brilliant in the short interval since St. John wrote.

But, while nothing is required of the Ephesians except that they should continue to show their old character,

yet a return to their earlier spirit was urgently necessary. The fault of the Ephesian Church was that it no

longer showed the same spirit: the intense enthusiasm which characterised the young Church had grown

cooler with advancing age. That was the serious danger that lay before them; and it is the common

experience in every reform movement, in every religion that spreads itself by proselytising. The history of

Mohammedanism shows it on a large scale. No religion has ever exercised a more rapid and almost magical

influence over barbarous races than Islam has often done, elevating them at once to a distinctly higher level

of spiritual and intellectual life than they had been capable of even understanding before. But in the case of

almost every Mohammedanised race, after the first burst of enthusiastic religion, under the immediate

stimulus of the great moral ideas that Mohammed taught, has been exhausted, its subsequent history

presents a spectacle of stagnation and retrogression.

The problem in this and in every other such case is how to find any means of exercising a continuous

stimulus, which shall maintain the first enthusiasm. Something is needed, and the writer of this letter perhaps

was thinking of some such stimulus in the words that follow, containing a threat as to what shall be done to

Ephesus if it continues to degenerate, and fails to reinvigorate its former earnest enthusiasm. But a less

serious penalty is threatened in this case than in some of the other letters --not destruction, nor rejection, not

even the extirpation of the weak or erring portion of the Church, but only "I come in displeasure at thee, and

will move thy lamp, the Church, out o f its place."

Some commentators regard the threat as equivalent to a decree of destruction, and point to the fact that the

site is a desert and the Church extinct as a proof that the threat has been fulfilled. But it seems impossible to

accept this view. It is wrong method to disregard the plain meaning, which is not destruction but change;

and equally so to appeal to present facts as proving that destruction must have been meant by this

figurative expression.

Equally unsatisfactory is another interpretation, that Ephesus shall be degraded from its place of honour,

which implies an unconscious assumption that Ephesus already occupied its later position of metropolitan

authority in the Asian Church. As yet Ephesus had no principate in the Church, except what it derived from

its own character and conduct: while its character continued, its influence must continue; if its character

degenerated, its influence must disappear. Ephesus has always remained the titular head of the Asian

Church; and the Bishop of Ephesus still bears that dignity, though he no longer resides at Ephesus, but at

Magnesia ad Sipylum. For many centuries, however, Smyrna has been in practice a much more important See

than Ephesus.

The natural meaning must be taken. The threat is so expressed that it must be understood of a change in

local position: "I will move thy Church out of its place."

Surely in this milder denunciation we may see a proof that the evil in Ephesus was curable. The loss of

enthusiasm which affected that Church was diffe rent in kind from the lukewarmness that affected Laodicea,

and should be treated in a different way. The half-heartedness of the Laodiceans was deadly, and those who

were so affected were hopeless, and should be irrevocably and inexorably rejected. But the cooling of the

first Ephesian enthusiasm was a failing that lies in human nature. The failing can be corrected, the

enthusiasm may be revived; and, if the Ephesians cannot revive it among themselves by their own strength,

their Church shall be moved out o f its place.

The interpretation of Grotius comes near the truth: "I will cause thy population to flee away to another

place." We do not know whether the form in which he expresses his interpretation is due to the belief

current in the country that the Christian people of Ephesus fled to the mountains and settled in a village four

hours distant, called Kirkindje, which their descendants still consider to be the representative of the ancient

Ephesus. But if Grotius had that fact in view, his interpretation d oes not quite hit the mark. The writer of the