The life and work of St. Paul

632 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAtTL.
its clearness. Chrysostoin no bad judge surely of style and rhetoric spoke
of the lofty sublimity of its sentiments. Theophylaet dwells on the same
characteristics as suitable to the Ephesians. Grotius says St. Paul here
equals the sublimity of his thoughts with words more sublime than any human
tongue has ever uttered. Luther reckoned it among the noblest books of the
New Testament. Witsius calls it a divine Epistle glowing with the flame of
Christian love, and the splendour of holy light, and flowing with fountains of
living water. Coleridge said of "
it, In this, the divinest composition of man,
is every doctrine of Christianity: first, those doctrines peculiar to Christianity
; and secondly, those precepts common to it with natural religion,"
Lastly, Alford calls it " the greatest and most heavenly work of one whose
very imagination is peopled with things in the heavens, and even his
fancy rapt into the visions of God." Pfleiderer, though he rejects the
genuineness of the Epistle, yet says that " of all the forms which Paulinism
went through in the course of its transition to Catholicism, that of the
Epistle to the Ephesians is the most developed and the richest in dogma."
The close resemblance in expression, and in many of the thoughts, to
the Epistle to the Colossians, when combined with the radical differences l
which separate the two Epistles, appears to me an absolutely irresistible
proof in favour of the authenticity of both, even if the external evidence
were weaker than it is. Roughly speaking, we may say that the style
of Colossians shows a " "
rich brevity that of ;
Ephesians a diffuser fulness.
Colossians is definite and logical; Ephesians is lyrical and Asiatic. In
Golossians, St. Paul has the error more prominently in view ; in Ephesians
ho has the counteracting truth. In Colossians he is the soldier; in Ephesians
the builder. In Colossians he is arguing against a vain and deceitful
philosophy; in Ephesians he is revealing a heavenly wisdom. Colossians
is " his caution, his argument, his process, and
"
his work-day toil ; Ephesians
is instruction passing into prayei*, a creed soaring into the loftiest of
Evangelic Psalms. Alike the differences and the resemblances are stamped
with an individuality of style which is completely beyond the reach of
imitation. 2 A forger might indeed have sat down with the deliberate purpose
of borrowing words and phrases and thoughts from the Epistle to
the Colossians, but in that case it would have been wholly beyond his
power to produce a letter which, in the midst of such resemblances, con-
1 There is the general resemblance that in both (Col. iii. ; Eph. iv. 1) the same transition
leads to the same application the humblest morality being based on the sublimest
truths ; and there are the special resemblances (