24.  EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.—­Ephesus, the metropolis of Proconsular Asia, which comprehended the western provinces of Asia Minor, lay on the coast of the AEgean sea between Smyrna on the north and Miletus on the south.  In the apostolic age it was a flourishing city, and renowned for the temple of the heathen goddess Diana.  Two visits of the apostle to Ephesus are recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, the latter of which was prolonged through most of three years.  Acts 18:19-21; chaps. 19; 20:31.  The occasion of writing this epistle seems to have been of a very general nature.  The apostle was sending a letter by Tychicus to the Colossians, and embraced the opportunity to write to the Ephesians also.  In entire accordance with this supposition is the general character of the epistle.  The apostle has no particular error to combat, as he had in the case of the Colossians.  He proceeds, therefore, in a placid and contemplative frame of mind to unfold the great work of Christ’s redemption; and then makes a practical application of it, as in the epistle to the Colossians, but with more fulness, and with some important additions.

It has seemed surprising to many that the apostle should have written in so general a strain to a church on which he had bestowed so much labor, and where he had so many personal friends; particularly that he should have omitted at the close all salutations.  To account for this various hypotheses have been proposed.  The words “in Ephesus” are omitted in the Sinai and Vatican manuscripts, and there is reason for believing that they were wanting in some other ancient manuscripts not now extant.  See the quotations from Basil the Great, and other fathers in Alford, Ellicott, Meyer, and other critical commentators.  On this ground some have supposed that the present epistle was intended to be encyclical—­an epistle for general circulation among the churches; others, that it is the Laodicean epistle referred to in Col. 4:16.  But in favor of the words “in Ephesus” there is an overwhelming weight of evidence.  They are sustained by all the versions and all the manuscripts except the above.  Besides, as every Greek scholar knows, if these words are omitted, it compels the omission from the original of the two preceding words which are found in every manuscript and version—­unless, indeed, we adopt the far-fetched hypothesis that the apostle furnished Tychicus with two or more copies of the epistle for different churches, leaving a blank space to be filled as occasion should require; and then it becomes impossible to explain how the reading “in Ephesus” should have been so universal in the manuscripts and versions.  There is no occasion for any of this ingenuity.  The omission of these words from single manuscripts is not wonderful.  It finds a parallel, as Alford remarks, in the omission of the words in