, perhaps his contemporary, who
wrote at Ephesus, under the shelter of the name of the great Ephesian
of ancient days, Heracleitus[3]. Moreover, St. Paul appeals
unhesitatingly to the actual experience of these Asiatic Christians,
and there is no reason to doubt that their consciences would have
responded to what he said to them about the old life out of which they
had been brought.

Let us now analyze a little more exactly this account St. Paul gives of
the state of sin which he saw around him in contemporary society.

(1) 'Ye walked according to the course of this world.' By 'this world'
St. Paul, like the other New Testament writers, means practically human
society as it organizes itself for its own purposes of pleasure or
profit without thought of God, or at least without thought of God as He
truly is. These Asiatic Christians, then, had formerly ordered their
life and conduct according to the demands and expectations of the
worldly world, obeying its motives, governed {93} by its fashions and
its laws, and indifferent to those considerations which it repudiated
or ignored.

(2) But to belong to the world in this sense is, in St. Paul's mind, to
belong to the kingdom of Satan. The worldly world had its origin from
a false desire of independence on man's part. He did not want to be
controlled by God; he wanted to live his own life for himself. But in
liberating himself according to his wishes from the control of God he
fell, according to St. Paul's belief, under another control. Rebellion
had been in the universe before man. There are invisible rebel
spirits, of whose real existence and influence St. Paul had no more
doubt than any other Jew who was not a Sadducee. And, indeed, our Lord
had so spoken of good and evil spirits as to assure His disciples of
their existence and influence. These rebel wills are unseen by us and
in most respects unknown, but they organize and give a certain
coherence and continuity to evil in the world. There thus arises a
sort of kingdom of evil over against the kingdom of God, and those who
will not surrender themselves to God and His kingdom, become perforce
servants of Satan and his kingdom. It is in view of this truth that
St. Paul {94} tells these Asiatic Christians that they used to walk
according 'to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now
worketh in the sons of disobedience.' (These evil spirits were, by a
natural way of thinking, located in the air