persona,l intercourse with the Ephc~ians, ancl to send salubtious to some of them, especially the eldc11s he bad met at Miletus; and we should not ba,ve expected the Epistle to be written so prepondcrating1y to Gentiles. But, in point of fact, in many of his Epi3tles the apostle sends no personal greetings; to do so was by no means his universal habit. Besides, as the Epistle was sent by Tychicus, a personal friend in whom he had great confidence, the greetings might be conveyed orally by him. We find, too, that in his Epistle to Philemon, who was one of his own converts, be use; that very expression, "hearing of thy faith and love," which in Ephesians is said to prove that the writer had never been at Ephesus. And as for the composition of the Ephesian Church, there are several incidents which show that, from the Jews, there came for the most part only bitter opposition (Acts xix. 9, 13, 14; xx. 19); so that the great majority of the Church, which was a very numerous one, must have been Gentiles. In fact, the shrine-makers for Diana would have had no cause for fear if it had not been for the multitude of pagans whom Paul was persuading to abandon the old religion. Moreover, in our everyday life, we are ever finding things that are mysterious to us when our information is imperfect, but that become plain and simple when some missmg link of explanation is supplied. It is certain that the early Church did not see in the features of the Epistle now adverted to any reason for doubting that Paul was the author. As to the allegation that the style, tone, and sentiment are in many respects not Pauline, no weight is to be attached to it. To trace salvation to grace as its fountain; to magnify the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ; to proclaim the freedom of the new dispensation; to interlace doctrine and duty in the web of exhortation; to sound the military trumpet, as it were and stimulate bis readers to intrepid action in the service of Christ ;-what were more eminently Pauline objects than these? and where are they more characteristically promoted than in this very writing ? A conjecture has been adopted by some writers that this Epistle was not addressed to Ephesus only, but was a kind of circular letter, sent first to Ephesus, but afterwards to various neighbouring Churches. On this hypo- thesis it has been held that an explanation may be given of those things which create a feeling of surprise. To this hypothesis we shall have to advert further on. The Epistle bears throughout to have been written by Paul, and, as he speaks i11 several places in the character of "a prisoner of the Lord," it appears that he was a captive at the time. There were two places where he suffered captivity-Cresarea and Rome. Tho reference to Tychieus, the bearer of the letter for the Colossians as weli as of this one for tho Ephesians, and other allusions, make it probable that he was at Rome when he wrote this letter. It is usually thought that the Epistle to the Ephe- sians was written shortly after that to the Colossians, while both were despatched together, and that their date is A.D. li2. No one could have inferred from the tone of the letters that at the t.imc the "Tiler "-as iT IN'l'RODUC'l'ION 'l'O
confined in bonds. Anything more bright, cheerful, n.nd even exulting than the tone of the letter to the Ephesians can hardly be conceived. No doubt some critics would say that this showed that the letter could not have been written in such circumstances. But negative critics are never more at sea. than in estimating spiritual forces. The triumphant tone of the letter is no proof that the writer was not in prison, but it is a signal proof that his Master had kept his word to him," Lo, I am with you alway, even t.o the end of the world."
Il. To WHOM WRI'l'l'BN. The words of the first verse (as it is in our text), lv 'EcJ>lv'l!, sufficiently show the destination of the Epistle; but the authenticity of these words has been disputed. Basil the Great received the Epistle as addressed to the Ephesians, but quoted and commented on ver. 1 so as to show that lv •EcJ,lv'l! was not in the manuscripts he used, at least not in those of early date. In the Codex Vatican.us and the Codex Sinaiticus the words are written by a later hand. Marcion appears to have called it Paul's Epistle to the Laodiceans, and quoted eh. iv. 5, 6 as from that Epistle. But the liberties taken by Marcion with the canon and canonical books show that but little weight is to be attached to him. Undoubtedly a difference was introdnced in the mannscripts at an early date. It is not easy to decide whether the words were omitted in some manuscripts from the original text, or whether they were inserted in other manuscripts where the text had them not. By some it has been thought that the Epistle was originally addressed to the Laodiceans, and that it is therefore the writing referred to in Col. iv. 16. Bleek favours this view, while he holds that the letter may have been an open one, intended for Laodicea in the first instance, but for other places near Laodicea that were even less known to the apostle personally. In opposition to this view, it is to be remarked that in_no manuscript are the words b, Aa.oKLO£~ to be found in place of lv 'EcJ>lv'l!, and, moreover, the letter referred to in Colossians is not a letter to the Laodiceans, but an Epistle from Laodicea. What that Epistle was is unknown, and can be only matter of conjecture. Another supposition, as we have already said, is, that while this letter was addressed to the Ephesians in the first instance, it was not meant for them alone. It is supposed that there were other Churches in much the same condition as that of Ephesus, and that the Epistle was intended as an encyclical letter, to go the round of them all. Thie might in some degree account for the absence of familiar salutations, and for other features that might have reasonably been looked for in a letter to the Ephesians. On the other hand, and in opposition to this hypothesis, there is nothing to indicate that the letter was meant for a variety of Churches. There is throughout an assumption of the unity of the Church, the letter 'l'HE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.