founded, as the Apostle says, on a false humility. They make the angels, according to the heathen idea, mediators whom men must apply to because the Supreme God was incomprehensible and out of reach. Without doubt they thus degraded the dignity of Christ as being a Prophet to whom only one of these cosmic angels, and an angel of a lower order, had revealed himself, whence Paul here insists so emphatically on the majesty of the Only born. The Apostle's warning, 'Beware that none rob you of your reward through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men' proves that the doctrine was drawn from an heathen philosophy as it was with the Essenes."

The consideration of this early form of Gnosticism is important as bearing upon the genuineness of this Epistle. It (or at least parts of it) have been pronounced by German rationalizing critics to be of later date than the times of St. Paul, because the Gnosticism is in their view more developed than it could have been at the time of the writing of this Epistle. But this is said without due consideration of the fact that the Gnosticism alluded to in the Epistle is as undeveloped as it can well be. It is all contained in the sentence "worshipping of angels": "Let no man beguile you of your reward, in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels." This is the only direct reference to that feature common to all Gnosticism, of the interposition of a series of supernatural existences between God and man. There is no reference whatsoever to the Dual idea, by which the origin of evil is attempted to be accounted for: and the rigorous asceticism reprobated, is quite as much Essene as Gnostic.

....

Now it is allowed on all hands that the fountain-head of Gnosticism is in the ancient Persian or Zoroastrian religious speculation, and this undoubtedly contains the invocation of intermediate beings. Mr. Ll. Davies, at the end of his commentary on the Colossians, gives the beginning of the first of the Yaćnas or Liturgical Invocations. Thus: "I invoke Ahura Mazda . . . who created us, who formed us, who keeps us, the noblest among the heavenly," and then the worshipper is directed to call upon six intermediate beings, whose names are Vohumano, Asha-vahista, Kshathra-vairya, Spenta armaiti, Hauwut, and Ameretat, and a seventh, Seroch, appears to have not yet been revealed, and is said to answer to the Messiah, so that Gnosticism would be no Gnosticism at all, unless it recognized these intermediate beings.

Besides this, we find in the two most ancient accounts of Simon Magus (considered by all ancient writers to be the founder of the Gnosticism which affected Christianity), that his doctrine is described as being, in its leading features, Angelology. Thus Irenæus, Book i. ch. 23, "Declaring that this woman, Ennæa, leaping forth from him, and comprehending the will of her father, descended to the lower regions of space, and generated angels and powers by whom also he declares this world was formed." Again, "He conferred salvation upon men by making himself (Simon Magus) known to them. For since the angels ruled the world ill, because each one of them coveted the principal power for himself, he had come to amend matters, and had descended, transfigured and assimilated to powers, and principalities, and angels, so that he might appear among men to be a man, while he was yet not a man, and that thus he was thought to have suffered in Judæa when he had not suffered," &c.

Again, we gather from Hippolytus, that Simon's creed, if such it can be called, was largely tinctured with angelology, even ascribing the creation of the world to angels. "For the angels who created the world," he said, "made whatever enactments they pleased, thinking by such words to enslave those who listened to them," &c. Hippolytus, "Refutation of all Heresies," book vi. ch. xiv.

These angels, or successions of angelic intermediate beings developed into the sons of the gnostical systems of the conclusion of the first century and the beginning of the next, but St. Paul's allusion to them is the simplest possible, and it seems to me equally applicable to a rudimentary, or to a more fully developed Gnosticism. He avoided saying a syllable about them, except that the recognition of them was incompatible with loyalty to the eternal Son.

TIME AND PLACE OF WRITING.

The Epistle to the Colossians was written about the same time as those to the Ephesians and Philemon during the last part of St. Paul's first imprisonment at Rome, and was sent from Rome to Asia Minor by Tychicus, with whom was associated Onesimus (Coloss. iv. 7, 8, 9; Ephes. vi. 21, 22).

The verbal coincidences between it and the Epistle to the Ephe.

sians are such, that that they must have been written when the great truths, and the expression of those truths, which are common to both, were fresh in the Apostle's mind, and yet each has its separate dominant truth-that in the Epistle to the Ephesians being the unity of the Church as one Body under Christ as its Head, and that to the Colossians being the unity of Christian truth in the same Christ, the Eternal Son of God Incarnate.

So that in the Ephesian letter the Apostle dwells upon the election of Jew and Gentile in Christ, and both being raised up in Christ, and made to sit together at God's right hand in Christ, and being built up as one holy temple in Christ, and being united and increasing under one Apostolic ministry in Christ, whilst in the Colossian Epistle the Godhead and Divine Sonship of the Lord and His creation of all things visible and invisible, is the root of all Christian truth, from which men fall if they are captivated by either Judaistic or Gnostic teaching, or by both combined.

In considering the distinctive teaching of the Epistle to the Colossians, we must remember that though written by the Apostle with the view of combating certain errors of the times, it was designed by the inspiring Spirit to be for the instruction of the Church in all ages and generations, and the dogmatic truths asserted in it are just as much lost sight of in England in the nineteenth century, as in Colosse in the first. We have in our popular theology nothing like the position which is ascribed in the first chapter to the Eternal Son, as the Creator of all things visible and invisible, and the Head of His mystical Body, or in the second chapter to the fulness of the Godhead dwelling bodily in Him. I do not deny for a moment that these truths are confessed by us in our creeds, but in this Epistle the loftiest truths are made the foundation for the performance of the lowliest every-day duties. One instance will abundantly suffice. The most mysterious truth that we are risen with Christ-that we are dead in Him, and that our life is hid with Christ in God, is assigned as the reason that we should mortify such sins as fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, and evil concupiscence-that we should put off anger, wrath, malice, and blasphemy, and that as the elec of God we should put on bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, and forbearance. So that dogma and duty are in this Epistle inseparably connected. There cannot be deeper truths than that Christ is the image of the in

visible God-that He is the author of Creation visible and invisible, that in Him dwelleth the fulness of Godhead bodily, and yet these deepest of truths are to be the root of a daily life of purity. truthfulness, mutual forgiveness, and charity.

A COMMENTARY.

THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS.

CHAP. I.

AUL, Timotheus our brother, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, PAUL

a Eph. i. 1. 2 To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ 1 Cor. iv. 17. Eph. vi. 21.

b

1. "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timotheus our brother." "An apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God." If there was a strong Jewish element in the city, and probably in the Church, it was well for St. Paul to assert that his apostleship was as much as that of the first-called apostles" by the will of God."

"By the will of God." Christ says of the twelve, "thine they were and thou gavest them me," and the calling of St. Paul indubitably set forth that he was a vessel of election," separated from his mother's womb and called by God's grace.'

"And Timotheus our brother." In seven epistles, those to the Corinthians, the Philippians, this and the Epistle to Philemon, and in those to the Thessalonians, St. Paul joins Timothy with himself as joint senders of the letters, and yet each letter is wholly St. Paul's, written in the first person singular, and evidently every word of it the production of one mind and will. This could only be for one purpose, viz., that others should be associated with the Apostle in his peculiar apostolical authority, so that when God should remove him from the scene, the apostolic ministry should not cease to be continued in the Church.

2. "To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at