And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly.
And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly.
Remarks:
(1) As the necessity under which Paul felt himself to transfer his labours from the synagogue to a separate place of meeting, first at Corinth and next at Ephesus, was one of the steps by which his own mind and those of his Jewish co-adjutors were gradually loosened from the exclusiveness of the ancient economy, so unforeseen and resistless events in Providence have from age to age been more effectual than all arguments would have been without them, in setting the faithful servants of Christ free from ancestral prejudices; enabling them to discover, and emboldening them to avail themselves of the liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free. Had the disciples who hung about Jerusalem not been all scattered abroad, with the exception of the apostles, by the persecution which arose after the martyrdom of Stephen, they had probably never preached even to their Jewish Brethren; still less would those who found themselves in the midst of pagans at Antioch have preached to such the unsearchable riches of Christ, and reared up there a beautiful church of uncircumised Gentiles. Events forced upon them a course of action which, though at first they might go into with some hesitation, they would afterward feel to have been their privilege from the first. So at the time of the glorious Reformation almost every step was rather forced on than deliberately chosen; so it has been in some events of our own day; and so, we doubt not, it will yet be, in the ecclesiastical struggles which wise men see to be approaching. Thus it is that men are gradually prepared for occupying positions and discharging duties from which they would shrink, and for which they might prove unqualified, were they called to them all at once, and by the mere force of argument.
(2) 'In the silversmith Demetrius, and his companions (says Gerok) we recognize-first, The abject slaves of business, who, in the pursuit of temporal gain, have lost all regard for eternity; next, the blind adherents of established customs, who, from every fresh movement of the Spirit, fear the disturbance of their ease, and, indeed, the destruction of the world; thirdly, the self-satisfied priests of the Beautiful, who, in idolatrous veneration for nature and art, acknowledge no consciousness of sin, and no need of grace. Compare Goethe's poem, 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians,' and his confession in his correspondence with Jacobi-`I am even now one of the Ephesian silversmiths who has spent his whole life in the contemplation and admiration and adoration of the wonderful temple of the goddess (Nature), and in imitation of her mysterious forms; and in whom it cannot possibly stir up an agreeable feeling, if any apostle will obtrude another and a formless God' [that is, a living and invisible Author of Nature]; fourthly, the hypocritical zealots for the Church and Religion, who, with their apparent zeal for God's house, have only their own interest in view.'
(3) The cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," suggests also to Gerok the following striking practical thoughts:
(a) 'Great and glorious is the kingdom of nature; but we find our true home and our right place only in the Kingdom of Grace.
(b) Great and beautiful are the works of the human mind in art and science; but without the discipline of the Divine Spirit and the light of the Christian Revelation, art and science fall into the grossest error.
(c) Great and strong is the power of the human will; but with the best will we can render to the holy God no pure service and build no worthy temple, if His Spirit cleanse not our hearts into His sanctuary and perfect His strength in our weakness.
(d) Great and remarkable are the histories of earthly kingdoms (as Greece and Rome); but the Cross-kingdom of Jesus Christ triumphs over all. Ephesus lies in ruins, and the temple of Diana in ashes; but the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church of Christ.'
(4) When we think with what difficulty complicated systems of religious fraud and superstition, which have for ages held peoples in abject bondage and fear, are made to lose their hold, one cannot but wonder at the rapid success of the Gospel in the hands of Paul at Ephesus, not only in the explosion of the 'curious arts' there practiced, but even in shaking to its center the magnificent worship of the witching temple, which it afterward entirely extinguished. And if this Gospel is still the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, and the Holy Spirit, at Pentecost sent down from heaven, is not withdrawn, should not the Church of God-in now sending forth men of God in the spirit of Paul, not to blaspheme, but to assail the gigantic and hoary superstitions which still hold sway over millions of our race-expect the like results?
(5) What discerning mind can fail to see in the principles which lie at the foundation of Romish superstition the same idolatrous and irrational character which distinguished the worship of the Ephesian temple; and opposed as these are fundamentally to those of the New Testament, who does not perceive that the growth of this system is the growth of all that is antichristian, that its existence is the blot of Christendom, and that its overthrow-root and branch-is essential to the triumph of the kingdom of God?