They exist and are exercised in Him and in Him alone. It follows therefore as a matter of course from this position of Christ in the universe and in the church that the redemption effected by Him must be universal in range and must extend equally and impartially to all. There 'cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian and Scythian, bond and free, but Christ is all and in all.'

Thus in the Epistle to the Colossians1 the doctrine of the catholicity of Christianity is again vindicated controversially, and logically based upon the catholic character of Christ and upon His universal function in creation and redemption; and in the contemporary Epistle to the Ephesians, without note of controversy, the doctrine of the catholic church, the brotherhood of all men in Christ, the doctrine which is, we may truly say, the culmination of all St. Paul's teaching, is allowed to develope itself in all its glory on the assumed basis of that teaching about Christ's person which had made any narrower idea of the church already seem incongruous and impossible. In the earlier dispensation in which the covenant of God was with one people, St. Paul can see only a preparatory process through 1 See i. 13-20; ii. 2, 3, 9-23; iii. 11. Cf. i. 27-28.

which the eternal purpose of God could at last be realized, and out of which His eternal secret could at last be disclosed. That purpose so long kept secret, and now revealed, is to gather together all nations and classes of men into the one Church of God, one organized body, one brotherhood in which all men are to find their salvation, and through which is to be realized an even wider purpose for the whole universe. In this doctrine of the catholic church St. Paul finds the expression of all the length and breadth and height and depth of the divine love. Its length, for it represents an age-long purpose slowly worked out; its breadth, for it is a society of all men and for the whole universe; its depth, for God has reached a hand of mercy down to the lowest gulfs of sin and alienation from God; its height, for in this society men are carried up into nothing less than union with God, to no lower seat than the heavenly places in Christ.

I have spoken of St. Paul's great arguments for the catholicity of the Gospel as two. The first appears mainly as a polemic against the idea of justification by works of the law. The second as a positive argument about the person of Christ and the results which flow from the right appreciation of it. But in fact there is

a necessary connexion between the two. The narrow Judaism of the Galatian reactionaries did in fact logically involve a narrow and therefore a false conception of the person of Christ. As Dr. Hort expresses it1, 'to accept Jesus as the Christ without any adequate enlargement of what was included in the Messiahship could hardly fail to involve either limitation of His nature to the human sphere, or at most a counting Him among the angels.' This logical connexion was in fact verified in history. The Judaizers of the earliest period of Christian history who insisted on circumcision for all Christians pass into the Ebionites of the second century who rejected the Church's doctrine of the person of Christ, as the eternal Son of God. And conversely it would be scarcely possible to accept the doctrine of the universal Christ, both divine and human, as St. Paul developes it, without perceiving that men must be made acceptable to Him and to His Father by something deeper and wider than any particular set of observances or 'works.' The relation therefore between the argument of St. Paul's epistles to the Galatians and the Romans on the one side, and that of his epistles to the Colossians and

1 Hort, Judaistic Christianity (Macmillan, 1894), p. 125.

the Ephesians on the other is one of unity rather than of contrast.

The relation of these two groups of epistles may be expressed also in another way. The argument of the earlier epistles is directed towards the Judaizers. Its purpose is to vindicate the right of the Gentiles to an equal place and position with the Jews in the kingdom of God. But at the time of the later group this right had been secured. On the basis of their acknowledged title the ingress of Gentiles into the churches of Asia had been even alarmingly rapid. Now it is time for St. Paul to address himself to these emancipated Gentiles and to exhort them in their turn not to relapse into unworthy and narrow conceptions of their redeemer, or into conduct unworthy of their new position: they must 'walk worthily of the vocation wherewith they are called.'

Our present political situation in England offers an analogy which may bring home to us the position of the Gentile Christians and the function of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The time is past for us when there is any necessity to contend that a vote should be given to all responsible men. So far at least as the male population is concerned, the title of the citizen

C

to the vote has been substantially acknowledged; but the time is by no means past when the newly enfranchised citizens need to be stimulated to realize what their enfranchisement carries with it of privilege and responsibility. And we may express this by saying that if our English political Epistle to the Galatians has been written and has done its work, our Epistle to the Ephesians is still surely very much needed.

It is very strange, or at least would be strange if we were not acquainted with the historical circumstances that have accounted for it, that St. Paul has been, out of all proportion to the facts of the case, identified in popular estimation with only the earlier of the two great arguments described above, with that which has given the basis to Protestantism, and not that which is, in fact, the charter of the Catholic Church.

We are all familiar with the fact that St. Paul taught the doctrine of justification by faith, and insisted therefore on the necessity and privilege of personal acceptance on the part of each individual of the promises of God in Christ. We all know how, when this aspect of things has been ignored and over-ridden-when an almost Jewish doctrine of the merit of good works1

1 Cf. app. note C, p. 257.