The life and work of St. Paul

THE EPISTLE TO "THE KPHESIAK8.' 645
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(" Awake thee, thou that sleepest,
And from the dead arise thou,
And Christ shall shine upon thee.")
" Take heed, then, how ye walk carefully, not as unwise but as wise, buying up
the opportunity because the days are evil. Do not prove yourselves senseless, but
understanding what is the 2
will of the Lord."
Thus, mingling special exhortation with universal principles, he proceeds to
warn them against drunkenness, and recalling perhaps the thrill of emotion
with which he and they have joined in such stirring words as those he
has just quoted, he bids them seek rather the spiritual exaltations of that holy
enthusiasm which finds vent in the melodies of Christian hymnology, and in
the eucharistic music of the heart, while at the same time all are mutually
submissive to each other in the fear of God. 3
The duty of submissiveness thus casually introduced is then illustrated
and enforced in three great social relations. 4 Wives are to be submissive
to their husbands, as the Church is to Christ ; and husbands to love their
wives, as Christ loved the Church, to sanctify it into stainless purity, and
to cherish it as a part of Himself in inseparable union. Children are to obey
their parents, and parents not to irritate their children. Slaves are to render
sincere and conscientious service, as being the slaves of their unseen Master,
Christ, and therefore bound to fulfil all the duties of the state of life in which
He has placed them ; and masters are to do their duty to their slaves, abandon-
ing threats, remembering that they too have a Master in whose sight they all
are equal. 5
Having thus gone through the main duties of domestic and social life as
contemplated in the light of Christ, he bids them finally " grow strong in the
Lord and in the might of His strength." 6 The exhortation brings up the
image of armour with which the worn and aged prisoner was but too familiar.
Daily the coupling-chain which bound his right wrist to the left of a Roman
legionary clashed as it touched some part of the soldier's arms. The baldric,
the military boot, the oblong shield, the cuirass, the helmet, the sword of the
Praetorian guardsman were among the few things which he daily saw. But
1 Isa. be. 1, 2. The versification is of the Hebrew type. On Christian hymnology,
v. supra, on Col. iii. 16. Antiphonal congregational singing was very early introduced
(Rev. xix. 14).
' Vers. 317. s Vers. 1& 21.
4 All commentators have felt a difficulty in seeing the connexion between singing and
subjection. I believe that it lies in a reminiscence of the unseemly Babel of contentioua
vanities which St. Paul had heard of, perhaps even witnessed, at Corinth, where such
disorder had been caused by the obtrusive vanity with which each person wished to
display his or her particular xapta-^a. If so or even if the association was something
else we have another inimitable maik of genuineness. No forger would dream of
appending a most important section of his moral teaching to a purely accidental thought.
* Ver. 22 vi. 9.
8 vL 10. The aSfXfa! is wanting in , B, D, E, and does not occur in Eph. or OoL