mainly on the person of Christ as the "fulness of the Godhead bodily," here he is impelled rather to the contemplation of the Church as "the body of Christ, the fulness of him that filleth all in all," and expatiates upon the glory and riches of the spiritual blessing with which its members are blessed in heavenly places in Christ. 1

The first half of the epistle is thus for the most part a hymn of praise for the grace of God, manifested according to His good pleasure which He had purposed in himself,-accompanied with the apostle's prayer for his readers that they may realise the glory of their calling. Ilence it was Calvin's favourite epistle, as Galatians was of Luther.

In the second part the apostle descends by a swift and beautiful transition to the duties of common life, “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called " (iv. 1); and the remainder of the epistle consists of practical exhortations based on the ideal unity of the Church as the harmonious body of Christ, and embracing the various forms of social and domestic duty to which "the new man " is called in the ordinary relations of life. Finally there is a stirring call to put on the whole armour of God for the conflict with the powers of evil,-expressed in the language of a metaphor which may have been suggested to Paul by his military surroundings at Rome, and forming a passage of great force and beauty, which of itself would make this epistle a precious heritage of the Church.

The catholic nature of this epistle shows that the apostle's education was now complete. The Saviour, whom he only knew at his conversion as the Risen One dwelling in another world, has become to him as an all-pervading Presence which may be realised even now in the sphere of human life, as the type of all affection and the centre of all authority, in the State and in the

1 The word "spirit" or "spiritual " occurs 13 times in this epistle, "the heavenlies" 5 times, "the grace of God" 13 times.

family as well as in the Church.

During his residence at Rome, the seat of empire and the centre of the world's secular life, Paul learned, as he had never yet done, the meaning of the Saviour's prayer, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

CHAPTER XVII

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES

I and 2 Timothy and Titus are known as the Pastoral Epistles, because they relate chiefly to the qualifications and duties of office-bearers entrusted with the pastoral care of the Church.

They are distinguished from all the other epistles of Paul by their want of historical agreement with any period in the life of the apostle as recorded in the Book of Acts, and also by their strongly-marked individuality alike in style and substance. Hence their genuineness has been more called in question than any of the other epistles of Paul-notwithstanding a large amount of external testimony in their favour.

The objections taken to them, however, on these grounds are almost entirely obviated if we suppose them to have been written subsequently to the events narrated in the Book of Acts. This is a supposition that in itself involves no improbability. It was, as we have seen, Paul's own expectation (Phil. ii. 24; Philemon, ver. 22) that he would be released from the imprisonment in which the Book of Acts leaves him; and for this expectation he seems to have had sufficient grounds in the inadequacy of the evidence brought against him, as well as in the tolerant attitude of the Roman Government previous to the great fire in Rome (64 A.D.), which was falsely attributed to the Christians and brought terrible persecutions in its train. Moreover, there is an early and general

tradition to the effect that he was released. Assuming that his liberation did take place, the difficulty of harmonising the epistles with his life disappears; while the late date of their composition-possibly some years after his release would go far to account for the peculiarity of their contents. It is no wonder that questions of discipline and government as well as of orthodoxy should now receive from the apostle a larger measure of attention than they had ever yet done, considering the growing needs of the Church and the responsible position of those to whom the epistles are addressed. The Church had

now been for many years a visible institution with officebearers of its own; and important doctrines had been vindicated and established. To conserve these doctrines and to provide for the regular superintendence of the Church after he and the other apostles had passed away, was Paul's great object in writing these epistles.1

The idea that the epistles may have been the products of a later age is in many respects untenable. Alike as regards the office-bearers mentioned, namely, bishops and deacons, and the doctrinal needs and dangers of the Church, they remind us far more of the state of things existing during Paul's first imprisonment, when he wrote Philippians and Colossians, than of anything in the second century. By the latter time the name of "bishop " had been appropriated to a chief dignitary ruling over the "presbyters" or elders, instead of being applied as here to the presbyters themselves as the overseers of the congregation (Titus i. 5, 7, cf. Acts xx. 17-28); while the vague notions engrafted on the Jewish Law, towards the close of the apostolic age, as a more enlightened kind of piety ("knowledge falsely so called "), had then developed into an elaborate system called Gnosticism, which set itself in direct opposition to the orthodox faith, and, unlike the heresy in these epistles, repudiated all affinity with the Jewish Law.

1 The large infusion of new words (i.e. words not elsewhere used by the apostle) is in accordance with the gradual expansion of his Vocabulary, which is evident on a comparison of Paul's successive writings.

66 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO TIMOTHY "

Who wrote it. We can trace allusion to this epistle as far back as the close of the first century. A hundred years later we find it universally accepted as Paul's, although it had been rejected in the course of the second century by one or two heretical writers,1 owing to the difficulty of reconciling its teaching with their favourite tenets.

In a general sense its peculiarities in language and contents have already been accounted for. In some respects, however, its peculiarities are positively in favour of the Pauline authorship. How unlikely that a forger would insert the word " mercy ‚» 2 (i. 2) in the usual Pauline greeting "grace and peace," or that he should have failed to make a lavish use of the connecting particles "wherefore," "then," etc., which are so common in Paul's writings.

Objection has been taken to the expression "let no man despise thy youth" (iv. 12), as if the apostle could not have applied that language to Timothy when he was already a man of about thirty-five years of age. But youth is relative; and in Paul's eyes Timothy, being so much his junior, and having been known to him as a lad, would naturally seem young,—especially in view of his great responsibilities in being set over so many elders.'

1 Marcion and Basilides.

2 This remark applies also to 2 Tim. (i. 2.) and Titus (i. 4).

3 Equally groundless is the objection that Paul had predicted to the Ephesian elders that "he should see their face no more" (Acts xx. 25), whereas this epistle implies that he had recently paid them another visit. For the words quoted contain the expression of a presentiment or at most of a conviction, not of an inspired prophecy, on the part of the apostle; and, besides, the language of the epistle, "as I exhorted thee to tarry at Ephesus when I was going into Macedonia," does not necessarily imply that the writer himself had been at Ephesus. It is quite possible he may have exhorted Timothy by a message from a distance, or have met him at Miletus as he had met the Ephesian elders several years before.

Again it has been argued that the instructions contained in this epistle might have been more easily given by the apostle in person during his recent visit to Ephesus, or on the subsequent visit to