apostle's argument. He was enforcing the duty of keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace in the 3d verse; and that thought of the unity of the Spirit led him to enlarge in the eloquent, effective, and conclusive terms which have occupied the sentences that follow the exhortation; and now in this verse he returns to the hortatory again, "This I say then." Arising out of that duty of unity there is this to be done,-this solemn and important endeavour to be made,-so solemn and so important, that the apostle introduces it in the most forcible way. "I say." I announce it; I intimate it. But more. "I testify," or solemnly declare. Furthermore, this adjuration is "in the Lord." This expression, as used here, is not an appeal to Christ, not an oath of adjuration, but a statement of the element in which the testimony is uttered. It is as if he had said-I, in Christ, believing in Christ, united to Christ, appeal and testify to you, who are also in Christ, believing in Christ, united to Christ. It is an affectionate appeal, advice, exhortation, from the apostle to the Ephesians, as occupying the same platform, to walk worthy of their vocation.

Thus, to walk worthy of their vocation, they must walk— that is, live and act-differently from the other unconverted Gentiles around them, or as they indeed themselves formerly walked. They had been changed, converted, made different, and they must so live as to show that this change was real and true; not in name only and in words, but in very act and deed.

For that former walk was in the vanity of their minds. This was the sphere of their moral walk-vanity. Perhaps not simply, or rather certainly, not idolatry only, but what Alford calls the waste of the whole rational powers on worthless objects, and Ellicott, the general depravation of the mind (the higher moral and intellectual element) which was the universal characteristic of heathenism. It is true that the outward manifestation of this total degradation of soul was idolatry-a result which was natural, for the fallen nature, disliking a pure and holy God, formed gods after its own liking. Man desiderates a Deity. It is an innate feeling of his nature that himself is not the highest animation. Whether he will or not, his thoughts rise beyond time and space, and ring in his ears, in language to which he cannot be deaf, the fact that a superior power exists, and that to that superior power he owes obedience. Though this recognition of a God is all but universal, it does not follow that all seek or worship the same God. There is another and an antagonistic principle in fallen humanity, which would assimilate the Deity to itself. "Thou thoughtest that I

was altogether such an one as thyself," is a key to much of the god-worship of men. And so a wicked world, running riot after the unholy imaginations of its own corrupted nature, has invested with the honours of Deity creations of its own in unnumbered thousands. The character of the various heathen nations is traceable in their gods. Reversing the Psalmist's language when he says, "Their makers are like unto them," we may lay it down as a true generalisation in respect to the deities of mere humanity, "They are like their makers."

There

Yet it is the perversity of human nature that has led it thus astray. Ever since that fatal morning when the hell-born suggestions of the serpent Satan seemed to the primal mother the wise counsels of superior knowledge, mere human investigation into divine things has been carried on with a bias towards error. We cannot believe that a holy God left men in so benighted a position as to shut them out from all conception of Himself, and yet recorded against them the fearful sentence, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Such a supposition is met in the face by the holiness and justice of God. Nor is revelation silent regarding so important a point. "That which may be known of God is manifested in or to them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse." was enough in nature to be a highway to nature's Creator. But there was a dark cloud between. There was a depraved and corrupted mind; and its emanations, instead of shooting up amid the worlds hung in space till they reached Him who hung them there by His Almighty fiat, kept grovelling amidst a deo-human instrumentality, only in a very slight degree, if at all, more exalted than itself. Once prostrated before a debased hero-theocracy, which they half-feared and half-despised, men continued satisfied. And as the claims of their self-invented gods were more easily met than those of a holier deity would have been, they avoided seeking a higher object of reverence, worship, and obedience. "When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were darkened; professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves; who changed the truth of God into a lie, and wor

shipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is God blessed for ever." The theology of the world leading them thus away from the true God, the consequences which resulted are little to be wondered at. Every step took them further from truth. Every new promulgation of divine law according to their code became only an allowance for or an incentive to vice, till at last the world arrived at the pitch of iniquity so graphically described by the apostle in the first chapter of Romans.

Such was the "vanity of mind," the depravity, the degradation, against which the apostle warns the Ephesians, and which he further describes in the two verses following:

Vers. 18, 19. Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: who, being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

To what a lamentable condition does the indulgence in sin bring men! Its first effect is to cloud over the intellect or understanding, so that the mind ceases to be able to apprehend the things of God. This effect began to take place at the fall, and attaches in consequence of the fall to every individual of the human race. Some are called, however, out of this darkness into the light of Christ; but those who refuse that call, as multitudes have done in all ages, and as multitudes still do, sink deeper and deeper into darkness, become more and more incapable of taking in and understanding anything that appertains to the divine life. This inability to know God ends in alienation from the life of God; that is, total separation from, and hatred of, that kind or course of life which is God's giftthe whole of that spiritual life in the soul which owes its origin to its being the communicated life of God. The darkening of the understanding results in ignorance-deep-seated, all-pervading, ignorance; and through or on account of that ignorance the soul becomes alienated from God. The procuring cause of all this is then broadly stated. It all arises because of the blindness or hardness of their heart. Because of their obstinate, wilful, persistent, refusal to hear and obey the will of God. This is the mental and moral process, and the end is that they become "past feeling," apathetic and regardless of all good, and in practice give themselves up unresistingly, if not indeed willingly, to all and every kind of worldliness and selfindulgence. Sometimes the religion of Jesus has been blamed as permitting men to live in sin that grace may abound. In truth, however, the case is the reverse. The religion of Jesus

VOL. XXIV.

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is purity and holiness, and cannot exist in combination with indulgence in known sin. Without the controlling and restraining power of the grace of Christ, either internally in the heart, acting as a principle of life, or externally in its outward influence, acting as a prudential motive of restraint, the condition of senseless, shameless, hopeless conscience-searedness soon arises, and the man in this state gives himself over, willingly yields himself, to the indulgence of vice and sin. And God gives him over too. For even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. What a picture of sin in two of the stages of its course! "By a perverted exercise of his free-will man plunges himself into sin; the deeper demersion in it is the judicial act of God." Then the expression, "to work all uncleanness with greediness," seems to point to that condition of sinfulness, when the man gives himself to sin with a deliberate purpose of making a business of it-when sinning from the pure and simple love of sinning is the studied condition of the man's life. What a fearful condition of wretchedness is thus reached! It is well to contemplate this, that we may be made to recoil from it; thankful, oh! how profoundly and eternally thankful, if it can be said of us, in the words of the next verse:

Ver. 20. But ye have not so learned Christ.

The description which the apostle has just concluded did not apply to these Ephesian brethren. The "but you" is emphatic, bringing out a distinct and marked contrast between them and the heathen around them. Jesus Christ in His person and His office was to them a reality, and brought them into a clear knowledge of their position towards God, and therefore produced results the very opposite of those produced by the darkening of the understanding in those who refused to retain God in their knowledge.

Ver. 21. If so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by Him as the truth is in Jesus.

If so be, if it be indeed true, that ye have in reality heard Him, not simply listened to talk about Him, but heard His own potential voice in your souls; and thus hearing, have been taught by Him, been the subject of His own divine teaching. The Greek is "taught in Him," not by Him, and indicates the process of teaching or growth in divine knowledge in vital union with Jesus. And what is the object of this teaching? It is truth-truth in Jesus. Truth is truth in its essence and perfection in Jesus," and is in grand contrast to the "vanity of their mind in which the Gentiles walked.

So taught, there will be a twofold change wrought in them

a putting off, and a putting on, as the result of the renewing of the spirit of their mind.

Ver. 22. That ye put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. This is the putting off. If they are taught in truth in Christ, they will put off and throw away, as they would an old and filthy garment, whatever in their former way of life or conversation appertained or belonged to the old man, the old unconverted nature-whatever pertained to them as unregenerate or unconverted persons. For this "old man," and all its belongings, "is corrupt, waxen corrupt, and involves destruction;" destruction being the end and outcome of all deceitful lusts. The Greek is, "The old man which is being corrupted according to the lusts of deceit," and the idea is that the unregenerate are in the process of corruption, or putrefying, involving destruction as the natural result of indulgence in lusts that deceive the soul. They look pleasant, but their looks are deceptive, and the reality is that they are poison to the soul. "Corruption and destruction are inseparably associated; man's old-nature lusts are his own executioners, fitting him more and more for eternal corruption."

Ver. 23. And be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

This putting off is a renewal, vital change, re-making, or recreation. It is a return to a former condition, and it is accomplished "by the spirit of your mind,"-the Holy Spirit united with your spirit and influencing your mind. Then this inner work of the Holy Spirit in the soul is manifested by an outward reformation.

Ver. 24. And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

The "putting off" is the negative side of the matter ceasing to do evil. The positive side is the "putting on;" the learning to do well. For the new nature is not simply and merely abstaining from sin; it is also a performing of that which is right and required by God. It is so different from the old condition of things that it is called "the new man." Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new. It is not so much the old nature renovated, as a new nature altogether the holy form of human life which results from redemption." This new nature is provided; for it is here said to be created, or, more accurately, "which hath been created." "The new man is, as it were, a holy garb or personality, not created in the case of each individual believer, but created once for all, and then individually assumed." Thus, as man lost the image of God in the first Adam, that image is restored to him