ng
of the catholic brotherhood be freely unfolded. It is time to pass
from the rudiments of the Christian gospel, the vindication of its most
elementary principles and liberties, the 'milk for babes,' to expound
the spiritual wisdom of the full-grown Christian manhood, the 'solid
meat for them of riper years.'

{34}

It is this sense of pause in conflict and free expansion in view of a
vast opportunity, which in great part at least interprets the glow and
glory of St. Paul's epistle.

iv.

The Epistle to the Ephesians might, so far as its contents are
concerned, have been addressed to any of the predominantly Gentile
churches; but to none more fitly than to Ephesus and to the churches of
Asia, where the progress of Gentile Christianity had been so rapid, and
where St. Paul's ministry had been so unusually prolonged. Let us
attempt to answer the questions--what was Ephesus? what was the
history, and what were the circumstances of the Ephesian church?

Ephesus had a double importance as a Greek and as an Asiatic city. A
colony of Ionians from Athens had early settled on some hills which
rose out of a fertile plain near the mouth of the Cayster. This was
the origin of the Greek city of Ephesus. Its position gave it
admirable commercial advantages. It became the greatest mart of
exchange[35] between East {35} and West in Asia Minor, and though its
commerce was threatened by the filling up of its harbour, it had not
decayed in St. Paul's time.

Among Greek cities it also occupied a not inconspicuous place in the
history of art, and at an earlier period of philosophy also. Here was
one of the chief homes of the Homeric tradition; hence in the person of
Callinus the Greek elegy is reputed to have had its origin, and in the
person of Hipponax the satire. It was the home of Heracleitus, one of
the greatest of the early philosophers, and of Apelles and Parrhasius,
the masters of painting[36].

And the greatest artists in sculpture--Phidias and Polycletus, Scopas
and Praxiteles--had adorned with their works the temple of Artemis,
which, in itself one of the wonders of the world, the masterpiece of
Ionic architecture, became also, like some great Christian cathedral, a
very museum of sculpture and painting.

If Greek artists built and decorated the temple of Artemis, they
attempted no doubt to represent the goddess under the form which her
Greek name suggested, the beautiful huntress-goddess; but the Greeks
ne