to the glory of the Father (iv. 7-16). In the thought that tne purpose of these gifts is the edifying of the body of Christ, the theme—the Church—is again sounded.
Practical exhortations follow, to spiritual renewal, truthful- ness, peace, honesty, purity of speech and life, love, godly caution, temperance, holy meditation and christian interchange, gratitude, and the reciprocal duties of husband and wife, in which last the church-theme is once more enunciated in typ- ifying by the marriage-rite Christ’s love for the Church (iv. 7-v.).
The Church includes the household. The exhortations to fidelity in household relations are continued (vi. 1-9). The ideal of the Church and of individual character is realized only through conflict with the evil world and the powers of dark- ness, in which the power of God alone can insure victory. Hence the Christian is urged to clothe himself with the divine panoply (vi. 10-18).
The authenticity of the epistle has been challenged on the ground of dissimilarity to the other writings of Paul, unusual words and phrases, and a general un-Pauline character in doc- trine and diction. As regards doctrine, the charge is beneath notice. As to diction, the argument from unusual expressions would bear equally against the genuineness of some of the best- attested epistles. While there are forty-two unique words in this letter, there are thirty-eight in Colossians, above a hundred in Romans, and two hundred and thirty in First Corinthians ; while the well-known peculiarities of Paul’s style are as evident in this as in the other epistles.
The epistle has also been assailed as “a mere verbose expan- sion ” of the Colossian letter. There are, indeed, marked resem- blances between the two both in matter and form, and some- times literal correspondences, as might be expected in two epis- tles written about the same time; but both the subject and the treatment of the two epistles present too many differences to bear out this charge of amplification. On the contrary, the same subject is sometimes treated more concisely in Ephesians than in Colossians (Eph. i. 15-17; Col. i. 83-6; Eph. iv. 32; Col. iii. 12-14). Ephesians, moreover, contains matter not
XXVili INTRODUCTION.
found in Colossians (Eph. i. 18-14; iv. 8-15; v. 7-14, 23-31; vi. 10-17).
The polemic element in Colossians is wanting in Ephesians. The Christology of Colossians is more metaphysical than that of Ephesians, while the predestinarianism of Ephesians does not appear in Colossians.
This epistle presents peculiar difficulties to the student. Dean Alford says: “ The difficulties lie altogether beneath the surface; are not discernible by the cursory reader, who finds all very straightforward and simple. . . . But when we begin to inquire why thought succeeds to thought, and one cumbrous parenthesis to another—depths under depths disclose themselves, wonderful systems of parallel allusion, frequent and complicated underplots—every word, the more we search, ap- proves itself as set in its exact logical place; we see every phrase contributing by its own similar organization and articu- lation to the carrying out of the organic whole. But this result is not won without much labor of thought, without repeated and minute laying together of portions and expressions, with- out bestowing on single words and phrases, and their succession and arrangement, as much study as would suffice for whole sec- tions of more exoteric epistles.”
While the diction is marked by a peculiar sonorousness and depth of tone, it does not surpass in variety and picturesqueness that of some other epistles, Second Corinthians, for instance. The shorter epistle to the Colossians contains thirty-eight unique words to forty-two in Ephesians. But no writing of Paul equals this in the liturgical majesty of its movement. The Epistle to the Romans is the ever-deepening flow of a stately river ; Second Corinthians is the rush of a rapid ; Ephes- jans is the solemn swell of a calm sea. Not a familiar and personal letter like Philippians and Philemon, it is, equally with these, devoid of official stateliness. Its dignity is that of the seer rather than of the bishop and teacher. It rises at times to the height of apocalypse. The impression of a teacher ex- pounding his theme is largely merged in the impression of a great mind and an adoring soul mastered and swept onward by the theme.