(g) The Consecration of Family Life. Family life is regulated in Col (3"-4') : it is dignified in 1 P (2"-3') as a means whereby Christians may hope to attract heathens to the faith ; but here it is lifted to a higher level still, as a type and nurseiy of Church life.
(h) The Picture of the Christian at a Soldier, and his life as a warfare, which finds its fullest expression here, has had a wonderful influence both on Christian history and on Cliristian litera- ture, enriching the latter with poems and allegories such as the Psychomachia of Prudentius, and the Pilgrim's Progress and the Taking of Mansottl by Bunyan, and nerving many a Christian hero and martyr for his task.
vi. Literathrb. — If we may see a literary dependence of 1 P and of the Apoc. upon our Ep., ita importance must have been recognized at once, and it must have been at once known in Rome ; the reminiscences found In the sub-apos. writers show a knowledge of it at least in Asia Minor ana Italy. There is some evidence that it was commented upon by the Gnostics in the 2nd cent. Origen wrote three books upon it, large fragment* of which are preser\'ed in Cramer's Catena^ vol. vi. ; probably a much larger part is embodied in Jerome's Commentarj/. In the next cent. Ephraem the Syrian, Victorinus the African, Ambrosiaater, St. Chrysostom, and Severianus, and rather later Theodore of Mopsues'tia, Theodoret, and Jerome, treated it in their general comm. on St. Paul's Epp. For an account of these comm. see Lightfoot, G(U. (pp. 217 ff.), and Swete's ed. of Theodore of Mopsuestia (vol. i. pp. lix-lxxix). For later comm. cf. Meyer's Comm. (Introd.), or Macpherson, pp. 96-106.
St. Chrysostom remains still the best comm. for his combina- tion of exegetical, doctrinal, and spiritual power, and for sympathy with the writer's mind and character. He want* exact treatment of exegetical difficulties, and is at times fanci- ful ; but he seizes well the whole drift of a passage ; he never avoids discussing a difficulty ; he has a Ann hold on doctrine, and is especially strong in the spiritual application of truth, dwelling on the contrast between virtue and vice ; on the strength of the will, on the beauty of the Christian character in contrast to the unnaturalness and impotence of sin. Theo- dore of Mopsuestia is acute as an exegete, but has leas spiritual insight: e.g. he explains all the blessings spoken of in the Ep. a4 referring to a future life.
Of mod. comm. Macpherson (Edinr. 1892) is full and useful, but not very stimulating; Ellicott, Alford, Moule(Camb. Bible), Beet, are "all good ; Bishop Lijthtfoofa notes on 1'" have been published posthumously (A o(#s on the Kpp. of St. Paid, 1895). W. Schmidt in Meyer's Comm. on yx, and Von Soden in the HarulkomTnentar zum XT (Freiburg, 1891), are excellent in exegesis.
For the doctrinal treatment of the Ep., Dale, Lectures oi* Eph., and Findlay in The b'xpot. Bible, are equally good, though both fail to rise to the writer's conception of the Church. For devotional use, Bemardine of Picquii:ny. in l.at. or In Eng. (tr. by A. H. Pritchard. 18S.S), is most useful. The intro- ductory questions are best dealt with by PHoiderer, PaulinOtm. ii. pp. 102-193; Von Soden, ubis%ij)ra\ and lloltzmann. Kritik der Rjihexer- und Kolotnter-bri^fe, Leipzig. 1882, aa against the Pauline authorship : on behalf of it. by Lightfoot, Bil'l. Ktmy ; Hort, I'rnUtiomena to the Ho. and Eph. 189.*» ; A. Robcrtsoo in Smith's Z)£f2 ; Weiss. Introd. to NT ; Zahn, Einl. •
W. Lock. EPHESUS ('E^<ro«) was the metropolis of th«
Koman {)rovince of Asia (wh. see), and one of the three great cities of the East Mediterranean lands (along ^vith Antioch in Syria and Alexandria in Egypt), a rank to which geographical and his- torical causes conspired to raise it. It was situated within 3 miles of the sea, on the river Cayster, which was navigable as far up as the city in the liom. period. It stood at the entrance to one of the four river valleys that extend upwards and eastwards like long narrow clefts in the high plateau forming the main muss of Asia Minor ; these valleys are separated by chains of moun- tains, which are really prolongations, like fingers, stretching out towards the \V. from the main plateau. The roads connecting the western sea, the JEgeaa, with the central and eastern lands, must necessarily follow the lines of these four valleys ; and near the mouth of each of them stood a Gr. city, in which the importance of the valley was centred. The four vaJleys are those of the river Caicus with the city Pergamus, of the Hermus with Smyrna, of the Cayster with E., and of the Ma-ander with Miletus. The four cities played a prominent part in the early history of Christianity in Asia Alinor. The shorter courses of the Caicus and Cayster make their vallejys un- Buited for routes of communication with the far East ; and natural circumstances make the road that leads up from the Hermus valley to the plateau too dilticult. Hence the route up the M.Tander to its junction with the Lycus, and thence up tlie Lycus i)y Laoilicea (wh. see) towards Apamea, has been the great road of history, and was one of the chief avenues of intercourse, of commerce, and of advanc- ing civilization and thought under the Rom. Empire. Now E., from the bef'inning, competed with Miletus as the seaport towards which the trade of that great ronH wa.s attracted ; for, owing to the configuration ot the coa-st and of the valley, the line from the I-yrus down the Mseander, and across the moun- tains by a pass only about 600 ft. high to E., is shorter by many miles than the line down the Ma-ander to Miletus. The superior energy and more thoroughly Gr. character of the people of Miletus, combined with their more advantageous harbour, gave them the advantage in earlier times ; but under the later Gr. kings, and still more de- cisively under the Roman rule, E. had established itself in undisputed sujiremacy as the sea-end of the great eastern highway, while the silting up of the Mseander seems to have been permitted to interfere with the excellence of the liarbour of Miletus. Thus E. became the great commercial centre for the whole country within, i.e. on the Roman side of, Mt. Taurus, as Slrabo mentions (p. 641, cf. pp. 640, 603).