But we must return to Paul and his Gentile readers. The old death in life was to them a sombre reality, keenly and painfully remembered. In that condition of moral night out of which Christ had rescued them, Gentile society around them still remained. Let us observe its features as they are delineated in contrast with the privileges long bestowed on Israel. The Gentile world was _Christless_, _hopeless_, _godless_. It had no share in the Divine polity framed for the chosen people; the outward mark of its uncircumcision was a true symbol of its irreligion and debasement.
Israel had a _God_. Besides, there were only "those who are called gods." This was the first and cardinal distinction. Not their race, not their secular calling, their political or intellectual gifts, but their faith formed the Jews into a nation. They were "the people of God," as no other people has been--of _the_ God, for theirs was "the true and living God"--Jehovah, the I AM, the One, the Alone. The monotheistic belief was, no doubt, wavering and imperfect in the mass of the nation in early times; but it was held by the ruling minds amongst them, by the men who have shaped the destiny of Israel and created its Bible, with increasing clearness and intensity of passion. "All the gods of the nations are idols--vapours, phantoms, nothings!--but Jehovah made the heavens." It was the ancestral faith that glowed in the breast of Paul at Athens, amidst the fairest shrines of Greece, when he "saw the city wholly given to idolatry"--man's highest art and the toil and piety of ages lavished on things that were no gods; and in the midst of the splendour of a hollow and decaying Paganism he read the confession that God was "unknown."
Ephesus had her famous goddess, worshipped in the most sumptuous pile of architecture that the ancient world contained. Behold the proud city, "temple-keeper of the great goddess Artemis," filled with wrath! Infuriate Demos flashes fire from his thousand eyes, and his brazen throat roars hoarse vengeance against the insulters of "her magnificence, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth"! Without God--_atheists_, in fact, the apostle calls this devout Asian population; and Artemis of Ephesus, and Athené, and Cybelé of Smyrna, and Zeus and Asclepius of Pergamum, though all the world worship them, are but "creatures of art and man's device."