Spirit;' for God the Father is nt once the God of peace and the God of love, and Jesus is our very Peace, in whom is fulness of grace and love. II. BLESSING TO ALL TRUE LOVERS OF CHRIST. The Epistle ends, as it begins, with grace and pence. The apostle implores God's favour upon all who love Christ in sincerity. 1. Ghrist is worthy of our love. He ought to be the supreme Object of our love, because of the loveliness of his character, because of his boundless love to hi~ people, because of his work as our Mediator. 2. The love of Ghrist is a test of our religion. He who loves him has found grace in God's sight, and will stand hi"h in the Divine favour. If we love him not, we are anathema; for we love not God° we love not man, we love not ourselves. If we love him, we have a grace of the Spirit, and we shall value bis gospel, his Word, bis cause, his people, and we shall delight in his presence. 3. The love must be sincere, free from those elements of decay or change that wonld work its destruction. It must be without hypocrisy, not in word only, but in deed and in truth. 4. The apostle wishes grace to all such lovers of Christ, so that they might have fresh discoveries of his love, e. fuller enjoyment of-his person, and a larger supply of all spiritual gifts. Amen.-'l'. C. Vera. 1-4.-0hristian nurture. Having shown how Christ sanctifies the marriage union and gives to husbands the ideal of devotion, the apostle proceeds in the present section to show the relation which should exist between children and parents. He directs children to the fifth commandment and to the promise it contains, and be calls upon fathers to afford their children Christian nurture in place of provocation. The section suggests- I. PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. And here we fall back upon the previous section. It is \when husbands and wives are related as Christ is to the Church, when self- saciificing love is met by reverential obedience, that the parents are qualified to train up the children. It is surely significant also that upon the father the burden of the nurture is laid. For he is in danger of provoking the children by severity, and so is not naturally so sympathetic as the mother. Besides, if the Christian father keep Christ before him as his great Ideal, then the Divine fatherhood regulates his conscience and he nurtures the little ones accordingly.1 II. 'l'nE NURTURE ITSELF. The children are not to be provoked,'but" nurtured in the chastening and admonition of the Lord" (Revised Version). The former of tbeso words (1ra16.Ca) might mean, as Harless suggests, "education in general" (allgemeine Begriff); but it is better to restrict it to the discipline, made up of order and of act, under which the children grow, while the latter word (vovB,ula) will indicate educa- tion by word. "The same spirit," says Monod, in loco, "which in our day relaxes filial obedience, softens paternal power ; the abuse of independence among inferiors and the forgetfulness of authority among superiors, march hand-in-hand. Parents who have known how to guard themselves against an excessive rigour, whether ns a matter of principle or of temperament, fall usually into the contrary excess; chastisement is banished from their household, and as for corporal punishment in particular, it is held most frequently for a mark of a hard heart or of a base-born spirit. Lot us oppose to these prejudices Prov. xiii. 24; xxii. 15; xxiii. 13, 14; xxix. 17. Dy the rod we do not mean corporal punishment alone; we simply say that one ought not to exclude it (cf. Prov. xxiii. 14), and that there are some cases whore nothing else will do. As for tho rest, behold the principle which should direct Christian pnrents in such a case-to employ discipline of the sweetest possible character, but discipline 5ufficient to repress the siu." Let this careful discipline be supplemented by a careful instruction and tho children shall be faithfully "nurtured" for tho Lord. III. THE EVOKED OBEDIENCE. (Vers. 1-3.) Children are to oboy their parents; they are to ltonO'Ur their father and mother. There is to be reverence in tho obedience. This will be secured if the parents are qualified by being God-like. It should, however, be rendered even when the parents are far from perfect. The loyalty of the childreu must not be determined by the character of the parents; as the natural governors, the parents are entitled to obedience even though they do not morally dcscrvo it. Tho 1 Cf. Bushnell's strikiug volume 'Christio.n Nurture,' especially the clmptcr on' Parental
Qnalifiontions.' 272 THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. [OB. VL 1-24.
obedience has no exception. Nor does any majority make the obligation to oease.1 Our obedience as God'e "dear children" should be the model of our filial obedience. Let us be loyal to our parent.s, just as we feel bound to be loyal to our Father in hr:n·en I lV. TIil!: A'l"l'ENDAl-"T BLESSING. (Ver. 3.) All God's oonimandmente carry blessings in their bo...«oms. In the keeping of them there is great reward (Ps. x:ix. 11). But the tifrh commandment has this temporal blessing associated with it of longevity. Obedient children, by a Dh·ine law, live longer than disobedient ones. Dr. Crosby goes so _far as to a..«sert ~at this law of longevity has only "one apparent eueption-where the soul it..-self prefers t.o leave this world for a better, and where, therefore, the letter of the promise yields to it.s spirit, and God, instead of continuing the saint upon earth takes him to his desired home in heaven. Where this exception does not ocour, w; must believe that every one who dies before old age has disregarded this command."2 Now, Christianity, in promoting nurture and evoking obedience, is so far securing the longevity of it.s children. We can see that the unity of Christian families must, ceteris paribus foster health and longevity. In this way Bushnell's assurance may come true of" th; out-populating power of the Christian stock."-R. M. E.