United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Paul spoke of man's night, such as it might be seen, alas! in the cities of the Roman empire. All those to whom he wrote Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, and the rest dwelt in great cities, heathen and profligate; and night in them was mixed up with all that was ugly, dangerous, and foul. They were bad enough by day: after sunset, they became hells on earth.
Gell preached before King Charles the first on Ephesians 4. 10. at New-Market, in the year 1631, a bold discourse, yet becoming him, testifying before the King that doctrine he taught to his life's end, "the possibility, through grace, of keeping the law of God in this life." Whoever reads these venerable Remains, will find this doctrine inculcated in them. Monro, who lived some time after Dr.
Perhaps, too, we may connect with this another idea which occurs more than once in Paul's Epistles. In that to the Ephesians, for instance, he says that the Christian ministry is to continue, till a certain point of progress has been reached, which he describes as our all coming to 'a perfect man. The whole of us together make a perfect man the whole make one image.
Paul's Epistles, especially this very text; and again, the opening of the Epistle to the Ephesians; and again, that most royal passage in the opening of the Colossians, where he speaks of the Everlasting Being of Christ, who is before all things, and by whom all things consist in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth. 28. And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. 29.
Even the religious practises of the Ephesians were unspeakably vile. This city was a moral bog, a sink of pollution, filled with all corruption, and reeking with vileness. It was a second Sodom. Vice stalked abroad everywhere and was honored and worshiped. We might therefore well say, “Can any good thing come out of Ephesus?
Christ Himself is, and He supplies to all, the separate graces which Christian men can wear. We may say that He is 'the panoply of God, as Paul calls it in Ephesians, and when we wear Him, and only in the measure in which we do wear Him, in that measure are we clothed with it. And so the last thing that I would point out here is that the obedience to these commands requires continual effort.
Thus Ignatius, writing to the Ephesians, adopts the three tests of faith and love and righteousness: "No man professing the faith sinneth; nor does he who professeth love, hate; the tree is known by its fruits; so, likewise, those who profess to be Christ's shall be seen from their deeds."
And for the rest, puzzled though I be, shall I not trust him, who not only made this world, but so loved it, that he stooped to die for it upon the Cross? EPHESIANS vi. 11. Put on the whole armour of God. St. Paul again and again compares himself and the Christians to whom he writes to soldiers, and their lives to warfare. And it was natural that he should do so.
When the first arrangement is used, the utterance of the word "great" arouses those vague associations of an impressive nature with which it has been habitually connected; the imagination is prepared to clothe with high attributes whatever follows; and when the words, "Diana of the Ephesians," are heard, all the appropriate imagery which can, on the instant, be summoned, is used in the formation of the picture: the mind being thus led directly, and without error, to the intended impression.
Word Of The Day