old Testament Scriptures is to +enable them to appreciate St. Paul's 'understanding in the secret of +the Christ.' But I doubt if so technical a use of 'read' can be made +out. + +[13] _In Epist. Joan, ad Parth._ v. 10. + + + + +{140} + +DIVISION I. § 6. CHAPTER IV. 1-16. + +_The unity of the church._ + +[Sidenote: _Connexion of thought_] + +This Epistle to the Ephesians, viewed as a whole and from the point of +view of a sympathetic intelligence, has a remarkable unity, and a unity +progressively developed. Thus, first of all, the apostle opened the +imagination of his hearers or readers to consider the place which the +catholic church holds in the divine counsels for the universe, in the +realization of the human ideal, and in the work of redemption from sin +(chap. i and ii). Then he proceeded to justify and explain his own +activity in the cause of catholicity, and made them feel at once the +glory and the profound difficulty of the ideal of unity in diversity +which it involves (chap. iii). It follows naturally and logically that +he should set the Church before them as an actually existing +organization, and bid them study it exactly and note the grounds of its +unity and the common end to which its different elements or members +{141} are meant to minister; and this is what he actually does in the +fourth chapter (1-16). Viewed, however, as a matter of grammatical +structure, it is probable that this passage forms another +digression--the real necessity of the argument acting as an +overmastering motive which pulls contrary to the immediate grammatical +purpose of the writer. Thus he had begun, at the beginning of chapter +iii, to pass from the doctrinal exposition which is involved in his +opening chapters to practical exhortation. The Asiatic members of the +catholic church are to be exhorted to live up to their calling: to turn +their backs deliberately on their old heathen habits, and to conform +themselves entirely to the principles of their new state. To this +exhortation he actually and finally attains at chapter iv. 17. The +intervening passage (a chapter and a half) is occupied, first, with the +digression which we have just considered at length, about St. Paul's +mission to the Gentiles and the difficulty of its realization, and with +the great prayer which that topic suggests (chap. iii); secondly, with +another digression on the character of the unity of the Church. This +is, I say, probably the case grammatically. For 'I, Paul, the prisoner +of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles' (iii. 1) is almost {142} unmistakably +intended to introduce a moral appeal to which his imprisonment for the +sake of those to whom he writes adds weight and force[1]. It is taken +up, after a digression, in iv. i, 'I, therefore, the prisoner of the +Lord, beseech you to walk worthily'; but the appeal there begun yields +anew to the necessity of further exposition, and only reaches its free +expression in iv. 17, 'This therefore I say and testify in the Lord'; +after which point we have moral exhortation and little else. + +Now, therefore, we are to occupy ourselves with what is grammatically a +second digression, but logically and really a most necessary step in +the exposition of St. Paul's thoughts--the subject of the unity of the +church catholic, its nature and obligations. Conscious of the profound +difficulty of welding naturally antagonistic elements, such as Jews and +Gentiles, slaves and free men, into one catholic fellowship, St. Paul +appeals to the Asiatic churches with all the force which he can command +as a prisoner on their account, to 'walk' as their catholic calling +{143} involves; that is, to exhibit all those moral qualities which are +necessary to maintain peace under difficult circumstance--a modest +estimate of oneself (humility or 'lowliness'), a mildness in mutual +relations ('meekness'), an habitual refusal to pass quick judgements on +what one cannot but condemn or dislike ('longsuffering'), a deliberate +forbearance one of another based on love. They are to accept one +another as brethren, with the rights of brethren. And the reason why +they should exhibit these qualities is not far to seek: they actually +share one common supernatural life--the imparted life of the +Spirit--and they are, therefore, to make it their deliberate object to +preserve this actual spiritual unity in its appropriate outward +expression, that is in harmonious fellowship,--'giving diligence to +keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.' + +[Sidenote: _The unity of the church_] + +But at this point the idea of the unity of the Church is felt to need +fuller exposition. In what sense are Christians one? They are one as +_one body_ or organization, made up no doubt of a multitude of +differing individual members, but all bound into one, under Christ for +their head, by the fact that the _one Spirit_, which is Christ's +supreme gift, is imparted to the whole {144} organization and every +member of it: and this common corporate life, where the elements are so +different, is made possible by the _one hope_ reaching forward into an +eternal world, which was set before them all when they received their +call into the body of Christ. This should be enough to annihilate +lower and shorter-lived differences. 'There is one body[2] and one +spirit even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.' It follows +from this that there is another threefold unity. For the existence of +the common head involves a common _allegiance to Him as Lord_, an +allegiance which is justified by what He is _believed to be_ by all +Christians; an allegiance, further, which is more than an outward +fealty, being cemented by an actual incorporation into His life which +takes place through the speaking symbol of the _laver of +regeneration_[3]. 'One Lord, one faith, one baptism.' But once more. +This common union with and under Christ in the Spirit, is not anything +less than union with _the one and only God and Father_, who is _over +all_ as the one head (even 'the head of Christ is God'), _through all_ +as the pervading presence, _in all_ as the active {145} life, 'one God +and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all things.' +Thus their unity is the deepest and most ultimate conceivable: it has a +width and range from which no one can be excluded: while it has a +closeness and cogency like the unity of blood. + +To realize what this unity is and may be, involves on our part a +continual looking out of ourselves, out of all individual, social and +national differences, up to the common source of all the gifts of all +Christians. Whatever each one possesses is simply the gift of the +divine bounty or grace, given to him by a definite act of bestowal, +varying merely in kind and degree according to the sovereign will of +Christ the Lord, the only giver; and it is therefore to be used in His +service and for His ends. The Psalmist had sung of the divine king of +Israel mounting as an earthly conqueror unto his sanctuary throne in +Zion after making captives and receiving gifts from among his enemies +without exception. + + 'Thou hast gone up into the heights, + Thou hast led captives captive; + Thou hast received gifts among men, yea from the rebellious also[4].' + + +It stands to reason that to St. Paul's mind this {146} conception is +realized nowhere but in Christ. Its application to Christ is in fact +assumed--'therefore,' i.e. with a view to Christ, 'he' or rather 'it,' +the Scripture 'saith'--and the passage is given free interpretation, +and, more than this, free modification, on the basis of this +assumption. For (1) the ascension of the conquering king is spoken of +as the result of a previous descent to the 'lower regions of this earth +of ours[5].' No man, as St. John says, hath ascended up to heaven but +He that came down from heaven. The person who 'beggared himself' to +come down to our earth and who subsequently mounted into the divine +glory is one and the same person, Christ the incarnate Son; and He thus +descended and re-ascended in order that He might, through the atonement +wrought by Him in the flesh and through the exaltation which rewarded +it, restore to the universe that unity of which sin and rebellion had +robbed it, and 'fill all things' once again with the divine bounty and +presence[6]. + +{147} + +(2) The sense of the psalm is--possibly not without Jewish +precedent[7]--altered in expression so that, instead of the conqueror +receiving gifts from men, his conquered enemies, we have him +represented as 'giving gifts to men.' This modification, whether +original in St. Paul or accepted by him, is no doubt due to the fact +that his mind is full of the idea of Christ as conquering only to +bless, receiving homage only to be enabled to bestow on them who offer +it the fulness of the divine bounty. And the 'captives' of Christ, to +St. Paul's mind, are no doubt not men, but the hosts of Satan reduced +to impotence. The exalted Christ, then, is the source of all gifts in +His Church, and He bestows on men various endowments in such a way as +to maintain among them a necessary relation. 'No member of the body of +Christ is endued with such perfection as to be able, without the +assistance of others, to supply his own necessities. A certain +proportion is allotted to each, and it is only by communicating with +others that all enjoy what is sufficient for maintaining their +respective places in the body[8].' This is the principle of mutual +dependence, the fundamental principle of corporate life. Thus 'He gave +{148} some as apostles, some prophets,' others in other varying +capacities to fulfil varying functions; the principle of the bestowal +being the same throughout. Each 'gifted' individual becomes himself a +gift to the Church. He is 'gifted' not for his own sake but for the +Church's sake--'with a view to the perfecting of the saints,' or 'the +complete equipment of the consecrated body,' for the manifold 'work of +ministry' entrusted to it; or to look at the matter from a rather +different point of view, 'for the purpose of completing the structure +of the body of Christ'--that living company of men in whom Christ +expresses Himself and through whom He acts upon the world. And that +structure is not complete till all together attain what is impossible +to any isolated Christian individual, the unity not only of a common +faith, but also of a common knowledge of what is revealed in the Son of +God; or, in other words, to the full-grown manhood; which, once again, +means that complete developement in which the fulness of the +Christ--all the complete array of His attributes and qualities--finds +harmonious exhibition over again in His people, His body. + +But the possibility of this completeness on the part of the Church as a +whole, depends on the {149} stability of the individual members in the +common faith. Thus it is Christ's purpose that His members should +cease to be as children, stirred up like the waves of the sea, or +carried about like feathers, by every wind of false teaching. There +is, it must be remembered, a kingdom of deception, an organized attempt +to seduce souls, of which wicked men make themselves the instruments. +In view of this hostile kingdom of error, the Christians must abide in +the truth revealed to them in love, and so grow up into the completed +life of Christ. For He is the head, and in Him they are the body. And +the body is a unit of many parts fitted and held together in one life +by a supply from the head, which circulates through every joint, and +for the full and unimpeded communication of which each several limb +must do its proper work, so that the whole body may grow into completed +life in that mutual coherence which is Christian love. + + +This prolonged paraphrase may serve to bring out the innumerable points +of interest in that rich passage in which St. Paul as it were gives the +reins to his imagination and his feelings in order to describe the +glory of the unity of the Church. + + +{150} 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. 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, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body +of Christ: till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the +knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of +the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no longer +children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of +doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of +error; but speaking truth 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 joint 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. + +{151} + +In this great conception of church unity there are several points to +which special attention must be given. + + +i. + +The Church is one, first of all, because a common inward life, the +Spirit, from a common source, Christ, flows in her veins and makes her +to be one body. What is this 'unity of Spirit?' says Chrysostom. 'As +in a body it is spirit which holds all together, and makes that to be a +unity which consists of different limbs, so it is in the Church. For +the Spirit was given for this purpose that He might unify those who +differ in race and variety of habits.' This inward life is no doubt, +as we shall see, imparted, maintained and perfected through outward +means or institutions--baptism, the eucharist, human offices and +ministries; but none the less it is the inward life which makes the +Church one. So that her unity is like the unity of a family or a race, +a unity of blood and life which exists in spite of all outward +differences: and not like such a unity as is produced by outward +government, as, for example, Armenians, Syrians, Kurds, and Turks make +up the unity of the Turkish empire, or Englishmen and Frenchmen the +Dominion of {152} Canada. The unity of the Christian Church is thus a +unity which ought to express itself in 'the bond of peace,' but which +does not consist in that, any more than the unity of a family consists +in the affection and sympathy which yet brothers ought to have one to +another. This Pauline idea of church unity--which is the idea also of +the New Testament as a whole--constantly finds expression in early +Christian writings, but one particular expression of it may be cited. +Hilary of Poitiers, in argument with the Arians, is confronted with the +position that the phrase 'I and my Father are one' means only one in +will, not one in nature, like the phrase used of the Church, 'one heart +and soul.' He refutes the argument by urging that, in the latter case +also, what is referred to is not a unity of wills but of nature: +believers are 'one thing through a new birth into the same (new) +nature.' 'Ye are all one,' says St. Paul, 'in Christ Jesus.' 'The +apostle teaches that this unity of the faithful comes from the nature +of the sacraments.... What then can concord of minds have to do with a +case where men are already made one by being clothed with one Christ +through the nature of one baptism?[9]' This passage gives {153} a +striking view of what ultimately constitutes church unity. + +It is necessary to call attention to this position because the great +Roman church, which occupies so large a space in the whole area of the +church, and impresses its ideas so powerfully upon men's imagination, +has perverted this idea of church unity by a one-sided emphasis on +unity of government. I find a typical modern Roman statement in Dr. +Hunter's _Outlines of Dogmatic Theology_[10]: 'The Church has a +principle of oneness which joins the members together, and +distinguishes the society from a mere aggregate of unconnected units. +The members are associated in order that, believing the revelation that +God has given, and using the means of grace which He has provided, +under the direction of the governors who have their authority from Him, +they may attain the end of their being, the salvation of their souls. +In other words, the unity which the Church must have includes the unity +of faith, unity of worship, and unity of government.' Here we have +church unity described as an outward association of individuals to +attain a certain end by submitting to a common authority in matters of +belief and worship. The {154} unity of spiritual life which St. Paul +and St. Hilary put distinctly first, becomes secondary or subordinate. +It is not even specified among the three chief elements of unity. But +it makes the greatest possible difference whether you say 'the Church +is one because all baptized persons share a common life in Christ, and +ought therefore to behave as "one body,"' or 'the Church is one by +submitting to a common authority in belief, worship, and government.' +The second is the Roman, the first is the apostolic statement. + + +ii. + +Once more, St. Paul's idea of the unity of the Church forbids us to +conceive of it as complete in this world. Each particular church with +its own organization has a certain relative completeness, but it gains +all its meaning and life through fellowship in the body of Christ--the +whole society of men who, having Christ for their head, live in the +unity of a life derived from Him. The head of the body is out of +sight. So also are the members of the body who 'are fallen asleep' but +are still 'in Jesus[11].' It is, so to speak--and increasingly as +history goes {155} on--only the lower limbs of the body who are on the +earth at any particular moment. And they find their centre of unity at +no lower point than Christ, the unseen head. This idea is vigorously +expressed by St. Augustine[12]: 'Since the whole Church is made up of +the head and the body, the head is our Saviour Himself, who suffered +under Pontius Pilate, who now, after He has risen from the dead, sits +at the right hand of God; but the body is the Church--not this church +or that, but the Church scattered over all the world; nor is it that +only which exists among men now living; but they also belong to it who +were before us and are to be after us to the end of the world. For the +whole Church, made up of all the faithful, because all the faithful are +members of Christ, has its head situate in the heavens which governs +this body: though it is separated from their sight, yet it is bound to +them by love." + +Now it is obvious that this Pauline and Augustinian idea of church +unity excludes, instead of suggesting, the Roman method of arguing for +the papacy from the necessity that a body must have a head. An +association of men in this world, such as the Church on earth {156} +is--a 'body of men' in this sense--may be governed in any of the +various ways in which human societies are governed, not by any means +necessarily by a monarch[13]. In this sense a body need not have a +single head; or it can be ruled by a president in a council of equals. +But in St. Paul's sense, the Church as a body must have a head, and +that head can be none other than Christ, because, according to his +spiritual physiology, from its head the Church receives its continually +inflowing life; and because the body is not completely, but only +partially, in this world, and the head must be over all the members, +and not only over some. + + +iii. + +But if the unity of the Church, as St. Paul expounds it, is before all +else a unity of life, it is as well a unity in the truth. It is a +unity based on belief in a divine revelation, given in the person of +Christ--based on the common confession that Jesus crucified and risen +is Christ and Lord[14]. To say that 'Jesus is the Lord' {157} involves +further--what is implied in this passage of the Epistle to the +Ephesians--the confession of the threefold name--the 'one God and +Father,' the 'one Lord' Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the 'one Spirit' +which is His gift; and there can be no real question that St. Paul's +language constantly involves that the Son and Spirit are with the +Father really personal, and really divine, included, so to speak, in +the one only eternal Godhead. A creed then is at the basis of the +Christian life--a creed which finds its best expression and safeguard +in the formulated doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. There +is no reason to think that St. Paul, if the situation of the later +Church could have been made plain to him, would have shrunk from these +dogmatic safeguards of the Church's central faith. + +But if we grant--what cannot really with any show of reason be +denied--that the Church is a visible organization based on a certain +revealed truth, which must be accepted by its members, and which admits +of being formulated in order to be preserved; still this truth may be +advanced and defended mainly by one of two methods--that of external +regulative authority, or that of appeal to principles, discussion, +controversy, {158} exhortation. And it can hardly be denied that St. +Paul prefers the latter. Sharp appeals to authority are indeed to be +found in St. Paul[15], but they are very rare. For example, in none of +his epistles against the Judaizers is the authority of the apostolic +decision, as to what might and what might not be required of the +Gentile Christians 'in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia[16],' brought into +requisition; though that decision 'settled the question.' He prefers +to prove that 'circumcision is nothing.' This may be in part accounted +for by St. Paul's refusal to admit that his own apostolic authority +needed the support of the twelve, and by the limited area to which the +decision was addressed; but there is another reason as well. For he +plainly, as all his epistles show, prefers to appeal not to authority +at all but to the spiritual reason; to expound principles, to argue, to +awaken the heart, conscience, and mind of Christians. It must be +admitted that there is very little in St. Paul's epistles about +differences of doctrinal views among Christians as distinct from +differences in practices. Yet there is enough--as in the vigorous +passage about the 'regarding of one {159} day above another[17]'--to +justify the belief that he would not have viewed with any disapproval +the existence in the Church of tolerated differences of opinion where +they did not touch the basis of the Church's life. Such differences of +view are hardly separable from what St. Paul glories in--a unity which +is consistent with great variety of gifts and character, and great +freedom. It is unity in variety which he has as his ideal, such a +unity as is always characteristic of a unity of life, like that of +nature or of a free people; or a unity, again, like that of a great +Gothic Church, or of the Bible. + +It is quite certain that St. Paul would have deprecated that 'short and +easy' method of promoting unity which has constant recourse to the +external pressure of dogma and authority. + + +iv. + +It follows naturally from what has been just said, that St. Paul should +look not so much to ecclesiastical enactments as to a right Christian +temper for preserving outward unity. 'Making it your moral effort,' so +we may paraphrase his exhortation to the Asiatic Christians, 'by means +{160} of the virtues which I have just specified of humility, meekness, +long-suffering, and forbearance, to maintain the unity of the Spirit in +the bond of Christian peace.' The New Testament view of heresy (a +self-willed separatism), or schism, is that it is a violation of +charity and peace in the interests of pride and impatience and +self-will. It is men like 'Diotrephes who loveth to have the +pre-eminence,' who violate it. In fact it is written in history that +the ecclesiastical schisms of the past have been due mainly either to +the impatience and wilfulness of would-be reformers, from Tertullian +downwards, or to the arrogance and love of domination in rival +individuals or rival sees. + +'Nothing,' says Chrysostom on this passage, 'will have power to divide +the Church so much as the love of authority, and nothing provokes God +so much as that the Church should be divided. We may have done ten +thousand good actions, but if we rend the fulness of the Church, we +shall suffer punishment with those who rent His body.' + +From this point of view we may find an interesting parallel to this +exhortation of St. Paul in a passage of Plato's _Laws_, which is, I +believe, one of the few passages in pre-Christian writings where the +virtue of humility is recognized. {161} 'God, as the old tradition +declares, holding in His hand the beginning, middle, and end of all +that is, moves according to His nature in a straight line towards the +accomplishment of His end. Justice always follows Him, and is the +punisher of those who fall short of the divine law. To that law he who +would be happy holds fast, and follows it in all humility and order; +but he who is lifted up with pride, or money, or honour, or beauty, who +has a soul hot with folly and guilt and insolence, and thinks that he +has no need of a guide and ruler, but is able himself to be the guide +of others, he, I say, is left deserted of God; and being thus deserted, +he takes to him others who are like himself, and dances about in wild +confusion; and many think that he is a great man, but in a short time +he pays a penalty which justice cannot but approve, and is utterly +destroyed, and his family and city with him.' + +From the point of view of the moral duty of preserving ecclesiastical +unity, it is quite clear that the guilt of Christians has been +exceedingly great, and also that it has been very widely diffused. The +amount of ambition, insolence, and impatience in the Church has, in +fact, been so vast that it remains no longer a matter {162} for +astonishment that it should have made the havoc that it has made in the +divine household, and should have thwarted, as it has thwarted, the +divine intention. But the recognition of this fact lays on us the duty +of meditating continually on the divine intention, and by all that lies +in our power, by prayer and by every other means, to restore the +recognition of the divine principle of unity whether in the narrower or +the wider circle of church life. + +It is not too much to say that the now popular principle of the free +voluntary association of Christians in societies organized to suit +varying phases of taste, is destructive of the moral discipline +intended for us. It was the obligation to belong to one body which was +intended as the restraint on the prejudices and eccentricities of race, +classes and individuals. If Greeks, Italians, and Englishmen are to be +content to belong to different churches; if among ourselves we are to +have one church for the well-to-do, and another for 'labour'; if any +individual who is offended in one church is to be free to go off to +another where he or she likes the minister better--where does the need +come in for the forbearance and long-suffering and humility on which +St. Paul {163} insists as the necessary virtues of the one body? We, +Christians but not in one brotherhood, may not be able to agree at +present among ourselves as to the proper basis of ecclesiastical unity, +but we ought to be able to agree that, somehow or other, Christians are +intended by Christ and by the apostle to be one body, and that the +wilful violation of outward unity is truly a refusal of the yoke of +Christ. + +And a great step would have been taken towards rendering the recovery +of ecclesiastical unity more easy if those who recognize the obligation +of the principle could be brought to perceive that true Catholicism +really requires a large measure of toleration and a deliberate +reasonableness. At present it is not too much to say that the idea of +the obligation of ecclesiastical unity is widely associated with an +emphasis on ecclesiastical and dogmatic authority such as is utterly +alien to the mind of the apostle of Catholicism. + + +v. + +In what has been said above we have been attending chiefly to the +restraints which St. Paul's idea of church unity appears to set upon +what are commonly known as 'ecclesiastical tendencies.' {164} Now it is +time to emphasize the other side of the representation. For without a +strongly engrained prejudice, there is not, it seems to the present +writer, any possibility of doubting that St. Paul meant by 'the Church' +in general, a society visible and organized, represented by a number of +visible and organized local societies or churches[18]. The Church is +in fact ideal in its spiritual character, but not one bit the less an +association of human beings, a society with quite definite limits, +ties, and obligations. For, to begin with, the 'one baptism' which +conveyed the spiritual gift of incorporation into Christ was also the +initiation into an actual brotherhood, with its rules of conduct, +worship, and belief: 'we were all baptized into one body[19].' The +'one Spirit' was normally bestowed by the 'laying on of' apostolic +'hands'--that is, the hands of the chief governors of the Christian +corporation. This rite followed upon and completed baptism, and its +administration had {165} been one of St. Paul's first ministerial acts +after he began his preaching at Ephesus[20]. Again, 'the breaking of +the bread' or eucharist, according to St. Paul's teaching, both +nourished the life of Christ in the Church, as being the communion of +His body and blood, and also, in the 'one loaf,' symbolized its outward +corporate unity[21]. + +Thus the bestowal of gifts of grace through outward rites, which +belonged to the corporate life of a society, insured that a Christian +should be no isolated and independent individual. More than this, the +necessary dependence of each individual Christian upon the one +organized society is made further evident by the existence of +spiritually endowed officers of the society who were as 'the more +honourable limbs of the body'--'some apostles, some prophets, some +evangelists, some pastors and teachers'--without whom the body would +have lacked its divinely-given equipment for ministry and edification. +These were not merely more or less gifted or (as we say) talented +individuals who undertook particular sorts of work on their own +initiative, or by the invitation of any group of Christian individuals. +We find that the apostles at least were a definite {166} body of men +who had received special commission from Christ Himself to govern His +Church[22]. The Christian 'prophets' were men of special supernatural +endowment, to know and declare God's will, and foretell His purposes. +They ranked after the apostles in virtue of their prophetic gift[23]. +But even they were to be restrained by the exigencies of church order. +'The spirits of the prophets are subject unto the prophets; for God is +not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the +saints.' Next to the prophets, St. Paul specifies the 'evangelists.' +They were no doubt, as their name implies, officers engaged with the +apostles in the general work of spreading the gospel, that is of +founding and organizing churches. Timothy, who is exhorted to 'do the +work of an evangelist[24],' would probably have ranked amongst them; +and if so, Titus and other similar companions and delegates of +apostles. At any rate, by whatever name they were called, such men +belonged to {167} the specially 'gifted' class, if we may judge by the +case of Timothy. But he, though marked out by prophecy, received his +'gift,' as a church officer, with the laying on of the hands of a whole +presbytery, while the hands of the apostle himself were the divine +instruments for imparting the gift to him[25]. The 'pastors and +teachers'--one class of men and not two--are, we may say certainly, +identical with the presbyters or 'bishops' as they were called by St. +Paul at Ephesus; and these again were men of spiritual endowment, but +also local church officers who had received a definite apostolic +appointment[26], and there is no reason to doubt by laying on of hands. +Thus the Church, as St. Paul conceives it, is a body differentiated by +varieties of spiritual endowments imparted to definite officers, for +the fulfilment of functions necessary to the life and development of +the whole body. Thus the outward unity of the {168} society at any +particular moment, and the necessary connexion of each individual +Christian with it, is secured both by the existence of social +sacraments or means of grace, and by the existence of a ministry +spiritually endowed and commissioned, to whom individual Christians +owed allegiance, and who ranked as the more honourable limbs of that +body to which they must belong if they would belong to Christ. + + +vi. + +St. Paul is not here thinking of the unity of the Church otherwise than +at a particular moment. But if one turns one's attention to its +continuous unity down the ages, again it must be recognized that one +main link of unity has been in fact the apostolic succession of the +ministry; that is the permanence in the Church of a spiritually-endowed +'stewardship of divine mysteries' received continually by the original +method of the laying on of hands in succession from apostolic men. The +necessity for each individual Christian to remain in relation to these +commissioned stewards if he wishes to continue to be of the divine +household, has kept men together in one body. And any one who looks at +St. Paul's method of imparting spiritual authority {169} and office to +Timothy and Titus, and directing them in their turn to hand it on by +ordaining others, can scarcely doubt that he contemplated the +institution in the Church of a permanent ministry deriving its +authority from above. + +How, in fact, did the later church ministry connect itself with that +which we find existing in the apostolic age? The apostolic ministry +divides itself broadly into the general and the local. There are +'ministers' or 'stewards' who are officers of the church catholic and +have a general commission. Such general commission belonged, of +course, to the apostles, though mutual delimitations were arranged +among themselves and though St. James, who ranked with the apostles, +was settled at Jerusalem. It belonged also, more or less, to +'evangelists' and other 'apostolic men,' who, however, might be +temporarily located in particular churches and districts, like Timothy +in Ephesus, and Titus in Crete. It belonged also to the prophets, who +would have been recognized as men inspired of God in all the churches, +and who in the subapostolic age are found in some districts exercising +functions like those of the apostles in the first age. The local +officers, on the other hand, were the presbyters, who are called also +bishops, and the {170} deacons. With this earliest state of things in +our mind, we shall perceive that where an apostle or apostolic man was +permanently resident in one particular church, a threefold ministry, +like that of later church history already existed. So it was at +Jerusalem where the presbyters and deacons were presided over by St. +James. So it was in Crete under Titus, and in Ephesus under Timothy. +So it was a few decades later in all the churches of Asia as organized +by St. John. In other parts of the world the exact method by which the +ministry developed is a matter of much dispute. But it seems to the +present writer most probable that everywhere the threefold ministry +came into existence by (1) a change of arrangement, and (2) a change of +name. (1) The change of arrangement was the establishment in each +local church of a prophet, or one, like Timothy or Titus, who had been +ordained to quasi-apostolic office by an apostle or man of apostolic +rank; such a change taking place first at the greatest centres, and +then in lesser cities. (2) The change of name was the appropriation to +this now localized ruler of the title of bishop or 'overseer' which had +hitherto appertained more or less to the presbyters generally. + +{171} + +But in any case it is certain that the developement of the ministry +occurred on the principle of the apostolic succession. Those who were +to be ministers were the elect of the church in which they were to +minister: but they were authoritatively ordained to their office from +above, and by succession from the apostolic men. And such a principle +of ministerial authority appears to be not only historical, but also +most rational. For a continuous corporate unity was to be maintained +in a society which, as being catholic, must lack all such natural links +of connexion as are afforded by a common language or common race. And +how could such continuous corporate unity have been so well secured as +by a succession of persons whose function should be to maintain a +tradition, and whose ministerial authority should make them necessary +centres of the unity? + + + +[1] And not as Dr. Robertson (Smith's _Dict. of Bible_, ed. ii. vol. i. +pt. ii. p. 951) suggests, to introduce a prayer to God, which is +resumed in iii. 14. The 'For this cause' which is repeated in iii. 14 +is not nearly so significant as 'the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you +Gentiles,' which is taken up again in iv. 1. + +[2] I have interpreted this word in the light of what is said in verse +16. + +[3] Tit. iii. 5. + +[4] Ps. lxviii. 18 (Delitzsch). + +[5] I do not think St. Paul need refer to the descent into Hades. 'The +lower parts of the earth,' Is. xliv. 23, may also refer not to Hades +(see Delitzsch _in loco_) but to 'the earth beneath.' + +[6] The 'filling all things' is, in the epistles to the Ephesians and +Colossians, the characteristic action of the exalted Christ and the +result of the reconciliation and atonement won. Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 24-28, +'That God may be all in all.' + +[7] See Delitzsch's and Perowne's notes. + +[8] Calvin, _in loc._ + +[9] Hil. _de Trin._ viii. 7-9. The last sentence is condensed. + +[10] Vol. i. p. 317 (Longmans, 1895). + +[11] 1 Thess. iv. 14. + +[12] _In Ps._ lvi. i. + +[13] It is one very noticeable feature of the recent Encyclical of Leo +XIII on the Unity of the Church ('satis cognitum') that it assumes that +'only a despotic monarch can secure to any society unity and strength.' + +[14] Romans x. 9. + +[15] For example, see Gal. i. 6-9. + +[16] Acts xv. 23-29. + +[17] Romans xiv. 56; cf. Phil. iii. 15-16. + +[18] Cf. Hort, _Ecclesia_, p. 169, who brings out that _all_ members of +the local churches, better and worse, are regarded as members of the +universal Church. 'There is no evidence that St. Paul regarded +membership of the universal Church as invisible and exclusively +spiritual, and shared by only a limited number of the members of the +external Ecclesiae.' See also app. note E, p. 267. + +[19] 1 Cor. xii. 13. + +[20] Acts xix. 1-7. + +[21] 1 Cor. x. 16, 17. + +[22] See app. note E, p. 269. + +[23] In ii. 20 and iii. 5, 'Apostles and prophets' are spoken of +together almost as one class included under one definite article. And +of course the apostle Paul remained also, what he is first called, a +prophet (Acts xiii. i). Apostles were also prophets; but not all +prophets were apostles. They can be, therefore, grouped apart as they +are here (iv. 11). + +[24] 2 Tim. iv. 5. + +[25] 1 Tim. iv. 14; 2 Tim. i. 6. + +[26] Acts xiv. 23. This is interpreted by the phrase (Acts xx. 28) +'The Holy Ghost made you bishops.' Cf. Titus i. 5, 'I left thee ... to +appoint elders in every city.... For the bishop must be blameless.' I +assume here the _practical_ identity of bishops and presbyters, as Acts +xx. 28, Tit. i. 5-7, Acts xiv. 23 (with Phil. i. 1) seem to require. +But 'the presbyters' or the 'presbyterate' was the more general name +for the governing body of a church, and an apostle can therefore call +himself a presbyter or include himself in the presbyterate (1 Peter v. +1; 1 Tim. iv. 14), whereas he would hardly call himself a 'bishop.' + + + + +{172} + +DIVISION II. CHAPTERS IV. 17-VI. 24. + +_Doctrine and conduct._ + +[Sidenote: _Doctrine and conduct_] + +Here the apostle, with a final 'therefore,' resuming the 'therefore' of +IV. i, passes without further delay to the entirely practical portion +of the epistle. + +These 'therefores' are characteristic of St. Paul. They indicate his +deep sense of the vital and necessary connexion between the Christian +mode of living and the doctrines of Christian belief. Christian belief +is a mould fashioning human conduct by a constant and uniform pressure +into a characteristic type, or a set of forces urging it along certain +lines of movement. Thus when some point of Christian belief has been +expounded there follows a 'therefore' indicating the inevitable moral +consequence of such belief where it is intelligently and voluntarily +held. Of course the consequence does not follow of mechanical +necessity. The doctrine acts by an appeal to the will. 'I beseech you +{173} therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God'--so St. Paul makes +his appeal to the Romans, when he had given them his great exposition +of the doctrines of grace and justification[1]. When he has expounded +the doctrine of the resurrection to the Corinthians[2], he +concludes--'_Therefore_, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast,' &c. The +doctrine of the Epistle to the Colossians leads to two conclusions: +'mortify _therefore_' and 'put on _therefore_, as God's elect, holy and +beloved, a heart of compassion[3].' The Epistle to the Hebrews +contains similar moral appeals based on dogmatic statements. +'_Therefore_ let us give the more earnest heed.' 'Having _therefore_, +brethren, boldness by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near with a true +heart.' '_Therefore_ let us lay aside every weight[4].' These +'therefores,' I say, indicate a fundamental characteristic of +Christianity: it is a manner of living based upon a disclosure of +divine truth about God and His will, about man's nature and his sin, +about God's redemptive action and its methods and intentions. + +Among ourselves to-day we hear frequently enough disparaging reference +to theological {174} doctrine whether as a subject for study or for +definite instruction. Theological dogmas are alluded to as things +remote from the ordinary concerns of men and associated with the +jarring interests of different religious bodies or of their clergy, +with 'denominationalism' or 'sacerdotalism[5].' This idea has been due +in great measure no doubt to faults in theologians and priests. But it +is none the less absurd, when it is seriously considered. If those +whose lives have given the most shining examples of practical +Christianity in all ages were cross-questioned, it would be found that +the overwhelming majority would, in all simplicity, attribute what was +good in their life to their definite beliefs. Indeed, it is self +evident that it must have a practically vast effect on a man's conduct +whether, for instance, he really believes that his own and other men's +lives, after some seventy years of probation in this world, pass under +divine judgement, only to enter into new and eternal conditions where +they will inevitably reap the fruits of their previous careers. {175} +It must make a vital difference whether he believes that the world is +the expression of blind force or of the will of a living, loving, God; +whether or no he believes that God personally cares for each +individual: whether or no he believes that God's interest in the world +was such as to move Him to redeem it, by the sacrifice of Himself, from +the tyranny of sin: whether he believes in divine forgiveness and God's +indwelling by His Spirit: whether he believes in a divine brotherhood +and divine means of grace in a household of God in the world. In fact, +if the practical ethics of India and China, or the Turkish Empire and +Morocco, are considered side by side with those of Christian Europe, it +is impossible to resist the conviction that men's behaviour depends in +the long run on what they believe about God. + +This obvious conclusion is, in part, veiled from our eyes by two facts. +One is that logic works slowly in human life. Take a transverse +section of humanity at any particular moment, and it appears a mass of +inconsistencies. It might almost suggest that there is no connexion at +all between belief and practice. But the same appearance is not +presented by human life in its long reaches. There you see how, in the +{176} slow result, an alteration of belief involves an alteration of +practice. Thus to take an example: at present our social conscience +about the obligations of marriage, or about personal purity, or about +suicide, unsatisfactory as it may appear to be to an earnest Christian, +is still saturated with Christian sentiment which is the result of a +prolonged impression left by Christian doctrine. If the doctrine were +to pass out of the minds of Englishmen in general, after a generation +or two there would be a weakening or destruction of the corresponding +sentiment, and an abolition of what is at present an obstacle to the +reign of sensual or selfish desires. But it takes some generations for +the effect of any weakening of belief to make itself felt. + +There is another fact which veils from the eyes of people in general +the real connexion between morals and doctrine. It is that it is +largely mediate or indirect. The moral standard of the 'average man' +is, unconsciously, kept up by the morals of the best men and women. +For social opinion is with the majority the force which mainly +influences their practice, and social opinion depends largely on +leaders. 'It is when the best men cease trying that the world sinks +back like lead.' Let anything {177} happen which should silence the +moral effort of the best individuals, and disaster would be imminent. +But this is exactly what would be the result if the best men and women +were to cease to be Christian believers. It is the highest level of +our common life that would be depressed. The result all round would be +indirect, but it would be widespread and disastrous. + +I do not mean, or think, that this weakening of religious belief in the +best men and women is occurring. I only instance its morally certain +results to make apparent how the general bearing of religious beliefs +on social practice is, in one way, veiled by its indirectness. + +But to St. Paul all this is self-evident. He sees quite clearly that +Christianity is to be a new life, a new social and ethical +manifestation in the world, because Christians believe that God has +made plain to them in Jesus Christ His character, nature, and +redemptive purposes, and has given, by His Spirit, a practical power to +their wills to correspond with the truth revealed to their +intelligences and hearts. + +So he proceeds from his exposition of the great doctrines of the Church +of the Redemption to its practical moral consequences. + + + +[1] Rom. xii. 1. + +[2] 1 Cor. xv. 58. + +[3] Col. iii. 5, 12. + +[4] Heb. ii. 1; x. 19; xii. 1. + +[5] An interesting expression of this sort of feeling is to be found in +George Crabbe's poem, _The Library_. On the whole we must have +improved since his day in our perception of the connexion of Christian +doctrine with Christian practice. + + + + +{178} + +DIVISION II. § 1. CHAPTER IV. 17-24. + +_Christianity a new life._ + +[Sidenote: _New life in Christ_] + +The characteristic words of St. Paul's gospel--grace, forgiveness, +mercy, liberty, justification by faith not by works--may naturally, +when taken by themselves and isolated from their context, lead to a +false thought of God as morally 'easy going,' and to a corrupt laxity +of conduct. Such a result has shown itself within the area of modern +history in the antinomianism of some Protestant bodies. But long +before the Reformation St. Paul's words were 'wrested by the ignorant +and unstedfast to their own destruction[1].' It was probably a +misunderstanding of St. Paul's doctrine of justification by faith which +called forth the protest of St. James' epistle. And indeed the traces +of this tendency to pervert the gospel are apparent enough in {179} St. +Paul's own epistles. Divine grace, it was even argued, can better show +its largeness if we afford it an opportunity by the abundance of our +sin. 'Let us continue in sin that grace may abound.' To this +monstrous suggestion St. Paul replies, in his epistle to the Romans[2], +that it rests on a complete misconception. Christian faith is an +introduction into Christ. Believing we are baptized into Him. This +means that we are to live as He lived towards the world of sin and +towards God. It means that we surrender ourselves in a spirit of glad +obedience to be moulded after His pattern. If our believing does not +lead to this new living, beyond all question it is a spurious thing, +and none of the Christian privileges attach to it. With a similar +purpose St. Paul writes here to the Asiatics--newly-made Christians, +who lived in the midst of an appallingly corrupt society, and whose +inherited traditions of conduct were altogether lacking in +self-restraint--to warn them against possible abuses of their Christian +privileges and Christian liberty. + +To be a Christian is to be committed to a new life different utterly +from the old life. + +What was the old life? In writing to the {180} Romans St. Paul +describes the life of the contemporary heathen world as having its +origin in a refusal of the will to acknowledge God. 'They glorified +Him not as God.' 'They refused to have God in their knowledge.' Hence +a darkening of the understanding. 'They became vain in their +reasonings; their senseless hearts were darkened; professing themselves +to be wise they became fools.' This explains the origin and +possibility of so foolish a worship as that of men and beasts. +Further, with the obscuring of the intelligence there was a perversion +and emancipation of the passions, resulting in all forms of lawlessness +and unnatural vice. A similar description of the 'old life' St. Paul +gives here. The root of evil here also appears to be in the 'heart' +(or will)--'the hardening of the heart'; hence arises 'vanity of the +mind,' an aimlessness or loss of all true and fixed point of view, a +'darkening of the understanding,' an inherent 'ignorance'; and +accompanying this loss of real intelligence has been a loss of what is +the true goal of human life, fellowship in 'the life of God.' Instead +of that a life of uncleanness has prevailed, made into a regular +business[3], and pursued with 'greediness,' i.e. an entire disregard +{181} for others' rights--such a life as is only possible where all +true human feeling and good taste has been quenched. Men have become +'past feeling.' + +As regards the relation of this black picture to the actual facts, +enough has perhaps been said above. At least St. Paul's picture is +given as a direct challenge to the experience of those to whom he +writes; and it is not blacker, at any rate, than the picture given by a +philosophic contemporary at Ephesus, who calls himself Heracleitus. +And on the black background of this 'former manner of life,' this 'old +man' or old manhood--a life ruled by lusts which are not only morally +evil but deceive and mock those who yield to them, leading, in fact, to +nothing but corruption and death, a 'waxing corrupt after the lusts of +deceit'--St. Paul sketches in the new life in Christ. To become a +believer is to submit one's intelligence to learn a new lesson, to +study Christ; it is to yield one's self to a 'form of teaching[4]' in +order to have one's life refashioned in marked contrast to old and +abandoned ways of life; it is to imbibe a new principle in the heart of +one's rational being, 'to be renewed in the spirit of one's mind'; it +is to put on deliberately, as a man puts on clothing, {182} a new +manhood, Christ's manhood, which is 'according to God[5],' that is, is +based on His own life, and is His 'new creation' in righteousness and +holiness. And this righteousness and holiness can never deceive us by +false promises, because they are rooted in 'truth' or reality. + + +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. But ye did not so learn 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 truth. + + +There is one phrase in this passage which may need some further +comment--'The life of God.' Into God's own eternal life, as He lives +it in Himself, we are given but glimpses. But God is also living in +the world as its inherent life, and each form of creation participates +in its measure, even if unconsciously, in the life {183} of God. +Consciously and intelligently man was intended to participate in it, +but he 'alienated' himself from it by sin; and, while he was physically +sustained in life by God, morally and mentally he was an exile. But +Christ embodies the divine life anew in human form, and by His Spirit +imparts it as a new life to men. Once more in Christ men live both 'in +God' and 'according to God.' + +This thought of our relation to the life of God is, in part, expressed +in the Latin original of the Collect for the ninth Sunday after +Trinity, in which we pray 'that we who cannot exist without Thee, may +be enabled to live according to Thee.' + + + +[1] 2 Pet. iii. 16. + +[2] Rom. vi. 1 ff. + +[3] 'To work all uncleanness.' Marg. 'to make a trade of.' + +[4] Rom. vi. 17. + +[5] Eph. iv. 24, R. V. Marg. 'the new man which is after God, created,' +&c. + + + + +{184} + +DIVISION II. § 2. CHAPTER IV. 25-32. + +_The new life a corporate life._ + +[Sidenote: _Corporate duties_] + +The first characteristic of the new life dwelt upon is its corporate +character, as a life lived by those who are 'members one of another,' +and have therefore a common aim. In a body of people working with a +common aim there may be a healthy rivalry and competition in doing good +work, a manifold spirit of initiation and inventiveness, and there may +be rewards of labour, proportioned not merely to needs but to these +personal excellences. But what there cannot be is a competition which +runs to the point of mutual destructiveness, or such accumulation of +the fruits of skill and labour in a few hands as maims or starves the +life of the majority. The common interest prevents this. 'The members +must have the same care one of another,' so that 'when one member +suffers all the members suffer with it[1].' The life is the life {185} +of a body, and the general well-being is therefore the common interest +of all the members, for the weakening or decay of one is the weakening +and decay of a more or less valuable part of a connected life. This is +the general principle on which the Church is based. This is the moral +meaning of churchmanship. 'Ye are members one of another.' + +Various specific obligations follow from this general principle. + +(a) _Truthfulness and openness_; for falsehood and concealment belong +to a life of separated and conflicting interests. The prophetic ideal +for the restored Israel is to be realized among Christians. 'Speak ye +every man truth with his neighbour: execute the judgement of truth and +peace in your gates: and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts +against his neighbour: and love no false oath[2].' + +(b) _Self-restraint in temper_. We must not injure one another in life +and limb, or wound one another in feelings. Therefore we must watch +the first beginnings of anger, as the Psalmist[3] warns us, lest they +lead to sin and give {186} the devil, i.e. the slanderer of his +brethren, the inspirer of all mutual recriminations, room and scope to +work in. + +(c) _Labour for the purpose of mutual beneficence_. Under the old +covenant God had contented Himself with forbidding stealing. Under the +new covenant the prohibition of what is wrong passes into the +injunction of what is right. Labour of whatever kind, labour directed +to produce something good, is required of all. 'If any man will not +work, neither let him eat[4].' The idle man in fact violates the +fundamental conditions of the Christian covenant as truly as if he were +denying the rudiments of the Christian faith. Now the object of +labouring is to acquire 'property,' which is in one sense 'private,' +and in another sense is not. The labourer may have, under his own free +administration, the fruits of his labour, but he is to administer his +property with the motive, not only of supporting himself, but of +helping his weaker and more needy brethren. + +(d) _Profitable speech_. Here again the Christian is not to be content +with avoiding noxious conversation. His talk is to be, not indeed +'edifying' in the narrowest sense, but such as {187} 'builds up what is +lacking' in life, or supplies a need, whether by counselling, or +informing, or refreshing, or cheering; so that it may 'give grace[5],' +that is, afford pleasure and, in the widest sense, bring a blessing to +the hearers. + +In all their conduct Christians are to have two masterful thoughts. +(1) They are to think of the divine purpose of the Holy Ghost who has +entered into the Church to 'seal' or mark it as an elect body destined +for full redemption from all evil, in body and soul, at the climax of +God's dealings, the last day. The Holy Ghost, with all His personal +love, will be grieved if we thwart His rich purpose for the whole body +by anything which is contrary to brotherhood in the thoughts of our +hearts, or the words of our lips, or our outward conduct. + +(2) They are to remember the divine pattern of life. God has shown His +own heart to us in the free forgiveness which He has given us in +Christ. Being in constant receipt of that forgiveness, we must not +prove ourselves hard and unforgiving towards one another. + + +{188} + +Wherefore, putting 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 wrath: 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 corrupt 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. + + +Here, then, St. Paul sketches catholicity in practice. The very idea +of the Church is that of a fellowship of naturally unlike individuals, +harmonized into unity by the new 'truth and grace' of God, which has +been made theirs in their regenerate life. It is this endowment of the +regenerate life that is to enable them to transcend, and overstep, and +defeat natural incompatibilities of temper, and to be one body in +Christ. The practical meaning of catholicity is brotherhood. It is +love, as St. Augustine says, grown as wide as the world[6]. + +Why has the world lost this sense of the {189} moral meaning of +catholic churchmanship? Why has 'ecclesiastical' come to mean +something quite different to 'brotherly'? Or it is a more profitable +question to ask, How shall we make it mean the same thing again? There +are many who would give up the very effort after recovering the church +principle, the obligation of the 'one body.' But this, as has been +said, is to abandon the ultimate catholic principle of Christianity. +For the very purpose of the one church for all the men of faith in +Jesus, is that the necessity for belonging to one body--a necessity +grounded on divine appointment--shall force together into a unity men +of all sorts and different kinds; and the forces of the new life which +they share in common are to overcome their natural repugnance and +antipathies, and to make the forbearance and love and mutual +helpfulness which corporate life requires, if not easy, at least +possible for them. + +This is the principle which must not be abandoned. We must assert the +theological principle of the Church because it is that and that alone +which can impress on men practically the obligation and possibility of +a catholic brotherhood. + +But it is folly to assert the theological truth of {190} churchmanship, +and neglect its moral meaning. Quite recently the bishops of the +Lambeth Conference have striven to impress anew the ethics of +churchmanship upon the conscience of the faithful[7]. The principle of +brotherhood must act as a constant counterpoise to the instinct of +competition. The principle of labour shows that the idle and selfish +are 'out of place' in a Christian community. The principle of justice +forces us to recognize that the true interest of each member of the +body politic must be consulted. The principle of public responsibility +reminds us that each one is his brother's keeper. Once more the Church +has been aroused to its prophetic task of 'binding' and 'loosing' the +consciences of men in regard specially to those matters which concern +the corporate life and the relations of classes to one another. And we +pray God that the work of our bishops may not be in vain. What we want +is not more Christians, but, much rather, better Christians--that is to +say, Christians who have more perception of what the moral effort +required for membership in the catholic brotherhood really is. + +{191} + +No doubt the needed social reformation is of vast difficulty. For +instance, one who contemplates our commercial relations in the world +may indeed be tempted to despair of the possibility of recovering the +practical application to 'business' of the law of truthfulness; and +many a one who is practically engaged in commerce, in higher or lower +station, finds that to act upon the law may involve something like +martyrdom. But the very meaning of divine faith is that we do, in +spite of all discouragements, hold that to be practicable which is the +will of God; and it is nothing new in the history of Christianity if at +a crisis we need 'the blood of martyrs'--or something morally +equivalent to their blood--for 'a seed,' the seed of a fresh growth of +Christian corporate life. No fresh start worth making is possible +without personal sacrifices; and to recover anything resembling St. +Paul's ethical standard for Christian society we need indeed a fresh +start. But the few Tractarians of sixty years ago by industry, +patience and prayer effected a kind of revolution in the Church as a +whole; and reformers of Christian social relations may with the same +weapons--and with no other--do the like. + + + +[1] 1 Cor. xii. 25, 26. + +[2] Zech. viii. 16, 17. + +[3] Ps. iv. 4, according to the LXX. But the English version 'Stand in +awe and sin not' is probably correct. + +[4] 2 Thess. iii. 10. + +[5] Cf. Col. iv. 6: 'Let your speech be always with grace' or +'graciousness'; Luke iv. 22: 'gracious words'; Ps. xlv. 2: 'Grace is +poured into thy lips'; Eccles. x. 12: 'The words of a wise man's mouth +are gracious'; Ecclus. xxi. 16: 'Grace shall be found in the lips of +the wise.' + +[6] See app. note F, p. 271, _The Ethics of Catholicism_. + +[7] See _Report of Lambeth Conference_, 1897. S.P.C.K., pp. 136 ff.; +and app. note G, p. 274. + + + + +{192} + +DIVISION II. § 3. CHAPTER V. 1-14. + +_The Christian life an imitation of God and a life in the light._ + +[Sidenote: _The imitation of God_] + +St. Paul has just suggested the thought of imitating God by ready +forgiveness. And in fact here--in the imitation of God--is one of the +greatest of the new ideas and motives which Christianity supplies. God +has manifested Himself in Christ under human conditions. He has +translated the unimaginable Godhead into terms of our own well-known +human nature. For Christ is very man, yet He is the Son of God, truly +God, and His character is God's character. For the Christian +henceforth in a quite new sense God is imitable: He can become a +pattern for actual human life. As children partly consciously and +partly unconsciously imitate their parents, so we Christians as +'beloved children' are to 'become imitators of God.' + +And it is quite plain what the character of {193} God as manifested in +Christ is. It is love; and to imitate God is therefore to 'walk in +love,' that is, to conduct one's life with love as its conscious motive +and atmosphere. Moreover, the love of Christ is a love which shows +itself in self-sacrifice. 'He offered himself as an offering and +sacrifice to God on our behalf; and God, who had of old made it plain +by His prophets that He could find no satisfaction in animal victims, +accepted 'as a sweet savour' this free-will offering of +self-sacrificing love. In the self-sacrifice of Christ, therefore, we +have the clear disclosure both of what God is and of what God will +accept from man. + +But this ideal of life as lying in love and in the deliberate +self-sacrifice of one for another is the plain negation of some maxims +for life generally accepted in heathen society. It is the plain +negation of sensual self-indulgence at the expense of others, or at the +expense of our spiritual nature, of 'fornication and uncleanness of all +kinds,' of filthy conduct, of the sort of jesting or wit which ignores +all moral restraints. It is the plain negation again of selfish greed +or the unlimited desire to get--'covetousness.' These things are out +of the question for a body of saints, that is, men dedicated to a holy +God. + +{194} + +[Sidenote: _Life in the light_] + +The tone and language which befits such a dedicated life is the tone +and language of thanksgiving. But clearly Asiatic Christians were only +too ready to forget the essential incompatibility of their new +profession with the old sinful habits around them. So St. Paul +emphasizes 'This ye know for certain that fornication or unclean living +on the one hand, or the turning of gain into a god on the other, surely +excludes a man from the kingdom of Christ and God[1].' And he +reiterates 'let no man deceive you with empty words.' Such vices, +being in plain contradiction to the divine will, make men subjects of +the divine wrath, and for you this should be startlingly plain. You +have been brought out of the realm of darkness of which once you formed +a part, into the realm of light, of which you now form a part, the +realm whose light is Christ. There is no fellowship between the light +and the darkness[2]. To live in the light means to bring forth fruit +of goodness and righteousness and truth, the fruit of a character like +Christ's. For you have in Christ a definite standard by which you can +test what is well pleasing to the {195} Lord. It is your business, +therefore, to keep yourselves altogether separate from the works of +darkness which bear no fruit. Not only so, but it is your business to +'reprove' or convict the dark world of sin; not, of course, by making +the works of darkness the subjects of your curiosity and +conversation--that indeed must not be--but simply by the contrast which +your own lives present. In the light of your lives the secret shame of +the heathen life will be unmasked. And in being unmasked even the +works of darkness will themselves become part of the light. To make +such ways of living attractive they must be cloaked up in a deceitful +glamour. Once stripped bare and shown in their true character they +teach their true lesson. Thus, the one duty of a man is to awake from +the old sleep of death; to separate himself from the morally dead world +and stand clear in the light of Christ. And that is what the early +Christian hymn, which St. Paul cites, was continually impressing upon +the Christian conscience. We may attempt to reproduce it in something +like its original rhythm thus:-- + + 'Be awakened, thou that sleepest; + Rise alive from out the dead world; + Christ, the Light, shall shine upon thee.' + + +{196} + +Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in +love, even as 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, or 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. 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 Christ shall shine upon thee. + + +Three points may be noticed in this characteristic exhortation:-- + +1. The strife of light and darkness. The victory of the rising sun +and its surrender at evening to the darkness; the obscuring of the +light through eclipse or mist and its recovery--these {197} universal +appearances present themselves naturally to human consciences +everywhere as being experiences analogous to the moral strife within +between good and evil. Light is thus the universal symbol of good, and +darkness of evil. The symbolism passes out of early native myths into +the spiritual phraseology of many religions; but especially into those +of the Persians and the Jews. 'In thy light shall we see light' is the +cry of the devout heart towards God. And the whole of Christian +language is possessed by the symbolism. Christ is 'the light of the +world': His disciples are 'the children of light,' they are to be +clothed in 'the armour of light,' bathed in 'the light of the glorious +Gospel': they are the children of the God who 'dwelleth in the light +which no man can approach unto': who 'is light and in whom is no +darkness at all.' + +St. Paul, like St. John, specially loves the metaphor of light. And it +is somewhat startling to notice how different is his conception of +enlightenment from that common in modern times, or indeed, from that +held in the schools of philosophy of his own day or by the Gnostics +just after him. This latter class of men, who can be taken as typical +of many others at very {198} different epochs, meant by 'the +enlightened' a select few who had a special capacity for intellectual +abstraction and contemplation, and who by such qualities of the +intellect were believed to attain to a knowledge of God which was +beyond the reach of the ordinary men of faith. But St. Paul, following +his Master, is quite certain that the root of true enlightenment lies +in the will and heart. The love of the light is first of all simply +the pure desire for goodness; and anything that is not this first of +all is a counterfeit and a sham. And the true enlightenment is thus +not the privilege of a few, but is open to all who will come to Christ. +'Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this +world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing +that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it +was God's good pleasure, through the foolishness of the preaching, to +save them that believe.' 'If any man thinketh that he is wise among +you in this world, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For +the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God[3].' This language +sounds violent; but I doubt if many thinking men could now be found +{199} to doubt that the way opened by the 'foolishness of the gospel +preaching' was a way of light for the world compared to which the way +of the contemporary philosophers was darkness and delusion. The +arrogant wisdom of the contemporary 'Heracleitus' would have provided +no real light at all for the Ephesians whom he denounced. A fresh +start was wanted for man, and the fresh start was primarily in the life +of the conscience and heart. On the other hand neither St. Paul, nor +any of the New Testament writers, can be accused of the sort of +obscurantism to which the later Church has often fallen a victim. One +cannot even conceive St. Paul denouncing free inquiry, or cloaking up +from free investigation the title-deeds of Christianity. His love of +the light--even with all the dangers that the light has--like his love +of freedom, is frank and real. + +If we come down to our own time, there is no doubt a great deal of +contemporary 'enlightenment' that St. Paul would have pronounced +spurious. He would never surely have disparaged intellectual inquiry +or free scientific research: but he would have continually emphasized +that no one was really enlightened whose will and heart was not right +with God. {200} To have a scientific knowledge of facts is by +comparison superficial; and worse than superficial is the sharpness and +worldly cleverness which continually boasts of being 'wide awake' and +'up to date.' It is possible to be awake and enlightened in the +speculative and practical intelligence: to be awake and enlightened in +the region of the senses: and yet to be asleep and in the dark in the +region of the will and conscience towards God. And there lies the true +heart of manhood. It is possible even to be enlightened about evil and +in the dark as regards goodness. But St. Paul hates curiosity about +the ways and methods of sin. 'I would,' he says, 'have you wise unto +that which is good, and simple unto that which is evil[4].' Take heed +that the light that is in thee be not darkness. This curiosity about +sin is a delusion which has sometimes a strange hold on some who would +serve God. But they must recognize that the only Christian method of +'convicting the world of sin' is by 'convicting it of righteousness.' +Innocence has a power which sometimes is strangely underrated. + +We may pause for a moment longer to dwell on the beauty of St. Paul's +ideal of Christianity {201} as a life in the light. It has everything +to gain and nothing to lose by disclosure. It has no need to cloak +itself. It can be frank with itself and the world. And, on the other +hand, sin is a great fraud and delusion as well as a great +disobedience. It dwells in a region of lies and excuses and +concealments; it hides from itself and from the world its true +character and true issues. For, in fact, it is not only in itself foul +and rebellious, but it is in its issues fruitless. It leads to +nothing: it produces nothing: it tends only to decay or corruption of +mind and body, while goodness is only another term for life and +fruitfulness. Life, and the production of life, is the good, and it +belongs to the light; on the contrary, what hinders or destroys life +goes against God and belongs to the darkness. This is a judgement +which mis-called disciples of Malthus in our day would do well to +remember. It is not from too much life that the world is suffering, +but from corrupt and perverted life. What we want to secure is not a +limit to the population, but the bringing up of children in health and +simple living, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. + +2. St. Paul, in some passages of his epistles, uses very strongly +'universalist' phrases. He {202} has spoken to the Ephesians of +bringing all things in heaven and earth again into a divine unity in +Christ. And to the Corinthians he spoke of a time when God should be +'all things in all.' It is, therefore, all the more noticeable that +when he comes to speak of the destiny of evil men he does not offer +them any hope if they persist in their evil, but warns them that moral +evil utterly and wholly excludes from the kingdom of God: and he +appears to be not at all anxious to reconcile this warning as to the +eternal consequences of wilful evil with what he has said in other +connexions as to the final inclusion of all things in a great unity. +His example would teach us to aim at being true to the whole truth +rather than at attaining a premature completeness or consistency of +knowledge about a world in regard to which we only 'know in part.' +'Yea, the more part of God's works are hid[5].' + +3. We cannot fail to notice how constantly St. Paul associates lawless +lust with lawless grasping at money or the goods of other +men--greediness or avarice. This has led some to suppose that the +Greek word for greediness is really intended to mean lust in its +grasping {203} character. But this is a mistake. The words are +associated partly, no doubt, because lust so often involves an +'overreaching and wronging our brothers[6]' of their just rights; but +much more because the lawless grasping after gain and the lawless +grasping after pleasure are the two great perversions of the human +soul. Pleasure and mammon are the two typical idols. + + + +[1] Possibly this expression means 'the kingdom of Him who is at once +Christ and God.' + +[2] 2 Cor. vi. 14. + +[3] 1 Cor. i. 20, 21; iii. 18. + +[4] Rom. xvi. 19. + +[5] Ecclus. xvi. 21. + +[6] 1 Thess. iv. 6. + + + + +{204} + +DIVISION II. § 4. CHAPTER V. 15-21. + +_The Christian life a zealous and deliberate seizing of the opportunity +afforded by surrounding moral evils._ + +[Sidenote: _Buying up the opportunity_] + +The Christian stands awake and in the light. He has a vantage-ground +of spiritual knowledge, and the opportunity afforded by this +vantage-ground he is to use. He is not to live at random but is to +fashion his life with deliberate circumspection and prudence in order +to make the best of the spiritual opportunity, just as the merchant +cleverly seizes and uses to his own advantage a particular commercial +situation. What gives the Christian his spiritual opportunity is the +corruption which surrounds him. Of that corruption St. Paul has +already said enough. The result of it was to leave whatever was good +in man disconsolate and ill at ease. The exhibition of the Christian +light amidst such surroundings could not but arrest men's attention and +attract {205} their hearts. And if we want to be informed, in greater +detail, how to buy up the opportunity, St. Paul's answer is threefold. + +First, there must be a positive apprehension of the divine will in +particular cases such as qualifies for decisive action. 'Be not +foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.' This is the +sort of wisdom which enables a man to do what our Lord expects of +spiritual leaders, to 'discern the time.' It is a rare quality but, +according to the measure of the gift of Christ to each, it is attained +by spiritual thoughtfulness, singlemindedness, and prayer. + +Secondly, there is to be a strong and sociable enthusiasm, expressing +itself in uninterrupted joy, and based upon deep draughts of the divine +Spirit. In St. Paul's day, as in our own, men would seek escape from +the dullness of life and its sense of isolation in the excitement and +fellowship which comes of intoxicating drink. Other forms of mental +intoxication were provided at Ephesus by a sensual religious +enthusiasm. St. Paul would have the Christians confront such lawless +excitement not merely with the spectacle of discipline and +self-restraint, but also with a counter-enthusiasm, purer but not less +strong. Christians are to find an {206} excitement as strong as +drunkenness, and a fellowship as warm as is to be found in any band of +revellers, in deep draughts of the wine of the Holy Ghost. 'Be not +drunken with wine wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit, +speaking one to another in psalms[1] and hymns and spiritual songs +(such as the one he has just quoted), singing and making melody with +your hearts to the Lord.' + +Lastly, there is to be a spirit of submission, mutual accommodation and +order. The disciples are to 'subject themselves one to another in the +fear of Christ.' They are, as St. Peter says[2], to be girt each one +with the apron of service to minister to one another's needs, knowing +their responsibility to Christ, and how He looks for obedience and +service in all men. Enthusiasm is apt to be lawless, but the +enthusiasm of the Christians is to be the enthusiasm of an organized +body. It was said of old of the men of Issachar, who gathered round +the standard of David[3], that they had 'understanding of the times to +know what Israel ought {207} to do; the heads of them were two hundred, +and all their brethren were at their commandment.' A similar spirit of +practical religious understanding, with a similar readiness to obey +their leaders, is what St. Paul desires in the new Israel to do the +work of the true Son of David. + +A temper then of clear positive understanding as to what God wills to +be done in the immediate future, fired by an ardent and sociable +enthusiasm, and associated with a disinterested readiness to obey one +another in practical affairs--this is what St. Paul means by 'looking +carefully how we walk'; and it is worth while noticing that St. Paul's +conception of carefulness leads in a direction quite opposed to mere +timorous and negative prudence. Exhortations not to be rash, but to +'look before you leap,' are very commonly given by the wise. But it +does not seem to be generally remembered that, at least in the service +of God, most men err by excess not of rashness but of caution, and +'look' so long that they never 'leap.' Truly if rashness has slain its +thousands, irresolution has slain its ten thousands. The spirit St. +Paul would have us cultivate is not this cowardly mis-called wisdom, +but rather the spirit of the ideal soldier, of the 'happy warrior.' +Nothing, {208} in fact, could be more fascinating than the picture St. +Paul here draws of the Christian community. He has a vision of a pure +brotherly enthusiastic society, fulfilled with a divine life, and +attracting into its warm and comfortable fellowship the isolated, +weary, hopeless, and sin-stained from the cold dark world outside. + + +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. + + +St. Paul's exhortation to 'buy up the opportunity because the days are +evil' finds fresh application in every generation. For each generation +the 'days are evil,' and good men always feel them to be so. Not +necessarily that they are evil by comparison with other days, for the +'good old times' certainly never existed, and it is not often possible +to balance the evils of one age against those of another. It is enough +{209} for us to understand 'the ills we have.' What they are in our +own generation is conspicuous enough. In part they are the normal +evils of selfishness, and sensuality, and pride, and weakness; of +divisions of races and classes, and personal uncharity. In part they +are special: I will not make any general attempt to characterize them +here. But it is probably true to say that, among other characteristics +which our generation exhibits, is a lack of great enthusiasms and +strong convictions and inspiring leaders. Literature, philosophy, and +politics are alike lacking in a clear moral impulse. 'Causes' are at a +discount. Men are disillusionized. It is a 'fin de siècle' by some +better title than a chronological mistake. It is this characteristic +of the moment that ought to give the Church its opportunity. At +present she largely fails to take it because she lacks concentration +within her own body. The true disciples, the faithful remnant, exist +in every place, but they are lost in the crowd. They need to be drawn +together if they are to make an impression. A vigorous faith, and the +confident hope for humanity which a vigorous faith begets, were never +better calculated than they are to-day to produce a right moral +impression on the world, owing to the {210} mere absence of rival +enthusiasms. We can supply what is wanted if only everywhere we will +cultivate sincerity and enthusiasm rather than numbers, and aim at +forming strong centres of spiritual life, rather than a weak uniform +diffusion of it. + + + +[1] St. Paul is in part referring to the habit of responsive or +antiphonal chanting, which Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, reports as +characteristic of the Christians half a century later--'to sing +responsively (secum invicem) a hymn to Christ as a God.' + +[2] 1 Pet. v. 5. + +[3] 1 Chron. xii. 32. + + + + +{211} + +DIVISION II. § 5. CHAPTERS V. 22-VI. 9. + +_The relation of husbands and wives: parents and children: masters and +servants._ + +[Sidenote: _The law of subordination_] + +St. Paul mentions submission as required, in a sense, from all +Christians towards all others--'submitting yourselves one to another.' +But it is plain that in any community, and most of all in a Christian +community where order is a divine principle, some will be specially +'under authority': and accordingly St. Paul applies his general maxim +to three classes in particular--wives towards their husbands, children +towards their parents, slaves towards their masters. But in making +these applications of the law of obedience, he enlarges his subject by +including the counter-balancing principle of the duty of +self-sacrificing love on the part of those in authority; so that he +treats not one side of the relation only but both. + + +{212} + +A. HUSBANDS AND WIVES. (V. 22-33.) + +[Sidenote: _Husbands and wives_] + +Wives are to be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. Just as +the divine fatherhood is the ground of all lower fatherhood, so the +authority of the one great Head is the ground in all lower headships, +and each in its place is to be accepted as the shadow of His. Thus the +husband's headship over his wife is the shadow of Christ's headship +over the church, and that explains of what sort the husband's authority +should be. For Christ's rule is a rule for the advantage of the ruled. +He rules the church as Himself its saviour or deliverer from bondage, +and the word 'saviour' is full of associations of self-sacrificing +love. So must it be with a Christian husband. But Christ is not +merely a head to the church. He too is a husband. This idea of God as +the husband of His people--an idea which expressed both His choice of +them, His love for them, and His jealous claim upon them--is familiar +in the Old Testament. 'Thy Maker is thy husband.' 'I am a husband +unto you, saith the Lord[1].' And it is probable, as Dr. Cheyne +suggests, 'that the so-called Song of Solomon was admitted into the +canon {213} on the ground that the bride of the poem symbolized the +chosen people[2].' But in a Christian sense the idea gains a fresh +meaning. 'We that are joined unto the Lord are of one spirit' with +Him[3]. We are the 'members of his body'; and, as drawing our life +from His manhood, we may be even said to be, like Eve from Adam, 'of +his flesh and of his bones[4].' Christ then is, in this richness of +meaning, the husband of the church. + +St. Paul seems further to describe this relation of Christ to the +church under the figure of three marriage customs. The husband first +acquires the object of his affection as his bride by a dowry: then by a +bath of purification the bride is prepared for the husband: finally she +is presented to him in bridal beauty. Accordingly Christ, because He +loved the church, first 'gave himself for her'; and we may interpret +this phrase in the light of another used by St. Paul in his speech to +the Ephesian elders, where the church is spoken of as 'purchased' or +{214} 'acquired[5]' by Christ's blood. Having thus acquired the Church +for His bride, He secondly 'cleansed her in the laver[6] of water with +the word': and that, in order that He might 'sanctify her' and so +finally 'present the church to himself a glorious church, not having +spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and +without blemish.' + +This threefold statement has great theological interest which we will +consider shortly. Here we will simply let it stand, as St. Paul uses +it, to exhibit Christ as the ideal husband, the pattern for every +husband. Love for his bride; self-sacrifice in order to win her; and +the deliberate aiming at moral perfection for her through the bridal +union--that is the law for him. The wife, according to the original +divine principle, is to be part of the man's self--one flesh with him. +He must love her truly and care for her as his own flesh. This +'mystery,' or divine secret revealed, is great, St. Paul says; 'but in +saying this I am thinking of Christ and his church.' This seems to be +the exact force of verse 32. In other words--this divine disclosure of +the relation of God to man, as realized in the marriage of Christ and +His church, is indeed great and lofty. {215} But, St. Paul continues +in effect, great and lofty as it is, it is a practical pattern for us. +Do ye also, as Christ the church, severally love each one his own wife +even as himself, and let the wife see that she fear (i.e. reverence and +fear to displease) her husband, even as the church stands in holy awe +of Christ. + + +Wives, _be in subjection_ unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. +For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of +the church, _being_ himself the saviour of the body. But as the church +is subject to Christ, so _let_ the wives also _be_ to their husbands in +everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the +church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having +cleansed it 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 it should be holy and without +blemish. Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their +own bodies. He that loveth his own wife loveth himself: for no man +ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as +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. + + +There are several points here which need consideration. + +{216} + +1. There is a rich theology in St. Paul's brief description of the +relation of Christ to the church. First, there is Christ's love for +the church which involves a purpose of entire sanctification for her; +then there is sacrifice, the sacrifice of Himself, for her; then there +is the baptismal purification of the church to fit her for Christ, +which is in fact nothing else than the baptismal purification of all +the individual members of the Christian body; and this is also, as St. +Paul elsewhere teaches, the means to them of new life by union with +Himself. It is their cleansing bath because therein they are 'baptized +into Christ.' (Here, we notice, the analogy of the marriage custom +breaks down: what is in the marriage ceremonies only a washing +preparatory to union, is in the spiritual counterpart also the act of +union. Baptism is both the abandonment of the old and union with the +new.) Lastly, there is the final presentation by Christ of the church +to Himself in sinless, stainless perfection. + +We observe that Christ's sacrifice is regarded by St. Paul as +preparatory and relative. He bought the church by the sacrifice of +Himself to obtain unimpeded rights over her, because He loved her and +in order to make her morally {217} perfect. The atonement has its +value because it is the removal of the obstacles to Christ working His +positive moral work in her. + +We observe again that the sacrifice of Christ is spoken of as offered +for the church, not for the world. Christ does indeed 'will that all +men shall be saved': He did indeed 'take away,' or take up and expiate, +'the sin of the world' in its totality[7]. But the divine method is +that men shall attain their salvation as 'members of Christ's body.' +Thus, if Christ's ultimate object in the divine sacrifice is the world: +His immediate object is the church through which He acts upon the world +and into which He calls every man. 'I pray,' He said, 'not for the +world, but for them whom thou hast given me.' 'He gave himself for us +that he might redeem us ... and purify unto himself a people for his +own possession[8].' + +Once more we notice in this passage a significant hint as to St. Paul's +conception of baptism. There is no doubt of the spiritual efficacy +which he assigns to it. And we observe in germ a doctrine of 'matter' +and 'form' in connexion with the sacraments. Baptism is a 'washing of +water' accompanied by a 'word.' The word {218} or utterance which St. +Paul refers to may be the formula of baptism 'into the name of the +Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,' or the 'word of faith' of +which confession is made by the person to be baptized--the confession +that 'Jesus is the Lord[9]'; but in either case the word gives the +rational interpretation to the act. It sets apart what would be +otherwise like any other act of washing, and stamps it for a spiritual +and holy purpose. 'Take away the word, and what is the water but mere +water? The word is superadded to the natural element and it becomes a +sacrament.' So says St. Augustine[10], in the spirit of St. Paul. +This is what is meant by the later theological term 'form[11],' the +'form' being that which differentiates or determines shapeless 'matter' +and makes it have a certain significance or gives it a certain +character. Thus the form of a sacrament is the word of divine +appointment which gives it spiritual significance; and the form and +matter together are essential to its validity. The matter of baptism +is the washing by water: the form is the defining phrase 'I {219} +baptize (or wash) thee into the name of the Father and of the Son and +of the Holy Ghost.' + +Lastly, we notice that the spiritual union of Christ and His church, +though it is perfect in the divine intention from the first, is in fact +only consummated at the point where the church is freed from the +imperfection of sin and has become the stainless counterpart of Christ +Himself. The love of Christ--the removal of obstacles to His love by +atoning sacrifice--the act of spiritual purification--the gradual +sanctification--the consummated union in glory: these are the moments +of the divine process of redemption, viewed from the side of Christ, +which St. Paul specifies. + +2. We come back to St. Paul's conception of marriage to dissipate +misconceptions. It is indeed absurd to speak as if St. Paul were, in +this passage, mainly emphasizing the subjection of the woman, whether +this be done from the conservative side 'to keep women in their place': +or from the point of view of those who desire her emancipation, in +order to represent St. Paul, and so Christianity as a whole, as giving +to women a servile position. Over against the subjection of women, he +sets, and indeed gives more space to emphasize, the self-sacrifice +{220} and service which is due to her from the man. You cannot tear +the one from the other. Like St. Peter so St. Paul would have the +husband 'give honour to the wife--as to the weaker vessel' indeed, but +also as 'joint heir of the grace of life[12].' In essential spiritual +value men and women are equal. 'In Christ is neither male nor female.' +St. Chrysostom rightly bases on this passage a powerful appeal to +husbands to overcome their selfishness in their relation to their +wives. There is nothing servile in the subordination required of the +woman[13]. If 'the husband is the head of the wife, the head of the +husband is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.' Christ even is +subordinate. And the character of the headship of the husband {221} +altogether excludes the idea that women are to be married in order to +serve men's selfish interests or gratify their passions. + +Then we must notice that St. Paul is impressing upon us a moral ideal +of which the two parts are inseparable. St. Paul says nothing to +indicate that where the relations are not ideal--where the husband is +selfish or brutal--law should not step in to protect the interests of +the wife and secure her against the insults or cruelties or frauds of +the husband. He is expressing a moral ideal[14]; while law must be +largely content with preventing outrage and securing a background on +which ideals can become possible. And just as St. Paul tells +Christians that they are to obey magistrates as God's +ministers--leaving it to be understood that when they command what is +contrary to God's will, 'we ought to obey God rather than men'; so in +the same way he speaks of the wife's (or child's or slave's) duty of +subjection, leaving a similar reservation likewise to be tacitly +understood. Obedience is to be 'in the Lord.' + +3. But no doubt St. Paul does emphasize the subordination of women to +men. He will {222} not ordinarily[15] permit the woman 'to teach (in +the public assembly) nor to have dominion over a man[16].' He clearly +does not think the difference of male and female is merely physical, +but perceives that the characteristic moral perils of the sexes[17] are +different: he assigns to man the governing and authoritative position, +and to woman the more retired and 'quieter[18]' functions. It may +indeed be argued that in certain details St. Paul's injunctions are for +his time only, and no more of perpetual obligation than his prohibition +of second marriages to the clergy is assumed to be, or his +quasi-recognition of slavery. But this argument carries us but a +little way. The most of what St. Paul says of men and women is based +on a principle which he conceives to be divine, and which all history +and experience confirms. The position of women in Christendom has +often fallen far short of what is truly Christian: but no attempted +rectification will be found otherwise than disastrous which ignores the +fundamental principle. All through the animal kingdom mental +differences accompany the physiological difference between the sexes. +Experience teaches {223} that women, as a whole, are superior to men in +certain moral qualities--in self-sacrifice, sympathy, purity, and +compassion, and in religious feeling, reverence and devotion: but +inferior to them in the moral qualities which are concerned with +government--in justice, love of truth and judgement, in stability and +reasonableness. Intellectually women have very often greater quickness +of apprehension and memory, greater power in learning languages, +greater artistic sensibility. But they are conspicuously inferior in +the constructive imagination, in creative genius, in philosophy and +science. It is sometimes said that if women had been as well educated +as men--and assuredly on Christian principles they ought to be, if +differently, yet equally well educated--they would have created as +much. Why, then, have almost no women been poets of the first order, +or musical composers, or painters? For in these artistic walks of life +their education has been in many countries better and more continuous. +To maintain that men and women are only physiologically different is to +run one's head against the brick wall of fact and science, no less than +against St. Paul's and St. Peter's principles[19]. + +{224} + +It remains true that + + 'women is not undevelopt man + But diverse ... seeing either sex alone + Is half itself, and in true marriage lies + Nor equal, nor unequal[20].' + + +4. It is necessary to add something about the position assigned by St. +Paul, in other epistles, to unmarried women; and to notice the relation +of his 'theory of women' to earlier Jewish ideas and those current in +general society. + +Nothing could well exceed the influence or nobility of the position of +the Jewish wife and mistress of the household, as it is given, for +example, in the Book of Proverbs[21]. That position St. Paul can +perpetuate and deepen, but hardly augment. And the Old Testament +recognized an altogether exceptional position in certain women endowed +with the gift of prophecy, like Miriam and Deborah and Huldah, who in +virtue of their gift exercised a public and {225} quasi-political +ministry. Thus in the Christian community also there were +prophetesses, and St. Paul, in the same epistle in which he forbids +women in general to teach in public, seems to leave room for such +exceptional women to 'pray or prophecy' in the Christian congregation +with their heads covered[22]. Thus in fact all down Christian history +there have been at intervals exceptional women with unmistakable gifts +for guiding souls in private and directing public policy, like St. +Catherine of Siena, or with gifts of government like St. Hilda, whom +the Church has rightly accepted as divinely endowed. Where +Christianity appears to have made a fresh departure in regard to women +was in the organized consecration of the gift of female ministry. The +deaconesses like Phoebe, and women like Lydia and Priscilla, are most +characteristic Christian figures; and they have a long line of +successors in later deaconesses and 'widows,' and sisters of mercy, and +nurses and teachers. It was the ignominy of the Church of England that +for so long she narrowed down the functions of women to those which +belong to wives and daughters at home. Multitudes of {226} women need +other than domestic spheres and are happier away from home; and we may +thank God that--apart from the specially political and judicial +functions which are proper to men--the widest sphere of influence and +service is now again being thrown open to women. + +How pitiable it was that, in face of all Christian experience and of +the authoritative language of the New Testament, unmarried women should +have no prospect opened to them but such as was drearily summed up in +the phrase 'old maids.' St. Paul, if in this epistle he is glorifying +the married state, certainly also glorifies both for men and women the +freedom of the celibate life consecrated to the service of God--the +consecration of those who in a special sense are the virgin-brides of +Christ. We may be thankful indeed that now, if somewhat tardily, it +has received from the largest assembly of Anglican bishops ever +gathered together an altogether ungrudging recognition[23]. + +It has been very frequently observed that, especially in Asia Minor, +women in St. Paul's day were attaining in non-Christian society +positions of great influence and dignity. We find them {227} very +commonly holding priesthoods and public offices and magistracies. It +would appear, however, that too much may be made of this. The +populations of the Asiatic towns loved to be entertained with expensive +games and largesses of money and grain, and to have temples built and +endowed for them. Wealthy women of noble families were elected to +priesthoods and offices where they could exercise their acceptable +liberality in these ways. But the offices were rather of dignity than +of practical government, and were closely associated with priesthoods. +There is no evidence that women in Asiatic cities could assist at +assemblies, or give votes, or speak in public, or serve on legations, +or enter into political relations with the Roman authorities. There +were women among the Asiarchs, but probably only when they were +associated in an honorary manner with their husbands. In the early +Christian church the influence of women was put to far nobler uses than +in Asiatic cities; but their position relatively to men was not far +different from what would have been recognized in the general society +of that region[24]. In other parts of the empire the {228} women of +the Christian church were conspicuously in advance of those outside. + +In somewhat later days of the Church there was some resentment at the +high and free position assigned to women in the New Testament +documents. Thus one celebrated MS. of the New Testament[25]--the Codex +Bezae--changes 'not a few of the honourable Greek women and of men' +(Acts xvii. 12) into 'of the Greeks and the honourable, many men and +women.' In xvii. 34 it cuts out Damaris. And in xvii. 4 it changes +the 'leading women' into 'wives of the leading men.' The spirit which +prompted these changes in an early Christian scribe and reviser, has +not been wanting in much later ages, though it had not a chance of +tampering with our sacred texts. + + +B. PARENTS AND CHILDREN. VI. 1-4. + +[Sidenote: _Parents and children_] + +After laying down the principles which determined the relation of wives +to their husbands, St. Paul turns to the relation of children to their +parents. The wives are to be _subordinate_ to their husbands. +Children are to be _obedient_ to their parents as part of their duty +'in the {229} Lord,' as members of His body. They are to show honour +to their parents as directed by the commandment which we call the +fifth, but which St. Paul here probably calls 'a commandment standing +first accompanied with promise.' It stands first among those which +refer to our neighbour grouped apart--as our Lord also says 'Thou +knowest the commandments,' and then specifies those six alone[26]. And +it is accompanied with a promise implied in the words 'that it may be +well with thee and that thou mayest live long in the land[27]'--a +promise that the prosperity and permanence of the nation shall be bound +up with the observance of the natural law of obedience to those from +whom we derive our life. I say the prosperity of the nation, and so no +doubt secondly of the individual; but all through the Ten Commandments +the individual is regarded only as part of the nation. + +The other translation of these words--'which is the first commandment +with promise'--is one to which the original Greek does not seem to give +any preference, and which does not give a good sense, for the fifth +commandment has neither {230} more nor less of promise than the second, +and in what we now call 'the second table' it stands alone as having a +promise implied. + +Here again in dealing with children St. Paul passes from the duty of +the subject to that of the authority. Fathers are exhorted not to +irritate their children, as in the Epistle to the Colossians they are +not to provoke them, or, as the word may perhaps mean, overstimulate +them so as to lead to their losing heart[28]. A broken spirit and a +sullen spirit are alike bad signs in youth. But this does not mean +that they are not to be disciplined; discipline is God's purpose for us +all through life, and in childhood and youth parents are the ministers +of God to discipline their children and put them in mind to obey God. + + +Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy +father and mother (which is the first commandment with 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. + + +We may notice in this passage the implication of infant baptism. The +children are addressed 'in the Lord,' that is as already members of the +{231} body of Christ. The children of any one Christian parent are, in +1 Cor. vii. 14, described as 'holy'--that is consecrated or dedicated +by the circumstances of their birth and the opportunity which it +supplies for Christian education--and thus fit subjects for baptism. +In fact it is probable that Christianity took from the Jews the +practice of infant baptism. Within their own race indeed there was no +need of a ceremony of incorporation. For the son of Jewish parents was +_born_ a member of the chosen people. But a proselyte was--certainly +before our Lord's time--made a Jew with a _baptism_[29] which was +regarded as his new birth, his naturalization into a new and higher +race. And if the proselyte had children they were baptized with him as +'little proselytes[30].' With a new depth of meaning this practice of +infant baptism was taken over by the Christian church in the case of +those already dedicated to God by the spiritual opportunities of their +birth and education, so that the beginnings of growth might be +sanctified, like our Lord's childhood, in the Spirit. + +{232} + +We must also take to heart in our day the lesson of the fifth +commandment, as re-enforced by St. Paul, with its converse in the duty +of parents. Domestic obedience is somewhat at a discount, it is to be +feared, in this generation in most classes of society; and this is a +very grave peril. Parents, wealthy as well as poor, are very commonly +disposed to make schoolmasters and schoolmistresses do the work of +discipline for them, while they retain for themselves the privilege of +spoiling their children. There are, however, of course, very many +exceptions. There are multitudes of homes where discipline is +exercised wisely and lovingly, and children find obedience always a +duty and mostly a joy. This is certainly the only divinely appointed +method by which we are to be prepared for the obedience and +self-discipline required of us when we grow to be what is falsely +described as 'our own masters.' And St. Paul's twofold admonition to +parents is full of wisdom: they are not to provoke their children so +that they become bad-tempered, and they are not to over-stimulate them, +by competition or otherwise, so that they become disheartened. But to +nourish them by appropriate food, mental and spiritual as well as +physical, so that they may grow to the full {233} stature and strength +which God intends for them. + + +C. MASTERS AND SLAVES. VI. 5-9. + +[Sidenote: _Masters and slaves_] + +St. Paul's method in dealing with slavery is well known. The slave is +in a position really, at bottom, inconsistent with human individuality +and liberty, as Christianity insists upon it. Thus, to go no further, +the male slave and his wife are liable (in all systems of slavery) to +be sold apart from one another. This puts in its plainest form the +inconsistency of slavery with Christianity. The slave is a living +rational tool of another man, and not his brother with fundamentally +the same spiritual right to 'save his life' or make the best of his +faculties. Thus where a slave _can_ obtain liberty St. Paul exhorts +him to prefer it[31]. And when he is dealing with the Christian master +Philemon, whose runaway slave, Onesimus, has become Christian under St. +Paul's influence, he exhorts him to receive him back, no longer as a +slave, but as a brother beloved[32]. But Christianity enlisted in no +premature crusade against slavery as an institution--premature, because +Christianity was not yet in the position to fashion a civilization of +{234} her own. It left it to be undermined by the Christian spirit. + +Thus St. Paul exhorts slaves to obey, and that in more forcible +language than he has applied even to children, 'with fear and +trembling'; that is with an intense anxiety to do their duty. They are +to perform their work as in God's sight, thoroughly--He being the +inspector of it who can infallibly tell good work from bad--and 'from +the heart,' that is, putting their will and mind into it. They are to +do it as to the Lord, knowing that no good work, however menial or +uninteresting, is wasted, but shall be received back, in its product or +legitimate fruit, as 'its own reward' from Christ's hand. In the +Epistle to Timothy, this additional reason for diligent service is +given, that if Christian slaves get a reputation for slackness they +will bring discredit upon the Christian name[33]. And in the same +passage a touch is added which shows what, even in its possible +perversions, the spirit of brotherhood really meant, 'They that have +believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren; +but let them serve them the rather, because they that partake of the +benefit are believers and beloved.' + +{235} + +And the masters are exhorted to remember that true principle of human +equality--that 'with God is no respect of persons,' that in God's sight +each man counts for one, and no one counts for more than one; each +having an equal claim and duty in the sight of the one Master under +whom all are servants. Thus they are to deal with their slaves in the +same spirit of duty as their slaves should have toward them, and they +are to treat them with the respect due to brother men 'forbearing +threatenings.' + + +Servants, be obedient unto them that according to the flesh are your +masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto +Christ; not in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as servants +of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; 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 masters, do the same +things unto them, and forbear threatening: knowing that both their +Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with +him. + + +Christianity has long abolished slavery so far as the legal status of +the slave is concerned. But the principles of mastership and service +are still to be learned in this brief section of St Paul's writing; and +if we really believed that 'with {236} God is no respect of persons' +there would be neither scamping of work and defrauding of employers, +nor on the other hand the 'sweating' of the employed and treating of +men and women as if they were tools for the profit of others, instead +of spiritual beings, with each his own divine end to realize. + + + +[1] Is. liv. 5; Jer. iii. 14. + +[2] _Prophecies of Isaiah_, vol. ii, p. 188. + +[3] 1 Cor. vi. 17. + +[4] This, it is well known, was read in the Old Version. It has +vanished (in submission to the verdict of the best MSS.) from the R. V. +But there seems to me to be some force in Alford's plea for the +originality of the words, as they stand in 'Western' and later texts. + +[5] Acts xx. 28. + +[6] 'Washing.' Marg. 'laver.' + +[7] John i. 29. + +[8] John xvii. 9; Tit. ii. 14. + +[9] Rom. x. 9; cp. Acts xxii. 16. + +[10] _In Joan, tract._ 80. Cf. Irenaeus _c. haer._ v. 2, 3. + +[11] See St. Thom. Aq., _Summa_, Pars iii. Qu. lxx. art. 6 _ad_ 3. + +[12] 1 Pet. iii. 7. + +[13] It is noticeable that St. Paul does not (according to the Revised +Version which represents the original) exactly enjoin _obedience_ upon +wives (as upon children and slaves) but _subjection_: cf. Col. iii. 18; +1 Cor. xiv. 34; 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12; 1 Pet. iii. 1. If however in the +use of the 'obey' in the vow of the wife our marriage service goes an +almost imperceptible stage beyond St. Paul, its general tone preserves +St. Paul's balance admirably. The husband 'worships' the wife and +endows her with all his worldly goods. The only other ecclesiastical +formula of ours in which the word worship is used of a purely human +relation, is the peer's oath of allegiance to the sovereign at the +coronation, 'I do become your liegeman of life and limb and of earthly +worship: and faith and troth I will bear unto you to live and to die +against all manner of folks.' + +[14] How many husbands are capable of 'teaching their wives at home' +about religion? see 1 Cor. xiv. 35. + +[15] See however below, p. 225. + +[16] 1 Tim. ii. 12; 1 Cor. xiv. 34, 35. + +[17] 1 Tim. ii. 8, 9. + +[18] 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12; cf. 1 Pet. iii. 4. + +[19] All this has been admirably stated by George Romanes, whom no one +could accuse of misogyny, in his essay on 'the mental differences +between men and women.' See Essays (Longmans, 1897), pp. 113 ff. And +the statements of the text are supported by Mr. Havelock Ellis' _Man +and Woman_ (Contemp. Science Series). Mr. Ellis is sometimes less +decisive than Mr. Romanes. But see capp. xiii, xiv. + +[20] Tennyson's _Princess_; cp. his _Memoir_ by Hallam Tennyson, +(Macmillan, 1897), i. 249. + +[21] Prov. xxxi. 10 ff. + +[22] 1 Cor. xi. 5. + +[23] _Lambeth Conference_, 1897. Report on Religious Communities, pp. +57 ff. + +[24] See Paris, _Quatenus foeminae res publicas in Asia Minore Romanis +inperantibus attigerint_ (Paris, 1891). + +[25] Ramsay, _Paul the Traveller_, p. 268. + +[26] Mark x. 19; cf. Matt xix. 18, 19; Luke xviii. 20. + +[27] Cited from Exod. xx. 12 according to the LXX, which assimilates +the passage to Deut. v. 16. + +[28] Col. iii. 21. In 2 Cor. ix. 2, the only other place where the +word is used by St. Paul or in the New Testament, it means to +_stimulate by emulation_. + +[29] Accompanied with circumcision and sacrifice. + +[30] See Dr. Taylor, _The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_, pp. 55-58, +and Sabatier, La _Didachè_, pp. 84-88, both very suggestive passages. +Cf. Edersheim, _Life and Times of Jesus_, App. xii, and Schürer, +_Jewish People_, Div. ii. vol. ii. pp. 319 ff. + +[31] 1 Cor. vii. 21, 23. + +[32] Philem. 16. + +[33] 1 Tim. vi. 1. + + + + +{237} + +DIVISION II. § 6. CHAPTER VI. 10-20. + +_The personal spiritual struggle._ + +[Sidenote: _The spiritual struggle_] + +The ethics of Christianity are, as has appeared, social ethics, the +ethics of a society organized in mutual relationships: and Christianity +is concerned with the whole life of man, body as well as soul, his +commerce and his politics as well as his religion. But because this +requires to be made emphatic, does it follow that we are to neglect or +depreciate the inward, personal, spiritual struggle? Are we to give a +reduced, because we give a better balanced, importance to 'saving one's +own soul,' that is preserving or recovering into its full power and +supremacy one's own spiritual personality? Of course not: because +social health depends on personal character. The more a good man +throws himself into social, including ecclesiastical, duties the more +he feels the need of character in himself and others. And the more +serious a man is {238} about his character, the more deeply he feels +the attention and self-discipline that character needs. Certainly the +most ascetic words of our Lord--those in which He speaks of the +necessity for cutting off or plucking out hand or eye if hand or eye +cause us to stumble, and warns us that we must be strong at the +spiritual centre of our being, before we can be free in exterior +action--are likely to come home to no one with more force than to one +who would do his duty in Church or state. Christ cannot redeem the +world without Himself passing through the temptation and the agony in +the garden. And thus St. Paul, after he has been dwelling on the +fraternal and corporate character of the Christian life, comes back at +the last to emphasize the personal spiritual struggle. To be a good +member of the body, he says in effect, you must be in personal +character a strong man, strong enough in Christ's might to win the +victory in a fearful struggle. + +Against what is our spiritual struggle? It is against the weakness and +lawlessness of our own flesh. 'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is +weak.' 'Our eye and hand and foot cause us to stumble.' Or again it +is the world which is too much for us. 'We seek honour one of another +{239} and not the glory that cometh from the only God.' Quite true. +But behind the manifest disorder of our nature and the insistence of +worldly motives there are other less apparent forces; and these, in St. +Paul's mind, so overshadow the more visible and tangible ones that, in +the Biblical manner of speech, he denies for the moment the reality of +the latter. 'We wrestle not against flesh and blood,' not against our +own flesh or a visibly corrupt public, but against an unseen spiritual +host organized for evil. + +It was noticed above that St. Paul has no doubt at all that moral evil +has its origin and spring in the dark background behind human +nature--in the rebel wills of devils. It has become customary to +regard belief in devils or angels as fanciful and perhaps +superstitious. Now no doubt theological and popular fancy has intruded +itself into the things it has not seen, and, instead of the studiously +vague[1] language of St. Paul, has developed a sort of geography and +ethnology for spirits good and bad which is mythological and allied to +superstition. But it has acted in the same way, and shown the same +resentment of the discipline of ignorance, in the case of even more +central spiritual realities. No {240} doubt again the belief in the +devil has sometimes become, in practical force, belief in a rival God. +But this sort of Manichaeism or dualism represents a very permanent +tendency in the untrained religious instincts of men, which the Bible +is occupied in restraining. In the Bible certainly Satan and his hosts +are rebel angels and not rival Gods. Once more undoubtedly demonology +has been a source of much misery and many degrading practices. But +demonology represents a natural religious instinct. It is older than +the Bible. And what our religion has done, where it has been true to +itself, is to purge away the noxious and non-moral superstitions. St. +Paul is representative of true Christianity in his stern refusal to use +the services of contemporary soothsaying and magic and sorcery[2]. One +has only to compare the exorcisms of our Lord with contemporary Jewish +exorcism to note the moral difference. And every truth has its +exaggeration and its abuse. The question still remains; are there no +spiritual beings but men? Is there no moral evil, but in the human +heart? Our Lord gives the most emphatic negative answer. His teaching +about evil (and good) spirits is unmistakable and {241} constant. If +He is an absolutely trustworthy teacher in the spiritual concerns of +life, then temptation from evil spirits is a reality, and a reality to +be held constantly in view. And our Lord's authority is confirmed by +our own experiences. Sometimes experience irresistibly suggests to us +the presence of unseen bad companions who can make vivid suggestions to +our minds. Or we are impressed like St. Paul with the delusive, lying +character of evil, which makes the belief in a malevolent will almost +inevitable. Or the continuity in evil influences, social or personal, +seems to disclose to us an organized plan or 'method[3]' a kingdom of +evil. + +It is then in view of unseen but personal spiritual adversaries +organized against us as armies, under leaders who have at their control +wide-reaching social forces of evil, and who intrude themselves into +the highest spiritual regions 'the heavenly places' to which in their +own nature they belong, that St. Paul would have us equip ourselves for +fighting in 'the armour of light[4].' + +If there is a spiritual battle, armour defensive and offensive becomes +a natural metaphor which {242} St. Paul frequently uses[5]. But in his +imprisonment he must have become specially habituated to the armour of +Roman soldiers, and here, as it were, he makes a spiritual meditation +on the pieces of the 'panoply' which were continually under his +observation. + +We are, then, to 'take up' or 'put on' the panoply or whole armour of +God. This means more than the armour which God supplies. It is +probably like 'the righteousness of God,' something which is not only a +gift of God, but a gift of His own self. Our righteousness is Christ, +and He is our armour. Christ, the 'stronger man,' who overthrew 'the +strong man armed' in His own person[6], and 'took away from him his +panoply in which he trusted,' is to be our defence. And by no external +protection; we are to clothe ourselves in His nature, to put Him on as +our armour. His is the strength in which we are, like Him, to come +triumphant through the hour of darkness. + +Now the parts of the armour, the elements of Christ's unconquerable +moral strength, what are they? + +{243} + +The belt which keeps all else in its place is for the Christian, +truth--that is, singleness of eye or perfect sincerity--the pure and +simple desire of the light. 'Unless the vessel be clean (or sincere)' +said the old Roman proverb, 'whatever you put into it turns sour.' A +lack of sincerity at the heart of the spiritual life will destroy it +all. Then the breastplate which covers vital organs is, for the +Christian, righteousness--the specific righteousness of Christ, St. +Paul seems to imply[7], in which in its indivisible unity he is to +enwrap himself. And, as the feet of the soldier must be well shod not +only for protection but also to facilitate free movement on all sorts +of ground, the Christian too is to be so possessed with the good +tidings of peace that he is 'prepared' to move and act under all +circumstances--all hesitations, and delays, and uncertainties which +hinder movement gone--his feet shod with the preparedness which belongs +to those who have peace at the heart. ('How beautiful upon the +mountains are the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings, that +publisheth peace.') In these three fundamental +dispositions--single-mindedness, whole-hearted {244} following of +Christ, readiness such as belongs to a believer in the good +tidings--lies the Christian's strength. But the armour is not yet +complete. The attacks of the enemy upon the thoughts will be frequent +and fiery. A constant and rapid action of the will will be necessary +to protect ourselves from evil suggestions lest they obtain a +lodgement. And the method of self-protection is to look continually +and deliberately out of ourselves up to Christ--to appeal to Him, to +invoke His name, to draw upon His strength by acts of our will. Thus +faith, continually at every fresh assault looking instinctively to +Christ and drawing upon His help, is to be our shield, off which the +enemy's darts will glance harmless, their hurtful fire quenched. And +in thus defending ourselves we must have continually in mind that God +has delivered man by a great redemption[8]. It is the sense of this +great salvation, the conviction of each Christian that he is among +those who have been saved and are tasting this salvation, which is to +cover his head from attack like a helmet[9]. And God's {245} +word--God's specific and particular utterances, through inspired +prophets and psalmists--is to equip his mouth with a sword of power; as +in His temptation and on the cross, Christ 'put off from Himself the +principalities and powers, and made a show of them, triumphing over +them openly' by the words of Holy Scripture; as Bunyan's Christian, +when 'Apollyon was fetching him his last blow, nimbly stretched out his +hand and caught' for his 'sword' the word of Micah, 'when I fall I +shall arise.' This is one fruit of constant meditation on the words of +Holy Scripture, that they recur to our minds when we most need them. +And then St. Paul passes from metaphor to simple speech, and for the +last weapon bids the Christians use 'always' that most powerful of all +spiritual weapons for themselves and others, 'prayer and supplication' +of all kinds and 'in all seasons.' But it is not to be ignorant and +blind prayer; it is to be prayer 'in the spirit,' 'who helpeth our +infirmities, for we know not of ourselves how to pray as we ought.' +'The things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God'[10]; and it is +to be the sort of prayer about which trouble is taken, and which is +persevering; and it is to be {246} prayer for others as well as for +themselves, 'for all the saints.' And St. Paul uses the pastor's +privilege, and asks for himself the support of his converts' prayers, +that he may have both power of speech and courage to proclaim the good +tidings of the divine secret disclosed, for which he is already +suffering as a prisoner. + + +Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. 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_. Wherefore take up the whole +armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, +having done 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 preparation 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, and on my behalf, that utterance 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. + + +{247} + +St. Paul does not only exhort Christians to pray, but he gives them +abundant examples. In this epistle there are two specimens[11] of +prayer for the spiritual progress of his converts, mingled with +thanksgivings and praise. We habitually pray for others that they may +be delivered from temporal evils, or that they may be converted from +flagrant sin or unbelief. But surely we very seldom pray rich prayers, +like those of St. Paul's, for others' progress in spiritual +apprehension. + + + +[1] Col. i. 16. + +[2] Acts xiii. 6-12; xvi. 16-18; xix. 13-20. + +[3] This is akin to St. Paul's word in the Greek, iv. 14; vi. 11. + +[4] Rom. xiii. 12. + +[5] Rom. vi. 13; xiii. 12; 2 Cor. vi. 7; x. 4; 1 Thess. v. 8. Cf. Isa. +xi. 4, 5, and Wisd. v. 19. + +[6] Luke xi. 21, 22. + +[7] By the use of the articles. Contrast Is. lix. 17 which he is +quoting. + +[8] Isa. lix. 17. + +[9] 'Salvation' is sometimes viewed as already accomplished, i.e. in +the victory of Christ: sometimes as still to be realized at 'the +redemption of our bodies': so in 1 Thess. v. 8 the helmet is 'the hope +of salvation' yet to be attained. + +[10] Rom. viii. 26; 1 Cor. ii. 11. + +[11] Eph. i. 15 ff.; iii. 14 ff. + + + + +{248} + +CONCLUSION. CHAPTER VI. 21-24. + +[Sidenote: _Conclusion_] + + +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. 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 +uncorruptness. + + +Tychicus was a native of Asia Minor[1], a companion and delegate of St. +Paul, like Timothy and others[2]. He was entrusted with the task +presumably of conveying this letter to the churches of Asia Minor, and +certainly of informing them as to the apostle's state in his Roman +imprisonment--information which could not fail to comfort and encourage +them. + +St. Paul brings this wonderful letter to a conclusion with a brief +benediction to the brethren--an invocation upon them of divine peace, +and love with faith--an invocation of divine favour upon all that 'love +our Lord Jesus Christ in {249} uncorruptness.' Corruption is the fruit +of sin, the condition of the 'old man[3].' Incorruption is the state +of the risen Christ, and in Him the members of His body are to be +preserved, and at last raised 'incorruptible[4]' in body. But there is +a prior 'incorruptibleness' of spirit in which all Christians are to +live from the first[5], a freedom from all such doublemindedness or +uncleanness as can corrupt the central life of the man. And to love +Christ with this incorruptibility is the condition of the permanent +enjoyment of all that His good favour would bestow upon us. + + + +[1] Acts xx. 4. + +[2] 2 Tim. iv. 12. + +[3] Eph. iv. 22 + +[4] Cor. xv. 52. + +[5] 1 Pet. iii. 4. + + + + +{251} + +APPENDED NOTES. + + +NOTE A. See p. 26. + +THE ROMAN EMPIRE RECOGNIZED BY CHRISTIAN + WRITERS AS A DIVINE PREPARATION FOR + THE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL. + +(1) The Spanish poet Prudentius (_c._ A.D. 400) fully appreciates the +influence of the Roman Empire in welding together the world into a +unity of government, laws, language, customs, and religious rites, to +prepare the way for the universal Church. The stanzas are remarkable +and worth quoting. They are put as a prayer into the mouth of the +Roman deacon Laurence during his martyrdom. He recognizes what the +Roman Empire has done, and prays that Rome may follow the example of +the rest of the world in becoming Christian. + + O Christe, numen unicum ut discrepantum gentium + O splendor, O virtus Patris, mores et observantiam, + O factor orbis et poli, linguas et ingenia et sacra, + atque auctor horum moenium! unis domares legibus. + + Qui sceptra Romae in vertice En omne sub regnum Remi + rerum locasti, sanciens mortale concessit genus: + mundum quirinali togae idem loquuntur dissoni + servire et armis cedere: ritus, id ipsum sentiunt. + +{252} + + Hoc destinatum, quo magis Confoederantur omnia + ius Christiani nominis hinc inde membra in symbolum: + quodcunque terrarum iacet mansuescit orbis subditus: + uno illigaret vinculo. mansuescat et summum caput. + + Da, Christe, Romanis tuis _Peristephanon_, ii. 413 ff. + sit Christiana ut civitas: + per quam dedisti ut caeteris + mens una sacrorum foret. + + +(2) The Pope, Leo the Great (_c._ A.D. 450), speaks thus (_Serm._ +lxxxii. 2): 'That the result of this unspeakable grace (the +Incarnation) might be spread abroad throughout the world, God's +providence made ready the Roman Empire, whose growth has reached so far +that the whole multitude of nations have been brought into +neighbourhood and connexion. For it particularly suited the divinely +planned work that many kingdoms should be leagued together in one +empire, so that the universal preaching might make its way quickly +through nations already united under the government of one state. And +yet that state, in ignorance of the author of its aggrandisement, +though it ruled almost all races, was enthralled by the errors of them +all; and seemed to itself to have received a great religion, because it +had rejected no falsehood. And for this very reason its emancipation +through Christ was the more wondrous that it had been so fast bound by +Satan.' Leo further recognizes that the Popes are entering into the +position of the Caesars (c. 1), that Rome, 'made the head of the world +by being the holy see of blessed Peter, should rule more widely by +means of the divine religion than of earthly sovereignty.' But his +statement of the relation of Peter to Paul in the evangelization of the +world (c. 5) is remarkably unhistorical. + + + + +{253} + +NOTE B. See p. 29. + +THE (SO-CALLED) 'LETTERS OF HERACLEITUS.' + +Nine letters under the name of the great philosopher of Ephesus remain +to us. In one of them (iv) Heracleitus is represented as saying to +some Ephesian adversaries, 'If you had been able to live again by a new +birth 500 years hence, you would have discovered Heracleitus yet alive +[i.e. in the memory of men] but not so much as a trace of your name.' +This probably indicates that the author is writing 500 years after +Heracleitus' supposed age. His age was differently estimated. But +'500 years after Heracleitus' would mean, according to all reckonings, +about the first half of the first century A.D. All the other +indications of age in the letters agree with this. (See Jacob Bernays' +_Heraclitischen Briefe_, Berlin, 1869, p. 112.) They were written +presumably at Ephesus, and all or most of them by a Stoic philosopher. +I do not think that it is necessary to assume traces of Jewish +influence in these letters, any more than in the writings of Seneca. +And the bulk of the letters is so thoroughly Stoic and contrary to +Jewish feeling, that a Jew is hardly likely to have interpolated them. +They illustrate therefore the current philosophic ideas which were at +work in the world in which St. Paul lived and taught, when he was +outside Judaea. That St. Paul was familiar with these ideas, however +his familiarity may have been gained, is shown beyond possibility of +mistake by his speeches--supposing them substantially genuine--at +Lystra and Athens. + +The following passages in these letters are interesting: + +(1) (From Heracleitus' defence of himself against {254} a charge of +impiety in letter iv) 'Where is God? Is he shut up in the temples? +You forsooth are pious who set up the God in a dark place. A man takes +it for an insult if he is said to be "made of stone": and is God truly +described as "born of the rocks"? Ignorant men, do ye not know that +God is not fashioned with hands, nor can you make him a sufficient +pedestal, nor shut him into one enclosure, but the whole world is his +temple, decorated with animals and planets and stars? I inscribed my +altar "to Heracles the Ephesian" [Greek: ERAKLEI TOI EPHESIOI] making +the God your citizen, not--he continues--to myself "Heracleitus an +Ephesian" [the same letters differently divided], as I am accused of +doing by you in your ignorance. Yet Heracles was a man deified by his +goodness and noble deeds; and were his virtues and labours greater than +mine? I have conquered money and ambition: I have mastered fear and +flattery,' &c. Then after a passage about the certainty of his own +immortal renown, he returns to ridicule idolatry. 'If an altar of a +god be not set up, is there no god? or if an altar be set up to what is +not a god, is it a god--so that stones become the evidences (witnesses) +of Gods? Nay it is his works which shall bear witness to God, as the +sun, the day and night, the seasons, the whole fruitful earth, and the +circle of the moon, his work and witness in the heavens.' The whole of +this letter (iv), which can be paralleled in all its ideas from Stoic +and Platonic sources, may compare and contrast with Acts xiv. 15-18; +xvii. 22-29. + +(2) Letter v is written by Heracleitus in sickness. He gives a theory +of disease as an excess of some element in the body; and describes his +soul as a divine thing reproducing in his body the healing activity of +God in the world as a whole,--'imitating God' by knowledge of the +method of nature. Even if his body prove unmanageable and succumb to +fate, yet his soul will rise {255} to heaven and 'I shall have my +citizenship (Greek: politeúsouai) not among men but among Gods.' +'Perhaps my soul is giving prophetic intimation of its release even now +from its prison house' so short lived and worthless. Letter vi is a +continuation of v, containing a denunciation of contemporary medicine +on the ground of its lack of science, and a further explanation of the +Stoic doctrine of the immanence of God in all nature--forming, +ordering, dissolving, transforming, healing everywhere. 'Him will I +imitate in myself and dismiss all others.' We should compare and (even +more) contrast St. Paul's assertions of independence of bodily +circumstances; his belief in the higher sense of 'nature' (Rom. ii. +14), and such phrases as Phil. ii. 20, 'our citizenship is in heaven,' +Eph. v. 1, 'Be ye imitators of God.' + +(3) Letter vii is addressed to Hermodorus in exile. Heracleitus is to +be exiled also 'for misanthropy and refusal to smile' by a law directed +against him alone. After an interesting condemnation of _privilegia_, +the letter explains his misanthropy. He does not hate men, but their +vices. The law should run 'If any man hates vice let him leave the +city.' Then he will go willingly. In fact he is already an exile +while in the city, for he cannot share its vices. Then he describes +Ephesian life in terms of fierce contempt, their lusts natural and +unnatural, their frauds, their wars of words, their legal +contentiousness, their faithlessness and perjuries, their robberies of +temples. He denounces their vices in connexion with the worship of +Cybele (beating the kettle-drum) and Dionysus (the eating of live +flesh), and with religious vigils and banquets, and alludes to details +of sensuality associated with these meetings. He condemns the +submission of great principles to the verdicts of the crowd at their +theatres, and passes to a further vivid onslaught on their quarrels and +murders (they are no longer men {256} but beasts), on their use of +music to excite their bloodthirsty passions, and on war altogether as +contrary to 'the law of nature,' and involving the pursuit of all sorts +of vice. All this impeachment may be compared with St. Paul, who +speaks however by comparison with marked reserve, in Rom. i. 24-31, +Eph. iv. 17-19, and elsewhere. + +(4) The eighth letter is again written to Hermodorus now on his way to +Italy to assist the Decemvirs with the Ten Tables. It contains a +somewhat remarkable 'judgement on wealthy Ephesus' and statement of the +judicial function of wealth. 'God does not punish by taking wealth +away, but rather gives it to the wicked, that through having +opportunity to sin they may be convicted, and by the very abundance of +their resources may exhibit their corruption on a wider stage.' Cf. 1 +Tim. vi. 9. + +(5) The banishment of Hermodorus had been on account of a proposed law +to grant equal citizenship to freed men, and the right of public office +to their children. This instance of Ephesian intolerance gives +occasion for an enunciation of the Stoic doctrine that the only real +freedom is moral freedom, and moral freedom constitutes a man a citizen +of the world. 'The good Ephesian is a citizen of the world. For this +is the common home of all, and its law is no written document but God +(Greek: ou grámma alla theós), and he who transgresses his duty shall +be impious; or rather he will not dare to transgress, for he will not +escape justice.' 'Let the Ephesians cease to be the sort of men they +are, and they will love all men in an equality of virtue.' 'Virtue, +not the chance of birth, makes men equal.' 'Only vice enslaves, only +virtue liberates.' For men to enslave their fellow men is to fall +below the beasts; so also to mutilate them as the Ephesians do their +Megabyzi--the eunuch-priests of the wooden image of Artemis. There +must be inequality of function in the world, but not refusal of +fellowship, as the {257} higher parts of nature do not despise the +lower, or the soul think scorn to dwell with the body, or the head +despise the entrails, or God refuse to give the gifts of nature, such +as the light of the sun, to all equally. Here again we have what is +both like and unlike St. Paul's doctrine of true human liberty and +'fellowship in the body.' + +On the whole I think these letters are worth more notice than they have +received, both in themselves and as a good example of the sort of +religious and moral doctrine current in the better heathen circles of +the Asiatic cities, while St. Paul was teaching. It presents many +points of connexion with St. Paul's teaching, and co-operated with the +influence of the Jewish synagogue to prepare men's minds for it. But +perhaps what chiefly strikes us is the contrast which the fierce and +arrogant contempt of the Stoic presents to the loving hopefulness of +the Christian messenger of the gospel. + + + + +NOTE C. See p. 74. + +THE JEWISH DOCTRINE OF WORKS IN _THE APOCALYPSE OF BARUCH_. + +Mr. R. H. Charles gives us the following statement[1]:-- + +'The Talmudic doctrine of works may be shortly summarized as follows: +Every good work--whether the fulfilment of a command or an act of +mercy--established a certain degree of merit with God, while every evil +work entailed a corresponding demerit. A man's position with God +depended on the relation existing between his merits and demerits, and +his salvation on the preponderance of the former over the latter. The +relation between his {258} merits and demerits was determined daily by +the weighing of his deeds. But as the results of such judgements were +necessarily unknown, there could not fail to be much uneasiness; and, +to allay this, the doctrine of the vicarious righteousness of the +patriarchs and saints of Israel was developed not later than the +beginning of the Christian era (cf. Matt. iii. 9). A man could thereby +summon to his aid the merits of the fathers, and so counterbalance his +demerits. + +'It is obvious that such a system does not admit of forgiveness in any +spiritual sense of the term. It can only mean in such a connexion a +remission of penalty to the offender, on the ground that compensation +is furnished, either through his own merit or through that of the +righteous fathers. Thus, as Weber vigorously puts it: "Vergebung ohne +Bezahlung gibt es nicht." Thus, according to popular Pharisaism, _God +never remitted a debt until He was paid in full, and so long as it was +paid it mattered not by whom_. + +'It will be observed that with the Pharisees forgiveness was _an +external thing_; it was concerned not with the man himself but with his +works--with these indeed as affecting him, but yet as existing +independently without him. This was not the view taken by the best +thought in the Old Testament. There forgiveness dealt first and +chiefly with the direct relation between man's spirit and God; it was +essentially a restoration of man to communion with God. When, +therefore, Christianity had to deal with these problems, it could not +accept the Pharisaic solutions, but had in some measure to return to +the Old Testament to authenticate and develope the highest therein +taught, and in the person and life of Christ to give it a world-wide +power and comprehensiveness.' + +The doctrine called Talmudic in the above extract receives remarkable +illustration in a Jewish work, _The {259} Apocalypse of Baruch_, which +dates from the same period as the writings of the New Testament (A.D. +50-100; or if the work be regarded as composite, we should say that its +component elements are of that date), and represents to us in a very +vivid and touching form the hopes and beliefs of a pious orthodox Jew. +Thus-- + +1. _The doctrine of the merit of good works_, ii. 2 [words spoken to +Jeremiah by God], 'Your works are to this city as a firm pillar.' xiv. +5: 'What have they profited who confessed before Thee, and have not +walked in vanity as the rest of the nations ... but always feared Thee, +and have not left Thy ways? And, lo, they have been carried off, nor +on their account hast Thou had mercy on Zion. And if others did evil, +it was due to Zion that on account of the works of those who wrought +good works she should be forgiven, and should not be overwhelmed on +account of the works of those who wrought unrighteousness.' lxiii. 3: +'Hezekiah trusted in his works, and had hope in his righteousness, and +spake with the Mighty One ... and the Mighty One heard him.' lxxxv. 1: +'In the generations of old those our fathers had helpers, righteous men +and holy prophets ... and they helped us when we sinned, and they +prayed for us to Him who made us, because they trusted in their works, +and the Mighty One heard their prayer and was gracious unto us.' li. +7: 'But those who have been saved by their works, and to whom the law +has been now a hope, and understanding an expectation, and wisdom a +confidence, to them wonders will appear in their time.' + +It is very noticeable in the above quotations that it is the works of +the righteous rather than their persons (as in Genesis xviii. 23-33) +that are put forward as the grounds of confidence with God. The claim +of righteousness in the second quotation (xiv. 5) may be paralleled in +the somewhat earlier work called _The Assumption {260} of Moses_[2]: +'Observe and know that neither did our fathers nor their forefathers +tempt God so as to transgress His commandments.' + +2. _The doctrine of the treasury of merits_. The good works of the +righteous are laid up as in a treasury to avail for themselves and for +others. Thus (xiv. 12): 'The righteous justly hope for the end, and +without fear depart from this habitation, because they have with Thee a +store of works preserved in treasuries.' xxiv. 1: 'Behold the days +come when the books will be opened in which are written the sins of all +those that have sinned, and again also the treasuries in which the +righteousness of all those who have been righteous in creation is +gathered.' + +The connexion of the mediaeval doctrine of the treasury of merits with +the similar Jewish doctrine needs to be traced out. + +3. _Righteousness identified with the keeping of the law_. For the +Pharisaic Jew righteousness meant simply the keeping of the law. Thus +xv. 5: 'Man would not have rightly understood My judgement if he had +not accepted the law.' Again, lxvii. 6: 'So far as Zion is delivered +up and Jerusalem laid waste ... the vapour of the smoke of the incense +of righteousness which is by the law is extinguished in Zion.' Thus +the merits of Abraham are attributed to his having kept the law before +it was written. lvii. 2: 'At that time the unwritten law was named +among them, and the works of the commandments were then fulfilled.' + +Of course it must be said that 'the Law' may mean the ceremonial law, +as in the lower form of Jewish thought, or special stress may be laid +on its moral precepts, as is the case in Baruch, and in the higher +Jewish teaching generally. + +{261} + +4. _The Gentiles are therefore incapable of righteousness_. lxii. 7: +'But regarding the Gentiles it were tedious to tell how they always +wrought impiety and wickedness, and never wrought righteousness.' Thus +the best hope of the Gentiles is that in the Messianic kingdom they +should become servants to Israel. This will be their lot if they have +never vexed the holy people; see lxxii. 2-6. + +5. _The world created on account of Israel_, xiv. 18: 'Thou didst say +that Thou wouldst make for Thy world man as the administrator of Thy +works, that it might be known that he was by no means made on account +of the world but the world on account of him. [But "man" is at once +interpreted as the Jewish race.] And now I see that as for the world +which was made on account of us, lo! it abides, but we on account of +whom it was made depart' [i.e. into captivity], xv. 7: 'As regards what +thou didst say touching the righteous, that on account of them has this +world come into being, nay more, even that world which is to come is on +their account.' xxi. 23: 'Reprove therefore the angel of death ... and +let the treasuries of souls restore them that are enclosed in them, for +there have been many years like those that are desolate, from the days +of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of all those who are like them, who +sleep in the earth, on whose account Thou didst say that Thou hadst +created the world.' (This idea of the treasury of the souls of the +righteous recurs in xxx. 2.) In _The Assumption of Moses_ (i. 12) it +is said, 'God hath created the world on behalf of His people. But He +was not pleased to manifest this purpose of creation from the +foundation of the world, in order that the Gentiles might thereby be +convicted [i.e. of ignorance], yea to their own humiliation might by +their arguments convict one another.' + +The above teaching shows us exactly what it was to which St. Paul +opposed his doctrine of Justification by {262} Faith. We see it here +on its own ground. Its close association with 'boasting' is apparent +even in its better form; and its view of election contrasts, by its +selfish narrowness, with the view of election put forward by St. Paul, +viz. that God's election of a chosen people or society, together with +His apparent reprobation of others left outside, both alike subserve a +purpose of infinite width, the ultimate divine purpose to 'have mercy +upon all.' See Romans ix-xi, especially xi. 32, and cf. Eph. i. 9-10: +'the secret of His will with a view to the dispensation of the fulness +of the times, to bring together all things in the Christ, things in +heaven and things in earth.' + +The marked contrast between the doctrine of Baruch and the doctrine of +St. Paul must of course be admitted in general; but it has been asked +whether the doctrine of the Atonement is not a fragment of the +abandoned Jewish doctrine of merit, borrowed inconsistently by St. +Paul, or inconsistently tolerated by him. To this the reply is surely +in the negative. The Jews undoubtedly held that Enoch, Moses, +Jeremiah, and others were, on account of their righteousness, the +accepted mediators with God on behalf of the chosen people, and +propitiators of His wrath (see especially _Assumption of Moses_, xi, +and passages from _Baruch_ cited above). But the doctrine of the +Atonement, when it is examined, proves to have one feature which puts +it into marked opposition with the Judaic doctrine of human merit. + +According to the Christian doctrine of the Atonement, Christ is purely +and simply God's gift to man. He is the Son of God, given to man by +the Father, in order that, taking our nature upon Him, living the +perfect human life, and dying the death of perfect obedience, He might +satisfy the divine requirement, which we could not satisfy, and procure +for us what we could not procure for ourselves, no, not the best of us. +Therefore this doctrine {263} puts all men, the best and worst alike, +in the common attitude of simply receiving from God, as an unmerited +boon, the gift of forgiveness and reconciliation in Christ. It is in +fact the strongest possible negation of the Jewish idea of human merit, +personal or vicarious. + +In other respects the doctrine of _The Apocalypse of Baruch_ affords at +once interesting contrasts and parallels to St. Paul's doctrine. Thus-- + +(_a_) In Baruch as in St. Paul, we have a combination of the doctrine +of divine predestination with the insistence on human free will and +responsibility. lxix. 4: 'Of the good works of the righteous which +should be accomplished before Him, He foresaw six kinds' should be +compared with Eph. ii. 10: 'Good works which God prepared beforehand +that we should walk in them.' + +(_b_) The eschatology of the New Testament, including St. Paul's, is of +course especially Jewish. It does not however concern us much in the +Epistle to the Ephesians; but we notice that in _The Apocalypse of +Baruch_ the idea of 'the consummation of the times' (cf. Eph. i. 10, +'the fulness of the times') appears and reappears constantly. See +xiii. 3; xxi. 8, 17; xxx. 3; xlii. 6; liv. 21; lvi. 2; lix. 4; lxix. 4, +5; cf. _The Assumption of Moses_, i. 18: 'The consummation of the end +of the days.' + +(_c_) The connexion of St. Paul's doctrine with the Jewish doctrine is +also illustrated in _The Apocalypse of Baruch_ on the following points. +_That the Gentiles had the opportunity of the knowledge of God through +His works in nature, but refused it_. See _Baruch_, liv. 18, and cf. +Romans, i. 20: _The pre-existence of the Messiah_. This is suggested +but not very clearly stated in xxx. 1, cf. Charles's note and _The +Assumption of Moses_, i. 14, where the pre-existence of Moses seems to +be asserted. Again, _the Fall of Adam and its effect in introducing +death_ (_or premature death_) _into the world_. See xxiii. 4; xlviii. +42; liv. 15; lvi. 6, and {264} Charles's notes. Once more The +Resurrection of the Body. See _Baruch_, l; li. On all these points we +see what was the material in existing Jewish thought or, in other +words, what were the existing developements of Old Testament belief, +which the Christian inspiration had to work upon. The effect of the +specifically Christian inspiration is chiefly seen (1) in selection +among existing beliefs--taking some and utterly rejecting others; (2) +in giving a definite and fixed form to current Messianic and other +ideas which were continually shifting and incoherent; and (3) in +spiritualizing and moralizing what it appropriated. Of course it is in +the Revelation or Apocalypse of St. John that we have the most signal +instance of the New Testament use of contemporary Jewish material. But +such material holds a very large place in the whole of the New +Testament, and there is no more important assistance to the study of +the New Testament than is afforded by contemporary Jewish literature, +especially that of an Apocalyptic character. + + + +[1] _The Apoc. of Baruch_ (A. and C. Black, 1896), p. lxxxii. The +statement is compiled from Weber, _Lehre des Talmuds_. + +[2] Edited also by R. H. Charles (A. and C. Black, 1897), p. 37. + + + + +NOTE D. See p. 120. + +THE BROTHERHOOD OF ST. ANDREW + +After the above passage was written, as to the need amongst us of a +deeper idea of the obligations of church membership, it fell to my lot +to go to the United States, to make acquaintance with the work of the +Brotherhood of St. Andrew in that country, and to assist at its general +convention in Buffalo. It seemed to me that nothing could be better +calculated to revive the true spirit of laymanship than that society, +'formed in recognition of {265} the fact that every Christian man is +pledged to devote his life to the spread of the kingdom of Christ on +earth.' + +It was started among a small band of young men, of the number of the +apostles, nearly fifteen years ago, in St. James's parish, Chicago, and +has spread till to-day it numbers more than 1,200 parochial chapters in +the United States alone, and has taken firm root in Canada and other +parts of the world. It has a double rule of Prayer and of Service. +The point of the service required is that it should have the character +especially of witness among a man's equals. So much 'church work' is +directed towards raising those who are in some ways our inferiors, that +we forget that the real test of a man is the witness he bears for +Christ among his equals. There is many a man who, especially in his +youth, fails to confess Christ in his own society, and then, if I may +so express it, sneaks round the corner to do something to raise the +degraded or takes orders and preaches the gospel. Nobody can possibly +disparage these efforts of love, but a certain character of cowardice +continues to attach to them, if they are not based on a frank witness +for Christ in a man's own walk of life, where it is hardest. It is +this witness which the Brotherhood requires. + +The particular rule is 'to make an earnest effort each week to bring +some one young man within hearing of the Gospel of Christ as set forth +in the services of the Church and in men's Bible classes.' This rule +is no doubt open to criticism. But it is interpreted in the spirit +rather than in the letter, and for its definite requirement it is +successfully pleaded that it keeps the members from vagueness and +slackness. + +Certainly the result appears to be excellent. The brethren are +pervaded by a spirit of frank religious profession and devotion. There +appears to be a general {266} tone among them of reality and good +sense. Their missionary zeal does not degenerate into an intrusive +prying into other men's souls. + +The Brotherhood was developed in the atmosphere of the United States, +and it remains a question whether it will flourish in England. The +more sharply defined distinctions of classes among us; our exaggerated +parochialism; the shyness and reserve in religious matters which +characterizes many really religious Englishmen and degenerates into a +sort of 'hypocrisy reversed,' or pretence of being less religious than +one is--these things will constitute grave obstacles. But the need is +at least as crying among us, as on the other side of the Atlantic, to +emphasize among professing Christians and churchmen the duty of +witness. At least we may trust the Brotherhood will be given a good +trial. But if it is to have a fair chance among us, the greatest care +must be taken that it should develope as a properly lay movement; and +while it receives all encouragement from the clergy, should not be +taken up by them to be turned into a guild of 'church workers,' useful +for purposes of parochial organization. + +One of the most striking facts about the Brotherhood in the States is +that, while the church spirit is unmistakable--as no one who was +present at the corporate Communion of 1,300 delegates in October of +this year at half-past six in the morning in a great church at Buffalo +could possibly doubt--it has successfully avoided becoming either a +party society or a society rent by factions. + +It is because I believe the witness of this Brotherhood to the true +church spirit has already proved invaluable that I venture to dedicate +this little exposition of the great book of brotherhood--though without +leave granted or asked--to its founder and president. + + + + +{267} + +NOTE E. See pp. 164, 166. + +THE CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH (CATHOLIC) IN ST. PAUL IN ITS RELATION TO +LOCAL CHURCHES. + +By far the most frequent use of the word 'church' or 'churches' in the +New Testament is to designate a local society of Christians or a number +of such societies taken together, 'the church at Jerusalem,' 'the +church at Antioch,' 'the churches of Galatia,' 'the seven churches +which are in Asia,' 'all the churches.' But it is used also for the +church as a whole. In fact, before Christ's coming the word in the +Greek of the Old Testament had passed from meaning an assembly of the +people, as in classical Greek, to meaning the sacred people as a +whole[1], as St. Stephen uses it in his speech 'The church in the +wilderness' (Acts vii. 38). And it is exactly in this sense that it is +used by our Lord in St. Matthew, xvi. 18. 'The church' which our Lord +there promises to 'build' is the Church of the New Covenant as a whole. +We might paraphrase His words (as Dr. Hort suggests[2]) 'on this rock I +will build my Israel.' Thus there is throughout the Acts and St. +Paul's earlier epistles, a tendency to pass from the use of 'church' as +a local society to its use as designating the whole body of the +faithful. This was but natural seeing that each local society did but +represent the one divine society, the church of the Old Covenant, +refounded by Christ. See Acts ix. 31: 'The church throughout all +Judaea and Galilee and Samaria.' {268} xii. 1: 'Herod the king put +forth his hands to afflict certain of the church.' xx. 28: 'The church +of God which he purchased with his own blood.' Gal. i. 13: 'I +persecuted the church of God.' 1 Cor. xii. 28: 'God hath set some in +the church, first apostles,' &c. In this last passage and in St. +Paul's speech to the Ephesian elders this general use of the term is +unmistakable. + +In the Epistle to the Ephesians, in which alone among his epistles St. +Paul is writing not about the difficulties or needs of a particular +congregation, but about the church in its general conception, this +larger use of the term becomes dominant. And the point to be noticed +is that the church in general, or catholic church, is conceived of, not +as made up of local churches, but as made up of individual members. +The local church would be regarded by St. Paul not as one element of a +catholic confederacy[3], but as the local representative of the one +divine and catholic society[4]. But the local church is not, according +to St. Paul, a completely independent representative of the church as a +whole. The apostles, as commissioned witnesses and representatives of +Christ, are over all the churches. They, or their recognized +associates and delegates, like Barnabas, Timothy and Titus, represent +the general church which every local church must, so to speak, +reproduce. The apostles therefore, or their representatives, give to +each church when it is first founded 'the tradition' of truth and +morals which is permanently to mould it; and they maintain the +tradition by a more or less constant supervision. Thus they are {269} +the force which holds all 'the churches' together on a common basis. +'So ordain I,' says St. Paul, 'in all the churches[5].' 'Hold fast the +traditions even as I delivered them to you[6].' The apostle has, he +teaches, an 'authority' commensurate with his 'stewardship[7],' an +authority 'which the Lord gave for the edification and not the +destruction[8]' of the Christians, but which at times must take the +form of a 'rod' of chastisement[9]. The complete doctrinal and moral +independence of particular Churches is strongly denied by St. Paul in +such phrases as 'Came the word of God unto you alone?' or, 'If any man +preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let +him be anathema[10].' + +Dr. Hort's work on _The Christian Ecclesia_, in many respects, as would +be expected, most admirable, seems to me to minimize quite +extraordinarily the apostolic authority. The apostles, he says, were +only witnesses of Christ. 'There is no trace in Scripture of a formal +commission of authority for government from Christ Himself.' This +surprising conclusion is reached by omitting many considerations. Thus +in St. Matthew xvi. 19 a definite grant of official authority--as +appears in the passage, Is. xxii. 22, on which it is based--is promised +to St. Peter, and he is on this occasion, as Dr. Hort himself +maintains, the representative of the apostles generally. This +stewardship granted to the apostles, to shepherd the flock and feed the +household of God, is implied again in St. Luke xii. 42, St. John xxi. +15-17; and it seems to be quite unreasonable to dissociate the +authoritative commission to 'absolve and retain,' St. John xx. 20-23, +from the apostolic office. Dr. Hort would apparently {270} dissociate +such passages as those last referred to from the apostolic office, and +assign them to the church as a whole. But how then does he account for +the authority inherent in the apostolic office, as it is represented by +St. Paul, and in the Acts? St. Paul's conception of the authority of +the apostles is barely considered by him; and the authority of the +apostolate in the Acts is strangely minimized. Nothing is said of +Simon's impression--surely a true one--that the apostles had the +'authority' to convey the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of +hands (viii. 19). Certainly the phrases used toward the churches of +Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, 'to whom we gave no commandment,' 'it +seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater +burden than these necessary things,' imply a governmental authority, +which, if it is shared by the presbyters, is substantially that of the +apostles (Acts xv. 24-28). + +Dr. Hort also minimizes greatly the element of official authority which +appears almost at once in the church by apostolic appointment and +delegation. No doubt there was at first an authority allowed--as must +always be allowed--to the acknowledged possessors of extraordinary +divine gifts, especially to the 'prophets.' But in the period of St. +Paul's later activity, when he is facing the future of the church and +has apparently ceased to expect an immediate return of Christ, these +special gifts retire into the background, while the ordinary functions +of government, and administration of the word and sacraments, remain in +the position which they are permanently to occupy in the hands of +regularly ordained officers. + +Dr. Hort deals, as it seems to me, most unreasonably with the pastoral +epistles. It is surely arbitrary to dissociate 'the gift which was in +Timothy by the laying on of St. Paul's hands,' the gift of power, and +love, and discipline; which Timothy is to 'stir up' (2 Tim. i. 6), from +{271} that mentioned in the first epistle (iv. 14), 'the gift that is +in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the +hands of the presbyters'; and to make the former a 'gift' of merely +personal piety. And (even if the 'lay hands suddenly on no man' be +interpreted, as Ellicott and Hort would interpret it, of the reception +of a penitent) it seems absurd to doubt, in view of what is said about +the laying on of hands in ordination of 'the seven' and of the +'evangelist' Timothy, and in view of the place it held generally for +conveying spiritual gifts in the Christian Church, that this was the +accepted method of ordination in all cases; there being in fact no +evidence to the contrary. + +Once more, Dr. Hort is surely maintaining an impossible position when, +even in face of the salutation to the Philippians, he denies that the +term 'episcopus' is used in the New Testament as a regular title of an +ecclesiastical office. + +Not even Dr. Hort's reputation for soundness of judgement could stand +against many posthumous publications such as _The Christian Ecclesia_. + + + +[1] _Not_, as Dr. Hort points out (_Christian Ecclesia_, p. 5), 'the +elect (called-out) people.' The word has in fact no such association +attached to it. + +[2] pp. 10, 11. + +[3] Unless indeed, in Eph. iii. 21, we should understand 'every +building' as meaning every local church which, fitted together with +every other, grows into a holy temple, i.e. into that which only a +really catholic church can be. + +[4] The same statement would be true of St. Ignatius of Antioch. + +[5] 1 Cor. vii. 17. + +[6] 1 Cor. xi. 2, xv. 2. + +[7] 1 Cor. ix. 17. + +[8] 2 Cor. x. 8. + +[9] 1 Cor. iv, 21. + +[10] 1 Cor. xiv. 36; Gal. i. 8. + + + + +NOTE F. See p. 188. + +THE ETHICS OF CATHOLICISM. + +The world at large is fully aware of the claim of 'Catholicism,' i.e. +the claim of the one visible church for all sorts of men. But the +ethical meaning of the claim has been strangely subordinated to its +theological and sacerdotal aspects. Its ethical meaning seems to me to +require developing under heads such as these:-- + +1. The requirement of mutual forbearance if men of all races and +classes and idiosyncrasies are to be bound {272} to belong to one +organization and to worship in common, 'breaking the one bread.' +Herein lies the moral discipline of Catholicism: see above, pp. 123 +foll. + +2. The consequent obligation of toleration in theology, ritual, &c., +on all matters which do not touch the actual basis of the Christian +faith. St. Cyprian, though he believed that those baptized outside the +church were not baptized at all, yet deliberately remained in communion +with those bishops who thought differently, trusting to the mercy of +God to supply the supposed deficiency in those who, outside his +jurisdiction, were admitted into the church, as he believed, without +baptism. And St. Augustine, who, most of ancient writers, understands +the moral meaning of Catholicism, repeatedly holds up this toleration +of Cyprian as an example to the Donatist separatists of his own day: +'If you seek advice from the blessed Cyprian, hear how much he +anticipates from the mere advantage of unity: so much so that he did +not separate himself from those who held different opinions: and, +though he thought that those who are baptized outside the communion of +the church do not receive baptism at all, yet he believed that those +who had thus been simply _admitted_ into the church could on no other +ground than the bond of unity come under the divine pardon.' Then he +quotes Cyprian's words: 'But some one will say: what will happen to +those who in the past, when coming from heresy to the church, have been +admitted without baptism? (I reply): God is powerful to grant them +forgiveness by His mercy, and not to separate from the gifts of His +church those who, after being thus simply admitted into her, have +fallen asleep.' And again: 'judging no man and separating no man from +the rights of communion because he thinks differently.' And St. +Augustine continues: 'All these catholic {273} unity embraces in her +motherly bosom, bearing one another's burdens in turn and endeavouring +to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, until, in +whatever respect they disagreed, the Lord should reveal (the truth) to +one or the other of them[1].' Not to St. Paul then, only, but to St. +Cyprian and St. Augustine, doctrinal toleration is an essential of +Catholicism. Would to God the claim of the one church had not come to +be associated so generally with the opposite tendency! See above, pp. +158 f. + +3. Catholicism, as meaning a church of all races and sorts of people, +postulates a constant missionary enthusiasm in all the members of the +church till this ideal be realized. 'To do the work of an evangelist,' +to have the 'feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace,' to +be content to leave nothing but evil outside the church--that is to be +a real catholic. + +4. To St. Paul's mind the Catholicism of the church is to lead the way +to an even wider 'reconciliation.' Through the catholic union of men +in the church the whole universe is to come back into unity. The +kingdom of God is to be something wider than the church which exists to +prepare for it. This principle once recognized secures that the church +shall feel and exhibit a constant interest in all departments of +knowledge and progress. The universe is one, and redemption is for the +whole. + +5. Catholicism is the antithesis of esotericism. All--men and women, +slave or free, Greek or Scythian--are capable of full initiation into +Christianity. All--not apostles and presbyter-bishops and deacons +only--but all Christians make up the high priestly body and have on +their foreheads the anointing oil: see above, pp. 111 ff. + +Forbearance between divergent classes and races and +individuals--doctrinal toleration--missionary {274} +enthusiasm--universal sympathy--recognition of a universal priesthood +of Christianity--these constitute the moral content of Pauline +Catholicism. + + + +[1] S. Aug. _de Baptismo_, ii. [xiii.] 18, [xiv.] 20. + + + + +NOTE G. See p. 190. + +THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE AND INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS. + +The 'Report of the Committee of the Lambeth Conference appointed to +consider and report upon the office of the Church with respect to +industrial problems--(_a_) the unemployed; (_b_) industrial +co-operation,' is so much to the point as a statement of Christian +social duty that I venture to reproduce the _first part of it_ here. + + +'The Committee desire to begin their Report with words of thankful +recognition that throughout the Church of Christ, and not least in the +Churches of our own Communion, there has been a marked increase of +solicitude about the problems of industrial and social life, and of +sympathy with the struggles, sufferings, responsibilities, and +anxieties, which those problems involve. + +'They hope that they rightly discern in this some increasing reflection +in modern shape of the likeness of the Lord, in whose blessed life zeal +for the souls, and sympathy for the bodily needs of men were undivided +fruits of a single love. + +'The Committee, before proceeding to touch upon two specific parts of +the subject, desire to record briefly what they deem to be certain +principles of Christian duty in such matters. + +'The primary duty of the Church, as such, and, within her, of the +Clergy, is that of ministry to men in the things of character, +conscience, and faith. In doing this, she also does her greatest +social duty. Character in the {275} citizen is the first social need; +character, with its securities in a candid, enlightened, and vigorous +conscience, and a strong faith in goodness and in God. The Church owes +this duty to all classes alike. Nothing must be allowed to distract +her from it, or needlessly to impede or prejudice her in its discharge; +and this requires of the Clergy, as spiritual officers, the exercise of +great discretion in any attempt to bring within their sphere work of a +more distinctively social kind. + +'But while this cannot be too strongly said, it is not the whole truth. +Character is influenced at every point by social conditions; and active +conscience, in an industrial society, will look for moral guidance on +industrial matters. + +'Economic science does not claim to give this, its task being to inform +but not to determine the conscience and judgement. But we believe that +Christ our Master does give such guidance by His example and teachings, +and by the present workings of His Spirit; and therefore under Him +Christian authority must in a measure do the same, the authority, that +is, of the whole Christian body, and of an enlightened Christian +opinion. This is part of the duty of the Christian Society, as +witnessing for Christ and representing Him in this present world, +occupied with His work of setting up the Kingdom of God, under and +amidst the natural conditions of human life. In this work the clergy, +whose special duty it is to ponder the bearings of Christian +principles, have their part; but the Christian laity, who deal directly +with the social and economic facts, can do even more. + +'The Committee believe that it would be wholly wrong for Christian +authority to attempt to interfere with the legitimate evolution of +economic and social thought and life by taking a side corporately in +the debates between rival social theories or systems. It will not (for +example), {276} at the present day, attempt to identify Christian duty +with the acceptance of systems based respectively on collective or +individual ownership of the means of production. + +'But they submit that Christian social duty will operate in two +directions:-- + +'1. The recognition, inculcation, and application of certain Christian +principles. They offer the following as examples:-- + +(_a_) The principle of Brotherhood. This principle of Brotherhood, or +Fellowship in Christ, proclaiming, as it does, that men are members one +of another, should act in all the relations of life as a constant +counterpoise to the instinct of competition. + +(_b_) The principle of Labour. That every man is bound to service--the +service of God and man. Labour and service are to be here understood +in their widest and most inclusive sense; but in some sense they are +obligatory on all. The wilfully idle man, and the man who lives only +for himself, are out of place in a Christian community. Work, +accordingly, is not to be looked upon as an irksome necessity for some, +but as the honourable task and privilege of all. + +(_c_) The principle of Justice. God is no respecter of persons. +Inequalities, indeed, of every kind are inwoven with the whole +providential order of human life, and are recognized emphatically in +our Lord's words. But the social order cannot ignore the interests of +any of its parts, and must, moreover, be tested by the degree in which +it secures for each freedom for happy, useful, and untrammelled life, +and distributes, as widely and equitably as may be, social advantages +and opportunities. + +(_d_) The principle of Public Responsibility. A Christian community, +as a whole, is morally responsible for {277} the character of its own +economic and social order, and for deciding to what extent matters +affecting that order are to be left to individual initiative, and to +the unregulated play of economic forces. Factory and sanitary +legislation, the institution of Government labour departments and the +influence of Government, or of public opinion and the press, or of +eminent citizens, in helping to avoid or reconcile industrial +conflicts, are instances in point. + +'2. Christian opinion should be awake to repudiate and condemn either +open breaches of social justice and duty, or maxims and principles of +an un-Christian character. It ought to condemn the belief that +economic conditions are to be left to the action of material causes and +mechanical laws, uncontrolled by any moral responsibility. It can +pronounce certain conditions of labour to be intolerable. It can +insist that the employer's personal responsibility, as such, is not +lost by his membership in a commercial or industrial Company. It can +press upon retail purchasers the obligation to consider not only the +cheapness of the goods supplied to them, but also the probable +conditions of their production. It can speak plainly of evils which +attach to the economic system under which we live, such as certain +forms of luxurious extravagance, the widespread pursuit of money by +financial gambling, the dishonesties of trade into which men are driven +by feverish competition, and the violences and reprisals of industrial +warfare. + +'It is plain that in these matters disapproval must take every +different shade, from plain condemnation of undoubted wrong to +tentative opinions about better and worse. Accordingly any organic +action of the Church, or any action of the Church's officers, as such, +should be very carefully restricted to cases where the rule of right is +practically clear, and much the larger part of the matter {278} should +be left to the free and flexible agency of the awakened Christian +conscience of the community at large, and of its individual members. + +'If the Christian conscience be thus awakened and active, it will +secure the best administration of particular systems, while they exist, +and the modification or change of them, when this is required by the +progress of knowledge, thought, and life. + +'It appears to follow from what precedes that the great need of the +Church, in this connexion, is the growth and extension of a serious, +intelligent, and sympathetic opinion on these subjects, to which +numberless Christians have as yet never thought of applying Christian +principles. There has been of late no little improvement in this +respect, but much remains to be done, and with this view the Committee +desire to make the following definite recommendation. + +'They suggest that, wherever possible, there should be formed, as a +part of local Church organization, Committees consisting chiefly of +laymen, whose work should be to study social and industrial problems +from the Christian point of view, and to assist in creating and +strengthening an enlightened public opinion in regard to such problems, +and promoting a more active spirit of social service, as a part of +Christian duty. + +'Such Committees, or bodies of Church workers in the way of social +service, while representing no one class of society, and abstaining +from taking sides in any disputes between classes, should fearlessly +draw attention to the various causes in our economic, industrial, and +social system, which call for remedial measures on Christian +principles.' + +Abundant illustration of the kind of matters with which such Committees +might deal will be found in the report. + + + + +OXFORD: HORACE HART + +PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, by +Charles Gore + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. 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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: St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians + A Practical Exposition + +Author: Charles Gore + +Release Date: April 17, 2010 [EBook #32016] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO EPHESIANS *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +<I>St. Paul's</I> +<BR> +<I>Epistle to the Ephesians</I> +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +<I>A Practical Exposition</I> +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +BY THE +</H4> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +RIGHT REV. CHARLES GORE, M.A., D.D. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +LORD BISHOP OF WORCESTER +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +FIFTH IMPRESSION +<BR> +TWELFTH THOUSAND +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LONDON +<BR> +JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET +<BR> +1902 +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>A Series of Simple Expositions</I> +<BR> +<I>of</I> +<BR> +<I>Portions of the New Testament</I> +</H4> + +<BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +BY THE +</H5> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +RIGHT REV. DR. GORE. +</H4> + +<BR> + +<PRE> + THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. <I>Crown 8vo</I>, 3/6. + THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. <I>Crown 8vo</I>, 3/6. + THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 2 <I>Vols., Crown 8vo</I>, 3/6 <I>each</I>. +</PRE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +Oxford +<BR> +HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +TO +</H4> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +JAMES L. HOUGHTELING +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +OF CHICAGO +<BR> +THE FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF THE BROTHERHOOD +<BR> +OF ST. ANDREW +<BR> +AND TO ALL THE BROTHERHOOD +<BR> +WHICH IN MORE SENSES THAN ONE +<BR> +HE REPRESENTS +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="Pvi"></A>vi}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +PREFACE +</H3> + +<P> +The favourable reception accorded to an exposition of the Sermon on the +Mount has encouraged me to attempt another practical explanation of a +portion of the New Testament, in the interest of such readers as are +intelligent indeed, but neither are nor hope to become critical +scholars. An immense deal has been done of late to assist New +Testament scholarship, but while the studies of the scholar make +progress, the ordinary Christian 'reading of the Bible' is, I fear, at +best at a standstill. This little book then is intended to make one of +St. Paul's epistles as intelligible as may be to the ordinary reader, +and so to enable him to make a practical religious use of it, 'to read, +mark, learn and inwardly digest' it. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="Pviii"></A>viii}</SPAN> + +<P> +The method pursued, in the main, has been to let each section of the +epistle be preceded by an analysis or paraphrase of the teaching it +contains, in which it is hoped that no element in the teaching is left +unnoticed, and followed by such further explanations of particular +phrases, or practical reflections, as seem to be needed. +</P> + +<P> +I have avoided as far as possible all discussion of rival views, and +given simply what are, in my judgement, the best explanations. +</P> + +<P> +I have ventured to dedicate this book to the President of the +Brotherhood of St. Andrew, because (see app. note D, p. 264) that +society represents surely a brave attempt to realize some of the chief +practical lessons which this epistle is intended to enforce. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +CHARLES GORE. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +WESTMINSTER ABBEY,<BR> +<I>Christmas</I>, 1897.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="Pix"></A>ix}</SPAN> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +TABLE OF CONTENTS +</H2> + +<PRE> + PAGE + +INTRODUCTION . . . Study of the New Testament . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P1">1</A> + The gospel of the Catholic Church . . . . . . <A HREF="#P6">6</A> + The Roman Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P20">20</A> + Ephesus and the Ephesians . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P34">34</A> + The letter--to whom written . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P43">43</A> + + +THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. + + SALUTATION (i. 1-2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P48">48</A> + + DIVISION I (i. 3-iv. 17) + + § 1 (i. 3-14) St. Paul's leading thoughts: + life in Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P54">54</A> + predestination . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P63">63</A> + the elect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P69">69</A> + the divine secret disclosed . . . . . . <A HREF="#P72">72</A> + grace not merit . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P74">74</A> + + § 2 (i. 15-23) St. Paul's prayer . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P78">78</A> + + § 3 (ii. 1-10) Sin and redemption . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P89">89</A> + + § 4 (ii. 11-22) Salvation in the Church . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P102">102</A> + + § 5 (iii) Paul the apostle of catholicity . . . . . <A HREF="#P121">121</A> + his second prayer . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P133">133</A> + + § 6 (iv. 1-16) The unity of the Church . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P140">140</A> +</PRE> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="Px"></A>x}</SPAN> + +<PRE> +DIVISION II (iv. 17-vi. 24): + + Doctrine and conduct . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P172">172</A> + + § 1 (iv. 17-24) Christianity a new life . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P178">178</A> + + § 2 (iv. 25-32) The new life a corporate life . . . . . . <A HREF="#P184">184</A> + + § 3 (v. 1-14) The new life an imitation of God . . . . <A HREF="#P192">192</A> + and a life in the light . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P194">194</A> + + § 4 (v. 15-21) The new life a buying up of an + opportunity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P204">204</A> + + § 5 (v. 22-vi. 9) The law of subordination and authority . <A HREF="#P211">211</A> + husbands and wives (v. 22-33) . . . . . <A HREF="#P212">212</A> + parents and children (vi. 1-4) . . . . <A HREF="#P228">228</A> + masters and slaves (vi. 5-9) . . . . . <A HREF="#P233">233</A> + + § 6 (vi. 10-20) The personal spiritual struggle . . . . . <A HREF="#P237">237</A> + +CONCLUSION (vi. 21-24) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P248">248</A> + + +APPENDED NOTES:-- + + A. The Roman Empire recognized by Christians as a + Divine Preparation for the Spread of the Gospel . . . . . <A HREF="#P251">251</A> + + B. The (so-called) 'Letters of Heracleitus' . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P253">253</A> + + C. The Jewish Doctrine of Works in _The Apocalypse of Baruch_ <A HREF="#P257">257</A> + + D. The Brotherhood of St. Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P264">264</A> + + E. The Conception of the Church Catholic in St. Paul in + its Relation to Local Churches . . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P267">267</A> + + F. The Ethics of Catholicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <A HREF="#P271">271</A> + + G. The Lambeth Conference and Industrial Problems . . . . . . <A HREF="#P274">274</A> +</PRE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="intro"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P1"></A>1}</SPAN> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<I>Introduction.</I> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +i. +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Introduction</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +There are two great rivers of Europe which, in their course, offer a +not uninstructive analogy to the Church of God. The Rhine and the +Rhone both take their rise from mountain glaciers, and for the first +hundred or hundred and fifty miles from their sources they run turbid +as glacier streams always are, and for the most part turbulent as +mountain torrents. Then they enter the great lakes of Constance and +Geneva. There, as in vast settling-vats, they deposit all the +discolouring elements which have hitherto defiled their waters, so that +when they re-emerge from the western ends of the lakes to run their +courses in central and southern Europe their +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P2"></A>2}</SPAN> +waters have a +translucent purity altogether delightful to contemplate. After this +the two rivers have very different destinies, but either from fouler +affluents or from the commercial activity upon their surfaces or along +their banks they lose the purity which characterized their second +birth, and become as foul as ever they were among their earlier +mountain fastnesses; till after all vicissitudes they lose themselves +to north or south in the vast and cleansing sea. +</P> + +<P> +The history of these rivers offers, I say, a remarkable parallel to the +history of the Church of God. For that too takes its rude and rough +beginnings high up in wild and remote fastnesses of our human history. +Such books of the Old Testament as those of Judges and Samuel and Kings +represent the turbid and turbulent running of this human nature of +ours, divinely directed indeed, but still unpurified and unregenerate. +But in the great lake of the humanity of Jesus all its acquired +pollution is cut off. In Him, virgin-born, our manhood is seen as +indeed the pure mirror of the divine glory; and when at Pentecost the +Church of God issues anew, by a second birth of that glorified manhood, +for its second course in this world, it issues unmixed with alien +influences, substantially +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P3"></A>3}</SPAN> +pure and unsullied. After a time its +history gains in complexity but its character loses in purity, so that +there are epochs of the history of the Church when its moral level is +possibly not higher than that which is represented in the roughest +books of the Old Testament: and through the whole of its later history +the Church is strangely fused with the world again, until they issue +both together into eternity. +</P> + +<P> +Men from all parts of the world visit Constance and Geneva, and delight +to look at the two famous rivers issuing pure and abundant from the +quiet lakes. An analogous pleasure belongs to the study of such books +of the New Testament as the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul's Epistle +to the Ephesians, which give us respectively the fortunes and the +theory of the Church at its origin. Later epochs of Church history +have possibly more richly diversified interests—such as the period of +the Councils, or the Middle Ages, or the Reformation. But the interest +of the earliest Church unmixed with the world, its principles fresh, +its inspirations strong, its native hue free from discolouring +elements, preoccupies us with a fascination which is unrivalled. The +divine society is young and inexperienced, but what it is and is meant +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P4"></A>4}</SPAN> +to be we can see there better than anywhere else. We return, when +our minds are aching and our eyes are dim with the complexity and +obscurity of our latter-day problem, to learn insight and simplicity +again at those pure sources. +</P> + +<P> +And to the Christian believer these books are not only documents of +great historical importance as illustrative of a unique period: they +also represent to us in different forms the highest level of that +action of the divine Spirit upon the mind of man which we call +inspiration. St. Paul for instance, in this Epistle to the Ephesians +claims, as we shall find, to be an 'inspired' man, a recipient of +divine revelation, and makes a similar claim for the apostles and +prophets generally. 'By revelation,' he says, 'God made known unto me +the mystery (or divine secret), as I wrote afore in few words, whereby, +when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the mystery of +Christ; which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as +it hath now been revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets in the +Spirit.' Inspiration is a term not easily susceptible of definition. +We are inclined in our generation to recognize its limits more frankly +than has been done in the past, and +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P5"></A>5}</SPAN> +its compatibility even with +positive error on subjects which are matter of ordinary human inquiry +and not of divine revelation[<A NAME="chap00bfn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn1">1</A>]; but its positive meaning in the region +of divine revelation—in what concerns God's moral will, purpose, +character and being, and the consequent moral and spiritual +significance of our human life—ought not to be less apparent to us +than formerly. Thus when we call a writer of the New Testament +'inspired' we must mean at least this: that the same divine Spirit who +put the message of God in the hearts of the prophets of old, and who +worked His perfect work without let and hindrance in the manhood of +Christ, is here so working upon the will and imagination, the memory +and intelligence, of one of Christ's commissioned witnesses as that he +shall interpret and not misinterpret the mind and person of his Master. +Practically, an inspired writer of the New Testament means a writer +under whom we can put ourselves to school to 'learn Christ' with +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P6"></A>6}</SPAN> +whole-hearted confidence and faith. This, of course, gives an +additional reason of the most cogent force why we should continually +recur to the sacred books of the New Testament. If Christianity is to +be deterred from a fatal return to nature—that is to the religious or +irreligious tendencies of mankind when left to itself—or if it is to +be recalled when it has lapsed, this can only be by an appeal to +Scripture constantly reiterated and pressed home. There is for ever +the testing-ground alike of doctrine, of moral character, and of +ecclesiastical tendency; there is the only perfect image of the mind of +Christ. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +ii. +</H4> + +<P> +The Epistle to the Ephesians gives us St. Paul's gospel of the Catholic +Church. So far from being a man of one idea, St. Paul fascinates and +sometimes bewilders us by the intricacy and variety of his thoughts; +but like the innumerable leaves and twigs of some finely-grown tree +which emerge, all of them, through branches and boughs, out of one +great trunk, strong and straight, and one deep and firmly-set root, so +it is with the infinitely various topics and suggestions of St. Paul. +They run back +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P7"></A>7}</SPAN> +into a few dominant thoughts, which in their turn +have one trunk-line of developement and one root. The root is the +conviction, finally smitten into the soul of St. Paul at the moment of +his conversion on the road to Damascus, that Jesus is the Christ; and +the trunk-line of development is that which is involved in St. Paul's +special commission to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, that is to +say, the principle that the Christ is the saviour of Gentiles as of +Jews and on an equal basis—or in other words, that the Christian +church is catholic. +</P> + +<P> +When St. Paul acknowledged that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, this +of course meant that he remained no less than formerly an adherent of +the Jewish faith, and that he 'worshipped' without any breach of +continuity, 'the God of his fathers.' So he is fond of insisting[<A NAME="chap00bfn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn2">2</A>]. +Thus to him the Church of Christ is still 'the commonwealth of Israel,' +God's ancient church, though reconstructed[<A NAME="chap00bfn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn3">3</A>]. For the religion of +Israel had had for its main motive the hope of the Christ. All that +St. Paul now believed was that this hope had been realized, and +realized to the shame of Israel in One whom they had rejected +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P8"></A>8}</SPAN> +and +crucified. But if to believe that Jesus was the Christ involved no +breach with the religion of Israel, yet it did involve the recognition +that it had been reconstituted on a new basis, and in a way that +suggested to existing Israelites nothing less than a revolution. The +church of God had, in St. Paul's present belief, widened out from being +the church of one nation into being a catholic society, a society for +all mankind. +</P> + +<P> +If St. Paul's epistles are taken in those groups into which they +naturally divide themselves, we find that in the first group, that of +the two epistles to the Thessalonians, all his favourite topics are +present as it were in the germ, but nothing that is specially +characteristic of him is yet developed. The free admission of the +Gentiles into the Church is, with the accompanying hostility of the +Jews, assumed[<A NAME="chap00bfn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn4">4</A>], but not much insisted upon; but in the interval +between these epistles and that to the Galatians the subject had gained +fresh and poignant interest. A party of Christians having their centre +at Jerusalem had been trying—in spite of the decision of the apostolic +council at Jerusalem—to reimpose upon the consciences of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P9"></A>9}</SPAN> +Gentile +Christians, and with especial success in the Galatian province, the +obligation of circumcision; or in other words had been trying to make +it evident that the Church of God was as much as ever the people of the +Jews, and that Gentiles could only become Christians by becoming also +Jewish proselytes pledged to keep the law of Moses. In view of this +attempt St. Paul re-embarks upon his great campaign for the catholicity +of the Church, and in his epistles of the second group[<A NAME="chap00bfn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn5">5</A>] (especially +those to the Galatians and the Romans) the catholicity of Christianity +is vindicated controversially upon the basis of the principle of +<I>justification by faith, not by works of the law</I>. +</P> + +<P> +The meaning and real importance of this doctrine ought not to be hard +for us to understand. To be justified means to be accepted or +acquitted by God. The Judaizers—that is the Christian representatives +of the narrower religious spirit of Israel—held that, as God's +covenant was with the Jews only, so men could obtain acceptance simply +by the observance of that Mosaic law which was to the Jew at once the +expression of the divine selection of his race, and the grounds of his +arrogant +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P10"></A>10}</SPAN> +contempt for all who had not 'Abraham to their +father[<A NAME="chap00bfn6text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn6">6</A>].' But St. Paul had made trial of that theory, and had found +it wanting. The observance of the law and the glorying in Jewish +privileges had brought him no peace with God: had in fact served only +to produce and deepen a sense of inner alienation from God and +conviction of sin. Thus in acknowledging the messiahship of that Jesus +whom the chosen people had rejected and surrendered to be crucified, he +was abandoning utterly and for ever the standing-ground of Jewish +pride: he was acknowledging that the only divine function of the law +was to convince men of sin, and of their need of pardon and salvation: +he was taking his stand as a sinner among the Gentiles, and humbly +welcoming the unmerited boon of pardon and acceptance from the hand of +the divine mercy in Christ Jesus. When St. Paul in familiar arguments, +from the witness of the Old Testament itself, and from the moral +experience of men, convicts the law of inadequacy as an instrument of +justification, his reasoning is full of a strong feeling and conviction +bred of his own experiences. The true means of justification, he has +come to perceive, is faith, that is, +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P11"></A>11}</SPAN> +the simple acceptance of the +divine favour freely offered, and this is something that belongs to no +special race, but to all men as such. For all men everywhere, to whom +the light comes, can know that they are sinners in the sight of God, +and can accept simply from the hand of the divine bounty the unmerited +boon of forgiveness and acceptance in Christ. Thus, if faith and faith +alone is that whereby men are justified or commended to God, then at +once the catholic basis of the reconstituted Church is secured. All +men can belong to it who can feel their need and hear the Gospel and +take God at His word. This is the great principle vindicated in the +compressed and fiery arguments of the Epistle to the Galatians, and +then subsequently developed in the calmer and orderly procedure of the +Epistle to the Romans. +</P> + +<P> +But in the next group of epistles, written out of that captivity at +Rome the record of which closes the Acts of the Apostles, the same +doctrine of the catholicity of the Church is developed from a different +point of view. Now it is the thought of the person of Christ which has +come to occupy the foreground. All along St. Paul had believed that +Christ was the Son of God, the divine mediator of creation, who in +these +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P12"></A>12}</SPAN> +latter days had for our sakes humbled Himself to be made +man[<A NAME="chap00bfn7text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn7">7</A>]. But this thought of Christ's person is elaborated and brought +into prominence in the third group of epistles[<A NAME="chap00bfn8text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn8">8</A>], especially in the +Epistle to the Colossians. A tendency derived from Jewish sources was +manifesting itself among some of the Asiatic Christians to exalt +angelic beings, conceived probably as representing divine attributes +and powers, into objects of religious worship[<A NAME="chap00bfn9text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn9">9</A>]. There is a certain +spurious humility which has in many ages, and not least in the +Christian Church, led men to shrink from direct approach to the high +and holy God and to resort to lower mediators, as more suitable to +their defiled condition and weakness. This sort of spurious humility +was already detected by St. Paul, in company with other Judaizing and +falsely ascetic tendencies, as a peril of the Asiatic churches, and +especially of the Colossians. +</P> + +<P> +But he will make no terms with it. Christ he teaches is the only and +the universal mediator, the one and only reconciler of all things to +the Father. And He is this because of the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P13"></A>13}</SPAN> +position that belongs +to His person in the universe as a whole. He, as the Father's image or +counterpart, is His unique agent in all the work of creation. All +created things whatever, from the lowest to the highest, seen or +unseen, be they thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, are +the work of His hand. All were created through Him and have Him for +their end or goal, and He is the sustaining life of the whole universe +in all its parts. 'In Him all things consist' or have their unity in a +system. And because He occupies this position in the whole universe, +therefore a similar position and sovereignty belong to Him in the +spiritual kingdom of redemption. There too He is, through His manhood +and His sacrificial death upon the cross, the unique author of the +reconciliation with God. He is by His spirit the inherent life of the +redeemed, and the goal of all their perfecting. There is, in fact, no +divine quality, or attribute, or activity of God towards His creatures +which is not His. In Him it pleased the Father that all the fulness of +divine attributes and offices should dwell, and in Him as Son of God +made man dwells all this fulness bodily. The divine attributes, that +is, are not committed to a number of different mediators. +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P14"></A>14}</SPAN> +They +exist and are exercised in Him and in Him alone. It follows therefore +as a matter of course from this position of Christ in the universe and +in the church that the redemption effected by Him must be universal in +range and must extend equally and impartially to all. There 'cannot be +Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian and Scythian, +bond and free, but Christ is all and in all.' +</P> + +<P> +Thus in the Epistle to the Colossians[<A NAME="chap00bfn10text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn10">10</A>] the doctrine of the +catholicity of Christianity is again vindicated controversially, and +logically based upon the catholic character of Christ and upon His +universal function in creation and redemption; and in the contemporary +Epistle to the Ephesians, without note of controversy, the doctrine of +the catholic church, the brotherhood of all men in Christ, the doctrine +which is, we may truly say, the culmination of all St. Paul's teaching, +is allowed to develope itself in all its glory on the assumed basis of +that teaching about Christ's person which had made any narrower idea of +the church already seem incongruous and impossible. In the earlier +dispensation in which the covenant of God was with one people, St. Paul +can see only a preparatory process through +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P15"></A>15}</SPAN> +which the eternal +purpose of God could at last be realized, and out of which His eternal +secret could at last be disclosed. That purpose so long kept secret, +and now revealed, is to gather together all nations and classes of men +into the one Church of God, one organized body, one brotherhood in +which all men are to find their salvation, and through which is to be +realized an even wider purpose for the whole universe. In this +doctrine of the catholic church St. Paul finds the expression of all +the length and breadth and height and depth of the divine love. Its +length, for it represents an age-long purpose slowly worked out; its +breadth, for it is a society of all men and for the whole universe; its +depth, for God has reached a hand of mercy down to the lowest gulfs of +sin and alienation from God; its height, for in this society men are +carried up into nothing less than union with God, to no lower seat than +the heavenly places in Christ. +</P> + +<P> +I have spoken of St. Paul's great arguments for the catholicity of the +Gospel as two. The first appears mainly as a polemic against the idea +of justification by works of the law. The second as a positive +argument about the person of Christ and the results which flow from the +right appreciation of it. But in fact there is +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P16"></A>16}</SPAN> +a necessary +connexion between the two. The narrow Judaism of the Galatian +reactionaries did in fact logically involve a narrow and therefore a +false conception of the person of Christ. As Dr. Hort expresses +it[<A NAME="chap00bfn11text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn11">11</A>], 'to accept Jesus as the Christ without any adequate enlargement +of what was included in the Messiahship could hardly fail to involve +either limitation of His nature to the human sphere, or at most a +counting Him among the angels.' This logical connexion was in fact +verified in history. The Judaizers of the earliest period of Christian +history who insisted on circumcision for all Christians pass into the +Ebionites of the second century who rejected the Church's doctrine of +the person of Christ, as the eternal Son of God. And conversely it +would be scarcely possible to accept the doctrine of the universal +Christ, both divine and human, as St. Paul developes it, without +perceiving that men must be made acceptable to Him and to His Father by +something deeper and wider than any particular set of observances or +'works.' The relation therefore between the argument of St. Paul's +epistles to the Galatians and the Romans on the one side, and that of +his epistles to the Colossians and +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P17"></A>17}</SPAN> +the Ephesians on the other is +one of unity rather than of contrast. +</P> + +<P> +The relation of these two groups of epistles may be expressed also in +another way. The argument of the earlier epistles is directed towards +the Judaizers. Its purpose is to vindicate the right of the Gentiles +to an equal place and position with the Jews in the kingdom of God. +But at the time of the later group this right had been secured. On the +basis of their acknowledged title the ingress of Gentiles into the +churches of Asia had been even alarmingly rapid. Now it is time for +St. Paul to address himself to these emancipated Gentiles and to exhort +them in their turn not to relapse into unworthy and narrow conceptions +of their redeemer, or into conduct unworthy of their new position: they +must 'walk worthily of the vocation wherewith they are called.' +</P> + +<P> +Our present political situation in England offers an analogy which may +bring home to us the position of the Gentile Christians and the +function of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The time is past for us when +there is any necessity to contend that a vote should be given to all +responsible men. So far at least as the male population is concerned, +the title of the citizen +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P18"></A>18}</SPAN> +to the vote has been substantially +acknowledged; but the time is by no means past when the newly +enfranchised citizens need to be stimulated to realize what their +enfranchisement carries with it of privilege and responsibility. And +we may express this by saying that if our English political Epistle to +the Galatians has been written and has done its work, our Epistle to +the Ephesians is still surely very much needed. +</P> + +<P> +It is very strange, or at least would be strange if we were not +acquainted with the historical circumstances that have accounted for +it, that St. Paul has been, out of all proportion to the facts of the +case, identified in popular estimation with only the earlier of the two +great arguments described above, with that which has given the basis to +Protestantism, and not that which is, in fact, the charter of the +Catholic Church. +</P> + +<P> +We are all familiar with the fact that St. Paul taught the doctrine of +justification by faith, and insisted therefore on the necessity and +privilege of personal acceptance on the part of each individual of the +promises of God in Christ. We all know how, when this aspect of things +has been ignored and over-ridden—when an almost Jewish doctrine of the +merit of good works[<A NAME="chap00bfn12text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn12">12</A>] +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P19"></A>19}</SPAN> +has been current in Christendom—it has +afforded a pretext for a Protestant reaction of the most +individualistic kind, of the kind which pays no regard to outward unity +or catholic authority. But certainly in St. Paul's own teaching there +is nothing individualistic in justifying faith. It is that by which +man wins admittance into the body of Christ; and the body of Christ is +an organized society, a catholic brotherhood. Salvation, as we shall +see, is as much social or ecclesiastical as it is individual; and +perhaps there is nothing more wanted to correct our ideas of what St. +Paul understood by justifying faith than an impartial study of the +Epistle to the Ephesians. It is true that this great epistle only +freely developes thoughts which were already unmistakably in St. Paul's +mind when he wrote his epistles to the Corinthians, and even those to +the Thessalonians. Already the social organization of the Church is a +prominent topic, and the ethics of Christianity are social ethics. But +now, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the idea of the Church has become +the dominant idea, and the ethical teaching can be justly characterized +in no other way than as a Christian socialism. +</P> + +<BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P20"></A>20}</SPAN> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +iii. +</H4> + +<P> +But it is time to examine somewhat more closely the circumstances under +which St. Paul wrote this epistle and their bearing upon its contents. +It was written by him during that imprisonment at Rome[<A NAME="chap00bfn13text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn13">13</A>] the record +of which brings to an end the Acts of the Apostles. He can therefore +put into his appeals all the force which naturally belongs to one who +has sacrificed himself for his principles. 'I, Paul,' he writes, 'the +prisoner of Jesus Christ, on behalf of you Gentiles.' He speaks of +himself as 'an ambassador in a chain' bound, as he was no doubt, to the +soldier which kept him. But the fact that he is a prisoner does not +occupy a great place in his mind. In part this is because his +imprisonment was not of a highly restrictive character. The Acts +conclude by telling us that he was allowed to dwell in his own hired +dwelling and to receive all that came to him without let or hindrance +to his preaching. And the tone of the 'epistles of the first +captivity' is cheerful as to the present and hopeful for the +future[<A NAME="chap00bfn14text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn14">14</A>]. But it is more important to notice that +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P21"></A>21}</SPAN> +the thought +of being in prison is apparently swallowed up in St. Paul's imagination +by other considerations. For, in the first place, St. Paul was, under +whatever restraints, at Rome. He had reached his goal—a new centre of +evangelization which was also the centre of the world. Step by step +the centre of Christian evangelization had passed toward Rome as its +goal. From Jerusalem, which told unmistakably that 'the salvation was +of the Jews,' it had moved to Antioch, where in a Greek city Jew met +Gentile on equal terms. From Antioch, under St. Paul's leadership, it +had passed to Corinth and Ephesus. These were indeed thoroughly +Gentile cities, and leading cities of the Empire, but they were +provincial. No imperial movement could rest satisfied till it +established itself at the centre of the great imperial +organization—till it had got to Rome. +</P> + +<P> +If we are to understand at all adequately the world in which St. Paul +wrote, the thought of the Roman Empire and of the unity which it was +giving the world must be clearly before our minds: and it will not be a +digression if we pause to dwell upon it at this point when we are +considering the significance of St. Paul's situation as at once a +prisoner and an evangelist in the great capital. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P22"></A>22}</SPAN> + +<P> +The Roman Empire brought the world, that is the whole of the known +world which was thought worth considering, into a great unity of +government. What had once been independent kingdoms had now become +provinces of the empire, and the whole of the Roman policy was directed +towards drawing closer the unity, and educating the provinces in Roman +ideas[<A NAME="chap00bfn15text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn15">15</A>]. +</P> + +<P> +If we seek to define Roman unity a little more closely the following +elements will be found perhaps the most important for our purpose. (1) +It was a unity of government strongly centralized at Rome in the person +of the emperor. The letters of a provincial governor like Pliny to his +master Trajan at Rome reveal to us how even trivial matters, such as +the formation of a guild of firemen in Pliny's province of Bithynia, +were referred up to the emperor. Roman government was in fact personal +and centralized in a very complete sense, and had the uniformity which +accompanies such a condition. (2) This centralized personal government +is, of course, only possible where there is a well-organized system of +inter-communication between the widely-separated parts of a great +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P23"></A>23}</SPAN> +empire. And there was this to an amazing extent in the Roman empire. +We find evidence of it in the great roads representing a highly +developed system of travelling. 'It is not too much to say that +travelling was more highly developed and the dividing power of distance +was weaker under the Empire than at any time before or since until we +come down to the present century.' This is what gives such a modern +and cosmopolitan flavour to the lives of men of the Empire as unlike +one another in other respects as Strabo and Jerome. We find the +evidence of such a system of inter-communication also, and not less +impressively, in the multiplied proofs afforded to us that every +movement of thought in the Empire must needs pass to Rome and establish +itself there. The rapid arrival of all oriental tendencies or beliefs +at Rome was, of course, what from the point of view of conservative +Romans meant the destruction of all that they valued in character and +ideals. 'The Orontes had poured itself into the Tiber.' But it was +none the less a fact of the utmost significance for the world's +progress. (3) The unity of the Empire depended largely on the use +which was made of Greek civilization and Greek language. The Empire +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P24"></A>24}</SPAN> +may be rightly described, if we are considering its eastern half, +as Greek no less than Roman from the first. Everywhere it was the +Greek language which was the instrument of Roman government, and Greek +civilization, tempered by somewhat barbarous Roman 'games,' which was +put into competition with local customs whether social or +religious[<A NAME="chap00bfn16text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn16">16</A>]. (4) Lastly, to a very real extent the Empire was aiming +at the establishment of a universal religion. Independent local gods +and local cults suited well enough a number of independent little +tribes and kingdoms, but it was felt instinctively that the one empire +involved also one religion, and with more or less of deliberate +intention the one religion was provided in the worship of the emperor, +or, perhaps we should say, of the Empire. +</P> + +<P> +This worship of the emperor has been among us a very byword for what is +monstrous and unintelligible. It bewilders us when we hear of +something like it in our own Indian empire. And yet a little +imagination ought to show us that where a pure monotheism has not +taught men the moral purity and personal character of God—where +religion is either pantheism, the deification of the one life, or +idolatry, the deification +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P25"></A>25}</SPAN> +of separate forms of life—the worship +of the imperial authority is intelligible enough. Here was a vast +power, universal in its range, mostly beneficent, and yet awful in its +limitless and arbitrary power of chastisement; what should it be but +divine, like nature, and an object to be appealed to, propitiated, +worshipped? At any rate the cultus of the emperor spread in the Roman +world, and particularly in the Asiatic provinces. It could ally itself +with the current pantheistic philosophy and also with popular local +cults: for it was tolerant of all and could embrace them all, or in +some cases it could identify itself with them—the emperor being +regarded as a special manifestation of the local god. And it made +itself popular through games—wild beast shows and gladiatorial +contests—which it was the business of its high priests or presidents +to provide or to organize. Thus it was that the Roman world came to be +organized by provinces for the purposes of the imperial religion, and +the provincial presidents, whom we hear of in the Acts as 'Asiarchs' or +'chiefs of Asia,' and from other sources as existing in the other +provinces—Galatarchs, Bithyniarchs, Syriarchs, and so on—were also +the high priests of the worship of the Caesars, by which it was sought +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P26"></A>26}</SPAN> +to make religion, like everything else, contribute to cement +imperial unity[<A NAME="chap00bfn17text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn17">17</A>]. +</P> + +<P> +Now there can be no doubt at all, if we look back from the fourth or +fifth centuries of our era, to how vast an extent this Roman unity had +been made an engine for the propagation of the Church. And the +Christians—the Spanish poet Prudentius, for instance, or Pope Leo the +Great[<A NAME="chap00bfn18text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn18">18</A>]—betray a strong consciousness of the place held by the +empire in the divine preparation for Christ. For long periods the +Roman authority was tolerant of Christianity and suffered its +propagation to go on in peace; and at the times when it became alarmed +at its subversive tendencies, and turned to become its persecutor, +still the Church could not be prevented from using the imperial +organization, its roads and its means of communication. Again, every +step in the progress of the Greek language facilitated the spread of +the new religion, the propagation of which was through Greek; and +conversely Christianity became an instrument for spreading the use of +this language which previously was making but a poor struggle against +the languages +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P27"></A>27}</SPAN> +of Asia Minor; for it is apparently a simple mistake +to suppose that even the apostles were miraculously dispensed from the +difficulties of acquiring new languages, and were enabled to speak all +languages as it were by instinct. Even the imperial religion provided +a framework to facilitate the organization of that still more imperial +religion which it found indeed absolutely incompatible with its +prerogatives, but in which it might have found an efficient substitute +to accomplish its own best ends. Thus the early Christian apologist +Tatian pleads that Christianity alone could supply what was manifestly +needed for a united world, a universal moral law and a universal +gratuitous education or philosophy, open to rich and poor, men and +women, alike[<A NAME="chap00bfn19text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn19">19</A>]. So strong in fact was in many respects the affinity +of the Empire and the Church that the apologists are not infrequently +able to claim, and that plausibly, that if the Roman authorities were +ready to recognize it, they would find in the Church their most +efficient ally. +</P> + +<P> +And there is no doubt that all this tendency to use the empire as the +ally and instrument of the Church began with St. Paul. The closer St. +Paul's evangelistic travels are examined the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P28"></A>28}</SPAN> +more apparent does it +become that he, the apostle who was also the Roman citizen, was by the +very force of circumstances, but also probably deliberately, working +the Church on the lines of the empire. 'The classification adopted in +Paul's own letters of the churches which he founded, is according to +provinces—Achaia, Macedonia, Asia, and Galatia; the same fact is +clearly visible in the narrative of Acts. It guides and inspires the +expressions from the time when the apostle landed at Perga. At every +step any one who knows the country recognizes that the Roman division +is implied[<A NAME="chap00bfn20text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn20">20</A>].' Nor can we fail to be struck with the regularity with +which St. Paul, wherever he mentions the Empire, takes it on its best +side and represents it as a divine institution whose officers are God's +ministers for justice and order and peace[<A NAME="chap00bfn21text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn21">21</A>]. It is from this point +of view alone that he will have Christians think of it and pray for +it[<A NAME="chap00bfn22text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn22">22</A>]. There is the confidence of the true son of the empire in his +'I appeal unto Caesar[<A NAME="chap00bfn23text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn23">23</A>].' +</P> + +<P> +Further than this, when St. Paul is addressing himself to Gentiles who +had received no leavening of Jewish monotheism, it is most striking +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P29"></A>29}</SPAN> +how he throws himself back on those common philosophical and +religious ideas which were permeating the thought of the Empire. 'The +popular philosophy inclined towards pantheism, the popular religion was +polytheistic, but Paul starts from the simplest platform common to +both. There exists something in the way of a divine nature which the +religious try to please and the philosophers try to understand[<A NAME="chap00bfn24text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn24">24</A>].' +Close parallels to St. Paul's language in his two recorded speeches at +Lystra and at Athens, can be found in the writings of the contemporary +Stoic philosopher Seneca[<A NAME="chap00bfn25text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn25">25</A>], and in the so-called 'Letters of +Heracleitus' written by some philosophic student nearly contemporary +with St. Paul at Ephesus[<A NAME="chap00bfn26text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn26">26</A>]. In exposing the folly of idolaters he +was only doing what a contemporary philosopher was doing also, and +repeating ideas which he might have learnt almost as readily in the +schools of his native city Tarsus—which Strabo speaks of as the most +philosophical place in the world, and the place where philosophy was +most of all an indigenous plant[<A NAME="chap00bfn27text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn27">27</A>]—as at the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P30"></A>30}</SPAN> +feet of Gamaliel in +Jerusalem. Certainly Paul the apostle to the Gentiles was also Saul of +Tarsus and the citizen of the Roman Empire in whose mind the idea and +sentiment of the empire lay already side by side with the idea of the +catholic church. +</P> + +<P> +Such a statement as has just been given of the relation of the Roman +organization to the Church is undoubtedly true. And it is also +indisputable that St. Paul was in fact the pioneer in using the empire +for the purposes of the Church. But it is more questionable to what +extent the idea of the empire as the handmaid of the Church was +consciously and deliberately, or only unconsciously or instinctively, +present to his mind; and in particular it is questionable how far the +peculiar exaltation of the epistles of the first captivity is due to +St. Paul's realization that in getting to Rome, the capital and centre +of the Empire, he had reached a goal which was +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P31"></A>31}</SPAN> +also a fresh and +unique starting-point for the evangelization of the world. +</P> + +<P> +To some extent this must certainly have been the case[<A NAME="chap00bfn28text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn28">28</A>]. While he is +at Ephesus[<A NAME="chap00bfn29text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn29">29</A>] preaching, he already has Rome in view, and a sense of +unaccomplished purpose till he has visited it, 'I must also see Rome.' +When a little later he writes to the Romans, the name of Rome is a name +both of attraction and of awe. He is eager to go to Rome, but he seems +to fear it at the same time. So much as in him lies, he is ready to +preach the gospel to them also that are at Rome. Even in face of all +that that imperial name means, he is not ashamed of the Gospel[<A NAME="chap00bfn30text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn30">30</A>]. +</P> + +<P> +Later the divine vision at Jerusalem assures him that, as he has borne +witness concerning Christ at Jerusalem, so he must bear witness also at +Rome[<A NAME="chap00bfn31text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn31">31</A>]. The confidence of this divine purpose mingles with and +reinforces the confidence of the Roman citizen in his appeal to Caesar. +The sense of the divine hand upon him to take him to Rome is +strengthened by another vision amid the terrors of the sea voyage[<A NAME="chap00bfn32text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn32">32</A>]. +At his first contact with the Roman +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P32"></A>32}</SPAN> +brethren 'he thanked God and +took courage[<A NAME="chap00bfn33text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn33">33</A>].' This sense of thankfulness and encouragement +pervades the whole of the first captivity so far as it is represented +in his letters. He had reached the goal of his labours and a fresh +starting-point for a wide-spreading activity. +</P> + +<P> +Certainly no one can mistake the glow of enthusiasm which pervades the +epistles of the first captivity generally, but especially the Epistle +to the Ephesians. It is conspicuously, and beyond all the other +epistles, rapturous and uplifted. And this is not due—as is the +cheerful thankfulness of the Epistle to the Philippians, at least in +part—to the specially intimate relations of St. Paul to the +congregations he was addressing, or to the specially satisfactory +character of their Christian life. On the contrary, St. Paul perceived +that the Asiatic churches, and especially Ephesus, were threatened by +very ominous perils. 'Very grievous wolves were entering in, not +sparing the flock; and among themselves men were arising, speaking +perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them[<A NAME="chap00bfn34text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn34">34</A>].' St. +Paul's rapturous tone must be accounted for by causes independent of +the Ephesian or Asiatic Christians in particular. +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P33"></A>33}</SPAN> +Among these +causes, as we have just seen, must be reckoned the fact, the +significance of which we have been dwelling upon, that St. Paul had now +reached Rome, the centre of the Gentile world. But it must also be +remembered that St. Paul had seen a great conflict fought out and won +for the catholicity of Christianity, and that now for the first time +there was a pause and freedom to take advantage of it. +</P> + +<P> +A great conflict had been fought and won. The backbone of the earlier +Jewish opposition to the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles on +equal terms had been broken. They had in fact swept into the Church in +increasing numbers. Their rights were recognized and their position +uncontested. There is now, in the comparative quiet of the 'hired +house' where St. Paul was confined, a period of pause in which he can +fitly sum up the results which have been won, and let the full meaning +of the catholic brotherhood be freely unfolded. It is time to pass +from the rudiments of the Christian gospel, the vindication of its most +elementary principles and liberties, the 'milk for babes,' to expound +the spiritual wisdom of the full-grown Christian manhood, the 'solid +meat for them of riper years.' +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P34"></A>34}</SPAN> + +<P> +It is this sense of pause in conflict and free expansion in view of a +vast opportunity, which in great part at least interprets the glow and +glory of St. Paul's epistle. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +iv. +</H4> + +<P> +The Epistle to the Ephesians might, so far as its contents are +concerned, have been addressed to any of the predominantly Gentile +churches; but to none more fitly than to Ephesus and to the churches of +Asia, where the progress of Gentile Christianity had been so rapid, and +where St. Paul's ministry had been so unusually prolonged. Let us +attempt to answer the questions—what was Ephesus? what was the +history, and what were the circumstances of the Ephesian church? +</P> + +<P> +Ephesus had a double importance as a Greek and as an Asiatic city. A +colony of Ionians from Athens had early settled on some hills which +rose out of a fertile plain near the mouth of the Cayster. This was +the origin of the Greek city of Ephesus. Its position gave it +admirable commercial advantages. It became the greatest mart of +exchange[<A NAME="chap00bfn35text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn35">35</A>] between East +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P35"></A>35}</SPAN> +and West in Asia Minor, and though its +commerce was threatened by the filling up of its harbour, it had not +decayed in St. Paul's time. +</P> + +<P> +Among Greek cities it also occupied a not inconspicuous place in the +history of art, and at an earlier period of philosophy also. Here was +one of the chief homes of the Homeric tradition; hence in the person of +Callinus the Greek elegy is reputed to have had its origin, and in the +person of Hipponax the satire. It was the home of Heracleitus, one of +the greatest of the early philosophers, and of Apelles and Parrhasius, +the masters of painting[<A NAME="chap00bfn36text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn36">36</A>]. +</P> + +<P> +And the greatest artists in sculpture—Phidias and Polycletus, Scopas +and Praxiteles—had adorned with their works the temple of Artemis, +which, in itself one of the wonders of the world, the masterpiece of +Ionic architecture, became also, like some great Christian cathedral, a +very museum of sculpture and painting. +</P> + +<P> +If Greek artists built and decorated the temple of Artemis, they +attempted no doubt to represent the goddess under the form which her +Greek name suggested, the beautiful huntress-goddess; but the Greeks +never in fact succeeded in +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P36"></A>36}</SPAN> +affecting the thoroughly Asiatic and +oriental character of a worship which had nothing Greek about it except +the name. The interest of Ephesus as an Asiatic city centred about +that ancient worship which had its home in the plain below the Greek +settlement. It was there before the Greeks came, it held its own +throughout and in spite of all Greek and Roman influences; all through +the history of Ephesus it gave its main character to the city—the +noted home of superstition and sorcery. +</P> + +<P> +The Artemis of Ephesus was, as Jerome remarks[<A NAME="chap00bfn37text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn37">37</A>], not the +huntress-goddess with her bow, but the many-breasted symbol of the +productive and nutritive powers of nature, the mother of all life, free +and untamed like the wild beasts who accompanied her. The grotesque +and archaic idol believed to have fallen down from heaven was a stiff, +erect mummy covered with many breasts and symbols of wild beasts. Her +worship was organized by a hierarchy of eunuch priests—called by a +Persian name Megabyzi—and 'consecrated' virgins. It was associated, +like other worships of the same divinity called indifferently Artemis +or Cybele or Ma, with ideals of life which from the point +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P37"></A>37}</SPAN> +of view +of any fixed moral order, Roman or Greek no less than Jewish or +Christian, was lawless and immoral. +</P> + +<P> +It is very well known how the Asiatic nature-worships flooded the Roman +empire, and even at Rome itself became by far more popular than the +traditional state religion. And among these Asiatic worships none was +more popular than the worship of Artemis of Ephesus, whose temple was +the wonder of the world, and who not only was worshipped publicly at +Ephesus, but was the object of a cult both public and private in +widely-separated parts of the empire. Such a temple and such a worship +would naturally collect a base and corrupt population; but what would +in any case have been bad was rendered worse by the fact that the area +round the temple was an asylum of refuge from the law, and that, as the +area of 'sanctuary' was extended at different times, the collection of +criminals became greater and greater. It had reached a point where it +threatened the safety of the city, and not long before St. Paul's time +the Emperor Augustus had found it necessary to curtail the area. The +history of our own Westminster is enough to assure us that a religious +asylum brings social degradation in its train. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P38"></A>38}</SPAN> + +<P> +Such was the commercial and religious importance of the beautiful, +wealthy, effeminate, superstitious, and most immoral city which became +for three years the centre of St. Paul's ministry. On his second +missionary journey St. Paul was making his way to Asia, and no doubt to +Ephesus, when he with his companions were hindered by the Holy Ghost +and turned across the Hellespont to Macedonia[<A NAME="chap00bfn38text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn38">38</A>]. On his return to +Syria, he could not be satisfied without at least setting foot in +Ephesus and making a beginning of preaching there in the synagogue[<A NAME="chap00bfn39text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn39">39</A>]; +but he was hastening back to Jerusalem, and, with a promise of return, +left his work there to Priscilla and Aquila. On his third missionary +journey Ephesus was the centre of his prolonged work. It was +accordingly the only city of the first rank which, so far as any +trustworthy evidence goes, had as the founder of its Church in the +strictest sense—that is, as the first gatherer of converts as well as +organizer of institutions—either St. Paul or any other apostle[<A NAME="chap00bfn40text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn40">40</A>]. +</P> + +<P> +St. Paul's first activity on arriving at Ephesus illustrates the stress +he laid on the gift of the Holy Ghost as the central characteristic of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P39"></A>39}</SPAN> +Christianity. He was brought in contact with the twelve imperfect +disciples who had been baptized only with John the Baptist's baptism, +and had not so much as heard whether the Holy Ghost was given. St. +Paul baptized them anew with Christian baptism, and bestowed upon them +the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of his hands[<A NAME="chap00bfn41text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn41">41</A>]. Then it +is recorded how he began his preaching as usual with the Jews in the +synagogue. The Jews of Asia Minor were regarded by the Jews of +Jerusalem as corrupted and Hellenized[<A NAME="chap00bfn42text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn42">42</A>]. But at any rate they +exhibited the same antagonism to the preaching of Christianity as their +stricter brethren. Thus St. Paul, when he had given them their chance, +abandoned their synagogue and established himself in the lecture-room +of Tyrannus, where he taught for two years and more[<A NAME="chap00bfn43text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn43">43</A>]. And this +became the centre of an evangelization which, even if St. Paul himself +did not visit other Asiatic towns, yet spread by the agency of his +companions over the whole of the Roman +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P40"></A>40}</SPAN> +province of Asia—to the +churches of the Lycus, Colossae, Laodicea, Hierapolis, and probably to +the rest of the 'seven churches' to which St. John wrote in his +Apocalypse. +</P> + +<P> +Ephesus was full of superstitions of all sorts as would be expected, +and St. Paul's miracles were such as would not unnaturally have led the +magicians to regard him as a greater master in their own craft. So +among others the Jewish chief priest Sceva's seven sons began to use +the central name of Paul's preaching as a new and most efficient +formula for exorcism. 'We adjure thee by Jesus whom Paul preaches.' +But it is frequently noticeable that St. Paul refused to allow himself +to use superstition as a handmaid of religion. The providential +disaster which befell these exorcists gave St. Paul an opportunity of +striking an effective blow where it was most needed against exorcism +and magic. The Christian converts came and confessed their +participation in the black arts, and burnt their books of incantations, +in spite of their value. The whole transaction must have impressed +vividly in the minds of the Ephesians the contrast between Christianity +and superstition. +</P> + +<P> +St. Paul had already encountered opposition as well as success at +Ephesus, for when, writing +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P41"></A>41}</SPAN> +from Ephesus, he speaks to the +Corinthians[<A NAME="chap00bfn44text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn44">44</A>] of having 'fought with beasts' there, the reference is +probably to what had befallen him in the earlier part of his residence +through the plots of the Jews; that long Epistle to the Corinthians can +hardly have been written <I>after</I> the famous tumult recorded in the +Acts. But that tumult, raised by the manufacturers of the silver +shrines of Artemis, was of course the most important persecution which +befell St. Paul at Ephesus. The narrative of it[<A NAME="chap00bfn45text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn45">45</A>] is exceedingly +instructive. We notice the friendliness of the Asiarchs, i.e. the +presidents of the provincial 'union' and priests of the imperial +worship, and the opinion of the town clerk, that St. Paul must be +acquitted of any insults to the religious beliefs of the Ephesians[<A NAME="chap00bfn46text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn46">46</A>]. +Christianity had not, it appears, yet excited the antipathy of the +religious or civil authorities of the Empire, but it had begun to +threaten the pockets of those who were concerned in supplying the needs +of the worshippers who thronged to the great +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P42"></A>42}</SPAN> +temple at Ephesus. +We need not inquire exactly how the little silver shrines of Artemis +were used; but they were much sought after, and their production gave +occupation to an important trade. The trade was threatened by the +spread of Christianity. The philosophers despised indeed the +idolatrous rites, but they despised also the people who practised them, +and had no hope or idea of converting them[<A NAME="chap00bfn47text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn47">47</A>]. St. Paul was the first +teacher at Ephesus who touched the fears of the idol makers by bringing +a pure religion to the hearts of the ordinary people. Hence the tumult +against the teachers of the new religion, raised not by the civil or +religious authorities of Ephesus, but simply by the trade interest. +</P> + +<P> +As soon as it was over St. Paul left Ephesus not to return there again. +But on his way back to Jerusalem he came not to Ephesus but to Miletus, +and sending for the Ephesian presbyters thither, he made them a +farewell speech[<A NAME="chap00bfn48text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn48">48</A>], which is in conspicuous harmony with the features +of his later Epistle to the Ephesians. Already the doctrines of a +divine purpose or +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P43"></A>43}</SPAN> +counsel now revealed, of the Church in general +as the object of the divine self-sacrifice and love, and of the Holy +Ghost as accomplishing her sanctification and developing her structure, +appear to be prominent in his mind, and to have become familiar topics +with the Ephesian Christians. 'I shrank not from declaring unto you +the whole counsel of God. Take heed unto yourselves and to all the +flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the +church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.... And now I +commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to +build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all them that are +sanctified.' These words from St. Paul's speech to the Ephesian +presbyters are in remarkable affinity with the teaching of our epistle. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +v. +</H4> + +<P> +We have been assuming that this epistle was addressed to Ephesus, but +there are reasons to believe that it was not addressed to Ephesus only, +but rather generally to the churches of the Roman province of Asia, of +which Ephesus was the chief. The reasons for thinking this are +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P44"></A>44}</SPAN> +partly internal to the epistle. St. Paul's personal relations to +individual Ephesian Christians must have been many and close, and we +know his habit of introducing personal allusions and greetings into his +epistles; but the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians is destitute of +them altogether, contrasting in this respect even with the Epistle to +the Colossians, written at the same time to a church which St. Paul +himself never visited. This would be a most inexplicable fact if the +Epistle to the Ephesians were really a letter to this one particular +church. More than this, St. Paul speaks in several passages in a way +which implies that he and those he wrote to were dependent on what they +had heard for mutual knowledge—'having heard of the faith in the Lord +Jesus that is among you'—'if so be ye have heard of the dispensation +of the grace of God which was given me to youward.' Such language is +much more natural if he is writing to others besides the Ephesians. +And this evidence internal to the substance of the epistle coincides +with evidence of the manuscripts. Very early manuscripts, some of +those which remain to us and some which are reported to us by primitive +scholars, omit the words 'in Ephesus' from St. Paul's opening greeting +'To the saints +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P45"></A>45}</SPAN> +and faithful brethren which are [in Ephesus].' +This fact, coupled with the absence of personal reminiscences in the +epistle, has suggested the idea that it was in fact a circular letter +to the saints and faithful brethren at a number of churches of the +Roman province of Asia, and that where the words 'in Ephesus' stand in +our text, there was perhaps a blank left in the epistle as St. Paul +dictated it, which was intended to be filled up in each church where it +was read. This is a view which has to a certain extent a special +interest for us in Westminster because, if it was first suggested by +the Genevan commentator Beza, it was elaborated by Archbishop Ussher, +who is identified with our Abbey by residence and by the memorable +record of his entombment in our abbey church with Anglican rites by the +command of Cromwell. It follows naturally from such a view that when +St. Paul writes to the Colossians and bids them send their letter to +Laodicea, and read that which comes from Laodicea[<A NAME="chap00bfn49text"></A><A HREF="#chap00bfn49">49</A>], the letter which +they should expect from Laodicea would be none other than the so-called +Epistle to the Ephesians which was to be read by them as well as the +other Asiatic Christians. +</P> + +<BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P46"></A>46}</SPAN> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +vi. +</H4> + +<P> +Enough perhaps has now been said to give a general idea of the +conditions under which this great epistle was written; and the topics +of the epistle have been already indicated. Its central theme is that +of the great catholic society, the renovated Israel, the Church of God. +In this catholic brotherhood St. Paul sees the realization of an +age-long purpose of God, the fulfilment of a long-secret counsel, now +at last disclosed to His chosen prophets. He sees nothing incongruous +in finding in the yet young and limited societies of Christian +disciples the consummation of the divine purpose for the world, for +these societies represent the breaking down of all barriers and the +bringing of all men to unity with one another through a recovered unity +with God, through Christ and in His Spirit. Therefore the work which +the Church is to accomplish is nothing less than a universal work, a +work not even limited to humanity; it is the bringing back of all +things visible or invisible into that unity which lies in God's +original purpose of creation. St. Paul long ago had spoken to the +Corinthians of a spiritual wisdom which they were not yet ready to +listen +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P47"></A>47}</SPAN> +to. But now St. Paul seems to feel—for reasons which we +have tried in part to interpret—that the time has come when all the +depth and richness of the divine secret may be spoken out. No wonder +that the subject stirs his imagination and gives to his whole tone an +uplifting and a glory without parallel in his other writings. And yet +it would be altogether false to attach to this epistle any associations +such as are commonly connected with flights of imagination or the +language of rhapsody. For the epistle has the most direct bearing on +matters of practical life. If St. Paul glorifies the Christian ideal +it is in order that all that weight of glory may be brought to bear +upon the Asiatic Christians to force them to see that their personal +and social conduct must have a purity, a liberality, a wisdom, a love, +a power, commensurate with the greatness of those motives which are +acting upon them in their new Christian state. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn1text">1</A>] The Committee of the Conference of Bishops at Lambeth, 1897, in a +report commended by the bishops as a body to the 'consideration of all +Christian people,' write: 'Your committee do not hold that a true view +of Holy Scripture forecloses any legitimate question about the literary +character or literal accuracy of different parts or statements of the +Old Testament.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn2text">2</A>] Acts xxiv 14; xxvi. 6, 7, 22, 23; 2 Tim i. 3. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn3text">3</A>] Eph. ii. 12-19. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn4text">4</A>] 1 Thess. ii. 14-16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn5text">5</A>] Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn6text">6</A>] See <A HREF="#notec">app. note C</A>, p. 257. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn7"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn7text">7</A>] Acts ix. 20; 1 Cor. viii. 6; Rom. ix. 5; 2 Cor. viii. 9; Gal. iv. 4. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn8"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn8text">8</A>] Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, Philemon. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn9"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn9text">9</A>] Col. ii. 18: 'by a voluntary humility (or 'taking delight in +humility') and worshipping of the angels.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn10"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn10text">10</A>] See i. 13-20; ii. 2, 3, 9-23; iii. 11. Cf. i. 27-28. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn11"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn11text">11</A>] Hort, <I>Judaistic Christianity</I> (Macmillan, 1894), p. 125. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn12"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn12text">12</A>] Cf. <A HREF="#notec">app. note C</A>, p. 257. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn13"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn13text">13</A>] Cf. Hort, <I>Prolegomena to Romans and Ephesians</I> (Macmillan, 1895), +p. 100. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn14"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn14text">14</A>] Col. iv. 2-4; Philemon 22; Phil. i. 12-14. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn15"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn15text">15</A>] Ramsay, <I>Paul the Traveller</I> (Hodder and Stoughton, 1895), pp. 130 +ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn16"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn16text">16</A>] Ramsay, <I>l.c.</I> p. 132. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn17"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn17text">17</A>] See Mommsen, <I>Provinces of Roman Empire</I> (Eng. trans.), i. 344 +ff.; Lightfoot, <I>Ign. and Polyc.</I> iii. pp. 404 ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn18"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn18text">18</A>] <A HREF="#notea">App. note A</A>, p. 251. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn19"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn19text">19</A>] Tatian, <I>Ad Graecos</I>, 28, 32. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn20"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn20text">20</A>] Ramsay, <I>l.c.</I> p. 135. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn21"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn21text">21</A>] Rom. xiii. 1-7; cf. ii. Thess. ii. 6. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn22"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn22text">22</A>] 1 Tim. ii. 1, 2. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn23"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn23text">23</A>] Acts xxv. 12. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn24"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn24text">24</A>] Ramsay, <I>l.c.</I> p. 147. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn25"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn25text">25</A>] Lightfoot, <I>Galatians</I>, 'St. Paul and Seneca,' pp. 287 ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn26"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn26text">26</A>] <A HREF="#noteb">See app. note B</A>, p. 253. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn27"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn27text">27</A>] 'The zeal of its inhabitants for philosophy and general culture is +such that they have surpassed even Athens and Alexandria and all other +cities where schools of philosophy can be mentioned. And its +pre-eminence in this respect is so great because there the students are +all townspeople, and strangers do not readily settle there.' Strabo, +xiv. v. 13. I do not suppose that St. Paul received any formal +education in Greek schools at Tarsus. But I think we must assume that +at some period St. Paul had sufficient contact with Gentile educated +opinion, whether at Tarsus or elsewhere, to be acquainted with +widely-spread religious and philosophical tendencies. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn28"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn28text">28</A>] Cf. Hort, <I>Christian Ecclesia</I>, p. 143. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn29"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn29text">29</A>] Acts xix. 21. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn30"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn30text">30</A>] Rom. i. 15, 16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn31"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn31text">31</A>] Acts xxiii. 11. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn32"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn32text">32</A>] Acts xxvii. 24. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn33"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn33text">33</A>] Acts xxviii. 15. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn34"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn34text">34</A>] Acts xx. 29, 30. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn35"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn35text">35</A>] Among other articles of commerce, tents made in Ephesus had a +special reputation, and St. Paul and Aquila had special opportunities +there for the exercise of their trade. Acts xx. 34. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn36"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn36text">36</A>] Strabo. xiv. 1, 25. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn37"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn37text">37</A>] Migne, <I>P. L.</I> xxvi. 441. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn38"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn38text">38</A>] Acts xvi. 6-10. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn39"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn39text">39</A>] Acts xviii. 19. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn40"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn40text">40</A>] Hort, <I>Prolegomena</I>, p. 83. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn41"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn41text">41</A>] Acts xix. 1-7. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn42"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn42text">42</A>] Ramsay, <I>l.c.</I> p. 143. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn43"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn43text">43</A>] 'From the fifth to the tenth hour' (11 a.m. to 4 p.m.), an early +addition to the text of the Acts tells us; i. e. after work hours, when +the school would naturally be vacant and St. Paul would have finished +his manual labour at tent-making. Ramsay, <I>l.c.</I> p. 276. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn44"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn44text">44</A>] 1 Cor. xv. 32. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn45"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn45text">45</A>] Acts xix. 23 ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn46"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn46text">46</A>] Prof. Ramsay asserts that instead of 'robbers of temples' (Acts +xix. 37), we should translate 'disloyal to the established government.' +<I>l.c.</I> p. 282. But the word is used in the former sense in special +connexion with Ephesus by Strabo, xiv. 1, 22, and Pseudo-Heracleitus, +<I>Ep.</I> 7, p. 64 (Bernays). +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn47"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn47text">47</A>] See <A HREF="#noteb">app. note B</A>, p. 253, on the contemporary 'letters of +Heracleitus.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn48"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn48text">48</A>] Acts xx. 17 ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap00bfn49"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap00bfn49text">49</A>] Col. iv. 16. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P48"></A>48}</SPAN> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER I. 1-2. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +Salutation. +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Salutation</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +St. Paul begins this, in common with his other epistles, with a brief +salutation to a particular church or group of churches, in which is +expressed in summary the authority he has for writing to them, the +light in which he regards them, and the central wish for them which he +has in his heart. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the saints +which are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you +and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +Here, then, we have three compressed thoughts. +</P> + +<P> +1. The particular person Paul writes this letter because he is not +only a believer in Christ but also an 'apostle of Christ Jesus through +the will of God.' The word apostle is a more or less general word for +a delegate, as when St. Paul +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P49"></A>49}</SPAN> +speaks of the 'apostles (or +messengers) of the churches[<A NAME="chap01fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap01fn1">1</A>];' but by an apostle in its highest +sense, 'an apostle of Jesus Christ,' St. Paul meant one of those, +originally twelve in number, who had received personally from the risen +Christ a particular commission to represent Him to the world. This +particular and personal commission he claimed to have received, in +common with the twelve, though later than they—at the time of his +conversion. 'Am I not an apostle?' he cries. 'Have I not seen Jesus +our Lord[<A NAME="chap01fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap01fn2">2</A>]?' 'He appeared to me also as unto one born out of due +time[<A NAME="chap01fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap01fn3">3</A>].' 'In nothing was I behind the very chiefest apostles[<A NAME="chap01fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap01fn4">4</A>].' +And as his claim to the apostolate was challenged by his Judaizing +opponents he had to insist upon it, to insist that it is not a +commission from or through Peter and the other apostles, or dependent +upon them for its exercise, but a direct commission, like theirs, from +the Head of the Church Himself. He is, he writes to the Galatians, +'Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor (like those subsequently ordained +by himself or the other apostles, like a Timothy, or a Titus, or like +the later clergy) through man,' but directly through, +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P50"></A>50}</SPAN> +as well as +from, the risen Jesus whom his eyes had seen, and His eternal Father[<A NAME="chap01fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap01fn5">5</A>]. +</P> + +<P> +It is surely a consolation to us of the Church of England, who belong +to a church subject to constant attack on the score of apostolic +character, to remember that St. Paul's apostolate was attacked with +some excuse, and that he had to spend a great deal of effort in +vindicating it, and was in no way ashamed of doing so, because he +perceived that a certain aspect of the life and truth of the Church was +bound up with its recognition. +</P> + +<P> +2. And he writes to the Asiatic Christians as 'saints' and 'faithful +in Christ Jesus.' 'Saint' does not mean primarily what we understand +by it—one pre-eminent in moral excellence; but rather one consecrated +or dedicated to the service and use of God. The idea of consecration +was common in all religions, and frequently, as in the Asiatic worships +at Ephesus and elsewhere, carried with it associations quite the +opposite of those which we assign to holiness. But the special +characteristic of the Old Testament religion had been the righteous and +holy character which it ascribed to Jehovah. Consecration to Him, +therefore, is seen to require +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P51"></A>51}</SPAN> +personal holiness, and this +requirement is only deepened in meaning under the Gospel. But still +'the saints' means primarily the 'consecrated ones'; and all Christians +are therefore saints—'called as saints' rather than 'called to be +saints,' in virtue of their belonging to the consecrated body into +which they were baptized; saints who because of their consecration are +therefore bound to live holily[<A NAME="chap01fn6text"></A><A HREF="#chap01fn6">6</A>]. 'The saints' in the Acts of the +Apostles[<A NAME="chap01fn7text"></A><A HREF="#chap01fn7">7</A>] is simply a synonym for the Church. St. Paul then writes +to the Asiatic Christians as 'consecrated' and 'faithful in Christ +Jesus,' i. e. believing members incorporated by baptism; and he writes +to them for no other purpose than to make them understand what is +implied in their common consecration and common faith. +</P> + +<P> +3. And his good wishes for them he sums up in the terms 'Grace and +peace in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Grace is that free +and unmerited favour or good-will of God towards man which takes shape +in a continuous outflow of the very riches of God's +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P52"></A>52}</SPAN> +inmost being +and spirit into the life of man through Christ; and peace of heart, +Godward and manward, 'central peace subsisting at the heart of endless +agitation' is that by the possession and bestowal of which Christianity +best gives assurance of its divine origin. +</P> + +<P> +We notice that these divine gifts are ascribed to 'God our Father and +the Lord Jesus Christ.' St. Paul does not generally call Christ by the +title God, partly, no doubt, from long engrained habit of language, but +partly also because nothing was more important than that no language +should be used in the first propagation of Christianity which could +give excuse for confusing the Christian belief in the threefold Name +with the worship of many gods. But, from the first, Christ, in St. +Paul's language, is exalted as Lord into a simply divine supremacy, and +associated most intimately with all the most exclusively divine +operations in the world without, and in the heart of man within. +Moreover, St. Paul refuses absolutely to tolerate any association of +other, however exalted, beings with Christ in lordship or mediatorship, +all created beings whatever being simply the work of His hands[<A NAME="chap01fn8text"></A><A HREF="#chap01fn8">8</A>]. +There remains, therefore, no room to +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P53"></A>53}</SPAN> +question that St. Paul +believed Christ to be strictly divine: to be Himself no creature, no +highest archangel, but one who, with the Holy Spirit alone, is truly +proper and essential to the divine being; and it affords us, therefore, +no manner of surprise that from time to time St. Paul actually calls +Christ God, as in the Epistle to the Romans 'who is over all, God +blessed for ever[<A NAME="chap01fn9text"></A><A HREF="#chap01fn9">9</A>],' and probably in the Epistle to Titus 'our great +God and saviour Jesus Christ[<A NAME="chap01fn10text"></A><A HREF="#chap01fn10">10</A>].' +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P> +<A NAME="chap01fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap01fn1text">1</A>] 2 Cor. viii. 23. +</P> + +<P> +<A NAME="chap01fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap01fn2text">2</A>] 1 Cor. ix. 1. +</P> + +<P> +<A NAME="chap01fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap01fn3text">3</A>] 1 Cor. xv. 8. +</P> + +<P> +<A NAME="chap01fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap01fn4text">4</A>] 2 Cor. xii. 11. +</P> + +<P> +<A NAME="chap01fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap01fn5text">5</A>] Gal. i. 1. +</P> + +<P> +<A NAME="chap01fn6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap01fn6text">6</A>] Tertullian, <I>de An.</I> 39, rightly interprets 1 Cor. vii. 14, 'now +are they [the children of whose parents one was a Christian] holy,' as +meaning, now are they already consecrated and marked out for baptismal +sanctification by the prerogative of their birth. +</P> + +<P> +<A NAME="chap01fn7"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap01fn7text">7</A>] Acts ix. 13, 33. +</P> + +<P> +<A NAME="chap01fn8"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap01fn8text">8</A>] Cf. 1 Cor. viii. 6; Col. i. 16. +</P> + +<P> +<A NAME="chap01fn9"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap01fn9text">9</A>] Rom. ix. 5. +</P> + +<P> +<A NAME="chap01fn10"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap01fn10text">10</A>] Tit. ii. 13. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0101"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P54"></A>54}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION I. CHAPTERS I. 3-IV. 17. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +§ I. CHAPTER i. 3-14. +</H4> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>St. Paul's leading thoughts.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>St. Paul's leading thoughts</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +Before we read the opening paragraph of St. Paul's letter we had better +review the great thoughts which are prominent in his mind as he writes. +My ambition is to make my readers feel that ideas which, because they +have become Christian commonplaces or because they have been blackened +by controversy, have by this time a ring of unreality about them, or of +theological remoteness, or of controversial bitterness, are in fact, if +we will 'consider them anew,' ideas the most important, the most +practical, and the most closely adapted to the moral needs of the plain +man. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +i. +</H4> + +<P> +St. Paul writes to the Christians as 'in Christ,' 'in the beloved,' +'blessed with all spiritual benediction in the heavenly places in +Christ,' 'adopted +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P55"></A>55}</SPAN> +as sons through Jesus Christ.' We are all of us +perfectly familiar with the idea of Christ as, so to speak, a personal +and individual redeemer, as the holy and righteous one, the beloved and +accepted Son, who is risen from the dead and exalted to supreme +sovereignty in heaven. But popular theology has not been quite so +familiar with the idea that Christ was and is all this in our manhood, +not simply because He was God as well as man (true as this is); but +because as man He was anointed with the Holy Spirit of God: that it was +in the power of that Spirit that He lived His life of holiness and +wrought His miracles of power: that it was in the power of that Spirit +that He taught and suffered and died and was glorified. Nor has +popular Christianity been familiar with the resulting truth: that by +that divine Spirit which possessed Him as man, the life of Christ is +extended beyond Himself to take in those who believe in Him, and make +them members of 'the church which is his body.' Yet, in fact, this +extension is implied even in the name Christ. The king Messiah, the +Christ of the Old Testament, is but the central figure of a whole +kingdom associated with Him, and all the characteristic phrases for +Christ in the New Testament +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P56"></A>56}</SPAN> +express the same idea. He is the +'first-born among many brethren[<A NAME="chap0101fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn1">1</A>]'; He is the 'first fruits[<A NAME="chap0101fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn2">2</A>]' of a +great harvest; He is the 'head of the body[<A NAME="chap0101fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn3">3</A>]'; He is the 'bridegroom' +inseparable from 'the bride[<A NAME="chap0101fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn4">4</A>]'; He is the second Adam, that is, head +of a new humanity[<A NAME="chap0101fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn5">5</A>]. Thus if the heavens closed around the ascending +Christ, and hid Him from view, they opened again around the descending +Spirit, descending into the heart of the Christian society to +perpetuate Christ's life and presence there. This historical ascent +and descent only embody in unmistakable facts the truth that the +life-giving Spirit, who made the manhood of Christ so satisfying to our +moral aspirations, is also and with the same reality, though not with +the same perfection or freedom, living and working in that great +society which He founded to represent Him on earth. Because this +society is possessed by the Spirit, therefore it lives in the same life +as Christ, it and all its individual members are 'in Christ.' In one +place, indeed, St. Paul includes the Church, the body, with its head +under the one name 'the Christ[<A NAME="chap0101fn6text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn6">6</A>].' +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Life in Christ</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +It is because the Church thus shares Christ's +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P57"></A>57}</SPAN> +life that it is +already spoken of as sharing His exaltation. We 'sit together in the +heavenly places with Christ' for no other reason than because, though +we are on earth, our life is bound up invisibly but in living reality +with the life of the glorified Christ, and we have in Him free access +into the courts of heaven. For this reason again, as the fulness of +the divine attributes dwells in the glorified Christ—all the fulness +of the Godhead bodily, so the same fulness is attributed, ideally at +least, to the Church too. It too is 'the fulness of him that filleth +all in all.' To St. Paul's mind there is one true human life in which +men are one with one another because they are at one with God. That +true human life is Christ's life, which He once lived on earth, and +which He is at present living in the glory of God, and which is +fulfilled with all the completeness of the divine life itself. But +that true human life is also shared by each and every member of His +Church, without exception, without reference to race or learning, or +wealth, or sex, or age. +</P> + +<P> +I have said that this is ideally the case. This identification of +Christ with the Church, that is to say, is not yet fully realized. The +Church is not yet glorified, not yet morally perfected nor +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P58"></A>58}</SPAN> +full +grown in the divine attributes. Its particular members may be living +deceitful and dishonourable lives. This is to say in other words that +God's work in 'redemption of his own possession,' His acquirement of a +people to Himself, is not yet complete. The purchase-money is paid, +but it has not yet taken full effect. But redemption is an +accomplished fact in the sense that all the conditions of the final +success are already there. The ideal may be freely realized in every +Christian because he has received the 'earnest' or pledge of the +Spirit, the pledge, that is, of all that is to be accomplished in him. +And this Spirit was received by each Christian at a particular and +assignable moment. We know what stress St. Paul laid at Ephesus on +proper Christian baptism and the laying on of hands which followed +it[<A NAME="chap0101fn7text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn7">7</A>]. By baptism men were spoken of as incorporated into Christ. +With the laying on of hands was associated the bestowal of the Spirit. +Henceforth a Christian had no need to ask for the Spirit as if He were +not already bestowed upon him; he had only to bring into practical use +spiritual forces and powers which the divine bounty had already put at +his disposal. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P59"></A>59}</SPAN> + +<P> +If we compare this set of ideas with those that have been current in +our popular theology, we shall find that the main difference lies in +this, that here the stress is laid on the work of Christ <I>in</I> man by +His Spirit, while the theology which has been popular among us has laid +the stress rather on the 'vicarious' work of Christ outside us and +<I>for</I> us, by making a propitiation for our sins. Now in fact this +latter doctrine is an unmistakable part of St. Paul's teaching in this +epistle and elsewhere. And all the mistakes to which it has led are +due to its not having been kept in proper relation to the set of ideas +which I have just been endeavouring to expound. 'Christ for us,' the +sacrifice of propitiation has been separated from 'Christ in us,' our +new life; whereas really the sacrifice was but a necessary removal of +an obstacle, preliminary to the new life. +</P> + +<P> +It was a necessary preliminary that Christ should put us on a fresh +basis, should enable us to break from our past and make a fresh start +in the divine acceptance. This He did by making atonement for our +sins, offering as a propitiatory sacrifice His life, even to the +shedding of His blood, that the Father might be enabled to forgive our +sins. This transaction is always +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P60"></A>60}</SPAN> +represented in the New Testament +as being the act of the Father as well as of the Son, for the divine +persons are not separable—neither an act by which the Son forces the +unwilling hand of the Father, nor an act in which the Father lays an +undeserved burden upon an unwilling Son—and the idea of propitiation +seems to St. Paul, as indeed it has seemed to men generally, a +thoroughly natural idea. Only in one place does he make any suggestion +as to why such a preliminary sacrifice of propitiation was necessary. +There[<A NAME="chap0101fn8text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn8">8</A>] he seems to find the moral necessity for it in the fact that +through long ages God's 'forbearance' had left men to work through +their own resources and so to find out their need of Him. 'He suffered +all nations to walk in their own ways.' He 'winked at' or 'overlooked +times of ignorance.' He 'passed over sins[<A NAME="chap0101fn9text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn9">9</A>].' This was part of His +educative process. One result of it, however, was a lowering of the +moral ideas entertained of the divine character. Thus God's +righteousness, which means holiness and compassion combined, needed to +be declared especially at that crisis of the divine dealings when God +was coming out towards +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P61"></A>61}</SPAN> +men, whom He had educated by His seeming +absence to feel their need of Him, with the offer of His love. The +free bounty of His mercy must not be misunderstood as if it were +indifference or laxity about moral wickedness. Thus the proclamation +of His compassion must be associated with something which would make +unmistakable the severity of His holiness and His moral claim. This +twofold end is what Christ accomplishes. Thus if He is the revealer of +the compassion of the Father, He also vindicates the divine character +by a great act of moral reparation, made in man's name and on man's +behalf, to the divine holiness which our sins have ignored and +outraged. This great act of reparation is consummated in the +bloodshedding of the Christ. The sacrifice of consummate obedience is +carried to its extreme point and accepted in its perfection. God in +Christ receives from man, and that publicly, a perfect reparation: an +acknowledgement without fault or drawback: a perfect sacrifice. Now +God can forgive the sins of men freely and without moral risk, if they +come to Him in the name of Christ. To come to God in the name of +Christ means, of course, to come in conscious moral identification of +one's self with Christ, with +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P62"></A>62}</SPAN> +His Spirit and His motives. The +faith which simply accepts the bounty of forgiveness through Christ's +sacrifice, must pass necessarily into the faith which corresponds +obediently with the divine love. Thus the purpose of the atonement is +never expressed as being that we should be let off punishment, or +simply that we should be forgiven, but rather that, being forgiven, we +should be united to Christ in His life[<A NAME="chap0101fn10text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn10">10</A>]. The propitiation which +Christ offered is only the removal of a preliminary obstacle to our +fellowship with Him in the life of God. The work of Christ 'for us' +has no meaning or efficacy till it has begun to pass into the work of +Christ 'in us' by His assimilating Spirit. It was only as baptized +into Christ and sharing His Spirit that Christians could accept the +forgiveness of their sins through the shedding of Christ's blood. The +sacrament of new life is also the sacrament of absolution, and the +washing away of sins. Nothing in fact can be plainer in this Epistle +to the Ephesians than that 'the redemption through Christ's blood, even +the forgiveness of trespasses[<A NAME="chap0101fn11text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn11">11</A>]' was only a preliminary removal of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P63"></A>63}</SPAN> +obstacles to that fellowship with God in Christ by His Spirit +which is the secret of the Church. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +ii. +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Predestination</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +St. Paul's mind is full of the idea of predestination. He delights to +contemplate the eternal purpose of God as lying behind what seems to us +the painfully slow method by which divine results are actually won. +What age-long processes have been necessary both among the Jews and +among the Gentiles before this young church, this divine society of man +with God has become possible! What slow working through 'times of +ignorance,' what infinite delay in the divine forbearance—as we should +now say, what age-long processes of developement! But St. Paul is +quite certain that the result is no afterthought, no accident of the +moment; but that from end to end of the universe there reaches a method +of the divine wisdom, and that here in the catholic church it has +arrived at an issue. 'God chose us in Christ before the foundation of +the world that we should be holy and without blemish (as spotless +victims) before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as +sons through Jesus Christ unto himself.' 'Fore-ordained +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P64"></A>64}</SPAN> +to be a +heritage according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after +the counsel of his will.' So he asseverates and repeats and insists. +There are, we may say, two ideas commonly associated with +predestination which St. Paul gives us no warrant for asserting. The +one is the predestination of individuals to eternal loss or +destruction. That God should create any single individual with the +intention of eternally destroying or punishing him is a horrible idea, +and, without prying into mysteries, we may say boldly that there is no +warrant for it in the Old or New Testaments. God is indeed represented +as predestinating men, like Jacob and Esau, to a higher or lower place +in the order of the world or the church. There are 'vessels' made by +the divine potter to purposes of 'honour,' and 'vessels' made to +purposes (comparatively) of 'dishonour[<A NAME="chap0101fn12text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn12">12</A>]': there are more honourable +and less honourable limbs of the body[<A NAME="chap0101fn13text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn13">13</A>]. But this does not prejudice +the eternal prospects of those who in this world hold the less +advantageous posts. With God is no respect of persons. Again God is +represented as predestinating men to moral hardness of heart where such +hardness is a judgement on previous wilfulness. Thus +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P65"></A>65}</SPAN> +men may be +predestined to temporary rejection of God, as in St. Paul's mind the +majority of the contemporary Jews were. That was their judgement, and +their punishment[<A NAME="chap0101fn14text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn14">14</A>]. It was however not God's first intention for +them nor His last. Those chapters of St. Paul[<A NAME="chap0101fn15text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn15">15</A>] which contain the +most terrible things about the present reprobation of the Jews contain +also the most emphatic repudiation of the idea that moral reprobation +was God's first idea for them, or His last. 'The gifts and calling of +God,' that is, His good gifts and calling, says St. Paul, speaking of +the now 'reprobate' Jews, are 'without repentance[<A NAME="chap0101fn16text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn16">16</A>].' God's present +reprobation of them is only a process towards a fresh opportunity. +'God hath shut up all into disobedience that he might have mercy upon +all[<A NAME="chap0101fn17text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn17">17</A>].' Men may baffle the original divine purpose, and that, so far +as their own blessedness is concerned, even finally: they may become +finally 'reprobate': but the divine purpose for them at its root +remains a purpose for good. 'God will have all men to be saved and to +come to the knowledge of the truth[<A NAME="chap0101fn18text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn18">18</A>].' +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P66"></A>66}</SPAN> + +<P> +And once again, the idea of a predestination for good, taking effect +necessarily and irrespective of men's co-operation, is an idea which +has been intruded unjustifiably into St. Paul's thought. It exalts his +whole being to consider that he is co-operating with God, and that the +conditions under which he lives represent a divine purpose with which +he is called to work. It is this which makes him feel it is worth +while working: it is this which nerves and sustains him in all +sufferings, and enlarges his horizon in all restraints: but he never +suggests that it does not lie within the mysterious power of his own +will to withdraw himself from co-operation with God. It is at least +conceivable to him that he should himself be rejected[<A NAME="chap0101fn19text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn19">19</A>]. In that +famous list of external forces which he feels are unable to tear him +from the grasp of the divine love, his own will is not included[<A NAME="chap0101fn20text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn20">20</A>], +nor could be included without gross inconsistency. +</P> + +<P> +Beyond all question there is here one problem which remains for all +time unsolved and insoluble—the relation of divine fore-knowledge[<A NAME="chap0101fn21text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn21">21</A>] +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P67"></A>67}</SPAN> +to human freedom. If we men are free to choose, how can it be, or +can it really be the case at all, that God knows beforehand actually +how each individual will behave in each particular case? This is a +problem which we cannot fathom any more than we can fathom any of the +problems which require for their solution an experience of what an +absolute and eternal consciousness can mean. But the problem belongs +to metaphysics. It inheres in the idea of eternity and God. The Bible +neither creates it nor solves it. We may say it does not touch it. +</P> + +<P> +Certainly when St. Paul dwells upon the thought of divine +predestination he dwells upon it in order to emphasize that, through +all the vicissitudes of the world's history, a divine purpose runs; and +especially that God works out His universal purposes through specially +selected agents 'his elect,' on whom His choice rests for special ends +in accordance with an eternal design and intention. And the sense of +co-operating with an eternal purpose of God inspires and strengthens +him. For God will not drop His work by the way. Whom He did foreknow +or mark out beforehand for His divine purposes, them He also +foreordained or predestinated to sonship, and in due time called into +the number +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P68"></A>68}</SPAN> +of His elect, and justified them, that is, pardoned +their sins and gave them a new standing-ground in Christ, and glorified +or will glorify them by the gradual operation of His grace[<A NAME="chap0101fn22text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn22">22</A>]. The +steps or moments of the divine action recognized in the Epistle to the +Romans are practically the same as those alluded to in the Epistle to +the Ephesians. There also is the eternal choice, and the +predestination to sonship, and at a particular time the call into the +Church, and the justification or remission of sins through the blood of +Christ, and the gradual promotion through sanctification to glory. And +the moral fruit of contemplating God's eternal purpose for His elect, +and the stages of His work upon them, is to be cheerful confidence of a +right sort. God will not drop them by the way, nor the work which they +are 'called' to accomplish. 'God who hath begun a good work will +perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ[<A NAME="chap0101fn23text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn23">23</A>].' Wherever St. Paul +recognizes a movement towards good in the single soul or in the world, +he knows that it is no accidental or passing phase: it has its roots in +the eternal will, and unless we resist it in wilful obstinacy, the +eternal will shall at last +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P69"></A>69}</SPAN> +carry it on to perfection. 'There +shall never be one lost good.' +</P> + +<P> +It is not out of place to notice in this connexion how closely akin is +St. Paul's thought to the modern philosophy of evolution. Only to St. +Paul the slow process of cosmic or human evolution is in no kind of +opposition to the idea of divine design. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +iii. +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The elect</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +This predestinated body, the Church, is what in another word St. Paul +calls the 'elect' or 'chosen.' The idea of election has had a very +false turn given to it, partly through mistakes which have been already +alluded to, partly because the idea of election has been separated from +another idea with which in the Bible it is most closely associated, the +idea of a universal purpose to which the elect minister. No thought +can be more prominent in the Old Testament than the thought that some +men out of multitudes have been chosen by God to be in a special +relation of intimacy with Him. 'You only have I known, O Israel, of +all the families of the earth.' But this election to special knowledge +of God, and special spiritual opportunity, +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P70"></A>70}</SPAN> +carries with it a +corresponding responsibility. It is no piece of favouritism on God's +part. The greater our opportunity the more is required of us. 'You +only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore will I +visit upon you all your iniquities[<A NAME="chap0101fn24text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn24">24</A>].' The fact is that the +principle of inequality in capacity and opportunity runs through the +whole world both in individuals and in societies. A great genius or a +great nation has special privileges and opportunities, but also, in the +sight of God who judges men according to their opportunities, special +responsibilities. But also (and this is by far the most important +point) the special vocation of every elect individual or body is for +the sake of others[<A NAME="chap0101fn25text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn25">25</A>]. It is God's method to work through the few +upon the many. That is the law of ministry which binds all the world +of strong and weak, of rich and poor, of learned and ignorant, into +one. Thus Abraham had been chosen alone, but it was that, through his +seed, all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Israel was +exclusively the people of God, but it was in order that all nations +should learn from them at last the word of God. The apostles were +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P71"></A>71}</SPAN> +the first 'elect' in Christ with a little Jewish company. 'We'—so St. +Paul speaks of the Jewish Christians—'we who had before hoped in +Christ.' But it was to show the way to all the Gentiles ('ye also, who +have heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation,') who +were also to constitute 'God's own possession' and His 'heritage.' The +purpose to be realized is a universal one: it is the re-union of man +with man, as such, by being all together reunited to God in one body. +And this idea is to have application even beyond the bounds of +humanity. Unity is the principle of all things as God created the +world. 'In Christ,' St. Paul writes to the Colossians, 'all things +consist' or 'hold together in one system[<A NAME="chap0101fn26text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn26">26</A>].' It is only sin, whether +in man or in the dimly-known spiritual world which lies beyond, which +has spoiled this unity, and in separating the creatures from God has +separated them from one another. And the Church of the reconciliation +is God's elect body to represent a divine purpose of restoration far +wider than itself—extending in fact to all creation. It is the divine +purpose, with a view to 'a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to +sum up' or 'bring together again in unity' all things in +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P72"></A>72}</SPAN> +Christ; +the things in the heaven, the dim spiritual forces of which we have +only glimpses, and the things upon the earth which we know so much +better. +</P> + +<P> +This great and rich idea of the election of the Church as a special +body to fulfil a universal purpose of recovery, cannot be expressed +better than in the very ancient prayer which forms part of the paschal +ceremonies of the Latin liturgy. 'O God of unchangeable power and +eternal light, look favourably on Thy whole Church, that wonderful and +sacred mystery, and by the tranquil operation of Thy perpetual +providence, carry out the work of man's salvation; and let the whole +world feel and see that things which were cast down are being raised +up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and all things +are returning to perfection through Him, from whom they took their +origin, even through our Lord Jesus Christ.' +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +iv. +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The divine secret disclosed</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +This universal reconciliation through a catholic church was God's +eternal purpose, but it was kept secret from the ages and the +generations, only at last to be disclosed to His +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P73"></A>73}</SPAN> +apostles and +prophets. The word 'mystery' in the New Testament means mostly a +divine secret which has now been disclosed. Just as the secret of +Nebuchadnezzar's dream, i.e. the purpose of God in the then order of +the world, was imparted to Daniel, so now the great disclosure of the +divine mystery or secret has been made, primarily indeed to apostles +and prophets, but through them to the whole body of the faithful. The +faithful must of course begin by receiving that simplest spiritual +nourishment which is milk for babes. They are to welcome the divine +forgiveness of their sins in Christ, and the gift of new life through +Him in their baptism and the laying-on of hands. They are to be taught +the rudimentary truths and moral lessons which are the first principles +of the oracles of Christ. But they are not to stop with this. They +are, and they are all of them without exception[<A NAME="chap0101fn27text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn27">27</A>], intended to grow +up to the full apprehension of the wisdom of the 'perfect' or perfectly +initiated. They are to dwell upon the divine secret, now revealed, of +God's purpose for the universe through the church till their whole +heart and intellect and imagination is enlightened and enriched by it. +</P> + +<BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P74"></A>74}</SPAN> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +v. +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>It is all of grace</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +And is the greatness of this exaltation and knowledge vouchsafed to the +Church to be a renewed occasion of pride—that spiritual pride, the +fatal results of which had already become apparent through the +rejection of the Jews? No: unless through a complete mistake, the very +opposite must be the result. The strength of human pride, as St. Paul +had seen long ago, lay in the idea that man could have merit of his +own, face to face with God: could have good works which were his own +and not God's, and which gave him a claim upon God. That Jewish +doctrine of merit[<A NAME="chap0101fn28text"></A><A HREF="#chap0101fn28">28</A>] had been convicted of utter falsity in St. Paul's +own spiritual experience. He had found himself brought to acknowledge, +like any sinner of the Gentiles, his simple dependence upon the divine +compassion for forgiveness and acceptance. This spiritual experience +of St. Paul was only the realizing through one channel of what is, in +fact, an elementary truth about human nature. The idea of human +independence is demonstrably a false idea. As a matter of fact, man +draws his life, physical and spiritual, from +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P75"></A>75}</SPAN> +sources beyond +himself—from the one source, God. In constant dependence on God he +lives necessarily from moment to moment, whether to breathe, or think, +or will. The freedom of will which he has is not really originative or +creative power, but a capacity of voluntary correspondence with what is +given him from beyond himself. In that power of correspondence, or +refusal to correspond, man's liberty begins and ends. He creates +nothing. It is not that man does something and then God does the rest. +The truth is that when we track man's good action to its root in his +will, we find for certain that God has been beforehand with him. The +good he does is in correspondence with moral and physical laws and +forces of the universe, or, in other words, with divine powers and +purposes lent and suggested to him. To attempt independence of God, to +have schemes and plans absolutely one's own, is to work arbitrarily and +ignorantly, and ultimately to fail and to know that one has failed. +Thus men, when they realize the facts of their condition, must depend, +and rejoice to depend, wholly upon God as for forgiveness where they +have done wrong, so also for suggestion and power that they may do +anything aright. There is +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P76"></A>76}</SPAN> +then no room for human pride. It is a +mistake. We come back to recognize, what St. Paul realized in his own +deep spiritual experience and taught the Church at the beginning. +Whatever is good in the world is all of divine initiation and of divine +grace. It is all, not to our glory, but (as St. Paul three times +repeats in the opening paragraphs of our epistle) 'to the praise of his +glory,' or 'to the praise of the glory of his grace which he freely +bestows on us' out of His pure love and goodwill. +</P> + +<BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>St. Paul's leading thoughts</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +These are the great leading thoughts which are in St. Paul's mind as he +begins to write to the Asiatic Christians. His heart, his imagination, +his intellect is full of the thought of the catholic society as it +exists in Christ, the extension of His life; of this society as the +outcome of an eternal and slow-working purpose of God; of this society, +as serving universal divine ends for humanity and for the universe; of +this society, as affording a sphere in which all men's faculties may be +enlightened and delighted with the depth and largeness of the divine +purpose; while his whole being is kept, safe from all the delusions of +pride, in continual and conscious dependence upon divine grace. +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P77"></A>77}</SPAN> +With these thoughts reflected in our minds we shall find that we have +the main clue to the whole of the Epistle to the Ephesians, and more +particularly to all the words of the opening chapter, which St. Paul +begins with a great ascription of praise to God for the blessing of the +Church. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +Blessed <I>be</I> the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath +blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly <I>places</I> in +Christ: even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, +that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having +foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto +himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of +the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved: +in whom we have our 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, having made known unto us +the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he +purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum +up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon +the earth; in him, <I>I say</I>, in whom also we were made a heritage, +having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh +all things after the counsel of his will; to the end that we should be +unto the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ: in +whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your +salvation,—in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy +Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance, unto the +redemption of <I>God's</I> own possession, unto the praise of his glory. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn1text">1</A>] Rom. viii. 29. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn2text">2</A>] 1 Cor. xv. 23. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn3text">3</A>] Eph. iv. 15, 16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn4text">4</A>] Eph. v. 32; Rev. xxi. 9. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn5text">5</A>] 1 Cor. xv. 45; Rom. v. 12-19. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn6text">6</A>] 1 Cor. xii. 12. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn7"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn7text">7</A>] Acts xix. 1-7. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn8"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn8text">8</A>] Rom. iii. 24-26. I have tried to develope St. Paul's hint. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn9"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn9text">9</A>] Rom. iii. 25; Acts xiv. 16; Acts xvii. 30. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn10"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn10text">10</A>] The earliest and simplest expression of the matter is that in St. +Paul's earliest epistle (1 Thess. v. 10), Christ 'died for us ... that +we should live together with him.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn11"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn11text">11</A>] Eph. i. 7; cf. ii. 13 ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn12"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn12text">12</A>] Rom. ix. 21. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn13"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn13text">13</A>] 1 Cor. xii. 22 ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn14"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn14text">14</A>] Cf. St. Matt. xiii. 13-15; St. John xii. 39, 40. We are not (Rom. +ix. 17) told <I>why</I> Pharaoh was brought out on the stage of history as +an example of God's hardening judgement. But no doubt there was a +moral reason. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn15"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn15text">15</A>] Rom. ix-xi. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn16"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn16text">16</A>] Rom. xi. 29. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn17"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn17text">17</A>] Rom. xi. 33. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn18"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn18text">18</A>] 1 Tim. ii. 4. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn19"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn19text">19</A>] 1 Cor. ix. 27. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn20"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn20text">20</A>] Rom. viii. 38, 39 +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn21"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn21text">21</A>] I am using the word here not in its Bible sense, for in the Bible +God is said to 'know' men in the sense of fixing His choice or approval +upon them; and to 'foreknow' is therefore to approve or choose +beforehand, as suitable instruments for a divine purpose. I am using +the word in its ordinary sense. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn22"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn22text">22</A>] Rom. viii. 28-30. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn23"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn23text">23</A>] Phil. i. 6. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn24"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn24text">24</A>] Amos iii. 2. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn25"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn25text">25</A>] On the Jewish idea of election, cf. <A HREF="#notec">app. note C</A>, p. 261. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn26"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn26text">26</A>] Col. i. 1. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn27"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn27text">27</A>] Col. i. 28. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0101fn28"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0101fn28text">28</A>] See <A HREF="#notec">app. note C</A>, p. 257. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0102"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P78"></A>78}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION I. § 2. CHAPTER I. 15-23. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>St. Paul's Prayer.</I> +</H4> + +<P> +St. Paul follows up this first expression of the great thoughts that +fill his mind with a deep and comprehensive thanksgiving for that large +measure of correspondence with the divine purpose which is reported +from the Asiatic churches, and with a prayer for their full +enlightenment in heart and intellect. He prays that they may rise to +the true science of what their Christian calling, as fellow-inheritors +with the saints of the divine blessing, really means; and to an +adequate expectation of what God intends to do in them, on the analogy +of what He has already done in Christ their head. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus +which is among you, and which <I>ye shew</I> toward all the saints, cease +not to give thanks for you, making mention <I>of you</I> 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 +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P79"></A>79}</SPAN> +of the glory of his inheritance in +the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward +who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might +which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made +him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly <I>places</I>, 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 gave him to be head +over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him +that filleth all in all. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +There is very little further explanation needed for this passage. But +three phrases may be noted:— +</P> + +<P> +(1) St. Paul calls the Father 'the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,' as +our Lord Himself calls Him 'my God' (John xx. 17) in His resurrection +state. It is no doubt of Christ <I>as man</I> that the Father is God; but +this relation of the Son as man to the Father depends upon an eternal +subordination in which the Son, even as God, stands to the Father from +whom He derives His divine life. The essential subordination of the +Son (and Spirit) to the Father as the one fount of Godhead, is +continually suggested in the New Testament; but it involves no +inferiority in Godhead, or subsequence in time—'nothing before or +after, nothing greater or less,' as the <I>Quicunque vult</I> says. And it +conveys to us the moral lesson that a subordinate position is not to be +resented as if it were a dishonour. +</P> + +<P> +(2) The spirit of 'wisdom and revelation' vouchsafed to us is to enable +us to apprehend in a measure the divine 'wisdom and prudence[<A NAME="chap0102fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0102fn1">1</A>]' +manifested in God's work of creation and redemption. The humility +which is content to correspond patiently and teachably with the method +of God is, as Francis Bacon was at pains to teach, of the essence of +all fruitful human science. +</P> + +<P> +(3) The expression 'the fulness' or 'the fulness of the Godhead[<A NAME="chap0102fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0102fn2">2</A>]' +means the sum total of the divine attributes, which, instead of being +spread over different angelic mediators, as the Colossians were +disposed to imagine, are, by the divine will, all concentrated and +combined in the glorified Christ. And here St. Paul teaches the +Ephesian Christians that all that belongs to the glorified Christ is to +belong also to the Church, which is His body. It is Christ who gives +to all creatures whatever various gifts of life they have. He 'filleth +all in all'; that is, 'He filleth the whole universe with all variety +of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P81"></A>81}</SPAN> +gifts.' But something much more than various gifts—the sum +total of all He is—He pours, or intends to pour, into the Church, so +that the Church as well as the Christ shall embody, and thus be +identified with, the fulness of the divine attributes. At present the +Church is this only ideally, or in the divine intention: the actually +existing Church has still much need of growth that her members 'may be +filled (as they are not at present) up to the measure of the divine +fulness'; or, in other words, up to 'the measure of the stature of the +fulness of the Christ[<A NAME="chap0102fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0102fn3">3</A>].' +</P> + +<P> +The fulness, according to St. Paul's doctrine, is to be sought first in +the eternal God; then in the glorified Christ; then, through Him, in +the fully developed Church; and, finally, through the Church, in a +sense in the universe as a whole, when the work of redemption is done +and God is at last 'all in all' throughout His creation. +</P> + +<P> +It may be noticed that St. Paul, in this doctrine of 'the fulness,' is +thinking rather of the divine attributes as manifested, than as they +are in themselves: and of Christ, not as the eternal +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P82"></A>82}</SPAN> +Son of God, +but, more particularly, as incarnate and glorified. It was the 'good +pleasure' of the Father to fill the exalted Christ, the first-begotten +from the dead, with the fulness of divine glory and power as the reward +of the humility and love which He showed when He 'emptied himself in +taking the form of a servant[<A NAME="chap0102fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap0102fn4">4</A>].' This bestowal was no doubt a giving +anew to Him, as man and as head of the Church, what was eternally His +as Son of the Father. +</P> + +<P> +There is another interpretation adopted by Chrysostom in ancient times, +and by Dr. Hort among moderns, of the phrase 'the church which is his +body, the fulness of him who filleth all in all.' According to them +the Church is regarded as making the Christ complete. It is in this +sense the 'fulfilment' of Christ, because without the Church He would +be a head without its members: and then the rest of the sentence should +be translated differently—'the church which is his body, the +fulfilment of him who is fulfilled in all ways with all things.' But +this is decidedly less agreeable to the general use of the expression +'the fulness' in the epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians[<A NAME="chap0102fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap0102fn5">5</A>]. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P83"></A>83}</SPAN> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Some practical lessons</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +We may also pause to recognize one or two ways in which St. Paul's view +of the Christian religion, as exhibited in the opening of this epistle, +suggests special deficiencies among ourselves. +</P> + +<P> +(1) St. Paul's Christianity is a religion of thankfulness. This +epistle is a burst of exuberant praise. Yet he was himself a prisoner, +and the church of Ephesus, with the other Asiatic churches, was sorely +threatened with moral and spiritual perils of all kinds. The secret of +this thankfulness is that he looks straight away from himself and his +surroundings up to God. He measures the value of human life and work +not by what immediate experience suggests, but by what he knows of the +purpose of God. In spite of all the obstacles opposed by human +wilfulness and weakness and sin, he knows that His purpose will effect +itself: therefore he 'rejoices in the Lord always,' and no discouraging +circumstances can quench the springs of his rejoicing. Our +Christianity is apt to be of a very 'dutiful' kind. We mean to do our +duty, we attend church and go to our communions. But our hearts are +full of the difficulties, the hardships, +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P84"></A>84}</SPAN> +the obstacles which the +situation presents, and we go on our way sadly, downhearted and +despondent. We need to learn or learn anew from St. Paul that true +Christianity is inseparable from deep joy; and the secret of that joy +lies in a continual looking away from all else—away from sin and its +ways, and from the manifold hindrances to the good we would do—up to +God, His love, His purpose, His will. In proportion as we do look up +to Him we shall rejoice, and in proportion as we rejoice in the Lord +will our religion have tone and power and attractiveness. +</P> + +<P> +(2) St. Paul appeals to the Asiatic Christians not to become something +they are not, or to acquire some spiritual gift that they have not +received, but simply to realize what they already are, and to claim the +privileges of their baptized state. They are already 'adopted as +sons[<A NAME="chap0102fn6text"></A><A HREF="#chap0102fn6">6</A>].' They have, like the Galatians, received 'the Spirit of +adoption.' The point now is that they should realize and put into +practice what already belongs to them. This mode of appeal is based on +the doctrine—in spite of its many perversions the most valuable +doctrine—of baptismal +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P85"></A>85}</SPAN> +regeneration. The false method of +appeal—as if careless Christians needed to <I>become</I> sons of God—which +involves a false idea of 'regeneration,' has been so much identified +with popular Protestantism, that I cannot do better than quote some +very apposite remarks by the late Congregationalist teacher, Dr. Dale, +of blessed memory, from his noble commentary on this very epistle to +the Ephesians:— +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +'This adoption of which Paul speaks is something more than a mere legal +and formal act, conveying certain high prerogatives. We are "called +the sons of God" because we are really made His sons by a new and +supernatural birth. Regeneration is sometimes described as though it +were merely a change in a man's principles of conduct in his character, +his tastes, his habits. The description is theologically false, and +practically most pernicious and misleading. If regeneration were +nothing more than this, we should have to speak of a man as being more +or less regenerate, according to the extent of his moral reformation; +but this would be contrary to the idiom of New Testament thought. That +a great change in the moral region of a man's nature will certainly +follow regeneration is true; this change, however, is not regeneration +itself, but the effect of regeneration; and the moral change which +regeneration produces varies in many ways in different men. In some +the change is immediate, decisive, and apparently complete. In others +it is extremely gradual, and may be for a long time hardly discernible. +In some regenerate men grave sins remain for a time unforsaken, perhaps +unrecognized. Look at these Ephesian Christians. +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P86"></A>86}</SPAN> +The Apostle has +to tell them that they must put away falsehood and speak the truth; +that they must give up thieving, and foul talk, and covetousness, and +gross sensual sin. +</P> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +'He addresses them as "saints." He describes them as having been +chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and foreordained +by God unto adoption as sons unto Himself; and yet he knows that they +are in danger of committing these base and flagrant offences. It was +hard for them to escape from the vices of heathenism. They were +regenerate; but as yet, in some of them, the moral effects of +regeneration were very incomplete, the change which regeneration was +ultimately certain to produce in their moral life had only begun, and +it was checked and hindered by a thousand hostile influences. +</P> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +'The simplest and most obvious account of regeneration is the truest. +When a man is regenerated he receives a new life and receives it from +God. In itself regeneration is not a change in his old life, but the +beginning of a new life which is conferred by the immediate and +supernatural act of the Holy Spirit. The man is really "born again." +A higher nature comes to him than that which he inherited from his +human parents; he is "begotten of God," "born of the Spirit."' +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +This passage, especially as coming from Dr. Dale, supplies a very +valuable corrective to still current religious mistakes. But surely we +have no ground for saying that the moral effects 'certainly' follow +regeneration, or follow it in all cases. It is not 'ultimately certain +to produce' them in all persons, but only in those who +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P87"></A>87}</SPAN> +exhibit, +sooner or later, the moral correspondence of a converted will. +</P> + +<P> +(3) Most Christians who have reacted from Calvinism and its false +doctrine of predestination have ceased to think about the truth which +it represents. But we need to make a right instead of a wrong use of +these great ideas of predestination and election, and thus to get rid +of all the miserable narrowness and hopelessness which settles down +upon us when we allow ourselves to think of religion as mainly a +process of saving our own souls, and when we live only in our present +feelings. +</P> + +<P> +What can be more inspiring and strengthening than to believe that there +is an eternal purpose of God working itself out in the universe through +all its stages and parts; that this eternal purpose includes us, and +has fastened upon us individually and brought us into Christ and His +Church, to make true men of us; and that it has done all this not for +our own sakes only, but to disclose something more of God's glory and +for the fulfilment of great and universal purposes, which are to +radiate out even from us? Wherever St. Paul sees the hand of God in +present experience, at once his mind works back to an eternal will and +therefore also +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P88"></A>88}</SPAN> +forward to an eternal and adequate result. And +this backward and forward look transfigures the present with a new +glory and a fresh hope. So will it be with us if this same +characteristically Christian way of looking at any apparent movement of +God in the present, in our own souls or in the world outside us, +becomes habitually and instinctively ours. God never acts on a sudden +impulse or without purpose of continuance. Certainly He can be trusted +not to stop and leave things unfinished. When He hath begun any good +work He will assuredly perfect it, if we will let Him. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0102fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0102fn1text">1</A>] i. 8. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0102fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0102fn2text">2</A>] See Col. i. 19; ii. 9; cf. ii. 3, 'in Christ are all the treasures +of wisdom and knowledge hidden.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0102fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0102fn3text">3</A>] Eph. iii. 19; iv. 13. It is not certain that by Him 'who filleth +all in all' St. Paul does not mean the Father rather than the Son. But +iv. 10 supports the interpretation given above. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0102fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0102fn4text">4</A>] Col. i. 19; Phil. ii. 9-11. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0102fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0102fn5text">5</A>] And the word rendered 'filleth' may have a middle and not a passive +sense, the idea being perhaps suggested that God 'fills all things for +his own purpose.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0102fn6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0102fn6text">6</A>] That is, they were 'predestined to an adoption' (Eph. i. 5) which +it is implied they have already received. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0103"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P89"></A>89}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION I. § 3. CHAPTER II. 1-10. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>Sin and redemption.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The depth of sin</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +In the first chapter of the epistle, St. Paul has had before his eyes +the glory of God's redemptive work—the wonder of His purpose of pure +love for the universe through the Church. His imagination has kindled +at the thought of the length, the breadth, the height of the divine +operation:—the length, for it is an eternal purpose slowly worked out +through the ages; the breadth, for it is to extend over the whole +universe; the height, for it is to carry men up to no lower point than +the throne of Christ in the heavenly places. But now he stops to call +the attention of his converts to what we may call a 'fourth dimension' +of the divine operation—its depth. How wonderfully low God had +stooped, in order to reach the point to which man had sunk! The +Asiatic Christians are bidden to ponder anew, and by +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P90"></A>90}</SPAN> +contrast to +their present experience, the life which they had once lived before +they knew Christ or were found in Him. +</P> + +<P> +Let us read the apostle's words, and then consider them in detail:— +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +And you <I>did he quicken</I>, 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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +We naturally put as a parallel to these and other verses of this +epistle (iv. 17-19) the terrible passage in Romans i, where St. Paul +describes the developement of sin in the Gentile world; how it had its +origin in the refusal of the human will to recognize God, how out of +the perversion of will it spread to the blinding of the understanding, +and then to giving an overmastering power and an unnatural distortion +to the passions, so that a state of moral lawlessness was produced and +maintained. +</P> + +<P> +What are we to say as to the truth of these accounts of the moral +condition of the heathen world? No doubt there is a good deal to be +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P91"></A>91}</SPAN> +said on the other side. Roman simplicity and virtue, and the +sanctity of domestic life, had not, as contemporary inscriptions and +historical records make perfectly evident, faded out of the Roman +Empire, and philanthropy and love of the poor were recognized +excellences. Nor had philosophic virtue vanished from the schools[<A NAME="chap0103fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0103fn1">1</A>]. +And all this St. Paul would not be slow to recognize. In the Epistle +to the Romans[<A NAME="chap0103fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0103fn2">2</A>] itself he speaks in language, such as a Stoic might +have used, of those who, uninstructed by any special divine law, were a +law unto themselves, in that they showed the practical effect of the +law written in their hearts. We must therefore recognize that St. Paul +is, in the passage we are now considering, speaking ideally; that is to +say, he is speaking of the general tendency of the heathen life, just +as he speaks ideally of the Christian church in view of its general +tendency; and he is speaking of it as he mostly knew it himself in the +notoriously corrupt cities of the east, Antioch and Ephesus. Ephesus, +in particular, had an extraordinarily bad character for vice as much as +for superstition; and what +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P92"></A>92}</SPAN> +St. Paul says of the heathen life does +not in fact make up a stronger indictment or present a blacker picture +than what is said by a Stoic philosopher, perhaps his contemporary, who +wrote at Ephesus, under the shelter of the name of the great Ephesian +of ancient days, Heracleitus[<A NAME="chap0103fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0103fn3">3</A>]. Moreover, St. Paul appeals +unhesitatingly to the actual experience of these Asiatic Christians, +and there is no reason to doubt that their consciences would have +responded to what he said to them about the old life out of which they +had been brought. +</P> + +<P> +Let us now analyze a little more exactly this account St. Paul gives of +the state of sin which he saw around him in contemporary society. +</P> + +<P> +(1) 'Ye walked according to the course of this world.' By 'this world' +St. Paul, like the other New Testament writers, means practically human +society as it organizes itself for its own purposes of pleasure or +profit without thought of God, or at least without thought of God as He +truly is. These Asiatic Christians, then, had formerly ordered their +life and conduct according to the demands and expectations of the +worldly world, obeying its motives, governed +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P93"></A>93}</SPAN> +by its fashions and +its laws, and indifferent to those considerations which it repudiated +or ignored. +</P> + +<P> +(2) But to belong to the world in this sense is, in St. Paul's mind, to +belong to the kingdom of Satan. The worldly world had its origin from +a false desire of independence on man's part. He did not want to be +controlled by God; he wanted to live his own life for himself. But in +liberating himself according to his wishes from the control of God he +fell, according to St. Paul's belief, under another control. Rebellion +had been in the universe before man. There are invisible rebel +spirits, of whose real existence and influence St. Paul had no more +doubt than any other Jew who was not a Sadducee. And, indeed, our Lord +had so spoken of good and evil spirits as to assure His disciples of +their existence and influence. These rebel wills are unseen by us and +in most respects unknown, but they organize and give a certain +coherence and continuity to evil in the world. There thus arises a +sort of kingdom of evil over against the kingdom of God, and those who +will not surrender themselves to God and His kingdom, become perforce +servants of Satan and his kingdom. It is in view of this truth that +St. Paul +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P94"></A>94}</SPAN> +tells these Asiatic Christians that they used to walk +according 'to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now +worketh in the sons of disobedience.' (These evil spirits were, by a +natural way of thinking, located in the air, according to the +contemporary Jewish ideas; and the idea is, if nothing more, a +convenient metaphor for a subtle and pervading influence.) This view +of their old life, as a bondage to evil spirits, is one which would be +as easily realized by inhabitants of Asiatic cities, where men were +largely occupied in finding charms against bad spirits, as by modern +Indian converts from devil-worship. Christianity recognizes a basis of +reality in the superstition from which at the same time it delivers men. +</P> + +<P> +(3) The main characteristic of this old godless life had been +lawlessness, but St. Paul here, as in his Epistle to the Romans, +associates Jews with Gentiles, 'we' with 'you,' in the same +condemnation. The spirits, or real selves of the Christians, had been, +in their former state, dominated by their appetites or their +imaginations. They were occupied in doing what their flesh or their +thoughts suggested. It is noticeable that St. Paul puts 'the mind' +side by side with 'the flesh' as a cause of sin, the intellectual +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P95"></A>95}</SPAN> +side by side with the sensual and emotional nature. We often in fact, +in our age, have experience of people who are not 'sensual' in the +ordinary sense, but who live lives which have no goodness, no +perseverance, no order, no fruitfulness in them, because they are the +slaves of the ideas of their own mind as they present themselves, now +one, now another; unregulated ideas being in fact, just as much as +unregulated passions, fluctuating, arbitrary, and tyrannous. Nothing +is more truly needed to-day than the discipline of the imagination. +</P> + +<P> +(4) Men living such a life of bondage are described further as 'dead +through their trespasses and sins.' St. Paul means by death to +describe any state of intellectual and moral insensibility. He would +have the Christian 'dead' to the motives and voices of the worldly and +sensual world. So in the same way he reminds the Asiatic Christians +that to all that life of God in which they were now fruitfully living, +they had at one time been insensible or dead—that is, blind to those +things which now seemed most apparent, unterrified at what would now +seem most horrible, unmoved by what now seemed most fascinating. And +if this was their state viewed in itself, in their relation to God +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P96"></A>96}</SPAN> +they were, like the Jews also, 'children of wrath.' This expression is +used in our catechism to describe 'original sin,' that is to say, that +moral disorder or weakness which belongs to our nature as we inherit +it, before we have had the opportunity of personal wrong doing. But +the application of the phrase by St. Paul is to describe rather the +state of <I>actual</I> sin in which Jew and Gentile alike 'naturally' lived. +It implies not that God hated them, for in the whole context St. Paul +is emphasizing 'the great love wherewith he loved them'; but that there +was a necessary moral incompatibility between them as they then were, +and God as He essentially and permanently is. God is so necessarily +holy that His being is, and must be, intolerable to the unholy. It +must be the case that at the bare idea of the divine coming, 'sinners +in Zion' should be 'afraid,' and should say one to another, 'who among +us shall dwell with the devouring fire, who among us shall dwell with +everlasting burnings[<A NAME="chap0103fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap0103fn4">4</A>]?' God necessarily presents Himself as a terror +to the godless; and from the point of view of God that means that our +sinful nature is the subject of His necessary wrath. He resents the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P97"></A>97}</SPAN> +perversion, the spoiling, of His own handiwork in us. He cannot +tolerate uncleanness, rebellion, unbelief. This wrath of God, in the +case of those whose wills are set to 'hate the light,' is directed +against men's persons. But so far as sin is only in our natures, and +is something of which we are the unwilling subjects, it appeals only to +God's compassion to lead Him to apply effective remedies. His wrath is +so far against sin, not against sinners; and none could know better +than these Asiatic Christians what lengths of resourcefulness and +self-sacrifice the divine compassion had gone in order to redeem men +from its tyranny. Thus St. Paul continues:— +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +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 Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and raised us up with him, +and made us to sit with him in the heavenly <I>places</I>, in Christ Jesus: +that in the ages to come he might shew 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: <I>it is</I> 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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The method of redemption</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +Here is St. Paul's description of the method of God in dealing with men +when they were in +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P98"></A>98}</SPAN> +that state of sin, the conditions of which he +has just summarised. We take note of the chief points in the method. +</P> + +<P> +(1) St. Paul has in mind here, as always, the divine predestination. +There was an eternal purpose in the divine mind to make St. Paul and +those to whom he wrote such as they were now on the way to become; it +was a purpose not merely general, but extending to details. It +belongs, in fact, to the divine perfection, that God does nothing, and +purposes nothing, in mere vague generality. The universal range and +scope of the divine activity as over all creatures whatsoever, hinders +not at all its perfect application to detail. Thus God had +'predestined,' or held in His eternal purpose, not merely the state of +Christians as a whole or even of the Asiatic Christians in particular, +but the details of conduct which He willed them individually to +exhibit. It is the particular 'good works' which God 'prepared +beforehand in order that they should walk in them[<A NAME="chap0103fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap0103fn5">5</A>].' +</P> + +<P> +(2) What God predestined He accomplished first in summary 'in Christ +Jesus.' In Him all that God meant to do for man was exhibited +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P99"></A>99}</SPAN> +and +accomplished as God's own and perfect handiwork, as an effective and +final disclosure. Men are to look for everything, for every kind of +development and progress, in Christ, but for nothing outside or beyond +Him. All is there—'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' all +'the fulness of the Godhead,' all the perfections of mankind, the +reconciliation of all seeming opposites. All is brought to the highest +possible level of attainment, 'the heavenly place.' +</P> + +<P> +(3) What had been summarily realized in Christ is progressively +realized in those who are 'in Him.' Undeterred by their condition of +moral and spiritual death, God, out of the heart of His rich mercy, +simply because of the great love He bore to men, has brought them, by +one act of regeneration, into the new life of His Son; has 'quickened +them together with Christ,' that is, has introduced them, at a definite +moment of initiation, into the life which has once for all triumphed +over death, and been glorified in the heavenly places; and has +introduced them into this life in order that, by the gradual +assimilation of its forces, future ages might witness in them all the +wealth of the goodness which had lain hid in the original act +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P100"></A>100}</SPAN> +of +incorporation. Meanwhile, while their growth is yet imperfect, God +sees those who are Christ's as 'in Christ': imputes His merits to them, +so we may legitimately say: that is, sees them and deals with them in +view of the fact that Christ's Spirit is at work in them; sees them and +deals with them 'not as they are, but as they are becoming.' <I>This</I> +doctrine of imputation, instead of being full of moral unreality, is in +accordance with all that is deepest in the philosophy of evolution. +For are we not continually being taught that in order to take a true +view of the value of any single thing, we must view it not as it is at +a particular moment, but in the light of its tendency? We must ask not +merely 'what,' but 'whence' and 'whither.' +</P> + +<P> +(4) It is all pure grace—the free outpouring of unmerited love. The +Christians are 'God's workmanship,' His new creation. He, in Christ, +had wrought the work all by Himself. They, the subjects of it, had +contributed nothing. It remained for them only to welcome and to +correspond. This is the summing up of man's legitimate attitude +towards God. This is faith. It is at its first stage simply the +acceptance of a divine mercy in all its undeserved and unconditional +largeness; but it passes at once, as +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P101"></A>101}</SPAN> +soon as ever the nature of +the divine gift is realized, into a glad co-operation with the divine +purpose. +</P> + +<P> +This then is, in outline, the method of the great salvation, of which +the Asiatic Christians had been and were the subjects. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0103fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0103fn1text">1</A>] On the virtuous aspect of the contemporary empire, see Renan, <I>Les +Apôtres</I>, pp. 306 ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0103fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0103fn2text">2</A>] Rom. ii. 14. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0103fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0103fn3text">3</A>] See <A HREF="#noteb">app. note B</A>, p. 255. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0103fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0103fn4text">4</A>] Is. xxxiii. 14, 15. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0103fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0103fn5text">5</A>] Cf. <A HREF="#notec">app. note C</A>, p. 263, for a similar thought in a contemporary +Jewish book. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0104"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P102"></A>102}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION I. § 4. CHAPTER II. 11-22. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>Salvation in the church.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The salvation social</I> +</SPAN> + + +<P> +God's deliverance or 'salvation' of mankind is a deliverance of +individuals indeed, but of individuals in and through a society; not of +isolated individuals, but of members of a body. +</P> + +<P> +It is and has been a popular religious idea that the primary aim of the +gospel is to produce saved individuals; and that it is a matter of +secondary importance that the saved individuals should afterwards +combine to form churches for their mutual spiritual profit, and for +promoting the work of preaching the gospel. But this way of conceiving +the matter is a reversal of the order of ideas in the Bible. 'The +salvation' in the Bible is supposed usually 'to reach the individual +through the community[<A NAME="chap0104fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn1">1</A>].' God's dealings with us in redemption thus +follow the lines of His dealings with us in our natural developement. +For man stands +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P103"></A>103}</SPAN> +out in history as a 'social animal.' His +individual developement, by a divine law of his constitution, is only +rendered possible because he is first of all a member of some society, +tribe, or nation, or state. Through membership in such a society +alone, and through the submissions and limitations on his personal +liberty which such membership involves, does he become capable of any +degree of free or high developement as an individual. This law, then, +of man's nature appears equally in the method of his redemption. Under +the old covenant it was to members of the 'commonwealth of Israel' that +the blessings of the covenant belonged. Under the new covenant St. +Paul still conceives of the same commonwealth as subsisting (as we +shall see directly), and as fulfilling no less than formerly the same +religious functions. True, it has been fundamentally reconstituted and +enlarged to include the believers of all nations, and not merely one +nation; but it is still the same commonwealth, or polity, or church; +and it is still through the church that God's 'covenant' dealings reach +the individual. +</P> + +<P> +It is for this reason that St. Paul goes on to describe the state of +the Asiatic Christians, +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P104"></A>104}</SPAN> +before their conversion, as a state of +alienation from the 'commonwealth of Israel.' They were 'Gentiles in +the flesh,' that is by the physical fact that they were not Jews; and +were contemptuously described as the uncircumcised by those who, as +Jews, were circumcised by human hands. And he conceives this to be +only another way of describing alienation from God and His manifold +covenants of promise, and from the Messiah, the hope of Israel and of +mankind. They were without the Church of God, and therefore presumably +without God and without hope. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +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, +alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the +covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. +But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the +blood of Christ. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +This alienation of Gentiles from the divine covenant was represented in +the structure of the temple at Jerusalem by a beautifully-worked marble +balustrade, separating the outer from the inner court, upon which stood +columns at regular intervals, bearing inscriptions, some in Greek and +some in Latin characters, to warn +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P105"></A>105}</SPAN> +aliens not to enter the holy +place. One of the Greek inscriptions was discovered a few years ago, +and is now to be read in the Museum of Constantinople. It runs thus: +'No alien to pass within the balustrade round the temple and the +enclosure. Whosoever shall be caught so doing must blame himself for +the penalty of death which he will incur.' +</P> + +<P> +This 'middle wall of partition' was vividly in St. Paul's memory. He +was in prison at Rome at the time of his writing this epistle, in part +at least because he was believed to have brought Trophimus, an +Ephesian, within the sacred enclosure at Jerusalem. 'He brought Greeks +also into the temple, and hath defiled the holy place.' +</P> + +<P> +It was this 'middle wall of partition,' representing the exclusiveness +of Jewish ordinances, which St. Paul rejoiced to believe Christ had +abolished. He had made Jew and Gentile one by bringing both alike to +God in one body and on a new basis. +</P> + +<P> +There were in fact two partitions in the Jewish temple of great +symbolical importance. There was the veil which hid the holy of +holies, and symbolized the alienation of man from God[<A NAME="chap0104fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn2">2</A>]; and there was +'the middle wall of partition' +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P106"></A>106}</SPAN> +already described, representing +the exclusion of the world from the privileges of the people of God. +The Pharisaic Jews ignored the spiritual lessons of the first +partition, and devoutly believed in the permanence of the second. But +Saul, while yet a Pharisee, had felt the reality of the first, and had +found in his own experience that the abolition of this first barrier by +Christ involved also the annihilation of the second. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The breaking down of partitions</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +It is in the Epistle to the Colossians that he lays stress upon the +abolition in Christ of the enmity between man and God. 'It was the +good pleasure of the Father ... through him to reconcile all things +unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.' 'You, +being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh +... did he quicken together with Christ, having forgiven us all our +trespasses; having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was +against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out of the +way, nailing it to the cross.' So with the help of various metaphors +does St. Paul strive to express the mighty truth that, by the shedding +of Christ's blood, that is to say by His sacrifice of perfected +obedience, the way had been opened for the forgiveness of our sins and +our +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P107"></A>107}</SPAN> +reconciliation to God in one life, one Spirit. But the +symbols and instruments of that former alienation from God which St. +Paul had experienced so bitterly, were to his mind the 'ordinances' of +the Jewish law. These, he had come to feel, had no other function than +to awaken and deepen the sense of sin which they were powerless to +overcome. They were nothing but 'a bond written against us'; a +continual record of condemnation. To trust in the observance of +ordinances was to remain an unreconciled sinner, alienated in mind and +unpurified in heart. On the other hand, to have faith in Jesus and +receive from Him the unmerited gift of the divine pardon and the Spirit +of sonship was, for a Jew, to cast away all that trust in the +observance of the ordinances of his nation which was so dear to his +heart. It was at once to place himself among the sinners of the +Gentiles. For in Jesus Christ all men were indeed brought near to God, +but not as meritorious Jews; rather as common men and common sinners, +needing and accepting all alike the undeserved mercy of a heavenly +Father. Thus it was that Christ, in breaking down one partition, had +broken down the other also. In opening the way to God by a simple +human trust in a +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P108"></A>108}</SPAN> +heavenly Father, and not by the complicated +arrangements of a special law, He had put all men on the same level of +need and of acceptance. He had not indeed abolished the covenant or +the covenant people, but He had enlarged its area and altered its +basis: there was still to be one visible body or people of the +covenant, but membership in it was to be open to all, Jew and Gentile +alike, who would feel their need of and put their trust in Jesus. This +is what St. Paul proceeds to express, and little more need be added to +explain his words. In the 'blood' or 'blood-shedding' of Jesus—that +is, His self-sacrifice for men, His obedience carried to the point of +the surrender of His life—a way had been opened to the Father that was +purely human, that belonged to the Gentiles who had been 'far off' as +well as to Jews who were already 'nigh' in the divine covenant. And in +being brought near to God by faith, and not by Jewish ordinances, Jew +and Gentile had been reconciled on a common basis—the two had been +made one in 'the flesh,' that is, the manhood of Christ, for no other +reason than because the 'law of commandments contained in (special +Jewish) ordinances,' which had hitherto been the basis of separation, +was now once for all +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P109"></A>109}</SPAN> +'abolished.' Henceforth there was one new +man, or new manhood, in Christ, in which all men were, potentially at +least, reconciled to God and to one another by His self-sacrifice upon +the cross. And to the knowledge of this new manhood all men were being +gradually brought by the 'preaching of peace' or of the gospel, which +had its origin from Jesus crucified and risen, and which, even now that +Jesus was invisibly acting through His apostolic and other ministers, +St. Paul attributes directly to Him. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The admission of Gentiles</I> +</SPAN> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the +blood of Christ. 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 <I>contained</I> 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 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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Now we can turn from the negative to the positive statement, and +observe what St. Paul says of the new privileges of the once heathen +converts. He pictures them under four metaphors, each describing a +social state. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P110"></A>110}</SPAN> + +<P> +(1) They are citizens in the holy state, the commonwealth of the people +consecrated to God—citizens with full rights, and no longer strangers +or unenfranchised residents (sojourners). +</P> + +<P> +(2) More intimately still, they belong to the family or household of +God. +</P> + +<P> +(3) They are being built all together into a sanctuary for God to dwell +in—a holy structure of which the foundation stones are the apostles, +and the Christian prophets who were their companions; and of which the +corner-stone, determining the lines of the building and compacting it +into one, is Jesus Christ, according to the word of God by Isaiah, +'Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation stone, a tried stone, a precious +corner stone of sure foundation.' +</P> + +<P> +(4) But the metaphor of the building passes into the metaphor of the +growing plant. Christ is, as St. Peter says, 'a <I>living</I> stone[<A NAME="chap0104fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn3">3</A>].' +He not only determines the lines of the spiritual structure, but He +pervades the whole of it as a presence and spirit, so that every other +human 'stone' is also alive and growing with His life. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are +fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P111"></A>111}</SPAN> +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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +These are indeed metaphors expressive of glorious realities, which have +no doubt become dulled in meaning through a conventional Christianity, +which involves no sacrifice and therefore attains no sense of +blessedness, but which a little meditation may easily restore to +something of their original freshness. +</P> + +<P> +(1) The idea of the chosen people all through the Old Testament is that +they are as a whole consecrated to God. Priests and kings appointed by +God to their several offices may indeed fulfil special functions in the +national life, yet the fundamental idea is never lost that the entire +nation is holy, 'a kingdom of priests.' It is because this is true +that the prophets can appeal as they do to the people in general, as +well as to priests and rulers, as sharing altogether the responsibility +of the national life. Now the whole of this idea is transferred, only +deepened and intensified, to the Christian Church. That too has its +divinely-ordained ministers, its differentiation of functions in the +one body, but the whole +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P112"></A>112}</SPAN> +body is priestly, and all are +citizens—not merely residents but citizens, that is, intelligent +participators in a common corporate life consecrated to God. How truly +realized this idea was in the early Christian communities, St. Paul's +letters are our best witnesses. They are really—except the pastoral +epistles—letters to the churches and not to the clergy. It is the +whole body which is at Thessalonica and Corinth to concern itself with +the exercise of moral discipline[<A NAME="chap0104fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn4">4</A>]—the whole body in the Galatian +churches and at Colossae who are to concern themselves with the +apprehension and protection of the full Christian truth. They are all +to be 'perfectly initiated' in Christ Jesus, full participators in the +affairs of the divine society[<A NAME="chap0104fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn5">5</A>]. Whatever needs to be said afterwards +about the special functions of special officers, this is the first +thing to be said and recognized; and it gives us a profound sense of +the distance we have fallen from our ideal. The laity, it is generally +understood among us, are to come to church and perhaps to communion, +are to accept the ministries of religion at marriages and funerals, and +are to subscribe a little money to religious objects; but they may +leave it to the clergy, as a matter of course, to carry on +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P113"></A>113}</SPAN> +the +business of religion—that is, worship and doctrine, for discipline has +been dropped out—and confine themselves to a certain amount of +irresponsible criticism of the sermons of the clergy and their +proceedings generally. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The catholic church</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +For this state of things—this very false sacerdotalism—the +responsibility is generally laid at the door of 'clerical arrogance.' +It is not necessary to consider how large a factor in the result +clerical arrogance has really been, for certainly what alone has given +the clergy the opportunity to put themselves in false isolation, and +what has been an immensely more powerful factor in the general result, +has been the spiritual apathy of the mass of church members, an apathy +which began as soon as the Christian profession began to cost men +little or nothing. +</P> + +<P> +Are we to set to work to revive St. Paul's ideal of the life of a +Church? If so, what we need is not more Christians, but better +Christians. We want to make the moral meaning of church membership +understood and its conditions appreciated. We want to make men +understand that it costs something to be a Christian; that to be a +Christian, that is a Churchman, is to be an intelligent participator in +a corporate life consecrated to God, and to concern +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P114"></A>114}</SPAN> +oneself +therefore, as a matter of course, in all that touches the corporate +life—its external as well as its spiritual conditions. For the houses +people live in, their wages, their social and commercial relations to +one another, their amusements, the education they receive, the +literature they read, these, no less truly than religious forces +strictly so called, affect intimately the health and well-being of any +society of men. We Christians are fellow-citizens together in the +commonwealth that is consecrated to God, a commonwealth of mortal men +with bodies as well as souls. +</P> + +<P> +(2) But St. Paul also describes the Church as the 'household of God.' +When our Lord was speaking to St. Peter about the ministry which was +being entrusted to the apostles, He said to him, 'Who then is the +faithful and wise steward whom his Lord shall set over his household to +give them their portion of food in due season[<A NAME="chap0104fn6text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn6">6</A>]?' This description +opens to us part of the meaning of the divine household. A household +is a place where a family is provided for, where there is a regular and +orderly supply of ordinary needs. And the Church is the divine +household in which God has provided stewards to make +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P115"></A>115}</SPAN> +regular +spiritual provision for men, so that they shall feel and know +themselves members of a family, understood, sympathized with, helped, +encouraged, disciplined, fed. What in fact are the sacraments and +sacramental rites, what are baptism, confirmation and communion, +marriage and ordination, the administration of the word of God, the +dealings with the penitent, the sick, the dead, but the 'portions of +food in due season,' the orderly distribution of the bread of life in +the family or household of God? +</P> + +<P> +But there is another idea which, in St. Paul's mind, attaches itself +strongly to the idea of the 'divine family.' It is that in this +household we are sons and not servants—that is intelligent +co-operators with God, and not merely submissive slaves. It is +noticeable how often he speaks with horror of Christians allowing +themselves again to be 'subject to ordinances,' or to 'the weak and +beggarly rudiments,' the alphabet of that earlier education when even +children are treated as slaves under mere obedience. 'Ye observe days, +and months, and seasons, and years, I am afraid of you[<A NAME="chap0104fn7text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn7">7</A>].' 'Why do ye +subject yourselves to ordinances, handle not, taste not, touch not[<A NAME="chap0104fn8text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn8">8</A>].' +It is perfectly true to say that what +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P116"></A>116}</SPAN> +St. Paul is deprecating is +a return to Jewish or pagan observances. But this is not all. He +demands not a change of observance only, but a change of spirit. Their +attitude towards observances as such is to be different. Not that St. +Paul does not insist on that readiness to obey reasonable authority +which is a condition of corporate life, or would hesitate to lay stress +upon corporate religious acts in the Christian body. The truth is very +far from that. 'We have no such custom, neither the churches of God,' +is an argument which ought to be sufficient to suppress eccentricity. +To 'keep the traditions' is a mark of a good Christian[<A NAME="chap0104fn9text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn9">9</A>]. 'A man that +is heretical' (or rather 'factious') after the first and second +admonition is to be 'refused'[<A NAME="chap0104fn10text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn10">10</A>]. Government is to be a constant +element in the Christian life. But the character of authority and of +obedience is to be changed. The authority is to be reasonable +authority, and the obedience intelligent obedience. Passive obedience +to an authority which does not explain itself, whether in a spiritual +director or in the Church as a whole, St. Paul would have thought of +meanly as a Christian virtue. And the multiplication of authoritative +observances he would have dreaded as a +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P117"></A>117}</SPAN> +bondage. Our Lord was +very unwilling to give His disciples, when He was on earth, much +direction. And St. Paul is true to his Master's spirit. Our life +should be ordered by principles, rather than directed in detail. For +to rely upon direction from outside dwarfs our sense of personal +responsibility, and personal relationship to the divine Spirit. A +certain amount of confusion, hesitation, difference, due to men feeling +their way, due to their different individualities having free scope, +St. Paul would apparently have thought preferable to that sort of order +which is the product of a very strong and exacting external government, +and to an undue exaltation of the virtue of passive obedience. +</P> + +<P> +(3) St. Paul describes the Church as a sanctuary which is gradually to +be built for God to dwell in. We remember how our Lord had said of the +temple at Jerusalem, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will +raise it up.' 'He spake,' St. John explains, 'of the temple of his +body[<A NAME="chap0104fn11text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn11">11</A>].' That—His own humanity proved triumphant over death—was to +be henceforth the tabernacle of God's presence among men. Where that +is God is, and the true worship of the Father in spirit and in truth. +But that body, raised again +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P118"></A>118}</SPAN> +the third day and become 'quickening +Spirit' as the body of the risen Christ, takes within its influence the +whole circle of believers. The 'body of Christ,' which is God's +temple, comes to mean the Church which lives in Christ's life, and +worships in Christ's Spirit. This is still the Church of the fathers +of the old covenant, but fundamentally reconstituted. God, as St. +James perceived[<A NAME="chap0104fn12text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn12">12</A>], was fulfilling His promise to 'build again the +tabernacle of David which had fallen.' It was being built anew upon +the apostles and their companions the prophets, the immediate +ambassadors of Christ, as foundation-stones of the renewed building, +who themselves have their positions determined and secured by Christ +Jesus as chief corner-stone. It was a spiritual fabric combining, like +a Gothic cathedral, various parts or 'several buildings,' with their +distinctive characteristics, all however united in one construction, +one great sanctuary of a redeemed humanity in which God dwells. +</P> + +<P> +The metaphor suggests the combination of national and individual +differences in real unity. It encourages us to pay due regard to the +free developement of our own characters and capacities, but also to +develope ourselves as parts of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P119"></A>119}</SPAN> +a greater whole, always +remembering that the work of a Christian individual or a local church +is in God's sight measured, not by its isolated result, but by the +contribution it makes to the life of the whole body. An eccentric +individuality, a schismatic developement is, even in proportion to its +strength, a source of weakness to the whole. By its relation to the +whole life of the Church all Christian effort must be both invigorated +and restrained. +</P> + +<P> +The metaphor suggests further that the social organization of the +Church is an organization for worship. It is a house and a +citizenship, because it is also a sanctuary. The strength of corporate +Christianity is to be measured by the vitality of corporate worship. A +church life in which the eucharist is not the centre, for all the +vigour which it may show in learning, or preaching, or philanthropy, is +after all but a maimed life. +</P> + +<P> +(4) But the Church, as a visible organization of men, can be what it +is—the city of God, His household and His sanctuary—only because it +is pervaded by Christ's life and spirit. The 'stones of the building' +are not merely placed side by side of one another, or held together by +any external agency of government; they +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P120"></A>120}</SPAN> +are as branches of a +living tree, limbs of a living body. In this recurrent thought, which +will be presented to us in another form when St. Paul comes to speak of +the head and the body, is the interpretation of all his theory of the +Church. It is verily and indeed the extension of the life of Christ. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +How are we to receive this great and manifold ideal of what the Church +means[<A NAME="chap0104fn13text"></A><A HREF="#chap0104fn13">13</A>]? It is by meditating upon it till St. Paul's +conceptions—and not any lower or narrower ones, Roman or Anglican or +Nonconformist—become vivid to our minds. Then, knowing what we aim at +restoring, we shall seek, in each parish and ecclesiastical centre, to +concentrate almost more than to extend the Church, to give it +spiritual, moral, and social reality, rather than to multiply a +membership which means little. For if men can understand the meaning +of the Church, as the city of God, the family of God, the sanctuary of +God, in the world, there is little fear that whatever is good in +humanity will fail of allegiance to her. The kings of the earth will +bring their glory and honour into her, and the nations of the earth +shall walk in her light. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn1text">1</A>] Sanday and Headlam's <I>Romans</I>, pp. 122-124. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn2text">2</A>] Hebr. ix. 8. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn3text">3</A>] 1 Peter ii. 4. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn4text">4</A>] 1 Thess. v. 14; 1 Cor. v.-vi. 11. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn5text">5</A>] Col. i. 28. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn6text">6</A>] Luke xii. 42. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn7"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn7text">7</A>] Gal. iv. 11; v. 1. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn8"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn8text">8</A>] Col. ii. 20-22. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn9"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn9text">9</A>] Cor. xi. 2, 16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn10"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn10text">10</A>] Tit. iii. 10. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn11"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn11text">11</A>] John ii. 19-21. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn12"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn12text">12</A>] Acts xv. 16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0104fn13"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0104fn13text">13</A>] See <A HREF="#noted">app. note D</A>, p. 264, on the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0105"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P121"></A>121}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION I. § 5. CHAPTER III. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>Paul the apostle of catholicity.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Paul the apostle of catholicity</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +St. Paul has unfolded the dimensions of the revelation of God given in +the catholic church. The interests of the whole of mankind and of the +whole universe which it is to subserve—that is its breadth: the +eternal and slowly realized intention of God of which it is the +expression—that is its length: the spiritual elevation up to which it +takes men—that is its height: the gulf of sin and misery from which it +rescues them—that is its depth. And now he is about to press upon the +Asiatic Christians the moral obligations which this great catholic +brotherhood involves. He begins his exhortation and enforces it by +reminding them of what he was enduring as a prisoner for Christ's +sake—'For this cause (i.e. seeing that all this is true), I, Paul, the +prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you, the Gentiles.' But when he +has thus made a beginning, he pauses to add weight +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P122"></A>122}</SPAN> +to his appeal +by emphasizing a personal but very important consideration. The +particular truth of the catholicity of the Church had been in quite a +special sense entrusted to him, Paul, personally, as apostle of the +Gentiles. He assumes that they have heard of this, his special +commission, and that it was the subject of a special revelation to +himself[<A NAME="chap0105fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn1">1</A>]. Indeed the fact must have formed part of his teaching at +Ephesus and throughout Asia, for his mind was full of it; he had +contended for it against strong opposition in his epistle to the +Galatians[<A NAME="chap0105fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn2">2</A>]; he had asserted it in his speech on the occasion of his +being made a prisoner at Jerusalem: and he had quite recently explained +it 'in brief compass' in the letter to the Colossians which was +intended to have, in part at least, the same readers as his present +epistle[<A NAME="chap0105fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn3">3</A>]. This special revelation then and accompanying commission +justifies him in particular, and more than any of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P123"></A>123}</SPAN> +the other +apostles, in pressing upon his converts the doctrine which forms the +special topic of this epistle. +</P> + +<P> +But to think of his special office as apostle of a catholic society, is +to think also of its extraordinary difficulty. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The difficulty of catholicity</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +When we set ourselves in our own later age to rehabilitate the sense of +church membership, we feel at once the strength of the forces against +us; we realize how much the feeling of blood-kinship in the family +counts for, or the wider kinship of national life, or the common +interests of our professions or our classes, compared to the feeble +sense of fellowship which comes from a church membership which is so +largely conventional. Most assuredly we feel the difficulty of what we +have in hand. But we cannot feel it more intensely than St. Paul felt +the difficulty involved in the very idea of a human brotherhood in +which national distinctions were obliterated. After all, the degree of +unity impressed by the Roman Empire upon the different nations it +embraced was superficial. On the whole it left men to walk in their +own ways. In particular it did not succeed in breaking down the +barriers of Jewish isolation. A society in which men should be neither +Jews nor +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P124"></A>124}</SPAN> +Gentiles, Greeks nor barbarians, bond nor free, but all +should be welded into one manhood by the pressure of a common and +constraining bond of brotherhood—a society in which even the savage +and brutal Scythian should have equal fellowship with Greeks and +Jews[<A NAME="chap0105fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn4">4</A>]—represented what had never yet been accomplished, and what the +most sanguine might reasonably have thought impossible. The history of +the Church, though not yet much more than thirty years old, had served +already to emphasize the difficulty of the undertaking. We read the +record of the first Jerusalem Church with its communism of love and +sympathy, and it seems the perfect realization of the Christian spirit +of brotherhood. So it was, but under comparatively easy conditions. +For all that community were Jews with common traditions, sympathies, +habits, ways of looking at things. They could behave as brethren, in +the glow of their fresh enthusiasm at finding that the long-expected +kingdom of Christ was now an actual fact, and its triumph to be +immediately expected, without any real bridging of the gulfs which yawn +between different sorts of men. That these gulfs still remained to be +bridged soon appeared. It became manifest that +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P125"></A>125}</SPAN> +Gentiles, +'sinners of the Gentiles,' had to be received into Christian +brotherhood upon equal terms, and without their accepting the Jewish +law and customs. The Council at Jerusalem attempted a compromise by +requiring of the Gentile converts certain accommodations to Jewish +manners. But the compromise did not avail to overcome the difficulty. +St. Paul found the centre of opposition to the equal admission of the +Gentiles in that very Church of Jerusalem which had been previously +foremost in the race of love. In fact, the true difficulty of the law +of brotherhood only then appeared when the obligation to fuse +inveterate national distinctions began to be enforced. Then indeed +flesh and blood rebelled. Without going any further than this single +piece of Christian experience, there is every reason why St. John +should warn Christians that the old commandment, 'ye shall love one +another,' is constantly, with every change of circumstance, becoming 'a +new commandment,' involving new difficulties, and challenging afresh +the efforts of the human will[<A NAME="chap0105fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn5">5</A>]. The same difficulty, only in a less +acute form, is in St. Paul's mind, and makes him measure and weigh his +words, when he writes to Philemon +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P126"></A>126}</SPAN> +to beg him to receive his +former runaway slave, 'no longer as a slave, but as a brother +beloved[<A NAME="chap0105fn6text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn6">6</A>].' +</P> + +<P> +And we cannot but pause and ask, in view of all the moral discipline +for men of various kinds which St. Paul sees to be involved in the +simple obligation to belong to one Christian body[<A NAME="chap0105fn7text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn7">7</A>],—what would have +been his feelings if he had heard of the doctrine which cuts at the +root of all this discipline by declaring that religion is only +concerned with the relation of the soul to God, and that Christians may +combine as they please in as many religious bodies as suits their +varying tastes? +</P> + +<P> +This difficulty in the very idea of a catholic brotherhood of men +explains the extraordinary earnestness with which St. Paul proceeds to +emphasize that indeed this, and nothing less than this, is the divine +mystery (or 'secret'), which, held back from all eternity in the mind +of God, was only now being disclosed through Christ's consecrated +messengers, and specially through St. Paul himself, the apostle of the +Gentiles. The incredible nature of the idea clogs St. Paul's language, +and almost makes shipwreck of his grammar. All the depth of Christian +doctrine is necessary as background +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P127"></A>127}</SPAN> +to recommend and justify this +otherwise entirely 'supernatural' ideal—this marvellous climax of the +workings and revelations of God. The spectacle of a catholic +brotherhood, with all that it promises of universal unity beyond +itself, is a lesson even to the angels of what the manifold wisdom of +God can conceive and accomplish. +</P> + +<P> +We have got into a habit of talking about the 'brotherhood of man' as +if it was an easy and obvious truth. All our experience of our English +relations with races of a different colour to our own, nay, all our +experience of class divisions at home, might have served to check this +easy-going sort of language. If we will consent to pause and reflect +on the actual difficulty of behaving or feeling as brethren should +behave and feel towards men of other races and of other educations and +habits than our own, we may be more inclined to believe that it is only +through some fundamental eradication of selfishness and inherent +narrowness that it can be made possible; only when we begin to live +from some centre greater than ourselves. And that is the moral meaning +of the constant doctrine of the New Testament, that only through being +reconciled to God can we be reconciled to one +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P128"></A>128}</SPAN> +another—only in +Christ that men can permanently and satisfactorily learn to love one +another, when racial and educational and personal antipathies make for +separation and not for unity. +</P> + +<P> +Now perhaps we are in a position to read with greater intelligence what +St. Paul wrote about 'the dispensation of the divine mystery,' i.e. +'the stewardship of the divine secret,' of the brotherhood of all men +in Christ or the catholicity of the Church, which had been committed to +him by the 'revelation' which followed his conversion to Christ[<A NAME="chap0105fn8text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn8">8</A>]. +</P> + +<P> +The doctrine of the brotherhood of men is in fact as much a peculiarly +Christian doctrine as that of divine sonship, and both alike are, in +the New Testament language, represented as realized only within the +community of the baptized. The facts of New Testament language compel +us to say and to recognize this[<A NAME="chap0105fn9text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn9">9</A>]. But +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P129"></A>129}</SPAN> +we are bound to +recognize also that they are truths which, when they are heard, are +welcomed by the natural conscience everywhere. For as all men are +'God's offspring[<A NAME="chap0105fn10text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn10">10</A>],' by the very fact of their creation as men, so +they are fitted to receive the privilege of sonship: and as they are +'made of one[<A NAME="chap0105fn11text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn11">11</A>],' so they are fitted to realize the privilege of +brotherhood. It is but to say the same thing in other words, if we +insist that Christians are the elect body, to realize and express among +men an idea of human nature which is the only true idea, and which, +overlaid and forgotten as it may have been, has never ceased to stir in +man's heart and conscience everywhere. The elect are elected for no +other purpose than to make manifest what all men are capable of +becoming, and, if they will obey God, are destined to become. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +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 to you-ward; 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 +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P130"></A>130}</SPAN> +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; <I>to wit</I>, 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 make all men see what is the +dispensation of the mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God +who created all things; to the intent that now unto the principalities +and the powers in the heavenly <I>places</I> might be made known through the +church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose +which he purposed in Christ 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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +There are a few points in this passage which still require explanation. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Paul the apostle of catholicity</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +1. What is St. Paul referring to when he says 'As I wrote afore in few +words whereby, when ye read[<A NAME="chap0105fn12text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn12">12</A>], ye can perceive my understanding in +the mystery of Christ' or (if I may venture to retranslate it) 'as I +wrote before in brief, by +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P131"></A>131}</SPAN> +comparison with which, as ye read, ye +can perceive my understanding in the secret of the Christ'? It is +generally supposed that he is referring to the verses in the first +chapter of this epistle (i. 9, 10, &c.), in which he speaks of the +'mystery' or 'secret' of the divine will now disclosed. But his point +appears to be rather that he had elsewhere written in brief about his +own special commission to preach the Gentile gospel; and the more +probable reference seems to be to the Epistle to the Colossians which +was written almost simultaneously with this epistle, probably just +previously, and was intended to be read at some at least, if not all, +of the same churches as this circular epistle, that is to say at +Laodicea and Colossae at least, and probabfxly more widely. In that +epistle (i. 25 ff.) he had really dwelt on his special commission in +almost the same terms as here, and comparison with what he said there +would indeed assist those he was now addressing to understand his +knowledge in the 'revealed secret of the Christ.' +</P> + +<P> +2. How can St. Paul, who insists continually that he is one of the +apostles, call them, without self-complacency, God's holy apostles? +The answer to this is that 'holiness' means 'consecration.' Any one is +'holy' or a 'saint' (the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P132"></A>132}</SPAN> +same word) who is consecrated to God in +any special way. Such consecration lays upon him an obligation to +moral goodness, which is what we mean by holiness, but it precedes the +fulfilment of the obligation. All Christians are holy (or 'saints') +because they are Christians, all apostles because they are apostles. +As for St. Paul's personal estimate of himself as an individual, we +have it just below. In view of his past sins, when he was 'kicking +against the pricks,' and, albeit in ignorance, persecuting the Church, +he calls himself 'less than the least of all the holy.' +</P> + +<P> +3. St. Paul conceives his function to be to 'make men see,' or 'bring +into the light' a long hidden secret of God now in part disclosed to +the apostles, and to be by them disclosed to the world—in part, for +its contents are still 'unsearchable' in their depth and in the +'manifoldness' of divine wisdom which they imply. But what is +disclosed is no afterthought of God. It is an eternal purpose; and it +is all of a piece with the original idea of creation: it is a 'secret +... hidden in God who created all things.' Redemption in fact +interprets to angels and men what God's purpose in creation originally +was. To minister to this disclosure is enough for any +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P133"></A>133}</SPAN> +man. It +makes all St. Paul's tribulations only such as it is worth while to +bear; and the Gentiles, in their turn, should find their glory in his +tribulations as an evidence of how much he thought it worth while to +suffer in what is their cause no less truly than his. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +St. Paul's second prayer +</SPAN> + +<P> +Here, as in the first chapter, the consideration of the glory, and +consequently the difficulty, of the gospel which St. Paul has to +deliver leads him off—just at the point where he seems to be resuming +the uncompleted sentence with which he began—into a prayer that the +Asiatic Christians may have strength given them to apprehend the wealth +of their spiritual position and opportunity. He invokes God as the +universal 'father (<I>pater</I>) from whom every family (<I>patria</I>)—every +company of men knit together by common relation to one father—is +named,' because this has direct reference to his purpose. All men +recognize family, or blood relations and obligations. St. Paul reminds +them that every conceivable society on earth or in heaven which is +bound by the ties of a common fatherhood, derives its 'name' and +therefore its significance from a larger relationship, an all-embracing +relationship of which these lower ones are but shadows—the +relationship to the one Father: +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P134"></A>134}</SPAN> +and he calls upon the one Father +to strengthen men to transcend all narrownesses of family or blood, and +rise to realize their position in the great family, the great +brotherhood under the one Father. To do this a strengthening of the +inner man, or inner life, by the divine Spirit is indeed needed. +Christ must be not only possessed by Christians, but realized. He must +dwell in their hearts by the realizing power of an active personal +faith. Where this is so—where faith is vigorous—there life must be +rooted and founded on love. Christian faith involves love. For it is +faith in a Father and His Son and His Spirit; and love, and nothing but +love, is the gift of the Father in the Son by the Spirit. This love +then will strengthen them, in the fellowship of the saints or +consecrated ones altogether, to apprehend God's work and purpose in all +its dimensions—breadth and length and depth and height—and to know +Christ's love (which yet passes knowledge and remains unknowable), and +to find their whole being, not as separate individuals, but as one body +praying and working and thinking together, expanded to take in the +fulness of what God is, the full complement of the divine life. To be +thus enlightened and enlarged is what St. Paul +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P135"></A>135}</SPAN> +understands by +being a 'good catholic': that is what he prays all these Asiatic +Christians may become. +</P> + +<P> +And his prayer passes into a doxology—an ascription of glory to God +because He is able to realize even what passes our power to conceive or +to ask for; and that without doing more for us than He has already +pledged Himself to do and actually begun to accomplish in us. And this +glory he would have eternally ascribed to God in the Church which lives +by His life; and also (where alone God can never fail of His full +rights) in Him in whom alone God's life is perfectly realized, and +worship perfectly rendered Him under conditions of manhood, in Jesus +the Christ. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family +in heaven and on 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 Christ may dwell in your hearts +through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, +may be strong to apprehend 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. +Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we +ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him <I>be</I> +the glory in the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P136"></A>136}</SPAN> +church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations +for ever and ever. Amen. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +St. Augustine, with his eye on the imperfections of the Church, +speaks[<A NAME="chap0105fn13text"></A><A HREF="#chap0105fn13">13</A>] of 'the glory of love ... alive but yet frost-bound. The +root is alive, but the branches are almost dry. There is a heart alive +within, and within are leaves and fruits; but they are waiting for a +summer.' That is surely what we feel. The world cries out for +brotherhood. We are perpetually explaining that brotherhood can only +become actual, in the long run, where men know themselves to be, and in +fact are, sons of God. We are continually pointing out that external +legislative social reforms can only effect good where there exists, to +respond to them and to use them, some strength and purity of inward +character: that outward reforms without moral redemption would effect +evil rather than good. All this is true and it is necessary to explain +it. But the convincing demonstration begins at that point where +Christianity makes man feel, and see in fact, that it contains in +itself the remedy for social evils, because it has the spirit of love: +where the Church is so actually presented as that men should feel and +know that this is a true human +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P137"></A>137}</SPAN> +brotherhood. It is the social, +human, brotherly power of the Church which is what is at the present +moment best calculated to win the consciences and convince the +intellects of men. But this actual living spirit of self-sacrificing +love—this spirit of real brotherhood—how 'frost-bound' it is! How +large the area of the Church, how many its institutions, where it is +not (to say the least) the most obvious thing represented! In fact, +social reform, and that the most thorough and the most permanent, +requires nothing more than that professing Christians should be better +Christians, Christians who really believe what St. Paul and St. John +say about the love of the brethren. Come then, O breath of the divine +Spirit, and breathe upon these bones of the Christian Church, that they +may live! +</P> + +<P> +And outside the area of nominal Christianity how 'frost-bound' our +evangelizing love. Surely the Church of England, as part of the +expansive British nation, has an apostleship to the nations comparable +to St. Paul's. Yet missionary zeal, as directed towards the natives of +India, or Japan, or Africa, is a very restricted thing; noticeably +restricted it must be confessed among those who most love the name of +Catholic: and almost non-existent in the great majority of those who +are +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P138"></A>138}</SPAN> +yet members of the national Church. But it cannot be too +deeply felt that to St. Paul the reconciliation of men with God is +inseparable from the reconciliation of man with man. The atonement +with God that is not an atonement among men he would not own. A peace +with God that leaves us content that Hindoos and Japanese and Africans +should not be of our religion is a false peace. A Christian who is not +really in heart and will a missionary is not a Christian at all. +Missionary effort is not a speciality of a few Christians, though, like +every other part of Christian life, it has its special organs. It is +an essential, never to be forgotten, part of all true Christian living, +and thinking, and praying. +</P> + +<P> +The missionary obligation of the Church depends, no doubt, chiefly on +the command of Christ, 'Go ye and make disciples of all the nations.' +But it is made intelligible when we realize that Christianity is really +a catholic religion, and that only in proportion as its catholicity +becomes a reality is its true power and richness exhibited. Each new +race which is introduced into the Church not only itself receives the +blessings of our religion, but reacts upon it to bring out new and +unsuspected aspects and +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P139"></A>139}</SPAN> +beauties of its truth and influence. It +has been so when Greeks, and Latins, and Teutons, and Kelts, and Slavs +have each in turn been brought into the growing circle of believers. +How impoverished was the exhibition of Christianity which the Jewish +Christians were capable of giving by themselves! How much of the +treasures of wisdom and power which lie hid in Christ awaited the Greek +intellect, and the Roman spirit of government, and the Teutonic +individuality, and the temper and character of the Kelt and the Slav, +before they could leap into light! And can we doubt that now again not +only would Indians, and Japanese, and Africans, and Chinamen be the +better for Christianity, but that Christianity would be unspeakably +also the richer for their adhesion—for the gifts which the subtlety of +India, and the grace of Japan, and the silent patience of China are +capable of bringing into the city of God. +</P> + +<P> +Come, then, O breath of the divine Spirit, and breathe upon the dead +bones of the Christian churches that forget that they are evangelists +of the nations, that they may live and stand upon their feet, an +exceeding great army, an army with banners. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn1text">1</A>] Acts xxii. 17-21. 'While I prayed in the temple, I fell into a +trance, and saw him saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly +out of Jerusalem.... Depart: for I will send thee forth far hence unto +the Gentiles.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn2text">2</A>] Gal. i. 15. 'It was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, +<I>even</I> from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to +reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn3text">3</A>] Col. i. 24-29; iv. 3, 4. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn4text">4</A>] Col. iii. 11. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn5text">5</A>] 1 John ii. 7, 8. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn6text">6</A>] Phil. 16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn7"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn7text">7</A>] Eph. iv. 1-3. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn8"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn8text">8</A>] Acts xxii. 21; xxvi. 17, 18. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn9"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn9text">9</A>] Thus the limitation of the term 'brotherhood' to Christians is +implied in 1 Pet. ii. 17, 'Honour all men. Love the brotherhood;' and +in 2 Pet. i. 7, 'In your love of the brethren supply love' (i.e. in the +narrower and closer circle of believers, learn the wider and all +embracing attitude towards men as men); and in 1 Cor. v. 11, 'Any man +that is named a brother.' The word brother is throughout the New +Testament used of <I>Christians</I> only, except where, in the Acts, it is +used by Jews of Jews. Our Lord's language about brotherhood applies to +the circle of the disciples, except Matt. xxv. 40, 'One of these my +brethren,' i.e. the wretched. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn10"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn10text">10</A>] Acts xvii. 28. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn11"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn11text">11</A>] Acts xvii. 26. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn12"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn12text">12</A>] Dr. Hort thinks 'read' is a technical word for reading the +Scriptures, and that this reading of the Old Testament Scriptures is to +enable them to appreciate St. Paul's 'understanding in the secret of +the Christ.' But I doubt if so technical a use of 'read' can be made +out. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0105fn13"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0105fn13text">13</A>] <I>In Epist. Joan, ad Parth.</I> v. 10. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0106"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P140"></A>140}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION I. § 6. CHAPTER IV. 1-16. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>The unity of the church.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Connexion of thought</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +This Epistle to the Ephesians, viewed as a whole and from the point of +view of a sympathetic intelligence, has a remarkable unity, and a unity +progressively developed. Thus, first of all, the apostle opened the +imagination of his hearers or readers to consider the place which the +catholic church holds in the divine counsels for the universe, in the +realization of the human ideal, and in the work of redemption from sin +(chap. i and ii). Then he proceeded to justify and explain his own +activity in the cause of catholicity, and made them feel at once the +glory and the profound difficulty of the ideal of unity in diversity +which it involves (chap. iii). It follows naturally and logically that +he should set the Church before them as an actually existing +organization, and bid them study it exactly and note the grounds of its +unity and the common end to which its different elements or members +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P141"></A>141}</SPAN> +are meant to minister; and this is what he actually does in the +fourth chapter (1-16). Viewed, however, as a matter of grammatical +structure, it is probable that this passage forms another +digression—the real necessity of the argument acting as an +overmastering motive which pulls contrary to the immediate grammatical +purpose of the writer. Thus he had begun, at the beginning of chapter +iii, to pass from the doctrinal exposition which is involved in his +opening chapters to practical exhortation. The Asiatic members of the +catholic church are to be exhorted to live up to their calling: to turn +their backs deliberately on their old heathen habits, and to conform +themselves entirely to the principles of their new state. To this +exhortation he actually and finally attains at chapter iv. 17. The +intervening passage (a chapter and a half) is occupied, first, with the +digression which we have just considered at length, about St. Paul's +mission to the Gentiles and the difficulty of its realization, and with +the great prayer which that topic suggests (chap. iii); secondly, with +another digression on the character of the unity of the Church. This +is, I say, probably the case grammatically. For 'I, Paul, the prisoner +of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles' (iii. 1) is almost +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P142"></A>142}</SPAN> +unmistakably +intended to introduce a moral appeal to which his imprisonment for the +sake of those to whom he writes adds weight and force[<A NAME="chap0106fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn1">1</A>]. It is taken +up, after a digression, in iv. i, 'I, therefore, the prisoner of the +Lord, beseech you to walk worthily'; but the appeal there begun yields +anew to the necessity of further exposition, and only reaches its free +expression in iv. 17, 'This therefore I say and testify in the Lord'; +after which point we have moral exhortation and little else. +</P> + +<P> +Now, therefore, we are to occupy ourselves with what is grammatically a +second digression, but logically and really a most necessary step in +the exposition of St. Paul's thoughts—the subject of the unity of the +church catholic, its nature and obligations. Conscious of the profound +difficulty of welding naturally antagonistic elements, such as Jews and +Gentiles, slaves and free men, into one catholic fellowship, St. Paul +appeals to the Asiatic churches with all the force which he can command +as a prisoner on their account, to 'walk' as their catholic calling +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P143"></A>143}</SPAN> +involves; that is, to exhibit all those moral qualities which are +necessary to maintain peace under difficult circumstance—a modest +estimate of oneself (humility or 'lowliness'), a mildness in mutual +relations ('meekness'), an habitual refusal to pass quick judgements on +what one cannot but condemn or dislike ('longsuffering'), a deliberate +forbearance one of another based on love. They are to accept one +another as brethren, with the rights of brethren. And the reason why +they should exhibit these qualities is not far to seek: they actually +share one common supernatural life—the imparted life of the +Spirit—and they are, therefore, to make it their deliberate object to +preserve this actual spiritual unity in its appropriate outward +expression, that is in harmonious fellowship,—'giving diligence to +keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.' +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The unity of the church</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +But at this point the idea of the unity of the Church is felt to need +fuller exposition. In what sense are Christians one? They are one as +<I>one body</I> or organization, made up no doubt of a multitude of +differing individual members, but all bound into one, under Christ for +their head, by the fact that the <I>one Spirit</I>, which is Christ's +supreme gift, is imparted to the whole +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P144"></A>144}</SPAN> +organization and every +member of it: and this common corporate life, where the elements are so +different, is made possible by the <I>one hope</I> reaching forward into an +eternal world, which was set before them all when they received their +call into the body of Christ. This should be enough to annihilate +lower and shorter-lived differences. 'There is one body[<A NAME="chap0106fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn2">2</A>] and one +spirit even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.' It follows +from this that there is another threefold unity. For the existence of +the common head involves a common <I>allegiance to Him as Lord</I>, an +allegiance which is justified by what He is <I>believed to be</I> by all +Christians; an allegiance, further, which is more than an outward +fealty, being cemented by an actual incorporation into His life which +takes place through the speaking symbol of the <I>laver of +regeneration</I>[<A NAME="chap0106fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn3">3</A>]. 'One Lord, one faith, one baptism.' But once more. +This common union with and under Christ in the Spirit, is not anything +less than union with <I>the one and only God and Father</I>, who is <I>over +all</I> as the one head (even 'the head of Christ is God'), <I>through all</I> +as the pervading presence, <I>in all</I> as the active +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P145"></A>145}</SPAN> +life, 'one God +and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all things.' +Thus their unity is the deepest and most ultimate conceivable: it has a +width and range from which no one can be excluded: while it has a +closeness and cogency like the unity of blood. +</P> + +<P> +To realize what this unity is and may be, involves on our part a +continual looking out of ourselves, out of all individual, social and +national differences, up to the common source of all the gifts of all +Christians. Whatever each one possesses is simply the gift of the +divine bounty or grace, given to him by a definite act of bestowal, +varying merely in kind and degree according to the sovereign will of +Christ the Lord, the only giver; and it is therefore to be used in His +service and for His ends. The Psalmist had sung of the divine king of +Israel mounting as an earthly conqueror unto his sanctuary throne in +Zion after making captives and receiving gifts from among his enemies +without exception. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +'Thou hast gone up into the heights,<BR> +Thou hast led captives captive;<BR> +Thou hast received gifts among men, yea from the rebellious also[<A NAME="chap0106fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn4">4</A>].'<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +It stands to reason that to St. Paul's mind this +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P146"></A>146}</SPAN> +conception is +realized nowhere but in Christ. Its application to Christ is in fact +assumed—'therefore,' i.e. with a view to Christ, 'he' or rather 'it,' +the Scripture 'saith'—and the passage is given free interpretation, +and, more than this, free modification, on the basis of this +assumption. For (1) the ascension of the conquering king is spoken of +as the result of a previous descent to the 'lower regions of this earth +of ours[<A NAME="chap0106fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn5">5</A>].' No man, as St. John says, hath ascended up to heaven but +He that came down from heaven. The person who 'beggared himself' to +come down to our earth and who subsequently mounted into the divine +glory is one and the same person, Christ the incarnate Son; and He thus +descended and re-ascended in order that He might, through the atonement +wrought by Him in the flesh and through the exaltation which rewarded +it, restore to the universe that unity of which sin and rebellion had +robbed it, and 'fill all things' once again with the divine bounty and +presence[<A NAME="chap0106fn6text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn6">6</A>]. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P147"></A>147}</SPAN> + +<P> +(2) The sense of the psalm is—possibly not without Jewish +precedent[<A NAME="chap0106fn7text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn7">7</A>]—altered in expression so that, instead of the conqueror +receiving gifts from men, his conquered enemies, we have him +represented as 'giving gifts to men.' This modification, whether +original in St. Paul or accepted by him, is no doubt due to the fact +that his mind is full of the idea of Christ as conquering only to +bless, receiving homage only to be enabled to bestow on them who offer +it the fulness of the divine bounty. And the 'captives' of Christ, to +St. Paul's mind, are no doubt not men, but the hosts of Satan reduced +to impotence. The exalted Christ, then, is the source of all gifts in +His Church, and He bestows on men various endowments in such a way as +to maintain among them a necessary relation. 'No member of the body of +Christ is endued with such perfection as to be able, without the +assistance of others, to supply his own necessities. A certain +proportion is allotted to each, and it is only by communicating with +others that all enjoy what is sufficient for maintaining their +respective places in the body[<A NAME="chap0106fn8text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn8">8</A>].' This is the principle of mutual +dependence, the fundamental principle of corporate life. Thus 'He gave +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P148"></A>148}</SPAN> +some as apostles, some prophets,' others in other varying +capacities to fulfil varying functions; the principle of the bestowal +being the same throughout. Each 'gifted' individual becomes himself a +gift to the Church. He is 'gifted' not for his own sake but for the +Church's sake—'with a view to the perfecting of the saints,' or 'the +complete equipment of the consecrated body,' for the manifold 'work of +ministry' entrusted to it; or to look at the matter from a rather +different point of view, 'for the purpose of completing the structure +of the body of Christ'—that living company of men in whom Christ +expresses Himself and through whom He acts upon the world. And that +structure is not complete till all together attain what is impossible +to any isolated Christian individual, the unity not only of a common +faith, but also of a common knowledge of what is revealed in the Son of +God; or, in other words, to the full-grown manhood; which, once again, +means that complete developement in which the fulness of the +Christ—all the complete array of His attributes and qualities—finds +harmonious exhibition over again in His people, His body. +</P> + +<P> +But the possibility of this completeness on the part of the Church as a +whole, depends on the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P149"></A>149}</SPAN> +stability of the individual members in the +common faith. Thus it is Christ's purpose that His members should +cease to be as children, stirred up like the waves of the sea, or +carried about like feathers, by every wind of false teaching. There +is, it must be remembered, a kingdom of deception, an organized attempt +to seduce souls, of which wicked men make themselves the instruments. +In view of this hostile kingdom of error, the Christians must abide in +the truth revealed to them in love, and so grow up into the completed +life of Christ. For He is the head, and in Him they are the body. And +the body is a unit of many parts fitted and held together in one life +by a supply from the head, which circulates through every joint, and +for the full and unimpeded communication of which each several limb +must do its proper work, so that the whole body may grow into completed +life in that mutual coherence which is Christian love. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +This prolonged paraphrase may serve to bring out the innumerable points +of interest in that rich passage in which St. Paul as it were gives the +reins to his imagination and his feelings in order to describe the +glory of the unity of the Church. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P150"></A>150}</SPAN> +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. +<I>There</I> 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. But unto +each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift +of Christ. Wherefore he saith, +</P> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive,<BR> +And gave gifts unto men.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +(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 <I>to be</I> apostles; and some, prophets; and some +evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the +saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body +of Christ: till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the +knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of +the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no longer +children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of +doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of +error; but speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, +which is the head, <I>even</I> Christ; from whom all the body fitly framed +and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according +to the working in <I>due</I> measure of each several part, maketh the +increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P151"></A>151}</SPAN> + +<P> +In this great conception of church unity there are several points to +which special attention must be given. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +i. +</H4> + +<P> +The Church is one, first of all, because a common inward life, the +Spirit, from a common source, Christ, flows in her veins and makes her +to be one body. What is this 'unity of Spirit?' says Chrysostom. 'As +in a body it is spirit which holds all together, and makes that to be a +unity which consists of different limbs, so it is in the Church. For +the Spirit was given for this purpose that He might unify those who +differ in race and variety of habits.' This inward life is no doubt, +as we shall see, imparted, maintained and perfected through outward +means or institutions—baptism, the eucharist, human offices and +ministries; but none the less it is the inward life which makes the +Church one. So that her unity is like the unity of a family or a race, +a unity of blood and life which exists in spite of all outward +differences: and not like such a unity as is produced by outward +government, as, for example, Armenians, Syrians, Kurds, and Turks make +up the unity of the Turkish empire, or Englishmen and Frenchmen the +Dominion of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P152"></A>152}</SPAN> +Canada. The unity of the Christian Church is thus a +unity which ought to express itself in 'the bond of peace,' but which +does not consist in that, any more than the unity of a family consists +in the affection and sympathy which yet brothers ought to have one to +another. This Pauline idea of church unity—which is the idea also of +the New Testament as a whole—constantly finds expression in early +Christian writings, but one particular expression of it may be cited. +Hilary of Poitiers, in argument with the Arians, is confronted with the +position that the phrase 'I and my Father are one' means only one in +will, not one in nature, like the phrase used of the Church, 'one heart +and soul.' He refutes the argument by urging that, in the latter case +also, what is referred to is not a unity of wills but of nature: +believers are 'one thing through a new birth into the same (new) +nature.' 'Ye are all one,' says St. Paul, 'in Christ Jesus.' 'The +apostle teaches that this unity of the faithful comes from the nature +of the sacraments.... What then can concord of minds have to do with a +case where men are already made one by being clothed with one Christ +through the nature of one baptism?[<A NAME="chap0106fn9text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn9">9</A>]' This passage gives +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P153"></A>153}</SPAN> +a +striking view of what ultimately constitutes church unity. +</P> + +<P> +It is necessary to call attention to this position because the great +Roman church, which occupies so large a space in the whole area of the +church, and impresses its ideas so powerfully upon men's imagination, +has perverted this idea of church unity by a one-sided emphasis on +unity of government. I find a typical modern Roman statement in Dr. +Hunter's <I>Outlines of Dogmatic Theology</I>[<A NAME="chap0106fn10text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn10">10</A>]: 'The Church has a +principle of oneness which joins the members together, and +distinguishes the society from a mere aggregate of unconnected units. +The members are associated in order that, believing the revelation that +God has given, and using the means of grace which He has provided, +under the direction of the governors who have their authority from Him, +they may attain the end of their being, the salvation of their souls. +In other words, the unity which the Church must have includes the unity +of faith, unity of worship, and unity of government.' Here we have +church unity described as an outward association of individuals to +attain a certain end by submitting to a common authority in matters of +belief and worship. The +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P154"></A>154}</SPAN> +unity of spiritual life which St. Paul +and St. Hilary put distinctly first, becomes secondary or subordinate. +It is not even specified among the three chief elements of unity. But +it makes the greatest possible difference whether you say 'the Church +is one because all baptized persons share a common life in Christ, and +ought therefore to behave as "one body,"' or 'the Church is one by +submitting to a common authority in belief, worship, and government.' +The second is the Roman, the first is the apostolic statement. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +ii. +</H4> + +<P> +Once more, St. Paul's idea of the unity of the Church forbids us to +conceive of it as complete in this world. Each particular church with +its own organization has a certain relative completeness, but it gains +all its meaning and life through fellowship in the body of Christ—the +whole society of men who, having Christ for their head, live in the +unity of a life derived from Him. The head of the body is out of +sight. So also are the members of the body who 'are fallen asleep' but +are still 'in Jesus[<A NAME="chap0106fn11text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn11">11</A>].' It is, so to speak—and increasingly as +history goes +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P155"></A>155}</SPAN> +on—only the lower limbs of the body who are on the +earth at any particular moment. And they find their centre of unity at +no lower point than Christ, the unseen head. This idea is vigorously +expressed by St. Augustine[<A NAME="chap0106fn12text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn12">12</A>]: 'Since the whole Church is made up of +the head and the body, the head is our Saviour Himself, who suffered +under Pontius Pilate, who now, after He has risen from the dead, sits +at the right hand of God; but the body is the Church—not this church +or that, but the Church scattered over all the world; nor is it that +only which exists among men now living; but they also belong to it who +were before us and are to be after us to the end of the world. For the +whole Church, made up of all the faithful, because all the faithful are +members of Christ, has its head situate in the heavens which governs +this body: though it is separated from their sight, yet it is bound to +them by love." +</P> + +<P> +Now it is obvious that this Pauline and Augustinian idea of church +unity excludes, instead of suggesting, the Roman method of arguing for +the papacy from the necessity that a body must have a head. An +association of men in this world, such as the Church on earth +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P156"></A>156}</SPAN> +is—a 'body of men' in this sense—may be governed in any of the +various ways in which human societies are governed, not by any means +necessarily by a monarch[<A NAME="chap0106fn13text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn13">13</A>]. In this sense a body need not have a +single head; or it can be ruled by a president in a council of equals. +But in St. Paul's sense, the Church as a body must have a head, and +that head can be none other than Christ, because, according to his +spiritual physiology, from its head the Church receives its continually +inflowing life; and because the body is not completely, but only +partially, in this world, and the head must be over all the members, +and not only over some. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +iii. +</H4> + +<P> +But if the unity of the Church, as St. Paul expounds it, is before all +else a unity of life, it is as well a unity in the truth. It is a +unity based on belief in a divine revelation, given in the person of +Christ—based on the common confession that Jesus crucified and risen +is Christ and Lord[<A NAME="chap0106fn14text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn14">14</A>]. To say that 'Jesus is the Lord' +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P157"></A>157}</SPAN> +involves +further—what is implied in this passage of the Epistle to the +Ephesians—the confession of the threefold name—the 'one God and +Father,' the 'one Lord' Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the 'one Spirit' +which is His gift; and there can be no real question that St. Paul's +language constantly involves that the Son and Spirit are with the +Father really personal, and really divine, included, so to speak, in +the one only eternal Godhead. A creed then is at the basis of the +Christian life—a creed which finds its best expression and safeguard +in the formulated doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. There +is no reason to think that St. Paul, if the situation of the later +Church could have been made plain to him, would have shrunk from these +dogmatic safeguards of the Church's central faith. +</P> + +<P> +But if we grant—what cannot really with any show of reason be +denied—that the Church is a visible organization based on a certain +revealed truth, which must be accepted by its members, and which admits +of being formulated in order to be preserved; still this truth may be +advanced and defended mainly by one of two methods—that of external +regulative authority, or that of appeal to principles, discussion, +controversy, +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P158"></A>158}</SPAN> +exhortation. And it can hardly be denied that St. +Paul prefers the latter. Sharp appeals to authority are indeed to be +found in St. Paul[<A NAME="chap0106fn15text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn15">15</A>], but they are very rare. For example, in none of +his epistles against the Judaizers is the authority of the apostolic +decision, as to what might and what might not be required of the +Gentile Christians 'in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia[<A NAME="chap0106fn16text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn16">16</A>],' brought into +requisition; though that decision 'settled the question.' He prefers +to prove that 'circumcision is nothing.' This may be in part accounted +for by St. Paul's refusal to admit that his own apostolic authority +needed the support of the twelve, and by the limited area to which the +decision was addressed; but there is another reason as well. For he +plainly, as all his epistles show, prefers to appeal not to authority +at all but to the spiritual reason; to expound principles, to argue, to +awaken the heart, conscience, and mind of Christians. It must be +admitted that there is very little in St. Paul's epistles about +differences of doctrinal views among Christians as distinct from +differences in practices. Yet there is enough—as in the vigorous +passage about the 'regarding of one +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P159"></A>159}</SPAN> +day above another[<A NAME="chap0106fn17text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn17">17</A>]'—to +justify the belief that he would not have viewed with any disapproval +the existence in the Church of tolerated differences of opinion where +they did not touch the basis of the Church's life. Such differences of +view are hardly separable from what St. Paul glories in—a unity which +is consistent with great variety of gifts and character, and great +freedom. It is unity in variety which he has as his ideal, such a +unity as is always characteristic of a unity of life, like that of +nature or of a free people; or a unity, again, like that of a great +Gothic Church, or of the Bible. +</P> + +<P> +It is quite certain that St. Paul would have deprecated that 'short and +easy' method of promoting unity which has constant recourse to the +external pressure of dogma and authority. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +iv. +</H4> + +<P> +It follows naturally from what has been just said, that St. Paul should +look not so much to ecclesiastical enactments as to a right Christian +temper for preserving outward unity. 'Making it your moral effort,' so +we may paraphrase his exhortation to the Asiatic Christians, 'by means +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P160"></A>160}</SPAN> +of the virtues which I have just specified of humility, meekness, +long-suffering, and forbearance, to maintain the unity of the Spirit in +the bond of Christian peace.' The New Testament view of heresy (a +self-willed separatism), or schism, is that it is a violation of +charity and peace in the interests of pride and impatience and +self-will. It is men like 'Diotrephes who loveth to have the +pre-eminence,' who violate it. In fact it is written in history that +the ecclesiastical schisms of the past have been due mainly either to +the impatience and wilfulness of would-be reformers, from Tertullian +downwards, or to the arrogance and love of domination in rival +individuals or rival sees. +</P> + +<P> +'Nothing,' says Chrysostom on this passage, 'will have power to divide +the Church so much as the love of authority, and nothing provokes God +so much as that the Church should be divided. We may have done ten +thousand good actions, but if we rend the fulness of the Church, we +shall suffer punishment with those who rent His body.' +</P> + +<P> +From this point of view we may find an interesting parallel to this +exhortation of St. Paul in a passage of Plato's <I>Laws</I>, which is, I +believe, one of the few passages in pre-Christian writings where the +virtue of humility is recognized. +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P161"></A>161}</SPAN> +'God, as the old tradition +declares, holding in His hand the beginning, middle, and end of all +that is, moves according to His nature in a straight line towards the +accomplishment of His end. Justice always follows Him, and is the +punisher of those who fall short of the divine law. To that law he who +would be happy holds fast, and follows it in all humility and order; +but he who is lifted up with pride, or money, or honour, or beauty, who +has a soul hot with folly and guilt and insolence, and thinks that he +has no need of a guide and ruler, but is able himself to be the guide +of others, he, I say, is left deserted of God; and being thus deserted, +he takes to him others who are like himself, and dances about in wild +confusion; and many think that he is a great man, but in a short time +he pays a penalty which justice cannot but approve, and is utterly +destroyed, and his family and city with him.' +</P> + +<P> +From the point of view of the moral duty of preserving ecclesiastical +unity, it is quite clear that the guilt of Christians has been +exceedingly great, and also that it has been very widely diffused. The +amount of ambition, insolence, and impatience in the Church has, in +fact, been so vast that it remains no longer a matter +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P162"></A>162}</SPAN> +for +astonishment that it should have made the havoc that it has made in the +divine household, and should have thwarted, as it has thwarted, the +divine intention. But the recognition of this fact lays on us the duty +of meditating continually on the divine intention, and by all that lies +in our power, by prayer and by every other means, to restore the +recognition of the divine principle of unity whether in the narrower or +the wider circle of church life. +</P> + +<P> +It is not too much to say that the now popular principle of the free +voluntary association of Christians in societies organized to suit +varying phases of taste, is destructive of the moral discipline +intended for us. It was the obligation to belong to one body which was +intended as the restraint on the prejudices and eccentricities of race, +classes and individuals. If Greeks, Italians, and Englishmen are to be +content to belong to different churches; if among ourselves we are to +have one church for the well-to-do, and another for 'labour'; if any +individual who is offended in one church is to be free to go off to +another where he or she likes the minister better—where does the need +come in for the forbearance and long-suffering and humility on which +St. Paul +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P163"></A>163}</SPAN> +insists as the necessary virtues of the one body? We, +Christians but not in one brotherhood, may not be able to agree at +present among ourselves as to the proper basis of ecclesiastical unity, +but we ought to be able to agree that, somehow or other, Christians are +intended by Christ and by the apostle to be one body, and that the +wilful violation of outward unity is truly a refusal of the yoke of +Christ. +</P> + +<P> +And a great step would have been taken towards rendering the recovery +of ecclesiastical unity more easy if those who recognize the obligation +of the principle could be brought to perceive that true Catholicism +really requires a large measure of toleration and a deliberate +reasonableness. At present it is not too much to say that the idea of +the obligation of ecclesiastical unity is widely associated with an +emphasis on ecclesiastical and dogmatic authority such as is utterly +alien to the mind of the apostle of Catholicism. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +v. +</H4> + +<P> +In what has been said above we have been attending chiefly to the +restraints which St. Paul's idea of church unity appears to set upon +what are commonly known as 'ecclesiastical tendencies.' +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P164"></A>164}</SPAN> +Now it is +time to emphasize the other side of the representation. For without a +strongly engrained prejudice, there is not, it seems to the present +writer, any possibility of doubting that St. Paul meant by 'the Church' +in general, a society visible and organized, represented by a number of +visible and organized local societies or churches[<A NAME="chap0106fn18text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn18">18</A>]. The Church is +in fact ideal in its spiritual character, but not one bit the less an +association of human beings, a society with quite definite limits, +ties, and obligations. For, to begin with, the 'one baptism' which +conveyed the spiritual gift of incorporation into Christ was also the +initiation into an actual brotherhood, with its rules of conduct, +worship, and belief: 'we were all baptized into one body[<A NAME="chap0106fn19text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn19">19</A>].' The +'one Spirit' was normally bestowed by the 'laying on of' apostolic +'hands'—that is, the hands of the chief governors of the Christian +corporation. This rite followed upon and completed baptism, and its +administration had +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P165"></A>165}</SPAN> +been one of St. Paul's first ministerial acts +after he began his preaching at Ephesus[<A NAME="chap0106fn20text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn20">20</A>]. Again, 'the breaking of +the bread' or eucharist, according to St. Paul's teaching, both +nourished the life of Christ in the Church, as being the communion of +His body and blood, and also, in the 'one loaf,' symbolized its outward +corporate unity[<A NAME="chap0106fn21text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn21">21</A>]. +</P> + +<P> +Thus the bestowal of gifts of grace through outward rites, which +belonged to the corporate life of a society, insured that a Christian +should be no isolated and independent individual. More than this, the +necessary dependence of each individual Christian upon the one +organized society is made further evident by the existence of +spiritually endowed officers of the society who were as 'the more +honourable limbs of the body'—'some apostles, some prophets, some +evangelists, some pastors and teachers'—without whom the body would +have lacked its divinely-given equipment for ministry and edification. +These were not merely more or less gifted or (as we say) talented +individuals who undertook particular sorts of work on their own +initiative, or by the invitation of any group of Christian individuals. +We find that the apostles at least were a definite +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P166"></A>166}</SPAN> +body of men +who had received special commission from Christ Himself to govern His +Church[<A NAME="chap0106fn22text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn22">22</A>]. The Christian 'prophets' were men of special supernatural +endowment, to know and declare God's will, and foretell His purposes. +They ranked after the apostles in virtue of their prophetic gift[<A NAME="chap0106fn23text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn23">23</A>]. +But even they were to be restrained by the exigencies of church order. +'The spirits of the prophets are subject unto the prophets; for God is +not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the +saints.' Next to the prophets, St. Paul specifies the 'evangelists.' +They were no doubt, as their name implies, officers engaged with the +apostles in the general work of spreading the gospel, that is of +founding and organizing churches. Timothy, who is exhorted to 'do the +work of an evangelist[<A NAME="chap0106fn24text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn24">24</A>],' would probably have ranked amongst them; +and if so, Titus and other similar companions and delegates of +apostles. At any rate, by whatever name they were called, such men +belonged to +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P167"></A>167}</SPAN> +the specially 'gifted' class, if we may judge by the +case of Timothy. But he, though marked out by prophecy, received his +'gift,' as a church officer, with the laying on of the hands of a whole +presbytery, while the hands of the apostle himself were the divine +instruments for imparting the gift to him[<A NAME="chap0106fn25text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn25">25</A>]. The 'pastors and +teachers'—one class of men and not two—are, we may say certainly, +identical with the presbyters or 'bishops' as they were called by St. +Paul at Ephesus; and these again were men of spiritual endowment, but +also local church officers who had received a definite apostolic +appointment[<A NAME="chap0106fn26text"></A><A HREF="#chap0106fn26">26</A>], and there is no reason to doubt by laying on of hands. +Thus the Church, as St. Paul conceives it, is a body differentiated by +varieties of spiritual endowments imparted to definite officers, for +the fulfilment of functions necessary to the life and development of +the whole body. Thus the outward unity of the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P168"></A>168}</SPAN> +society at any +particular moment, and the necessary connexion of each individual +Christian with it, is secured both by the existence of social +sacraments or means of grace, and by the existence of a ministry +spiritually endowed and commissioned, to whom individual Christians +owed allegiance, and who ranked as the more honourable limbs of that +body to which they must belong if they would belong to Christ. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +vi. +</H4> + +<P> +St. Paul is not here thinking of the unity of the Church otherwise than +at a particular moment. But if one turns one's attention to its +continuous unity down the ages, again it must be recognized that one +main link of unity has been in fact the apostolic succession of the +ministry; that is the permanence in the Church of a spiritually-endowed +'stewardship of divine mysteries' received continually by the original +method of the laying on of hands in succession from apostolic men. The +necessity for each individual Christian to remain in relation to these +commissioned stewards if he wishes to continue to be of the divine +household, has kept men together in one body. And any one who looks at +St. Paul's method of imparting spiritual authority +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P169"></A>169}</SPAN> +and office to +Timothy and Titus, and directing them in their turn to hand it on by +ordaining others, can scarcely doubt that he contemplated the +institution in the Church of a permanent ministry deriving its +authority from above. +</P> + +<P> +How, in fact, did the later church ministry connect itself with that +which we find existing in the apostolic age? The apostolic ministry +divides itself broadly into the general and the local. There are +'ministers' or 'stewards' who are officers of the church catholic and +have a general commission. Such general commission belonged, of +course, to the apostles, though mutual delimitations were arranged +among themselves and though St. James, who ranked with the apostles, +was settled at Jerusalem. It belonged also, more or less, to +'evangelists' and other 'apostolic men,' who, however, might be +temporarily located in particular churches and districts, like Timothy +in Ephesus, and Titus in Crete. It belonged also to the prophets, who +would have been recognized as men inspired of God in all the churches, +and who in the subapostolic age are found in some districts exercising +functions like those of the apostles in the first age. The local +officers, on the other hand, were the presbyters, who are called also +bishops, and the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P170"></A>170}</SPAN> +deacons. With this earliest state of things in +our mind, we shall perceive that where an apostle or apostolic man was +permanently resident in one particular church, a threefold ministry, +like that of later church history already existed. So it was at +Jerusalem where the presbyters and deacons were presided over by St. +James. So it was in Crete under Titus, and in Ephesus under Timothy. +So it was a few decades later in all the churches of Asia as organized +by St. John. In other parts of the world the exact method by which the +ministry developed is a matter of much dispute. But it seems to the +present writer most probable that everywhere the threefold ministry +came into existence by (1) a change of arrangement, and (2) a change of +name. (1) The change of arrangement was the establishment in each +local church of a prophet, or one, like Timothy or Titus, who had been +ordained to quasi-apostolic office by an apostle or man of apostolic +rank; such a change taking place first at the greatest centres, and +then in lesser cities. (2) The change of name was the appropriation to +this now localized ruler of the title of bishop or 'overseer' which had +hitherto appertained more or less to the presbyters generally. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P171"></A>171}</SPAN> + +<P> +But in any case it is certain that the developement of the ministry +occurred on the principle of the apostolic succession. Those who were +to be ministers were the elect of the church in which they were to +minister: but they were authoritatively ordained to their office from +above, and by succession from the apostolic men. And such a principle +of ministerial authority appears to be not only historical, but also +most rational. For a continuous corporate unity was to be maintained +in a society which, as being catholic, must lack all such natural links +of connexion as are afforded by a common language or common race. And +how could such continuous corporate unity have been so well secured as +by a succession of persons whose function should be to maintain a +tradition, and whose ministerial authority should make them necessary +centres of the unity? +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn1text">1</A>] And not as Dr. Robertson (Smith's <I>Dict. of Bible</I>, ed. ii. vol. i. +pt. ii. p. 951) suggests, to introduce a prayer to God, which is +resumed in iii. 14. The 'For this cause' which is repeated in iii. 14 +is not nearly so significant as 'the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you +Gentiles,' which is taken up again in iv. 1. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn2text">2</A>] I have interpreted this word in the light of what is said in verse +16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn3text">3</A>] Tit. iii. 5. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn4text">4</A>] Ps. lxviii. 18 (Delitzsch). +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn5text">5</A>] I do not think St. Paul need refer to the descent into Hades. 'The +lower parts of the earth,' Is. xliv. 23, may also refer not to Hades +(see Delitzsch <I>in loco</I>) but to 'the earth beneath.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn6text">6</A>] The 'filling all things' is, in the epistles to the Ephesians and +Colossians, the characteristic action of the exalted Christ and the +result of the reconciliation and atonement won. Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 24-28, +'That God may be all in all.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn7"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn7text">7</A>] See Delitzsch's and Perowne's notes. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn8"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn8text">8</A>] Calvin, <I>in loc.</I> +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn9"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn9text">9</A>] Hil. <I>de Trin.</I> viii. 7-9. The last sentence is condensed. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn10"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn10text">10</A>] Vol. i. p. 317 (Longmans, 1895). +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn11"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn11text">11</A>] 1 Thess. iv. 14. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn12"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn12text">12</A>] <I>In Ps.</I> lvi. i. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn13"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn13text">13</A>] It is one very noticeable feature of the recent Encyclical of Leo +XIII on the Unity of the Church ('satis cognitum') that it assumes that +'only a despotic monarch can secure to any society unity and strength.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn14"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn14text">14</A>] Romans x. 9. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn15"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn15text">15</A>] For example, see Gal. i. 6-9. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn16"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn16text">16</A>] Acts xv. 23-29. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn17"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn17text">17</A>] Romans xiv. 56; cf. Phil. iii. 15-16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn18"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn18text">18</A>] Cf. Hort, <I>Ecclesia</I>, p. 169, who brings out that <I>all</I> members of +the local churches, better and worse, are regarded as members of the +universal Church. 'There is no evidence that St. Paul regarded +membership of the universal Church as invisible and exclusively +spiritual, and shared by only a limited number of the members of the +external Ecclesiae.' See also app. note E, p. 267. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn19"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn19text">19</A>] 1 Cor. xii. 13. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn20"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn20text">20</A>] Acts xix. 1-7. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn21"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn21text">21</A>] 1 Cor. x. 16, 17. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn22"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn22text">22</A>] See <A HREF="#notee">app. note E</A>, p. 269. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn23"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn23text">23</A>] In ii. 20 and iii. 5, 'Apostles and prophets' are spoken of +together almost as one class included under one definite article. And +of course the apostle Paul remained also, what he is first called, a +prophet (Acts xiii. i). Apostles were also prophets; but not all +prophets were apostles. They can be, therefore, grouped apart as they +are here (iv. 11). +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn24"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn24text">24</A>] 2 Tim. iv. 5. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn25"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn25text">25</A>] 1 Tim. iv. 14; 2 Tim. i. 6. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0106fn26"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0106fn26text">26</A>] Acts xiv. 23. This is interpreted by the phrase (Acts xx. 28) +'The Holy Ghost made you bishops.' Cf. Titus i. 5, 'I left thee ... to +appoint elders in every city.... For the bishop must be blameless.' I +assume here the <I>practical</I> identity of bishops and presbyters, as Acts +xx. 28, Tit. i. 5-7, Acts xiv. 23 (with Phil. i. 1) seem to require. +But 'the presbyters' or the 'presbyterate' was the more general name +for the governing body of a church, and an apostle can therefore call +himself a presbyter or include himself in the presbyterate (1 Peter v. +1; 1 Tim. iv. 14), whereas he would hardly call himself a 'bishop.' +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P172"></A>172}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION II. CHAPTERS IV. 17-VI. 24. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>Doctrine and conduct.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Doctrine and conduct</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +Here the apostle, with a final 'therefore,' resuming the 'therefore' of +IV. i, passes without further delay to the entirely practical portion +of the epistle. +</P> + +<P> +These 'therefores' are characteristic of St. Paul. They indicate his +deep sense of the vital and necessary connexion between the Christian +mode of living and the doctrines of Christian belief. Christian belief +is a mould fashioning human conduct by a constant and uniform pressure +into a characteristic type, or a set of forces urging it along certain +lines of movement. Thus when some point of Christian belief has been +expounded there follows a 'therefore' indicating the inevitable moral +consequence of such belief where it is intelligently and voluntarily +held. Of course the consequence does not follow of mechanical +necessity. The doctrine acts by an appeal to the will. 'I beseech you +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P173"></A>173}</SPAN> +therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God'—so St. Paul makes +his appeal to the Romans, when he had given them his great exposition +of the doctrines of grace and justification[<A NAME="chap02fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap02fn1">1</A>]. When he has expounded +the doctrine of the resurrection to the Corinthians[<A NAME="chap02fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap02fn2">2</A>], he +concludes—'<I>Therefore</I>, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast,' &c. The +doctrine of the Epistle to the Colossians leads to two conclusions: +'mortify <I>therefore</I>' and 'put on <I>therefore</I>, as God's elect, holy and +beloved, a heart of compassion[<A NAME="chap02fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap02fn3">3</A>].' The Epistle to the Hebrews +contains similar moral appeals based on dogmatic statements. +'<I>Therefore</I> let us give the more earnest heed.' 'Having <I>therefore</I>, +brethren, boldness by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near with a true +heart.' '<I>Therefore</I> let us lay aside every weight[<A NAME="chap02fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap02fn4">4</A>].' These +'therefores,' I say, indicate a fundamental characteristic of +Christianity: it is a manner of living based upon a disclosure of +divine truth about God and His will, about man's nature and his sin, +about God's redemptive action and its methods and intentions. +</P> + +<P> +Among ourselves to-day we hear frequently enough disparaging reference +to theological +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P174"></A>174}</SPAN> +doctrine whether as a subject for study or for +definite instruction. Theological dogmas are alluded to as things +remote from the ordinary concerns of men and associated with the +jarring interests of different religious bodies or of their clergy, +with 'denominationalism' or 'sacerdotalism[<A NAME="chap02fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap02fn5">5</A>].' This idea has been due +in great measure no doubt to faults in theologians and priests. But it +is none the less absurd, when it is seriously considered. If those +whose lives have given the most shining examples of practical +Christianity in all ages were cross-questioned, it would be found that +the overwhelming majority would, in all simplicity, attribute what was +good in their life to their definite beliefs. Indeed, it is self +evident that it must have a practically vast effect on a man's conduct +whether, for instance, he really believes that his own and other men's +lives, after some seventy years of probation in this world, pass under +divine judgement, only to enter into new and eternal conditions where +they will inevitably reap the fruits of their previous careers. +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P175"></A>175}</SPAN> +It must make a vital difference whether he believes that the world is +the expression of blind force or of the will of a living, loving, God; +whether or no he believes that God personally cares for each +individual: whether or no he believes that God's interest in the world +was such as to move Him to redeem it, by the sacrifice of Himself, from +the tyranny of sin: whether he believes in divine forgiveness and God's +indwelling by His Spirit: whether he believes in a divine brotherhood +and divine means of grace in a household of God in the world. In fact, +if the practical ethics of India and China, or the Turkish Empire and +Morocco, are considered side by side with those of Christian Europe, it +is impossible to resist the conviction that men's behaviour depends in +the long run on what they believe about God. +</P> + +<P> +This obvious conclusion is, in part, veiled from our eyes by two facts. +One is that logic works slowly in human life. Take a transverse +section of humanity at any particular moment, and it appears a mass of +inconsistencies. It might almost suggest that there is no connexion at +all between belief and practice. But the same appearance is not +presented by human life in its long reaches. There you see how, in the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P176"></A>176}</SPAN> +slow result, an alteration of belief involves an alteration of +practice. Thus to take an example: at present our social conscience +about the obligations of marriage, or about personal purity, or about +suicide, unsatisfactory as it may appear to be to an earnest Christian, +is still saturated with Christian sentiment which is the result of a +prolonged impression left by Christian doctrine. If the doctrine were +to pass out of the minds of Englishmen in general, after a generation +or two there would be a weakening or destruction of the corresponding +sentiment, and an abolition of what is at present an obstacle to the +reign of sensual or selfish desires. But it takes some generations for +the effect of any weakening of belief to make itself felt. +</P> + +<P> +There is another fact which veils from the eyes of people in general +the real connexion between morals and doctrine. It is that it is +largely mediate or indirect. The moral standard of the 'average man' +is, unconsciously, kept up by the morals of the best men and women. +For social opinion is with the majority the force which mainly +influences their practice, and social opinion depends largely on +leaders. 'It is when the best men cease trying that the world sinks +back like lead.' Let anything +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P177"></A>177}</SPAN> +happen which should silence the +moral effort of the best individuals, and disaster would be imminent. +But this is exactly what would be the result if the best men and women +were to cease to be Christian believers. It is the highest level of +our common life that would be depressed. The result all round would be +indirect, but it would be widespread and disastrous. +</P> + +<P> +I do not mean, or think, that this weakening of religious belief in the +best men and women is occurring. I only instance its morally certain +results to make apparent how the general bearing of religious beliefs +on social practice is, in one way, veiled by its indirectness. +</P> + +<P> +But to St. Paul all this is self-evident. He sees quite clearly that +Christianity is to be a new life, a new social and ethical +manifestation in the world, because Christians believe that God has +made plain to them in Jesus Christ His character, nature, and +redemptive purposes, and has given, by His Spirit, a practical power to +their wills to correspond with the truth revealed to their +intelligences and hearts. +</P> + +<P> +So he proceeds from his exposition of the great doctrines of the Church +of the Redemption to its practical moral consequences. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap02fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap02fn1text">1</A>] Rom. xii. 1. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap02fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap02fn2text">2</A>] 1 Cor. xv. 58. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap02fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap02fn3text">3</A>] Col. iii. 5, 12. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap02fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap02fn4text">4</A>] Heb. ii. 1; x. 19; xii. 1. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap02fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap02fn5text">5</A>] An interesting expression of this sort of feeling is to be found in +George Crabbe's poem, <I>The Library</I>. On the whole we must have +improved since his day in our perception of the connexion of Christian +doctrine with Christian practice. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0201"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P178"></A>178}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION II. § 1. CHAPTER IV. 17-24. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>Christianity a new life.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>New life in Christ</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +The characteristic words of St. Paul's gospel—grace, forgiveness, +mercy, liberty, justification by faith not by works—may naturally, +when taken by themselves and isolated from their context, lead to a +false thought of God as morally 'easy going,' and to a corrupt laxity +of conduct. Such a result has shown itself within the area of modern +history in the antinomianism of some Protestant bodies. But long +before the Reformation St. Paul's words were 'wrested by the ignorant +and unstedfast to their own destruction[<A NAME="chap0201fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0201fn1">1</A>].' It was probably a +misunderstanding of St. Paul's doctrine of justification by faith which +called forth the protest of St. James' epistle. And indeed the traces +of this tendency to pervert the gospel are apparent enough in +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P179"></A>179}</SPAN> +St. +Paul's own epistles. Divine grace, it was even argued, can better show +its largeness if we afford it an opportunity by the abundance of our +sin. 'Let us continue in sin that grace may abound.' To this +monstrous suggestion St. Paul replies, in his epistle to the Romans[<A NAME="chap0201fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0201fn2">2</A>], +that it rests on a complete misconception. Christian faith is an +introduction into Christ. Believing we are baptized into Him. This +means that we are to live as He lived towards the world of sin and +towards God. It means that we surrender ourselves in a spirit of glad +obedience to be moulded after His pattern. If our believing does not +lead to this new living, beyond all question it is a spurious thing, +and none of the Christian privileges attach to it. With a similar +purpose St. Paul writes here to the Asiatics—newly-made Christians, +who lived in the midst of an appallingly corrupt society, and whose +inherited traditions of conduct were altogether lacking in +self-restraint—to warn them against possible abuses of their Christian +privileges and Christian liberty. +</P> + +<P> +To be a Christian is to be committed to a new life different utterly +from the old life. +</P> + +<P> +What was the old life? In writing to the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P180"></A>180}</SPAN> +Romans St. Paul +describes the life of the contemporary heathen world as having its +origin in a refusal of the will to acknowledge God. 'They glorified +Him not as God.' 'They refused to have God in their knowledge.' Hence +a darkening of the understanding. 'They became vain in their +reasonings; their senseless hearts were darkened; professing themselves +to be wise they became fools.' This explains the origin and +possibility of so foolish a worship as that of men and beasts. +Further, with the obscuring of the intelligence there was a perversion +and emancipation of the passions, resulting in all forms of lawlessness +and unnatural vice. A similar description of the 'old life' St. Paul +gives here. The root of evil here also appears to be in the 'heart' +(or will)—'the hardening of the heart'; hence arises 'vanity of the +mind,' an aimlessness or loss of all true and fixed point of view, a +'darkening of the understanding,' an inherent 'ignorance'; and +accompanying this loss of real intelligence has been a loss of what is +the true goal of human life, fellowship in 'the life of God.' Instead +of that a life of uncleanness has prevailed, made into a regular +business[<A NAME="chap0201fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0201fn3">3</A>], and pursued with 'greediness,' i.e. an entire disregard +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P181"></A>181}</SPAN> +for others' rights—such a life as is only possible where all +true human feeling and good taste has been quenched. Men have become +'past feeling.' +</P> + +<P> +As regards the relation of this black picture to the actual facts, +enough has perhaps been said above. At least St. Paul's picture is +given as a direct challenge to the experience of those to whom he +writes; and it is not blacker, at any rate, than the picture given by a +philosophic contemporary at Ephesus, who calls himself Heracleitus. +And on the black background of this 'former manner of life,' this 'old +man' or old manhood—a life ruled by lusts which are not only morally +evil but deceive and mock those who yield to them, leading, in fact, to +nothing but corruption and death, a 'waxing corrupt after the lusts of +deceit'—St. Paul sketches in the new life in Christ. To become a +believer is to submit one's intelligence to learn a new lesson, to +study Christ; it is to yield one's self to a 'form of teaching[<A NAME="chap0201fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap0201fn4">4</A>]' in +order to have one's life refashioned in marked contrast to old and +abandoned ways of life; it is to imbibe a new principle in the heart of +one's rational being, 'to be renewed in the spirit of one's mind'; it +is to put on deliberately, as a man puts on clothing, +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P182"></A>182}</SPAN> +a new +manhood, Christ's manhood, which is 'according to God[<A NAME="chap0201fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap0201fn5">5</A>],' that is, is +based on His own life, and is His 'new creation' in righteousness and +holiness. And this righteousness and holiness can never deceive us by +false promises, because they are rooted in 'truth' or reality. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +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. But ye did not so learn 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 truth. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +There is one phrase in this passage which may need some further +comment—'The life of God.' Into God's own eternal life, as He lives +it in Himself, we are given but glimpses. But God is also living in +the world as its inherent life, and each form of creation participates +in its measure, even if unconsciously, in the life +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P183"></A>183}</SPAN> +of God. +Consciously and intelligently man was intended to participate in it, +but he 'alienated' himself from it by sin; and, while he was physically +sustained in life by God, morally and mentally he was an exile. But +Christ embodies the divine life anew in human form, and by His Spirit +imparts it as a new life to men. Once more in Christ men live both 'in +God' and 'according to God.' +</P> + +<P> +This thought of our relation to the life of God is, in part, expressed +in the Latin original of the Collect for the ninth Sunday after +Trinity, in which we pray 'that we who cannot exist without Thee, may +be enabled to live according to Thee.' +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0201fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0201fn1text">1</A>] 2 Pet. iii. 16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0201fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0201fn2text">2</A>] Rom. vi. 1 ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0201fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0201fn3text">3</A>] 'To work all uncleanness.' Marg. 'to make a trade of.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0201fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0201fn4text">4</A>] Rom. vi. 17. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0201fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0201fn5text">5</A>] Eph. iv. 24, R. V. Marg. 'the new man which is after God, created,' +&c. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0202"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P184"></A>184}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION II. § 2. CHAPTER IV. 25-32. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>The new life a corporate life.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Corporate duties</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +The first characteristic of the new life dwelt upon is its corporate +character, as a life lived by those who are 'members one of another,' +and have therefore a common aim. In a body of people working with a +common aim there may be a healthy rivalry and competition in doing good +work, a manifold spirit of initiation and inventiveness, and there may +be rewards of labour, proportioned not merely to needs but to these +personal excellences. But what there cannot be is a competition which +runs to the point of mutual destructiveness, or such accumulation of +the fruits of skill and labour in a few hands as maims or starves the +life of the majority. The common interest prevents this. 'The members +must have the same care one of another,' so that 'when one member +suffers all the members suffer with it[<A NAME="chap0202fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0202fn1">1</A>].' The life is the life +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P185"></A>185}</SPAN> +of a body, and the general well-being is therefore the common interest +of all the members, for the weakening or decay of one is the weakening +and decay of a more or less valuable part of a connected life. This is +the general principle on which the Church is based. This is the moral +meaning of churchmanship. 'Ye are members one of another.' +</P> + +<P> +Various specific obligations follow from this general principle. +</P> + +<P> +(a) <I>Truthfulness and openness</I>; for falsehood and concealment belong +to a life of separated and conflicting interests. The prophetic ideal +for the restored Israel is to be realized among Christians. 'Speak ye +every man truth with his neighbour: execute the judgement of truth and +peace in your gates: and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts +against his neighbour: and love no false oath[<A NAME="chap0202fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0202fn2">2</A>].' +</P> + +<P> +(b) <I>Self-restraint in temper</I>. We must not injure one another in life +and limb, or wound one another in feelings. Therefore we must watch +the first beginnings of anger, as the Psalmist[<A NAME="chap0202fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0202fn3">3</A>] warns us, lest they +lead to sin and give +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P186"></A>186}</SPAN> +the devil, i.e. the slanderer of his +brethren, the inspirer of all mutual recriminations, room and scope to +work in. +</P> + +<P> +(c) <I>Labour for the purpose of mutual beneficence</I>. Under the old +covenant God had contented Himself with forbidding stealing. Under the +new covenant the prohibition of what is wrong passes into the +injunction of what is right. Labour of whatever kind, labour directed +to produce something good, is required of all. 'If any man will not +work, neither let him eat[<A NAME="chap0202fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap0202fn4">4</A>].' The idle man in fact violates the +fundamental conditions of the Christian covenant as truly as if he were +denying the rudiments of the Christian faith. Now the object of +labouring is to acquire 'property,' which is in one sense 'private,' +and in another sense is not. The labourer may have, under his own free +administration, the fruits of his labour, but he is to administer his +property with the motive, not only of supporting himself, but of +helping his weaker and more needy brethren. +</P> + +<P> +(d) <I>Profitable speech</I>. Here again the Christian is not to be content +with avoiding noxious conversation. His talk is to be, not indeed +'edifying' in the narrowest sense, but such as +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P187"></A>187}</SPAN> +'builds up what is +lacking' in life, or supplies a need, whether by counselling, or +informing, or refreshing, or cheering; so that it may 'give grace[<A NAME="chap0202fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap0202fn5">5</A>],' +that is, afford pleasure and, in the widest sense, bring a blessing to +the hearers. +</P> + +<P> +In all their conduct Christians are to have two masterful thoughts. +(1) They are to think of the divine purpose of the Holy Ghost who has +entered into the Church to 'seal' or mark it as an elect body destined +for full redemption from all evil, in body and soul, at the climax of +God's dealings, the last day. The Holy Ghost, with all His personal +love, will be grieved if we thwart His rich purpose for the whole body +by anything which is contrary to brotherhood in the thoughts of our +hearts, or the words of our lips, or our outward conduct. +</P> + +<P> +(2) They are to remember the divine pattern of life. God has shown His +own heart to us in the free forgiveness which He has given us in +Christ. Being in constant receipt of that forgiveness, we must not +prove ourselves hard and unforgiving towards one another. +</P> + +<BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P188"></A>188}</SPAN> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +Wherefore, putting 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 wrath: 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 corrupt 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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Here, then, St. Paul sketches catholicity in practice. The very idea +of the Church is that of a fellowship of naturally unlike individuals, +harmonized into unity by the new 'truth and grace' of God, which has +been made theirs in their regenerate life. It is this endowment of the +regenerate life that is to enable them to transcend, and overstep, and +defeat natural incompatibilities of temper, and to be one body in +Christ. The practical meaning of catholicity is brotherhood. It is +love, as St. Augustine says, grown as wide as the world[<A NAME="chap0202fn6text"></A><A HREF="#chap0202fn6">6</A>]. +</P> + +<P> +Why has the world lost this sense of the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P189"></A>189}</SPAN> +moral meaning of +catholic churchmanship? Why has 'ecclesiastical' come to mean +something quite different to 'brotherly'? Or it is a more profitable +question to ask, How shall we make it mean the same thing again? There +are many who would give up the very effort after recovering the church +principle, the obligation of the 'one body.' But this, as has been +said, is to abandon the ultimate catholic principle of Christianity. +For the very purpose of the one church for all the men of faith in +Jesus, is that the necessity for belonging to one body—a necessity +grounded on divine appointment—shall force together into a unity men +of all sorts and different kinds; and the forces of the new life which +they share in common are to overcome their natural repugnance and +antipathies, and to make the forbearance and love and mutual +helpfulness which corporate life requires, if not easy, at least +possible for them. +</P> + +<P> +This is the principle which must not be abandoned. We must assert the +theological principle of the Church because it is that and that alone +which can impress on men practically the obligation and possibility of +a catholic brotherhood. +</P> + +<P> +But it is folly to assert the theological truth of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P190"></A>190}</SPAN> +churchmanship, +and neglect its moral meaning. Quite recently the bishops of the +Lambeth Conference have striven to impress anew the ethics of +churchmanship upon the conscience of the faithful[<A NAME="chap0202fn7text"></A><A HREF="#chap0202fn7">7</A>]. The principle of +brotherhood must act as a constant counterpoise to the instinct of +competition. The principle of labour shows that the idle and selfish +are 'out of place' in a Christian community. The principle of justice +forces us to recognize that the true interest of each member of the +body politic must be consulted. The principle of public responsibility +reminds us that each one is his brother's keeper. Once more the Church +has been aroused to its prophetic task of 'binding' and 'loosing' the +consciences of men in regard specially to those matters which concern +the corporate life and the relations of classes to one another. And we +pray God that the work of our bishops may not be in vain. What we want +is not more Christians, but, much rather, better Christians—that is to +say, Christians who have more perception of what the moral effort +required for membership in the catholic brotherhood really is. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P191"></A>191}</SPAN> + +<P> +No doubt the needed social reformation is of vast difficulty. For +instance, one who contemplates our commercial relations in the world +may indeed be tempted to despair of the possibility of recovering the +practical application to 'business' of the law of truthfulness; and +many a one who is practically engaged in commerce, in higher or lower +station, finds that to act upon the law may involve something like +martyrdom. But the very meaning of divine faith is that we do, in +spite of all discouragements, hold that to be practicable which is the +will of God; and it is nothing new in the history of Christianity if at +a crisis we need 'the blood of martyrs'—or something morally +equivalent to their blood—for 'a seed,' the seed of a fresh growth of +Christian corporate life. No fresh start worth making is possible +without personal sacrifices; and to recover anything resembling St. +Paul's ethical standard for Christian society we need indeed a fresh +start. But the few Tractarians of sixty years ago by industry, +patience and prayer effected a kind of revolution in the Church as a +whole; and reformers of Christian social relations may with the same +weapons—and with no other—do the like. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0202fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0202fn1text">1</A>] 1 Cor. xii. 25, 26. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0202fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0202fn2text">2</A>] Zech. viii. 16, 17. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0202fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0202fn3text">3</A>] Ps. iv. 4, according to the LXX. But the English version 'Stand in +awe and sin not' is probably correct. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0202fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0202fn4text">4</A>] 2 Thess. iii. 10. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0202fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0202fn5text">5</A>] Cf. Col. iv. 6: 'Let your speech be always with grace' or +'graciousness'; Luke iv. 22: 'gracious words'; Ps. xlv. 2: 'Grace is +poured into thy lips'; Eccles. x. 12: 'The words of a wise man's mouth +are gracious'; Ecclus. xxi. 16: 'Grace shall be found in the lips of +the wise.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0202fn6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0202fn6text">6</A>] See <A HREF="#notef">app. note F</A>, p. 271, <I>The Ethics of Catholicism</I>. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0202fn7"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0202fn7text">7</A>] See <I>Report of Lambeth Conference</I>, 1897. S.P.C.K., pp. 136 ff.; +and <A HREF="#noteg">app. note G</A>, p. 274. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0203"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P192"></A>192}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION II. § 3. CHAPTER V. 1-14. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>The Christian life an imitation of God and <BR>a life in the light.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The imitation of God</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +St. Paul has just suggested the thought of imitating God by ready +forgiveness. And in fact here—in the imitation of God—is one of the +greatest of the new ideas and motives which Christianity supplies. God +has manifested Himself in Christ under human conditions. He has +translated the unimaginable Godhead into terms of our own well-known +human nature. For Christ is very man, yet He is the Son of God, truly +God, and His character is God's character. For the Christian +henceforth in a quite new sense God is imitable: He can become a +pattern for actual human life. As children partly consciously and +partly unconsciously imitate their parents, so we Christians as +'beloved children' are to 'become imitators of God.' +</P> + +<P> +And it is quite plain what the character of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P193"></A>193}</SPAN> +God as manifested in +Christ is. It is love; and to imitate God is therefore to 'walk in +love,' that is, to conduct one's life with love as its conscious motive +and atmosphere. Moreover, the love of Christ is a love which shows +itself in self-sacrifice. 'He offered himself as an offering and +sacrifice to God on our behalf; and God, who had of old made it plain +by His prophets that He could find no satisfaction in animal victims, +accepted 'as a sweet savour' this free-will offering of +self-sacrificing love. In the self-sacrifice of Christ, therefore, we +have the clear disclosure both of what God is and of what God will +accept from man. +</P> + +<P> +But this ideal of life as lying in love and in the deliberate +self-sacrifice of one for another is the plain negation of some maxims +for life generally accepted in heathen society. It is the plain +negation of sensual self-indulgence at the expense of others, or at the +expense of our spiritual nature, of 'fornication and uncleanness of all +kinds,' of filthy conduct, of the sort of jesting or wit which ignores +all moral restraints. It is the plain negation again of selfish greed +or the unlimited desire to get—'covetousness.' These things are out +of the question for a body of saints, that is, men dedicated to a holy +God. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P194"></A>194}</SPAN> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Life in the light</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +The tone and language which befits such a dedicated life is the tone +and language of thanksgiving. But clearly Asiatic Christians were only +too ready to forget the essential incompatibility of their new +profession with the old sinful habits around them. So St. Paul +emphasizes 'This ye know for certain that fornication or unclean living +on the one hand, or the turning of gain into a god on the other, surely +excludes a man from the kingdom of Christ and God[<A NAME="chap0203fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0203fn1">1</A>].' And he +reiterates 'let no man deceive you with empty words.' Such vices, +being in plain contradiction to the divine will, make men subjects of +the divine wrath, and for you this should be startlingly plain. You +have been brought out of the realm of darkness of which once you formed +a part, into the realm of light, of which you now form a part, the +realm whose light is Christ. There is no fellowship between the light +and the darkness[<A NAME="chap0203fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0203fn2">2</A>]. To live in the light means to bring forth fruit +of goodness and righteousness and truth, the fruit of a character like +Christ's. For you have in Christ a definite standard by which you can +test what is well pleasing to the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P195"></A>195}</SPAN> +Lord. It is your business, +therefore, to keep yourselves altogether separate from the works of +darkness which bear no fruit. Not only so, but it is your business to +'reprove' or convict the dark world of sin; not, of course, by making +the works of darkness the subjects of your curiosity and +conversation—that indeed must not be—but simply by the contrast which +your own lives present. In the light of your lives the secret shame of +the heathen life will be unmasked. And in being unmasked even the +works of darkness will themselves become part of the light. To make +such ways of living attractive they must be cloaked up in a deceitful +glamour. Once stripped bare and shown in their true character they +teach their true lesson. Thus, the one duty of a man is to awake from +the old sleep of death; to separate himself from the morally dead world +and stand clear in the light of Christ. And that is what the early +Christian hymn, which St. Paul cites, was continually impressing upon +the Christian conscience. We may attempt to reproduce it in something +like its original rhythm thus:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +'Be awakened, thou that sleepest;<BR> +Rise alive from out the dead world;<BR> +Christ, the Light, shall shine upon thee.'<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P196"></A>196}</SPAN> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in +love, even as 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, or 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. 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 <I>he</I> saith, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the +dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Three points may be noticed in this characteristic exhortation:— +</P> + +<P> +1. The strife of light and darkness. The victory of the rising sun +and its surrender at evening to the darkness; the obscuring of the +light through eclipse or mist and its recovery—these +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P197"></A>197}</SPAN> +universal +appearances present themselves naturally to human consciences +everywhere as being experiences analogous to the moral strife within +between good and evil. Light is thus the universal symbol of good, and +darkness of evil. The symbolism passes out of early native myths into +the spiritual phraseology of many religions; but especially into those +of the Persians and the Jews. 'In thy light shall we see light' is the +cry of the devout heart towards God. And the whole of Christian +language is possessed by the symbolism. Christ is 'the light of the +world': His disciples are 'the children of light,' they are to be +clothed in 'the armour of light,' bathed in 'the light of the glorious +Gospel': they are the children of the God who 'dwelleth in the light +which no man can approach unto': who 'is light and in whom is no +darkness at all.' +</P> + +<P> +St. Paul, like St. John, specially loves the metaphor of light. And it +is somewhat startling to notice how different is his conception of +enlightenment from that common in modern times, or indeed, from that +held in the schools of philosophy of his own day or by the Gnostics +just after him. This latter class of men, who can be taken as typical +of many others at very +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P198"></A>198}</SPAN> +different epochs, meant by 'the +enlightened' a select few who had a special capacity for intellectual +abstraction and contemplation, and who by such qualities of the +intellect were believed to attain to a knowledge of God which was +beyond the reach of the ordinary men of faith. But St. Paul, following +his Master, is quite certain that the root of true enlightenment lies +in the will and heart. The love of the light is first of all simply +the pure desire for goodness; and anything that is not this first of +all is a counterfeit and a sham. And the true enlightenment is thus +not the privilege of a few, but is open to all who will come to Christ. +'Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this +world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing +that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it +was God's good pleasure, through the foolishness of the preaching, to +save them that believe.' 'If any man thinketh that he is wise among +you in this world, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For +the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God[<A NAME="chap0203fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0203fn3">3</A>].' This language +sounds violent; but I doubt if many thinking men could now be found +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P199"></A>199}</SPAN> +to doubt that the way opened by the 'foolishness of the gospel +preaching' was a way of light for the world compared to which the way +of the contemporary philosophers was darkness and delusion. The +arrogant wisdom of the contemporary 'Heracleitus' would have provided +no real light at all for the Ephesians whom he denounced. A fresh +start was wanted for man, and the fresh start was primarily in the life +of the conscience and heart. On the other hand neither St. Paul, nor +any of the New Testament writers, can be accused of the sort of +obscurantism to which the later Church has often fallen a victim. One +cannot even conceive St. Paul denouncing free inquiry, or cloaking up +from free investigation the title-deeds of Christianity. His love of +the light—even with all the dangers that the light has—like his love +of freedom, is frank and real. +</P> + +<P> +If we come down to our own time, there is no doubt a great deal of +contemporary 'enlightenment' that St. Paul would have pronounced +spurious. He would never surely have disparaged intellectual inquiry +or free scientific research: but he would have continually emphasized +that no one was really enlightened whose will and heart was not right +with God. +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P200"></A>200}</SPAN> +To have a scientific knowledge of facts is by +comparison superficial; and worse than superficial is the sharpness and +worldly cleverness which continually boasts of being 'wide awake' and +'up to date.' It is possible to be awake and enlightened in the +speculative and practical intelligence: to be awake and enlightened in +the region of the senses: and yet to be asleep and in the dark in the +region of the will and conscience towards God. And there lies the true +heart of manhood. It is possible even to be enlightened about evil and +in the dark as regards goodness. But St. Paul hates curiosity about +the ways and methods of sin. 'I would,' he says, 'have you wise unto +that which is good, and simple unto that which is evil[<A NAME="chap0203fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap0203fn4">4</A>].' Take heed +that the light that is in thee be not darkness. This curiosity about +sin is a delusion which has sometimes a strange hold on some who would +serve God. But they must recognize that the only Christian method of +'convicting the world of sin' is by 'convicting it of righteousness.' +Innocence has a power which sometimes is strangely underrated. +</P> + +<P> +We may pause for a moment longer to dwell on the beauty of St. Paul's +ideal of Christianity +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P201"></A>201}</SPAN> +as a life in the light. It has everything +to gain and nothing to lose by disclosure. It has no need to cloak +itself. It can be frank with itself and the world. And, on the other +hand, sin is a great fraud and delusion as well as a great +disobedience. It dwells in a region of lies and excuses and +concealments; it hides from itself and from the world its true +character and true issues. For, in fact, it is not only in itself foul +and rebellious, but it is in its issues fruitless. It leads to +nothing: it produces nothing: it tends only to decay or corruption of +mind and body, while goodness is only another term for life and +fruitfulness. Life, and the production of life, is the good, and it +belongs to the light; on the contrary, what hinders or destroys life +goes against God and belongs to the darkness. This is a judgement +which mis-called disciples of Malthus in our day would do well to +remember. It is not from too much life that the world is suffering, +but from corrupt and perverted life. What we want to secure is not a +limit to the population, but the bringing up of children in health and +simple living, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. +</P> + +<P> +2. St. Paul, in some passages of his epistles, uses very strongly +'universalist' phrases. He +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P202"></A>202}</SPAN> +has spoken to the Ephesians of +bringing all things in heaven and earth again into a divine unity in +Christ. And to the Corinthians he spoke of a time when God should be +'all things in all.' It is, therefore, all the more noticeable that +when he comes to speak of the destiny of evil men he does not offer +them any hope if they persist in their evil, but warns them that moral +evil utterly and wholly excludes from the kingdom of God: and he +appears to be not at all anxious to reconcile this warning as to the +eternal consequences of wilful evil with what he has said in other +connexions as to the final inclusion of all things in a great unity. +His example would teach us to aim at being true to the whole truth +rather than at attaining a premature completeness or consistency of +knowledge about a world in regard to which we only 'know in part.' +'Yea, the more part of God's works are hid[<A NAME="chap0203fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap0203fn5">5</A>].' +</P> + +<P> +3. We cannot fail to notice how constantly St. Paul associates lawless +lust with lawless grasping at money or the goods of other +men—greediness or avarice. This has led some to suppose that the +Greek word for greediness is really intended to mean lust in its +grasping +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P203"></A>203}</SPAN> +character. But this is a mistake. The words are +associated partly, no doubt, because lust so often involves an +'overreaching and wronging our brothers[<A NAME="chap0203fn6text"></A><A HREF="#chap0203fn6">6</A>]' of their just rights; but +much more because the lawless grasping after gain and the lawless +grasping after pleasure are the two great perversions of the human +soul. Pleasure and mammon are the two typical idols. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0203fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0203fn1text">1</A>] Possibly this expression means 'the kingdom of Him who is at once +Christ and God.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0203fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0203fn2text">2</A>] 2 Cor. vi. 14. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0203fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0203fn3text">3</A>] 1 Cor. i. 20, 21; iii. 18. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0203fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0203fn4text">4</A>] Rom. xvi. 19. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0203fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0203fn5text">5</A>] Ecclus. xvi. 21. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0203fn6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0203fn6text">6</A>] 1 Thess. iv. 6. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0204"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P204"></A>204}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION II. § 4. CHAPTER V. 15-21. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>The Christian life a zealous and deliberate seizing<BR> +of the opportunity afforded by surrounding moral evils.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Buying up the opportunity</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +The Christian stands awake and in the light. He has a vantage-ground +of spiritual knowledge, and the opportunity afforded by this +vantage-ground he is to use. He is not to live at random but is to +fashion his life with deliberate circumspection and prudence in order +to make the best of the spiritual opportunity, just as the merchant +cleverly seizes and uses to his own advantage a particular commercial +situation. What gives the Christian his spiritual opportunity is the +corruption which surrounds him. Of that corruption St. Paul has +already said enough. The result of it was to leave whatever was good +in man disconsolate and ill at ease. The exhibition of the Christian +light amidst such surroundings could not but arrest men's attention and +attract +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P205"></A>205}</SPAN> +their hearts. And if we want to be informed, in greater +detail, how to buy up the opportunity, St. Paul's answer is threefold. +</P> + +<P> +First, there must be a positive apprehension of the divine will in +particular cases such as qualifies for decisive action. 'Be not +foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.' This is the +sort of wisdom which enables a man to do what our Lord expects of +spiritual leaders, to 'discern the time.' It is a rare quality but, +according to the measure of the gift of Christ to each, it is attained +by spiritual thoughtfulness, singlemindedness, and prayer. +</P> + +<P> +Secondly, there is to be a strong and sociable enthusiasm, expressing +itself in uninterrupted joy, and based upon deep draughts of the divine +Spirit. In St. Paul's day, as in our own, men would seek escape from +the dullness of life and its sense of isolation in the excitement and +fellowship which comes of intoxicating drink. Other forms of mental +intoxication were provided at Ephesus by a sensual religious +enthusiasm. St. Paul would have the Christians confront such lawless +excitement not merely with the spectacle of discipline and +self-restraint, but also with a counter-enthusiasm, purer but not less +strong. Christians are to find an +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P206"></A>206}</SPAN> +excitement as strong as +drunkenness, and a fellowship as warm as is to be found in any band of +revellers, in deep draughts of the wine of the Holy Ghost. 'Be not +drunken with wine wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit, +speaking one to another in psalms[<A NAME="chap0204fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0204fn1">1</A>] and hymns and spiritual songs +(such as the one he has just quoted), singing and making melody with +your hearts to the Lord.' +</P> + +<P> +Lastly, there is to be a spirit of submission, mutual accommodation and +order. The disciples are to 'subject themselves one to another in the +fear of Christ.' They are, as St. Peter says[<A NAME="chap0204fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0204fn2">2</A>], to be girt each one +with the apron of service to minister to one another's needs, knowing +their responsibility to Christ, and how He looks for obedience and +service in all men. Enthusiasm is apt to be lawless, but the +enthusiasm of the Christians is to be the enthusiasm of an organized +body. It was said of old of the men of Issachar, who gathered round +the standard of David[<A NAME="chap0204fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0204fn3">3</A>], that they had 'understanding of the times to +know what Israel ought +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P207"></A>207}</SPAN> +to do; the heads of them were two hundred, +and all their brethren were at their commandment.' A similar spirit of +practical religious understanding, with a similar readiness to obey +their leaders, is what St. Paul desires in the new Israel to do the +work of the true Son of David. +</P> + +<P> +A temper then of clear positive understanding as to what God wills to +be done in the immediate future, fired by an ardent and sociable +enthusiasm, and associated with a disinterested readiness to obey one +another in practical affairs—this is what St. Paul means by 'looking +carefully how we walk'; and it is worth while noticing that St. Paul's +conception of carefulness leads in a direction quite opposed to mere +timorous and negative prudence. Exhortations not to be rash, but to +'look before you leap,' are very commonly given by the wise. But it +does not seem to be generally remembered that, at least in the service +of God, most men err by excess not of rashness but of caution, and +'look' so long that they never 'leap.' Truly if rashness has slain its +thousands, irresolution has slain its ten thousands. The spirit St. +Paul would have us cultivate is not this cowardly mis-called wisdom, +but rather the spirit of the ideal soldier, of the 'happy warrior.' +Nothing, +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P208"></A>208}</SPAN> +in fact, could be more fascinating than the picture St. +Paul here draws of the Christian community. He has a vision of a pure +brotherly enthusiastic society, fulfilled with a divine life, and +attracting into its warm and comfortable fellowship the isolated, +weary, hopeless, and sin-stained from the cold dark world outside. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +St. Paul's exhortation to 'buy up the opportunity because the days are +evil' finds fresh application in every generation. For each generation +the 'days are evil,' and good men always feel them to be so. Not +necessarily that they are evil by comparison with other days, for the +'good old times' certainly never existed, and it is not often possible +to balance the evils of one age against those of another. It is enough +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P209"></A>209}</SPAN> +for us to understand 'the ills we have.' What they are in our +own generation is conspicuous enough. In part they are the normal +evils of selfishness, and sensuality, and pride, and weakness; of +divisions of races and classes, and personal uncharity. In part they +are special: I will not make any general attempt to characterize them +here. But it is probably true to say that, among other characteristics +which our generation exhibits, is a lack of great enthusiasms and +strong convictions and inspiring leaders. Literature, philosophy, and +politics are alike lacking in a clear moral impulse. 'Causes' are at a +discount. Men are disillusionized. It is a 'fin de siècle' by some +better title than a chronological mistake. It is this characteristic +of the moment that ought to give the Church its opportunity. At +present she largely fails to take it because she lacks concentration +within her own body. The true disciples, the faithful remnant, exist +in every place, but they are lost in the crowd. They need to be drawn +together if they are to make an impression. A vigorous faith, and the +confident hope for humanity which a vigorous faith begets, were never +better calculated than they are to-day to produce a right moral +impression on the world, owing to the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P210"></A>210}</SPAN> +mere absence of rival +enthusiasms. We can supply what is wanted if only everywhere we will +cultivate sincerity and enthusiasm rather than numbers, and aim at +forming strong centres of spiritual life, rather than a weak uniform +diffusion of it. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0204fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0204fn1text">1</A>] St. Paul is in part referring to the habit of responsive or +antiphonal chanting, which Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, reports as +characteristic of the Christians half a century later—'to sing +responsively (secum invicem) a hymn to Christ as a God.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0204fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0204fn2text">2</A>] 1 Pet. v. 5. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0204fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0204fn3text">3</A>] 1 Chron. xii. 32. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0205"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P211"></A>211}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION II. § 5. CHAPTERS V. 22-VI. 9. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>The relation of husbands and wives: parents and<BR> +children: masters and servants.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The law of subordination</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +St. Paul mentions submission as required, in a sense, from all +Christians towards all others—'submitting yourselves one to another.' +But it is plain that in any community, and most of all in a Christian +community where order is a divine principle, some will be specially +'under authority': and accordingly St. Paul applies his general maxim +to three classes in particular—wives towards their husbands, children +towards their parents, slaves towards their masters. But in making +these applications of the law of obedience, he enlarges his subject by +including the counter-balancing principle of the duty of +self-sacrificing love on the part of those in authority; so that he +treats not one side of the relation only but both. +</P> + +<BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P212"></A>212}</SPAN> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +A. HUSBANDS AND WIVES. (V. 22-33.) +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Husbands and wives</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +Wives are to be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. Just as +the divine fatherhood is the ground of all lower fatherhood, so the +authority of the one great Head is the ground in all lower headships, +and each in its place is to be accepted as the shadow of His. Thus the +husband's headship over his wife is the shadow of Christ's headship +over the church, and that explains of what sort the husband's authority +should be. For Christ's rule is a rule for the advantage of the ruled. +He rules the church as Himself its saviour or deliverer from bondage, +and the word 'saviour' is full of associations of self-sacrificing +love. So must it be with a Christian husband. But Christ is not +merely a head to the church. He too is a husband. This idea of God as +the husband of His people—an idea which expressed both His choice of +them, His love for them, and His jealous claim upon them—is familiar +in the Old Testament. 'Thy Maker is thy husband.' 'I am a husband +unto you, saith the Lord[<A NAME="chap0205fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn1">1</A>].' And it is probable, as Dr. Cheyne +suggests, 'that the so-called Song of Solomon was admitted into the +canon +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P213"></A>213}</SPAN> +on the ground that the bride of the poem symbolized the +chosen people[<A NAME="chap0205fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn2">2</A>].' But in a Christian sense the idea gains a fresh +meaning. 'We that are joined unto the Lord are of one spirit' with +Him[<A NAME="chap0205fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn3">3</A>]. We are the 'members of his body'; and, as drawing our life +from His manhood, we may be even said to be, like Eve from Adam, 'of +his flesh and of his bones[<A NAME="chap0205fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn4">4</A>].' Christ then is, in this richness of +meaning, the husband of the church. +</P> + +<P> +St. Paul seems further to describe this relation of Christ to the +church under the figure of three marriage customs. The husband first +acquires the object of his affection as his bride by a dowry: then by a +bath of purification the bride is prepared for the husband: finally she +is presented to him in bridal beauty. Accordingly Christ, because He +loved the church, first 'gave himself for her'; and we may interpret +this phrase in the light of another used by St. Paul in his speech to +the Ephesian elders, where the church is spoken of as 'purchased' or +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P214"></A>214}</SPAN> +'acquired[<A NAME="chap0205fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn5">5</A>]' by Christ's blood. Having thus acquired the Church +for His bride, He secondly 'cleansed her in the laver[<A NAME="chap0205fn6text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn6">6</A>] of water with +the word': and that, in order that He might 'sanctify her' and so +finally 'present the church to himself a glorious church, not having +spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and +without blemish.' +</P> + +<P> +This threefold statement has great theological interest which we will +consider shortly. Here we will simply let it stand, as St. Paul uses +it, to exhibit Christ as the ideal husband, the pattern for every +husband. Love for his bride; self-sacrifice in order to win her; and +the deliberate aiming at moral perfection for her through the bridal +union—that is the law for him. The wife, according to the original +divine principle, is to be part of the man's self—one flesh with him. +He must love her truly and care for her as his own flesh. This +'mystery,' or divine secret revealed, is great, St. Paul says; 'but in +saying this I am thinking of Christ and his church.' This seems to be +the exact force of verse 32. In other words—this divine disclosure of +the relation of God to man, as realized in the marriage of Christ and +His church, is indeed great and lofty. +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P215"></A>215}</SPAN> +But, St. Paul continues +in effect, great and lofty as it is, it is a practical pattern for us. +Do ye also, as Christ the church, severally love each one his own wife +even as himself, and let the wife see that she fear (i.e. reverence and +fear to displease) her husband, even as the church stands in holy awe +of Christ. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Wives, <I>be in subjection</I> unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. +For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of +the church, <I>being</I> himself the saviour of the body. But as the church +is subject to Christ, so <I>let</I> the wives also <I>be</I> to their husbands in +everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the +church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having +cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he might +present the church to himself a glorious <I>church</I>, not having spot or +wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without +blemish. Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their +own bodies. He that loveth his own wife loveth himself: for no man +ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as +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 <I>let</I> the +wife <I>see</I> that she fear her husband. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +There are several points here which need consideration. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P216"></A>216}</SPAN> + +<P> +1. There is a rich theology in St. Paul's brief description of the +relation of Christ to the church. First, there is Christ's love for +the church which involves a purpose of entire sanctification for her; +then there is sacrifice, the sacrifice of Himself, for her; then there +is the baptismal purification of the church to fit her for Christ, +which is in fact nothing else than the baptismal purification of all +the individual members of the Christian body; and this is also, as St. +Paul elsewhere teaches, the means to them of new life by union with +Himself. It is their cleansing bath because therein they are 'baptized +into Christ.' (Here, we notice, the analogy of the marriage custom +breaks down: what is in the marriage ceremonies only a washing +preparatory to union, is in the spiritual counterpart also the act of +union. Baptism is both the abandonment of the old and union with the +new.) Lastly, there is the final presentation by Christ of the church +to Himself in sinless, stainless perfection. +</P> + +<P> +We observe that Christ's sacrifice is regarded by St. Paul as +preparatory and relative. He bought the church by the sacrifice of +Himself to obtain unimpeded rights over her, because He loved her and +in order to make her morally +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P217"></A>217}</SPAN> +perfect. The atonement has its +value because it is the removal of the obstacles to Christ working His +positive moral work in her. +</P> + +<P> +We observe again that the sacrifice of Christ is spoken of as offered +for the church, not for the world. Christ does indeed 'will that all +men shall be saved': He did indeed 'take away,' or take up and expiate, +'the sin of the world' in its totality[<A NAME="chap0205fn7text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn7">7</A>]. But the divine method is +that men shall attain their salvation as 'members of Christ's body.' +Thus, if Christ's ultimate object in the divine sacrifice is the world: +His immediate object is the church through which He acts upon the world +and into which He calls every man. 'I pray,' He said, 'not for the +world, but for them whom thou hast given me.' 'He gave himself for us +that he might redeem us ... and purify unto himself a people for his +own possession[<A NAME="chap0205fn8text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn8">8</A>].' +</P> + +<P> +Once more we notice in this passage a significant hint as to St. Paul's +conception of baptism. There is no doubt of the spiritual efficacy +which he assigns to it. And we observe in germ a doctrine of 'matter' +and 'form' in connexion with the sacraments. Baptism is a 'washing of +water' accompanied by a 'word.' The word +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P218"></A>218}</SPAN> +or utterance which St. +Paul refers to may be the formula of baptism 'into the name of the +Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,' or the 'word of faith' of +which confession is made by the person to be baptized—the confession +that 'Jesus is the Lord[<A NAME="chap0205fn9text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn9">9</A>]'; but in either case the word gives the +rational interpretation to the act. It sets apart what would be +otherwise like any other act of washing, and stamps it for a spiritual +and holy purpose. 'Take away the word, and what is the water but mere +water? The word is superadded to the natural element and it becomes a +sacrament.' So says St. Augustine[<A NAME="chap0205fn10text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn10">10</A>], in the spirit of St. Paul. +This is what is meant by the later theological term 'form[<A NAME="chap0205fn11text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn11">11</A>],' the +'form' being that which differentiates or determines shapeless 'matter' +and makes it have a certain significance or gives it a certain +character. Thus the form of a sacrament is the word of divine +appointment which gives it spiritual significance; and the form and +matter together are essential to its validity. The matter of baptism +is the washing by water: the form is the defining phrase 'I +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P219"></A>219}</SPAN> +baptize (or wash) thee into the name of the Father and of the Son and +of the Holy Ghost.' +</P> + +<P> +Lastly, we notice that the spiritual union of Christ and His church, +though it is perfect in the divine intention from the first, is in fact +only consummated at the point where the church is freed from the +imperfection of sin and has become the stainless counterpart of Christ +Himself. The love of Christ—the removal of obstacles to His love by +atoning sacrifice—the act of spiritual purification—the gradual +sanctification—the consummated union in glory: these are the moments +of the divine process of redemption, viewed from the side of Christ, +which St. Paul specifies. +</P> + +<P> +2. We come back to St. Paul's conception of marriage to dissipate +misconceptions. It is indeed absurd to speak as if St. Paul were, in +this passage, mainly emphasizing the subjection of the woman, whether +this be done from the conservative side 'to keep women in their place': +or from the point of view of those who desire her emancipation, in +order to represent St. Paul, and so Christianity as a whole, as giving +to women a servile position. Over against the subjection of women, he +sets, and indeed gives more space to emphasize, the self-sacrifice +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P220"></A>220}</SPAN> +and service which is due to her from the man. You cannot tear +the one from the other. Like St. Peter so St. Paul would have the +husband 'give honour to the wife—as to the weaker vessel' indeed, but +also as 'joint heir of the grace of life[<A NAME="chap0205fn12text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn12">12</A>].' In essential spiritual +value men and women are equal. 'In Christ is neither male nor female.' +St. Chrysostom rightly bases on this passage a powerful appeal to +husbands to overcome their selfishness in their relation to their +wives. There is nothing servile in the subordination required of the +woman[<A NAME="chap0205fn13text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn13">13</A>]. If 'the husband is the head of the wife, the head of the +husband is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.' Christ even is +subordinate. And the character of the headship of the husband +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P221"></A>221}</SPAN> +altogether excludes the idea that women are to be married in order to +serve men's selfish interests or gratify their passions. +</P> + +<P> +Then we must notice that St. Paul is impressing upon us a moral ideal +of which the two parts are inseparable. St. Paul says nothing to +indicate that where the relations are not ideal—where the husband is +selfish or brutal—law should not step in to protect the interests of +the wife and secure her against the insults or cruelties or frauds of +the husband. He is expressing a moral ideal[<A NAME="chap0205fn14text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn14">14</A>]; while law must be +largely content with preventing outrage and securing a background on +which ideals can become possible. And just as St. Paul tells +Christians that they are to obey magistrates as God's +ministers—leaving it to be understood that when they command what is +contrary to God's will, 'we ought to obey God rather than men'; so in +the same way he speaks of the wife's (or child's or slave's) duty of +subjection, leaving a similar reservation likewise to be tacitly +understood. Obedience is to be 'in the Lord.' +</P> + +<P> +3. But no doubt St. Paul does emphasize the subordination of women to +men. He will +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P222"></A>222}</SPAN> +not ordinarily[<A NAME="chap0205fn15text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn15">15</A>] permit the woman 'to teach (in +the public assembly) nor to have dominion over a man[<A NAME="chap0205fn16text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn16">16</A>].' He clearly +does not think the difference of male and female is merely physical, +but perceives that the characteristic moral perils of the sexes[<A NAME="chap0205fn17text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn17">17</A>] are +different: he assigns to man the governing and authoritative position, +and to woman the more retired and 'quieter[<A NAME="chap0205fn18text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn18">18</A>]' functions. It may +indeed be argued that in certain details St. Paul's injunctions are for +his time only, and no more of perpetual obligation than his prohibition +of second marriages to the clergy is assumed to be, or his +quasi-recognition of slavery. But this argument carries us but a +little way. The most of what St. Paul says of men and women is based +on a principle which he conceives to be divine, and which all history +and experience confirms. The position of women in Christendom has +often fallen far short of what is truly Christian: but no attempted +rectification will be found otherwise than disastrous which ignores the +fundamental principle. All through the animal kingdom mental +differences accompany the physiological difference between the sexes. +Experience teaches +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P223"></A>223}</SPAN> +that women, as a whole, are superior to men in +certain moral qualities—in self-sacrifice, sympathy, purity, and +compassion, and in religious feeling, reverence and devotion: but +inferior to them in the moral qualities which are concerned with +government—in justice, love of truth and judgement, in stability and +reasonableness. Intellectually women have very often greater quickness +of apprehension and memory, greater power in learning languages, +greater artistic sensibility. But they are conspicuously inferior in +the constructive imagination, in creative genius, in philosophy and +science. It is sometimes said that if women had been as well educated +as men—and assuredly on Christian principles they ought to be, if +differently, yet equally well educated—they would have created as +much. Why, then, have almost no women been poets of the first order, +or musical composers, or painters? For in these artistic walks of life +their education has been in many countries better and more continuous. +To maintain that men and women are only physiologically different is to +run one's head against the brick wall of fact and science, no less than +against St. Paul's and St. Peter's principles[<A NAME="chap0205fn19text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn19">19</A>]. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P224"></A>224}</SPAN> + +<P> +It remains true that +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">'women is not undevelopt man</SPAN><BR> +But diverse ... seeing either sex alone<BR> +Is half itself, and in true marriage lies<BR> +Nor equal, nor unequal[<A NAME="chap0205fn20text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn20">20</A>].'<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +4. It is necessary to add something about the position assigned by St. +Paul, in other epistles, to unmarried women; and to notice the relation +of his 'theory of women' to earlier Jewish ideas and those current in +general society. +</P> + +<P> +Nothing could well exceed the influence or nobility of the position of +the Jewish wife and mistress of the household, as it is given, for +example, in the Book of Proverbs[<A NAME="chap0205fn21text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn21">21</A>]. That position St. Paul can +perpetuate and deepen, but hardly augment. And the Old Testament +recognized an altogether exceptional position in certain women endowed +with the gift of prophecy, like Miriam and Deborah and Huldah, who in +virtue of their gift exercised a public and +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P225"></A>225}</SPAN> +quasi-political +ministry. Thus in the Christian community also there were +prophetesses, and St. Paul, in the same epistle in which he forbids +women in general to teach in public, seems to leave room for such +exceptional women to 'pray or prophecy' in the Christian congregation +with their heads covered[<A NAME="chap0205fn22text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn22">22</A>]. Thus in fact all down Christian history +there have been at intervals exceptional women with unmistakable gifts +for guiding souls in private and directing public policy, like St. +Catherine of Siena, or with gifts of government like St. Hilda, whom +the Church has rightly accepted as divinely endowed. Where +Christianity appears to have made a fresh departure in regard to women +was in the organized consecration of the gift of female ministry. The +deaconesses like Phoebe, and women like Lydia and Priscilla, are most +characteristic Christian figures; and they have a long line of +successors in later deaconesses and 'widows,' and sisters of mercy, and +nurses and teachers. It was the ignominy of the Church of England that +for so long she narrowed down the functions of women to those which +belong to wives and daughters at home. Multitudes of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P226"></A>226}</SPAN> +women need +other than domestic spheres and are happier away from home; and we may +thank God that—apart from the specially political and judicial +functions which are proper to men—the widest sphere of influence and +service is now again being thrown open to women. +</P> + +<P> +How pitiable it was that, in face of all Christian experience and of +the authoritative language of the New Testament, unmarried women should +have no prospect opened to them but such as was drearily summed up in +the phrase 'old maids.' St. Paul, if in this epistle he is glorifying +the married state, certainly also glorifies both for men and women the +freedom of the celibate life consecrated to the service of God—the +consecration of those who in a special sense are the virgin-brides of +Christ. We may be thankful indeed that now, if somewhat tardily, it +has received from the largest assembly of Anglican bishops ever +gathered together an altogether ungrudging recognition[<A NAME="chap0205fn23text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn23">23</A>]. +</P> + +<P> +It has been very frequently observed that, especially in Asia Minor, +women in St. Paul's day were attaining in non-Christian society +positions of great influence and dignity. We find them +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P227"></A>227}</SPAN> +very +commonly holding priesthoods and public offices and magistracies. It +would appear, however, that too much may be made of this. The +populations of the Asiatic towns loved to be entertained with expensive +games and largesses of money and grain, and to have temples built and +endowed for them. Wealthy women of noble families were elected to +priesthoods and offices where they could exercise their acceptable +liberality in these ways. But the offices were rather of dignity than +of practical government, and were closely associated with priesthoods. +There is no evidence that women in Asiatic cities could assist at +assemblies, or give votes, or speak in public, or serve on legations, +or enter into political relations with the Roman authorities. There +were women among the Asiarchs, but probably only when they were +associated in an honorary manner with their husbands. In the early +Christian church the influence of women was put to far nobler uses than +in Asiatic cities; but their position relatively to men was not far +different from what would have been recognized in the general society +of that region[<A NAME="chap0205fn24text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn24">24</A>]. In other parts of the empire the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P228"></A>228}</SPAN> +women of +the Christian church were conspicuously in advance of those outside. +</P> + +<P> +In somewhat later days of the Church there was some resentment at the +high and free position assigned to women in the New Testament +documents. Thus one celebrated MS. of the New Testament[<A NAME="chap0205fn25text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn25">25</A>]—the Codex +Bezae—changes 'not a few of the honourable Greek women and of men' +(Acts xvii. 12) into 'of the Greeks and the honourable, many men and +women.' In xvii. 34 it cuts out Damaris. And in xvii. 4 it changes +the 'leading women' into 'wives of the leading men.' The spirit which +prompted these changes in an early Christian scribe and reviser, has +not been wanting in much later ages, though it had not a chance of +tampering with our sacred texts. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +B. PARENTS AND CHILDREN. VI. 1-4. +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Parents and children</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +After laying down the principles which determined the relation of wives +to their husbands, St. Paul turns to the relation of children to their +parents. The wives are to be <I>subordinate</I> to their husbands. +Children are to be <I>obedient</I> to their parents as part of their duty +'in the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P229"></A>229}</SPAN> +Lord,' as members of His body. They are to show honour +to their parents as directed by the commandment which we call the +fifth, but which St. Paul here probably calls 'a commandment standing +first accompanied with promise.' It stands first among those which +refer to our neighbour grouped apart—as our Lord also says 'Thou +knowest the commandments,' and then specifies those six alone[<A NAME="chap0205fn26text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn26">26</A>]. And +it is accompanied with a promise implied in the words 'that it may be +well with thee and that thou mayest live long in the land[<A NAME="chap0205fn27text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn27">27</A>]'—a +promise that the prosperity and permanence of the nation shall be bound +up with the observance of the natural law of obedience to those from +whom we derive our life. I say the prosperity of the nation, and so no +doubt secondly of the individual; but all through the Ten Commandments +the individual is regarded only as part of the nation. +</P> + +<P> +The other translation of these words—'which is the first commandment +with promise'—is one to which the original Greek does not seem to give +any preference, and which does not give a good sense, for the fifth +commandment has neither +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P230"></A>230}</SPAN> +more nor less of promise than the second, +and in what we now call 'the second table' it stands alone as having a +promise implied. +</P> + +<P> +Here again in dealing with children St. Paul passes from the duty of +the subject to that of the authority. Fathers are exhorted not to +irritate their children, as in the Epistle to the Colossians they are +not to provoke them, or, as the word may perhaps mean, overstimulate +them so as to lead to their losing heart[<A NAME="chap0205fn28text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn28">28</A>]. A broken spirit and a +sullen spirit are alike bad signs in youth. But this does not mean +that they are not to be disciplined; discipline is God's purpose for us +all through life, and in childhood and youth parents are the ministers +of God to discipline their children and put them in mind to obey God. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy +father and mother (which is the first commandment with 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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +We may notice in this passage the implication of infant baptism. The +children are addressed 'in the Lord,' that is as already members of the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P231"></A>231}</SPAN> +body of Christ. The children of any one Christian parent are, in +1 Cor. vii. 14, described as 'holy'—that is consecrated or dedicated +by the circumstances of their birth and the opportunity which it +supplies for Christian education—and thus fit subjects for baptism. +In fact it is probable that Christianity took from the Jews the +practice of infant baptism. Within their own race indeed there was no +need of a ceremony of incorporation. For the son of Jewish parents was +<I>born</I> a member of the chosen people. But a proselyte was—certainly +before our Lord's time—made a Jew with a <I>baptism</I>[<A NAME="chap0205fn29text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn29">29</A>] which was +regarded as his new birth, his naturalization into a new and higher +race. And if the proselyte had children they were baptized with him as +'little proselytes[<A NAME="chap0205fn30text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn30">30</A>].' With a new depth of meaning this practice of +infant baptism was taken over by the Christian church in the case of +those already dedicated to God by the spiritual opportunities of their +birth and education, so that the beginnings of growth might be +sanctified, like our Lord's childhood, in the Spirit. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P232"></A>232}</SPAN> + +<P> +We must also take to heart in our day the lesson of the fifth +commandment, as re-enforced by St. Paul, with its converse in the duty +of parents. Domestic obedience is somewhat at a discount, it is to be +feared, in this generation in most classes of society; and this is a +very grave peril. Parents, wealthy as well as poor, are very commonly +disposed to make schoolmasters and schoolmistresses do the work of +discipline for them, while they retain for themselves the privilege of +spoiling their children. There are, however, of course, very many +exceptions. There are multitudes of homes where discipline is +exercised wisely and lovingly, and children find obedience always a +duty and mostly a joy. This is certainly the only divinely appointed +method by which we are to be prepared for the obedience and +self-discipline required of us when we grow to be what is falsely +described as 'our own masters.' And St. Paul's twofold admonition to +parents is full of wisdom: they are not to provoke their children so +that they become bad-tempered, and they are not to over-stimulate them, +by competition or otherwise, so that they become disheartened. But to +nourish them by appropriate food, mental and spiritual as well as +physical, so that they may grow to the full +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P233"></A>233}</SPAN> +stature and strength +which God intends for them. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +C. MASTERS AND SLAVES. VI. 5-9. +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Masters and slaves</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +St. Paul's method in dealing with slavery is well known. The slave is +in a position really, at bottom, inconsistent with human individuality +and liberty, as Christianity insists upon it. Thus, to go no further, +the male slave and his wife are liable (in all systems of slavery) to +be sold apart from one another. This puts in its plainest form the +inconsistency of slavery with Christianity. The slave is a living +rational tool of another man, and not his brother with fundamentally +the same spiritual right to 'save his life' or make the best of his +faculties. Thus where a slave <I>can</I> obtain liberty St. Paul exhorts +him to prefer it[<A NAME="chap0205fn31text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn31">31</A>]. And when he is dealing with the Christian master +Philemon, whose runaway slave, Onesimus, has become Christian under St. +Paul's influence, he exhorts him to receive him back, no longer as a +slave, but as a brother beloved[<A NAME="chap0205fn32text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn32">32</A>]. But Christianity enlisted in no +premature crusade against slavery as an institution—premature, because +Christianity was not yet in the position to fashion a civilization of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P234"></A>234}</SPAN> +her own. It left it to be undermined by the Christian spirit. +</P> + +<P> +Thus St. Paul exhorts slaves to obey, and that in more forcible +language than he has applied even to children, 'with fear and +trembling'; that is with an intense anxiety to do their duty. They are +to perform their work as in God's sight, thoroughly—He being the +inspector of it who can infallibly tell good work from bad—and 'from +the heart,' that is, putting their will and mind into it. They are to +do it as to the Lord, knowing that no good work, however menial or +uninteresting, is wasted, but shall be received back, in its product or +legitimate fruit, as 'its own reward' from Christ's hand. In the +Epistle to Timothy, this additional reason for diligent service is +given, that if Christian slaves get a reputation for slackness they +will bring discredit upon the Christian name[<A NAME="chap0205fn33text"></A><A HREF="#chap0205fn33">33</A>]. And in the same +passage a touch is added which shows what, even in its possible +perversions, the spirit of brotherhood really meant, 'They that have +believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren; +but let them serve them the rather, because they that partake of the +benefit are believers and beloved.' +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P235"></A>235}</SPAN> + +<P> +And the masters are exhorted to remember that true principle of human +equality—that 'with God is no respect of persons,' that in God's sight +each man counts for one, and no one counts for more than one; each +having an equal claim and duty in the sight of the one Master under +whom all are servants. Thus they are to deal with their slaves in the +same spirit of duty as their slaves should have toward them, and they +are to treat them with the respect due to brother men 'forbearing +threatenings.' +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +Servants, be obedient unto them that according to the flesh are your +masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto +Christ; not in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as servants +of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; 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 <I>he be</I> bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same +things unto them, and forbear threatening: knowing that both their +Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with +him. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Christianity has long abolished slavery so far as the legal status of +the slave is concerned. But the principles of mastership and service +are still to be learned in this brief section of St Paul's writing; and +if we really believed that 'with +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P236"></A>236}</SPAN> +God is no respect of persons' +there would be neither scamping of work and defrauding of employers, +nor on the other hand the 'sweating' of the employed and treating of +men and women as if they were tools for the profit of others, instead +of spiritual beings, with each his own divine end to realize. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn1text">1</A>] Is. liv. 5; Jer. iii. 14. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn2text">2</A>] <I>Prophecies of Isaiah</I>, vol. ii, p. 188. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn3text">3</A>] 1 Cor. vi. 17. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn4text">4</A>] This, it is well known, was read in the Old Version. It has +vanished (in submission to the verdict of the best MSS.) from the R. V. +But there seems to me to be some force in Alford's plea for the +originality of the words, as they stand in 'Western' and later texts. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn5text">5</A>] Acts xx. 28. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn6text">6</A>] 'Washing.' Marg. 'laver.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn7"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn7text">7</A>] John i. 29. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn8"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn8text">8</A>] John xvii. 9; Tit. ii. 14. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn9"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn9text">9</A>] Rom. x. 9; cp. Acts xxii. 16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn10"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn10text">10</A>] <I>In Joan, tract.</I> 80. Cf. Irenaeus <I>c. haer.</I> v. 2, 3. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn11"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn11text">11</A>] See St. Thom. Aq., <I>Summa</I>, Pars iii. Qu. lxx. art. 6 <I>ad</I> 3. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn12"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn12text">12</A>] 1 Pet. iii. 7. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn13"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn13text">13</A>] It is noticeable that St. Paul does not (according to the Revised +Version which represents the original) exactly enjoin <I>obedience</I> upon +wives (as upon children and slaves) but <I>subjection</I>: cf. Col. iii. 18; +1 Cor. xiv. 34; 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12; 1 Pet. iii. 1. If however in the +use of the 'obey' in the vow of the wife our marriage service goes an +almost imperceptible stage beyond St. Paul, its general tone preserves +St. Paul's balance admirably. The husband 'worships' the wife and +endows her with all his worldly goods. The only other ecclesiastical +formula of ours in which the word worship is used of a purely human +relation, is the peer's oath of allegiance to the sovereign at the +coronation, 'I do become your liegeman of life and limb and of earthly +worship: and faith and troth I will bear unto you to live and to die +against all manner of folks.' +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn14"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn14text">14</A>] How many husbands are capable of 'teaching their wives at home' +about religion? see 1 Cor. xiv. 35. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn15"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn15text">15</A>] See however below, p. <A HREF="#P225">225</A>. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn16"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn16text">16</A>] 1 Tim. ii. 12; 1 Cor. xiv. 34, 35. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn17"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn17text">17</A>] 1 Tim. ii. 8, 9. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn18"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn18text">18</A>] 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12; cf. 1 Pet. iii. 4. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn19"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn19text">19</A>] All this has been admirably stated by George Romanes, whom no one +could accuse of misogyny, in his essay on 'the mental differences +between men and women.' See Essays (Longmans, 1897), pp. 113 ff. And +the statements of the text are supported by Mr. Havelock Ellis' <I>Man +and Woman</I> (Contemp. Science Series). Mr. Ellis is sometimes less +decisive than Mr. Romanes. But see capp. xiii, xiv. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn20"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn20text">20</A>] Tennyson's <I>Princess</I>; cp. his <I>Memoir</I> by Hallam Tennyson, +(Macmillan, 1897), i. 249. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn21"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn21text">21</A>] Prov. xxxi. 10 ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn22"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn22text">22</A>] 1 Cor. xi. 5. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn23"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn23text">23</A>] <I>Lambeth Conference</I>, 1897. Report on Religious Communities, pp. +57 ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn24"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn24text">24</A>] See Paris, <I>Quatenus foeminae res publicas in Asia Minore Romanis +inperantibus attigerint</I> (Paris, 1891). +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn25"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn25text">25</A>] Ramsay, <I>Paul the Traveller</I>, p. 268. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn26"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn26text">26</A>] Mark x. 19; cf. Matt xix. 18, 19; Luke xviii. 20. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn27"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn27text">27</A>] Cited from Exod. xx. 12 according to the LXX, which assimilates +the passage to Deut. v. 16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn28"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn28text">28</A>] Col. iii. 21. In 2 Cor. ix. 2, the only other place where the +word is used by St. Paul or in the New Testament, it means to +<I>stimulate by emulation</I>. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn29"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn29text">29</A>] Accompanied with circumcision and sacrifice. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn30"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn30text">30</A>] See Dr. Taylor, <I>The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles</I>, pp. 55-58, +and Sabatier, La <I>Didachè</I>, pp. 84-88, both very suggestive passages. +Cf. Edersheim, <I>Life and Times of Jesus</I>, App. xii, and Schürer, +<I>Jewish People</I>, Div. ii. vol. ii. pp. 319 ff. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn31"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn31text">31</A>] 1 Cor. vii. 21, 23. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn32"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn32text">32</A>] Philem. 16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0205fn33"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0205fn33text">33</A>] 1 Tim. vi. 1. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap0206"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P237"></A>237}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIVISION II. § 6. CHAPTER VI. 10-20. +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>The personal spiritual struggle.</I> +</H4> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>The spiritual struggle</I> +</SPAN> + +<P> +The ethics of Christianity are, as has appeared, social ethics, the +ethics of a society organized in mutual relationships: and Christianity +is concerned with the whole life of man, body as well as soul, his +commerce and his politics as well as his religion. But because this +requires to be made emphatic, does it follow that we are to neglect or +depreciate the inward, personal, spiritual struggle? Are we to give a +reduced, because we give a better balanced, importance to 'saving one's +own soul,' that is preserving or recovering into its full power and +supremacy one's own spiritual personality? Of course not: because +social health depends on personal character. The more a good man +throws himself into social, including ecclesiastical, duties the more +he feels the need of character in himself and others. And the more +serious a man is +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P238"></A>238}</SPAN> +about his character, the more deeply he feels +the attention and self-discipline that character needs. Certainly the +most ascetic words of our Lord—those in which He speaks of the +necessity for cutting off or plucking out hand or eye if hand or eye +cause us to stumble, and warns us that we must be strong at the +spiritual centre of our being, before we can be free in exterior +action—are likely to come home to no one with more force than to one +who would do his duty in Church or state. Christ cannot redeem the +world without Himself passing through the temptation and the agony in +the garden. And thus St. Paul, after he has been dwelling on the +fraternal and corporate character of the Christian life, comes back at +the last to emphasize the personal spiritual struggle. To be a good +member of the body, he says in effect, you must be in personal +character a strong man, strong enough in Christ's might to win the +victory in a fearful struggle. +</P> + +<P> +Against what is our spiritual struggle? It is against the weakness and +lawlessness of our own flesh. 'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is +weak.' 'Our eye and hand and foot cause us to stumble.' Or again it +is the world which is too much for us. 'We seek honour one of another +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P239"></A>239}</SPAN> +and not the glory that cometh from the only God.' Quite true. +But behind the manifest disorder of our nature and the insistence of +worldly motives there are other less apparent forces; and these, in St. +Paul's mind, so overshadow the more visible and tangible ones that, in +the Biblical manner of speech, he denies for the moment the reality of +the latter. 'We wrestle not against flesh and blood,' not against our +own flesh or a visibly corrupt public, but against an unseen spiritual +host organized for evil. +</P> + +<P> +It was noticed above that St. Paul has no doubt at all that moral evil +has its origin and spring in the dark background behind human +nature—in the rebel wills of devils. It has become customary to +regard belief in devils or angels as fanciful and perhaps +superstitious. Now no doubt theological and popular fancy has intruded +itself into the things it has not seen, and, instead of the studiously +vague[<A NAME="chap0206fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap0206fn1">1</A>] language of St. Paul, has developed a sort of geography and +ethnology for spirits good and bad which is mythological and allied to +superstition. But it has acted in the same way, and shown the same +resentment of the discipline of ignorance, in the case of even more +central spiritual realities. No +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P240"></A>240}</SPAN> +doubt again the belief in the +devil has sometimes become, in practical force, belief in a rival God. +But this sort of Manichaeism or dualism represents a very permanent +tendency in the untrained religious instincts of men, which the Bible +is occupied in restraining. In the Bible certainly Satan and his hosts +are rebel angels and not rival Gods. Once more undoubtedly demonology +has been a source of much misery and many degrading practices. But +demonology represents a natural religious instinct. It is older than +the Bible. And what our religion has done, where it has been true to +itself, is to purge away the noxious and non-moral superstitions. St. +Paul is representative of true Christianity in his stern refusal to use +the services of contemporary soothsaying and magic and sorcery[<A NAME="chap0206fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap0206fn2">2</A>]. One +has only to compare the exorcisms of our Lord with contemporary Jewish +exorcism to note the moral difference. And every truth has its +exaggeration and its abuse. The question still remains; are there no +spiritual beings but men? Is there no moral evil, but in the human +heart? Our Lord gives the most emphatic negative answer. His teaching +about evil (and good) spirits is unmistakable and +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P241"></A>241}</SPAN> +constant. If +He is an absolutely trustworthy teacher in the spiritual concerns of +life, then temptation from evil spirits is a reality, and a reality to +be held constantly in view. And our Lord's authority is confirmed by +our own experiences. Sometimes experience irresistibly suggests to us +the presence of unseen bad companions who can make vivid suggestions to +our minds. Or we are impressed like St. Paul with the delusive, lying +character of evil, which makes the belief in a malevolent will almost +inevitable. Or the continuity in evil influences, social or personal, +seems to disclose to us an organized plan or 'method[<A NAME="chap0206fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap0206fn3">3</A>]' a kingdom of +evil. +</P> + +<P> +It is then in view of unseen but personal spiritual adversaries +organized against us as armies, under leaders who have at their control +wide-reaching social forces of evil, and who intrude themselves into +the highest spiritual regions 'the heavenly places' to which in their +own nature they belong, that St. Paul would have us equip ourselves for +fighting in 'the armour of light[<A NAME="chap0206fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap0206fn4">4</A>].' +</P> + +<P> +If there is a spiritual battle, armour defensive and offensive becomes +a natural metaphor which +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P242"></A>242}</SPAN> +St. Paul frequently uses[<A NAME="chap0206fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap0206fn5">5</A>]. But in his +imprisonment he must have become specially habituated to the armour of +Roman soldiers, and here, as it were, he makes a spiritual meditation +on the pieces of the 'panoply' which were continually under his +observation. +</P> + +<P> +We are, then, to 'take up' or 'put on' the panoply or whole armour of +God. This means more than the armour which God supplies. It is +probably like 'the righteousness of God,' something which is not only a +gift of God, but a gift of His own self. Our righteousness is Christ, +and He is our armour. Christ, the 'stronger man,' who overthrew 'the +strong man armed' in His own person[<A NAME="chap0206fn6text"></A><A HREF="#chap0206fn6">6</A>], and 'took away from him his +panoply in which he trusted,' is to be our defence. And by no external +protection; we are to clothe ourselves in His nature, to put Him on as +our armour. His is the strength in which we are, like Him, to come +triumphant through the hour of darkness. +</P> + +<P> +Now the parts of the armour, the elements of Christ's unconquerable +moral strength, what are they? +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P243"></A>243}</SPAN> + +<P> +The belt which keeps all else in its place is for the Christian, +truth—that is, singleness of eye or perfect sincerity—the pure and +simple desire of the light. 'Unless the vessel be clean (or sincere)' +said the old Roman proverb, 'whatever you put into it turns sour.' A +lack of sincerity at the heart of the spiritual life will destroy it +all. Then the breastplate which covers vital organs is, for the +Christian, righteousness—the specific righteousness of Christ, St. +Paul seems to imply[<A NAME="chap0206fn7text"></A><A HREF="#chap0206fn7">7</A>], in which in its indivisible unity he is to +enwrap himself. And, as the feet of the soldier must be well shod not +only for protection but also to facilitate free movement on all sorts +of ground, the Christian too is to be so possessed with the good +tidings of peace that he is 'prepared' to move and act under all +circumstances—all hesitations, and delays, and uncertainties which +hinder movement gone—his feet shod with the preparedness which belongs +to those who have peace at the heart. ('How beautiful upon the +mountains are the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings, that +publisheth peace.') In these three fundamental +dispositions—single-mindedness, whole-hearted +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P244"></A>244}</SPAN> +following of +Christ, readiness such as belongs to a believer in the good +tidings—lies the Christian's strength. But the armour is not yet +complete. The attacks of the enemy upon the thoughts will be frequent +and fiery. A constant and rapid action of the will will be necessary +to protect ourselves from evil suggestions lest they obtain a +lodgement. And the method of self-protection is to look continually +and deliberately out of ourselves up to Christ—to appeal to Him, to +invoke His name, to draw upon His strength by acts of our will. Thus +faith, continually at every fresh assault looking instinctively to +Christ and drawing upon His help, is to be our shield, off which the +enemy's darts will glance harmless, their hurtful fire quenched. And +in thus defending ourselves we must have continually in mind that God +has delivered man by a great redemption[<A NAME="chap0206fn8text"></A><A HREF="#chap0206fn8">8</A>]. It is the sense of this +great salvation, the conviction of each Christian that he is among +those who have been saved and are tasting this salvation, which is to +cover his head from attack like a helmet[<A NAME="chap0206fn9text"></A><A HREF="#chap0206fn9">9</A>]. And God's +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P245"></A>245}</SPAN> +word—God's specific and particular utterances, through inspired +prophets and psalmists—is to equip his mouth with a sword of power; as +in His temptation and on the cross, Christ 'put off from Himself the +principalities and powers, and made a show of them, triumphing over +them openly' by the words of Holy Scripture; as Bunyan's Christian, +when 'Apollyon was fetching him his last blow, nimbly stretched out his +hand and caught' for his 'sword' the word of Micah, 'when I fall I +shall arise.' This is one fruit of constant meditation on the words of +Holy Scripture, that they recur to our minds when we most need them. +And then St. Paul passes from metaphor to simple speech, and for the +last weapon bids the Christians use 'always' that most powerful of all +spiritual weapons for themselves and others, 'prayer and supplication' +of all kinds and 'in all seasons.' But it is not to be ignorant and +blind prayer; it is to be prayer 'in the spirit,' 'who helpeth our +infirmities, for we know not of ourselves how to pray as we ought.' +'The things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God'[<A NAME="chap0206fn10text"></A><A HREF="#chap0206fn10">10</A>]; and it is +to be the sort of prayer about which trouble is taken, and which is +persevering; and it is to be +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P246"></A>246}</SPAN> +prayer for others as well as for +themselves, 'for all the saints.' And St. Paul uses the pastor's +privilege, and asks for himself the support of his converts' prayers, +that he may have both power of speech and courage to proclaim the good +tidings of the divine secret disclosed, for which he is already +suffering as a prisoner. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. 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 <I>hosts</I> of +wickedness in the heavenly <I>places</I>. Wherefore take up the whole +armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, +having done 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 preparation 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, and on my behalf, that utterance 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. +</P> + +<BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P247"></A>247}</SPAN> + +<P> +St. Paul does not only exhort Christians to pray, but he gives them +abundant examples. In this epistle there are two specimens[<A NAME="chap0206fn11text"></A><A HREF="#chap0206fn11">11</A>] of +prayer for the spiritual progress of his converts, mingled with +thanksgivings and praise. We habitually pray for others that they may +be delivered from temporal evils, or that they may be converted from +flagrant sin or unbelief. But surely we very seldom pray rich prayers, +like those of St. Paul's, for others' progress in spiritual +apprehension. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0206fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0206fn1text">1</A>] Col. i. 16. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0206fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0206fn2text">2</A>] Acts xiii. 6-12; xvi. 16-18; xix. 13-20. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0206fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0206fn3text">3</A>] This is akin to St. Paul's word in the Greek, iv. 14; vi. 11. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0206fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0206fn4text">4</A>] Rom. xiii. 12. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0206fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0206fn5text">5</A>] Rom. vi. 13; xiii. 12; 2 Cor. vi. 7; x. 4; 1 Thess. v. 8. Cf. Isa. +xi. 4, 5, and Wisd. v. 19. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0206fn6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0206fn6text">6</A>] Luke xi. 21, 22. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0206fn7"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0206fn7text">7</A>] By the use of the articles. Contrast Is. lix. 17 which he is +quoting. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0206fn8"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0206fn8text">8</A>] Isa. lix. 17. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0206fn9"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0206fn9text">9</A>] 'Salvation' is sometimes viewed as already accomplished, i.e. in +the victory of Christ: sometimes as still to be realized at 'the +redemption of our bodies': so in 1 Thess. v. 8 the helmet is 'the hope +of salvation' yet to be attained. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0206fn10"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0206fn10text">10</A>] Rom. viii. 26; 1 Cor. ii. 11. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap0206fn11"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap0206fn11text">11</A>] Eph. i. 15 ff.; iii. 14 ff. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P248"></A>248}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CONCLUSION. CHAPTER VI. 21-24. +</H3> + +<SPAN CLASS="sidenote"> +<I>Conclusion</I> +</SPAN> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="quote"> +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. 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 +uncorruptness. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Tychicus was a native of Asia Minor[<A NAME="chap03fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap03fn1">1</A>], a companion and delegate of St. +Paul, like Timothy and others[<A NAME="chap03fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap03fn2">2</A>]. He was entrusted with the task +presumably of conveying this letter to the churches of Asia Minor, and +certainly of informing them as to the apostle's state in his Roman +imprisonment—information which could not fail to comfort and encourage +them. +</P> + +<P> +St. Paul brings this wonderful letter to a conclusion with a brief +benediction to the brethren—an invocation upon them of divine peace, +and love with faith—an invocation of divine favour upon all that 'love +our Lord Jesus Christ in +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P249"></A>249}</SPAN> +uncorruptness.' Corruption is the fruit +of sin, the condition of the 'old man[<A NAME="chap03fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap03fn3">3</A>].' Incorruption is the state +of the risen Christ, and in Him the members of His body are to be +preserved, and at last raised 'incorruptible[<A NAME="chap03fn4text"></A><A HREF="#chap03fn4">4</A>]' in body. But there is +a prior 'incorruptibleness' of spirit in which all Christians are to +live from the first[<A NAME="chap03fn5text"></A><A HREF="#chap03fn5">5</A>], a freedom from all such doublemindedness or +uncleanness as can corrupt the central life of the man. And to love +Christ with this incorruptibility is the condition of the permanent +enjoyment of all that His good favour would bestow upon us. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap03fn1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap03fn1text">1</A>] Acts xx. 4. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap03fn2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap03fn2text">2</A>] 2 Tim. iv. 12. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap03fn3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap03fn3text">3</A>] Eph. iv. 22 +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap03fn4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap03fn4text">4</A>] Cor. xv. 52. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap03fn5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap03fn5text">5</A>] 1 Pet. iii. 4. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="notes"></A> +<A NAME="notea"></A> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P251"></A>251}</SPAN> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +APPENDED NOTES. +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +NOTE A. See p. 26. +</H4> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE ROMAN EMPIRE RECOGNIZED BY CHRISTIAN<BR> +WRITERS AS A DIVINE PREPARATION FOR<BR> +THE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL.<BR> +</H4> + +<P> +(1) The Spanish poet Prudentius (<I>c.</I> A.D. 400) fully appreciates the +influence of the Roman Empire in welding together the world into a +unity of government, laws, language, customs, and religious rites, to +prepare the way for the universal Church. The stanzas are remarkable +and worth quoting. They are put as a prayer into the mouth of the +Roman deacon Laurence during his martyrdom. He recognizes what the +Roman Empire has done, and prays that Rome may follow the example of +the rest of the world in becoming Christian. +</P> + +<PRE> +O Christe, numen unicum ut discrepantum gentium +O splendor, O virtus Patris, mores et observantiam, +O factor orbis et poli, linguas et ingenia et sacra, +atque auctor horum moenium! unis domares legibus. + +Qui sceptra Romae in vertice En omne sub regnum Remi +rerum locasti, sanciens mortale concessit genus: +mundum quirinali togae idem loquuntur dissoni +servire et armis cedere: ritus, id ipsum sentiunt. +</PRE> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P252"></A>252}</SPAN> + +<PRE> +Hoc destinatum, quo magis Confoederantur omnia +ius Christiani nominis hinc inde membra in symbolum: +quodcunque terrarum iacet mansuescit orbis subditus: +uno illigaret vinculo. mansuescat et summum caput. + +Da, Christe, Romanis tuis <I>Peristephanon</I>, ii. 413 ff. +sit Christiana ut civitas: +per quam dedisti ut caeteris +mens una sacrorum foret. +</PRE> + +<BR> + +<P> +(2) The Pope, Leo the Great (<I>c.</I> A.D. 450), speaks thus (<I>Serm.</I> +lxxxii. 2): 'That the result of this unspeakable grace (the +Incarnation) might be spread abroad throughout the world, God's +providence made ready the Roman Empire, whose growth has reached so far +that the whole multitude of nations have been brought into +neighbourhood and connexion. For it particularly suited the divinely +planned work that many kingdoms should be leagued together in one +empire, so that the universal preaching might make its way quickly +through nations already united under the government of one state. And +yet that state, in ignorance of the author of its aggrandisement, +though it ruled almost all races, was enthralled by the errors of them +all; and seemed to itself to have received a great religion, because it +had rejected no falsehood. And for this very reason its emancipation +through Christ was the more wondrous that it had been so fast bound by +Satan.' Leo further recognizes that the Popes are entering into the +position of the Caesars (c. 1), that Rome, 'made the head of the world +by being the holy see of blessed Peter, should rule more widely by +means of the divine religion than of earthly sovereignty.' But his +statement of the relation of Peter to Paul in the evangelization of the +world (c. 5) is remarkably unhistorical. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P253"></A>253}</SPAN> + +<A NAME="noteb"></A> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +NOTE B. See p. 29. +</H4> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE (SO-CALLED) 'LETTERS OF HERACLEITUS.' +</H4> + +<P> +Nine letters under the name of the great philosopher of Ephesus remain +to us. In one of them (iv) Heracleitus is represented as saying to +some Ephesian adversaries, 'If you had been able to live again by a new +birth 500 years hence, you would have discovered Heracleitus yet alive +[i.e. in the memory of men] but not so much as a trace of your name.' +This probably indicates that the author is writing 500 years after +Heracleitus' supposed age. His age was differently estimated. But +'500 years after Heracleitus' would mean, according to all reckonings, +about the first half of the first century A.D. All the other +indications of age in the letters agree with this. (See Jacob Bernays' +<I>Heraclitischen Briefe</I>, Berlin, 1869, p. 112.) They were written +presumably at Ephesus, and all or most of them by a Stoic philosopher. +I do not think that it is necessary to assume traces of Jewish +influence in these letters, any more than in the writings of Seneca. +And the bulk of the letters is so thoroughly Stoic and contrary to +Jewish feeling, that a Jew is hardly likely to have interpolated them. +They illustrate therefore the current philosophic ideas which were at +work in the world in which St. Paul lived and taught, when he was +outside Judaea. That St. Paul was familiar with these ideas, however +his familiarity may have been gained, is shown beyond possibility of +mistake by his speeches—supposing them substantially genuine—at +Lystra and Athens. +</P> + +<P> +The following passages in these letters are interesting: +</P> + +<P> +(1) (From Heracleitus' defence of himself against +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P254"></A>254}</SPAN> +a charge of +impiety in letter iv) 'Where is God? Is he shut up in the temples? +You forsooth are pious who set up the God in a dark place. A man takes +it for an insult if he is said to be "made of stone": and is God truly +described as "born of the rocks"? Ignorant men, do ye not know that +God is not fashioned with hands, nor can you make him a sufficient +pedestal, nor shut him into one enclosure, but the whole world is his +temple, decorated with animals and planets and stars? I inscribed my +altar "to Heracles the Ephesian" [Greek: ERAKLEI TOI EPHESIOI] making +the God your citizen, not—he continues—to myself "Heracleitus an +Ephesian" [the same letters differently divided], as I am accused of +doing by you in your ignorance. Yet Heracles was a man deified by his +goodness and noble deeds; and were his virtues and labours greater than +mine? I have conquered money and ambition: I have mastered fear and +flattery,' &c. Then after a passage about the certainty of his own +immortal renown, he returns to ridicule idolatry. 'If an altar of a +god be not set up, is there no god? or if an altar be set up to what is +not a god, is it a god—so that stones become the evidences (witnesses) +of Gods? Nay it is his works which shall bear witness to God, as the +sun, the day and night, the seasons, the whole fruitful earth, and the +circle of the moon, his work and witness in the heavens.' The whole of +this letter (iv), which can be paralleled in all its ideas from Stoic +and Platonic sources, may compare and contrast with Acts xiv. 15-18; +xvii. 22-29. +</P> + +<P> +(2) Letter v is written by Heracleitus in sickness. He gives a theory +of disease as an excess of some element in the body; and describes his +soul as a divine thing reproducing in his body the healing activity of +God in the world as a whole,—'imitating God' by knowledge of the +method of nature. Even if his body prove unmanageable and succumb to +fate, yet his soul will rise +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P255"></A>255}</SPAN> +to heaven and 'I shall have my +citizenship (Greek: politeúsouai) not among men but among Gods.' +'Perhaps my soul is giving prophetic intimation of its release even now +from its prison house' so short lived and worthless. Letter vi is a +continuation of v, containing a denunciation of contemporary medicine +on the ground of its lack of science, and a further explanation of the +Stoic doctrine of the immanence of God in all nature—forming, +ordering, dissolving, transforming, healing everywhere. 'Him will I +imitate in myself and dismiss all others.' We should compare and (even +more) contrast St. Paul's assertions of independence of bodily +circumstances; his belief in the higher sense of 'nature' (Rom. ii. +14), and such phrases as Phil. ii. 20, 'our citizenship is in heaven,' +Eph. v. 1, 'Be ye imitators of God.' +</P> + +<P> +(3) Letter vii is addressed to Hermodorus in exile. Heracleitus is to +be exiled also 'for misanthropy and refusal to smile' by a law directed +against him alone. After an interesting condemnation of <I>privilegia</I>, +the letter explains his misanthropy. He does not hate men, but their +vices. The law should run 'If any man hates vice let him leave the +city.' Then he will go willingly. In fact he is already an exile +while in the city, for he cannot share its vices. Then he describes +Ephesian life in terms of fierce contempt, their lusts natural and +unnatural, their frauds, their wars of words, their legal +contentiousness, their faithlessness and perjuries, their robberies of +temples. He denounces their vices in connexion with the worship of +Cybele (beating the kettle-drum) and Dionysus (the eating of live +flesh), and with religious vigils and banquets, and alludes to details +of sensuality associated with these meetings. He condemns the +submission of great principles to the verdicts of the crowd at their +theatres, and passes to a further vivid onslaught on their quarrels and +murders (they are no longer men +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P256"></A>256}</SPAN> +but beasts), on their use of +music to excite their bloodthirsty passions, and on war altogether as +contrary to 'the law of nature,' and involving the pursuit of all sorts +of vice. All this impeachment may be compared with St. Paul, who +speaks however by comparison with marked reserve, in Rom. i. 24-31, +Eph. iv. 17-19, and elsewhere. +</P> + +<P> +(4) The eighth letter is again written to Hermodorus now on his way to +Italy to assist the Decemvirs with the Ten Tables. It contains a +somewhat remarkable 'judgement on wealthy Ephesus' and statement of the +judicial function of wealth. 'God does not punish by taking wealth +away, but rather gives it to the wicked, that through having +opportunity to sin they may be convicted, and by the very abundance of +their resources may exhibit their corruption on a wider stage.' Cf. 1 +Tim. vi. 9. +</P> + +<P> +(5) The banishment of Hermodorus had been on account of a proposed law +to grant equal citizenship to freed men, and the right of public office +to their children. This instance of Ephesian intolerance gives +occasion for an enunciation of the Stoic doctrine that the only real +freedom is moral freedom, and moral freedom constitutes a man a citizen +of the world. 'The good Ephesian is a citizen of the world. For this +is the common home of all, and its law is no written document but God +(Greek: ou grámma alla theós), and he who transgresses his duty shall +be impious; or rather he will not dare to transgress, for he will not +escape justice.' 'Let the Ephesians cease to be the sort of men they +are, and they will love all men in an equality of virtue.' 'Virtue, +not the chance of birth, makes men equal.' 'Only vice enslaves, only +virtue liberates.' For men to enslave their fellow men is to fall +below the beasts; so also to mutilate them as the Ephesians do their +Megabyzi—the eunuch-priests of the wooden image of Artemis. There +must be inequality of function in the world, but not refusal of +fellowship, as the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P257"></A>257}</SPAN> +higher parts of nature do not despise the +lower, or the soul think scorn to dwell with the body, or the head +despise the entrails, or God refuse to give the gifts of nature, such +as the light of the sun, to all equally. Here again we have what is +both like and unlike St. Paul's doctrine of true human liberty and +'fellowship in the body.' +</P> + +<P> +On the whole I think these letters are worth more notice than they have +received, both in themselves and as a good example of the sort of +religious and moral doctrine current in the better heathen circles of +the Asiatic cities, while St. Paul was teaching. It presents many +points of connexion with St. Paul's teaching, and co-operated with the +influence of the Jewish synagogue to prepare men's minds for it. But +perhaps what chiefly strikes us is the contrast which the fierce and +arrogant contempt of the Stoic presents to the loving hopefulness of +the Christian messenger of the gospel. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="notec"></A> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +NOTE C. See p. 74. +</H4> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE JEWISH DOCTRINE OF WORKS IN <I>THE APOCALYPSE OF BARUCH</I>. +</H4> + +<P> +Mr. R. H. Charles gives us the following statement[<A NAME="chap04fnc1text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fnc1">1</A>]:— +</P> + +<P> +'The Talmudic doctrine of works may be shortly summarized as follows: +Every good work—whether the fulfilment of a command or an act of +mercy—established a certain degree of merit with God, while every evil +work entailed a corresponding demerit. A man's position with God +depended on the relation existing between his merits and demerits, and +his salvation on the preponderance of the former over the latter. The +relation between his +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P258"></A>258}</SPAN> +merits and demerits was determined daily by +the weighing of his deeds. But as the results of such judgements were +necessarily unknown, there could not fail to be much uneasiness; and, +to allay this, the doctrine of the vicarious righteousness of the +patriarchs and saints of Israel was developed not later than the +beginning of the Christian era (cf. Matt. iii. 9). A man could thereby +summon to his aid the merits of the fathers, and so counterbalance his +demerits. +</P> + +<P> +'It is obvious that such a system does not admit of forgiveness in any +spiritual sense of the term. It can only mean in such a connexion a +remission of penalty to the offender, on the ground that compensation +is furnished, either through his own merit or through that of the +righteous fathers. Thus, as Weber vigorously puts it: "Vergebung ohne +Bezahlung gibt es nicht." Thus, according to popular Pharisaism, <I>God +never remitted a debt until He was paid in full, and so long as it was +paid it mattered not by whom</I>. +</P> + +<P> +'It will be observed that with the Pharisees forgiveness was <I>an +external thing</I>; it was concerned not with the man himself but with his +works—with these indeed as affecting him, but yet as existing +independently without him. This was not the view taken by the best +thought in the Old Testament. There forgiveness dealt first and +chiefly with the direct relation between man's spirit and God; it was +essentially a restoration of man to communion with God. When, +therefore, Christianity had to deal with these problems, it could not +accept the Pharisaic solutions, but had in some measure to return to +the Old Testament to authenticate and develope the highest therein +taught, and in the person and life of Christ to give it a world-wide +power and comprehensiveness.' +</P> + +<P> +The doctrine called Talmudic in the above extract receives remarkable +illustration in a Jewish work, <I>The +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P259"></A>259}</SPAN> +Apocalypse of Baruch</I>, which +dates from the same period as the writings of the New Testament (A.D. +50-100; or if the work be regarded as composite, we should say that its +component elements are of that date), and represents to us in a very +vivid and touching form the hopes and beliefs of a pious orthodox Jew. +Thus— +</P> + +<P> +1. <I>The doctrine of the merit of good works</I>, ii. 2 [words spoken to +Jeremiah by God], 'Your works are to this city as a firm pillar.' xiv. +5: 'What have they profited who confessed before Thee, and have not +walked in vanity as the rest of the nations ... but always feared Thee, +and have not left Thy ways? And, lo, they have been carried off, nor +on their account hast Thou had mercy on Zion. And if others did evil, +it was due to Zion that on account of the works of those who wrought +good works she should be forgiven, and should not be overwhelmed on +account of the works of those who wrought unrighteousness.' lxiii. 3: +'Hezekiah trusted in his works, and had hope in his righteousness, and +spake with the Mighty One ... and the Mighty One heard him.' lxxxv. 1: +'In the generations of old those our fathers had helpers, righteous men +and holy prophets ... and they helped us when we sinned, and they +prayed for us to Him who made us, because they trusted in their works, +and the Mighty One heard their prayer and was gracious unto us.' li. +7: 'But those who have been saved by their works, and to whom the law +has been now a hope, and understanding an expectation, and wisdom a +confidence, to them wonders will appear in their time.' +</P> + +<P> +It is very noticeable in the above quotations that it is the works of +the righteous rather than their persons (as in Genesis xviii. 23-33) +that are put forward as the grounds of confidence with God. The claim +of righteousness in the second quotation (xiv. 5) may be paralleled in +the somewhat earlier work called <I>The Assumption +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P260"></A>260}</SPAN> +of Moses</I>[<A NAME="chap04fnc2text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fnc2">2</A>]: +'Observe and know that neither did our fathers nor their forefathers +tempt God so as to transgress His commandments.' +</P> + +<P> +2. <I>The doctrine of the treasury of merits</I>. The good works of the +righteous are laid up as in a treasury to avail for themselves and for +others. Thus (xiv. 12): 'The righteous justly hope for the end, and +without fear depart from this habitation, because they have with Thee a +store of works preserved in treasuries.' xxiv. 1: 'Behold the days +come when the books will be opened in which are written the sins of all +those that have sinned, and again also the treasuries in which the +righteousness of all those who have been righteous in creation is +gathered.' +</P> + +<P> +The connexion of the mediaeval doctrine of the treasury of merits with +the similar Jewish doctrine needs to be traced out. +</P> + +<P> +3. <I>Righteousness identified with the keeping of the law</I>. For the +Pharisaic Jew righteousness meant simply the keeping of the law. Thus +xv. 5: 'Man would not have rightly understood My judgement if he had +not accepted the law.' Again, lxvii. 6: 'So far as Zion is delivered +up and Jerusalem laid waste ... the vapour of the smoke of the incense +of righteousness which is by the law is extinguished in Zion.' Thus +the merits of Abraham are attributed to his having kept the law before +it was written. lvii. 2: 'At that time the unwritten law was named +among them, and the works of the commandments were then fulfilled.' +</P> + +<P> +Of course it must be said that 'the Law' may mean the ceremonial law, +as in the lower form of Jewish thought, or special stress may be laid +on its moral precepts, as is the case in Baruch, and in the higher +Jewish teaching generally. +</P> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P261"></A>261}</SPAN> + +<P> +4. <I>The Gentiles are therefore incapable of righteousness</I>. lxii. 7: +'But regarding the Gentiles it were tedious to tell how they always +wrought impiety and wickedness, and never wrought righteousness.' Thus +the best hope of the Gentiles is that in the Messianic kingdom they +should become servants to Israel. This will be their lot if they have +never vexed the holy people; see lxxii. 2-6. +</P> + +<P> +5. <I>The world created on account of Israel</I>, xiv. 18: 'Thou didst say +that Thou wouldst make for Thy world man as the administrator of Thy +works, that it might be known that he was by no means made on account +of the world but the world on account of him. [But "man" is at once +interpreted as the Jewish race.] And now I see that as for the world +which was made on account of us, lo! it abides, but we on account of +whom it was made depart' [i.e. into captivity], xv. 7: 'As regards what +thou didst say touching the righteous, that on account of them has this +world come into being, nay more, even that world which is to come is on +their account.' xxi. 23: 'Reprove therefore the angel of death ... and +let the treasuries of souls restore them that are enclosed in them, for +there have been many years like those that are desolate, from the days +of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of all those who are like them, who +sleep in the earth, on whose account Thou didst say that Thou hadst +created the world.' (This idea of the treasury of the souls of the +righteous recurs in xxx. 2.) In <I>The Assumption of Moses</I> (i. 12) it +is said, 'God hath created the world on behalf of His people. But He +was not pleased to manifest this purpose of creation from the +foundation of the world, in order that the Gentiles might thereby be +convicted [i.e. of ignorance], yea to their own humiliation might by +their arguments convict one another.' +</P> + +<P> +The above teaching shows us exactly what it was to which St. Paul +opposed his doctrine of Justification by +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P262"></A>262}</SPAN> +Faith. We see it here +on its own ground. Its close association with 'boasting' is apparent +even in its better form; and its view of election contrasts, by its +selfish narrowness, with the view of election put forward by St. Paul, +viz. that God's election of a chosen people or society, together with +His apparent reprobation of others left outside, both alike subserve a +purpose of infinite width, the ultimate divine purpose to 'have mercy +upon all.' See Romans ix-xi, especially xi. 32, and cf. Eph. i. 9-10: +'the secret of His will with a view to the dispensation of the fulness +of the times, to bring together all things in the Christ, things in +heaven and things in earth.' +</P> + +<P> +The marked contrast between the doctrine of Baruch and the doctrine of +St. Paul must of course be admitted in general; but it has been asked +whether the doctrine of the Atonement is not a fragment of the +abandoned Jewish doctrine of merit, borrowed inconsistently by St. +Paul, or inconsistently tolerated by him. To this the reply is surely +in the negative. The Jews undoubtedly held that Enoch, Moses, +Jeremiah, and others were, on account of their righteousness, the +accepted mediators with God on behalf of the chosen people, and +propitiators of His wrath (see especially <I>Assumption of Moses</I>, xi, +and passages from <I>Baruch</I> cited above). But the doctrine of the +Atonement, when it is examined, proves to have one feature which puts +it into marked opposition with the Judaic doctrine of human merit. +</P> + +<P> +According to the Christian doctrine of the Atonement, Christ is purely +and simply God's gift to man. He is the Son of God, given to man by +the Father, in order that, taking our nature upon Him, living the +perfect human life, and dying the death of perfect obedience, He might +satisfy the divine requirement, which we could not satisfy, and procure +for us what we could not procure for ourselves, no, not the best of us. +Therefore this doctrine +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P263"></A>263}</SPAN> +puts all men, the best and worst alike, +in the common attitude of simply receiving from God, as an unmerited +boon, the gift of forgiveness and reconciliation in Christ. It is in +fact the strongest possible negation of the Jewish idea of human merit, +personal or vicarious. +</P> + +<P> +In other respects the doctrine of <I>The Apocalypse of Baruch</I> affords at +once interesting contrasts and parallels to St. Paul's doctrine. Thus— +</P> + +<P> +(<I>a</I>) In Baruch as in St. Paul, we have a combination of the doctrine +of divine predestination with the insistence on human free will and +responsibility. lxix. 4: 'Of the good works of the righteous which +should be accomplished before Him, He foresaw six kinds' should be +compared with Eph. ii. 10: 'Good works which God prepared beforehand +that we should walk in them.' +</P> + +<P> +(<I>b</I>) The eschatology of the New Testament, including St. Paul's, is of +course especially Jewish. It does not however concern us much in the +Epistle to the Ephesians; but we notice that in <I>The Apocalypse of +Baruch</I> the idea of 'the consummation of the times' (cf. Eph. i. 10, +'the fulness of the times') appears and reappears constantly. See +xiii. 3; xxi. 8, 17; xxx. 3; xlii. 6; liv. 21; lvi. 2; lix. 4; lxix. 4, +5; cf. <I>The Assumption of Moses</I>, i. 18: 'The consummation of the end +of the days.' +</P> + +<P> +(<I>c</I>) The connexion of St. Paul's doctrine with the Jewish doctrine is +also illustrated in <I>The Apocalypse of Baruch</I> on the following points. +<I>That the Gentiles had the opportunity of the knowledge of God through +His works in nature, but refused it</I>. See <I>Baruch</I>, liv. 18, and cf. +Romans, i. 20: <I>The pre-existence of the Messiah</I>. This is suggested +but not very clearly stated in xxx. 1, cf. Charles's note and <I>The +Assumption of Moses</I>, i. 14, where the pre-existence of Moses seems to +be asserted. Again, <I>the Fall of Adam and its effect in introducing +death</I> (<I>or premature death</I>) <I>into the world</I>. See xxiii. 4; xlviii. +42; liv. 15; lvi. 6, and +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P264"></A>264}</SPAN> +Charles's notes. Once more The +Resurrection of the Body. See <I>Baruch</I>, l; li. On all these points we +see what was the material in existing Jewish thought or, in other +words, what were the existing developements of Old Testament belief, +which the Christian inspiration had to work upon. The effect of the +specifically Christian inspiration is chiefly seen (1) in selection +among existing beliefs—taking some and utterly rejecting others; (2) +in giving a definite and fixed form to current Messianic and other +ideas which were continually shifting and incoherent; and (3) in +spiritualizing and moralizing what it appropriated. Of course it is in +the Revelation or Apocalypse of St. John that we have the most signal +instance of the New Testament use of contemporary Jewish material. But +such material holds a very large place in the whole of the New +Testament, and there is no more important assistance to the study of +the New Testament than is afforded by contemporary Jewish literature, +especially that of an Apocalyptic character. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fnc1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fnc1text">1</A>] <I>The Apoc. of Baruch</I> (A. and C. Black, 1896), p. lxxxii. The +statement is compiled from Weber, <I>Lehre des Talmuds</I>. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fnc2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fnc2text">2</A>] Edited also by R. H. Charles (A. and C. Black, 1897), p. 37. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="noted"></A> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +NOTE D. See p. 120. +</H4> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE BROTHERHOOD OF ST. ANDREW +</H4> + +<P> +After the above passage was written, as to the need amongst us of a +deeper idea of the obligations of church membership, it fell to my lot +to go to the United States, to make acquaintance with the work of the +Brotherhood of St. Andrew in that country, and to assist at its general +convention in Buffalo. It seemed to me that nothing could be better +calculated to revive the true spirit of laymanship than that society, +'formed in recognition of +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P265"></A>265}</SPAN> +the fact that every Christian man is +pledged to devote his life to the spread of the kingdom of Christ on +earth.' +</P> + +<P> +It was started among a small band of young men, of the number of the +apostles, nearly fifteen years ago, in St. James's parish, Chicago, and +has spread till to-day it numbers more than 1,200 parochial chapters in +the United States alone, and has taken firm root in Canada and other +parts of the world. It has a double rule of Prayer and of Service. +The point of the service required is that it should have the character +especially of witness among a man's equals. So much 'church work' is +directed towards raising those who are in some ways our inferiors, that +we forget that the real test of a man is the witness he bears for +Christ among his equals. There is many a man who, especially in his +youth, fails to confess Christ in his own society, and then, if I may +so express it, sneaks round the corner to do something to raise the +degraded or takes orders and preaches the gospel. Nobody can possibly +disparage these efforts of love, but a certain character of cowardice +continues to attach to them, if they are not based on a frank witness +for Christ in a man's own walk of life, where it is hardest. It is +this witness which the Brotherhood requires. +</P> + +<P> +The particular rule is 'to make an earnest effort each week to bring +some one young man within hearing of the Gospel of Christ as set forth +in the services of the Church and in men's Bible classes.' This rule +is no doubt open to criticism. But it is interpreted in the spirit +rather than in the letter, and for its definite requirement it is +successfully pleaded that it keeps the members from vagueness and +slackness. +</P> + +<P> +Certainly the result appears to be excellent. The brethren are +pervaded by a spirit of frank religious profession and devotion. There +appears to be a general +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P266"></A>266}</SPAN> +tone among them of reality and good +sense. Their missionary zeal does not degenerate into an intrusive +prying into other men's souls. +</P> + +<P> +The Brotherhood was developed in the atmosphere of the United States, +and it remains a question whether it will flourish in England. The +more sharply defined distinctions of classes among us; our exaggerated +parochialism; the shyness and reserve in religious matters which +characterizes many really religious Englishmen and degenerates into a +sort of 'hypocrisy reversed,' or pretence of being less religious than +one is—these things will constitute grave obstacles. But the need is +at least as crying among us, as on the other side of the Atlantic, to +emphasize among professing Christians and churchmen the duty of +witness. At least we may trust the Brotherhood will be given a good +trial. But if it is to have a fair chance among us, the greatest care +must be taken that it should develope as a properly lay movement; and +while it receives all encouragement from the clergy, should not be +taken up by them to be turned into a guild of 'church workers,' useful +for purposes of parochial organization. +</P> + +<P> +One of the most striking facts about the Brotherhood in the States is +that, while the church spirit is unmistakable—as no one who was +present at the corporate Communion of 1,300 delegates in October of +this year at half-past six in the morning in a great church at Buffalo +could possibly doubt—it has successfully avoided becoming either a +party society or a society rent by factions. +</P> + +<P> +It is because I believe the witness of this Brotherhood to the true +church spirit has already proved invaluable that I venture to dedicate +this little exposition of the great book of brotherhood—though without +leave granted or asked—to its founder and president. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P267"></A>267}</SPAN> + +<A NAME="notee"></A> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +NOTE E. See pp. 164, 166. +</H4> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH (CATHOLIC) IN ST. PAUL <BR> +IN ITS RELATION TO LOCAL CHURCHES. +</H4> + +<P> +By far the most frequent use of the word 'church' or 'churches' in the +New Testament is to designate a local society of Christians or a number +of such societies taken together, 'the church at Jerusalem,' 'the +church at Antioch,' 'the churches of Galatia,' 'the seven churches +which are in Asia,' 'all the churches.' But it is used also for the +church as a whole. In fact, before Christ's coming the word in the +Greek of the Old Testament had passed from meaning an assembly of the +people, as in classical Greek, to meaning the sacred people as a +whole[<A NAME="chap04fne1text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fne1">1</A>], as St. Stephen uses it in his speech 'The church in the +wilderness' (Acts vii. 38). And it is exactly in this sense that it is +used by our Lord in St. Matthew, xvi. 18. 'The church' which our Lord +there promises to 'build' is the Church of the New Covenant as a whole. +We might paraphrase His words (as Dr. Hort suggests[<A NAME="chap04fne2text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fne2">2</A>]) 'on this rock I +will build my Israel.' Thus there is throughout the Acts and St. +Paul's earlier epistles, a tendency to pass from the use of 'church' as +a local society to its use as designating the whole body of the +faithful. This was but natural seeing that each local society did but +represent the one divine society, the church of the Old Covenant, +refounded by Christ. See Acts ix. 31: 'The church throughout all +Judaea and Galilee and Samaria.' +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P268"></A>268}</SPAN> +xii. 1: 'Herod the king put +forth his hands to afflict certain of the church.' xx. 28: 'The church +of God which he purchased with his own blood.' Gal. i. 13: 'I +persecuted the church of God.' 1 Cor. xii. 28: 'God hath set some in +the church, first apostles,' &c. In this last passage and in St. +Paul's speech to the Ephesian elders this general use of the term is +unmistakable. +</P> + +<P> +In the Epistle to the Ephesians, in which alone among his epistles St. +Paul is writing not about the difficulties or needs of a particular +congregation, but about the church in its general conception, this +larger use of the term becomes dominant. And the point to be noticed +is that the church in general, or catholic church, is conceived of, not +as made up of local churches, but as made up of individual members. +The local church would be regarded by St. Paul not as one element of a +catholic confederacy[<A NAME="chap04fne3text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fne3">3</A>], but as the local representative of the one +divine and catholic society[<A NAME="chap04fne4text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fne4">4</A>]. But the local church is not, according +to St. Paul, a completely independent representative of the church as a +whole. The apostles, as commissioned witnesses and representatives of +Christ, are over all the churches. They, or their recognized +associates and delegates, like Barnabas, Timothy and Titus, represent +the general church which every local church must, so to speak, +reproduce. The apostles therefore, or their representatives, give to +each church when it is first founded 'the tradition' of truth and +morals which is permanently to mould it; and they maintain the +tradition by a more or less constant supervision. Thus they are +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P269"></A>269}</SPAN> +the force which holds all 'the churches' together on a common basis. +'So ordain I,' says St. Paul, 'in all the churches[<A NAME="chap04fne5text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fne5">5</A>].' 'Hold fast the +traditions even as I delivered them to you[<A NAME="chap04fne6text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fne6">6</A>].' The apostle has, he +teaches, an 'authority' commensurate with his 'stewardship[<A NAME="chap04fne7text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fne7">7</A>],' an +authority 'which the Lord gave for the edification and not the +destruction[<A NAME="chap04fne8text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fne8">8</A>]' of the Christians, but which at times must take the +form of a 'rod' of chastisement[<A NAME="chap04fne9text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fne9">9</A>]. The complete doctrinal and moral +independence of particular Churches is strongly denied by St. Paul in +such phrases as 'Came the word of God unto you alone?' or, 'If any man +preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let +him be anathema[<A NAME="chap04fne10text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fne10">10</A>].' +</P> + +<P> +Dr. Hort's work on <I>The Christian Ecclesia</I>, in many respects, as would +be expected, most admirable, seems to me to minimize quite +extraordinarily the apostolic authority. The apostles, he says, were +only witnesses of Christ. 'There is no trace in Scripture of a formal +commission of authority for government from Christ Himself.' This +surprising conclusion is reached by omitting many considerations. Thus +in St. Matthew xvi. 19 a definite grant of official authority—as +appears in the passage, Is. xxii. 22, on which it is based—is promised +to St. Peter, and he is on this occasion, as Dr. Hort himself +maintains, the representative of the apostles generally. This +stewardship granted to the apostles, to shepherd the flock and feed the +household of God, is implied again in St. Luke xii. 42, St. John xxi. +15-17; and it seems to be quite unreasonable to dissociate the +authoritative commission to 'absolve and retain,' St. John xx. 20-23, +from the apostolic office. Dr. Hort would apparently +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P270"></A>270}</SPAN> +dissociate +such passages as those last referred to from the apostolic office, and +assign them to the church as a whole. But how then does he account for +the authority inherent in the apostolic office, as it is represented by +St. Paul, and in the Acts? St. Paul's conception of the authority of +the apostles is barely considered by him; and the authority of the +apostolate in the Acts is strangely minimized. Nothing is said of +Simon's impression—surely a true one—that the apostles had the +'authority' to convey the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of +hands (viii. 19). Certainly the phrases used toward the churches of +Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, 'to whom we gave no commandment,' 'it +seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater +burden than these necessary things,' imply a governmental authority, +which, if it is shared by the presbyters, is substantially that of the +apostles (Acts xv. 24-28). +</P> + +<P> +Dr. Hort also minimizes greatly the element of official authority which +appears almost at once in the church by apostolic appointment and +delegation. No doubt there was at first an authority allowed—as must +always be allowed—to the acknowledged possessors of extraordinary +divine gifts, especially to the 'prophets.' But in the period of St. +Paul's later activity, when he is facing the future of the church and +has apparently ceased to expect an immediate return of Christ, these +special gifts retire into the background, while the ordinary functions +of government, and administration of the word and sacraments, remain in +the position which they are permanently to occupy in the hands of +regularly ordained officers. +</P> + +<P> +Dr. Hort deals, as it seems to me, most unreasonably with the pastoral +epistles. It is surely arbitrary to dissociate 'the gift which was in +Timothy by the laying on of St. Paul's hands,' the gift of power, and +love, and discipline; which Timothy is to 'stir up' (2 Tim. i. 6), from +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P271"></A>271}</SPAN> +that mentioned in the first epistle (iv. 14), 'the gift that is +in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the +hands of the presbyters'; and to make the former a 'gift' of merely +personal piety. And (even if the 'lay hands suddenly on no man' be +interpreted, as Ellicott and Hort would interpret it, of the reception +of a penitent) it seems absurd to doubt, in view of what is said about +the laying on of hands in ordination of 'the seven' and of the +'evangelist' Timothy, and in view of the place it held generally for +conveying spiritual gifts in the Christian Church, that this was the +accepted method of ordination in all cases; there being in fact no +evidence to the contrary. +</P> + +<P> +Once more, Dr. Hort is surely maintaining an impossible position when, +even in face of the salutation to the Philippians, he denies that the +term 'episcopus' is used in the New Testament as a regular title of an +ecclesiastical office. +</P> + +<P> +Not even Dr. Hort's reputation for soundness of judgement could stand +against many posthumous publications such as <I>The Christian Ecclesia</I>. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fne1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fne1text">1</A>] <I>Not</I>, as Dr. Hort points out (<I>Christian Ecclesia</I>, p. 5), 'the +elect (called-out) people.' The word has in fact no such association +attached to it. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fne2"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fne2text">2</A>] pp. 10, 11. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fne3"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fne3text">3</A>] Unless indeed, in Eph. iii. 21, we should understand 'every +building' as meaning every local church which, fitted together with +every other, grows into a holy temple, i.e. into that which only a +really catholic church can be. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fne4"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fne4text">4</A>] The same statement would be true of St. Ignatius of Antioch. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fne5"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fne5text">5</A>] 1 Cor. vii. 17. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fne6"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fne6text">6</A>] 1 Cor. xi. 2, xv. 2. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fne7"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fne7text">7</A>] 1 Cor. ix. 17. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fne8"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fne8text">8</A>] 2 Cor. x. 8. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fne9"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fne9text">9</A>] 1 Cor. iv, 21. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fne10"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fne10text">10</A>] 1 Cor. xiv. 36; Gal. i. 8. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="notef"></A> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +NOTE F. See p. 188. +</H4> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE ETHICS OF CATHOLICISM. +</H4> + +<P> +The world at large is fully aware of the claim of 'Catholicism,' i.e. +the claim of the one visible church for all sorts of men. But the +ethical meaning of the claim has been strangely subordinated to its +theological and sacerdotal aspects. Its ethical meaning seems to me to +require developing under heads such as these:— +</P> + +<P> +1. The requirement of mutual forbearance if men of all races and +classes and idiosyncrasies are to be bound +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P272"></A>272}</SPAN> +to belong to one +organization and to worship in common, 'breaking the one bread.' +Herein lies the moral discipline of Catholicism: see above, pp. 123 +foll. +</P> + +<P> +2. The consequent obligation of toleration in theology, ritual, &c., +on all matters which do not touch the actual basis of the Christian +faith. St. Cyprian, though he believed that those baptized outside the +church were not baptized at all, yet deliberately remained in communion +with those bishops who thought differently, trusting to the mercy of +God to supply the supposed deficiency in those who, outside his +jurisdiction, were admitted into the church, as he believed, without +baptism. And St. Augustine, who, most of ancient writers, understands +the moral meaning of Catholicism, repeatedly holds up this toleration +of Cyprian as an example to the Donatist separatists of his own day: +'If you seek advice from the blessed Cyprian, hear how much he +anticipates from the mere advantage of unity: so much so that he did +not separate himself from those who held different opinions: and, +though he thought that those who are baptized outside the communion of +the church do not receive baptism at all, yet he believed that those +who had thus been simply <I>admitted</I> into the church could on no other +ground than the bond of unity come under the divine pardon.' Then he +quotes Cyprian's words: 'But some one will say: what will happen to +those who in the past, when coming from heresy to the church, have been +admitted without baptism? (I reply): God is powerful to grant them +forgiveness by His mercy, and not to separate from the gifts of His +church those who, after being thus simply admitted into her, have +fallen asleep.' And again: 'judging no man and separating no man from +the rights of communion because he thinks differently.' And St. +Augustine continues: 'All these catholic +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P273"></A>273}</SPAN> +unity embraces in her +motherly bosom, bearing one another's burdens in turn and endeavouring +to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, until, in +whatever respect they disagreed, the Lord should reveal (the truth) to +one or the other of them[<A NAME="chap04fnf1text"></A><A HREF="#chap04fnf1">1</A>].' Not to St. Paul then, only, but to St. +Cyprian and St. Augustine, doctrinal toleration is an essential of +Catholicism. Would to God the claim of the one church had not come to +be associated so generally with the opposite tendency! See above, pp. +158 f. +</P> + +<P> +3. Catholicism, as meaning a church of all races and sorts of people, +postulates a constant missionary enthusiasm in all the members of the +church till this ideal be realized. 'To do the work of an evangelist,' +to have the 'feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace,' to +be content to leave nothing but evil outside the church—that is to be +a real catholic. +</P> + +<P> +4. To St. Paul's mind the Catholicism of the church is to lead the way +to an even wider 'reconciliation.' Through the catholic union of men +in the church the whole universe is to come back into unity. The +kingdom of God is to be something wider than the church which exists to +prepare for it. This principle once recognized secures that the church +shall feel and exhibit a constant interest in all departments of +knowledge and progress. The universe is one, and redemption is for the +whole. +</P> + +<P> +5. Catholicism is the antithesis of esotericism. All—men and women, +slave or free, Greek or Scythian—are capable of full initiation into +Christianity. All—not apostles and presbyter-bishops and deacons +only—but all Christians make up the high priestly body and have on +their foreheads the anointing oil: see above, pp. 111 ff. +</P> + +<P> +Forbearance between divergent classes and races and +individuals—doctrinal toleration—missionary +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P274"></A>274}</SPAN> +enthusiasm—universal sympathy—recognition of a universal priesthood +of Christianity—these constitute the moral content of Pauline +Catholicism. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +<A NAME="chap04fnf1"></A> +[<A HREF="#chap04fnf1text">1</A>] S. Aug. <I>de Baptismo</I>, ii. [xiii.] 18, [xiv.] 20. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="noteg"></A> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +NOTE G. See p. 190. +</H4> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE AND INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS. +</H4> + +<P> +The 'Report of the Committee of the Lambeth Conference appointed to +consider and report upon the office of the Church with respect to +industrial problems—(<I>a</I>) the unemployed; (<I>b</I>) industrial +co-operation,' is so much to the point as a statement of Christian +social duty that I venture to reproduce the <I>first part of it</I> here. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +'The Committee desire to begin their Report with words of thankful +recognition that throughout the Church of Christ, and not least in the +Churches of our own Communion, there has been a marked increase of +solicitude about the problems of industrial and social life, and of +sympathy with the struggles, sufferings, responsibilities, and +anxieties, which those problems involve. +</P> + +<P> +'They hope that they rightly discern in this some increasing reflection +in modern shape of the likeness of the Lord, in whose blessed life zeal +for the souls, and sympathy for the bodily needs of men were undivided +fruits of a single love. +</P> + +<P> +'The Committee, before proceeding to touch upon two specific parts of +the subject, desire to record briefly what they deem to be certain +principles of Christian duty in such matters. +</P> + +<P> +'The primary duty of the Church, as such, and, within her, of the +Clergy, is that of ministry to men in the things of character, +conscience, and faith. In doing this, she also does her greatest +social duty. Character in the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P275"></A>275}</SPAN> +citizen is the first social need; +character, with its securities in a candid, enlightened, and vigorous +conscience, and a strong faith in goodness and in God. The Church owes +this duty to all classes alike. Nothing must be allowed to distract +her from it, or needlessly to impede or prejudice her in its discharge; +and this requires of the Clergy, as spiritual officers, the exercise of +great discretion in any attempt to bring within their sphere work of a +more distinctively social kind. +</P> + +<P> +'But while this cannot be too strongly said, it is not the whole truth. +Character is influenced at every point by social conditions; and active +conscience, in an industrial society, will look for moral guidance on +industrial matters. +</P> + +<P> +'Economic science does not claim to give this, its task being to inform +but not to determine the conscience and judgement. But we believe that +Christ our Master does give such guidance by His example and teachings, +and by the present workings of His Spirit; and therefore under Him +Christian authority must in a measure do the same, the authority, that +is, of the whole Christian body, and of an enlightened Christian +opinion. This is part of the duty of the Christian Society, as +witnessing for Christ and representing Him in this present world, +occupied with His work of setting up the Kingdom of God, under and +amidst the natural conditions of human life. In this work the clergy, +whose special duty it is to ponder the bearings of Christian +principles, have their part; but the Christian laity, who deal directly +with the social and economic facts, can do even more. +</P> + +<P> +'The Committee believe that it would be wholly wrong for Christian +authority to attempt to interfere with the legitimate evolution of +economic and social thought and life by taking a side corporately in +the debates between rival social theories or systems. It will not (for +example), +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P276"></A>276}</SPAN> +at the present day, attempt to identify Christian duty +with the acceptance of systems based respectively on collective or +individual ownership of the means of production. +</P> + +<P> +'But they submit that Christian social duty will operate in two +directions:— +</P> + +<P> +'1. The recognition, inculcation, and application of certain Christian +principles. They offer the following as examples:— +</P> + +<P STYLE="margin-left: 8%; text-indent: -4%"> +(<I>a</I>) The principle of Brotherhood. This principle of Brotherhood, or +Fellowship in Christ, proclaiming, as it does, that men are members one +of another, should act in all the relations of life as a constant +counterpoise to the instinct of competition. +</P> + +<P STYLE="margin-left: 8%; text-indent: -4%"> +(<I>b</I>) The principle of Labour. That every man is bound to service—the +service of God and man. Labour and service are to be here understood +in their widest and most inclusive sense; but in some sense they are +obligatory on all. The wilfully idle man, and the man who lives only +for himself, are out of place in a Christian community. Work, +accordingly, is not to be looked upon as an irksome necessity for some, +but as the honourable task and privilege of all. +</P> + +<P STYLE="margin-left: 8%; text-indent: -4%"> +(<I>c</I>) The principle of Justice. God is no respecter of persons. +Inequalities, indeed, of every kind are inwoven with the whole +providential order of human life, and are recognized emphatically in +our Lord's words. But the social order cannot ignore the interests of +any of its parts, and must, moreover, be tested by the degree in which +it secures for each freedom for happy, useful, and untrammelled life, +and distributes, as widely and equitably as may be, social advantages +and opportunities. +</P> + +<P STYLE="margin-left: 8%; text-indent: -4%"> +(<I>d</I>) The principle of Public Responsibility. A Christian community, +as a whole, is morally responsible for +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P277"></A>277}</SPAN> +the character of its own +economic and social order, and for deciding to what extent matters +affecting that order are to be left to individual initiative, and to +the unregulated play of economic forces. Factory and sanitary +legislation, the institution of Government labour departments and the +influence of Government, or of public opinion and the press, or of +eminent citizens, in helping to avoid or reconcile industrial +conflicts, are instances in point. +</P> + +<P> +'2. Christian opinion should be awake to repudiate and condemn either +open breaches of social justice and duty, or maxims and principles of +an un-Christian character. It ought to condemn the belief that +economic conditions are to be left to the action of material causes and +mechanical laws, uncontrolled by any moral responsibility. It can +pronounce certain conditions of labour to be intolerable. It can +insist that the employer's personal responsibility, as such, is not +lost by his membership in a commercial or industrial Company. It can +press upon retail purchasers the obligation to consider not only the +cheapness of the goods supplied to them, but also the probable +conditions of their production. It can speak plainly of evils which +attach to the economic system under which we live, such as certain +forms of luxurious extravagance, the widespread pursuit of money by +financial gambling, the dishonesties of trade into which men are driven +by feverish competition, and the violences and reprisals of industrial +warfare. +</P> + +<P> +'It is plain that in these matters disapproval must take every +different shade, from plain condemnation of undoubted wrong to +tentative opinions about better and worse. Accordingly any organic +action of the Church, or any action of the Church's officers, as such, +should be very carefully restricted to cases where the rule of right is +practically clear, and much the larger part of the matter +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P278"></A>278}</SPAN> +should +be left to the free and flexible agency of the awakened Christian +conscience of the community at large, and of its individual members. +</P> + +<P> +'If the Christian conscience be thus awakened and active, it will +secure the best administration of particular systems, while they exist, +and the modification or change of them, when this is required by the +progress of knowledge, thought, and life. +</P> + +<P> +'It appears to follow from what precedes that the great need of the +Church, in this connexion, is the growth and extension of a serious, +intelligent, and sympathetic opinion on these subjects, to which +numberless Christians have as yet never thought of applying Christian +principles. There has been of late no little improvement in this +respect, but much remains to be done, and with this view the Committee +desire to make the following definite recommendation. +</P> + +<P> +'They suggest that, wherever possible, there should be formed, as a +part of local Church organization, Committees consisting chiefly of +laymen, whose work should be to study social and industrial problems +from the Christian point of view, and to assist in creating and +strengthening an enlightened public opinion in regard to such problems, +and promoting a more active spirit of social service, as a part of +Christian duty. +</P> + +<P> +'Such Committees, or bodies of Church workers in the way of social +service, while representing no one class of society, and abstaining +from taking sides in any disputes between classes, should fearlessly +draw attention to the various causes in our economic, industrial, and +social system, which call for remedial measures on Christian +principles.' +</P> + +<P> +Abundant illustration of the kind of matters with which such Committees +might deal will be found in the report. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +OXFORD: HORACE HART +<BR> +PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, by +Charles Gore + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. 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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: St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians + A Practical Exposition + +Author: Charles Gore + +Release Date: April 17, 2010 [EBook #32016] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO EPHESIANS *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + +_St. Paul's_ + +_Epistle to the Ephesians_ + + +_A Practical Exposition_ + + +BY THE + +RIGHT REV. CHARLES GORE, M.A., D.D. + +LORD BISHOP OF WORCESTER + + + + +FIFTH IMPRESSION + +TWELFTH THOUSAND + + + + +LONDON + +JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET + +1902 + + + + +_A Series of Simple Expositions_ + +_of_ + +_Portions of the New Testament_ + + +BY THE + +RIGHT REV. DR. GORE. + + +THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. _Crown 8vo_, 3/6. + +THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. _Crown 8vo_, 3/6. + +THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 2 _Vols., Crown 8vo_, 3/6 _each_. + + + + +Oxford + +HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY + + + + +TO + +JAMES L. HOUGHTELING + +OF CHICAGO + +THE FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF THE BROTHERHOOD + +OF ST. ANDREW + +AND TO ALL THE BROTHERHOOD + +WHICH IN MORE SENSES THAN ONE + +HE REPRESENTS + + + + +{vi} + +PREFACE + +The favourable reception accorded to an exposition of the Sermon on the +Mount has encouraged me to attempt another practical explanation of a +portion of the New Testament, in the interest of such readers as are +intelligent indeed, but neither are nor hope to become critical +scholars. An immense deal has been done of late to assist New +Testament scholarship, but while the studies of the scholar make +progress, the ordinary Christian 'reading of the Bible' is, I fear, at +best at a standstill. This little book then is intended to make one of +St. Paul's epistles as intelligible as may be to the ordinary reader, +and so to enable him to make a practical religious use of it, 'to read, +mark, learn and inwardly digest' it. + +{viii} + +The method pursued, in the main, has been to let each section of the +epistle be preceded by an analysis or paraphrase of the teaching it +contains, in which it is hoped that no element in the teaching is left +unnoticed, and followed by such further explanations of particular +phrases, or practical reflections, as seem to be needed. + +I have avoided as far as possible all discussion of rival views, and +given simply what are, in my judgement, the best explanations. + +I have ventured to dedicate this book to the President of the +Brotherhood of St. Andrew, because (see app. note D, p. 264) that +society represents surely a brave attempt to realize some of the chief +practical lessons which this epistle is intended to enforce. + +CHARLES GORE. + +WESTMINSTER ABBEY, + _Christmas_, 1897. + + + + +{ix} + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +INTRODUCTION . . . Study of the New Testament . . . . . . . . . 1 + The gospel of the Catholic Church . . . . . . 6 + The Roman Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 + Ephesus and the Ephesians . . . . . . . . . . 34 + The letter--to whom written . . . . . . . . . 43 + + +THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. + + SALUTATION (i. 1-2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 + + DIVISION I (i. 3-iv. 17) + + Sec. 1 (i. 3-14) St. Paul's leading thoughts: + life in Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 + predestination . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 + the elect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 + the divine secret disclosed . . . . . . 72 + grace not merit . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 + + Sec. 2 (i. 15-23) St. Paul's prayer . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 + + Sec. 3 (ii. 1-10) Sin and redemption . . . . . . . . . . . 89 + + Sec. 4 (ii. 11-22) Salvation in the Church . . . . . . . . . 102 + + Sec. 5 (iii) Paul the apostle of catholicity . . . . . 121 + his second prayer . . . . . . . . . . . 133 + + Sec. 6 (iv. 1-16) The unity of the Church . . . . . . . . . 140 + + +{x} + +DIVISION II (iv. 17-vi. 24): + + Doctrine and conduct . . . . . . . . . . 172 + + Sec. 1 (iv. 17-24) Christianity a new life . . . . . . . . . 178 + + Sec. 2 (iv. 25-32) The new life a corporate life . . . . . . 184 + + Sec. 3 (v. 1-14) The new life an imitation of God . . . . 192 + and a life in the light . . . . . . . . 194 + + Sec. 4 (v. 15-21) The new life a buying up of an + opportunity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 + + Sec. 5 (v. 22-vi. 9) The law of subordination and authority 211 + husbands and wives (v. 22-33) . . . . . 212 + parents and children (vi. 1-4) . . . . 228 + masters and slaves (vi. 5-9) . . . . . 233 + + Sec. 6 (vi. 10-20) The personal spiritual struggle . . . . . 237 + +CONCLUSION (vi. 21-24) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 + + +APPENDED NOTES:-- + + A. The Roman Empire recognized by Christians as a + Divine Preparation for the Spread of the Gospel . . . . . 251 + + B. The (so-called) 'Letters of Heracleitus' . . . . . . . . . 253 + + C. The Jewish Doctrine of Works in _The Apocalypse of Baruch_ 257 + + D. The Brotherhood of St. Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 + + E. The Conception of the Church Catholic in St. Paul in + its Relation to Local Churches . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 + + F. The Ethics of Catholicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 + + G. The Lambeth Conference and Industrial Problems . . . . . . 274 + + + + +{1} + +THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS + + +_Introduction._ + +i. + +[Sidenote: _Introduction_] + +There are two great rivers of Europe which, in their course, offer a +not uninstructive analogy to the Church of God. The Rhine and the +Rhone both take their rise from mountain glaciers, and for the first +hundred or hundred and fifty miles from their sources they run turbid +as glacier streams always are, and for the most part turbulent as +mountain torrents. Then they enter the great lakes of Constance and +Geneva. There, as in vast settling-vats, they deposit all the +discolouring elements which have hitherto defiled their waters, so that +when they re-emerge from the western ends of the lakes to run their +courses in central and southern Europe their {2} waters have a +translucent purity altogether delightful to contemplate. After this +the two rivers have very different destinies, but either from fouler +affluents or from the commercial activity upon their surfaces or along +their banks they lose the purity which characterized their second +birth, and become as foul as ever they were among their earlier +mountain fastnesses; till after all vicissitudes they lose themselves +to north or south in the vast and cleansing sea. + +The history of these rivers offers, I say, a remarkable parallel to the +history of the Church of God. For that too takes its rude and rough +beginnings high up in wild and remote fastnesses of our human history. +Such books of the Old Testament as those of Judges and Samuel and Kings +represent the turbid and turbulent running of this human nature of +ours, divinely directed indeed, but still unpurified and unregenerate. +But in the great lake of the humanity of Jesus all its acquired +pollution is cut off. In Him, virgin-born, our manhood is seen as +indeed the pure mirror of the divine glory; and when at Pentecost the +Church of God issues anew, by a second birth of that glorified manhood, +for its second course in this world, it issues unmixed with alien +influences, substantially {3} pure and unsullied. After a time its +history gains in complexity but its character loses in purity, so that +there are epochs of the history of the Church when its moral level is +possibly not higher than that which is represented in the roughest +books of the Old Testament: and through the whole of its later history +the Church is strangely fused with the world again, until they issue +both together into eternity. + +Men from all parts of the world visit Constance and Geneva, and delight +to look at the two famous rivers issuing pure and abundant from the +quiet lakes. An analogous pleasure belongs to the study of such books +of the New Testament as the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul's Epistle +to the Ephesians, which give us respectively the fortunes and the +theory of the Church at its origin. Later epochs of Church history +have possibly more richly diversified interests--such as the period of +the Councils, or the Middle Ages, or the Reformation. But the interest +of the earliest Church unmixed with the world, its principles fresh, +its inspirations strong, its native hue free from discolouring +elements, preoccupies us with a fascination which is unrivalled. The +divine society is young and inexperienced, but what it is and is meant +{4} to be we can see there better than anywhere else. We return, when +our minds are aching and our eyes are dim with the complexity and +obscurity of our latter-day problem, to learn insight and simplicity +again at those pure sources. + +And to the Christian believer these books are not only documents of +great historical importance as illustrative of a unique period: they +also represent to us in different forms the highest level of that +action of the divine Spirit upon the mind of man which we call +inspiration. St. Paul for instance, in this Epistle to the Ephesians +claims, as we shall find, to be an 'inspired' man, a recipient of +divine revelation, and makes a similar claim for the apostles and +prophets generally. 'By revelation,' he says, 'God made known unto me +the mystery (or divine secret), as I wrote afore in few words, whereby, +when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the mystery of +Christ; which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as +it hath now been revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets in the +Spirit.' Inspiration is a term not easily susceptible of definition. +We are inclined in our generation to recognize its limits more frankly +than has been done in the past, and {5} its compatibility even with +positive error on subjects which are matter of ordinary human inquiry +and not of divine revelation[1]; but its positive meaning in the region +of divine revelation--in what concerns God's moral will, purpose, +character and being, and the consequent moral and spiritual +significance of our human life--ought not to be less apparent to us +than formerly. Thus when we call a writer of the New Testament +'inspired' we must mean at least this: that the same divine Spirit who +put the message of God in the hearts of the prophets of old, and who +worked His perfect work without let and hindrance in the manhood of +Christ, is here so working upon the will and imagination, the memory +and intelligence, of one of Christ's commissioned witnesses as that he +shall interpret and not misinterpret the mind and person of his Master. +Practically, an inspired writer of the New Testament means a writer +under whom we can put ourselves to school to 'learn Christ' with {6} +whole-hearted confidence and faith. This, of course, gives an +additional reason of the most cogent force why we should continually +recur to the sacred books of the New Testament. If Christianity is to +be deterred from a fatal return to nature--that is to the religious or +irreligious tendencies of mankind when left to itself--or if it is to +be recalled when it has lapsed, this can only be by an appeal to +Scripture constantly reiterated and pressed home. There is for ever +the testing-ground alike of doctrine, of moral character, and of +ecclesiastical tendency; there is the only perfect image of the mind of +Christ. + + +ii. + +The Epistle to the Ephesians gives us St. Paul's gospel of the Catholic +Church. So far from being a man of one idea, St. Paul fascinates and +sometimes bewilders us by the intricacy and variety of his thoughts; +but like the innumerable leaves and twigs of some finely-grown tree +which emerge, all of them, through branches and boughs, out of one +great trunk, strong and straight, and one deep and firmly-set root, so +it is with the infinitely various topics and suggestions of St. Paul. +They run back {7} into a few dominant thoughts, which in their turn +have one trunk-line of developement and one root. The root is the +conviction, finally smitten into the soul of St. Paul at the moment of +his conversion on the road to Damascus, that Jesus is the Christ; and +the trunk-line of development is that which is involved in St. Paul's +special commission to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, that is to +say, the principle that the Christ is the saviour of Gentiles as of +Jews and on an equal basis--or in other words, that the Christian +church is catholic. + +When St. Paul acknowledged that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, this +of course meant that he remained no less than formerly an adherent of +the Jewish faith, and that he 'worshipped' without any breach of +continuity, 'the God of his fathers.' So he is fond of insisting[2]. +Thus to him the Church of Christ is still 'the commonwealth of Israel,' +God's ancient church, though reconstructed[3]. For the religion of +Israel had had for its main motive the hope of the Christ. All that +St. Paul now believed was that this hope had been realized, and +realized to the shame of Israel in One whom they had rejected {8} and +crucified. But if to believe that Jesus was the Christ involved no +breach with the religion of Israel, yet it did involve the recognition +that it had been reconstituted on a new basis, and in a way that +suggested to existing Israelites nothing less than a revolution. The +church of God had, in St. Paul's present belief, widened out from being +the church of one nation into being a catholic society, a society for +all mankind. + +If St. Paul's epistles are taken in those groups into which they +naturally divide themselves, we find that in the first group, that of +the two epistles to the Thessalonians, all his favourite topics are +present as it were in the germ, but nothing that is specially +characteristic of him is yet developed. The free admission of the +Gentiles into the Church is, with the accompanying hostility of the +Jews, assumed[4], but not much insisted upon; but in the interval +between these epistles and that to the Galatians the subject had gained +fresh and poignant interest. A party of Christians having their centre +at Jerusalem had been trying--in spite of the decision of the apostolic +council at Jerusalem--to reimpose upon the consciences of {9} Gentile +Christians, and with especial success in the Galatian province, the +obligation of circumcision; or in other words had been trying to make +it evident that the Church of God was as much as ever the people of the +Jews, and that Gentiles could only become Christians by becoming also +Jewish proselytes pledged to keep the law of Moses. In view of this +attempt St. Paul re-embarks upon his great campaign for the catholicity +of the Church, and in his epistles of the second group[5] (especially +those to the Galatians and the Romans) the catholicity of Christianity +is vindicated controversially upon the basis of the principle of +_justification by faith, not by works of the law_. + +The meaning and real importance of this doctrine ought not to be hard +for us to understand. To be justified means to be accepted or +acquitted by God. The Judaizers--that is the Christian representatives +of the narrower religious spirit of Israel--held that, as God's +covenant was with the Jews only, so men could obtain acceptance simply +by the observance of that Mosaic law which was to the Jew at once the +expression of the divine selection of his race, and the grounds of his +arrogant {10} contempt for all who had not 'Abraham to their +father[6].' But St. Paul had made trial of that theory, and had found +it wanting. The observance of the law and the glorying in Jewish +privileges had brought him no peace with God: had in fact served only +to produce and deepen a sense of inner alienation from God and +conviction of sin. Thus in acknowledging the messiahship of that Jesus +whom the chosen people had rejected and surrendered to be crucified, he +was abandoning utterly and for ever the standing-ground of Jewish +pride: he was acknowledging that the only divine function of the law +was to convince men of sin, and of their need of pardon and salvation: +he was taking his stand as a sinner among the Gentiles, and humbly +welcoming the unmerited boon of pardon and acceptance from the hand of +the divine mercy in Christ Jesus. When St. Paul in familiar arguments, +from the witness of the Old Testament itself, and from the moral +experience of men, convicts the law of inadequacy as an instrument of +justification, his reasoning is full of a strong feeling and conviction +bred of his own experiences. The true means of justification, he has +come to perceive, is faith, that is, {11} the simple acceptance of the +divine favour freely offered, and this is something that belongs to no +special race, but to all men as such. For all men everywhere, to whom +the light comes, can know that they are sinners in the sight of God, +and can accept simply from the hand of the divine bounty the unmerited +boon of forgiveness and acceptance in Christ. Thus, if faith and faith +alone is that whereby men are justified or commended to God, then at +once the catholic basis of the reconstituted Church is secured. All +men can belong to it who can feel their need and hear the Gospel and +take God at His word. This is the great principle vindicated in the +compressed and fiery arguments of the Epistle to the Galatians, and +then subsequently developed in the calmer and orderly procedure of the +Epistle to the Romans. + +But in the next group of epistles, written out of that captivity at +Rome the record of which closes the Acts of the Apostles, the same +doctrine of the catholicity of the Church is developed from a different +point of view. Now it is the thought of the person of Christ which has +come to occupy the foreground. All along St. Paul had believed that +Christ was the Son of God, the divine mediator of creation, who in +these {12} latter days had for our sakes humbled Himself to be made +man[7]. But this thought of Christ's person is elaborated and brought +into prominence in the third group of epistles[8], especially in the +Epistle to the Colossians. A tendency derived from Jewish sources was +manifesting itself among some of the Asiatic Christians to exalt +angelic beings, conceived probably as representing divine attributes +and powers, into objects of religious worship[9]. There is a certain +spurious humility which has in many ages, and not least in the +Christian Church, led men to shrink from direct approach to the high +and holy God and to resort to lower mediators, as more suitable to +their defiled condition and weakness. This sort of spurious humility +was already detected by St. Paul, in company with other Judaizing and +falsely ascetic tendencies, as a peril of the Asiatic churches, and +especially of the Colossians. + +But he will make no terms with it. Christ he teaches is the only and +the universal mediator, the one and only reconciler of all things to +the Father. And He is this because of the {13} position that belongs +to His person in the universe as a whole. He, as the Father's image or +counterpart, is His unique agent in all the work of creation. All +created things whatever, from the lowest to the highest, seen or +unseen, be they thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, are +the work of His hand. All were created through Him and have Him for +their end or goal, and He is the sustaining life of the whole universe +in all its parts. 'In Him all things consist' or have their unity in a +system. And because He occupies this position in the whole universe, +therefore a similar position and sovereignty belong to Him in the +spiritual kingdom of redemption. There too He is, through His manhood +and His sacrificial death upon the cross, the unique author of the +reconciliation with God. He is by His spirit the inherent life of the +redeemed, and the goal of all their perfecting. There is, in fact, no +divine quality, or attribute, or activity of God towards His creatures +which is not His. In Him it pleased the Father that all the fulness of +divine attributes and offices should dwell, and in Him as Son of God +made man dwells all this fulness bodily. The divine attributes, that +is, are not committed to a number of different mediators. {14} They +exist and are exercised in Him and in Him alone. It follows therefore +as a matter of course from this position of Christ in the universe and +in the church that the redemption effected by Him must be universal in +range and must extend equally and impartially to all. There 'cannot be +Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian and Scythian, +bond and free, but Christ is all and in all.' + +Thus in the Epistle to the Colossians[10] the doctrine of the +catholicity of Christianity is again vindicated controversially, and +logically based upon the catholic character of Christ and upon His +universal function in creation and redemption; and in the contemporary +Epistle to the Ephesians, without note of controversy, the doctrine of +the catholic church, the brotherhood of all men in Christ, the doctrine +which is, we may truly say, the culmination of all St. Paul's teaching, +is allowed to develope itself in all its glory on the assumed basis of +that teaching about Christ's person which had made any narrower idea of +the church already seem incongruous and impossible. In the earlier +dispensation in which the covenant of God was with one people, St. Paul +can see only a preparatory process through {15} which the eternal +purpose of God could at last be realized, and out of which His eternal +secret could at last be disclosed. That purpose so long kept secret, +and now revealed, is to gather together all nations and classes of men +into the one Church of God, one organized body, one brotherhood in +which all men are to find their salvation, and through which is to be +realized an even wider purpose for the whole universe. In this +doctrine of the catholic church St. Paul finds the expression of all +the length and breadth and height and depth of the divine love. Its +length, for it represents an age-long purpose slowly worked out; its +breadth, for it is a society of all men and for the whole universe; its +depth, for God has reached a hand of mercy down to the lowest gulfs of +sin and alienation from God; its height, for in this society men are +carried up into nothing less than union with God, to no lower seat than +the heavenly places in Christ. + +I have spoken of St. Paul's great arguments for the catholicity of the +Gospel as two. The first appears mainly as a polemic against the idea +of justification by works of the law. The second as a positive +argument about the person of Christ and the results which flow from the +right appreciation of it. But in fact there is {16} a necessary +connexion between the two. The narrow Judaism of the Galatian +reactionaries did in fact logically involve a narrow and therefore a +false conception of the person of Christ. As Dr. Hort expresses +it[11], 'to accept Jesus as the Christ without any adequate enlargement +of what was included in the Messiahship could hardly fail to involve +either limitation of His nature to the human sphere, or at most a +counting Him among the angels.' This logical connexion was in fact +verified in history. The Judaizers of the earliest period of Christian +history who insisted on circumcision for all Christians pass into the +Ebionites of the second century who rejected the Church's doctrine of +the person of Christ, as the eternal Son of God. And conversely it +would be scarcely possible to accept the doctrine of the universal +Christ, both divine and human, as St. Paul developes it, without +perceiving that men must be made acceptable to Him and to His Father by +something deeper and wider than any particular set of observances or +'works.' The relation therefore between the argument of St. Paul's +epistles to the Galatians and the Romans on the one side, and that of +his epistles to the Colossians and {17} the Ephesians on the other is +one of unity rather than of contrast. + +The relation of these two groups of epistles may be expressed also in +another way. The argument of the earlier epistles is directed towards +the Judaizers. Its purpose is to vindicate the right of the Gentiles +to an equal place and position with the Jews in the kingdom of God. +But at the time of the later group this right had been secured. On the +basis of their acknowledged title the ingress of Gentiles into the +churches of Asia had been even alarmingly rapid. Now it is time for +St. Paul to address himself to these emancipated Gentiles and to exhort +them in their turn not to relapse into unworthy and narrow conceptions +of their redeemer, or into conduct unworthy of their new position: they +must 'walk worthily of the vocation wherewith they are called.' + +Our present political situation in England offers an analogy which may +bring home to us the position of the Gentile Christians and the +function of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The time is past for us when +there is any necessity to contend that a vote should be given to all +responsible men. So far at least as the male population is concerned, +the title of the citizen {18} to the vote has been substantially +acknowledged; but the time is by no means past when the newly +enfranchised citizens need to be stimulated to realize what their +enfranchisement carries with it of privilege and responsibility. And +we may express this by saying that if our English political Epistle to +the Galatians has been written and has done its work, our Epistle to +the Ephesians is still surely very much needed. + +It is very strange, or at least would be strange if we were not +acquainted with the historical circumstances that have accounted for +it, that St. Paul has been, out of all proportion to the facts of the +case, identified in popular estimation with only the earlier of the two +great arguments described above, with that which has given the basis to +Protestantism, and not that which is, in fact, the charter of the +Catholic Church. + +We are all familiar with the fact that St. Paul taught the doctrine of +justification by faith, and insisted therefore on the necessity and +privilege of personal acceptance on the part of each individual of the +promises of God in Christ. We all know how, when this aspect of things +has been ignored and over-ridden--when an almost Jewish doctrine of the +merit of good works[12] {19} has been current in Christendom--it has +afforded a pretext for a Protestant reaction of the most +individualistic kind, of the kind which pays no regard to outward unity +or catholic authority. But certainly in St. Paul's own teaching there +is nothing individualistic in justifying faith. It is that by which +man wins admittance into the body of Christ; and the body of Christ is +an organized society, a catholic brotherhood. Salvation, as we shall +see, is as much social or ecclesiastical as it is individual; and +perhaps there is nothing more wanted to correct our ideas of what St. +Paul understood by justifying faith than an impartial study of the +Epistle to the Ephesians. It is true that this great epistle only +freely developes thoughts which were already unmistakably in St. Paul's +mind when he wrote his epistles to the Corinthians, and even those to +the Thessalonians. Already the social organization of the Church is a +prominent topic, and the ethics of Christianity are social ethics. But +now, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the idea of the Church has become +the dominant idea, and the ethical teaching can be justly characterized +in no other way than as a Christian socialism. + + +{20} + +iii. + +But it is time to examine somewhat more closely the circumstances under +which St. Paul wrote this epistle and their bearing upon its contents. +It was written by him during that imprisonment at Rome[13] the record +of which brings to an end the Acts of the Apostles. He can therefore +put into his appeals all the force which naturally belongs to one who +has sacrificed himself for his principles. 'I, Paul,' he writes, 'the +prisoner of Jesus Christ, on behalf of you Gentiles.' He speaks of +himself as 'an ambassador in a chain' bound, as he was no doubt, to the +soldier which kept him. But the fact that he is a prisoner does not +occupy a great place in his mind. In part this is because his +imprisonment was not of a highly restrictive character. The Acts +conclude by telling us that he was allowed to dwell in his own hired +dwelling and to receive all that came to him without let or hindrance +to his preaching. And the tone of the 'epistles of the first +captivity' is cheerful as to the present and hopeful for the +future[14]. But it is more important to notice that {21} the thought +of being in prison is apparently swallowed up in St. Paul's imagination +by other considerations. For, in the first place, St. Paul was, under +whatever restraints, at Rome. He had reached his goal--a new centre of +evangelization which was also the centre of the world. Step by step +the centre of Christian evangelization had passed toward Rome as its +goal. From Jerusalem, which told unmistakably that 'the salvation was +of the Jews,' it had moved to Antioch, where in a Greek city Jew met +Gentile on equal terms. From Antioch, under St. Paul's leadership, it +had passed to Corinth and Ephesus. These were indeed thoroughly +Gentile cities, and leading cities of the Empire, but they were +provincial. No imperial movement could rest satisfied till it +established itself at the centre of the great imperial +organization--till it had got to Rome. + +If we are to understand at all adequately the world in which St. Paul +wrote, the thought of the Roman Empire and of the unity which it was +giving the world must be clearly before our minds: and it will not be a +digression if we pause to dwell upon it at this point when we are +considering the significance of St. Paul's situation as at once a +prisoner and an evangelist in the great capital. + +{22} + +The Roman Empire brought the world, that is the whole of the known +world which was thought worth considering, into a great unity of +government. What had once been independent kingdoms had now become +provinces of the empire, and the whole of the Roman policy was directed +towards drawing closer the unity, and educating the provinces in Roman +ideas[15]. + +If we seek to define Roman unity a little more closely the following +elements will be found perhaps the most important for our purpose. (1) +It was a unity of government strongly centralized at Rome in the person +of the emperor. The letters of a provincial governor like Pliny to his +master Trajan at Rome reveal to us how even trivial matters, such as +the formation of a guild of firemen in Pliny's province of Bithynia, +were referred up to the emperor. Roman government was in fact personal +and centralized in a very complete sense, and had the uniformity which +accompanies such a condition. (2) This centralized personal government +is, of course, only possible where there is a well-organized system of +inter-communication between the widely-separated parts of a great {23} +empire. And there was this to an amazing extent in the Roman empire. +We find evidence of it in the great roads representing a highly +developed system of travelling. 'It is not too much to say that +travelling was more highly developed and the dividing power of distance +was weaker under the Empire than at any time before or since until we +come down to the present century.' This is what gives such a modern +and cosmopolitan flavour to the lives of men of the Empire as unlike +one another in other respects as Strabo and Jerome. We find the +evidence of such a system of inter-communication also, and not less +impressively, in the multiplied proofs afforded to us that every +movement of thought in the Empire must needs pass to Rome and establish +itself there. The rapid arrival of all oriental tendencies or beliefs +at Rome was, of course, what from the point of view of conservative +Romans meant the destruction of all that they valued in character and +ideals. 'The Orontes had poured itself into the Tiber.' But it was +none the less a fact of the utmost significance for the world's +progress. (3) The unity of the Empire depended largely on the use +which was made of Greek civilization and Greek language. The Empire +{24} may be rightly described, if we are considering its eastern half, +as Greek no less than Roman from the first. Everywhere it was the +Greek language which was the instrument of Roman government, and Greek +civilization, tempered by somewhat barbarous Roman 'games,' which was +put into competition with local customs whether social or +religious[16]. (4) Lastly, to a very real extent the Empire was aiming +at the establishment of a universal religion. Independent local gods +and local cults suited well enough a number of independent little +tribes and kingdoms, but it was felt instinctively that the one empire +involved also one religion, and with more or less of deliberate +intention the one religion was provided in the worship of the emperor, +or, perhaps we should say, of the Empire. + +This worship of the emperor has been among us a very byword for what is +monstrous and unintelligible. It bewilders us when we hear of +something like it in our own Indian empire. And yet a little +imagination ought to show us that where a pure monotheism has not +taught men the moral purity and personal character of God--where +religion is either pantheism, the deification of the one life, or +idolatry, the deification {25} of separate forms of life--the worship +of the imperial authority is intelligible enough. Here was a vast +power, universal in its range, mostly beneficent, and yet awful in its +limitless and arbitrary power of chastisement; what should it be but +divine, like nature, and an object to be appealed to, propitiated, +worshipped? At any rate the cultus of the emperor spread in the Roman +world, and particularly in the Asiatic provinces. It could ally itself +with the current pantheistic philosophy and also with popular local +cults: for it was tolerant of all and could embrace them all, or in +some cases it could identify itself with them--the emperor being +regarded as a special manifestation of the local god. And it made +itself popular through games--wild beast shows and gladiatorial +contests--which it was the business of its high priests or presidents +to provide or to organize. Thus it was that the Roman world came to be +organized by provinces for the purposes of the imperial religion, and +the provincial presidents, whom we hear of in the Acts as 'Asiarchs' or +'chiefs of Asia,' and from other sources as existing in the other +provinces--Galatarchs, Bithyniarchs, Syriarchs, and so on--were also +the high priests of the worship of the Caesars, by which it was sought +{26} to make religion, like everything else, contribute to cement +imperial unity[17]. + +Now there can be no doubt at all, if we look back from the fourth or +fifth centuries of our era, to how vast an extent this Roman unity had +been made an engine for the propagation of the Church. And the +Christians--the Spanish poet Prudentius, for instance, or Pope Leo the +Great[18]--betray a strong consciousness of the place held by the +empire in the divine preparation for Christ. For long periods the +Roman authority was tolerant of Christianity and suffered its +propagation to go on in peace; and at the times when it became alarmed +at its subversive tendencies, and turned to become its persecutor, +still the Church could not be prevented from using the imperial +organization, its roads and its means of communication. Again, every +step in the progress of the Greek language facilitated the spread of +the new religion, the propagation of which was through Greek; and +conversely Christianity became an instrument for spreading the use of +this language which previously was making but a poor struggle against +the languages {27} of Asia Minor; for it is apparently a simple mistake +to suppose that even the apostles were miraculously dispensed from the +difficulties of acquiring new languages, and were enabled to speak all +languages as it were by instinct. Even the imperial religion provided +a framework to facilitate the organization of that still more imperial +religion which it found indeed absolutely incompatible with its +prerogatives, but in which it might have found an efficient substitute +to accomplish its own best ends. Thus the early Christian apologist +Tatian pleads that Christianity alone could supply what was manifestly +needed for a united world, a universal moral law and a universal +gratuitous education or philosophy, open to rich and poor, men and +women, alike[19]. So strong in fact was in many respects the affinity +of the Empire and the Church that the apologists are not infrequently +able to claim, and that plausibly, that if the Roman authorities were +ready to recognize it, they would find in the Church their most +efficient ally. + +And there is no doubt that all this tendency to use the empire as the +ally and instrument of the Church began with St. Paul. The closer St. +Paul's evangelistic travels are examined the {28} more apparent does it +become that he, the apostle who was also the Roman citizen, was by the +very force of circumstances, but also probably deliberately, working +the Church on the lines of the empire. 'The classification adopted in +Paul's own letters of the churches which he founded, is according to +provinces--Achaia, Macedonia, Asia, and Galatia; the same fact is +clearly visible in the narrative of Acts. It guides and inspires the +expressions from the time when the apostle landed at Perga. At every +step any one who knows the country recognizes that the Roman division +is implied[20].' Nor can we fail to be struck with the regularity with +which St. Paul, wherever he mentions the Empire, takes it on its best +side and represents it as a divine institution whose officers are God's +ministers for justice and order and peace[21]. It is from this point +of view alone that he will have Christians think of it and pray for +it[22]. There is the confidence of the true son of the empire in his +'I appeal unto Caesar[23].' + +Further than this, when St. Paul is addressing himself to Gentiles who +had received no leavening of Jewish monotheism, it is most striking +{29} how he throws himself back on those common philosophical and +religious ideas which were permeating the thought of the Empire. 'The +popular philosophy inclined towards pantheism, the popular religion was +polytheistic, but Paul starts from the simplest platform common to +both. There exists something in the way of a divine nature which the +religious try to please and the philosophers try to understand[24].' +Close parallels to St. Paul's language in his two recorded speeches at +Lystra and at Athens, can be found in the writings of the contemporary +Stoic philosopher Seneca[25], and in the so-called 'Letters of +Heracleitus' written by some philosophic student nearly contemporary +with St. Paul at Ephesus[26]. In exposing the folly of idolaters he +was only doing what a contemporary philosopher was doing also, and +repeating ideas which he might have learnt almost as readily in the +schools of his native city Tarsus--which Strabo speaks of as the most +philosophical place in the world, and the place where philosophy was +most of all an indigenous plant[27]--as at the {30} feet of Gamaliel in +Jerusalem. Certainly Paul the apostle to the Gentiles was also Saul of +Tarsus and the citizen of the Roman Empire in whose mind the idea and +sentiment of the empire lay already side by side with the idea of the +catholic church. + +Such a statement as has just been given of the relation of the Roman +organization to the Church is undoubtedly true. And it is also +indisputable that St. Paul was in fact the pioneer in using the empire +for the purposes of the Church. But it is more questionable to what +extent the idea of the empire as the handmaid of the Church was +consciously and deliberately, or only unconsciously or instinctively, +present to his mind; and in particular it is questionable how far the +peculiar exaltation of the epistles of the first captivity is due to +St. Paul's realization that in getting to Rome, the capital and centre +of the Empire, he had reached a goal which was {31} also a fresh and +unique starting-point for the evangelization of the world. + +To some extent this must certainly have been the case[28]. While he is +at Ephesus[29] preaching, he already has Rome in view, and a sense of +unaccomplished purpose till he has visited it, 'I must also see Rome.' +When a little later he writes to the Romans, the name of Rome is a name +both of attraction and of awe. He is eager to go to Rome, but he seems +to fear it at the same time. So much as in him lies, he is ready to +preach the gospel to them also that are at Rome. Even in face of all +that that imperial name means, he is not ashamed of the Gospel[30]. + +Later the divine vision at Jerusalem assures him that, as he has borne +witness concerning Christ at Jerusalem, so he must bear witness also at +Rome[31]. The confidence of this divine purpose mingles with and +reinforces the confidence of the Roman citizen in his appeal to Caesar. +The sense of the divine hand upon him to take him to Rome is +strengthened by another vision amid the terrors of the sea voyage[32]. +At his first contact with the Roman {32} brethren 'he thanked God and +took courage[33].' This sense of thankfulness and encouragement +pervades the whole of the first captivity so far as it is represented +in his letters. He had reached the goal of his labours and a fresh +starting-point for a wide-spreading activity. + +Certainly no one can mistake the glow of enthusiasm which pervades the +epistles of the first captivity generally, but especially the Epistle +to the Ephesians. It is conspicuously, and beyond all the other +epistles, rapturous and uplifted. And this is not due--as is the +cheerful thankfulness of the Epistle to the Philippians, at least in +part--to the specially intimate relations of St. Paul to the +congregations he was addressing, or to the specially satisfactory +character of their Christian life. On the contrary, St. Paul perceived +that the Asiatic churches, and especially Ephesus, were threatened by +very ominous perils. 'Very grievous wolves were entering in, not +sparing the flock; and among themselves men were arising, speaking +perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them[34].' St. +Paul's rapturous tone must be accounted for by causes independent of +the Ephesian or Asiatic Christians in particular. {33} Among these +causes, as we have just seen, must be reckoned the fact, the +significance of which we have been dwelling upon, that St. Paul had now +reached Rome, the centre of the Gentile world. But it must also be +remembered that St. Paul had seen a great conflict fought out and won +for the catholicity of Christianity, and that now for the first time +there was a pause and freedom to take advantage of it. + +A great conflict had been fought and won. The backbone of the earlier +Jewish opposition to the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles on +equal terms had been broken. They had in fact swept into the Church in +increasing numbers. Their rights were recognized and their position +uncontested. There is now, in the comparative quiet of the 'hired +house' where St. Paul was confined, a period of pause in which he can +fitly sum up the results which have been won, and let the full meaning +of the catholic brotherhood be freely unfolded. It is time to pass +from the rudiments of the Christian gospel, the vindication of its most +elementary principles and liberties, the 'milk for babes,' to expound +the spiritual wisdom of the full-grown Christian manhood, the 'solid +meat for them of riper years.' + +{34} + +It is this sense of pause in conflict and free expansion in view of a +vast opportunity, which in great part at least interprets the glow and +glory of St. Paul's epistle. + + +iv. + +The Epistle to the Ephesians might, so far as its contents are +concerned, have been addressed to any of the predominantly Gentile +churches; but to none more fitly than to Ephesus and to the churches of +Asia, where the progress of Gentile Christianity had been so rapid, and +where St. Paul's ministry had been so unusually prolonged. Let us +attempt to answer the questions--what was Ephesus? what was the +history, and what were the circumstances of the Ephesian church? + +Ephesus had a double importance as a Greek and as an Asiatic city. A +colony of Ionians from Athens had early settled on some hills which +rose out of a fertile plain near the mouth of the Cayster. This was +the origin of the Greek city of Ephesus. Its position gave it +admirable commercial advantages. It became the greatest mart of +exchange[35] between East {35} and West in Asia Minor, and though its +commerce was threatened by the filling up of its harbour, it had not +decayed in St. Paul's time. + +Among Greek cities it also occupied a not inconspicuous place in the +history of art, and at an earlier period of philosophy also. Here was +one of the chief homes of the Homeric tradition; hence in the person of +Callinus the Greek elegy is reputed to have had its origin, and in the +person of Hipponax the satire. It was the home of Heracleitus, one of +the greatest of the early philosophers, and of Apelles and Parrhasius, +the masters of painting[36]. + +And the greatest artists in sculpture--Phidias and Polycletus, Scopas +and Praxiteles--had adorned with their works the temple of Artemis, +which, in itself one of the wonders of the world, the masterpiece of +Ionic architecture, became also, like some great Christian cathedral, a +very museum of sculpture and painting. + +If Greek artists built and decorated the temple of Artemis, they +attempted no doubt to represent the goddess under the form which her +Greek name suggested, the beautiful huntress-goddess; but the Greeks +never in fact succeeded in {36} affecting the thoroughly Asiatic and +oriental character of a worship which had nothing Greek about it except +the name. The interest of Ephesus as an Asiatic city centred about +that ancient worship which had its home in the plain below the Greek +settlement. It was there before the Greeks came, it held its own +throughout and in spite of all Greek and Roman influences; all through +the history of Ephesus it gave its main character to the city--the +noted home of superstition and sorcery. + +The Artemis of Ephesus was, as Jerome remarks[37], not the +huntress-goddess with her bow, but the many-breasted symbol of the +productive and nutritive powers of nature, the mother of all life, free +and untamed like the wild beasts who accompanied her. The grotesque +and archaic idol believed to have fallen down from heaven was a stiff, +erect mummy covered with many breasts and symbols of wild beasts. Her +worship was organized by a hierarchy of eunuch priests--called by a +Persian name Megabyzi--and 'consecrated' virgins. It was associated, +like other worships of the same divinity called indifferently Artemis +or Cybele or Ma, with ideals of life which from the point {37} of view +of any fixed moral order, Roman or Greek no less than Jewish or +Christian, was lawless and immoral. + +It is very well known how the Asiatic nature-worships flooded the Roman +empire, and even at Rome itself became by far more popular than the +traditional state religion. And among these Asiatic worships none was +more popular than the worship of Artemis of Ephesus, whose temple was +the wonder of the world, and who not only was worshipped publicly at +Ephesus, but was the object of a cult both public and private in +widely-separated parts of the empire. Such a temple and such a worship +would naturally collect a base and corrupt population; but what would +in any case have been bad was rendered worse by the fact that the area +round the temple was an asylum of refuge from the law, and that, as the +area of 'sanctuary' was extended at different times, the collection of +criminals became greater and greater. It had reached a point where it +threatened the safety of the city, and not long before St. Paul's time +the Emperor Augustus had found it necessary to curtail the area. The +history of our own Westminster is enough to assure us that a religious +asylum brings social degradation in its train. + +{38} + +Such was the commercial and religious importance of the beautiful, +wealthy, effeminate, superstitious, and most immoral city which became +for three years the centre of St. Paul's ministry. On his second +missionary journey St. Paul was making his way to Asia, and no doubt to +Ephesus, when he with his companions were hindered by the Holy Ghost +and turned across the Hellespont to Macedonia[38]. On his return to +Syria, he could not be satisfied without at least setting foot in +Ephesus and making a beginning of preaching there in the synagogue[39]; +but he was hastening back to Jerusalem, and, with a promise of return, +left his work there to Priscilla and Aquila. On his third missionary +journey Ephesus was the centre of his prolonged work. It was +accordingly the only city of the first rank which, so far as any +trustworthy evidence goes, had as the founder of its Church in the +strictest sense--that is, as the first gatherer of converts as well as +organizer of institutions--either St. Paul or any other apostle[40]. + +St. Paul's first activity on arriving at Ephesus illustrates the stress +he laid on the gift of the Holy Ghost as the central characteristic of +{39} Christianity. He was brought in contact with the twelve imperfect +disciples who had been baptized only with John the Baptist's baptism, +and had not so much as heard whether the Holy Ghost was given. St. +Paul baptized them anew with Christian baptism, and bestowed upon them +the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of his hands[41]. Then it +is recorded how he began his preaching as usual with the Jews in the +synagogue. The Jews of Asia Minor were regarded by the Jews of +Jerusalem as corrupted and Hellenized[42]. But at any rate they +exhibited the same antagonism to the preaching of Christianity as their +stricter brethren. Thus St. Paul, when he had given them their chance, +abandoned their synagogue and established himself in the lecture-room +of Tyrannus, where he taught for two years and more[43]. And this +became the centre of an evangelization which, even if St. Paul himself +did not visit other Asiatic towns, yet spread by the agency of his +companions over the whole of the Roman {40} province of Asia--to the +churches of the Lycus, Colossae, Laodicea, Hierapolis, and probably to +the rest of the 'seven churches' to which St. John wrote in his +Apocalypse. + +Ephesus was full of superstitions of all sorts as would be expected, +and St. Paul's miracles were such as would not unnaturally have led the +magicians to regard him as a greater master in their own craft. So +among others the Jewish chief priest Sceva's seven sons began to use +the central name of Paul's preaching as a new and most efficient +formula for exorcism. 'We adjure thee by Jesus whom Paul preaches.' +But it is frequently noticeable that St. Paul refused to allow himself +to use superstition as a handmaid of religion. The providential +disaster which befell these exorcists gave St. Paul an opportunity of +striking an effective blow where it was most needed against exorcism +and magic. The Christian converts came and confessed their +participation in the black arts, and burnt their books of incantations, +in spite of their value. The whole transaction must have impressed +vividly in the minds of the Ephesians the contrast between Christianity +and superstition. + +St. Paul had already encountered opposition as well as success at +Ephesus, for when, writing {41} from Ephesus, he speaks to the +Corinthians[44] of having 'fought with beasts' there, the reference is +probably to what had befallen him in the earlier part of his residence +through the plots of the Jews; that long Epistle to the Corinthians can +hardly have been written _after_ the famous tumult recorded in the +Acts. But that tumult, raised by the manufacturers of the silver +shrines of Artemis, was of course the most important persecution which +befell St. Paul at Ephesus. The narrative of it[45] is exceedingly +instructive. We notice the friendliness of the Asiarchs, i.e. the +presidents of the provincial 'union' and priests of the imperial +worship, and the opinion of the town clerk, that St. Paul must be +acquitted of any insults to the religious beliefs of the Ephesians[46]. +Christianity had not, it appears, yet excited the antipathy of the +religious or civil authorities of the Empire, but it had begun to +threaten the pockets of those who were concerned in supplying the needs +of the worshippers who thronged to the great {42} temple at Ephesus. +We need not inquire exactly how the little silver shrines of Artemis +were used; but they were much sought after, and their production gave +occupation to an important trade. The trade was threatened by the +spread of Christianity. The philosophers despised indeed the +idolatrous rites, but they despised also the people who practised them, +and had no hope or idea of converting them[47]. St. Paul was the first +teacher at Ephesus who touched the fears of the idol makers by bringing +a pure religion to the hearts of the ordinary people. Hence the tumult +against the teachers of the new religion, raised not by the civil or +religious authorities of Ephesus, but simply by the trade interest. + +As soon as it was over St. Paul left Ephesus not to return there again. +But on his way back to Jerusalem he came not to Ephesus but to Miletus, +and sending for the Ephesian presbyters thither, he made them a +farewell speech[48], which is in conspicuous harmony with the features +of his later Epistle to the Ephesians. Already the doctrines of a +divine purpose or {43} counsel now revealed, of the Church in general +as the object of the divine self-sacrifice and love, and of the Holy +Ghost as accomplishing her sanctification and developing her structure, +appear to be prominent in his mind, and to have become familiar topics +with the Ephesian Christians. 'I shrank not from declaring unto you +the whole counsel of God. Take heed unto yourselves and to all the +flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the +church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.... And now I +commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to +build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all them that are +sanctified.' These words from St. Paul's speech to the Ephesian +presbyters are in remarkable affinity with the teaching of our epistle. + + +v. + +We have been assuming that this epistle was addressed to Ephesus, but +there are reasons to believe that it was not addressed to Ephesus only, +but rather generally to the churches of the Roman province of Asia, of +which Ephesus was the chief. The reasons for thinking this are {44} +partly internal to the epistle. St. Paul's personal relations to +individual Ephesian Christians must have been many and close, and we +know his habit of introducing personal allusions and greetings into his +epistles; but the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians is destitute of +them altogether, contrasting in this respect even with the Epistle to +the Colossians, written at the same time to a church which St. Paul +himself never visited. This would be a most inexplicable fact if the +Epistle to the Ephesians were really a letter to this one particular +church. More than this, St. Paul speaks in several passages in a way +which implies that he and those he wrote to were dependent on what they +had heard for mutual knowledge--'having heard of the faith in the Lord +Jesus that is among you'--'if so be ye have heard of the dispensation +of the grace of God which was given me to youward.' Such language is +much more natural if he is writing to others besides the Ephesians. +And this evidence internal to the substance of the epistle coincides +with evidence of the manuscripts. Very early manuscripts, some of +those which remain to us and some which are reported to us by primitive +scholars, omit the words 'in Ephesus' from St. Paul's opening greeting +'To the saints {45} and faithful brethren which are [in Ephesus].' +This fact, coupled with the absence of personal reminiscences in the +epistle, has suggested the idea that it was in fact a circular letter +to the saints and faithful brethren at a number of churches of the +Roman province of Asia, and that where the words 'in Ephesus' stand in +our text, there was perhaps a blank left in the epistle as St. Paul +dictated it, which was intended to be filled up in each church where it +was read. This is a view which has to a certain extent a special +interest for us in Westminster because, if it was first suggested by +the Genevan commentator Beza, it was elaborated by Archbishop Ussher, +who is identified with our Abbey by residence and by the memorable +record of his entombment in our abbey church with Anglican rites by the +command of Cromwell. It follows naturally from such a view that when +St. Paul writes to the Colossians and bids them send their letter to +Laodicea, and read that which comes from Laodicea[49], the letter which +they should expect from Laodicea would be none other than the so-called +Epistle to the Ephesians which was to be read by them as well as the +other Asiatic Christians. + + +{46} + +vi. + +Enough perhaps has now been said to give a general idea of the +conditions under which this great epistle was written; and the topics +of the epistle have been already indicated. Its central theme is that +of the great catholic society, the renovated Israel, the Church of God. +In this catholic brotherhood St. Paul sees the realization of an +age-long purpose of God, the fulfilment of a long-secret counsel, now +at last disclosed to His chosen prophets. He sees nothing incongruous +in finding in the yet young and limited societies of Christian +disciples the consummation of the divine purpose for the world, for +these societies represent the breaking down of all barriers and the +bringing of all men to unity with one another through a recovered unity +with God, through Christ and in His Spirit. Therefore the work which +the Church is to accomplish is nothing less than a universal work, a +work not even limited to humanity; it is the bringing back of all +things visible or invisible into that unity which lies in God's +original purpose of creation. St. Paul long ago had spoken to the +Corinthians of a spiritual wisdom which they were not yet ready to +listen {47} to. But now St. Paul seems to feel--for reasons which we +have tried in part to interpret--that the time has come when all the +depth and richness of the divine secret may be spoken out. No wonder +that the subject stirs his imagination and gives to his whole tone an +uplifting and a glory without parallel in his other writings. And yet +it would be altogether false to attach to this epistle any associations +such as are commonly connected with flights of imagination or the +language of rhapsody. For the epistle has the most direct bearing on +matters of practical life. If St. Paul glorifies the Christian ideal +it is in order that all that weight of glory may be brought to bear +upon the Asiatic Christians to force them to see that their personal +and social conduct must have a purity, a liberality, a wisdom, a love, +a power, commensurate with the greatness of those motives which are +acting upon them in their new Christian state. + + + +[1] The Committee of the Conference of Bishops at Lambeth, 1897, in a +report commended by the bishops as a body to the 'consideration of all +Christian people,' write: 'Your committee do not hold that a true view +of Holy Scripture forecloses any legitimate question about the literary +character or literal accuracy of different parts or statements of the +Old Testament.' + +[2] Acts xxiv 14; xxvi. 6, 7, 22, 23; 2 Tim i. 3. + +[3] Eph. ii. 12-19. + +[4] 1 Thess. ii. 14-16. + +[5] Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans. + +[6] See app. note C, p. 257. + +[7] Acts ix. 20; 1 Cor. viii. 6; Rom. ix. 5; 2 Cor. viii. 9; Gal. iv. 4. + +[8] Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, Philemon. + +[9] Col. ii. 18: 'by a voluntary humility (or 'taking delight in +humility') and worshipping of the angels.' + +[10] See i. 13-20; ii. 2, 3, 9-23; iii. 11. Cf. i. 27-28. + +[11] Hort, _Judaistic Christianity_ (Macmillan, 1894), p. 125. + +[12] Cf. app. note C, p. 257. + +[13] Cf. Hort, _Prolegomena to Romans and Ephesians_ (Macmillan, 1895), +p. 100. + +[14] Col. iv. 2-4; Philemon 22; Phil. i. 12-14. + +[15] Ramsay, _Paul the Traveller_ (Hodder and Stoughton, 1895), pp. 130 +ff. + +[16] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 132. + +[17] See Mommsen, _Provinces of Roman Empire_ (Eng. trans.), i. 344 +ff.; Lightfoot, _Ign. and Polyc._ iii. pp. 404 ff. + +[18] App. note A, p. 251. + +[19] Tatian, _Ad Graecos_, 28, 32. + +[20] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 135. + +[21] Rom. xiii. 1-7; cf. ii. Thess. ii. 6. + +[22] 1 Tim. ii. 1, 2. + +[23] Acts xxv. 12. + +[24] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 147. + +[25] Lightfoot, _Galatians_, 'St. Paul and Seneca,' pp. 287 ff. + +[26] See app. note B, p. 253. + +[27] 'The zeal of its inhabitants for philosophy and general culture is +such that they have surpassed even Athens and Alexandria and all other +cities where schools of philosophy can be mentioned. And its +pre-eminence in this respect is so great because there the students are +all townspeople, and strangers do not readily settle there.' Strabo, +xiv. v. 13. I do not suppose that St. Paul received any formal +education in Greek schools at Tarsus. But I think we must assume that +at some period St. Paul had sufficient contact with Gentile educated +opinion, whether at Tarsus or elsewhere, to be acquainted with +widely-spread religious and philosophical tendencies. + +[28] Cf. Hort, _Christian Ecclesia_, p. 143. + +[29] Acts xix. 21. + +[30] Rom. i. 15, 16. + +[31] Acts xxiii. 11. + +[32] Acts xxvii. 24. + +[33] Acts xxviii. 15. + +[34] Acts xx. 29, 30. + +[35] Among other articles of commerce, tents made in Ephesus had a +special reputation, and St. Paul and Aquila had special opportunities +there for the exercise of their trade. Acts xx. 34. + +[36] Strabo. xiv. 1, 25. + +[37] Migne, _P. L._ xxvi. 441. + +[38] Acts xvi. 6-10. + +[39] Acts xviii. 19. + +[40] Hort, _Prolegomena_, p. 83. + +[41] Acts xix. 1-7. + +[42] Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 143. + +[43] 'From the fifth to the tenth hour' (11 a.m. to 4 p.m.), an early +addition to the text of the Acts tells us; i. e. after work hours, when +the school would naturally be vacant and St. Paul would have finished +his manual labour at tent-making. Ramsay, _l.c._ p. 276. + +[44] 1 Cor. xv. 32. + +[45] Acts xix. 23 ff. + +[46] Prof. Ramsay asserts that instead of 'robbers of temples' (Acts +xix. 37), we should translate 'disloyal to the established government.' +_l.c._ p. 282. But the word is used in the former sense in special +connexion with Ephesus by Strabo, xiv. 1, 22, and Pseudo-Heracleitus, +_Ep._ 7, p. 64 (Bernays). + +[47] See app. note B, p. 253, on the contemporary 'letters of +Heracleitus.' + +[48] Acts xx. 17 ff. + +[49] Col. iv. 16. + + + + +{48} + +THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS + +CHAPTER I. 1-2. + +Salutation. + +[Sidenote: _Salutation_] + +St. Paul begins this, in common with his other epistles, with a brief +salutation to a particular church or group of churches, in which is +expressed in summary the authority he has for writing to them, the +light in which he regards them, and the central wish for them which he +has in his heart. + + +Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the saints +which are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you +and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. + + +Here, then, we have three compressed thoughts. + +1. The particular person Paul writes this letter because he is not +only a believer in Christ but also an 'apostle of Christ Jesus through +the will of God.' The word apostle is a more or less general word for +a delegate, as when St. Paul {49} speaks of the 'apostles (or +messengers) of the churches[1];' but by an apostle in its highest +sense, 'an apostle of Jesus Christ,' St. Paul meant one of those, +originally twelve in number, who had received personally from the risen +Christ a particular commission to represent Him to the world. This +particular and personal commission he claimed to have received, in +common with the twelve, though later than they--at the time of his +conversion. 'Am I not an apostle?' he cries. 'Have I not seen Jesus +our Lord[2]?' 'He appeared to me also as unto one born out of due +time[3].' 'In nothing was I behind the very chiefest apostles[4].' +And as his claim to the apostolate was challenged by his Judaizing +opponents he had to insist upon it, to insist that it is not a +commission from or through Peter and the other apostles, or dependent +upon them for its exercise, but a direct commission, like theirs, from +the Head of the Church Himself. He is, he writes to the Galatians, +'Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor (like those subsequently ordained +by himself or the other apostles, like a Timothy, or a Titus, or like +the later clergy) through man,' but directly through, {50} as well as +from, the risen Jesus whom his eyes had seen, and His eternal Father[5]. + +It is surely a consolation to us of the Church of England, who belong +to a church subject to constant attack on the score of apostolic +character, to remember that St. Paul's apostolate was attacked with +some excuse, and that he had to spend a great deal of effort in +vindicating it, and was in no way ashamed of doing so, because he +perceived that a certain aspect of the life and truth of the Church was +bound up with its recognition. + +2. And he writes to the Asiatic Christians as 'saints' and 'faithful +in Christ Jesus.' 'Saint' does not mean primarily what we understand +by it--one pre-eminent in moral excellence; but rather one consecrated +or dedicated to the service and use of God. The idea of consecration +was common in all religions, and frequently, as in the Asiatic worships +at Ephesus and elsewhere, carried with it associations quite the +opposite of those which we assign to holiness. But the special +characteristic of the Old Testament religion had been the righteous and +holy character which it ascribed to Jehovah. Consecration to Him, +therefore, is seen to require {51} personal holiness, and this +requirement is only deepened in meaning under the Gospel. But still +'the saints' means primarily the 'consecrated ones'; and all Christians +are therefore saints--'called as saints' rather than 'called to be +saints,' in virtue of their belonging to the consecrated body into +which they were baptized; saints who because of their consecration are +therefore bound to live holily[6]. 'The saints' in the Acts of the +Apostles[7] is simply a synonym for the Church. St. Paul then writes +to the Asiatic Christians as 'consecrated' and 'faithful in Christ +Jesus,' i. e. believing members incorporated by baptism; and he writes +to them for no other purpose than to make them understand what is +implied in their common consecration and common faith. + +3. And his good wishes for them he sums up in the terms 'Grace and +peace in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Grace is that free +and unmerited favour or good-will of God towards man which takes shape +in a continuous outflow of the very riches of God's {52} inmost being +and spirit into the life of man through Christ; and peace of heart, +Godward and manward, 'central peace subsisting at the heart of endless +agitation' is that by the possession and bestowal of which Christianity +best gives assurance of its divine origin. + +We notice that these divine gifts are ascribed to 'God our Father and +the Lord Jesus Christ.' St. Paul does not generally call Christ by the +title God, partly, no doubt, from long engrained habit of language, but +partly also because nothing was more important than that no language +should be used in the first propagation of Christianity which could +give excuse for confusing the Christian belief in the threefold Name +with the worship of many gods. But, from the first, Christ, in St. +Paul's language, is exalted as Lord into a simply divine supremacy, and +associated most intimately with all the most exclusively divine +operations in the world without, and in the heart of man within. +Moreover, St. Paul refuses absolutely to tolerate any association of +other, however exalted, beings with Christ in lordship or mediatorship, +all created beings whatever being simply the work of His hands[8]. +There remains, therefore, no room to {53} question that St. Paul +believed Christ to be strictly divine: to be Himself no creature, no +highest archangel, but one who, with the Holy Spirit alone, is truly +proper and essential to the divine being; and it affords us, therefore, +no manner of surprise that from time to time St. Paul actually calls +Christ God, as in the Epistle to the Romans 'who is over all, God +blessed for ever[9],' and probably in the Epistle to Titus 'our great +God and saviour Jesus Christ[10].' + + + +[1] 2 Cor. viii. 23. + +[2] 1 Cor. ix. 1. + +[3] 1 Cor. xv. 8. + +[4] 2 Cor. xii. 11. + +[5] Gal. i. 1. + +[6] Tertullian, _de An._ 39, rightly interprets 1 Cor. vii. 14, 'now +are they [the children of whose parents one was a Christian] holy,' as +meaning, now are they already consecrated and marked out for baptismal +sanctification by the prerogative of their birth. + +[7] Acts ix. 13, 33. + +[8] Cf. 1 Cor. viii. 6; Col. i. 16. + +[9] Rom. ix. 5. + +[10] Tit. ii. 13. + + + + +{54} + +DIVISION I. CHAPTERS I. 3-IV. 17. + +Sec. I. CHAPTER i. 3-14. + +_St. Paul's leading thoughts._ + +[Sidenote: _St. Paul's leading thoughts_] + +Before we read the opening paragraph of St. Paul's letter we had better +review the great thoughts which are prominent in his mind as he writes. +My ambition is to make my readers feel that ideas which, because they +have become Christian commonplaces or because they have been blackened +by controversy, have by this time a ring of unreality about them, or of +theological remoteness, or of controversial bitterness, are in fact, if +we will 'consider them anew,' ideas the most important, the most +practical, and the most closely adapted to the moral needs of the plain +man. + + +i. + +St. Paul writes to the Christians as 'in Christ,' 'in the beloved,' +'blessed with all spiritual benediction in the heavenly places in +Christ,' 'adopted {55} as sons through Jesus Christ.' We are all of us +perfectly familiar with the idea of Christ as, so to speak, a personal +and individual redeemer, as the holy and righteous one, the beloved and +accepted Son, who is risen from the dead and exalted to supreme +sovereignty in heaven. But popular theology has not been quite so +familiar with the idea that Christ was and is all this in our manhood, +not simply because He was God as well as man (true as this is); but +because as man He was anointed with the Holy Spirit of God: that it was +in the power of that Spirit that He lived His life of holiness and +wrought His miracles of power: that it was in the power of that Spirit +that He taught and suffered and died and was glorified. Nor has +popular Christianity been familiar with the resulting truth: that by +that divine Spirit which possessed Him as man, the life of Christ is +extended beyond Himself to take in those who believe in Him, and make +them members of 'the church which is his body.' Yet, in fact, this +extension is implied even in the name Christ. The king Messiah, the +Christ of the Old Testament, is but the central figure of a whole +kingdom associated with Him, and all the characteristic phrases for +Christ in the New Testament {56} express the same idea. He is the +'first-born among many brethren[1]'; He is the 'first fruits[2]' of a +great harvest; He is the 'head of the body[3]'; He is the 'bridegroom' +inseparable from 'the bride[4]'; He is the second Adam, that is, head +of a new humanity[5]. Thus if the heavens closed around the ascending +Christ, and hid Him from view, they opened again around the descending +Spirit, descending into the heart of the Christian society to +perpetuate Christ's life and presence there. This historical ascent +and descent only embody in unmistakable facts the truth that the +life-giving Spirit, who made the manhood of Christ so satisfying to our +moral aspirations, is also and with the same reality, though not with +the same perfection or freedom, living and working in that great +society which He founded to represent Him on earth. Because this +society is possessed by the Spirit, therefore it lives in the same life +as Christ, it and all its individual members are 'in Christ.' In one +place, indeed, St. Paul includes the Church, the body, with its head +under the one name 'the Christ[6].' + +[Sidenote: _Life in Christ_] + +It is because the Church thus shares Christ's {57} life that it is +already spoken of as sharing His exaltation. We 'sit together in the +heavenly places with Christ' for no other reason than because, though +we are on earth, our life is bound up invisibly but in living reality +with the life of the glorified Christ, and we have in Him free access +into the courts of heaven. For this reason again, as the fulness of +the divine attributes dwells in the glorified Christ--all the fulness +of the Godhead bodily, so the same fulness is attributed, ideally at +least, to the Church too. It too is 'the fulness of him that filleth +all in all.' To St. Paul's mind there is one true human life in which +men are one with one another because they are at one with God. That +true human life is Christ's life, which He once lived on earth, and +which He is at present living in the glory of God, and which is +fulfilled with all the completeness of the divine life itself. But +that true human life is also shared by each and every member of His +Church, without exception, without reference to race or learning, or +wealth, or sex, or age. + +I have said that this is ideally the case. This identification of +Christ with the Church, that is to say, is not yet fully realized. The +Church is not yet glorified, not yet morally perfected nor {58} full +grown in the divine attributes. Its particular members may be living +deceitful and dishonourable lives. This is to say in other words that +God's work in 'redemption of his own possession,' His acquirement of a +people to Himself, is not yet complete. The purchase-money is paid, +but it has not yet taken full effect. But redemption is an +accomplished fact in the sense that all the conditions of the final +success are already there. The ideal may be freely realized in every +Christian because he has received the 'earnest' or pledge of the +Spirit, the pledge, that is, of all that is to be accomplished in him. +And this Spirit was received by each Christian at a particular and +assignable moment. We know what stress St. Paul laid at Ephesus on +proper Christian baptism and the laying on of hands which followed +it[7]. By baptism men were spoken of as incorporated into Christ. +With the laying on of hands was associated the bestowal of the Spirit. +Henceforth a Christian had no need to ask for the Spirit as if He were +not already bestowed upon him; he had only to bring into practical use +spiritual forces and powers which the divine bounty had already put at +his disposal. + +{59} + +If we compare this set of ideas with those that have been current in +our popular theology, we shall find that the main difference lies in +this, that here the stress is laid on the work of Christ _in_ man by +His Spirit, while the theology which has been popular among us has laid +the stress rather on the 'vicarious' work of Christ outside us and +_for_ us, by making a propitiation for our sins. Now in fact this +latter doctrine is an unmistakable part of St. Paul's teaching in this +epistle and elsewhere. And all the mistakes to which it has led are +due to its not having been kept in proper relation to the set of ideas +which I have just been endeavouring to expound. 'Christ for us,' the +sacrifice of propitiation has been separated from 'Christ in us,' our +new life; whereas really the sacrifice was but a necessary removal of +an obstacle, preliminary to the new life. + +It was a necessary preliminary that Christ should put us on a fresh +basis, should enable us to break from our past and make a fresh start +in the divine acceptance. This He did by making atonement for our +sins, offering as a propitiatory sacrifice His life, even to the +shedding of His blood, that the Father might be enabled to forgive our +sins. This transaction is always {60} represented in the New Testament +as being the act of the Father as well as of the Son, for the divine +persons are not separable--neither an act by which the Son forces the +unwilling hand of the Father, nor an act in which the Father lays an +undeserved burden upon an unwilling Son--and the idea of propitiation +seems to St. Paul, as indeed it has seemed to men generally, a +thoroughly natural idea. Only in one place does he make any suggestion +as to why such a preliminary sacrifice of propitiation was necessary. +There[8] he seems to find the moral necessity for it in the fact that +through long ages God's 'forbearance' had left men to work through +their own resources and so to find out their need of Him. 'He suffered +all nations to walk in their own ways.' He 'winked at' or 'overlooked +times of ignorance.' He 'passed over sins[9].' This was part of His +educative process. One result of it, however, was a lowering of the +moral ideas entertained of the divine character. Thus God's +righteousness, which means holiness and compassion combined, needed to +be declared especially at that crisis of the divine dealings when God +was coming out towards {61} men, whom He had educated by His seeming +absence to feel their need of Him, with the offer of His love. The +free bounty of His mercy must not be misunderstood as if it were +indifference or laxity about moral wickedness. Thus the proclamation +of His compassion must be associated with something which would make +unmistakable the severity of His holiness and His moral claim. This +twofold end is what Christ accomplishes. Thus if He is the revealer of +the compassion of the Father, He also vindicates the divine character +by a great act of moral reparation, made in man's name and on man's +behalf, to the divine holiness which our sins have ignored and +outraged. This great act of reparation is consummated in the +bloodshedding of the Christ. The sacrifice of consummate obedience is +carried to its extreme point and accepted in its perfection. God in +Christ receives from man, and that publicly, a perfect reparation: an +acknowledgement without fault or drawback: a perfect sacrifice. Now +God can forgive the sins of men freely and without moral risk, if they +come to Him in the name of Christ. To come to God in the name of +Christ means, of course, to come in conscious moral identification of +one's self with Christ, with {62} His Spirit and His motives. The +faith which simply accepts the bounty of forgiveness through Christ's +sacrifice, must pass necessarily into the faith which corresponds +obediently with the divine love. Thus the purpose of the atonement is +never expressed as being that we should be let off punishment, or +simply that we should be forgiven, but rather that, being forgiven, we +should be united to Christ in His life[10]. The propitiation which +Christ offered is only the removal of a preliminary obstacle to our +fellowship with Him in the life of God. The work of Christ 'for us' +has no meaning or efficacy till it has begun to pass into the work of +Christ 'in us' by His assimilating Spirit. It was only as baptized +into Christ and sharing His Spirit that Christians could accept the +forgiveness of their sins through the shedding of Christ's blood. The +sacrament of new life is also the sacrament of absolution, and the +washing away of sins. Nothing in fact can be plainer in this Epistle +to the Ephesians than that 'the redemption through Christ's blood, even +the forgiveness of trespasses[11]' was only a preliminary removal of +{63} obstacles to that fellowship with God in Christ by His Spirit +which is the secret of the Church. + + +ii. + +[Sidenote: _Predestination_] + +St. Paul's mind is full of the idea of predestination. He delights to +contemplate the eternal purpose of God as lying behind what seems to us +the painfully slow method by which divine results are actually won. +What age-long processes have been necessary both among the Jews and +among the Gentiles before this young church, this divine society of man +with God has become possible! What slow working through 'times of +ignorance,' what infinite delay in the divine forbearance--as we should +now say, what age-long processes of developement! But St. Paul is +quite certain that the result is no afterthought, no accident of the +moment; but that from end to end of the universe there reaches a method +of the divine wisdom, and that here in the catholic church it has +arrived at an issue. 'God chose us in Christ before the foundation of +the world that we should be holy and without blemish (as spotless +victims) before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as +sons through Jesus Christ unto himself.' 'Fore-ordained {64} to be a +heritage according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after +the counsel of his will.' So he asseverates and repeats and insists. +There are, we may say, two ideas commonly associated with +predestination which St. Paul gives us no warrant for asserting. The +one is the predestination of individuals to eternal loss or +destruction. That God should create any single individual with the +intention of eternally destroying or punishing him is a horrible idea, +and, without prying into mysteries, we may say boldly that there is no +warrant for it in the Old or New Testaments. God is indeed represented +as predestinating men, like Jacob and Esau, to a higher or lower place +in the order of the world or the church. There are 'vessels' made by +the divine potter to purposes of 'honour,' and 'vessels' made to +purposes (comparatively) of 'dishonour[12]': there are more honourable +and less honourable limbs of the body[13]. But this does not prejudice +the eternal prospects of those who in this world hold the less +advantageous posts. With God is no respect of persons. Again God is +represented as predestinating men to moral hardness of heart where such +hardness is a judgement on previous wilfulness. Thus {65} men may be +predestined to temporary rejection of God, as in St. Paul's mind the +majority of the contemporary Jews were. That was their judgement, and +their punishment[14]. It was however not God's first intention for +them nor His last. Those chapters of St. Paul[15] which contain the +most terrible things about the present reprobation of the Jews contain +also the most emphatic repudiation of the idea that moral reprobation +was God's first idea for them, or His last. 'The gifts and calling of +God,' that is, His good gifts and calling, says St. Paul, speaking of +the now 'reprobate' Jews, are 'without repentance[16].' God's present +reprobation of them is only a process towards a fresh opportunity. +'God hath shut up all into disobedience that he might have mercy upon +all[17].' Men may baffle the original divine purpose, and that, so far +as their own blessedness is concerned, even finally: they may become +finally 'reprobate': but the divine purpose for them at its root +remains a purpose for good. 'God will have all men to be saved and to +come to the knowledge of the truth[18].' + +{66} + +And once again, the idea of a predestination for good, taking effect +necessarily and irrespective of men's co-operation, is an idea which +has been intruded unjustifiably into St. Paul's thought. It exalts his +whole being to consider that he is co-operating with God, and that the +conditions under which he lives represent a divine purpose with which +he is called to work. It is this which makes him feel it is worth +while working: it is this which nerves and sustains him in all +sufferings, and enlarges his horizon in all restraints: but he never +suggests that it does not lie within the mysterious power of his own +will to withdraw himself from co-operation with God. It is at least +conceivable to him that he should himself be rejected[19]. In that +famous list of external forces which he feels are unable to tear him +from the grasp of the divine love, his own will is not included[20], +nor could be included without gross inconsistency. + +Beyond all question there is here one problem which remains for all +time unsolved and insoluble--the relation of divine fore-knowledge[21] +{67} to human freedom. If we men are free to choose, how can it be, or +can it really be the case at all, that God knows beforehand actually +how each individual will behave in each particular case? This is a +problem which we cannot fathom any more than we can fathom any of the +problems which require for their solution an experience of what an +absolute and eternal consciousness can mean. But the problem belongs +to metaphysics. It inheres in the idea of eternity and God. The Bible +neither creates it nor solves it. We may say it does not touch it. + +Certainly when St. Paul dwells upon the thought of divine +predestination he dwells upon it in order to emphasize that, through +all the vicissitudes of the world's history, a divine purpose runs; and +especially that God works out His universal purposes through specially +selected agents 'his elect,' on whom His choice rests for special ends +in accordance with an eternal design and intention. And the sense of +co-operating with an eternal purpose of God inspires and strengthens +him. For God will not drop His work by the way. Whom He did foreknow +or mark out beforehand for His divine purposes, them He also +foreordained or predestinated to sonship, and in due time called into +the number {68} of His elect, and justified them, that is, pardoned +their sins and gave them a new standing-ground in Christ, and glorified +or will glorify them by the gradual operation of His grace[22]. The +steps or moments of the divine action recognized in the Epistle to the +Romans are practically the same as those alluded to in the Epistle to +the Ephesians. There also is the eternal choice, and the +predestination to sonship, and at a particular time the call into the +Church, and the justification or remission of sins through the blood of +Christ, and the gradual promotion through sanctification to glory. And +the moral fruit of contemplating God's eternal purpose for His elect, +and the stages of His work upon them, is to be cheerful confidence of a +right sort. God will not drop them by the way, nor the work which they +are 'called' to accomplish. 'God who hath begun a good work will +perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ[23].' Wherever St. Paul +recognizes a movement towards good in the single soul or in the world, +he knows that it is no accidental or passing phase: it has its roots in +the eternal will, and unless we resist it in wilful obstinacy, the +eternal will shall at last {69} carry it on to perfection. 'There +shall never be one lost good.' + +It is not out of place to notice in this connexion how closely akin is +St. Paul's thought to the modern philosophy of evolution. Only to St. +Paul the slow process of cosmic or human evolution is in no kind of +opposition to the idea of divine design. + + +iii. + +[Sidenote: _The elect_] + +This predestinated body, the Church, is what in another word St. Paul +calls the 'elect' or 'chosen.' The idea of election has had a very +false turn given to it, partly through mistakes which have been already +alluded to, partly because the idea of election has been separated from +another idea with which in the Bible it is most closely associated, the +idea of a universal purpose to which the elect minister. No thought +can be more prominent in the Old Testament than the thought that some +men out of multitudes have been chosen by God to be in a special +relation of intimacy with Him. 'You only have I known, O Israel, of +all the families of the earth.' But this election to special knowledge +of God, and special spiritual opportunity, {70} carries with it a +corresponding responsibility. It is no piece of favouritism on God's +part. The greater our opportunity the more is required of us. 'You +only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore will I +visit upon you all your iniquities[24].' The fact is that the +principle of inequality in capacity and opportunity runs through the +whole world both in individuals and in societies. A great genius or a +great nation has special privileges and opportunities, but also, in the +sight of God who judges men according to their opportunities, special +responsibilities. But also (and this is by far the most important +point) the special vocation of every elect individual or body is for +the sake of others[25]. It is God's method to work through the few +upon the many. That is the law of ministry which binds all the world +of strong and weak, of rich and poor, of learned and ignorant, into +one. Thus Abraham had been chosen alone, but it was that, through his +seed, all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Israel was +exclusively the people of God, but it was in order that all nations +should learn from them at last the word of God. The apostles were {71} +the first 'elect' in Christ with a little Jewish company. 'We'--so St. +Paul speaks of the Jewish Christians--'we who had before hoped in +Christ.' But it was to show the way to all the Gentiles ('ye also, who +have heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation,') who +were also to constitute 'God's own possession' and His 'heritage.' The +purpose to be realized is a universal one: it is the re-union of man +with man, as such, by being all together reunited to God in one body. +And this idea is to have application even beyond the bounds of +humanity. Unity is the principle of all things as God created the +world. 'In Christ,' St. Paul writes to the Colossians, 'all things +consist' or 'hold together in one system[26].' It is only sin, whether +in man or in the dimly-known spiritual world which lies beyond, which +has spoiled this unity, and in separating the creatures from God has +separated them from one another. And the Church of the reconciliation +is God's elect body to represent a divine purpose of restoration far +wider than itself--extending in fact to all creation. It is the divine +purpose, with a view to 'a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to +sum up' or 'bring together again in unity' all things in {72} Christ; +the things in the heaven, the dim spiritual forces of which we have +only glimpses, and the things upon the earth which we know so much +better. + +This great and rich idea of the election of the Church as a special +body to fulfil a universal purpose of recovery, cannot be expressed +better than in the very ancient prayer which forms part of the paschal +ceremonies of the Latin liturgy. 'O God of unchangeable power and +eternal light, look favourably on Thy whole Church, that wonderful and +sacred mystery, and by the tranquil operation of Thy perpetual +providence, carry out the work of man's salvation; and let the whole +world feel and see that things which were cast down are being raised +up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and all things +are returning to perfection through Him, from whom they took their +origin, even through our Lord Jesus Christ.' + + +iv. + +[Sidenote: _The divine secret disclosed_] + +This universal reconciliation through a catholic church was God's +eternal purpose, but it was kept secret from the ages and the +generations, only at last to be disclosed to His {73} apostles and +prophets. The word 'mystery' in the New Testament means mostly a +divine secret which has now been disclosed. Just as the secret of +Nebuchadnezzar's dream, i.e. the purpose of God in the then order of +the world, was imparted to Daniel, so now the great disclosure of the +divine mystery or secret has been made, primarily indeed to apostles +and prophets, but through them to the whole body of the faithful. The +faithful must of course begin by receiving that simplest spiritual +nourishment which is milk for babes. They are to welcome the divine +forgiveness of their sins in Christ, and the gift of new life through +Him in their baptism and the laying-on of hands. They are to be taught +the rudimentary truths and moral lessons which are the first principles +of the oracles of Christ. But they are not to stop with this. They +are, and they are all of them without exception[27], intended to grow +up to the full apprehension of the wisdom of the 'perfect' or perfectly +initiated. They are to dwell upon the divine secret, now revealed, of +God's purpose for the universe through the church till their whole +heart and intellect and imagination is enlightened and enriched by it. + + +{74} + +v. + +[Sidenote: _It is all of grace_] + +And is the greatness of this exaltation and knowledge vouchsafed to the +Church to be a renewed occasion of pride--that spiritual pride, the +fatal results of which had already become apparent through the +rejection of the Jews? No: unless through a complete mistake, the very +opposite must be the result. The strength of human pride, as St. Paul +had seen long ago, lay in the idea that man could have merit of his +own, face to face with God: could have good works which were his own +and not God's, and which gave him a claim upon God. That Jewish +doctrine of merit[28] had been convicted of utter falsity in St. Paul's +own spiritual experience. He had found himself brought to acknowledge, +like any sinner of the Gentiles, his simple dependence upon the divine +compassion for forgiveness and acceptance. This spiritual experience +of St. Paul was only the realizing through one channel of what is, in +fact, an elementary truth about human nature. The idea of human +independence is demonstrably a false idea. As a matter of fact, man +draws his life, physical and spiritual, from {75} sources beyond +himself--from the one source, God. In constant dependence on God he +lives necessarily from moment to moment, whether to breathe, or think, +or will. The freedom of will which he has is not really originative or +creative power, but a capacity of voluntary correspondence with what is +given him from beyond himself. In that power of correspondence, or +refusal to correspond, man's liberty begins and ends. He creates +nothing. It is not that man does something and then God does the rest. +The truth is that when we track man's good action to its root in his +will, we find for certain that God has been beforehand with him. The +good he does is in correspondence with moral and physical laws and +forces of the universe, or, in other words, with divine powers and +purposes lent and suggested to him. To attempt independence of God, to +have schemes and plans absolutely one's own, is to work arbitrarily and +ignorantly, and ultimately to fail and to know that one has failed. +Thus men, when they realize the facts of their condition, must depend, +and rejoice to depend, wholly upon God as for forgiveness where they +have done wrong, so also for suggestion and power that they may do +anything aright. There is {76} then no room for human pride. It is a +mistake. We come back to recognize, what St. Paul realized in his own +deep spiritual experience and taught the Church at the beginning. +Whatever is good in the world is all of divine initiation and of divine +grace. It is all, not to our glory, but (as St. Paul three times +repeats in the opening paragraphs of our epistle) 'to the praise of his +glory,' or 'to the praise of the glory of his grace which he freely +bestows on us' out of His pure love and goodwill. + + +[Sidenote: _St. Paul's leading thoughts_] + +These are the great leading thoughts which are in St. Paul's mind as he +begins to write to the Asiatic Christians. His heart, his imagination, +his intellect is full of the thought of the catholic society as it +exists in Christ, the extension of His life; of this society as the +outcome of an eternal and slow-working purpose of God; of this society, +as serving universal divine ends for humanity and for the universe; of +this society, as affording a sphere in which all men's faculties may be +enlightened and delighted with the depth and largeness of the divine +purpose; while his whole being is kept, safe from all the delusions of +pride, in continual and conscious dependence upon divine grace. {77} +With these thoughts reflected in our minds we shall find that we have +the main clue to the whole of the Epistle to the Ephesians, and more +particularly to all the words of the opening chapter, which St. Paul +begins with a great ascription of praise to God for the blessing of the +Church. + + +Blessed _be_ the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath +blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly _places_ in +Christ: even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, +that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having +foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto +himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of +the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved: +in whom we have our 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, having made known unto us +the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he +purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum +up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon +the earth; in him, _I say_, in whom also we were made a heritage, +having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh +all things after the counsel of his will; to the end that we should be +unto the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ: in +whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your +salvation,--in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy +Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance, unto the +redemption of _God's_ own possession, unto the praise of his glory. + + + +[1] Rom. viii. 29. + +[2] 1 Cor. xv. 23. + +[3] Eph. iv. 15, 16. + +[4] Eph. v. 32; Rev. xxi. 9. + +[5] 1 Cor. xv. 45; Rom. v. 12-19. + +[6] 1 Cor. xii. 12. + +[7] Acts xix. 1-7. + +[8] Rom. iii. 24-26. I have tried to develope St. Paul's hint. + +[9] Rom. iii. 25; Acts xiv. 16; Acts xvii. 30. + +[10] The earliest and simplest expression of the matter is that in St. +Paul's earliest epistle (1 Thess. v. 10), Christ 'died for us ... that +we should live together with him.' + +[11] Eph. i. 7; cf. ii. 13 ff. + +[12] Rom. ix. 21. + +[13] 1 Cor. xii. 22 ff. + +[14] Cf. St. Matt. xiii. 13-15; St. John xii. 39, 40. We are not (Rom. +ix. 17) told _why_ Pharaoh was brought out on the stage of history as +an example of God's hardening judgement. But no doubt there was a +moral reason. + +[15] Rom. ix-xi. + +[16] Rom. xi. 29. + +[17] Rom. xi. 33. + +[18] 1 Tim. ii. 4. + +[19] 1 Cor. ix. 27. + +[20] Rom. viii. 38, 39 + +[21] I am using the word here not in its Bible sense, for in the Bible +God is said to 'know' men in the sense of fixing His choice or approval +upon them; and to 'foreknow' is therefore to approve or choose +beforehand, as suitable instruments for a divine purpose. I am using +the word in its ordinary sense. + +[22] Rom. viii. 28-30. + +[23] Phil. i. 6. + +[24] Amos iii. 2. + +[25] On the Jewish idea of election, cf. app. note C, p. 261. + +[26] Col. i. 1. + +[27] Col. i. 28. + +[28] See app. note C, p. 257. + + + + +{78} + +DIVISION I. Sec. 2. CHAPTER I. 15-23. + +_St. Paul's Prayer._ + +St. Paul follows up this first expression of the great thoughts that +fill his mind with a deep and comprehensive thanksgiving for that large +measure of correspondence with the divine purpose which is reported +from the Asiatic churches, and with a prayer for their full +enlightenment in heart and intellect. He prays that they may rise to +the true science of what their Christian calling, as fellow-inheritors +with the saints of the divine blessing, really means; and to an +adequate expectation of what God intends to do in them, on the analogy +of what He has already done in Christ their head. + + +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 {79} of the glory of his inheritance in +the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward +who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might +which he wrought in Christ, when 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 gave him to be head +over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him +that filleth all in all. + + +There is very little further explanation needed for this passage. But +three phrases may be noted:-- + +(1) St. Paul calls the Father 'the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,' as +our Lord Himself calls Him 'my God' (John xx. 17) in His resurrection +state. It is no doubt of Christ _as man_ that the Father is God; but +this relation of the Son as man to the Father depends upon an eternal +subordination in which the Son, even as God, stands to the Father from +whom He derives His divine life. The essential subordination of the +Son (and Spirit) to the Father as the one fount of Godhead, is +continually suggested in the New Testament; but it involves no +inferiority in Godhead, or subsequence in time--'nothing before or +after, nothing greater or less,' as the _Quicunque vult_ says. And it +conveys to us the moral lesson that a subordinate position is not to be +resented as if it were a dishonour. + +(2) The spirit of 'wisdom and revelation' vouchsafed to us is to enable +us to apprehend in a measure the divine 'wisdom and prudence[1]' +manifested in God's work of creation and redemption. The humility +which is content to correspond patiently and teachably with the method +of God is, as Francis Bacon was at pains to teach, of the essence of +all fruitful human science. + +(3) The expression 'the fulness' or 'the fulness of the Godhead[2]' +means the sum total of the divine attributes, which, instead of being +spread over different angelic mediators, as the Colossians were +disposed to imagine, are, by the divine will, all concentrated and +combined in the glorified Christ. And here St. Paul teaches the +Ephesian Christians that all that belongs to the glorified Christ is to +belong also to the Church, which is His body. It is Christ who gives +to all creatures whatever various gifts of life they have. He 'filleth +all in all'; that is, 'He filleth the whole universe with all variety +of {81} gifts.' But something much more than various gifts--the sum +total of all He is--He pours, or intends to pour, into the Church, so +that the Church as well as the Christ shall embody, and thus be +identified with, the fulness of the divine attributes. At present the +Church is this only ideally, or in the divine intention: the actually +existing Church has still much need of growth that her members 'may be +filled (as they are not at present) up to the measure of the divine +fulness'; or, in other words, up to 'the measure of the stature of the +fulness of the Christ[3].' + +The fulness, according to St. Paul's doctrine, is to be sought first in +the eternal God; then in the glorified Christ; then, through Him, in +the fully developed Church; and, finally, through the Church, in a +sense in the universe as a whole, when the work of redemption is done +and God is at last 'all in all' throughout His creation. + +It may be noticed that St. Paul, in this doctrine of 'the fulness,' is +thinking rather of the divine attributes as manifested, than as they +are in themselves: and of Christ, not as the eternal {82} Son of God, +but, more particularly, as incarnate and glorified. It was the 'good +pleasure' of the Father to fill the exalted Christ, the first-begotten +from the dead, with the fulness of divine glory and power as the reward +of the humility and love which He showed when He 'emptied himself in +taking the form of a servant[4].' This bestowal was no doubt a giving +anew to Him, as man and as head of the Church, what was eternally His +as Son of the Father. + +There is another interpretation adopted by Chrysostom in ancient times, +and by Dr. Hort among moderns, of the phrase 'the church which is his +body, the fulness of him who filleth all in all.' According to them +the Church is regarded as making the Christ complete. It is in this +sense the 'fulfilment' of Christ, because without the Church He would +be a head without its members: and then the rest of the sentence should +be translated differently--'the church which is his body, the +fulfilment of him who is fulfilled in all ways with all things.' But +this is decidedly less agreeable to the general use of the expression +'the fulness' in the epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians[5]. + +{83} + +[Sidenote: _Some practical lessons_] + +We may also pause to recognize one or two ways in which St. Paul's view +of the Christian religion, as exhibited in the opening of this epistle, +suggests special deficiencies among ourselves. + +(1) St. Paul's Christianity is a religion of thankfulness. This +epistle is a burst of exuberant praise. Yet he was himself a prisoner, +and the church of Ephesus, with the other Asiatic churches, was sorely +threatened with moral and spiritual perils of all kinds. The secret of +this thankfulness is that he looks straight away from himself and his +surroundings up to God. He measures the value of human life and work +not by what immediate experience suggests, but by what he knows of the +purpose of God. In spite of all the obstacles opposed by human +wilfulness and weakness and sin, he knows that His purpose will effect +itself: therefore he 'rejoices in the Lord always,' and no discouraging +circumstances can quench the springs of his rejoicing. Our +Christianity is apt to be of a very 'dutiful' kind. We mean to do our +duty, we attend church and go to our communions. But our hearts are +full of the difficulties, the hardships, {84} the obstacles which the +situation presents, and we go on our way sadly, downhearted and +despondent. We need to learn or learn anew from St. Paul that true +Christianity is inseparable from deep joy; and the secret of that joy +lies in a continual looking away from all else--away from sin and its +ways, and from the manifold hindrances to the good we would do--up to +God, His love, His purpose, His will. In proportion as we do look up +to Him we shall rejoice, and in proportion as we rejoice in the Lord +will our religion have tone and power and attractiveness. + +(2) St. Paul appeals to the Asiatic Christians not to become something +they are not, or to acquire some spiritual gift that they have not +received, but simply to realize what they already are, and to claim the +privileges of their baptized state. They are already 'adopted as +sons[6].' They have, like the Galatians, received 'the Spirit of +adoption.' The point now is that they should realize and put into +practice what already belongs to them. This mode of appeal is based on +the doctrine--in spite of its many perversions the most valuable +doctrine--of baptismal {85} regeneration. The false method of +appeal--as if careless Christians needed to _become_ sons of God--which +involves a false idea of 'regeneration,' has been so much identified +with popular Protestantism, that I cannot do better than quote some +very apposite remarks by the late Congregationalist teacher, Dr. Dale, +of blessed memory, from his noble commentary on this very epistle to +the Ephesians:-- + + +'This adoption of which Paul speaks is something more than a mere legal +and formal act, conveying certain high prerogatives. We are "called +the sons of God" because we are really made His sons by a new and +supernatural birth. Regeneration is sometimes described as though it +were merely a change in a man's principles of conduct in his character, +his tastes, his habits. The description is theologically false, and +practically most pernicious and misleading. If regeneration were +nothing more than this, we should have to speak of a man as being more +or less regenerate, according to the extent of his moral reformation; +but this would be contrary to the idiom of New Testament thought. That +a great change in the moral region of a man's nature will certainly +follow regeneration is true; this change, however, is not regeneration +itself, but the effect of regeneration; and the moral change which +regeneration produces varies in many ways in different men. In some +the change is immediate, decisive, and apparently complete. In others +it is extremely gradual, and may be for a long time hardly discernible. +In some regenerate men grave sins remain for a time unforsaken, perhaps +unrecognized. Look at these Ephesian Christians. {86} The Apostle has +to tell them that they must put away falsehood and speak the truth; +that they must give up thieving, and foul talk, and covetousness, and +gross sensual sin. + +'He addresses them as "saints." He describes them as having been +chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and foreordained +by God unto adoption as sons unto Himself; and yet he knows that they +are in danger of committing these base and flagrant offences. It was +hard for them to escape from the vices of heathenism. They were +regenerate; but as yet, in some of them, the moral effects of +regeneration were very incomplete, the change which regeneration was +ultimately certain to produce in their moral life had only begun, and +it was checked and hindered by a thousand hostile influences. + +'The simplest and most obvious account of regeneration is the truest. +When a man is regenerated he receives a new life and receives it from +God. In itself regeneration is not a change in his old life, but the +beginning of a new life which is conferred by the immediate and +supernatural act of the Holy Spirit. The man is really "born again." +A higher nature comes to him than that which he inherited from his +human parents; he is "begotten of God," "born of the Spirit."' + + +This passage, especially as coming from Dr. Dale, supplies a very +valuable corrective to still current religious mistakes. But surely we +have no ground for saying that the moral effects 'certainly' follow +regeneration, or follow it in all cases. It is not 'ultimately certain +to produce' them in all persons, but only in those who {87} exhibit, +sooner or later, the moral correspondence of a converted will. + +(3) Most Christians who have reacted from Calvinism and its false +doctrine of predestination have ceased to think about the truth which +it represents. But we need to make a right instead of a wrong use of +these great ideas of predestination and election, and thus to get rid +of all the miserable narrowness and hopelessness which settles down +upon us when we allow ourselves to think of religion as mainly a +process of saving our own souls, and when we live only in our present +feelings. + +What can be more inspiring and strengthening than to believe that there +is an eternal purpose of God working itself out in the universe through +all its stages and parts; that this eternal purpose includes us, and +has fastened upon us individually and brought us into Christ and His +Church, to make true men of us; and that it has done all this not for +our own sakes only, but to disclose something more of God's glory and +for the fulfilment of great and universal purposes, which are to +radiate out even from us? Wherever St. Paul sees the hand of God in +present experience, at once his mind works back to an eternal will and +therefore also {88} forward to an eternal and adequate result. And +this backward and forward look transfigures the present with a new +glory and a fresh hope. So will it be with us if this same +characteristically Christian way of looking at any apparent movement of +God in the present, in our own souls or in the world outside us, +becomes habitually and instinctively ours. God never acts on a sudden +impulse or without purpose of continuance. Certainly He can be trusted +not to stop and leave things unfinished. When He hath begun any good +work He will assuredly perfect it, if we will let Him. + + + +[1] i. 8. + +[2] See Col. i. 19; ii. 9; cf. ii. 3, 'in Christ are all the treasures +of wisdom and knowledge hidden.' + +[3] Eph. iii. 19; iv. 13. It is not certain that by Him 'who filleth +all in all' St. Paul does not mean the Father rather than the Son. But +iv. 10 supports the interpretation given above. + +[4] Col. i. 19; Phil. ii. 9-11. + +[5] And the word rendered 'filleth' may have a middle and not a passive +sense, the idea being perhaps suggested that God 'fills all things for +his own purpose.' + +[6] That is, they were 'predestined to an adoption' (Eph. i. 5) which +it is implied they have already received. + + + + +{89} + +DIVISION I. Sec. 3. CHAPTER II. 1-10. + +_Sin and redemption._ + +[Sidenote: _The depth of sin_] + +In the first chapter of the epistle, St. Paul has had before his eyes +the glory of God's redemptive work--the wonder of His purpose of pure +love for the universe through the Church. His imagination has kindled +at the thought of the length, the breadth, the height of the divine +operation:--the length, for it is an eternal purpose slowly worked out +through the ages; the breadth, for it is to extend over the whole +universe; the height, for it is to carry men up to no lower point than +the throne of Christ in the heavenly places. But now he stops to call +the attention of his converts to what we may call a 'fourth dimension' +of the divine operation--its depth. How wonderfully low God had +stooped, in order to reach the point to which man had sunk! The +Asiatic Christians are bidden to ponder anew, and by {90} contrast to +their present experience, the life which they had once lived before +they knew Christ or were found in Him. + +Let us read the apostle's words, and then consider them in detail:-- + + +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. + + +We naturally put as a parallel to these and other verses of this +epistle (iv. 17-19) the terrible passage in Romans i, where St. Paul +describes the developement of sin in the Gentile world; how it had its +origin in the refusal of the human will to recognize God, how out of +the perversion of will it spread to the blinding of the understanding, +and then to giving an overmastering power and an unnatural distortion +to the passions, so that a state of moral lawlessness was produced and +maintained. + +What are we to say as to the truth of these accounts of the moral +condition of the heathen world? No doubt there is a good deal to be +{91} said on the other side. Roman simplicity and virtue, and the +sanctity of domestic life, had not, as contemporary inscriptions and +historical records make perfectly evident, faded out of the Roman +Empire, and philanthropy and love of the poor were recognized +excellences. Nor had philosophic virtue vanished from the schools[1]. +And all this St. Paul would not be slow to recognize. In the Epistle +to the Romans[2] itself he speaks in language, such as a Stoic might +have used, of those who, uninstructed by any special divine law, were a +law unto themselves, in that they showed the practical effect of the +law written in their hearts. We must therefore recognize that St. Paul +is, in the passage we are now considering, speaking ideally; that is to +say, he is speaking of the general tendency of the heathen life, just +as he speaks ideally of the Christian church in view of its general +tendency; and he is speaking of it as he mostly knew it himself in the +notoriously corrupt cities of the east, Antioch and Ephesus. Ephesus, +in particular, had an extraordinarily bad character for vice as much as +for superstition; and what {92} St. Paul says of the heathen life does +not in fact make up a stronger indictment or present a blacker picture +than what is said by a Stoic philosopher, perhaps his contemporary, who +wrote at Ephesus, under the shelter of the name of the great Ephesian +of ancient days, Heracleitus[3]. Moreover, St. Paul appeals +unhesitatingly to the actual experience of these Asiatic Christians, +and there is no reason to doubt that their consciences would have +responded to what he said to them about the old life out of which they +had been brought. + +Let us now analyze a little more exactly this account St. Paul gives of +the state of sin which he saw around him in contemporary society. + +(1) 'Ye walked according to the course of this world.' By 'this world' +St. Paul, like the other New Testament writers, means practically human +society as it organizes itself for its own purposes of pleasure or +profit without thought of God, or at least without thought of God as He +truly is. These Asiatic Christians, then, had formerly ordered their +life and conduct according to the demands and expectations of the +worldly world, obeying its motives, governed {93} by its fashions and +its laws, and indifferent to those considerations which it repudiated +or ignored. + +(2) But to belong to the world in this sense is, in St. Paul's mind, to +belong to the kingdom of Satan. The worldly world had its origin from +a false desire of independence on man's part. He did not want to be +controlled by God; he wanted to live his own life for himself. But in +liberating himself according to his wishes from the control of God he +fell, according to St. Paul's belief, under another control. Rebellion +had been in the universe before man. There are invisible rebel +spirits, of whose real existence and influence St. Paul had no more +doubt than any other Jew who was not a Sadducee. And, indeed, our Lord +had so spoken of good and evil spirits as to assure His disciples of +their existence and influence. These rebel wills are unseen by us and +in most respects unknown, but they organize and give a certain +coherence and continuity to evil in the world. There thus arises a +sort of kingdom of evil over against the kingdom of God, and those who +will not surrender themselves to God and His kingdom, become perforce +servants of Satan and his kingdom. It is in view of this truth that +St. Paul {94} tells these Asiatic Christians that they used to walk +according 'to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now +worketh in the sons of disobedience.' (These evil spirits were, by a +natural way of thinking, located in the air, according to the +contemporary Jewish ideas; and the idea is, if nothing more, a +convenient metaphor for a subtle and pervading influence.) This view +of their old life, as a bondage to evil spirits, is one which would be +as easily realized by inhabitants of Asiatic cities, where men were +largely occupied in finding charms against bad spirits, as by modern +Indian converts from devil-worship. Christianity recognizes a basis of +reality in the superstition from which at the same time it delivers men. + +(3) The main characteristic of this old godless life had been +lawlessness, but St. Paul here, as in his Epistle to the Romans, +associates Jews with Gentiles, 'we' with 'you,' in the same +condemnation. The spirits, or real selves of the Christians, had been, +in their former state, dominated by their appetites or their +imaginations. They were occupied in doing what their flesh or their +thoughts suggested. It is noticeable that St. Paul puts 'the mind' +side by side with 'the flesh' as a cause of sin, the intellectual {95} +side by side with the sensual and emotional nature. We often in fact, +in our age, have experience of people who are not 'sensual' in the +ordinary sense, but who live lives which have no goodness, no +perseverance, no order, no fruitfulness in them, because they are the +slaves of the ideas of their own mind as they present themselves, now +one, now another; unregulated ideas being in fact, just as much as +unregulated passions, fluctuating, arbitrary, and tyrannous. Nothing +is more truly needed to-day than the discipline of the imagination. + +(4) Men living such a life of bondage are described further as 'dead +through their trespasses and sins.' St. Paul means by death to +describe any state of intellectual and moral insensibility. He would +have the Christian 'dead' to the motives and voices of the worldly and +sensual world. So in the same way he reminds the Asiatic Christians +that to all that life of God in which they were now fruitfully living, +they had at one time been insensible or dead--that is, blind to those +things which now seemed most apparent, unterrified at what would now +seem most horrible, unmoved by what now seemed most fascinating. And +if this was their state viewed in itself, in their relation to God {96} +they were, like the Jews also, 'children of wrath.' This expression is +used in our catechism to describe 'original sin,' that is to say, that +moral disorder or weakness which belongs to our nature as we inherit +it, before we have had the opportunity of personal wrong doing. But +the application of the phrase by St. Paul is to describe rather the +state of _actual_ sin in which Jew and Gentile alike 'naturally' lived. +It implies not that God hated them, for in the whole context St. Paul +is emphasizing 'the great love wherewith he loved them'; but that there +was a necessary moral incompatibility between them as they then were, +and God as He essentially and permanently is. God is so necessarily +holy that His being is, and must be, intolerable to the unholy. It +must be the case that at the bare idea of the divine coming, 'sinners +in Zion' should be 'afraid,' and should say one to another, 'who among +us shall dwell with the devouring fire, who among us shall dwell with +everlasting burnings[4]?' God necessarily presents Himself as a terror +to the godless; and from the point of view of God that means that our +sinful nature is the subject of His necessary wrath. He resents the +{97} perversion, the spoiling, of His own handiwork in us. He cannot +tolerate uncleanness, rebellion, unbelief. This wrath of God, in the +case of those whose wills are set to 'hate the light,' is directed +against men's persons. But so far as sin is only in our natures, and +is something of which we are the unwilling subjects, it appeals only to +God's compassion to lead Him to apply effective remedies. His wrath is +so far against sin, not against sinners; and none could know better +than these Asiatic Christians what lengths of resourcefulness and +self-sacrifice the divine compassion had gone in order to redeem men +from its tyranny. Thus St. Paul continues:-- + + +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 Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and raised us up with him, +and made us to sit with him in the heavenly _places_, in Christ Jesus: +that in the ages to come he might shew 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. + + +[Sidenote: _The method of redemption_] + +Here is St. Paul's description of the method of God in dealing with men +when they were in {98} that state of sin, the conditions of which he +has just summarised. We take note of the chief points in the method. + +(1) St. Paul has in mind here, as always, the divine predestination. +There was an eternal purpose in the divine mind to make St. Paul and +those to whom he wrote such as they were now on the way to become; it +was a purpose not merely general, but extending to details. It +belongs, in fact, to the divine perfection, that God does nothing, and +purposes nothing, in mere vague generality. The universal range and +scope of the divine activity as over all creatures whatsoever, hinders +not at all its perfect application to detail. Thus God had +'predestined,' or held in His eternal purpose, not merely the state of +Christians as a whole or even of the Asiatic Christians in particular, +but the details of conduct which He willed them individually to +exhibit. It is the particular 'good works' which God 'prepared +beforehand in order that they should walk in them[5].' + +(2) What God predestined He accomplished first in summary 'in Christ +Jesus.' In Him all that God meant to do for man was exhibited {99} and +accomplished as God's own and perfect handiwork, as an effective and +final disclosure. Men are to look for everything, for every kind of +development and progress, in Christ, but for nothing outside or beyond +Him. All is there--'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' all +'the fulness of the Godhead,' all the perfections of mankind, the +reconciliation of all seeming opposites. All is brought to the highest +possible level of attainment, 'the heavenly place.' + +(3) What had been summarily realized in Christ is progressively +realized in those who are 'in Him.' Undeterred by their condition of +moral and spiritual death, God, out of the heart of His rich mercy, +simply because of the great love He bore to men, has brought them, by +one act of regeneration, into the new life of His Son; has 'quickened +them together with Christ,' that is, has introduced them, at a definite +moment of initiation, into the life which has once for all triumphed +over death, and been glorified in the heavenly places; and has +introduced them into this life in order that, by the gradual +assimilation of its forces, future ages might witness in them all the +wealth of the goodness which had lain hid in the original act {100} of +incorporation. Meanwhile, while their growth is yet imperfect, God +sees those who are Christ's as 'in Christ': imputes His merits to them, +so we may legitimately say: that is, sees them and deals with them in +view of the fact that Christ's Spirit is at work in them; sees them and +deals with them 'not as they are, but as they are becoming.' _This_ +doctrine of imputation, instead of being full of moral unreality, is in +accordance with all that is deepest in the philosophy of evolution. +For are we not continually being taught that in order to take a true +view of the value of any single thing, we must view it not as it is at +a particular moment, but in the light of its tendency? We must ask not +merely 'what,' but 'whence' and 'whither.' + +(4) It is all pure grace--the free outpouring of unmerited love. The +Christians are 'God's workmanship,' His new creation. He, in Christ, +had wrought the work all by Himself. They, the subjects of it, had +contributed nothing. It remained for them only to welcome and to +correspond. This is the summing up of man's legitimate attitude +towards God. This is faith. It is at its first stage simply the +acceptance of a divine mercy in all its undeserved and unconditional +largeness; but it passes at once, as {101} soon as ever the nature of +the divine gift is realized, into a glad co-operation with the divine +purpose. + +This then is, in outline, the method of the great salvation, of which +the Asiatic Christians had been and were the subjects. + + + +[1] On the virtuous aspect of the contemporary empire, see Renan, _Les +Apotres_, pp. 306 ff. + +[2] Rom. ii. 14. + +[3] See app. note B, p. 255. + +[4] Is. xxxiii. 14, 15. + +[5] Cf. app. note C, p. 263, for a similar thought in a contemporary +Jewish book. + + + + +{102} + +DIVISION I. Sec. 4. CHAPTER II. 11-22. + +_Salvation in the church._ + +[Sidenote: _The salvation social_] + +God's deliverance or 'salvation' of mankind is a deliverance of +individuals indeed, but of individuals in and through a society; not of +isolated individuals, but of members of a body. + +It is and has been a popular religious idea that the primary aim of the +gospel is to produce saved individuals; and that it is a matter of +secondary importance that the saved individuals should afterwards +combine to form churches for their mutual spiritual profit, and for +promoting the work of preaching the gospel. But this way of conceiving +the matter is a reversal of the order of ideas in the Bible. 'The +salvation' in the Bible is supposed usually 'to reach the individual +through the community[1].' God's dealings with us in redemption thus +follow the lines of His dealings with us in our natural developement. +For man stands {103} out in history as a 'social animal.' His +individual developement, by a divine law of his constitution, is only +rendered possible because he is first of all a member of some society, +tribe, or nation, or state. Through membership in such a society +alone, and through the submissions and limitations on his personal +liberty which such membership involves, does he become capable of any +degree of free or high developement as an individual. This law, then, +of man's nature appears equally in the method of his redemption. Under +the old covenant it was to members of the 'commonwealth of Israel' that +the blessings of the covenant belonged. Under the new covenant St. +Paul still conceives of the same commonwealth as subsisting (as we +shall see directly), and as fulfilling no less than formerly the same +religious functions. True, it has been fundamentally reconstituted and +enlarged to include the believers of all nations, and not merely one +nation; but it is still the same commonwealth, or polity, or church; +and it is still through the church that God's 'covenant' dealings reach +the individual. + +It is for this reason that St. Paul goes on to describe the state of +the Asiatic Christians, {104} before their conversion, as a state of +alienation from the 'commonwealth of Israel.' They were 'Gentiles in +the flesh,' that is by the physical fact that they were not Jews; and +were contemptuously described as the uncircumcised by those who, as +Jews, were circumcised by human hands. And he conceives this to be +only another way of describing alienation from God and His manifold +covenants of promise, and from the Messiah, the hope of Israel and of +mankind. They were without the Church of God, and therefore presumably +without God and without hope. + + +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, +alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the +covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. +But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the +blood of Christ. + + +This alienation of Gentiles from the divine covenant was represented in +the structure of the temple at Jerusalem by a beautifully-worked marble +balustrade, separating the outer from the inner court, upon which stood +columns at regular intervals, bearing inscriptions, some in Greek and +some in Latin characters, to warn {105} aliens not to enter the holy +place. One of the Greek inscriptions was discovered a few years ago, +and is now to be read in the Museum of Constantinople. It runs thus: +'No alien to pass within the balustrade round the temple and the +enclosure. Whosoever shall be caught so doing must blame himself for +the penalty of death which he will incur.' + +This 'middle wall of partition' was vividly in St. Paul's memory. He +was in prison at Rome at the time of his writing this epistle, in part +at least because he was believed to have brought Trophimus, an +Ephesian, within the sacred enclosure at Jerusalem. 'He brought Greeks +also into the temple, and hath defiled the holy place.' + +It was this 'middle wall of partition,' representing the exclusiveness +of Jewish ordinances, which St. Paul rejoiced to believe Christ had +abolished. He had made Jew and Gentile one by bringing both alike to +God in one body and on a new basis. + +There were in fact two partitions in the Jewish temple of great +symbolical importance. There was the veil which hid the holy of +holies, and symbolized the alienation of man from God[2]; and there was +'the middle wall of partition' {106} already described, representing +the exclusion of the world from the privileges of the people of God. +The Pharisaic Jews ignored the spiritual lessons of the first +partition, and devoutly believed in the permanence of the second. But +Saul, while yet a Pharisee, had felt the reality of the first, and had +found in his own experience that the abolition of this first barrier by +Christ involved also the annihilation of the second. + +[Sidenote: _The breaking down of partitions_] + +It is in the Epistle to the Colossians that he lays stress upon the +abolition in Christ of the enmity between man and God. 'It was the +good pleasure of the Father ... through him to reconcile all things +unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.' 'You, +being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh +... did he quicken together with Christ, having forgiven us all our +trespasses; having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was +against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out of the +way, nailing it to the cross.' So with the help of various metaphors +does St. Paul strive to express the mighty truth that, by the shedding +of Christ's blood, that is to say by His sacrifice of perfected +obedience, the way had been opened for the forgiveness of our sins and +our {107} reconciliation to God in one life, one Spirit. But the +symbols and instruments of that former alienation from God which St. +Paul had experienced so bitterly, were to his mind the 'ordinances' of +the Jewish law. These, he had come to feel, had no other function than +to awaken and deepen the sense of sin which they were powerless to +overcome. They were nothing but 'a bond written against us'; a +continual record of condemnation. To trust in the observance of +ordinances was to remain an unreconciled sinner, alienated in mind and +unpurified in heart. On the other hand, to have faith in Jesus and +receive from Him the unmerited gift of the divine pardon and the Spirit +of sonship was, for a Jew, to cast away all that trust in the +observance of the ordinances of his nation which was so dear to his +heart. It was at once to place himself among the sinners of the +Gentiles. For in Jesus Christ all men were indeed brought near to God, +but not as meritorious Jews; rather as common men and common sinners, +needing and accepting all alike the undeserved mercy of a heavenly +Father. Thus it was that Christ, in breaking down one partition, had +broken down the other also. In opening the way to God by a simple +human trust in a {108} heavenly Father, and not by the complicated +arrangements of a special law, He had put all men on the same level of +need and of acceptance. He had not indeed abolished the covenant or +the covenant people, but He had enlarged its area and altered its +basis: there was still to be one visible body or people of the +covenant, but membership in it was to be open to all, Jew and Gentile +alike, who would feel their need of and put their trust in Jesus. This +is what St. Paul proceeds to express, and little more need be added to +explain his words. In the 'blood' or 'blood-shedding' of Jesus--that +is, His self-sacrifice for men, His obedience carried to the point of +the surrender of His life--a way had been opened to the Father that was +purely human, that belonged to the Gentiles who had been 'far off' as +well as to Jews who were already 'nigh' in the divine covenant. And in +being brought near to God by faith, and not by Jewish ordinances, Jew +and Gentile had been reconciled on a common basis--the two had been +made one in 'the flesh,' that is, the manhood of Christ, for no other +reason than because the 'law of commandments contained in (special +Jewish) ordinances,' which had hitherto been the basis of separation, +was now once for all {109} 'abolished.' Henceforth there was one new +man, or new manhood, in Christ, in which all men were, potentially at +least, reconciled to God and to one another by His self-sacrifice upon +the cross. And to the knowledge of this new manhood all men were being +gradually brought by the 'preaching of peace' or of the gospel, which +had its origin from Jesus crucified and risen, and which, even now that +Jesus was invisibly acting through His apostolic and other ministers, +St. Paul attributes directly to Him. + +[Sidenote: _The admission of Gentiles_] + + +But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the +blood of Christ. 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 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. + + +Now we can turn from the negative to the positive statement, and +observe what St. Paul says of the new privileges of the once heathen +converts. He pictures them under four metaphors, each describing a +social state. + +{110} + +(1) They are citizens in the holy state, the commonwealth of the people +consecrated to God--citizens with full rights, and no longer strangers +or unenfranchised residents (sojourners). + +(2) More intimately still, they belong to the family or household of +God. + +(3) They are being built all together into a sanctuary for God to dwell +in--a holy structure of which the foundation stones are the apostles, +and the Christian prophets who were their companions; and of which the +corner-stone, determining the lines of the building and compacting it +into one, is Jesus Christ, according to the word of God by Isaiah, +'Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation stone, a tried stone, a precious +corner stone of sure foundation.' + +(4) But the metaphor of the building passes into the metaphor of the +growing plant. Christ is, as St. Peter says, 'a _living_ stone[3].' +He not only determines the lines of the spiritual structure, but He +pervades the whole of it as a presence and spirit, so that every other +human 'stone' is also alive and growing with His life. + + +So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are +fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the {111} 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. + + +These are indeed metaphors expressive of glorious realities, which have +no doubt become dulled in meaning through a conventional Christianity, +which involves no sacrifice and therefore attains no sense of +blessedness, but which a little meditation may easily restore to +something of their original freshness. + +(1) The idea of the chosen people all through the Old Testament is that +they are as a whole consecrated to God. Priests and kings appointed by +God to their several offices may indeed fulfil special functions in the +national life, yet the fundamental idea is never lost that the entire +nation is holy, 'a kingdom of priests.' It is because this is true +that the prophets can appeal as they do to the people in general, as +well as to priests and rulers, as sharing altogether the responsibility +of the national life. Now the whole of this idea is transferred, only +deepened and intensified, to the Christian Church. That too has its +divinely-ordained ministers, its differentiation of functions in the +one body, but the whole {112} body is priestly, and all are +citizens--not merely residents but citizens, that is, intelligent +participators in a common corporate life consecrated to God. How truly +realized this idea was in the early Christian communities, St. Paul's +letters are our best witnesses. They are really--except the pastoral +epistles--letters to the churches and not to the clergy. It is the +whole body which is at Thessalonica and Corinth to concern itself with +the exercise of moral discipline[4]--the whole body in the Galatian +churches and at Colossae who are to concern themselves with the +apprehension and protection of the full Christian truth. They are all +to be 'perfectly initiated' in Christ Jesus, full participators in the +affairs of the divine society[5]. Whatever needs to be said afterwards +about the special functions of special officers, this is the first +thing to be said and recognized; and it gives us a profound sense of +the distance we have fallen from our ideal. The laity, it is generally +understood among us, are to come to church and perhaps to communion, +are to accept the ministries of religion at marriages and funerals, and +are to subscribe a little money to religious objects; but they may +leave it to the clergy, as a matter of course, to carry on {113} the +business of religion--that is, worship and doctrine, for discipline has +been dropped out--and confine themselves to a certain amount of +irresponsible criticism of the sermons of the clergy and their +proceedings generally. + +[Sidenote: _The catholic church_] + +For this state of things--this very false sacerdotalism--the +responsibility is generally laid at the door of 'clerical arrogance.' +It is not necessary to consider how large a factor in the result +clerical arrogance has really been, for certainly what alone has given +the clergy the opportunity to put themselves in false isolation, and +what has been an immensely more powerful factor in the general result, +has been the spiritual apathy of the mass of church members, an apathy +which began as soon as the Christian profession began to cost men +little or nothing. + +Are we to set to work to revive St. Paul's ideal of the life of a +Church? If so, what we need is not more Christians, but better +Christians. We want to make the moral meaning of church membership +understood and its conditions appreciated. We want to make men +understand that it costs something to be a Christian; that to be a +Christian, that is a Churchman, is to be an intelligent participator in +a corporate life consecrated to God, and to concern {114} oneself +therefore, as a matter of course, in all that touches the corporate +life--its external as well as its spiritual conditions. For the houses +people live in, their wages, their social and commercial relations to +one another, their amusements, the education they receive, the +literature they read, these, no less truly than religious forces +strictly so called, affect intimately the health and well-being of any +society of men. We Christians are fellow-citizens together in the +commonwealth that is consecrated to God, a commonwealth of mortal men +with bodies as well as souls. + +(2) But St. Paul also describes the Church as the 'household of God.' +When our Lord was speaking to St. Peter about the ministry which was +being entrusted to the apostles, He said to him, 'Who then is the +faithful and wise steward whom his Lord shall set over his household to +give them their portion of food in due season[6]?' This description +opens to us part of the meaning of the divine household. A household +is a place where a family is provided for, where there is a regular and +orderly supply of ordinary needs. And the Church is the divine +household in which God has provided stewards to make {115} regular +spiritual provision for men, so that they shall feel and know +themselves members of a family, understood, sympathized with, helped, +encouraged, disciplined, fed. What in fact are the sacraments and +sacramental rites, what are baptism, confirmation and communion, +marriage and ordination, the administration of the word of God, the +dealings with the penitent, the sick, the dead, but the 'portions of +food in due season,' the orderly distribution of the bread of life in +the family or household of God? + +But there is another idea which, in St. Paul's mind, attaches itself +strongly to the idea of the 'divine family.' It is that in this +household we are sons and not servants--that is intelligent +co-operators with God, and not merely submissive slaves. It is +noticeable how often he speaks with horror of Christians allowing +themselves again to be 'subject to ordinances,' or to 'the weak and +beggarly rudiments,' the alphabet of that earlier education when even +children are treated as slaves under mere obedience. 'Ye observe days, +and months, and seasons, and years, I am afraid of you[7].' 'Why do ye +subject yourselves to ordinances, handle not, taste not, touch not[8].' +It is perfectly true to say that what {116} St. Paul is deprecating is +a return to Jewish or pagan observances. But this is not all. He +demands not a change of observance only, but a change of spirit. Their +attitude towards observances as such is to be different. Not that St. +Paul does not insist on that readiness to obey reasonable authority +which is a condition of corporate life, or would hesitate to lay stress +upon corporate religious acts in the Christian body. The truth is very +far from that. 'We have no such custom, neither the churches of God,' +is an argument which ought to be sufficient to suppress eccentricity. +To 'keep the traditions' is a mark of a good Christian[9]. 'A man that +is heretical' (or rather 'factious') after the first and second +admonition is to be 'refused'[10]. Government is to be a constant +element in the Christian life. But the character of authority and of +obedience is to be changed. The authority is to be reasonable +authority, and the obedience intelligent obedience. Passive obedience +to an authority which does not explain itself, whether in a spiritual +director or in the Church as a whole, St. Paul would have thought of +meanly as a Christian virtue. And the multiplication of authoritative +observances he would have dreaded as a {117} bondage. Our Lord was +very unwilling to give His disciples, when He was on earth, much +direction. And St. Paul is true to his Master's spirit. Our life +should be ordered by principles, rather than directed in detail. For +to rely upon direction from outside dwarfs our sense of personal +responsibility, and personal relationship to the divine Spirit. A +certain amount of confusion, hesitation, difference, due to men feeling +their way, due to their different individualities having free scope, +St. Paul would apparently have thought preferable to that sort of order +which is the product of a very strong and exacting external government, +and to an undue exaltation of the virtue of passive obedience. + +(3) St. Paul describes the Church as a sanctuary which is gradually to +be built for God to dwell in. We remember how our Lord had said of the +temple at Jerusalem, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will +raise it up.' 'He spake,' St. John explains, 'of the temple of his +body[11].' That--His own humanity proved triumphant over death--was to +be henceforth the tabernacle of God's presence among men. Where that +is God is, and the true worship of the Father in spirit and in truth. +But that body, raised again {118} the third day and become 'quickening +Spirit' as the body of the risen Christ, takes within its influence the +whole circle of believers. The 'body of Christ,' which is God's +temple, comes to mean the Church which lives in Christ's life, and +worships in Christ's Spirit. This is still the Church of the fathers +of the old covenant, but fundamentally reconstituted. God, as St. +James perceived[12], was fulfilling His promise to 'build again the +tabernacle of David which had fallen.' It was being built anew upon +the apostles and their companions the prophets, the immediate +ambassadors of Christ, as foundation-stones of the renewed building, +who themselves have their positions determined and secured by Christ +Jesus as chief corner-stone. It was a spiritual fabric combining, like +a Gothic cathedral, various parts or 'several buildings,' with their +distinctive characteristics, all however united in one construction, +one great sanctuary of a redeemed humanity in which God dwells. + +The metaphor suggests the combination of national and individual +differences in real unity. It encourages us to pay due regard to the +free developement of our own characters and capacities, but also to +develope ourselves as parts of {119} a greater whole, always +remembering that the work of a Christian individual or a local church +is in God's sight measured, not by its isolated result, but by the +contribution it makes to the life of the whole body. An eccentric +individuality, a schismatic developement is, even in proportion to its +strength, a source of weakness to the whole. By its relation to the +whole life of the Church all Christian effort must be both invigorated +and restrained. + +The metaphor suggests further that the social organization of the +Church is an organization for worship. It is a house and a +citizenship, because it is also a sanctuary. The strength of corporate +Christianity is to be measured by the vitality of corporate worship. A +church life in which the eucharist is not the centre, for all the +vigour which it may show in learning, or preaching, or philanthropy, is +after all but a maimed life. + +(4) But the Church, as a visible organization of men, can be what it +is--the city of God, His household and His sanctuary--only because it +is pervaded by Christ's life and spirit. The 'stones of the building' +are not merely placed side by side of one another, or held together by +any external agency of government; they {120} are as branches of a +living tree, limbs of a living body. In this recurrent thought, which +will be presented to us in another form when St. Paul comes to speak of +the head and the body, is the interpretation of all his theory of the +Church. It is verily and indeed the extension of the life of Christ. + + +How are we to receive this great and manifold ideal of what the Church +means[13]? It is by meditating upon it till St. Paul's +conceptions--and not any lower or narrower ones, Roman or Anglican or +Nonconformist--become vivid to our minds. Then, knowing what we aim at +restoring, we shall seek, in each parish and ecclesiastical centre, to +concentrate almost more than to extend the Church, to give it +spiritual, moral, and social reality, rather than to multiply a +membership which means little. For if men can understand the meaning +of the Church, as the city of God, the family of God, the sanctuary of +God, in the world, there is little fear that whatever is good in +humanity will fail of allegiance to her. The kings of the earth will +bring their glory and honour into her, and the nations of the earth +shall walk in her light. + + + +[1] Sanday and Headlam's _Romans_, pp. 122-124. + +[2] Hebr. ix. 8. + +[3] 1 Peter ii. 4. + +[4] 1 Thess. v. 14; 1 Cor. v.-vi. 11. + +[5] Col. i. 28. + +[6] Luke xii. 42. + +[7] Gal. iv. 11; v. 1. + +[8] Col. ii. 20-22. + +[9] Cor. xi. 2, 16. + +[10] Tit. iii. 10. + +[11] John ii. 19-21. + +[12] Acts xv. 16. + +[13] See app. note D, p. 264, on the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. + + + + +{121} + +DIVISION I. Sec. 5. CHAPTER III. + +_Paul the apostle of catholicity._ + +[Sidenote: _Paul the apostle of catholicity_] + +St. Paul has unfolded the dimensions of the revelation of God given in +the catholic church. The interests of the whole of mankind and of the +whole universe which it is to subserve--that is its breadth: the +eternal and slowly realized intention of God of which it is the +expression--that is its length: the spiritual elevation up to which it +takes men--that is its height: the gulf of sin and misery from which it +rescues them--that is its depth. And now he is about to press upon the +Asiatic Christians the moral obligations which this great catholic +brotherhood involves. He begins his exhortation and enforces it by +reminding them of what he was enduring as a prisoner for Christ's +sake--'For this cause (i.e. seeing that all this is true), I, Paul, the +prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you, the Gentiles.' But when he +has thus made a beginning, he pauses to add weight {122} to his appeal +by emphasizing a personal but very important consideration. The +particular truth of the catholicity of the Church had been in quite a +special sense entrusted to him, Paul, personally, as apostle of the +Gentiles. He assumes that they have heard of this, his special +commission, and that it was the subject of a special revelation to +himself[1]. Indeed the fact must have formed part of his teaching at +Ephesus and throughout Asia, for his mind was full of it; he had +contended for it against strong opposition in his epistle to the +Galatians[2]; he had asserted it in his speech on the occasion of his +being made a prisoner at Jerusalem: and he had quite recently explained +it 'in brief compass' in the letter to the Colossians which was +intended to have, in part at least, the same readers as his present +epistle[3]. This special revelation then and accompanying commission +justifies him in particular, and more than any of {123} the other +apostles, in pressing upon his converts the doctrine which forms the +special topic of this epistle. + +But to think of his special office as apostle of a catholic society, is +to think also of its extraordinary difficulty. + +[Sidenote: _The difficulty of catholicity_] + +When we set ourselves in our own later age to rehabilitate the sense of +church membership, we feel at once the strength of the forces against +us; we realize how much the feeling of blood-kinship in the family +counts for, or the wider kinship of national life, or the common +interests of our professions or our classes, compared to the feeble +sense of fellowship which comes from a church membership which is so +largely conventional. Most assuredly we feel the difficulty of what we +have in hand. But we cannot feel it more intensely than St. Paul felt +the difficulty involved in the very idea of a human brotherhood in +which national distinctions were obliterated. After all, the degree of +unity impressed by the Roman Empire upon the different nations it +embraced was superficial. On the whole it left men to walk in their +own ways. In particular it did not succeed in breaking down the +barriers of Jewish isolation. A society in which men should be neither +Jews nor {124} Gentiles, Greeks nor barbarians, bond nor free, but all +should be welded into one manhood by the pressure of a common and +constraining bond of brotherhood--a society in which even the savage +and brutal Scythian should have equal fellowship with Greeks and +Jews[4]--represented what had never yet been accomplished, and what the +most sanguine might reasonably have thought impossible. The history of +the Church, though not yet much more than thirty years old, had served +already to emphasize the difficulty of the undertaking. We read the +record of the first Jerusalem Church with its communism of love and +sympathy, and it seems the perfect realization of the Christian spirit +of brotherhood. So it was, but under comparatively easy conditions. +For all that community were Jews with common traditions, sympathies, +habits, ways of looking at things. They could behave as brethren, in +the glow of their fresh enthusiasm at finding that the long-expected +kingdom of Christ was now an actual fact, and its triumph to be +immediately expected, without any real bridging of the gulfs which yawn +between different sorts of men. That these gulfs still remained to be +bridged soon appeared. It became manifest that {125} Gentiles, +'sinners of the Gentiles,' had to be received into Christian +brotherhood upon equal terms, and without their accepting the Jewish +law and customs. The Council at Jerusalem attempted a compromise by +requiring of the Gentile converts certain accommodations to Jewish +manners. But the compromise did not avail to overcome the difficulty. +St. Paul found the centre of opposition to the equal admission of the +Gentiles in that very Church of Jerusalem which had been previously +foremost in the race of love. In fact, the true difficulty of the law +of brotherhood only then appeared when the obligation to fuse +inveterate national distinctions began to be enforced. Then indeed +flesh and blood rebelled. Without going any further than this single +piece of Christian experience, there is every reason why St. John +should warn Christians that the old commandment, 'ye shall love one +another,' is constantly, with every change of circumstance, becoming 'a +new commandment,' involving new difficulties, and challenging afresh +the efforts of the human will[5]. The same difficulty, only in a less +acute form, is in St. Paul's mind, and makes him measure and weigh his +words, when he writes to Philemon {126} to beg him to receive his +former runaway slave, 'no longer as a slave, but as a brother +beloved[6].' + +And we cannot but pause and ask, in view of all the moral discipline +for men of various kinds which St. Paul sees to be involved in the +simple obligation to belong to one Christian body[7],--what would have +been his feelings if he had heard of the doctrine which cuts at the +root of all this discipline by declaring that religion is only +concerned with the relation of the soul to God, and that Christians may +combine as they please in as many religious bodies as suits their +varying tastes? + +This difficulty in the very idea of a catholic brotherhood of men +explains the extraordinary earnestness with which St. Paul proceeds to +emphasize that indeed this, and nothing less than this, is the divine +mystery (or 'secret'), which, held back from all eternity in the mind +of God, was only now being disclosed through Christ's consecrated +messengers, and specially through St. Paul himself, the apostle of the +Gentiles. The incredible nature of the idea clogs St. Paul's language, +and almost makes shipwreck of his grammar. All the depth of Christian +doctrine is necessary as background {127} to recommend and justify this +otherwise entirely 'supernatural' ideal--this marvellous climax of the +workings and revelations of God. The spectacle of a catholic +brotherhood, with all that it promises of universal unity beyond +itself, is a lesson even to the angels of what the manifold wisdom of +God can conceive and accomplish. + +We have got into a habit of talking about the 'brotherhood of man' as +if it was an easy and obvious truth. All our experience of our English +relations with races of a different colour to our own, nay, all our +experience of class divisions at home, might have served to check this +easy-going sort of language. If we will consent to pause and reflect +on the actual difficulty of behaving or feeling as brethren should +behave and feel towards men of other races and of other educations and +habits than our own, we may be more inclined to believe that it is only +through some fundamental eradication of selfishness and inherent +narrowness that it can be made possible; only when we begin to live +from some centre greater than ourselves. And that is the moral meaning +of the constant doctrine of the New Testament, that only through being +reconciled to God can we be reconciled to one {128} another--only in +Christ that men can permanently and satisfactorily learn to love one +another, when racial and educational and personal antipathies make for +separation and not for unity. + +Now perhaps we are in a position to read with greater intelligence what +St. Paul wrote about 'the dispensation of the divine mystery,' i.e. +'the stewardship of the divine secret,' of the brotherhood of all men +in Christ or the catholicity of the Church, which had been committed to +him by the 'revelation' which followed his conversion to Christ[8]. + +The doctrine of the brotherhood of men is in fact as much a peculiarly +Christian doctrine as that of divine sonship, and both alike are, in +the New Testament language, represented as realized only within the +community of the baptized. The facts of New Testament language compel +us to say and to recognize this[9]. But {129} we are bound to +recognize also that they are truths which, when they are heard, are +welcomed by the natural conscience everywhere. For as all men are +'God's offspring[10],' by the very fact of their creation as men, so +they are fitted to receive the privilege of sonship: and as they are +'made of one[11],' so they are fitted to realize the privilege of +brotherhood. It is but to say the same thing in other words, if we +insist that Christians are the elect body, to realize and express among +men an idea of human nature which is the only true idea, and which, +overlaid and forgotten as it may have been, has never ceased to stir in +man's heart and conscience everywhere. The elect are elected for no +other purpose than to make manifest what all men are capable of +becoming, and, if they will obey God, are destined to become. + + +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 to you-ward; 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 {130} 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 make all men see what is the +dispensation of the mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God +who created all things; to the intent that now unto the principalities +and the powers in the heavenly _places_ might be made known through the +church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose +which he purposed in Christ 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. + + +There are a few points in this passage which still require explanation. + +[Sidenote: _Paul the apostle of catholicity_] + +1. What is St. Paul referring to when he says 'As I wrote afore in few +words whereby, when ye read[12], ye can perceive my understanding in +the mystery of Christ' or (if I may venture to retranslate it) 'as I +wrote before in brief, by {131} comparison with which, as ye read, ye +can perceive my understanding in the secret of the Christ'? It is +generally supposed that he is referring to the verses in the first +chapter of this epistle (i. 9, 10, &c.), in which he speaks of the +'mystery' or 'secret' of the divine will now disclosed. But his point +appears to be rather that he had elsewhere written in brief about his +own special commission to preach the Gentile gospel; and the more +probable reference seems to be to the Epistle to the Colossians which +was written almost simultaneously with this epistle, probably just +previously, and was intended to be read at some at least, if not all, +of the same churches as this circular epistle, that is to say at +Laodicea and Colossae at least, and probabfxly more widely. In that +epistle (i. 25 ff.) he had really dwelt on his special commission in +almost the same terms as here, and comparison with what he said there +would indeed assist those he was now addressing to understand his +knowledge in the 'revealed secret of the Christ.' + +2. How can St. Paul, who insists continually that he is one of the +apostles, call them, without self-complacency, God's holy apostles? +The answer to this is that 'holiness' means 'consecration.' Any one is +'holy' or a 'saint' (the {132} same word) who is consecrated to God in +any special way. Such consecration lays upon him an obligation to +moral goodness, which is what we mean by holiness, but it precedes the +fulfilment of the obligation. All Christians are holy (or 'saints') +because they are Christians, all apostles because they are apostles. +As for St. Paul's personal estimate of himself as an individual, we +have it just below. In view of his past sins, when he was 'kicking +against the pricks,' and, albeit in ignorance, persecuting the Church, +he calls himself 'less than the least of all the holy.' + +3. St. Paul conceives his function to be to 'make men see,' or 'bring +into the light' a long hidden secret of God now in part disclosed to +the apostles, and to be by them disclosed to the world--in part, for +its contents are still 'unsearchable' in their depth and in the +'manifoldness' of divine wisdom which they imply. But what is +disclosed is no afterthought of God. It is an eternal purpose; and it +is all of a piece with the original idea of creation: it is a 'secret +... hidden in God who created all things.' Redemption in fact +interprets to angels and men what God's purpose in creation originally +was. To minister to this disclosure is enough for any {133} man. It +makes all St. Paul's tribulations only such as it is worth while to +bear; and the Gentiles, in their turn, should find their glory in his +tribulations as an evidence of how much he thought it worth while to +suffer in what is their cause no less truly than his. + +[Sidenote: St. Paul's second prayer] + +Here, as in the first chapter, the consideration of the glory, and +consequently the difficulty, of the gospel which St. Paul has to +deliver leads him off--just at the point where he seems to be resuming +the uncompleted sentence with which he began--into a prayer that the +Asiatic Christians may have strength given them to apprehend the wealth +of their spiritual position and opportunity. He invokes God as the +universal 'father (_pater_) from whom every family (_patria_)--every +company of men knit together by common relation to one father--is +named,' because this has direct reference to his purpose. All men +recognize family, or blood relations and obligations. St. Paul reminds +them that every conceivable society on earth or in heaven which is +bound by the ties of a common fatherhood, derives its 'name' and +therefore its significance from a larger relationship, an all-embracing +relationship of which these lower ones are but shadows--the +relationship to the one Father: {134} and he calls upon the one Father +to strengthen men to transcend all narrownesses of family or blood, and +rise to realize their position in the great family, the great +brotherhood under the one Father. To do this a strengthening of the +inner man, or inner life, by the divine Spirit is indeed needed. +Christ must be not only possessed by Christians, but realized. He must +dwell in their hearts by the realizing power of an active personal +faith. Where this is so--where faith is vigorous--there life must be +rooted and founded on love. Christian faith involves love. For it is +faith in a Father and His Son and His Spirit; and love, and nothing but +love, is the gift of the Father in the Son by the Spirit. This love +then will strengthen them, in the fellowship of the saints or +consecrated ones altogether, to apprehend God's work and purpose in all +its dimensions--breadth and length and depth and height--and to know +Christ's love (which yet passes knowledge and remains unknowable), and +to find their whole being, not as separate individuals, but as one body +praying and working and thinking together, expanded to take in the +fulness of what God is, the full complement of the divine life. To be +thus enlightened and enlarged is what St. Paul {135} understands by +being a 'good catholic': that is what he prays all these Asiatic +Christians may become. + +And his prayer passes into a doxology--an ascription of glory to God +because He is able to realize even what passes our power to conceive or +to ask for; and that without doing more for us than He has already +pledged Himself to do and actually begun to accomplish in us. And this +glory he would have eternally ascribed to God in the Church which lives +by His life; and also (where alone God can never fail of His full +rights) in Him in whom alone God's life is perfectly realized, and +worship perfectly rendered Him under conditions of manhood, in Jesus +the Christ. + + +For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family +in heaven and on 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 Christ may dwell in your hearts +through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, +may be strong to apprehend 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. +Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we +ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him _be_ +the glory in the {136} church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations +for ever and ever. Amen. + + +St. Augustine, with his eye on the imperfections of the Church, +speaks[13] of 'the glory of love ... alive but yet frost-bound. The +root is alive, but the branches are almost dry. There is a heart alive +within, and within are leaves and fruits; but they are waiting for a +summer.' That is surely what we feel. The world cries out for +brotherhood. We are perpetually explaining that brotherhood can only +become actual, in the long run, where men know themselves to be, and in +fact are, sons of God. We are continually pointing out that external +legislative social reforms can only effect good where there exists, to +respond to them and to use them, some strength and purity of inward +character: that outward reforms without moral redemption would effect +evil rather than good. All this is true and it is necessary to explain +it. But the convincing demonstration begins at that point where +Christianity makes man feel, and see in fact, that it contains in +itself the remedy for social evils, because it has the spirit of love: +where the Church is so actually presented as that men should feel and +know that this is a true human {137} brotherhood. It is the social, +human, brotherly power of the Church which is what is at the present +moment best calculated to win the consciences and convince the +intellects of men. But this actual living spirit of self-sacrificing +love--this spirit of real brotherhood--how 'frost-bound' it is! How +large the area of the Church, how many its institutions, where it is +not (to say the least) the most obvious thing represented! In fact, +social reform, and that the most thorough and the most permanent, +requires nothing more than that professing Christians should be better +Christians, Christians who really believe what St. Paul and St. John +say about the love of the brethren. Come then, O breath of the divine +Spirit, and breathe upon these bones of the Christian Church, that they +may live! + +And outside the area of nominal Christianity how 'frost-bound' our +evangelizing love. Surely the Church of England, as part of the +expansive British nation, has an apostleship to the nations comparable +to St. Paul's. Yet missionary zeal, as directed towards the natives of +India, or Japan, or Africa, is a very restricted thing; noticeably +restricted it must be confessed among those who most love the name of +Catholic: and almost non-existent in the great majority of those who +are {138} yet members of the national Church. But it cannot be too +deeply felt that to St. Paul the reconciliation of men with God is +inseparable from the reconciliation of man with man. The atonement +with God that is not an atonement among men he would not own. A peace +with God that leaves us content that Hindoos and Japanese and Africans +should not be of our religion is a false peace. A Christian who is not +really in heart and will a missionary is not a Christian at all. +Missionary effort is not a speciality of a few Christians, though, like +every other part of Christian life, it has its special organs. It is +an essential, never to be forgotten, part of all true Christian living, +and thinking, and praying. + +The missionary obligation of the Church depends, no doubt, chiefly on +the command of Christ, 'Go ye and make disciples of all the nations.' +But it is made intelligible when we realize that Christianity is really +a catholic religion, and that only in proportion as its catholicity +becomes a reality is its true power and richness exhibited. Each new +race which is introduced into the Church not only itself receives the +blessings of our religion, but reacts upon it to bring out new and +unsuspected aspects and {139} beauties of its truth and influence. It +has been so when Greeks, and Latins, and Teutons, and Kelts, and Slavs +have each in turn been brought into the growing circle of believers. +How impoverished was the exhibition of Christianity which the Jewish +Christians were capable of giving by themselves! How much of the +treasures of wisdom and power which lie hid in Christ awaited the Greek +intellect, and the Roman spirit of government, and the Teutonic +individuality, and the temper and character of the Kelt and the Slav, +before they could leap into light! And can we doubt that now again not +only would Indians, and Japanese, and Africans, and Chinamen be the +better for Christianity, but that Christianity would be unspeakably +also the richer for their adhesion--for the gifts which the subtlety of +India, and the grace of Japan, and the silent patience of China are +capable of bringing into the city of God. + +Come, then, O breath of the divine Spirit, and breathe upon the dead +bones of the Christian churches that forget that they are evangelists +of the nations, that they may live and stand upon their feet, an +exceeding great army, an army with banners. + + + +[1] Acts xxii. 17-21. 'While I prayed in the temple, I fell into a +trance, and saw him saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly +out of Jerusalem.... Depart: for I will send thee forth far hence unto +the Gentiles.' + +[2] Gal. i. 15. 'It was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, +_even_ from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to +reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles.' + +[3] Col. i. 24-29; iv. 3, 4. + +[4] Col. iii. 11. + +[5] 1 John ii. 7, 8. + +[6] Phil. 16. + +[7] Eph. iv. 1-3. + +[8] Acts xxii. 21; xxvi. 17, 18. + +[9] Thus the limitation of the term 'brotherhood' to Christians is +implied in 1 Pet. ii. 17, 'Honour all men. Love the brotherhood;' and +in 2 Pet. i. 7, 'In your love of the brethren supply love' (i.e. in the +narrower and closer circle of believers, learn the wider and all +embracing attitude towards men as men); and in 1 Cor. v. 11, 'Any man +that is named a brother.' The word brother is throughout the New +Testament used of _Christians_ only, except where, in the Acts, it is +used by Jews of Jews. Our Lord's language about brotherhood applies to +the circle of the disciples, except Matt. xxv. 40, 'One of these my +brethren,' i.e. the wretched. + +[10] Acts xvii. 28. + +[11] Acts xvii. 26. + +[12] Dr. Hort thinks 'read' is a technical word for reading the +Scriptures, and that this reading of the Old Testament Scriptures is to +enable them to appreciate St. Paul's 'understanding in the secret of +the Christ.' But I doubt if so technical a use of 'read' can be made +out. + +[13] _In Epist. Joan, ad Parth._ v. 10. + + + + +{140} + +DIVISION I. Sec. 6. CHAPTER IV. 1-16. + +_The unity of the church._ + +[Sidenote: _Connexion of thought_] + +This Epistle to the Ephesians, viewed as a whole and from the point of +view of a sympathetic intelligence, has a remarkable unity, and a unity +progressively developed. Thus, first of all, the apostle opened the +imagination of his hearers or readers to consider the place which the +catholic church holds in the divine counsels for the universe, in the +realization of the human ideal, and in the work of redemption from sin +(chap. i and ii). Then he proceeded to justify and explain his own +activity in the cause of catholicity, and made them feel at once the +glory and the profound difficulty of the ideal of unity in diversity +which it involves (chap. iii). It follows naturally and logically that +he should set the Church before them as an actually existing +organization, and bid them study it exactly and note the grounds of its +unity and the common end to which its different elements or members +{141} are meant to minister; and this is what he actually does in the +fourth chapter (1-16). Viewed, however, as a matter of grammatical +structure, it is probable that this passage forms another +digression--the real necessity of the argument acting as an +overmastering motive which pulls contrary to the immediate grammatical +purpose of the writer. Thus he had begun, at the beginning of chapter +iii, to pass from the doctrinal exposition which is involved in his +opening chapters to practical exhortation. The Asiatic members of the +catholic church are to be exhorted to live up to their calling: to turn +their backs deliberately on their old heathen habits, and to conform +themselves entirely to the principles of their new state. To this +exhortation he actually and finally attains at chapter iv. 17. The +intervening passage (a chapter and a half) is occupied, first, with the +digression which we have just considered at length, about St. Paul's +mission to the Gentiles and the difficulty of its realization, and with +the great prayer which that topic suggests (chap. iii); secondly, with +another digression on the character of the unity of the Church. This +is, I say, probably the case grammatically. For 'I, Paul, the prisoner +of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles' (iii. 1) is almost {142} unmistakably +intended to introduce a moral appeal to which his imprisonment for the +sake of those to whom he writes adds weight and force[1]. It is taken +up, after a digression, in iv. i, 'I, therefore, the prisoner of the +Lord, beseech you to walk worthily'; but the appeal there begun yields +anew to the necessity of further exposition, and only reaches its free +expression in iv. 17, 'This therefore I say and testify in the Lord'; +after which point we have moral exhortation and little else. + +Now, therefore, we are to occupy ourselves with what is grammatically a +second digression, but logically and really a most necessary step in +the exposition of St. Paul's thoughts--the subject of the unity of the +church catholic, its nature and obligations. Conscious of the profound +difficulty of welding naturally antagonistic elements, such as Jews and +Gentiles, slaves and free men, into one catholic fellowship, St. Paul +appeals to the Asiatic churches with all the force which he can command +as a prisoner on their account, to 'walk' as their catholic calling +{143} involves; that is, to exhibit all those moral qualities which are +necessary to maintain peace under difficult circumstance--a modest +estimate of oneself (humility or 'lowliness'), a mildness in mutual +relations ('meekness'), an habitual refusal to pass quick judgements on +what one cannot but condemn or dislike ('longsuffering'), a deliberate +forbearance one of another based on love. They are to accept one +another as brethren, with the rights of brethren. And the reason why +they should exhibit these qualities is not far to seek: they actually +share one common supernatural life--the imparted life of the +Spirit--and they are, therefore, to make it their deliberate object to +preserve this actual spiritual unity in its appropriate outward +expression, that is in harmonious fellowship,--'giving diligence to +keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.' + +[Sidenote: _The unity of the church_] + +But at this point the idea of the unity of the Church is felt to need +fuller exposition. In what sense are Christians one? They are one as +_one body_ or organization, made up no doubt of a multitude of +differing individual members, but all bound into one, under Christ for +their head, by the fact that the _one Spirit_, which is Christ's +supreme gift, is imparted to the whole {144} organization and every +member of it: and this common corporate life, where the elements are so +different, is made possible by the _one hope_ reaching forward into an +eternal world, which was set before them all when they received their +call into the body of Christ. This should be enough to annihilate +lower and shorter-lived differences. 'There is one body[2] and one +spirit even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.' It follows +from this that there is another threefold unity. For the existence of +the common head involves a common _allegiance to Him as Lord_, an +allegiance which is justified by what He is _believed to be_ by all +Christians; an allegiance, further, which is more than an outward +fealty, being cemented by an actual incorporation into His life which +takes place through the speaking symbol of the _laver of +regeneration_[3]. 'One Lord, one faith, one baptism.' But once more. +This common union with and under Christ in the Spirit, is not anything +less than union with _the one and only God and Father_, who is _over +all_ as the one head (even 'the head of Christ is God'), _through all_ +as the pervading presence, _in all_ as the active {145} life, 'one God +and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all things.' +Thus their unity is the deepest and most ultimate conceivable: it has a +width and range from which no one can be excluded: while it has a +closeness and cogency like the unity of blood. + +To realize what this unity is and may be, involves on our part a +continual looking out of ourselves, out of all individual, social and +national differences, up to the common source of all the gifts of all +Christians. Whatever each one possesses is simply the gift of the +divine bounty or grace, given to him by a definite act of bestowal, +varying merely in kind and degree according to the sovereign will of +Christ the Lord, the only giver; and it is therefore to be used in His +service and for His ends. The Psalmist had sung of the divine king of +Israel mounting as an earthly conqueror unto his sanctuary throne in +Zion after making captives and receiving gifts from among his enemies +without exception. + + 'Thou hast gone up into the heights, + Thou hast led captives captive; + Thou hast received gifts among men, yea from the rebellious also[4].' + + +It stands to reason that to St. Paul's mind this {146} conception is +realized nowhere but in Christ. Its application to Christ is in fact +assumed--'therefore,' i.e. with a view to Christ, 'he' or rather 'it,' +the Scripture 'saith'--and the passage is given free interpretation, +and, more than this, free modification, on the basis of this +assumption. For (1) the ascension of the conquering king is spoken of +as the result of a previous descent to the 'lower regions of this earth +of ours[5].' No man, as St. John says, hath ascended up to heaven but +He that came down from heaven. The person who 'beggared himself' to +come down to our earth and who subsequently mounted into the divine +glory is one and the same person, Christ the incarnate Son; and He thus +descended and re-ascended in order that He might, through the atonement +wrought by Him in the flesh and through the exaltation which rewarded +it, restore to the universe that unity of which sin and rebellion had +robbed it, and 'fill all things' once again with the divine bounty and +presence[6]. + +{147} + +(2) The sense of the psalm is--possibly not without Jewish +precedent[7]--altered in expression so that, instead of the conqueror +receiving gifts from men, his conquered enemies, we have him +represented as 'giving gifts to men.' This modification, whether +original in St. Paul or accepted by him, is no doubt due to the fact +that his mind is full of the idea of Christ as conquering only to +bless, receiving homage only to be enabled to bestow on them who offer +it the fulness of the divine bounty. And the 'captives' of Christ, to +St. Paul's mind, are no doubt not men, but the hosts of Satan reduced +to impotence. The exalted Christ, then, is the source of all gifts in +His Church, and He bestows on men various endowments in such a way as +to maintain among them a necessary relation. 'No member of the body of +Christ is endued with such perfection as to be able, without the +assistance of others, to supply his own necessities. A certain +proportion is allotted to each, and it is only by communicating with +others that all enjoy what is sufficient for maintaining their +respective places in the body[8].' This is the principle of mutual +dependence, the fundamental principle of corporate life. Thus 'He gave +{148} some as apostles, some prophets,' others in other varying +capacities to fulfil varying functions; the principle of the bestowal +being the same throughout. Each 'gifted' individual becomes himself a +gift to the Church. He is 'gifted' not for his own sake but for the +Church's sake--'with a view to the perfecting of the saints,' or 'the +complete equipment of the consecrated body,' for the manifold 'work of +ministry' entrusted to it; or to look at the matter from a rather +different point of view, 'for the purpose of completing the structure +of the body of Christ'--that living company of men in whom Christ +expresses Himself and through whom He acts upon the world. And that +structure is not complete till all together attain what is impossible +to any isolated Christian individual, the unity not only of a common +faith, but also of a common knowledge of what is revealed in the Son of +God; or, in other words, to the full-grown manhood; which, once again, +means that complete developement in which the fulness of the +Christ--all the complete array of His attributes and qualities--finds +harmonious exhibition over again in His people, His body. + +But the possibility of this completeness on the part of the Church as a +whole, depends on the {149} stability of the individual members in the +common faith. Thus it is Christ's purpose that His members should +cease to be as children, stirred up like the waves of the sea, or +carried about like feathers, by every wind of false teaching. There +is, it must be remembered, a kingdom of deception, an organized attempt +to seduce souls, of which wicked men make themselves the instruments. +In view of this hostile kingdom of error, the Christians must abide in +the truth revealed to them in love, and so grow up into the completed +life of Christ. For He is the head, and in Him they are the body. And +the body is a unit of many parts fitted and held together in one life +by a supply from the head, which circulates through every joint, and +for the full and unimpeded communication of which each several limb +must do its proper work, so that the whole body may grow into completed +life in that mutual coherence which is Christian love. + + +This prolonged paraphrase may serve to bring out the innumerable points +of interest in that rich passage in which St. Paul as it were gives the +reins to his imagination and his feelings in order to describe the +glory of the unity of the Church. + + +{150} 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. 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, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body +of Christ: till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the +knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of +the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no longer +children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of +doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of +error; but speaking truth 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 joint 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. + +{151} + +In this great conception of church unity there are several points to +which special attention must be given. + + +i. + +The Church is one, first of all, because a common inward life, the +Spirit, from a common source, Christ, flows in her veins and makes her +to be one body. What is this 'unity of Spirit?' says Chrysostom. 'As +in a body it is spirit which holds all together, and makes that to be a +unity which consists of different limbs, so it is in the Church. For +the Spirit was given for this purpose that He might unify those who +differ in race and variety of habits.' This inward life is no doubt, +as we shall see, imparted, maintained and perfected through outward +means or institutions--baptism, the eucharist, human offices and +ministries; but none the less it is the inward life which makes the +Church one. So that her unity is like the unity of a family or a race, +a unity of blood and life which exists in spite of all outward +differences: and not like such a unity as is produced by outward +government, as, for example, Armenians, Syrians, Kurds, and Turks make +up the unity of the Turkish empire, or Englishmen and Frenchmen the +Dominion of {152} Canada. The unity of the Christian Church is thus a +unity which ought to express itself in 'the bond of peace,' but which +does not consist in that, any more than the unity of a family consists +in the affection and sympathy which yet brothers ought to have one to +another. This Pauline idea of church unity--which is the idea also of +the New Testament as a whole--constantly finds expression in early +Christian writings, but one particular expression of it may be cited. +Hilary of Poitiers, in argument with the Arians, is confronted with the +position that the phrase 'I and my Father are one' means only one in +will, not one in nature, like the phrase used of the Church, 'one heart +and soul.' He refutes the argument by urging that, in the latter case +also, what is referred to is not a unity of wills but of nature: +believers are 'one thing through a new birth into the same (new) +nature.' 'Ye are all one,' says St. Paul, 'in Christ Jesus.' 'The +apostle teaches that this unity of the faithful comes from the nature +of the sacraments.... What then can concord of minds have to do with a +case where men are already made one by being clothed with one Christ +through the nature of one baptism?[9]' This passage gives {153} a +striking view of what ultimately constitutes church unity. + +It is necessary to call attention to this position because the great +Roman church, which occupies so large a space in the whole area of the +church, and impresses its ideas so powerfully upon men's imagination, +has perverted this idea of church unity by a one-sided emphasis on +unity of government. I find a typical modern Roman statement in Dr. +Hunter's _Outlines of Dogmatic Theology_[10]: 'The Church has a +principle of oneness which joins the members together, and +distinguishes the society from a mere aggregate of unconnected units. +The members are associated in order that, believing the revelation that +God has given, and using the means of grace which He has provided, +under the direction of the governors who have their authority from Him, +they may attain the end of their being, the salvation of their souls. +In other words, the unity which the Church must have includes the unity +of faith, unity of worship, and unity of government.' Here we have +church unity described as an outward association of individuals to +attain a certain end by submitting to a common authority in matters of +belief and worship. The {154} unity of spiritual life which St. Paul +and St. Hilary put distinctly first, becomes secondary or subordinate. +It is not even specified among the three chief elements of unity. But +it makes the greatest possible difference whether you say 'the Church +is one because all baptized persons share a common life in Christ, and +ought therefore to behave as "one body,"' or 'the Church is one by +submitting to a common authority in belief, worship, and government.' +The second is the Roman, the first is the apostolic statement. + + +ii. + +Once more, St. Paul's idea of the unity of the Church forbids us to +conceive of it as complete in this world. Each particular church with +its own organization has a certain relative completeness, but it gains +all its meaning and life through fellowship in the body of Christ--the +whole society of men who, having Christ for their head, live in the +unity of a life derived from Him. The head of the body is out of +sight. So also are the members of the body who 'are fallen asleep' but +are still 'in Jesus[11].' It is, so to speak--and increasingly as +history goes {155} on--only the lower limbs of the body who are on the +earth at any particular moment. And they find their centre of unity at +no lower point than Christ, the unseen head. This idea is vigorously +expressed by St. Augustine[12]: 'Since the whole Church is made up of +the head and the body, the head is our Saviour Himself, who suffered +under Pontius Pilate, who now, after He has risen from the dead, sits +at the right hand of God; but the body is the Church--not this church +or that, but the Church scattered over all the world; nor is it that +only which exists among men now living; but they also belong to it who +were before us and are to be after us to the end of the world. For the +whole Church, made up of all the faithful, because all the faithful are +members of Christ, has its head situate in the heavens which governs +this body: though it is separated from their sight, yet it is bound to +them by love." + +Now it is obvious that this Pauline and Augustinian idea of church +unity excludes, instead of suggesting, the Roman method of arguing for +the papacy from the necessity that a body must have a head. An +association of men in this world, such as the Church on earth {156} +is--a 'body of men' in this sense--may be governed in any of the +various ways in which human societies are governed, not by any means +necessarily by a monarch[13]. In this sense a body need not have a +single head; or it can be ruled by a president in a council of equals. +But in St. Paul's sense, the Church as a body must have a head, and +that head can be none other than Christ, because, according to his +spiritual physiology, from its head the Church receives its continually +inflowing life; and because the body is not completely, but only +partially, in this world, and the head must be over all the members, +and not only over some. + + +iii. + +But if the unity of the Church, as St. Paul expounds it, is before all +else a unity of life, it is as well a unity in the truth. It is a +unity based on belief in a divine revelation, given in the person of +Christ--based on the common confession that Jesus crucified and risen +is Christ and Lord[14]. To say that 'Jesus is the Lord' {157} involves +further--what is implied in this passage of the Epistle to the +Ephesians--the confession of the threefold name--the 'one God and +Father,' the 'one Lord' Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the 'one Spirit' +which is His gift; and there can be no real question that St. Paul's +language constantly involves that the Son and Spirit are with the +Father really personal, and really divine, included, so to speak, in +the one only eternal Godhead. A creed then is at the basis of the +Christian life--a creed which finds its best expression and safeguard +in the formulated doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. There +is no reason to think that St. Paul, if the situation of the later +Church could have been made plain to him, would have shrunk from these +dogmatic safeguards of the Church's central faith. + +But if we grant--what cannot really with any show of reason be +denied--that the Church is a visible organization based on a certain +revealed truth, which must be accepted by its members, and which admits +of being formulated in order to be preserved; still this truth may be +advanced and defended mainly by one of two methods--that of external +regulative authority, or that of appeal to principles, discussion, +controversy, {158} exhortation. And it can hardly be denied that St. +Paul prefers the latter. Sharp appeals to authority are indeed to be +found in St. Paul[15], but they are very rare. For example, in none of +his epistles against the Judaizers is the authority of the apostolic +decision, as to what might and what might not be required of the +Gentile Christians 'in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia[16],' brought into +requisition; though that decision 'settled the question.' He prefers +to prove that 'circumcision is nothing.' This may be in part accounted +for by St. Paul's refusal to admit that his own apostolic authority +needed the support of the twelve, and by the limited area to which the +decision was addressed; but there is another reason as well. For he +plainly, as all his epistles show, prefers to appeal not to authority +at all but to the spiritual reason; to expound principles, to argue, to +awaken the heart, conscience, and mind of Christians. It must be +admitted that there is very little in St. Paul's epistles about +differences of doctrinal views among Christians as distinct from +differences in practices. Yet there is enough--as in the vigorous +passage about the 'regarding of one {159} day above another[17]'--to +justify the belief that he would not have viewed with any disapproval +the existence in the Church of tolerated differences of opinion where +they did not touch the basis of the Church's life. Such differences of +view are hardly separable from what St. Paul glories in--a unity which +is consistent with great variety of gifts and character, and great +freedom. It is unity in variety which he has as his ideal, such a +unity as is always characteristic of a unity of life, like that of +nature or of a free people; or a unity, again, like that of a great +Gothic Church, or of the Bible. + +It is quite certain that St. Paul would have deprecated that 'short and +easy' method of promoting unity which has constant recourse to the +external pressure of dogma and authority. + + +iv. + +It follows naturally from what has been just said, that St. Paul should +look not so much to ecclesiastical enactments as to a right Christian +temper for preserving outward unity. 'Making it your moral effort,' so +we may paraphrase his exhortation to the Asiatic Christians, 'by means +{160} of the virtues which I have just specified of humility, meekness, +long-suffering, and forbearance, to maintain the unity of the Spirit in +the bond of Christian peace.' The New Testament view of heresy (a +self-willed separatism), or schism, is that it is a violation of +charity and peace in the interests of pride and impatience and +self-will. It is men like 'Diotrephes who loveth to have the +pre-eminence,' who violate it. In fact it is written in history that +the ecclesiastical schisms of the past have been due mainly either to +the impatience and wilfulness of would-be reformers, from Tertullian +downwards, or to the arrogance and love of domination in rival +individuals or rival sees. + +'Nothing,' says Chrysostom on this passage, 'will have power to divide +the Church so much as the love of authority, and nothing provokes God +so much as that the Church should be divided. We may have done ten +thousand good actions, but if we rend the fulness of the Church, we +shall suffer punishment with those who rent His body.' + +From this point of view we may find an interesting parallel to this +exhortation of St. Paul in a passage of Plato's _Laws_, which is, I +believe, one of the few passages in pre-Christian writings where the +virtue of humility is recognized. {161} 'God, as the old tradition +declares, holding in His hand the beginning, middle, and end of all +that is, moves according to His nature in a straight line towards the +accomplishment of His end. Justice always follows Him, and is the +punisher of those who fall short of the divine law. To that law he who +would be happy holds fast, and follows it in all humility and order; +but he who is lifted up with pride, or money, or honour, or beauty, who +has a soul hot with folly and guilt and insolence, and thinks that he +has no need of a guide and ruler, but is able himself to be the guide +of others, he, I say, is left deserted of God; and being thus deserted, +he takes to him others who are like himself, and dances about in wild +confusion; and many think that he is a great man, but in a short time +he pays a penalty which justice cannot but approve, and is utterly +destroyed, and his family and city with him.' + +From the point of view of the moral duty of preserving ecclesiastical +unity, it is quite clear that the guilt of Christians has been +exceedingly great, and also that it has been very widely diffused. The +amount of ambition, insolence, and impatience in the Church has, in +fact, been so vast that it remains no longer a matter {162} for +astonishment that it should have made the havoc that it has made in the +divine household, and should have thwarted, as it has thwarted, the +divine intention. But the recognition of this fact lays on us the duty +of meditating continually on the divine intention, and by all that lies +in our power, by prayer and by every other means, to restore the +recognition of the divine principle of unity whether in the narrower or +the wider circle of church life. + +It is not too much to say that the now popular principle of the free +voluntary association of Christians in societies organized to suit +varying phases of taste, is destructive of the moral discipline +intended for us. It was the obligation to belong to one body which was +intended as the restraint on the prejudices and eccentricities of race, +classes and individuals. If Greeks, Italians, and Englishmen are to be +content to belong to different churches; if among ourselves we are to +have one church for the well-to-do, and another for 'labour'; if any +individual who is offended in one church is to be free to go off to +another where he or she likes the minister better--where does the need +come in for the forbearance and long-suffering and humility on which +St. Paul {163} insists as the necessary virtues of the one body? We, +Christians but not in one brotherhood, may not be able to agree at +present among ourselves as to the proper basis of ecclesiastical unity, +but we ought to be able to agree that, somehow or other, Christians are +intended by Christ and by the apostle to be one body, and that the +wilful violation of outward unity is truly a refusal of the yoke of +Christ. + +And a great step would have been taken towards rendering the recovery +of ecclesiastical unity more easy if those who recognize the obligation +of the principle could be brought to perceive that true Catholicism +really requires a large measure of toleration and a deliberate +reasonableness. At present it is not too much to say that the idea of +the obligation of ecclesiastical unity is widely associated with an +emphasis on ecclesiastical and dogmatic authority such as is utterly +alien to the mind of the apostle of Catholicism. + + +v. + +In what has been said above we have been attending chiefly to the +restraints which St. Paul's idea of church unity appears to set upon +what are commonly known as 'ecclesiastical tendencies.' {164} Now it is +time to emphasize the other side of the representation. For without a +strongly engrained prejudice, there is not, it seems to the present +writer, any possibility of doubting that St. Paul meant by 'the Church' +in general, a society visible and organized, represented by a number of +visible and organized local societies or churches[18]. The Church is +in fact ideal in its spiritual character, but not one bit the less an +association of human beings, a society with quite definite limits, +ties, and obligations. For, to begin with, the 'one baptism' which +conveyed the spiritual gift of incorporation into Christ was also the +initiation into an actual brotherhood, with its rules of conduct, +worship, and belief: 'we were all baptized into one body[19].' The +'one Spirit' was normally bestowed by the 'laying on of' apostolic +'hands'--that is, the hands of the chief governors of the Christian +corporation. This rite followed upon and completed baptism, and its +administration had {165} been one of St. Paul's first ministerial acts +after he began his preaching at Ephesus[20]. Again, 'the breaking of +the bread' or eucharist, according to St. Paul's teaching, both +nourished the life of Christ in the Church, as being the communion of +His body and blood, and also, in the 'one loaf,' symbolized its outward +corporate unity[21]. + +Thus the bestowal of gifts of grace through outward rites, which +belonged to the corporate life of a society, insured that a Christian +should be no isolated and independent individual. More than this, the +necessary dependence of each individual Christian upon the one +organized society is made further evident by the existence of +spiritually endowed officers of the society who were as 'the more +honourable limbs of the body'--'some apostles, some prophets, some +evangelists, some pastors and teachers'--without whom the body would +have lacked its divinely-given equipment for ministry and edification. +These were not merely more or less gifted or (as we say) talented +individuals who undertook particular sorts of work on their own +initiative, or by the invitation of any group of Christian individuals. +We find that the apostles at least were a definite {166} body of men +who had received special commission from Christ Himself to govern His +Church[22]. The Christian 'prophets' were men of special supernatural +endowment, to know and declare God's will, and foretell His purposes. +They ranked after the apostles in virtue of their prophetic gift[23]. +But even they were to be restrained by the exigencies of church order. +'The spirits of the prophets are subject unto the prophets; for God is +not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the +saints.' Next to the prophets, St. Paul specifies the 'evangelists.' +They were no doubt, as their name implies, officers engaged with the +apostles in the general work of spreading the gospel, that is of +founding and organizing churches. Timothy, who is exhorted to 'do the +work of an evangelist[24],' would probably have ranked amongst them; +and if so, Titus and other similar companions and delegates of +apostles. At any rate, by whatever name they were called, such men +belonged to {167} the specially 'gifted' class, if we may judge by the +case of Timothy. But he, though marked out by prophecy, received his +'gift,' as a church officer, with the laying on of the hands of a whole +presbytery, while the hands of the apostle himself were the divine +instruments for imparting the gift to him[25]. The 'pastors and +teachers'--one class of men and not two--are, we may say certainly, +identical with the presbyters or 'bishops' as they were called by St. +Paul at Ephesus; and these again were men of spiritual endowment, but +also local church officers who had received a definite apostolic +appointment[26], and there is no reason to doubt by laying on of hands. +Thus the Church, as St. Paul conceives it, is a body differentiated by +varieties of spiritual endowments imparted to definite officers, for +the fulfilment of functions necessary to the life and development of +the whole body. Thus the outward unity of the {168} society at any +particular moment, and the necessary connexion of each individual +Christian with it, is secured both by the existence of social +sacraments or means of grace, and by the existence of a ministry +spiritually endowed and commissioned, to whom individual Christians +owed allegiance, and who ranked as the more honourable limbs of that +body to which they must belong if they would belong to Christ. + + +vi. + +St. Paul is not here thinking of the unity of the Church otherwise than +at a particular moment. But if one turns one's attention to its +continuous unity down the ages, again it must be recognized that one +main link of unity has been in fact the apostolic succession of the +ministry; that is the permanence in the Church of a spiritually-endowed +'stewardship of divine mysteries' received continually by the original +method of the laying on of hands in succession from apostolic men. The +necessity for each individual Christian to remain in relation to these +commissioned stewards if he wishes to continue to be of the divine +household, has kept men together in one body. And any one who looks at +St. Paul's method of imparting spiritual authority {169} and office to +Timothy and Titus, and directing them in their turn to hand it on by +ordaining others, can scarcely doubt that he contemplated the +institution in the Church of a permanent ministry deriving its +authority from above. + +How, in fact, did the later church ministry connect itself with that +which we find existing in the apostolic age? The apostolic ministry +divides itself broadly into the general and the local. There are +'ministers' or 'stewards' who are officers of the church catholic and +have a general commission. Such general commission belonged, of +course, to the apostles, though mutual delimitations were arranged +among themselves and though St. James, who ranked with the apostles, +was settled at Jerusalem. It belonged also, more or less, to +'evangelists' and other 'apostolic men,' who, however, might be +temporarily located in particular churches and districts, like Timothy +in Ephesus, and Titus in Crete. It belonged also to the prophets, who +would have been recognized as men inspired of God in all the churches, +and who in the subapostolic age are found in some districts exercising +functions like those of the apostles in the first age. The local +officers, on the other hand, were the presbyters, who are called also +bishops, and the {170} deacons. With this earliest state of things in +our mind, we shall perceive that where an apostle or apostolic man was +permanently resident in one particular church, a threefold ministry, +like that of later church history already existed. So it was at +Jerusalem where the presbyters and deacons were presided over by St. +James. So it was in Crete under Titus, and in Ephesus under Timothy. +So it was a few decades later in all the churches of Asia as organized +by St. John. In other parts of the world the exact method by which the +ministry developed is a matter of much dispute. But it seems to the +present writer most probable that everywhere the threefold ministry +came into existence by (1) a change of arrangement, and (2) a change of +name. (1) The change of arrangement was the establishment in each +local church of a prophet, or one, like Timothy or Titus, who had been +ordained to quasi-apostolic office by an apostle or man of apostolic +rank; such a change taking place first at the greatest centres, and +then in lesser cities. (2) The change of name was the appropriation to +this now localized ruler of the title of bishop or 'overseer' which had +hitherto appertained more or less to the presbyters generally. + +{171} + +But in any case it is certain that the developement of the ministry +occurred on the principle of the apostolic succession. Those who were +to be ministers were the elect of the church in which they were to +minister: but they were authoritatively ordained to their office from +above, and by succession from the apostolic men. And such a principle +of ministerial authority appears to be not only historical, but also +most rational. For a continuous corporate unity was to be maintained +in a society which, as being catholic, must lack all such natural links +of connexion as are afforded by a common language or common race. And +how could such continuous corporate unity have been so well secured as +by a succession of persons whose function should be to maintain a +tradition, and whose ministerial authority should make them necessary +centres of the unity? + + + +[1] And not as Dr. Robertson (Smith's _Dict. of Bible_, ed. ii. vol. i. +pt. ii. p. 951) suggests, to introduce a prayer to God, which is +resumed in iii. 14. The 'For this cause' which is repeated in iii. 14 +is not nearly so significant as 'the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you +Gentiles,' which is taken up again in iv. 1. + +[2] I have interpreted this word in the light of what is said in verse +16. + +[3] Tit. iii. 5. + +[4] Ps. lxviii. 18 (Delitzsch). + +[5] I do not think St. Paul need refer to the descent into Hades. 'The +lower parts of the earth,' Is. xliv. 23, may also refer not to Hades +(see Delitzsch _in loco_) but to 'the earth beneath.' + +[6] The 'filling all things' is, in the epistles to the Ephesians and +Colossians, the characteristic action of the exalted Christ and the +result of the reconciliation and atonement won. Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 24-28, +'That God may be all in all.' + +[7] See Delitzsch's and Perowne's notes. + +[8] Calvin, _in loc._ + +[9] Hil. _de Trin._ viii. 7-9. The last sentence is condensed. + +[10] Vol. i. p. 317 (Longmans, 1895). + +[11] 1 Thess. iv. 14. + +[12] _In Ps._ lvi. i. + +[13] It is one very noticeable feature of the recent Encyclical of Leo +XIII on the Unity of the Church ('satis cognitum') that it assumes that +'only a despotic monarch can secure to any society unity and strength.' + +[14] Romans x. 9. + +[15] For example, see Gal. i. 6-9. + +[16] Acts xv. 23-29. + +[17] Romans xiv. 56; cf. Phil. iii. 15-16. + +[18] Cf. Hort, _Ecclesia_, p. 169, who brings out that _all_ members of +the local churches, better and worse, are regarded as members of the +universal Church. 'There is no evidence that St. Paul regarded +membership of the universal Church as invisible and exclusively +spiritual, and shared by only a limited number of the members of the +external Ecclesiae.' See also app. note E, p. 267. + +[19] 1 Cor. xii. 13. + +[20] Acts xix. 1-7. + +[21] 1 Cor. x. 16, 17. + +[22] See app. note E, p. 269. + +[23] In ii. 20 and iii. 5, 'Apostles and prophets' are spoken of +together almost as one class included under one definite article. And +of course the apostle Paul remained also, what he is first called, a +prophet (Acts xiii. i). Apostles were also prophets; but not all +prophets were apostles. They can be, therefore, grouped apart as they +are here (iv. 11). + +[24] 2 Tim. iv. 5. + +[25] 1 Tim. iv. 14; 2 Tim. i. 6. + +[26] Acts xiv. 23. This is interpreted by the phrase (Acts xx. 28) +'The Holy Ghost made you bishops.' Cf. Titus i. 5, 'I left thee ... to +appoint elders in every city.... For the bishop must be blameless.' I +assume here the _practical_ identity of bishops and presbyters, as Acts +xx. 28, Tit. i. 5-7, Acts xiv. 23 (with Phil. i. 1) seem to require. +But 'the presbyters' or the 'presbyterate' was the more general name +for the governing body of a church, and an apostle can therefore call +himself a presbyter or include himself in the presbyterate (1 Peter v. +1; 1 Tim. iv. 14), whereas he would hardly call himself a 'bishop.' + + + + +{172} + +DIVISION II. CHAPTERS IV. 17-VI. 24. + +_Doctrine and conduct._ + +[Sidenote: _Doctrine and conduct_] + +Here the apostle, with a final 'therefore,' resuming the 'therefore' of +IV. i, passes without further delay to the entirely practical portion +of the epistle. + +These 'therefores' are characteristic of St. Paul. They indicate his +deep sense of the vital and necessary connexion between the Christian +mode of living and the doctrines of Christian belief. Christian belief +is a mould fashioning human conduct by a constant and uniform pressure +into a characteristic type, or a set of forces urging it along certain +lines of movement. Thus when some point of Christian belief has been +expounded there follows a 'therefore' indicating the inevitable moral +consequence of such belief where it is intelligently and voluntarily +held. Of course the consequence does not follow of mechanical +necessity. The doctrine acts by an appeal to the will. 'I beseech you +{173} therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God'--so St. Paul makes +his appeal to the Romans, when he had given them his great exposition +of the doctrines of grace and justification[1]. When he has expounded +the doctrine of the resurrection to the Corinthians[2], he +concludes--'_Therefore_, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast,' &c. The +doctrine of the Epistle to the Colossians leads to two conclusions: +'mortify _therefore_' and 'put on _therefore_, as God's elect, holy and +beloved, a heart of compassion[3].' The Epistle to the Hebrews +contains similar moral appeals based on dogmatic statements. +'_Therefore_ let us give the more earnest heed.' 'Having _therefore_, +brethren, boldness by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near with a true +heart.' '_Therefore_ let us lay aside every weight[4].' These +'therefores,' I say, indicate a fundamental characteristic of +Christianity: it is a manner of living based upon a disclosure of +divine truth about God and His will, about man's nature and his sin, +about God's redemptive action and its methods and intentions. + +Among ourselves to-day we hear frequently enough disparaging reference +to theological {174} doctrine whether as a subject for study or for +definite instruction. Theological dogmas are alluded to as things +remote from the ordinary concerns of men and associated with the +jarring interests of different religious bodies or of their clergy, +with 'denominationalism' or 'sacerdotalism[5].' This idea has been due +in great measure no doubt to faults in theologians and priests. But it +is none the less absurd, when it is seriously considered. If those +whose lives have given the most shining examples of practical +Christianity in all ages were cross-questioned, it would be found that +the overwhelming majority would, in all simplicity, attribute what was +good in their life to their definite beliefs. Indeed, it is self +evident that it must have a practically vast effect on a man's conduct +whether, for instance, he really believes that his own and other men's +lives, after some seventy years of probation in this world, pass under +divine judgement, only to enter into new and eternal conditions where +they will inevitably reap the fruits of their previous careers. {175} +It must make a vital difference whether he believes that the world is +the expression of blind force or of the will of a living, loving, God; +whether or no he believes that God personally cares for each +individual: whether or no he believes that God's interest in the world +was such as to move Him to redeem it, by the sacrifice of Himself, from +the tyranny of sin: whether he believes in divine forgiveness and God's +indwelling by His Spirit: whether he believes in a divine brotherhood +and divine means of grace in a household of God in the world. In fact, +if the practical ethics of India and China, or the Turkish Empire and +Morocco, are considered side by side with those of Christian Europe, it +is impossible to resist the conviction that men's behaviour depends in +the long run on what they believe about God. + +This obvious conclusion is, in part, veiled from our eyes by two facts. +One is that logic works slowly in human life. Take a transverse +section of humanity at any particular moment, and it appears a mass of +inconsistencies. It might almost suggest that there is no connexion at +all between belief and practice. But the same appearance is not +presented by human life in its long reaches. There you see how, in the +{176} slow result, an alteration of belief involves an alteration of +practice. Thus to take an example: at present our social conscience +about the obligations of marriage, or about personal purity, or about +suicide, unsatisfactory as it may appear to be to an earnest Christian, +is still saturated with Christian sentiment which is the result of a +prolonged impression left by Christian doctrine. If the doctrine were +to pass out of the minds of Englishmen in general, after a generation +or two there would be a weakening or destruction of the corresponding +sentiment, and an abolition of what is at present an obstacle to the +reign of sensual or selfish desires. But it takes some generations for +the effect of any weakening of belief to make itself felt. + +There is another fact which veils from the eyes of people in general +the real connexion between morals and doctrine. It is that it is +largely mediate or indirect. The moral standard of the 'average man' +is, unconsciously, kept up by the morals of the best men and women. +For social opinion is with the majority the force which mainly +influences their practice, and social opinion depends largely on +leaders. 'It is when the best men cease trying that the world sinks +back like lead.' Let anything {177} happen which should silence the +moral effort of the best individuals, and disaster would be imminent. +But this is exactly what would be the result if the best men and women +were to cease to be Christian believers. It is the highest level of +our common life that would be depressed. The result all round would be +indirect, but it would be widespread and disastrous. + +I do not mean, or think, that this weakening of religious belief in the +best men and women is occurring. I only instance its morally certain +results to make apparent how the general bearing of religious beliefs +on social practice is, in one way, veiled by its indirectness. + +But to St. Paul all this is self-evident. He sees quite clearly that +Christianity is to be a new life, a new social and ethical +manifestation in the world, because Christians believe that God has +made plain to them in Jesus Christ His character, nature, and +redemptive purposes, and has given, by His Spirit, a practical power to +their wills to correspond with the truth revealed to their +intelligences and hearts. + +So he proceeds from his exposition of the great doctrines of the Church +of the Redemption to its practical moral consequences. + + + +[1] Rom. xii. 1. + +[2] 1 Cor. xv. 58. + +[3] Col. iii. 5, 12. + +[4] Heb. ii. 1; x. 19; xii. 1. + +[5] An interesting expression of this sort of feeling is to be found in +George Crabbe's poem, _The Library_. On the whole we must have +improved since his day in our perception of the connexion of Christian +doctrine with Christian practice. + + + + +{178} + +DIVISION II. Sec. 1. CHAPTER IV. 17-24. + +_Christianity a new life._ + +[Sidenote: _New life in Christ_] + +The characteristic words of St. Paul's gospel--grace, forgiveness, +mercy, liberty, justification by faith not by works--may naturally, +when taken by themselves and isolated from their context, lead to a +false thought of God as morally 'easy going,' and to a corrupt laxity +of conduct. Such a result has shown itself within the area of modern +history in the antinomianism of some Protestant bodies. But long +before the Reformation St. Paul's words were 'wrested by the ignorant +and unstedfast to their own destruction[1].' It was probably a +misunderstanding of St. Paul's doctrine of justification by faith which +called forth the protest of St. James' epistle. And indeed the traces +of this tendency to pervert the gospel are apparent enough in {179} St. +Paul's own epistles. Divine grace, it was even argued, can better show +its largeness if we afford it an opportunity by the abundance of our +sin. 'Let us continue in sin that grace may abound.' To this +monstrous suggestion St. Paul replies, in his epistle to the Romans[2], +that it rests on a complete misconception. Christian faith is an +introduction into Christ. Believing we are baptized into Him. This +means that we are to live as He lived towards the world of sin and +towards God. It means that we surrender ourselves in a spirit of glad +obedience to be moulded after His pattern. If our believing does not +lead to this new living, beyond all question it is a spurious thing, +and none of the Christian privileges attach to it. With a similar +purpose St. Paul writes here to the Asiatics--newly-made Christians, +who lived in the midst of an appallingly corrupt society, and whose +inherited traditions of conduct were altogether lacking in +self-restraint--to warn them against possible abuses of their Christian +privileges and Christian liberty. + +To be a Christian is to be committed to a new life different utterly +from the old life. + +What was the old life? In writing to the {180} Romans St. Paul +describes the life of the contemporary heathen world as having its +origin in a refusal of the will to acknowledge God. 'They glorified +Him not as God.' 'They refused to have God in their knowledge.' Hence +a darkening of the understanding. 'They became vain in their +reasonings; their senseless hearts were darkened; professing themselves +to be wise they became fools.' This explains the origin and +possibility of so foolish a worship as that of men and beasts. +Further, with the obscuring of the intelligence there was a perversion +and emancipation of the passions, resulting in all forms of lawlessness +and unnatural vice. A similar description of the 'old life' St. Paul +gives here. The root of evil here also appears to be in the 'heart' +(or will)--'the hardening of the heart'; hence arises 'vanity of the +mind,' an aimlessness or loss of all true and fixed point of view, a +'darkening of the understanding,' an inherent 'ignorance'; and +accompanying this loss of real intelligence has been a loss of what is +the true goal of human life, fellowship in 'the life of God.' Instead +of that a life of uncleanness has prevailed, made into a regular +business[3], and pursued with 'greediness,' i.e. an entire disregard +{181} for others' rights--such a life as is only possible where all +true human feeling and good taste has been quenched. Men have become +'past feeling.' + +As regards the relation of this black picture to the actual facts, +enough has perhaps been said above. At least St. Paul's picture is +given as a direct challenge to the experience of those to whom he +writes; and it is not blacker, at any rate, than the picture given by a +philosophic contemporary at Ephesus, who calls himself Heracleitus. +And on the black background of this 'former manner of life,' this 'old +man' or old manhood--a life ruled by lusts which are not only morally +evil but deceive and mock those who yield to them, leading, in fact, to +nothing but corruption and death, a 'waxing corrupt after the lusts of +deceit'--St. Paul sketches in the new life in Christ. To become a +believer is to submit one's intelligence to learn a new lesson, to +study Christ; it is to yield one's self to a 'form of teaching[4]' in +order to have one's life refashioned in marked contrast to old and +abandoned ways of life; it is to imbibe a new principle in the heart of +one's rational being, 'to be renewed in the spirit of one's mind'; it +is to put on deliberately, as a man puts on clothing, {182} a new +manhood, Christ's manhood, which is 'according to God[5],' that is, is +based on His own life, and is His 'new creation' in righteousness and +holiness. And this righteousness and holiness can never deceive us by +false promises, because they are rooted in 'truth' or reality. + + +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. But ye did not so learn 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 truth. + + +There is one phrase in this passage which may need some further +comment--'The life of God.' Into God's own eternal life, as He lives +it in Himself, we are given but glimpses. But God is also living in +the world as its inherent life, and each form of creation participates +in its measure, even if unconsciously, in the life {183} of God. +Consciously and intelligently man was intended to participate in it, +but he 'alienated' himself from it by sin; and, while he was physically +sustained in life by God, morally and mentally he was an exile. But +Christ embodies the divine life anew in human form, and by His Spirit +imparts it as a new life to men. Once more in Christ men live both 'in +God' and 'according to God.' + +This thought of our relation to the life of God is, in part, expressed +in the Latin original of the Collect for the ninth Sunday after +Trinity, in which we pray 'that we who cannot exist without Thee, may +be enabled to live according to Thee.' + + + +[1] 2 Pet. iii. 16. + +[2] Rom. vi. 1 ff. + +[3] 'To work all uncleanness.' Marg. 'to make a trade of.' + +[4] Rom. vi. 17. + +[5] Eph. iv. 24, R. V. Marg. 'the new man which is after God, created,' +&c. + + + + +{184} + +DIVISION II. Sec. 2. CHAPTER IV. 25-32. + +_The new life a corporate life._ + +[Sidenote: _Corporate duties_] + +The first characteristic of the new life dwelt upon is its corporate +character, as a life lived by those who are 'members one of another,' +and have therefore a common aim. In a body of people working with a +common aim there may be a healthy rivalry and competition in doing good +work, a manifold spirit of initiation and inventiveness, and there may +be rewards of labour, proportioned not merely to needs but to these +personal excellences. But what there cannot be is a competition which +runs to the point of mutual destructiveness, or such accumulation of +the fruits of skill and labour in a few hands as maims or starves the +life of the majority. The common interest prevents this. 'The members +must have the same care one of another,' so that 'when one member +suffers all the members suffer with it[1].' The life is the life {185} +of a body, and the general well-being is therefore the common interest +of all the members, for the weakening or decay of one is the weakening +and decay of a more or less valuable part of a connected life. This is +the general principle on which the Church is based. This is the moral +meaning of churchmanship. 'Ye are members one of another.' + +Various specific obligations follow from this general principle. + +(a) _Truthfulness and openness_; for falsehood and concealment belong +to a life of separated and conflicting interests. The prophetic ideal +for the restored Israel is to be realized among Christians. 'Speak ye +every man truth with his neighbour: execute the judgement of truth and +peace in your gates: and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts +against his neighbour: and love no false oath[2].' + +(b) _Self-restraint in temper_. We must not injure one another in life +and limb, or wound one another in feelings. Therefore we must watch +the first beginnings of anger, as the Psalmist[3] warns us, lest they +lead to sin and give {186} the devil, i.e. the slanderer of his +brethren, the inspirer of all mutual recriminations, room and scope to +work in. + +(c) _Labour for the purpose of mutual beneficence_. Under the old +covenant God had contented Himself with forbidding stealing. Under the +new covenant the prohibition of what is wrong passes into the +injunction of what is right. Labour of whatever kind, labour directed +to produce something good, is required of all. 'If any man will not +work, neither let him eat[4].' The idle man in fact violates the +fundamental conditions of the Christian covenant as truly as if he were +denying the rudiments of the Christian faith. Now the object of +labouring is to acquire 'property,' which is in one sense 'private,' +and in another sense is not. The labourer may have, under his own free +administration, the fruits of his labour, but he is to administer his +property with the motive, not only of supporting himself, but of +helping his weaker and more needy brethren. + +(d) _Profitable speech_. Here again the Christian is not to be content +with avoiding noxious conversation. His talk is to be, not indeed +'edifying' in the narrowest sense, but such as {187} 'builds up what is +lacking' in life, or supplies a need, whether by counselling, or +informing, or refreshing, or cheering; so that it may 'give grace[5],' +that is, afford pleasure and, in the widest sense, bring a blessing to +the hearers. + +In all their conduct Christians are to have two masterful thoughts. +(1) They are to think of the divine purpose of the Holy Ghost who has +entered into the Church to 'seal' or mark it as an elect body destined +for full redemption from all evil, in body and soul, at the climax of +God's dealings, the last day. The Holy Ghost, with all His personal +love, will be grieved if we thwart His rich purpose for the whole body +by anything which is contrary to brotherhood in the thoughts of our +hearts, or the words of our lips, or our outward conduct. + +(2) They are to remember the divine pattern of life. God has shown His +own heart to us in the free forgiveness which He has given us in +Christ. Being in constant receipt of that forgiveness, we must not +prove ourselves hard and unforgiving towards one another. + + +{188} + +Wherefore, putting 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 wrath: 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 corrupt 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. + + +Here, then, St. Paul sketches catholicity in practice. The very idea +of the Church is that of a fellowship of naturally unlike individuals, +harmonized into unity by the new 'truth and grace' of God, which has +been made theirs in their regenerate life. It is this endowment of the +regenerate life that is to enable them to transcend, and overstep, and +defeat natural incompatibilities of temper, and to be one body in +Christ. The practical meaning of catholicity is brotherhood. It is +love, as St. Augustine says, grown as wide as the world[6]. + +Why has the world lost this sense of the {189} moral meaning of +catholic churchmanship? Why has 'ecclesiastical' come to mean +something quite different to 'brotherly'? Or it is a more profitable +question to ask, How shall we make it mean the same thing again? There +are many who would give up the very effort after recovering the church +principle, the obligation of the 'one body.' But this, as has been +said, is to abandon the ultimate catholic principle of Christianity. +For the very purpose of the one church for all the men of faith in +Jesus, is that the necessity for belonging to one body--a necessity +grounded on divine appointment--shall force together into a unity men +of all sorts and different kinds; and the forces of the new life which +they share in common are to overcome their natural repugnance and +antipathies, and to make the forbearance and love and mutual +helpfulness which corporate life requires, if not easy, at least +possible for them. + +This is the principle which must not be abandoned. We must assert the +theological principle of the Church because it is that and that alone +which can impress on men practically the obligation and possibility of +a catholic brotherhood. + +But it is folly to assert the theological truth of {190} churchmanship, +and neglect its moral meaning. Quite recently the bishops of the +Lambeth Conference have striven to impress anew the ethics of +churchmanship upon the conscience of the faithful[7]. The principle of +brotherhood must act as a constant counterpoise to the instinct of +competition. The principle of labour shows that the idle and selfish +are 'out of place' in a Christian community. The principle of justice +forces us to recognize that the true interest of each member of the +body politic must be consulted. The principle of public responsibility +reminds us that each one is his brother's keeper. Once more the Church +has been aroused to its prophetic task of 'binding' and 'loosing' the +consciences of men in regard specially to those matters which concern +the corporate life and the relations of classes to one another. And we +pray God that the work of our bishops may not be in vain. What we want +is not more Christians, but, much rather, better Christians--that is to +say, Christians who have more perception of what the moral effort +required for membership in the catholic brotherhood really is. + +{191} + +No doubt the needed social reformation is of vast difficulty. For +instance, one who contemplates our commercial relations in the world +may indeed be tempted to despair of the possibility of recovering the +practical application to 'business' of the law of truthfulness; and +many a one who is practically engaged in commerce, in higher or lower +station, finds that to act upon the law may involve something like +martyrdom. But the very meaning of divine faith is that we do, in +spite of all discouragements, hold that to be practicable which is the +will of God; and it is nothing new in the history of Christianity if at +a crisis we need 'the blood of martyrs'--or something morally +equivalent to their blood--for 'a seed,' the seed of a fresh growth of +Christian corporate life. No fresh start worth making is possible +without personal sacrifices; and to recover anything resembling St. +Paul's ethical standard for Christian society we need indeed a fresh +start. But the few Tractarians of sixty years ago by industry, +patience and prayer effected a kind of revolution in the Church as a +whole; and reformers of Christian social relations may with the same +weapons--and with no other--do the like. + + + +[1] 1 Cor. xii. 25, 26. + +[2] Zech. viii. 16, 17. + +[3] Ps. iv. 4, according to the LXX. But the English version 'Stand in +awe and sin not' is probably correct. + +[4] 2 Thess. iii. 10. + +[5] Cf. Col. iv. 6: 'Let your speech be always with grace' or +'graciousness'; Luke iv. 22: 'gracious words'; Ps. xlv. 2: 'Grace is +poured into thy lips'; Eccles. x. 12: 'The words of a wise man's mouth +are gracious'; Ecclus. xxi. 16: 'Grace shall be found in the lips of +the wise.' + +[6] See app. note F, p. 271, _The Ethics of Catholicism_. + +[7] See _Report of Lambeth Conference_, 1897. S.P.C.K., pp. 136 ff.; +and app. note G, p. 274. + + + + +{192} + +DIVISION II. Sec. 3. CHAPTER V. 1-14. + +_The Christian life an imitation of God and a life in the light._ + +[Sidenote: _The imitation of God_] + +St. Paul has just suggested the thought of imitating God by ready +forgiveness. And in fact here--in the imitation of God--is one of the +greatest of the new ideas and motives which Christianity supplies. God +has manifested Himself in Christ under human conditions. He has +translated the unimaginable Godhead into terms of our own well-known +human nature. For Christ is very man, yet He is the Son of God, truly +God, and His character is God's character. For the Christian +henceforth in a quite new sense God is imitable: He can become a +pattern for actual human life. As children partly consciously and +partly unconsciously imitate their parents, so we Christians as +'beloved children' are to 'become imitators of God.' + +And it is quite plain what the character of {193} God as manifested in +Christ is. It is love; and to imitate God is therefore to 'walk in +love,' that is, to conduct one's life with love as its conscious motive +and atmosphere. Moreover, the love of Christ is a love which shows +itself in self-sacrifice. 'He offered himself as an offering and +sacrifice to God on our behalf; and God, who had of old made it plain +by His prophets that He could find no satisfaction in animal victims, +accepted 'as a sweet savour' this free-will offering of +self-sacrificing love. In the self-sacrifice of Christ, therefore, we +have the clear disclosure both of what God is and of what God will +accept from man. + +But this ideal of life as lying in love and in the deliberate +self-sacrifice of one for another is the plain negation of some maxims +for life generally accepted in heathen society. It is the plain +negation of sensual self-indulgence at the expense of others, or at the +expense of our spiritual nature, of 'fornication and uncleanness of all +kinds,' of filthy conduct, of the sort of jesting or wit which ignores +all moral restraints. It is the plain negation again of selfish greed +or the unlimited desire to get--'covetousness.' These things are out +of the question for a body of saints, that is, men dedicated to a holy +God. + +{194} + +[Sidenote: _Life in the light_] + +The tone and language which befits such a dedicated life is the tone +and language of thanksgiving. But clearly Asiatic Christians were only +too ready to forget the essential incompatibility of their new +profession with the old sinful habits around them. So St. Paul +emphasizes 'This ye know for certain that fornication or unclean living +on the one hand, or the turning of gain into a god on the other, surely +excludes a man from the kingdom of Christ and God[1].' And he +reiterates 'let no man deceive you with empty words.' Such vices, +being in plain contradiction to the divine will, make men subjects of +the divine wrath, and for you this should be startlingly plain. You +have been brought out of the realm of darkness of which once you formed +a part, into the realm of light, of which you now form a part, the +realm whose light is Christ. There is no fellowship between the light +and the darkness[2]. To live in the light means to bring forth fruit +of goodness and righteousness and truth, the fruit of a character like +Christ's. For you have in Christ a definite standard by which you can +test what is well pleasing to the {195} Lord. It is your business, +therefore, to keep yourselves altogether separate from the works of +darkness which bear no fruit. Not only so, but it is your business to +'reprove' or convict the dark world of sin; not, of course, by making +the works of darkness the subjects of your curiosity and +conversation--that indeed must not be--but simply by the contrast which +your own lives present. In the light of your lives the secret shame of +the heathen life will be unmasked. And in being unmasked even the +works of darkness will themselves become part of the light. To make +such ways of living attractive they must be cloaked up in a deceitful +glamour. Once stripped bare and shown in their true character they +teach their true lesson. Thus, the one duty of a man is to awake from +the old sleep of death; to separate himself from the morally dead world +and stand clear in the light of Christ. And that is what the early +Christian hymn, which St. Paul cites, was continually impressing upon +the Christian conscience. We may attempt to reproduce it in something +like its original rhythm thus:-- + + 'Be awakened, thou that sleepest; + Rise alive from out the dead world; + Christ, the Light, shall shine upon thee.' + + +{196} + +Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in +love, even as 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, or 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. 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 Christ shall shine upon thee. + + +Three points may be noticed in this characteristic exhortation:-- + +1. The strife of light and darkness. The victory of the rising sun +and its surrender at evening to the darkness; the obscuring of the +light through eclipse or mist and its recovery--these {197} universal +appearances present themselves naturally to human consciences +everywhere as being experiences analogous to the moral strife within +between good and evil. Light is thus the universal symbol of good, and +darkness of evil. The symbolism passes out of early native myths into +the spiritual phraseology of many religions; but especially into those +of the Persians and the Jews. 'In thy light shall we see light' is the +cry of the devout heart towards God. And the whole of Christian +language is possessed by the symbolism. Christ is 'the light of the +world': His disciples are 'the children of light,' they are to be +clothed in 'the armour of light,' bathed in 'the light of the glorious +Gospel': they are the children of the God who 'dwelleth in the light +which no man can approach unto': who 'is light and in whom is no +darkness at all.' + +St. Paul, like St. John, specially loves the metaphor of light. And it +is somewhat startling to notice how different is his conception of +enlightenment from that common in modern times, or indeed, from that +held in the schools of philosophy of his own day or by the Gnostics +just after him. This latter class of men, who can be taken as typical +of many others at very {198} different epochs, meant by 'the +enlightened' a select few who had a special capacity for intellectual +abstraction and contemplation, and who by such qualities of the +intellect were believed to attain to a knowledge of God which was +beyond the reach of the ordinary men of faith. But St. Paul, following +his Master, is quite certain that the root of true enlightenment lies +in the will and heart. The love of the light is first of all simply +the pure desire for goodness; and anything that is not this first of +all is a counterfeit and a sham. And the true enlightenment is thus +not the privilege of a few, but is open to all who will come to Christ. +'Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this +world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing +that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it +was God's good pleasure, through the foolishness of the preaching, to +save them that believe.' 'If any man thinketh that he is wise among +you in this world, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For +the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God[3].' This language +sounds violent; but I doubt if many thinking men could now be found +{199} to doubt that the way opened by the 'foolishness of the gospel +preaching' was a way of light for the world compared to which the way +of the contemporary philosophers was darkness and delusion. The +arrogant wisdom of the contemporary 'Heracleitus' would have provided +no real light at all for the Ephesians whom he denounced. A fresh +start was wanted for man, and the fresh start was primarily in the life +of the conscience and heart. On the other hand neither St. Paul, nor +any of the New Testament writers, can be accused of the sort of +obscurantism to which the later Church has often fallen a victim. One +cannot even conceive St. Paul denouncing free inquiry, or cloaking up +from free investigation the title-deeds of Christianity. His love of +the light--even with all the dangers that the light has--like his love +of freedom, is frank and real. + +If we come down to our own time, there is no doubt a great deal of +contemporary 'enlightenment' that St. Paul would have pronounced +spurious. He would never surely have disparaged intellectual inquiry +or free scientific research: but he would have continually emphasized +that no one was really enlightened whose will and heart was not right +with God. {200} To have a scientific knowledge of facts is by +comparison superficial; and worse than superficial is the sharpness and +worldly cleverness which continually boasts of being 'wide awake' and +'up to date.' It is possible to be awake and enlightened in the +speculative and practical intelligence: to be awake and enlightened in +the region of the senses: and yet to be asleep and in the dark in the +region of the will and conscience towards God. And there lies the true +heart of manhood. It is possible even to be enlightened about evil and +in the dark as regards goodness. But St. Paul hates curiosity about +the ways and methods of sin. 'I would,' he says, 'have you wise unto +that which is good, and simple unto that which is evil[4].' Take heed +that the light that is in thee be not darkness. This curiosity about +sin is a delusion which has sometimes a strange hold on some who would +serve God. But they must recognize that the only Christian method of +'convicting the world of sin' is by 'convicting it of righteousness.' +Innocence has a power which sometimes is strangely underrated. + +We may pause for a moment longer to dwell on the beauty of St. Paul's +ideal of Christianity {201} as a life in the light. It has everything +to gain and nothing to lose by disclosure. It has no need to cloak +itself. It can be frank with itself and the world. And, on the other +hand, sin is a great fraud and delusion as well as a great +disobedience. It dwells in a region of lies and excuses and +concealments; it hides from itself and from the world its true +character and true issues. For, in fact, it is not only in itself foul +and rebellious, but it is in its issues fruitless. It leads to +nothing: it produces nothing: it tends only to decay or corruption of +mind and body, while goodness is only another term for life and +fruitfulness. Life, and the production of life, is the good, and it +belongs to the light; on the contrary, what hinders or destroys life +goes against God and belongs to the darkness. This is a judgement +which mis-called disciples of Malthus in our day would do well to +remember. It is not from too much life that the world is suffering, +but from corrupt and perverted life. What we want to secure is not a +limit to the population, but the bringing up of children in health and +simple living, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. + +2. St. Paul, in some passages of his epistles, uses very strongly +'universalist' phrases. He {202} has spoken to the Ephesians of +bringing all things in heaven and earth again into a divine unity in +Christ. And to the Corinthians he spoke of a time when God should be +'all things in all.' It is, therefore, all the more noticeable that +when he comes to speak of the destiny of evil men he does not offer +them any hope if they persist in their evil, but warns them that moral +evil utterly and wholly excludes from the kingdom of God: and he +appears to be not at all anxious to reconcile this warning as to the +eternal consequences of wilful evil with what he has said in other +connexions as to the final inclusion of all things in a great unity. +His example would teach us to aim at being true to the whole truth +rather than at attaining a premature completeness or consistency of +knowledge about a world in regard to which we only 'know in part.' +'Yea, the more part of God's works are hid[5].' + +3. We cannot fail to notice how constantly St. Paul associates lawless +lust with lawless grasping at money or the goods of other +men--greediness or avarice. This has led some to suppose that the +Greek word for greediness is really intended to mean lust in its +grasping {203} character. But this is a mistake. The words are +associated partly, no doubt, because lust so often involves an +'overreaching and wronging our brothers[6]' of their just rights; but +much more because the lawless grasping after gain and the lawless +grasping after pleasure are the two great perversions of the human +soul. Pleasure and mammon are the two typical idols. + + + +[1] Possibly this expression means 'the kingdom of Him who is at once +Christ and God.' + +[2] 2 Cor. vi. 14. + +[3] 1 Cor. i. 20, 21; iii. 18. + +[4] Rom. xvi. 19. + +[5] Ecclus. xvi. 21. + +[6] 1 Thess. iv. 6. + + + + +{204} + +DIVISION II. Sec. 4. CHAPTER V. 15-21. + +_The Christian life a zealous and deliberate seizing of the opportunity +afforded by surrounding moral evils._ + +[Sidenote: _Buying up the opportunity_] + +The Christian stands awake and in the light. He has a vantage-ground +of spiritual knowledge, and the opportunity afforded by this +vantage-ground he is to use. He is not to live at random but is to +fashion his life with deliberate circumspection and prudence in order +to make the best of the spiritual opportunity, just as the merchant +cleverly seizes and uses to his own advantage a particular commercial +situation. What gives the Christian his spiritual opportunity is the +corruption which surrounds him. Of that corruption St. Paul has +already said enough. The result of it was to leave whatever was good +in man disconsolate and ill at ease. The exhibition of the Christian +light amidst such surroundings could not but arrest men's attention and +attract {205} their hearts. And if we want to be informed, in greater +detail, how to buy up the opportunity, St. Paul's answer is threefold. + +First, there must be a positive apprehension of the divine will in +particular cases such as qualifies for decisive action. 'Be not +foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.' This is the +sort of wisdom which enables a man to do what our Lord expects of +spiritual leaders, to 'discern the time.' It is a rare quality but, +according to the measure of the gift of Christ to each, it is attained +by spiritual thoughtfulness, singlemindedness, and prayer. + +Secondly, there is to be a strong and sociable enthusiasm, expressing +itself in uninterrupted joy, and based upon deep draughts of the divine +Spirit. In St. Paul's day, as in our own, men would seek escape from +the dullness of life and its sense of isolation in the excitement and +fellowship which comes of intoxicating drink. Other forms of mental +intoxication were provided at Ephesus by a sensual religious +enthusiasm. St. Paul would have the Christians confront such lawless +excitement not merely with the spectacle of discipline and +self-restraint, but also with a counter-enthusiasm, purer but not less +strong. Christians are to find an {206} excitement as strong as +drunkenness, and a fellowship as warm as is to be found in any band of +revellers, in deep draughts of the wine of the Holy Ghost. 'Be not +drunken with wine wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit, +speaking one to another in psalms[1] and hymns and spiritual songs +(such as the one he has just quoted), singing and making melody with +your hearts to the Lord.' + +Lastly, there is to be a spirit of submission, mutual accommodation and +order. The disciples are to 'subject themselves one to another in the +fear of Christ.' They are, as St. Peter says[2], to be girt each one +with the apron of service to minister to one another's needs, knowing +their responsibility to Christ, and how He looks for obedience and +service in all men. Enthusiasm is apt to be lawless, but the +enthusiasm of the Christians is to be the enthusiasm of an organized +body. It was said of old of the men of Issachar, who gathered round +the standard of David[3], that they had 'understanding of the times to +know what Israel ought {207} to do; the heads of them were two hundred, +and all their brethren were at their commandment.' A similar spirit of +practical religious understanding, with a similar readiness to obey +their leaders, is what St. Paul desires in the new Israel to do the +work of the true Son of David. + +A temper then of clear positive understanding as to what God wills to +be done in the immediate future, fired by an ardent and sociable +enthusiasm, and associated with a disinterested readiness to obey one +another in practical affairs--this is what St. Paul means by 'looking +carefully how we walk'; and it is worth while noticing that St. Paul's +conception of carefulness leads in a direction quite opposed to mere +timorous and negative prudence. Exhortations not to be rash, but to +'look before you leap,' are very commonly given by the wise. But it +does not seem to be generally remembered that, at least in the service +of God, most men err by excess not of rashness but of caution, and +'look' so long that they never 'leap.' Truly if rashness has slain its +thousands, irresolution has slain its ten thousands. The spirit St. +Paul would have us cultivate is not this cowardly mis-called wisdom, +but rather the spirit of the ideal soldier, of the 'happy warrior.' +Nothing, {208} in fact, could be more fascinating than the picture St. +Paul here draws of the Christian community. He has a vision of a pure +brotherly enthusiastic society, fulfilled with a divine life, and +attracting into its warm and comfortable fellowship the isolated, +weary, hopeless, and sin-stained from the cold dark world outside. + + +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. + + +St. Paul's exhortation to 'buy up the opportunity because the days are +evil' finds fresh application in every generation. For each generation +the 'days are evil,' and good men always feel them to be so. Not +necessarily that they are evil by comparison with other days, for the +'good old times' certainly never existed, and it is not often possible +to balance the evils of one age against those of another. It is enough +{209} for us to understand 'the ills we have.' What they are in our +own generation is conspicuous enough. In part they are the normal +evils of selfishness, and sensuality, and pride, and weakness; of +divisions of races and classes, and personal uncharity. In part they +are special: I will not make any general attempt to characterize them +here. But it is probably true to say that, among other characteristics +which our generation exhibits, is a lack of great enthusiasms and +strong convictions and inspiring leaders. Literature, philosophy, and +politics are alike lacking in a clear moral impulse. 'Causes' are at a +discount. Men are disillusionized. It is a 'fin de siecle' by some +better title than a chronological mistake. It is this characteristic +of the moment that ought to give the Church its opportunity. At +present she largely fails to take it because she lacks concentration +within her own body. The true disciples, the faithful remnant, exist +in every place, but they are lost in the crowd. They need to be drawn +together if they are to make an impression. A vigorous faith, and the +confident hope for humanity which a vigorous faith begets, were never +better calculated than they are to-day to produce a right moral +impression on the world, owing to the {210} mere absence of rival +enthusiasms. We can supply what is wanted if only everywhere we will +cultivate sincerity and enthusiasm rather than numbers, and aim at +forming strong centres of spiritual life, rather than a weak uniform +diffusion of it. + + + +[1] St. Paul is in part referring to the habit of responsive or +antiphonal chanting, which Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, reports as +characteristic of the Christians half a century later--'to sing +responsively (secum invicem) a hymn to Christ as a God.' + +[2] 1 Pet. v. 5. + +[3] 1 Chron. xii. 32. + + + + +{211} + +DIVISION II. Sec. 5. CHAPTERS V. 22-VI. 9. + +_The relation of husbands and wives: parents and children: masters and +servants._ + +[Sidenote: _The law of subordination_] + +St. Paul mentions submission as required, in a sense, from all +Christians towards all others--'submitting yourselves one to another.' +But it is plain that in any community, and most of all in a Christian +community where order is a divine principle, some will be specially +'under authority': and accordingly St. Paul applies his general maxim +to three classes in particular--wives towards their husbands, children +towards their parents, slaves towards their masters. But in making +these applications of the law of obedience, he enlarges his subject by +including the counter-balancing principle of the duty of +self-sacrificing love on the part of those in authority; so that he +treats not one side of the relation only but both. + + +{212} + +A. HUSBANDS AND WIVES. (V. 22-33.) + +[Sidenote: _Husbands and wives_] + +Wives are to be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. Just as +the divine fatherhood is the ground of all lower fatherhood, so the +authority of the one great Head is the ground in all lower headships, +and each in its place is to be accepted as the shadow of His. Thus the +husband's headship over his wife is the shadow of Christ's headship +over the church, and that explains of what sort the husband's authority +should be. For Christ's rule is a rule for the advantage of the ruled. +He rules the church as Himself its saviour or deliverer from bondage, +and the word 'saviour' is full of associations of self-sacrificing +love. So must it be with a Christian husband. But Christ is not +merely a head to the church. He too is a husband. This idea of God as +the husband of His people--an idea which expressed both His choice of +them, His love for them, and His jealous claim upon them--is familiar +in the Old Testament. 'Thy Maker is thy husband.' 'I am a husband +unto you, saith the Lord[1].' And it is probable, as Dr. Cheyne +suggests, 'that the so-called Song of Solomon was admitted into the +canon {213} on the ground that the bride of the poem symbolized the +chosen people[2].' But in a Christian sense the idea gains a fresh +meaning. 'We that are joined unto the Lord are of one spirit' with +Him[3]. We are the 'members of his body'; and, as drawing our life +from His manhood, we may be even said to be, like Eve from Adam, 'of +his flesh and of his bones[4].' Christ then is, in this richness of +meaning, the husband of the church. + +St. Paul seems further to describe this relation of Christ to the +church under the figure of three marriage customs. The husband first +acquires the object of his affection as his bride by a dowry: then by a +bath of purification the bride is prepared for the husband: finally she +is presented to him in bridal beauty. Accordingly Christ, because He +loved the church, first 'gave himself for her'; and we may interpret +this phrase in the light of another used by St. Paul in his speech to +the Ephesian elders, where the church is spoken of as 'purchased' or +{214} 'acquired[5]' by Christ's blood. Having thus acquired the Church +for His bride, He secondly 'cleansed her in the laver[6] of water with +the word': and that, in order that He might 'sanctify her' and so +finally 'present the church to himself a glorious church, not having +spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and +without blemish.' + +This threefold statement has great theological interest which we will +consider shortly. Here we will simply let it stand, as St. Paul uses +it, to exhibit Christ as the ideal husband, the pattern for every +husband. Love for his bride; self-sacrifice in order to win her; and +the deliberate aiming at moral perfection for her through the bridal +union--that is the law for him. The wife, according to the original +divine principle, is to be part of the man's self--one flesh with him. +He must love her truly and care for her as his own flesh. This +'mystery,' or divine secret revealed, is great, St. Paul says; 'but in +saying this I am thinking of Christ and his church.' This seems to be +the exact force of verse 32. In other words--this divine disclosure of +the relation of God to man, as realized in the marriage of Christ and +His church, is indeed great and lofty. {215} But, St. Paul continues +in effect, great and lofty as it is, it is a practical pattern for us. +Do ye also, as Christ the church, severally love each one his own wife +even as himself, and let the wife see that she fear (i.e. reverence and +fear to displease) her husband, even as the church stands in holy awe +of Christ. + + +Wives, _be in subjection_ unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. +For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of +the church, _being_ himself the saviour of the body. But as the church +is subject to Christ, so _let_ the wives also _be_ to their husbands in +everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the +church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having +cleansed it 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 it should be holy and without +blemish. Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their +own bodies. He that loveth his own wife loveth himself: for no man +ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as +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. + + +There are several points here which need consideration. + +{216} + +1. There is a rich theology in St. Paul's brief description of the +relation of Christ to the church. First, there is Christ's love for +the church which involves a purpose of entire sanctification for her; +then there is sacrifice, the sacrifice of Himself, for her; then there +is the baptismal purification of the church to fit her for Christ, +which is in fact nothing else than the baptismal purification of all +the individual members of the Christian body; and this is also, as St. +Paul elsewhere teaches, the means to them of new life by union with +Himself. It is their cleansing bath because therein they are 'baptized +into Christ.' (Here, we notice, the analogy of the marriage custom +breaks down: what is in the marriage ceremonies only a washing +preparatory to union, is in the spiritual counterpart also the act of +union. Baptism is both the abandonment of the old and union with the +new.) Lastly, there is the final presentation by Christ of the church +to Himself in sinless, stainless perfection. + +We observe that Christ's sacrifice is regarded by St. Paul as +preparatory and relative. He bought the church by the sacrifice of +Himself to obtain unimpeded rights over her, because He loved her and +in order to make her morally {217} perfect. The atonement has its +value because it is the removal of the obstacles to Christ working His +positive moral work in her. + +We observe again that the sacrifice of Christ is spoken of as offered +for the church, not for the world. Christ does indeed 'will that all +men shall be saved': He did indeed 'take away,' or take up and expiate, +'the sin of the world' in its totality[7]. But the divine method is +that men shall attain their salvation as 'members of Christ's body.' +Thus, if Christ's ultimate object in the divine sacrifice is the world: +His immediate object is the church through which He acts upon the world +and into which He calls every man. 'I pray,' He said, 'not for the +world, but for them whom thou hast given me.' 'He gave himself for us +that he might redeem us ... and purify unto himself a people for his +own possession[8].' + +Once more we notice in this passage a significant hint as to St. Paul's +conception of baptism. There is no doubt of the spiritual efficacy +which he assigns to it. And we observe in germ a doctrine of 'matter' +and 'form' in connexion with the sacraments. Baptism is a 'washing of +water' accompanied by a 'word.' The word {218} or utterance which St. +Paul refers to may be the formula of baptism 'into the name of the +Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,' or the 'word of faith' of +which confession is made by the person to be baptized--the confession +that 'Jesus is the Lord[9]'; but in either case the word gives the +rational interpretation to the act. It sets apart what would be +otherwise like any other act of washing, and stamps it for a spiritual +and holy purpose. 'Take away the word, and what is the water but mere +water? The word is superadded to the natural element and it becomes a +sacrament.' So says St. Augustine[10], in the spirit of St. Paul. +This is what is meant by the later theological term 'form[11],' the +'form' being that which differentiates or determines shapeless 'matter' +and makes it have a certain significance or gives it a certain +character. Thus the form of a sacrament is the word of divine +appointment which gives it spiritual significance; and the form and +matter together are essential to its validity. The matter of baptism +is the washing by water: the form is the defining phrase 'I {219} +baptize (or wash) thee into the name of the Father and of the Son and +of the Holy Ghost.' + +Lastly, we notice that the spiritual union of Christ and His church, +though it is perfect in the divine intention from the first, is in fact +only consummated at the point where the church is freed from the +imperfection of sin and has become the stainless counterpart of Christ +Himself. The love of Christ--the removal of obstacles to His love by +atoning sacrifice--the act of spiritual purification--the gradual +sanctification--the consummated union in glory: these are the moments +of the divine process of redemption, viewed from the side of Christ, +which St. Paul specifies. + +2. We come back to St. Paul's conception of marriage to dissipate +misconceptions. It is indeed absurd to speak as if St. Paul were, in +this passage, mainly emphasizing the subjection of the woman, whether +this be done from the conservative side 'to keep women in their place': +or from the point of view of those who desire her emancipation, in +order to represent St. Paul, and so Christianity as a whole, as giving +to women a servile position. Over against the subjection of women, he +sets, and indeed gives more space to emphasize, the self-sacrifice +{220} and service which is due to her from the man. You cannot tear +the one from the other. Like St. Peter so St. Paul would have the +husband 'give honour to the wife--as to the weaker vessel' indeed, but +also as 'joint heir of the grace of life[12].' In essential spiritual +value men and women are equal. 'In Christ is neither male nor female.' +St. Chrysostom rightly bases on this passage a powerful appeal to +husbands to overcome their selfishness in their relation to their +wives. There is nothing servile in the subordination required of the +woman[13]. If 'the husband is the head of the wife, the head of the +husband is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.' Christ even is +subordinate. And the character of the headship of the husband {221} +altogether excludes the idea that women are to be married in order to +serve men's selfish interests or gratify their passions. + +Then we must notice that St. Paul is impressing upon us a moral ideal +of which the two parts are inseparable. St. Paul says nothing to +indicate that where the relations are not ideal--where the husband is +selfish or brutal--law should not step in to protect the interests of +the wife and secure her against the insults or cruelties or frauds of +the husband. He is expressing a moral ideal[14]; while law must be +largely content with preventing outrage and securing a background on +which ideals can become possible. And just as St. Paul tells +Christians that they are to obey magistrates as God's +ministers--leaving it to be understood that when they command what is +contrary to God's will, 'we ought to obey God rather than men'; so in +the same way he speaks of the wife's (or child's or slave's) duty of +subjection, leaving a similar reservation likewise to be tacitly +understood. Obedience is to be 'in the Lord.' + +3. But no doubt St. Paul does emphasize the subordination of women to +men. He will {222} not ordinarily[15] permit the woman 'to teach (in +the public assembly) nor to have dominion over a man[16].' He clearly +does not think the difference of male and female is merely physical, +but perceives that the characteristic moral perils of the sexes[17] are +different: he assigns to man the governing and authoritative position, +and to woman the more retired and 'quieter[18]' functions. It may +indeed be argued that in certain details St. Paul's injunctions are for +his time only, and no more of perpetual obligation than his prohibition +of second marriages to the clergy is assumed to be, or his +quasi-recognition of slavery. But this argument carries us but a +little way. The most of what St. Paul says of men and women is based +on a principle which he conceives to be divine, and which all history +and experience confirms. The position of women in Christendom has +often fallen far short of what is truly Christian: but no attempted +rectification will be found otherwise than disastrous which ignores the +fundamental principle. All through the animal kingdom mental +differences accompany the physiological difference between the sexes. +Experience teaches {223} that women, as a whole, are superior to men in +certain moral qualities--in self-sacrifice, sympathy, purity, and +compassion, and in religious feeling, reverence and devotion: but +inferior to them in the moral qualities which are concerned with +government--in justice, love of truth and judgement, in stability and +reasonableness. Intellectually women have very often greater quickness +of apprehension and memory, greater power in learning languages, +greater artistic sensibility. But they are conspicuously inferior in +the constructive imagination, in creative genius, in philosophy and +science. It is sometimes said that if women had been as well educated +as men--and assuredly on Christian principles they ought to be, if +differently, yet equally well educated--they would have created as +much. Why, then, have almost no women been poets of the first order, +or musical composers, or painters? For in these artistic walks of life +their education has been in many countries better and more continuous. +To maintain that men and women are only physiologically different is to +run one's head against the brick wall of fact and science, no less than +against St. Paul's and St. Peter's principles[19]. + +{224} + +It remains true that + + 'women is not undevelopt man + But diverse ... seeing either sex alone + Is half itself, and in true marriage lies + Nor equal, nor unequal[20].' + + +4. It is necessary to add something about the position assigned by St. +Paul, in other epistles, to unmarried women; and to notice the relation +of his 'theory of women' to earlier Jewish ideas and those current in +general society. + +Nothing could well exceed the influence or nobility of the position of +the Jewish wife and mistress of the household, as it is given, for +example, in the Book of Proverbs[21]. That position St. Paul can +perpetuate and deepen, but hardly augment. And the Old Testament +recognized an altogether exceptional position in certain women endowed +with the gift of prophecy, like Miriam and Deborah and Huldah, who in +virtue of their gift exercised a public and {225} quasi-political +ministry. Thus in the Christian community also there were +prophetesses, and St. Paul, in the same epistle in which he forbids +women in general to teach in public, seems to leave room for such +exceptional women to 'pray or prophecy' in the Christian congregation +with their heads covered[22]. Thus in fact all down Christian history +there have been at intervals exceptional women with unmistakable gifts +for guiding souls in private and directing public policy, like St. +Catherine of Siena, or with gifts of government like St. Hilda, whom +the Church has rightly accepted as divinely endowed. Where +Christianity appears to have made a fresh departure in regard to women +was in the organized consecration of the gift of female ministry. The +deaconesses like Phoebe, and women like Lydia and Priscilla, are most +characteristic Christian figures; and they have a long line of +successors in later deaconesses and 'widows,' and sisters of mercy, and +nurses and teachers. It was the ignominy of the Church of England that +for so long she narrowed down the functions of women to those which +belong to wives and daughters at home. Multitudes of {226} women need +other than domestic spheres and are happier away from home; and we may +thank God that--apart from the specially political and judicial +functions which are proper to men--the widest sphere of influence and +service is now again being thrown open to women. + +How pitiable it was that, in face of all Christian experience and of +the authoritative language of the New Testament, unmarried women should +have no prospect opened to them but such as was drearily summed up in +the phrase 'old maids.' St. Paul, if in this epistle he is glorifying +the married state, certainly also glorifies both for men and women the +freedom of the celibate life consecrated to the service of God--the +consecration of those who in a special sense are the virgin-brides of +Christ. We may be thankful indeed that now, if somewhat tardily, it +has received from the largest assembly of Anglican bishops ever +gathered together an altogether ungrudging recognition[23]. + +It has been very frequently observed that, especially in Asia Minor, +women in St. Paul's day were attaining in non-Christian society +positions of great influence and dignity. We find them {227} very +commonly holding priesthoods and public offices and magistracies. It +would appear, however, that too much may be made of this. The +populations of the Asiatic towns loved to be entertained with expensive +games and largesses of money and grain, and to have temples built and +endowed for them. Wealthy women of noble families were elected to +priesthoods and offices where they could exercise their acceptable +liberality in these ways. But the offices were rather of dignity than +of practical government, and were closely associated with priesthoods. +There is no evidence that women in Asiatic cities could assist at +assemblies, or give votes, or speak in public, or serve on legations, +or enter into political relations with the Roman authorities. There +were women among the Asiarchs, but probably only when they were +associated in an honorary manner with their husbands. In the early +Christian church the influence of women was put to far nobler uses than +in Asiatic cities; but their position relatively to men was not far +different from what would have been recognized in the general society +of that region[24]. In other parts of the empire the {228} women of +the Christian church were conspicuously in advance of those outside. + +In somewhat later days of the Church there was some resentment at the +high and free position assigned to women in the New Testament +documents. Thus one celebrated MS. of the New Testament[25]--the Codex +Bezae--changes 'not a few of the honourable Greek women and of men' +(Acts xvii. 12) into 'of the Greeks and the honourable, many men and +women.' In xvii. 34 it cuts out Damaris. And in xvii. 4 it changes +the 'leading women' into 'wives of the leading men.' The spirit which +prompted these changes in an early Christian scribe and reviser, has +not been wanting in much later ages, though it had not a chance of +tampering with our sacred texts. + + +B. PARENTS AND CHILDREN. VI. 1-4. + +[Sidenote: _Parents and children_] + +After laying down the principles which determined the relation of wives +to their husbands, St. Paul turns to the relation of children to their +parents. The wives are to be _subordinate_ to their husbands. +Children are to be _obedient_ to their parents as part of their duty +'in the {229} Lord,' as members of His body. They are to show honour +to their parents as directed by the commandment which we call the +fifth, but which St. Paul here probably calls 'a commandment standing +first accompanied with promise.' It stands first among those which +refer to our neighbour grouped apart--as our Lord also says 'Thou +knowest the commandments,' and then specifies those six alone[26]. And +it is accompanied with a promise implied in the words 'that it may be +well with thee and that thou mayest live long in the land[27]'--a +promise that the prosperity and permanence of the nation shall be bound +up with the observance of the natural law of obedience to those from +whom we derive our life. I say the prosperity of the nation, and so no +doubt secondly of the individual; but all through the Ten Commandments +the individual is regarded only as part of the nation. + +The other translation of these words--'which is the first commandment +with promise'--is one to which the original Greek does not seem to give +any preference, and which does not give a good sense, for the fifth +commandment has neither {230} more nor less of promise than the second, +and in what we now call 'the second table' it stands alone as having a +promise implied. + +Here again in dealing with children St. Paul passes from the duty of +the subject to that of the authority. Fathers are exhorted not to +irritate their children, as in the Epistle to the Colossians they are +not to provoke them, or, as the word may perhaps mean, overstimulate +them so as to lead to their losing heart[28]. A broken spirit and a +sullen spirit are alike bad signs in youth. But this does not mean +that they are not to be disciplined; discipline is God's purpose for us +all through life, and in childhood and youth parents are the ministers +of God to discipline their children and put them in mind to obey God. + + +Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy +father and mother (which is the first commandment with 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. + + +We may notice in this passage the implication of infant baptism. The +children are addressed 'in the Lord,' that is as already members of the +{231} body of Christ. The children of any one Christian parent are, in +1 Cor. vii. 14, described as 'holy'--that is consecrated or dedicated +by the circumstances of their birth and the opportunity which it +supplies for Christian education--and thus fit subjects for baptism. +In fact it is probable that Christianity took from the Jews the +practice of infant baptism. Within their own race indeed there was no +need of a ceremony of incorporation. For the son of Jewish parents was +_born_ a member of the chosen people. But a proselyte was--certainly +before our Lord's time--made a Jew with a _baptism_[29] which was +regarded as his new birth, his naturalization into a new and higher +race. And if the proselyte had children they were baptized with him as +'little proselytes[30].' With a new depth of meaning this practice of +infant baptism was taken over by the Christian church in the case of +those already dedicated to God by the spiritual opportunities of their +birth and education, so that the beginnings of growth might be +sanctified, like our Lord's childhood, in the Spirit. + +{232} + +We must also take to heart in our day the lesson of the fifth +commandment, as re-enforced by St. Paul, with its converse in the duty +of parents. Domestic obedience is somewhat at a discount, it is to be +feared, in this generation in most classes of society; and this is a +very grave peril. Parents, wealthy as well as poor, are very commonly +disposed to make schoolmasters and schoolmistresses do the work of +discipline for them, while they retain for themselves the privilege of +spoiling their children. There are, however, of course, very many +exceptions. There are multitudes of homes where discipline is +exercised wisely and lovingly, and children find obedience always a +duty and mostly a joy. This is certainly the only divinely appointed +method by which we are to be prepared for the obedience and +self-discipline required of us when we grow to be what is falsely +described as 'our own masters.' And St. Paul's twofold admonition to +parents is full of wisdom: they are not to provoke their children so +that they become bad-tempered, and they are not to over-stimulate them, +by competition or otherwise, so that they become disheartened. But to +nourish them by appropriate food, mental and spiritual as well as +physical, so that they may grow to the full {233} stature and strength +which God intends for them. + + +C. MASTERS AND SLAVES. VI. 5-9. + +[Sidenote: _Masters and slaves_] + +St. Paul's method in dealing with slavery is well known. The slave is +in a position really, at bottom, inconsistent with human individuality +and liberty, as Christianity insists upon it. Thus, to go no further, +the male slave and his wife are liable (in all systems of slavery) to +be sold apart from one another. This puts in its plainest form the +inconsistency of slavery with Christianity. The slave is a living +rational tool of another man, and not his brother with fundamentally +the same spiritual right to 'save his life' or make the best of his +faculties. Thus where a slave _can_ obtain liberty St. Paul exhorts +him to prefer it[31]. And when he is dealing with the Christian master +Philemon, whose runaway slave, Onesimus, has become Christian under St. +Paul's influence, he exhorts him to receive him back, no longer as a +slave, but as a brother beloved[32]. But Christianity enlisted in no +premature crusade against slavery as an institution--premature, because +Christianity was not yet in the position to fashion a civilization of +{234} her own. It left it to be undermined by the Christian spirit. + +Thus St. Paul exhorts slaves to obey, and that in more forcible +language than he has applied even to children, 'with fear and +trembling'; that is with an intense anxiety to do their duty. They are +to perform their work as in God's sight, thoroughly--He being the +inspector of it who can infallibly tell good work from bad--and 'from +the heart,' that is, putting their will and mind into it. They are to +do it as to the Lord, knowing that no good work, however menial or +uninteresting, is wasted, but shall be received back, in its product or +legitimate fruit, as 'its own reward' from Christ's hand. In the +Epistle to Timothy, this additional reason for diligent service is +given, that if Christian slaves get a reputation for slackness they +will bring discredit upon the Christian name[33]. And in the same +passage a touch is added which shows what, even in its possible +perversions, the spirit of brotherhood really meant, 'They that have +believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren; +but let them serve them the rather, because they that partake of the +benefit are believers and beloved.' + +{235} + +And the masters are exhorted to remember that true principle of human +equality--that 'with God is no respect of persons,' that in God's sight +each man counts for one, and no one counts for more than one; each +having an equal claim and duty in the sight of the one Master under +whom all are servants. Thus they are to deal with their slaves in the +same spirit of duty as their slaves should have toward them, and they +are to treat them with the respect due to brother men 'forbearing +threatenings.' + + +Servants, be obedient unto them that according to the flesh are your +masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto +Christ; not in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as servants +of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; 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 masters, do the same +things unto them, and forbear threatening: knowing that both their +Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with +him. + + +Christianity has long abolished slavery so far as the legal status of +the slave is concerned. But the principles of mastership and service +are still to be learned in this brief section of St Paul's writing; and +if we really believed that 'with {236} God is no respect of persons' +there would be neither scamping of work and defrauding of employers, +nor on the other hand the 'sweating' of the employed and treating of +men and women as if they were tools for the profit of others, instead +of spiritual beings, with each his own divine end to realize. + + + +[1] Is. liv. 5; Jer. iii. 14. + +[2] _Prophecies of Isaiah_, vol. ii, p. 188. + +[3] 1 Cor. vi. 17. + +[4] This, it is well known, was read in the Old Version. It has +vanished (in submission to the verdict of the best MSS.) from the R. V. +But there seems to me to be some force in Alford's plea for the +originality of the words, as they stand in 'Western' and later texts. + +[5] Acts xx. 28. + +[6] 'Washing.' Marg. 'laver.' + +[7] John i. 29. + +[8] John xvii. 9; Tit. ii. 14. + +[9] Rom. x. 9; cp. Acts xxii. 16. + +[10] _In Joan, tract._ 80. Cf. Irenaeus _c. haer._ v. 2, 3. + +[11] See St. Thom. Aq., _Summa_, Pars iii. Qu. lxx. art. 6 _ad_ 3. + +[12] 1 Pet. iii. 7. + +[13] It is noticeable that St. Paul does not (according to the Revised +Version which represents the original) exactly enjoin _obedience_ upon +wives (as upon children and slaves) but _subjection_: cf. Col. iii. 18; +1 Cor. xiv. 34; 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12; 1 Pet. iii. 1. If however in the +use of the 'obey' in the vow of the wife our marriage service goes an +almost imperceptible stage beyond St. Paul, its general tone preserves +St. Paul's balance admirably. The husband 'worships' the wife and +endows her with all his worldly goods. The only other ecclesiastical +formula of ours in which the word worship is used of a purely human +relation, is the peer's oath of allegiance to the sovereign at the +coronation, 'I do become your liegeman of life and limb and of earthly +worship: and faith and troth I will bear unto you to live and to die +against all manner of folks.' + +[14] How many husbands are capable of 'teaching their wives at home' +about religion? see 1 Cor. xiv. 35. + +[15] See however below, p. 225. + +[16] 1 Tim. ii. 12; 1 Cor. xiv. 34, 35. + +[17] 1 Tim. ii. 8, 9. + +[18] 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12; cf. 1 Pet. iii. 4. + +[19] All this has been admirably stated by George Romanes, whom no one +could accuse of misogyny, in his essay on 'the mental differences +between men and women.' See Essays (Longmans, 1897), pp. 113 ff. And +the statements of the text are supported by Mr. Havelock Ellis' _Man +and Woman_ (Contemp. Science Series). Mr. Ellis is sometimes less +decisive than Mr. Romanes. But see capp. xiii, xiv. + +[20] Tennyson's _Princess_; cp. his _Memoir_ by Hallam Tennyson, +(Macmillan, 1897), i. 249. + +[21] Prov. xxxi. 10 ff. + +[22] 1 Cor. xi. 5. + +[23] _Lambeth Conference_, 1897. Report on Religious Communities, pp. +57 ff. + +[24] See Paris, _Quatenus foeminae res publicas in Asia Minore Romanis +inperantibus attigerint_ (Paris, 1891). + +[25] Ramsay, _Paul the Traveller_, p. 268. + +[26] Mark x. 19; cf. Matt xix. 18, 19; Luke xviii. 20. + +[27] Cited from Exod. xx. 12 according to the LXX, which assimilates +the passage to Deut. v. 16. + +[28] Col. iii. 21. In 2 Cor. ix. 2, the only other place where the +word is used by St. Paul or in the New Testament, it means to +_stimulate by emulation_. + +[29] Accompanied with circumcision and sacrifice. + +[30] See Dr. Taylor, _The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_, pp. 55-58, +and Sabatier, La _Didache_, pp. 84-88, both very suggestive passages. +Cf. Edersheim, _Life and Times of Jesus_, App. xii, and Schuerer, +_Jewish People_, Div. ii. vol. ii. pp. 319 ff. + +[31] 1 Cor. vii. 21, 23. + +[32] Philem. 16. + +[33] 1 Tim. vi. 1. + + + + +{237} + +DIVISION II. Sec. 6. CHAPTER VI. 10-20. + +_The personal spiritual struggle._ + +[Sidenote: _The spiritual struggle_] + +The ethics of Christianity are, as has appeared, social ethics, the +ethics of a society organized in mutual relationships: and Christianity +is concerned with the whole life of man, body as well as soul, his +commerce and his politics as well as his religion. But because this +requires to be made emphatic, does it follow that we are to neglect or +depreciate the inward, personal, spiritual struggle? Are we to give a +reduced, because we give a better balanced, importance to 'saving one's +own soul,' that is preserving or recovering into its full power and +supremacy one's own spiritual personality? Of course not: because +social health depends on personal character. The more a good man +throws himself into social, including ecclesiastical, duties the more +he feels the need of character in himself and others. And the more +serious a man is {238} about his character, the more deeply he feels +the attention and self-discipline that character needs. Certainly the +most ascetic words of our Lord--those in which He speaks of the +necessity for cutting off or plucking out hand or eye if hand or eye +cause us to stumble, and warns us that we must be strong at the +spiritual centre of our being, before we can be free in exterior +action--are likely to come home to no one with more force than to one +who would do his duty in Church or state. Christ cannot redeem the +world without Himself passing through the temptation and the agony in +the garden. And thus St. Paul, after he has been dwelling on the +fraternal and corporate character of the Christian life, comes back at +the last to emphasize the personal spiritual struggle. To be a good +member of the body, he says in effect, you must be in personal +character a strong man, strong enough in Christ's might to win the +victory in a fearful struggle. + +Against what is our spiritual struggle? It is against the weakness and +lawlessness of our own flesh. 'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is +weak.' 'Our eye and hand and foot cause us to stumble.' Or again it +is the world which is too much for us. 'We seek honour one of another +{239} and not the glory that cometh from the only God.' Quite true. +But behind the manifest disorder of our nature and the insistence of +worldly motives there are other less apparent forces; and these, in St. +Paul's mind, so overshadow the more visible and tangible ones that, in +the Biblical manner of speech, he denies for the moment the reality of +the latter. 'We wrestle not against flesh and blood,' not against our +own flesh or a visibly corrupt public, but against an unseen spiritual +host organized for evil. + +It was noticed above that St. Paul has no doubt at all that moral evil +has its origin and spring in the dark background behind human +nature--in the rebel wills of devils. It has become customary to +regard belief in devils or angels as fanciful and perhaps +superstitious. Now no doubt theological and popular fancy has intruded +itself into the things it has not seen, and, instead of the studiously +vague[1] language of St. Paul, has developed a sort of geography and +ethnology for spirits good and bad which is mythological and allied to +superstition. But it has acted in the same way, and shown the same +resentment of the discipline of ignorance, in the case of even more +central spiritual realities. No {240} doubt again the belief in the +devil has sometimes become, in practical force, belief in a rival God. +But this sort of Manichaeism or dualism represents a very permanent +tendency in the untrained religious instincts of men, which the Bible +is occupied in restraining. In the Bible certainly Satan and his hosts +are rebel angels and not rival Gods. Once more undoubtedly demonology +has been a source of much misery and many degrading practices. But +demonology represents a natural religious instinct. It is older than +the Bible. And what our religion has done, where it has been true to +itself, is to purge away the noxious and non-moral superstitions. St. +Paul is representative of true Christianity in his stern refusal to use +the services of contemporary soothsaying and magic and sorcery[2]. One +has only to compare the exorcisms of our Lord with contemporary Jewish +exorcism to note the moral difference. And every truth has its +exaggeration and its abuse. The question still remains; are there no +spiritual beings but men? Is there no moral evil, but in the human +heart? Our Lord gives the most emphatic negative answer. His teaching +about evil (and good) spirits is unmistakable and {241} constant. If +He is an absolutely trustworthy teacher in the spiritual concerns of +life, then temptation from evil spirits is a reality, and a reality to +be held constantly in view. And our Lord's authority is confirmed by +our own experiences. Sometimes experience irresistibly suggests to us +the presence of unseen bad companions who can make vivid suggestions to +our minds. Or we are impressed like St. Paul with the delusive, lying +character of evil, which makes the belief in a malevolent will almost +inevitable. Or the continuity in evil influences, social or personal, +seems to disclose to us an organized plan or 'method[3]' a kingdom of +evil. + +It is then in view of unseen but personal spiritual adversaries +organized against us as armies, under leaders who have at their control +wide-reaching social forces of evil, and who intrude themselves into +the highest spiritual regions 'the heavenly places' to which in their +own nature they belong, that St. Paul would have us equip ourselves for +fighting in 'the armour of light[4].' + +If there is a spiritual battle, armour defensive and offensive becomes +a natural metaphor which {242} St. Paul frequently uses[5]. But in his +imprisonment he must have become specially habituated to the armour of +Roman soldiers, and here, as it were, he makes a spiritual meditation +on the pieces of the 'panoply' which were continually under his +observation. + +We are, then, to 'take up' or 'put on' the panoply or whole armour of +God. This means more than the armour which God supplies. It is +probably like 'the righteousness of God,' something which is not only a +gift of God, but a gift of His own self. Our righteousness is Christ, +and He is our armour. Christ, the 'stronger man,' who overthrew 'the +strong man armed' in His own person[6], and 'took away from him his +panoply in which he trusted,' is to be our defence. And by no external +protection; we are to clothe ourselves in His nature, to put Him on as +our armour. His is the strength in which we are, like Him, to come +triumphant through the hour of darkness. + +Now the parts of the armour, the elements of Christ's unconquerable +moral strength, what are they? + +{243} + +The belt which keeps all else in its place is for the Christian, +truth--that is, singleness of eye or perfect sincerity--the pure and +simple desire of the light. 'Unless the vessel be clean (or sincere)' +said the old Roman proverb, 'whatever you put into it turns sour.' A +lack of sincerity at the heart of the spiritual life will destroy it +all. Then the breastplate which covers vital organs is, for the +Christian, righteousness--the specific righteousness of Christ, St. +Paul seems to imply[7], in which in its indivisible unity he is to +enwrap himself. And, as the feet of the soldier must be well shod not +only for protection but also to facilitate free movement on all sorts +of ground, the Christian too is to be so possessed with the good +tidings of peace that he is 'prepared' to move and act under all +circumstances--all hesitations, and delays, and uncertainties which +hinder movement gone--his feet shod with the preparedness which belongs +to those who have peace at the heart. ('How beautiful upon the +mountains are the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings, that +publisheth peace.') In these three fundamental +dispositions--single-mindedness, whole-hearted {244} following of +Christ, readiness such as belongs to a believer in the good +tidings--lies the Christian's strength. But the armour is not yet +complete. The attacks of the enemy upon the thoughts will be frequent +and fiery. A constant and rapid action of the will will be necessary +to protect ourselves from evil suggestions lest they obtain a +lodgement. And the method of self-protection is to look continually +and deliberately out of ourselves up to Christ--to appeal to Him, to +invoke His name, to draw upon His strength by acts of our will. Thus +faith, continually at every fresh assault looking instinctively to +Christ and drawing upon His help, is to be our shield, off which the +enemy's darts will glance harmless, their hurtful fire quenched. And +in thus defending ourselves we must have continually in mind that God +has delivered man by a great redemption[8]. It is the sense of this +great salvation, the conviction of each Christian that he is among +those who have been saved and are tasting this salvation, which is to +cover his head from attack like a helmet[9]. And God's {245} +word--God's specific and particular utterances, through inspired +prophets and psalmists--is to equip his mouth with a sword of power; as +in His temptation and on the cross, Christ 'put off from Himself the +principalities and powers, and made a show of them, triumphing over +them openly' by the words of Holy Scripture; as Bunyan's Christian, +when 'Apollyon was fetching him his last blow, nimbly stretched out his +hand and caught' for his 'sword' the word of Micah, 'when I fall I +shall arise.' This is one fruit of constant meditation on the words of +Holy Scripture, that they recur to our minds when we most need them. +And then St. Paul passes from metaphor to simple speech, and for the +last weapon bids the Christians use 'always' that most powerful of all +spiritual weapons for themselves and others, 'prayer and supplication' +of all kinds and 'in all seasons.' But it is not to be ignorant and +blind prayer; it is to be prayer 'in the spirit,' 'who helpeth our +infirmities, for we know not of ourselves how to pray as we ought.' +'The things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God'[10]; and it is +to be the sort of prayer about which trouble is taken, and which is +persevering; and it is to be {246} prayer for others as well as for +themselves, 'for all the saints.' And St. Paul uses the pastor's +privilege, and asks for himself the support of his converts' prayers, +that he may have both power of speech and courage to proclaim the good +tidings of the divine secret disclosed, for which he is already +suffering as a prisoner. + + +Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. 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_. Wherefore take up the whole +armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, +having done 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 preparation 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, and on my behalf, that utterance 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. + + +{247} + +St. Paul does not only exhort Christians to pray, but he gives them +abundant examples. In this epistle there are two specimens[11] of +prayer for the spiritual progress of his converts, mingled with +thanksgivings and praise. We habitually pray for others that they may +be delivered from temporal evils, or that they may be converted from +flagrant sin or unbelief. But surely we very seldom pray rich prayers, +like those of St. Paul's, for others' progress in spiritual +apprehension. + + + +[1] Col. i. 16. + +[2] Acts xiii. 6-12; xvi. 16-18; xix. 13-20. + +[3] This is akin to St. Paul's word in the Greek, iv. 14; vi. 11. + +[4] Rom. xiii. 12. + +[5] Rom. vi. 13; xiii. 12; 2 Cor. vi. 7; x. 4; 1 Thess. v. 8. Cf. Isa. +xi. 4, 5, and Wisd. v. 19. + +[6] Luke xi. 21, 22. + +[7] By the use of the articles. Contrast Is. lix. 17 which he is +quoting. + +[8] Isa. lix. 17. + +[9] 'Salvation' is sometimes viewed as already accomplished, i.e. in +the victory of Christ: sometimes as still to be realized at 'the +redemption of our bodies': so in 1 Thess. v. 8 the helmet is 'the hope +of salvation' yet to be attained. + +[10] Rom. viii. 26; 1 Cor. ii. 11. + +[11] Eph. i. 15 ff.; iii. 14 ff. + + + + +{248} + +CONCLUSION. CHAPTER VI. 21-24. + +[Sidenote: _Conclusion_] + + +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. 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 +uncorruptness. + + +Tychicus was a native of Asia Minor[1], a companion and delegate of St. +Paul, like Timothy and others[2]. He was entrusted with the task +presumably of conveying this letter to the churches of Asia Minor, and +certainly of informing them as to the apostle's state in his Roman +imprisonment--information which could not fail to comfort and encourage +them. + +St. Paul brings this wonderful letter to a conclusion with a brief +benediction to the brethren--an invocation upon them of divine peace, +and love with faith--an invocation of divine favour upon all that 'love +our Lord Jesus Christ in {249} uncorruptness.' Corruption is the fruit +of sin, the condition of the 'old man[3].' Incorruption is the state +of the risen Christ, and in Him the members of His body are to be +preserved, and at last raised 'incorruptible[4]' in body. But there is +a prior 'incorruptibleness' of spirit in which all Christians are to +live from the first[5], a freedom from all such doublemindedness or +uncleanness as can corrupt the central life of the man. And to love +Christ with this incorruptibility is the condition of the permanent +enjoyment of all that His good favour would bestow upon us. + + + +[1] Acts xx. 4. + +[2] 2 Tim. iv. 12. + +[3] Eph. iv. 22 + +[4] Cor. xv. 52. + +[5] 1 Pet. iii. 4. + + + + +{251} + +APPENDED NOTES. + + +NOTE A. See p. 26. + +THE ROMAN EMPIRE RECOGNIZED BY CHRISTIAN + WRITERS AS A DIVINE PREPARATION FOR + THE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL. + +(1) The Spanish poet Prudentius (_c._ A.D. 400) fully appreciates the +influence of the Roman Empire in welding together the world into a +unity of government, laws, language, customs, and religious rites, to +prepare the way for the universal Church. The stanzas are remarkable +and worth quoting. They are put as a prayer into the mouth of the +Roman deacon Laurence during his martyrdom. He recognizes what the +Roman Empire has done, and prays that Rome may follow the example of +the rest of the world in becoming Christian. + + O Christe, numen unicum ut discrepantum gentium + O splendor, O virtus Patris, mores et observantiam, + O factor orbis et poli, linguas et ingenia et sacra, + atque auctor horum moenium! unis domares legibus. + + Qui sceptra Romae in vertice En omne sub regnum Remi + rerum locasti, sanciens mortale concessit genus: + mundum quirinali togae idem loquuntur dissoni + servire et armis cedere: ritus, id ipsum sentiunt. + +{252} + + Hoc destinatum, quo magis Confoederantur omnia + ius Christiani nominis hinc inde membra in symbolum: + quodcunque terrarum iacet mansuescit orbis subditus: + uno illigaret vinculo. mansuescat et summum caput. + + Da, Christe, Romanis tuis _Peristephanon_, ii. 413 ff. + sit Christiana ut civitas: + per quam dedisti ut caeteris + mens una sacrorum foret. + + +(2) The Pope, Leo the Great (_c._ A.D. 450), speaks thus (_Serm._ +lxxxii. 2): 'That the result of this unspeakable grace (the +Incarnation) might be spread abroad throughout the world, God's +providence made ready the Roman Empire, whose growth has reached so far +that the whole multitude of nations have been brought into +neighbourhood and connexion. For it particularly suited the divinely +planned work that many kingdoms should be leagued together in one +empire, so that the universal preaching might make its way quickly +through nations already united under the government of one state. And +yet that state, in ignorance of the author of its aggrandisement, +though it ruled almost all races, was enthralled by the errors of them +all; and seemed to itself to have received a great religion, because it +had rejected no falsehood. And for this very reason its emancipation +through Christ was the more wondrous that it had been so fast bound by +Satan.' Leo further recognizes that the Popes are entering into the +position of the Caesars (c. 1), that Rome, 'made the head of the world +by being the holy see of blessed Peter, should rule more widely by +means of the divine religion than of earthly sovereignty.' But his +statement of the relation of Peter to Paul in the evangelization of the +world (c. 5) is remarkably unhistorical. + + + + +{253} + +NOTE B. See p. 29. + +THE (SO-CALLED) 'LETTERS OF HERACLEITUS.' + +Nine letters under the name of the great philosopher of Ephesus remain +to us. In one of them (iv) Heracleitus is represented as saying to +some Ephesian adversaries, 'If you had been able to live again by a new +birth 500 years hence, you would have discovered Heracleitus yet alive +[i.e. in the memory of men] but not so much as a trace of your name.' +This probably indicates that the author is writing 500 years after +Heracleitus' supposed age. His age was differently estimated. But +'500 years after Heracleitus' would mean, according to all reckonings, +about the first half of the first century A.D. All the other +indications of age in the letters agree with this. (See Jacob Bernays' +_Heraclitischen Briefe_, Berlin, 1869, p. 112.) They were written +presumably at Ephesus, and all or most of them by a Stoic philosopher. +I do not think that it is necessary to assume traces of Jewish +influence in these letters, any more than in the writings of Seneca. +And the bulk of the letters is so thoroughly Stoic and contrary to +Jewish feeling, that a Jew is hardly likely to have interpolated them. +They illustrate therefore the current philosophic ideas which were at +work in the world in which St. Paul lived and taught, when he was +outside Judaea. That St. Paul was familiar with these ideas, however +his familiarity may have been gained, is shown beyond possibility of +mistake by his speeches--supposing them substantially genuine--at +Lystra and Athens. + +The following passages in these letters are interesting: + +(1) (From Heracleitus' defence of himself against {254} a charge of +impiety in letter iv) 'Where is God? Is he shut up in the temples? +You forsooth are pious who set up the God in a dark place. A man takes +it for an insult if he is said to be "made of stone": and is God truly +described as "born of the rocks"? Ignorant men, do ye not know that +God is not fashioned with hands, nor can you make him a sufficient +pedestal, nor shut him into one enclosure, but the whole world is his +temple, decorated with animals and planets and stars? I inscribed my +altar "to Heracles the Ephesian" [Greek: ERAKLEI TOI EPHESIOI] making +the God your citizen, not--he continues--to myself "Heracleitus an +Ephesian" [the same letters differently divided], as I am accused of +doing by you in your ignorance. Yet Heracles was a man deified by his +goodness and noble deeds; and were his virtues and labours greater than +mine? I have conquered money and ambition: I have mastered fear and +flattery,' &c. Then after a passage about the certainty of his own +immortal renown, he returns to ridicule idolatry. 'If an altar of a +god be not set up, is there no god? or if an altar be set up to what is +not a god, is it a god--so that stones become the evidences (witnesses) +of Gods? Nay it is his works which shall bear witness to God, as the +sun, the day and night, the seasons, the whole fruitful earth, and the +circle of the moon, his work and witness in the heavens.' The whole of +this letter (iv), which can be paralleled in all its ideas from Stoic +and Platonic sources, may compare and contrast with Acts xiv. 15-18; +xvii. 22-29. + +(2) Letter v is written by Heracleitus in sickness. He gives a theory +of disease as an excess of some element in the body; and describes his +soul as a divine thing reproducing in his body the healing activity of +God in the world as a whole,--'imitating God' by knowledge of the +method of nature. Even if his body prove unmanageable and succumb to +fate, yet his soul will rise {255} to heaven and 'I shall have my +citizenship (Greek: politeusouai) not among men but among Gods.' +'Perhaps my soul is giving prophetic intimation of its release even now +from its prison house' so short lived and worthless. Letter vi is a +continuation of v, containing a denunciation of contemporary medicine +on the ground of its lack of science, and a further explanation of the +Stoic doctrine of the immanence of God in all nature--forming, +ordering, dissolving, transforming, healing everywhere. 'Him will I +imitate in myself and dismiss all others.' We should compare and (even +more) contrast St. Paul's assertions of independence of bodily +circumstances; his belief in the higher sense of 'nature' (Rom. ii. +14), and such phrases as Phil. ii. 20, 'our citizenship is in heaven,' +Eph. v. 1, 'Be ye imitators of God.' + +(3) Letter vii is addressed to Hermodorus in exile. Heracleitus is to +be exiled also 'for misanthropy and refusal to smile' by a law directed +against him alone. After an interesting condemnation of _privilegia_, +the letter explains his misanthropy. He does not hate men, but their +vices. The law should run 'If any man hates vice let him leave the +city.' Then he will go willingly. In fact he is already an exile +while in the city, for he cannot share its vices. Then he describes +Ephesian life in terms of fierce contempt, their lusts natural and +unnatural, their frauds, their wars of words, their legal +contentiousness, their faithlessness and perjuries, their robberies of +temples. He denounces their vices in connexion with the worship of +Cybele (beating the kettle-drum) and Dionysus (the eating of live +flesh), and with religious vigils and banquets, and alludes to details +of sensuality associated with these meetings. He condemns the +submission of great principles to the verdicts of the crowd at their +theatres, and passes to a further vivid onslaught on their quarrels and +murders (they are no longer men {256} but beasts), on their use of +music to excite their bloodthirsty passions, and on war altogether as +contrary to 'the law of nature,' and involving the pursuit of all sorts +of vice. All this impeachment may be compared with St. Paul, who +speaks however by comparison with marked reserve, in Rom. i. 24-31, +Eph. iv. 17-19, and elsewhere. + +(4) The eighth letter is again written to Hermodorus now on his way to +Italy to assist the Decemvirs with the Ten Tables. It contains a +somewhat remarkable 'judgement on wealthy Ephesus' and statement of the +judicial function of wealth. 'God does not punish by taking wealth +away, but rather gives it to the wicked, that through having +opportunity to sin they may be convicted, and by the very abundance of +their resources may exhibit their corruption on a wider stage.' Cf. 1 +Tim. vi. 9. + +(5) The banishment of Hermodorus had been on account of a proposed law +to grant equal citizenship to freed men, and the right of public office +to their children. This instance of Ephesian intolerance gives +occasion for an enunciation of the Stoic doctrine that the only real +freedom is moral freedom, and moral freedom constitutes a man a citizen +of the world. 'The good Ephesian is a citizen of the world. For this +is the common home of all, and its law is no written document but God +(Greek: ou gramma alla theos), and he who transgresses his duty shall +be impious; or rather he will not dare to transgress, for he will not +escape justice.' 'Let the Ephesians cease to be the sort of men they +are, and they will love all men in an equality of virtue.' 'Virtue, +not the chance of birth, makes men equal.' 'Only vice enslaves, only +virtue liberates.' For men to enslave their fellow men is to fall +below the beasts; so also to mutilate them as the Ephesians do their +Megabyzi--the eunuch-priests of the wooden image of Artemis. There +must be inequality of function in the world, but not refusal of +fellowship, as the {257} higher parts of nature do not despise the +lower, or the soul think scorn to dwell with the body, or the head +despise the entrails, or God refuse to give the gifts of nature, such +as the light of the sun, to all equally. Here again we have what is +both like and unlike St. Paul's doctrine of true human liberty and +'fellowship in the body.' + +On the whole I think these letters are worth more notice than they have +received, both in themselves and as a good example of the sort of +religious and moral doctrine current in the better heathen circles of +the Asiatic cities, while St. Paul was teaching. It presents many +points of connexion with St. Paul's teaching, and co-operated with the +influence of the Jewish synagogue to prepare men's minds for it. But +perhaps what chiefly strikes us is the contrast which the fierce and +arrogant contempt of the Stoic presents to the loving hopefulness of +the Christian messenger of the gospel. + + + + +NOTE C. See p. 74. + +THE JEWISH DOCTRINE OF WORKS IN _THE APOCALYPSE OF BARUCH_. + +Mr. R. H. Charles gives us the following statement[1]:-- + +'The Talmudic doctrine of works may be shortly summarized as follows: +Every good work--whether the fulfilment of a command or an act of +mercy--established a certain degree of merit with God, while every evil +work entailed a corresponding demerit. A man's position with God +depended on the relation existing between his merits and demerits, and +his salvation on the preponderance of the former over the latter. The +relation between his {258} merits and demerits was determined daily by +the weighing of his deeds. But as the results of such judgements were +necessarily unknown, there could not fail to be much uneasiness; and, +to allay this, the doctrine of the vicarious righteousness of the +patriarchs and saints of Israel was developed not later than the +beginning of the Christian era (cf. Matt. iii. 9). A man could thereby +summon to his aid the merits of the fathers, and so counterbalance his +demerits. + +'It is obvious that such a system does not admit of forgiveness in any +spiritual sense of the term. It can only mean in such a connexion a +remission of penalty to the offender, on the ground that compensation +is furnished, either through his own merit or through that of the +righteous fathers. Thus, as Weber vigorously puts it: "Vergebung ohne +Bezahlung gibt es nicht." Thus, according to popular Pharisaism, _God +never remitted a debt until He was paid in full, and so long as it was +paid it mattered not by whom_. + +'It will be observed that with the Pharisees forgiveness was _an +external thing_; it was concerned not with the man himself but with his +works--with these indeed as affecting him, but yet as existing +independently without him. This was not the view taken by the best +thought in the Old Testament. There forgiveness dealt first and +chiefly with the direct relation between man's spirit and God; it was +essentially a restoration of man to communion with God. When, +therefore, Christianity had to deal with these problems, it could not +accept the Pharisaic solutions, but had in some measure to return to +the Old Testament to authenticate and develope the highest therein +taught, and in the person and life of Christ to give it a world-wide +power and comprehensiveness.' + +The doctrine called Talmudic in the above extract receives remarkable +illustration in a Jewish work, _The {259} Apocalypse of Baruch_, which +dates from the same period as the writings of the New Testament (A.D. +50-100; or if the work be regarded as composite, we should say that its +component elements are of that date), and represents to us in a very +vivid and touching form the hopes and beliefs of a pious orthodox Jew. +Thus-- + +1. _The doctrine of the merit of good works_, ii. 2 [words spoken to +Jeremiah by God], 'Your works are to this city as a firm pillar.' xiv. +5: 'What have they profited who confessed before Thee, and have not +walked in vanity as the rest of the nations ... but always feared Thee, +and have not left Thy ways? And, lo, they have been carried off, nor +on their account hast Thou had mercy on Zion. And if others did evil, +it was due to Zion that on account of the works of those who wrought +good works she should be forgiven, and should not be overwhelmed on +account of the works of those who wrought unrighteousness.' lxiii. 3: +'Hezekiah trusted in his works, and had hope in his righteousness, and +spake with the Mighty One ... and the Mighty One heard him.' lxxxv. 1: +'In the generations of old those our fathers had helpers, righteous men +and holy prophets ... and they helped us when we sinned, and they +prayed for us to Him who made us, because they trusted in their works, +and the Mighty One heard their prayer and was gracious unto us.' li. +7: 'But those who have been saved by their works, and to whom the law +has been now a hope, and understanding an expectation, and wisdom a +confidence, to them wonders will appear in their time.' + +It is very noticeable in the above quotations that it is the works of +the righteous rather than their persons (as in Genesis xviii. 23-33) +that are put forward as the grounds of confidence with God. The claim +of righteousness in the second quotation (xiv. 5) may be paralleled in +the somewhat earlier work called _The Assumption {260} of Moses_[2]: +'Observe and know that neither did our fathers nor their forefathers +tempt God so as to transgress His commandments.' + +2. _The doctrine of the treasury of merits_. The good works of the +righteous are laid up as in a treasury to avail for themselves and for +others. Thus (xiv. 12): 'The righteous justly hope for the end, and +without fear depart from this habitation, because they have with Thee a +store of works preserved in treasuries.' xxiv. 1: 'Behold the days +come when the books will be opened in which are written the sins of all +those that have sinned, and again also the treasuries in which the +righteousness of all those who have been righteous in creation is +gathered.' + +The connexion of the mediaeval doctrine of the treasury of merits with +the similar Jewish doctrine needs to be traced out. + +3. _Righteousness identified with the keeping of the law_. For the +Pharisaic Jew righteousness meant simply the keeping of the law. Thus +xv. 5: 'Man would not have rightly understood My judgement if he had +not accepted the law.' Again, lxvii. 6: 'So far as Zion is delivered +up and Jerusalem laid waste ... the vapour of the smoke of the incense +of righteousness which is by the law is extinguished in Zion.' Thus +the merits of Abraham are attributed to his having kept the law before +it was written. lvii. 2: 'At that time the unwritten law was named +among them, and the works of the commandments were then fulfilled.' + +Of course it must be said that 'the Law' may mean the ceremonial law, +as in the lower form of Jewish thought, or special stress may be laid +on its moral precepts, as is the case in Baruch, and in the higher +Jewish teaching generally. + +{261} + +4. _The Gentiles are therefore incapable of righteousness_. lxii. 7: +'But regarding the Gentiles it were tedious to tell how they always +wrought impiety and wickedness, and never wrought righteousness.' Thus +the best hope of the Gentiles is that in the Messianic kingdom they +should become servants to Israel. This will be their lot if they have +never vexed the holy people; see lxxii. 2-6. + +5. _The world created on account of Israel_, xiv. 18: 'Thou didst say +that Thou wouldst make for Thy world man as the administrator of Thy +works, that it might be known that he was by no means made on account +of the world but the world on account of him. [But "man" is at once +interpreted as the Jewish race.] And now I see that as for the world +which was made on account of us, lo! it abides, but we on account of +whom it was made depart' [i.e. into captivity], xv. 7: 'As regards what +thou didst say touching the righteous, that on account of them has this +world come into being, nay more, even that world which is to come is on +their account.' xxi. 23: 'Reprove therefore the angel of death ... and +let the treasuries of souls restore them that are enclosed in them, for +there have been many years like those that are desolate, from the days +of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of all those who are like them, who +sleep in the earth, on whose account Thou didst say that Thou hadst +created the world.' (This idea of the treasury of the souls of the +righteous recurs in xxx. 2.) In _The Assumption of Moses_ (i. 12) it +is said, 'God hath created the world on behalf of His people. But He +was not pleased to manifest this purpose of creation from the +foundation of the world, in order that the Gentiles might thereby be +convicted [i.e. of ignorance], yea to their own humiliation might by +their arguments convict one another.' + +The above teaching shows us exactly what it was to which St. Paul +opposed his doctrine of Justification by {262} Faith. We see it here +on its own ground. Its close association with 'boasting' is apparent +even in its better form; and its view of election contrasts, by its +selfish narrowness, with the view of election put forward by St. Paul, +viz. that God's election of a chosen people or society, together with +His apparent reprobation of others left outside, both alike subserve a +purpose of infinite width, the ultimate divine purpose to 'have mercy +upon all.' See Romans ix-xi, especially xi. 32, and cf. Eph. i. 9-10: +'the secret of His will with a view to the dispensation of the fulness +of the times, to bring together all things in the Christ, things in +heaven and things in earth.' + +The marked contrast between the doctrine of Baruch and the doctrine of +St. Paul must of course be admitted in general; but it has been asked +whether the doctrine of the Atonement is not a fragment of the +abandoned Jewish doctrine of merit, borrowed inconsistently by St. +Paul, or inconsistently tolerated by him. To this the reply is surely +in the negative. The Jews undoubtedly held that Enoch, Moses, +Jeremiah, and others were, on account of their righteousness, the +accepted mediators with God on behalf of the chosen people, and +propitiators of His wrath (see especially _Assumption of Moses_, xi, +and passages from _Baruch_ cited above). But the doctrine of the +Atonement, when it is examined, proves to have one feature which puts +it into marked opposition with the Judaic doctrine of human merit. + +According to the Christian doctrine of the Atonement, Christ is purely +and simply God's gift to man. He is the Son of God, given to man by +the Father, in order that, taking our nature upon Him, living the +perfect human life, and dying the death of perfect obedience, He might +satisfy the divine requirement, which we could not satisfy, and procure +for us what we could not procure for ourselves, no, not the best of us. +Therefore this doctrine {263} puts all men, the best and worst alike, +in the common attitude of simply receiving from God, as an unmerited +boon, the gift of forgiveness and reconciliation in Christ. It is in +fact the strongest possible negation of the Jewish idea of human merit, +personal or vicarious. + +In other respects the doctrine of _The Apocalypse of Baruch_ affords at +once interesting contrasts and parallels to St. Paul's doctrine. Thus-- + +(_a_) In Baruch as in St. Paul, we have a combination of the doctrine +of divine predestination with the insistence on human free will and +responsibility. lxix. 4: 'Of the good works of the righteous which +should be accomplished before Him, He foresaw six kinds' should be +compared with Eph. ii. 10: 'Good works which God prepared beforehand +that we should walk in them.' + +(_b_) The eschatology of the New Testament, including St. Paul's, is of +course especially Jewish. It does not however concern us much in the +Epistle to the Ephesians; but we notice that in _The Apocalypse of +Baruch_ the idea of 'the consummation of the times' (cf. Eph. i. 10, +'the fulness of the times') appears and reappears constantly. See +xiii. 3; xxi. 8, 17; xxx. 3; xlii. 6; liv. 21; lvi. 2; lix. 4; lxix. 4, +5; cf. _The Assumption of Moses_, i. 18: 'The consummation of the end +of the days.' + +(_c_) The connexion of St. Paul's doctrine with the Jewish doctrine is +also illustrated in _The Apocalypse of Baruch_ on the following points. +_That the Gentiles had the opportunity of the knowledge of God through +His works in nature, but refused it_. See _Baruch_, liv. 18, and cf. +Romans, i. 20: _The pre-existence of the Messiah_. This is suggested +but not very clearly stated in xxx. 1, cf. Charles's note and _The +Assumption of Moses_, i. 14, where the pre-existence of Moses seems to +be asserted. Again, _the Fall of Adam and its effect in introducing +death_ (_or premature death_) _into the world_. See xxiii. 4; xlviii. +42; liv. 15; lvi. 6, and {264} Charles's notes. Once more The +Resurrection of the Body. See _Baruch_, l; li. On all these points we +see what was the material in existing Jewish thought or, in other +words, what were the existing developements of Old Testament belief, +which the Christian inspiration had to work upon. The effect of the +specifically Christian inspiration is chiefly seen (1) in selection +among existing beliefs--taking some and utterly rejecting others; (2) +in giving a definite and fixed form to current Messianic and other +ideas which were continually shifting and incoherent; and (3) in +spiritualizing and moralizing what it appropriated. Of course it is in +the Revelation or Apocalypse of St. John that we have the most signal +instance of the New Testament use of contemporary Jewish material. But +such material holds a very large place in the whole of the New +Testament, and there is no more important assistance to the study of +the New Testament than is afforded by contemporary Jewish literature, +especially that of an Apocalyptic character. + + + +[1] _The Apoc. of Baruch_ (A. and C. Black, 1896), p. lxxxii. The +statement is compiled from Weber, _Lehre des Talmuds_. + +[2] Edited also by R. H. Charles (A. and C. Black, 1897), p. 37. + + + + +NOTE D. See p. 120. + +THE BROTHERHOOD OF ST. ANDREW + +After the above passage was written, as to the need amongst us of a +deeper idea of the obligations of church membership, it fell to my lot +to go to the United States, to make acquaintance with the work of the +Brotherhood of St. Andrew in that country, and to assist at its general +convention in Buffalo. It seemed to me that nothing could be better +calculated to revive the true spirit of laymanship than that society, +'formed in recognition of {265} the fact that every Christian man is +pledged to devote his life to the spread of the kingdom of Christ on +earth.' + +It was started among a small band of young men, of the number of the +apostles, nearly fifteen years ago, in St. James's parish, Chicago, and +has spread till to-day it numbers more than 1,200 parochial chapters in +the United States alone, and has taken firm root in Canada and other +parts of the world. It has a double rule of Prayer and of Service. +The point of the service required is that it should have the character +especially of witness among a man's equals. So much 'church work' is +directed towards raising those who are in some ways our inferiors, that +we forget that the real test of a man is the witness he bears for +Christ among his equals. There is many a man who, especially in his +youth, fails to confess Christ in his own society, and then, if I may +so express it, sneaks round the corner to do something to raise the +degraded or takes orders and preaches the gospel. Nobody can possibly +disparage these efforts of love, but a certain character of cowardice +continues to attach to them, if they are not based on a frank witness +for Christ in a man's own walk of life, where it is hardest. It is +this witness which the Brotherhood requires. + +The particular rule is 'to make an earnest effort each week to bring +some one young man within hearing of the Gospel of Christ as set forth +in the services of the Church and in men's Bible classes.' This rule +is no doubt open to criticism. But it is interpreted in the spirit +rather than in the letter, and for its definite requirement it is +successfully pleaded that it keeps the members from vagueness and +slackness. + +Certainly the result appears to be excellent. The brethren are +pervaded by a spirit of frank religious profession and devotion. There +appears to be a general {266} tone among them of reality and good +sense. Their missionary zeal does not degenerate into an intrusive +prying into other men's souls. + +The Brotherhood was developed in the atmosphere of the United States, +and it remains a question whether it will flourish in England. The +more sharply defined distinctions of classes among us; our exaggerated +parochialism; the shyness and reserve in religious matters which +characterizes many really religious Englishmen and degenerates into a +sort of 'hypocrisy reversed,' or pretence of being less religious than +one is--these things will constitute grave obstacles. But the need is +at least as crying among us, as on the other side of the Atlantic, to +emphasize among professing Christians and churchmen the duty of +witness. At least we may trust the Brotherhood will be given a good +trial. But if it is to have a fair chance among us, the greatest care +must be taken that it should develope as a properly lay movement; and +while it receives all encouragement from the clergy, should not be +taken up by them to be turned into a guild of 'church workers,' useful +for purposes of parochial organization. + +One of the most striking facts about the Brotherhood in the States is +that, while the church spirit is unmistakable--as no one who was +present at the corporate Communion of 1,300 delegates in October of +this year at half-past six in the morning in a great church at Buffalo +could possibly doubt--it has successfully avoided becoming either a +party society or a society rent by factions. + +It is because I believe the witness of this Brotherhood to the true +church spirit has already proved invaluable that I venture to dedicate +this little exposition of the great book of brotherhood--though without +leave granted or asked--to its founder and president. + + + + +{267} + +NOTE E. See pp. 164, 166. + +THE CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH (CATHOLIC) IN ST. PAUL IN ITS RELATION TO +LOCAL CHURCHES. + +By far the most frequent use of the word 'church' or 'churches' in the +New Testament is to designate a local society of Christians or a number +of such societies taken together, 'the church at Jerusalem,' 'the +church at Antioch,' 'the churches of Galatia,' 'the seven churches +which are in Asia,' 'all the churches.' But it is used also for the +church as a whole. In fact, before Christ's coming the word in the +Greek of the Old Testament had passed from meaning an assembly of the +people, as in classical Greek, to meaning the sacred people as a +whole[1], as St. Stephen uses it in his speech 'The church in the +wilderness' (Acts vii. 38). And it is exactly in this sense that it is +used by our Lord in St. Matthew, xvi. 18. 'The church' which our Lord +there promises to 'build' is the Church of the New Covenant as a whole. +We might paraphrase His words (as Dr. Hort suggests[2]) 'on this rock I +will build my Israel.' Thus there is throughout the Acts and St. +Paul's earlier epistles, a tendency to pass from the use of 'church' as +a local society to its use as designating the whole body of the +faithful. This was but natural seeing that each local society did but +represent the one divine society, the church of the Old Covenant, +refounded by Christ. See Acts ix. 31: 'The church throughout all +Judaea and Galilee and Samaria.' {268} xii. 1: 'Herod the king put +forth his hands to afflict certain of the church.' xx. 28: 'The church +of God which he purchased with his own blood.' Gal. i. 13: 'I +persecuted the church of God.' 1 Cor. xii. 28: 'God hath set some in +the church, first apostles,' &c. In this last passage and in St. +Paul's speech to the Ephesian elders this general use of the term is +unmistakable. + +In the Epistle to the Ephesians, in which alone among his epistles St. +Paul is writing not about the difficulties or needs of a particular +congregation, but about the church in its general conception, this +larger use of the term becomes dominant. And the point to be noticed +is that the church in general, or catholic church, is conceived of, not +as made up of local churches, but as made up of individual members. +The local church would be regarded by St. Paul not as one element of a +catholic confederacy[3], but as the local representative of the one +divine and catholic society[4]. But the local church is not, according +to St. Paul, a completely independent representative of the church as a +whole. The apostles, as commissioned witnesses and representatives of +Christ, are over all the churches. They, or their recognized +associates and delegates, like Barnabas, Timothy and Titus, represent +the general church which every local church must, so to speak, +reproduce. The apostles therefore, or their representatives, give to +each church when it is first founded 'the tradition' of truth and +morals which is permanently to mould it; and they maintain the +tradition by a more or less constant supervision. Thus they are {269} +the force which holds all 'the churches' together on a common basis. +'So ordain I,' says St. Paul, 'in all the churches[5].' 'Hold fast the +traditions even as I delivered them to you[6].' The apostle has, he +teaches, an 'authority' commensurate with his 'stewardship[7],' an +authority 'which the Lord gave for the edification and not the +destruction[8]' of the Christians, but which at times must take the +form of a 'rod' of chastisement[9]. The complete doctrinal and moral +independence of particular Churches is strongly denied by St. Paul in +such phrases as 'Came the word of God unto you alone?' or, 'If any man +preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let +him be anathema[10].' + +Dr. Hort's work on _The Christian Ecclesia_, in many respects, as would +be expected, most admirable, seems to me to minimize quite +extraordinarily the apostolic authority. The apostles, he says, were +only witnesses of Christ. 'There is no trace in Scripture of a formal +commission of authority for government from Christ Himself.' This +surprising conclusion is reached by omitting many considerations. Thus +in St. Matthew xvi. 19 a definite grant of official authority--as +appears in the passage, Is. xxii. 22, on which it is based--is promised +to St. Peter, and he is on this occasion, as Dr. Hort himself +maintains, the representative of the apostles generally. This +stewardship granted to the apostles, to shepherd the flock and feed the +household of God, is implied again in St. Luke xii. 42, St. John xxi. +15-17; and it seems to be quite unreasonable to dissociate the +authoritative commission to 'absolve and retain,' St. John xx. 20-23, +from the apostolic office. Dr. Hort would apparently {270} dissociate +such passages as those last referred to from the apostolic office, and +assign them to the church as a whole. But how then does he account for +the authority inherent in the apostolic office, as it is represented by +St. Paul, and in the Acts? St. Paul's conception of the authority of +the apostles is barely considered by him; and the authority of the +apostolate in the Acts is strangely minimized. Nothing is said of +Simon's impression--surely a true one--that the apostles had the +'authority' to convey the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of +hands (viii. 19). Certainly the phrases used toward the churches of +Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, 'to whom we gave no commandment,' 'it +seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater +burden than these necessary things,' imply a governmental authority, +which, if it is shared by the presbyters, is substantially that of the +apostles (Acts xv. 24-28). + +Dr. Hort also minimizes greatly the element of official authority which +appears almost at once in the church by apostolic appointment and +delegation. No doubt there was at first an authority allowed--as must +always be allowed--to the acknowledged possessors of extraordinary +divine gifts, especially to the 'prophets.' But in the period of St. +Paul's later activity, when he is facing the future of the church and +has apparently ceased to expect an immediate return of Christ, these +special gifts retire into the background, while the ordinary functions +of government, and administration of the word and sacraments, remain in +the position which they are permanently to occupy in the hands of +regularly ordained officers. + +Dr. Hort deals, as it seems to me, most unreasonably with the pastoral +epistles. It is surely arbitrary to dissociate 'the gift which was in +Timothy by the laying on of St. Paul's hands,' the gift of power, and +love, and discipline; which Timothy is to 'stir up' (2 Tim. i. 6), from +{271} that mentioned in the first epistle (iv. 14), 'the gift that is +in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the +hands of the presbyters'; and to make the former a 'gift' of merely +personal piety. And (even if the 'lay hands suddenly on no man' be +interpreted, as Ellicott and Hort would interpret it, of the reception +of a penitent) it seems absurd to doubt, in view of what is said about +the laying on of hands in ordination of 'the seven' and of the +'evangelist' Timothy, and in view of the place it held generally for +conveying spiritual gifts in the Christian Church, that this was the +accepted method of ordination in all cases; there being in fact no +evidence to the contrary. + +Once more, Dr. Hort is surely maintaining an impossible position when, +even in face of the salutation to the Philippians, he denies that the +term 'episcopus' is used in the New Testament as a regular title of an +ecclesiastical office. + +Not even Dr. Hort's reputation for soundness of judgement could stand +against many posthumous publications such as _The Christian Ecclesia_. + + + +[1] _Not_, as Dr. Hort points out (_Christian Ecclesia_, p. 5), 'the +elect (called-out) people.' The word has in fact no such association +attached to it. + +[2] pp. 10, 11. + +[3] Unless indeed, in Eph. iii. 21, we should understand 'every +building' as meaning every local church which, fitted together with +every other, grows into a holy temple, i.e. into that which only a +really catholic church can be. + +[4] The same statement would be true of St. Ignatius of Antioch. + +[5] 1 Cor. vii. 17. + +[6] 1 Cor. xi. 2, xv. 2. + +[7] 1 Cor. ix. 17. + +[8] 2 Cor. x. 8. + +[9] 1 Cor. iv, 21. + +[10] 1 Cor. xiv. 36; Gal. i. 8. + + + + +NOTE F. See p. 188. + +THE ETHICS OF CATHOLICISM. + +The world at large is fully aware of the claim of 'Catholicism,' i.e. +the claim of the one visible church for all sorts of men. But the +ethical meaning of the claim has been strangely subordinated to its +theological and sacerdotal aspects. Its ethical meaning seems to me to +require developing under heads such as these:-- + +1. The requirement of mutual forbearance if men of all races and +classes and idiosyncrasies are to be bound {272} to belong to one +organization and to worship in common, 'breaking the one bread.' +Herein lies the moral discipline of Catholicism: see above, pp. 123 +foll. + +2. The consequent obligation of toleration in theology, ritual, &c., +on all matters which do not touch the actual basis of the Christian +faith. St. Cyprian, though he believed that those baptized outside the +church were not baptized at all, yet deliberately remained in communion +with those bishops who thought differently, trusting to the mercy of +God to supply the supposed deficiency in those who, outside his +jurisdiction, were admitted into the church, as he believed, without +baptism. And St. Augustine, who, most of ancient writers, understands +the moral meaning of Catholicism, repeatedly holds up this toleration +of Cyprian as an example to the Donatist separatists of his own day: +'If you seek advice from the blessed Cyprian, hear how much he +anticipates from the mere advantage of unity: so much so that he did +not separate himself from those who held different opinions: and, +though he thought that those who are baptized outside the communion of +the church do not receive baptism at all, yet he believed that those +who had thus been simply _admitted_ into the church could on no other +ground than the bond of unity come under the divine pardon.' Then he +quotes Cyprian's words: 'But some one will say: what will happen to +those who in the past, when coming from heresy to the church, have been +admitted without baptism? (I reply): God is powerful to grant them +forgiveness by His mercy, and not to separate from the gifts of His +church those who, after being thus simply admitted into her, have +fallen asleep.' And again: 'judging no man and separating no man from +the rights of communion because he thinks differently.' And St. +Augustine continues: 'All these catholic {273} unity embraces in her +motherly bosom, bearing one another's burdens in turn and endeavouring +to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, until, in +whatever respect they disagreed, the Lord should reveal (the truth) to +one or the other of them[1].' Not to St. Paul then, only, but to St. +Cyprian and St. Augustine, doctrinal toleration is an essential of +Catholicism. Would to God the claim of the one church had not come to +be associated so generally with the opposite tendency! See above, pp. +158 f. + +3. Catholicism, as meaning a church of all races and sorts of people, +postulates a constant missionary enthusiasm in all the members of the +church till this ideal be realized. 'To do the work of an evangelist,' +to have the 'feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace,' to +be content to leave nothing but evil outside the church--that is to be +a real catholic. + +4. To St. Paul's mind the Catholicism of the church is to lead the way +to an even wider 'reconciliation.' Through the catholic union of men +in the church the whole universe is to come back into unity. The +kingdom of God is to be something wider than the church which exists to +prepare for it. This principle once recognized secures that the church +shall feel and exhibit a constant interest in all departments of +knowledge and progress. The universe is one, and redemption is for the +whole. + +5. Catholicism is the antithesis of esotericism. All--men and women, +slave or free, Greek or Scythian--are capable of full initiation into +Christianity. All--not apostles and presbyter-bishops and deacons +only--but all Christians make up the high priestly body and have on +their foreheads the anointing oil: see above, pp. 111 ff. + +Forbearance between divergent classes and races and +individuals--doctrinal toleration--missionary {274} +enthusiasm--universal sympathy--recognition of a universal priesthood +of Christianity--these constitute the moral content of Pauline +Catholicism. + + + +[1] S. Aug. _de Baptismo_, ii. [xiii.] 18, [xiv.] 20. + + + + +NOTE G. See p. 190. + +THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE AND INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS. + +The 'Report of the Committee of the Lambeth Conference appointed to +consider and report upon the office of the Church with respect to +industrial problems--(_a_) the unemployed; (_b_) industrial +co-operation,' is so much to the point as a statement of Christian +social duty that I venture to reproduce the _first part of it_ here. + + +'The Committee desire to begin their Report with words of thankful +recognition that throughout the Church of Christ, and not least in the +Churches of our own Communion, there has been a marked increase of +solicitude about the problems of industrial and social life, and of +sympathy with the struggles, sufferings, responsibilities, and +anxieties, which those problems involve. + +'They hope that they rightly discern in this some increasing reflection +in modern shape of the likeness of the Lord, in whose blessed life zeal +for the souls, and sympathy for the bodily needs of men were undivided +fruits of a single love. + +'The Committee, before proceeding to touch upon two specific parts of +the subject, desire to record briefly what they deem to be certain +principles of Christian duty in such matters. + +'The primary duty of the Church, as such, and, within her, of the +Clergy, is that of ministry to men in the things of character, +conscience, and faith. In doing this, she also does her greatest +social duty. Character in the {275} citizen is the first social need; +character, with its securities in a candid, enlightened, and vigorous +conscience, and a strong faith in goodness and in God. The Church owes +this duty to all classes alike. Nothing must be allowed to distract +her from it, or needlessly to impede or prejudice her in its discharge; +and this requires of the Clergy, as spiritual officers, the exercise of +great discretion in any attempt to bring within their sphere work of a +more distinctively social kind. + +'But while this cannot be too strongly said, it is not the whole truth. +Character is influenced at every point by social conditions; and active +conscience, in an industrial society, will look for moral guidance on +industrial matters. + +'Economic science does not claim to give this, its task being to inform +but not to determine the conscience and judgement. But we believe that +Christ our Master does give such guidance by His example and teachings, +and by the present workings of His Spirit; and therefore under Him +Christian authority must in a measure do the same, the authority, that +is, of the whole Christian body, and of an enlightened Christian +opinion. This is part of the duty of the Christian Society, as +witnessing for Christ and representing Him in this present world, +occupied with His work of setting up the Kingdom of God, under and +amidst the natural conditions of human life. In this work the clergy, +whose special duty it is to ponder the bearings of Christian +principles, have their part; but the Christian laity, who deal directly +with the social and economic facts, can do even more. + +'The Committee believe that it would be wholly wrong for Christian +authority to attempt to interfere with the legitimate evolution of +economic and social thought and life by taking a side corporately in +the debates between rival social theories or systems. It will not (for +example), {276} at the present day, attempt to identify Christian duty +with the acceptance of systems based respectively on collective or +individual ownership of the means of production. + +'But they submit that Christian social duty will operate in two +directions:-- + +'1. The recognition, inculcation, and application of certain Christian +principles. They offer the following as examples:-- + +(_a_) The principle of Brotherhood. This principle of Brotherhood, or +Fellowship in Christ, proclaiming, as it does, that men are members one +of another, should act in all the relations of life as a constant +counterpoise to the instinct of competition. + +(_b_) The principle of Labour. That every man is bound to service--the +service of God and man. Labour and service are to be here understood +in their widest and most inclusive sense; but in some sense they are +obligatory on all. The wilfully idle man, and the man who lives only +for himself, are out of place in a Christian community. Work, +accordingly, is not to be looked upon as an irksome necessity for some, +but as the honourable task and privilege of all. + +(_c_) The principle of Justice. God is no respecter of persons. +Inequalities, indeed, of every kind are inwoven with the whole +providential order of human life, and are recognized emphatically in +our Lord's words. But the social order cannot ignore the interests of +any of its parts, and must, moreover, be tested by the degree in which +it secures for each freedom for happy, useful, and untrammelled life, +and distributes, as widely and equitably as may be, social advantages +and opportunities. + +(_d_) The principle of Public Responsibility. A Christian community, +as a whole, is morally responsible for {277} the character of its own +economic and social order, and for deciding to what extent matters +affecting that order are to be left to individual initiative, and to +the unregulated play of economic forces. Factory and sanitary +legislation, the institution of Government labour departments and the +influence of Government, or of public opinion and the press, or of +eminent citizens, in helping to avoid or reconcile industrial +conflicts, are instances in point. + +'2. Christian opinion should be awake to repudiate and condemn either +open breaches of social justice and duty, or maxims and principles of +an un-Christian character. It ought to condemn the belief that +economic conditions are to be left to the action of material causes and +mechanical laws, uncontrolled by any moral responsibility. It can +pronounce certain conditions of labour to be intolerable. It can +insist that the employer's personal responsibility, as such, is not +lost by his membership in a commercial or industrial Company. It can +press upon retail purchasers the obligation to consider not only the +cheapness of the goods supplied to them, but also the probable +conditions of their production. It can speak plainly of evils which +attach to the economic system under which we live, such as certain +forms of luxurious extravagance, the widespread pursuit of money by +financial gambling, the dishonesties of trade into which men are driven +by feverish competition, and the violences and reprisals of industrial +warfare. + +'It is plain that in these matters disapproval must take every +different shade, from plain condemnation of undoubted wrong to +tentative opinions about better and worse. Accordingly any organic +action of the Church, or any action of the Church's officers, as such, +should be very carefully restricted to cases where the rule of right is +practically clear, and much the larger part of the matter {278} should +be left to the free and flexible agency of the awakened Christian +conscience of the community at large, and of its individual members. + +'If the Christian conscience be thus awakened and active, it will +secure the best administration of particular systems, while they exist, +and the modification or change of them, when this is required by the +progress of knowledge, thought, and life. + +'It appears to follow from what precedes that the great need of the +Church, in this connexion, is the growth and extension of a serious, +intelligent, and sympathetic opinion on these subjects, to which +numberless Christians have as yet never thought of applying Christian +principles. There has been of late no little improvement in this +respect, but much remains to be done, and with this view the Committee +desire to make the following definite recommendation. + +'They suggest that, wherever possible, there should be formed, as a +part of local Church organization, Committees consisting chiefly of +laymen, whose work should be to study social and industrial problems +from the Christian point of view, and to assist in creating and +strengthening an enlightened public opinion in regard to such problems, +and promoting a more active spirit of social service, as a part of +Christian duty. + +'Such Committees, or bodies of Church workers in the way of social +service, while representing no one class of society, and abstaining +from taking sides in any disputes between classes, should fearlessly +draw attention to the various causes in our economic, industrial, and +social system, which call for remedial measures on Christian +principles.' + +Abundant illustration of the kind of matters with which such Committees +might deal will be found in the report. + + + + +OXFORD: HORACE HART + +PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, by +Charles Gore + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. 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