No congregation, or set of congregations, can realize the sublime conception of the Church that rises before our vision in Ephesians. It is as if the apostle had been able to anticipate the glorious spectacle which John beheld in apocalyptic vision. Though he had founded more churches in the great cities of the Empire than any man of the apostolic band, yet none of these alone, nor all of them together, could realize his fair ideal of that one mystical body, the Church, the Bride, the Lamb's wife.
This Epistle is pre-eminently the Epistle of the Church; and the view held by men of the conception of it here presented, will largely indicate their mental and spiritual attitude towards their fellow Christians. There is no test like this. We must enter into God's thought when we speak about the Church; not as she now is, in broken bits, like a number of squares of painted glass lying in heaps at the foot of what is to be a window of marvellous beauty; but as she is to be when the mystery of God is finished, and she is presented to his Son, worthy to "answer to" Him, according to the ancient word of the Creator, when seeking a bride for Adam (Genesis 2:18).