Ephesian Studies

He present Volume completes a series of
expository “Studies” upon the Epistles

of St Paul known as the Epistles of the First Roman Imprisonment. As in dealiyg with the Epistles to Philippi, Colossez, and Philemon, so with this to Ephesus, or more properly (as we shall see) to Asia, the author has sought, as his one aim, to exhibit something of the treasures of ‘edification, exhortation, and comfort,” lodged for us by the Inspiring Master in the wonderful work of the inspired Servant. To this everything else has been subsidiary, alike the brief historical and critical introduction and the occasional grammatical discussions.

The highest ambition of the interpreter has viil PREFACE

been to bring the reader into closer contact with the ‘Celestial Letter” itself, and with the mind and message of God in it.

May His mercy be pleased to make some

use of the work for His ends in His Church.

CaMBRIDGE,

“Farewell Pembroke Hall, of late myne owne Colledge, my cure and my charge. In thy Orchard (the wals, buts, and trees, if they could speake, would beare me witnes) I learned without booke almost all Paules epistles, yea, and I weene all the Canonicall epistles, saue only the Apocalyps. Of which study, although in time a great part did depart from me, yet the sweete smell thereof I trust I shall cary with me into heauen: for the profite thereof I thinke I haue felt in all my

lyfe tyme euer after, ’
Nicuoras Ripiry, Bishop and Martyr, 1555.

(Cae See 32g A Shy Sa
INTRODUCTORY

N a spring day of mingled shower and
sunshine, March 5th, 1897, I stepped for

the first time on the shore of Asia. Landing at Smyrna, we travelled by rail, a large company, from the port through a fine and fertile country, to a roadside station bearing the name Aya Salouk. At this place we left the train, and for some hours traversed the neighbouring hills and fields, making our way from fragment to fragment of a vast scene of ruins. Here was a Byzantine church, there a track, scarcely to be called a road, bordered with Greek sarcophagi. On the western side of a commanding hill in the midst of the region was the grass-grown hollow of a Greek theatre, the steps of the seats still traceable under the vegetation, the structures of the stage a confused mass of ruin. Sitting there a little while alone, I looked over the landscape at my feet as it stretched towards the Gulf of Smyrna

3 School of Theology PA a at Claremont and the westering sun. A small river shone with its broken silver reaches along the middle of the scene, and noble hills bounded the broad vista, right and left; those on the right, northward, lying at a considerable distance. Not very far off upon the plain in that direction was visible, as I moved a little from the nook where I sat, a wide hollow in the general level, a sort of small sunken field, overgrown with thorn-bushes, and heaped with the confused wreckage of walls, columns, and steps. A few birds were singing near me; “the breezy whispers of the hill” were heard in tune with them; now and then a fellow-traveller’s voice at a little distance was audible; otherwise the scene was one of beautiful but pathetic silence and repose, the quiet of a vast cemetery of the ancient days.

It was all that remains of Ephesus. Aya Salouk is Hagzos Theologos, the Holy Divine, St John. The place where I sat was once the Theatre where for two long hours that dense throng stood shouting, ‘‘ Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.” And yonder hollow field, with its thorns and its stones, what is it? It is the site, determined at last, of the great Temple of Artemis herself, ‘the Ephesian Miracle,” the world’s wonder, where stood the adored image, grotesque and barbaric, of the prolific Nature-Power, and along with it the Dzofetes, “the Thing fallen from Zeus,” from Jupiter; whatever it was, meteoric stone or not. There “all Asia and the world” were wont to worship.

Many and heart-moving were the memories which arose during that walk, during that quiet session in the cavea of the Theatre. But the one commanding and inspiring memory was St Paul. Here was his well-known Ephesus. Here for the space of three complete years — a unique length of stationary work for him — he had lived and laboured, not as the apostolic missionary only but as the apostolic pastor. Here he had taken that critical and momentous step, the “separation” of the disciples from the Synagogue to a distinct place of teaching and no doubt of worship, “the school of one Tyrannus,” the lecture-hall, we may suppose, of a friendly professor in what we may call the Ephesian University. Here he had laboured, watched, and wept, for both the community and individuals. Here he had met and influenced visitors from every part of the Asian Province, till his power for Christ was felt in every district, yes, even in the remote valley of the river Lycus, from which Laodicean, Hieropolitan, and Colossian citizens, finding their way to the capital, had been found by Paul’s Lord and won to Him. Here he had built up the Church till its presbyters were a large group, men of the Holy Spirit, and devotedly attached to himself as father and leader (Acts xx.). Yonder, where the sea shines under the declining sun, he had, on a memorable occasion, summoned them to meet him at Miletus, and they had obeyed, travelling probably down the great ship-canal which then connected the spacious inland haven of the city with the distant coast. And in later years it was to this Ephesus that the Missionary addressed, from Rome, the wonderful Letter which we are about to study.

There I sat in 1897, with the Epistle to the Ephesians in my hand. That Epistle was written not improbably in 63, eighteen hundred and thirty-four years before. Yet it was new that day; a “fallen leaf that kept its green,” its immortal green; aye, and not fallen either; for its true Author is not dead, though His servant who wrote the Letter for Him sleepeth. He, and therefore His Word, “liveth and abideth for ever.”

Solemn and inspiring is the contrast, in a case like that of Ephesus, between the total decay of the place and the everlasting youth and newness “STUDIES” 7

of the Scripture. It has an indescribable pathos, and a heart-searching warning, from one point of view; but it is full from another of “everlasting comfort, and good hope through grace.”

So we approach the Epistle to the Ephesians, for a series of spiritual ‘‘ Studies.” The word ‘“‘ Studies” I half deprecate while I use it; it may so easily seem to mean something quite other than what is offered here. It may suggest original research, critical discussion, minute enquiry. As a fact I pretend only to provide the reader with a careful paraphrase or running rendering of the Epistle, accompanied with a simple development of its main spiritual and practical lessons. But after all I will not apologize for the word “Studies” in such a connexion. The purely spiritual use of the Holy Scriptures, if it is what it should be, calls as truly as any critical handling does for care, for reverent attention, for the watchful while devout use of reason; we may use the word “Study” for an attempt to read the Bible thus.

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