As soon as it was over St. Paul left Ephesus not to return there again. But on his way back to Jerusalem he came not to Ephesus but to Miletus, and sending for the Ephesian presbyters thither, he made them a farewell speech[48], which is in conspicuous harmony with the features of his later Epistle to the Ephesians. Already the doctrines of a divine purpose or {43} counsel now revealed, of the Church in general as the object of the divine self-sacrifice and love, and of the Holy Ghost as accomplishing her sanctification and developing her structure, appear to be prominent in his mind, and to have become familiar topics with the Ephesian Christians. 'I shrank not from declaring unto you the whole counsel of God. Take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.... And now I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all them that are sanctified.' These words from St. Paul's speech to the Ephesian presbyters are in remarkable affinity with the teaching of our epistle. v. We have been assuming that this epistle was addressed to Ephesus, but there are reasons to believe that it was not addressed to Ephesus only, but rather generally to the churches of the Roman province of Asia, of which Ephesus was the chief. The reasons for thinking this are {44} partly internal to the epistle. St. Paul's personal relations to individual Ephesian Christians must have been many and close, and we know his habit of introducing personal allusions and greetings into his epistles; but the so-called Epistle to the Ephesians is destitute of them altogether, contrasting in this respect even with the Epistle to the Colossians, written at the same time to a church which St. Paul himself never visited. This would be a most inexplicable fact if the Epistle to the Ephesians were really a letter to this one particular church. More than this, St. Paul speaks in several passages in a way which implies that he and those he wrote to were dependent on what they had heard for mutual knowledge--'having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus that is among you'--'if so be ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given me to youward.' Such language is much more natural if he is writing to others besides the Ephesians. And this evidence internal to the substance of the epistle coincides with evidence of the manuscripts. Very early manuscripts, some of those which remain to us and some which are reported to us by primitive scholars, omit the words 'in Ephesus' from St. Paul's opening greeting 'To the saints {45} and faithful brethren which are [in Ephesus].' This fact, coupled with the absence of personal reminiscences in the epistle, has suggested the idea that it was in fact a circular letter to the saints and faithful brethren at a number of churches of the