The life and work of St. Paul

606 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
practical exhortations than in the doctrinal statements. In the Epistle to the
Colossians he is primarily occupied with the refutation of an error ; in that
to the Ephesians he is absorbed in the rapturous development of an exalted
truth. The main theme of the Colossians is the Person of Christ ; that of the
Ephesians is the life of Christ manifested in the 1
living energy of His Church.
In the former, Christ is the " Plenitude," the synthesis and totality of every
attribute of God ; in the latter, the ideal Church, as the body of Christ, is the
Plenitude, the recipient of all the fulness of Him who filleth all things with
all. 2
Christ's person is most prominent in the Colossians ; Christ's body, the
Church of Christ, in the Ephesians.
The genuineness of these two letters has been repeatedly and formidably
assailed, and the grounds of the attack are not by any means- so fantastic as
those on which other letters have been rejected as spurious. To dwell at
length on the external evidence is no part of my scheme, and the grounds on
which the internal evidence seems to me decisive in their favour, even after
the fullest and frankest admission of all counter-difficulties, will best appear
when we have considered the events out of which they spring, and which at
once shaped, and are sufficient to account for, the peculiarities by which they
are marked.
Towards the close of St. Paul's Roman imprisonment, when his approaching
liberation seemed so all but certain that he even requests Philemon to bo
getting a lodging in readiness for him, he received a visit from Epaphras of
Colossae. To him, perhaps, had been granted the distinguished honour of
founding Churches not only in his native town, but also in Laodicea and
Hierapolis, which lie within a distance of sixteen miles from each other in the
valley of the Lycus. That remarkable stream resembles the Anio in clothing
the country through which it flows with calcareous deposits ; and in some parts
of its course, especially near Colossse, it flowed under natural bridges of
gleaming travertine deposited by its own waters, the course of which was frequently
modified by this peculiarity, and by the terrific earthquakes to which
the valley has always been liable. The traveller who followed the course of
the Lycus in a south-eastward direction from the valley of the Maeander into
which it flows, would first observe on a plateau, which rises high above its
northern bank, the vast and splendid city of Hierapolis, famous as the birth-
place of him who in Nicopolis
" Taught Arrian when Vespasian's brutal son
Cleared Rome of what most shamed him M3
and famous also for the miraculous properties of the mephitic spring whose
exhalations could be breathed in safety by the priests of Cybele alone. About
CoLii. 19; Eph. iv. 16.
8 CoL i. 19; ii. 9; Eph. i. 23; ffl. 19; iv. 13. (John i. 14, 16.) German writers
express the difference by saying that Christlichkeit is more prominent in the Colossians,
Kirchlichkeit in the Ephesians.
3 Epictetus was a contemporary of the Apostle. As to the Christian tinge of his Stoic
peculations, see my Seekers after God.