heathen devotees were dressed for the occasion, mostly in white garments, with garlands of the sacred

foliage (whatever tree or plant the deity preferred), while many of the principal personages wore special

dress of a still more sacred character, which marked them as playing for the time the part of the god and of

his attendant divine beings, and some were adorned with the golden crown either of their deity or of the

Imperial religion. But the Ephesian Christians wear the o rders of Christ. The heathen devotees carried

images of their gods, both the principal deities and many associated beings. The Christian Ephesians in their

life carry God and carry Christ always with them, for, as Ignatius has said in the previous sentence, their

conduct in the ordinary affairs of life spiritualised those affairs, inasmuch as they did everything in Christ.

Many of the heathen devotees carried in their processions small shrines containing representations of their

gods; but the body of every true right-living Christian is the temple and shrine of his God. The heathen

carried in the procession many sacred objects, sometimes openly displayed, sometimes concealed in boxes

(like the sacred mystic things which were brought from Eleusis to Athens by one procession in order that a

few days later they might be carried back by the great mystic procession to Eleusis for the celebration of the

Mysteries); and at Ephesus an inscription of the period contains a long enumeration of various objects and

orname nts which were to be carried in one of the great annual processions. But the Christians carry holiness

itself with them, wherever they go and whatever they do.

How utterly different is the spirit of this passage from the Jewish attitude towards the heathen world! Every

analogy that Ignatius here draws would have been to the Jews an abomination, the forbidden and hateful

thing. It would have been loathsome to them to compare the things of God with the things of idols or devils.

Ignatius evidently had never passed through the phase of Judaism; he had passed straight from Paganism

to Christianity. He very rarely quotes from the Old Testament, and when he does his quotations are almost

exclusively from Psalms and Isaiah, the books which would be most frequently used by Christians.

Hence he places his new religion directly in relation with Paganism. Christianity spirutalises and enlarges

and ennobles the ceremonial of the heathen; but that ceremonial was not simply rejected by him as

abominable and vile, for it was a step in the way of religion.

The point of view is noble and true, and yet it proved to be the first step in the path that led on by

insensible degrees, during the loss of education in the Church, to the paganising of religion and the

transformation of the Pagan deities into saints of the Church, Demeter into St. Demetrius, Achilles

Pontarches into St. Phocas of Sinope, Poseidon into St. Nicolas of Myra, and so on. From these words of

Ignatius it is easy to draw the moral, which assuredly Ignatius did not dream of, that the Church should

express religious feeling in similar processions; and, as thought and feeling deteriorated, the step was taken.

The same true and idealised spirit is perceptible in other parts of Ignatius' letters. In Eph. sect. 10 he says:

"Pray continually for the rest of mankind (i.e. those who are not Christians, and specially the Pagans), for

there is in them a hope of repentance. Give them the opportunity of learning from your actions, if they will

not hear you." The influence o f St. Paul's teaching is here conspicuous: by nature the Gentiles do the things

of the Law, if they only give their real nature free play, and do not degrade it (Rom 2:16).

Ignatius felt strongly the duty he owed to his former co-religionists, as Paul felt himself "a debtor both to

Greeks and to Barbarians"; and just as the term "debtor" implies that Paul had received and felt himself

bound to repay, such indubitably must have been the thought in the mind of Igantius. Ignatius learned the

lesson from Paul, because he was prepared to learn it. Many have read him and have not learned it.

In this view new light is thrown on a series of passages in the letters of Ignatius, some of which are obscure,

and one at least has been so little understood that the true reading is by many editors rejected, though

Lightfoot's sympathetic feeling for Ignatius keeps him right, as it usually does; and Zahn independently has

decided in favour of the same text.

One of the most characteristic and significant features in the writings of Ignatius is the emphasis that he

lays on silence, as something peculiarly sacred and Divine. He recurs to this thought repeatedly. Silence is