picture of this. What Paul said of Athens applied equally to Colosse:
"The city was wholly given to idolatry." The lower classes, especially,
were very ignorant, having no knowledge of God save that which the
light of nature gave them.

But when Paul went into their midst, preaching the Gospel of
salvation, the prophecy of Isaiah, concerning Zebulon and Naphtali,
was fulfilled unto them, as it had been before at Capernaum on the
shore of the Galilean Sea: "The people which sat in darkness saw a
great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death,
to them did light spring up." They opened their eyes to the light and
rejoiced to see it; and their hearts to the love it revealed, and they
took it in. They accepted Christ Jesus the Lord in all his fullness.
Faith became to them a living principle. They felt its truth as surely
as though with their natural eyes and ears they saw and heard all that
it comprehended for time and eternity, for earth and heaven.

But you want to know how I find all this out. Turn with me to the
first chapter of Paul's letter to them, and I will show you. Now
notice that right in the beginning he addresses them as "SAINTS and
FAITHFUL BRETHREN in Christ." By "saints" he means that they are
_holy_; and by "faithful brethren" he means to tell how they got to be
so. This, I think, is saying a good deal for them; but he goes on: "We
give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying
always for you; having heard of your FAITH in Christ Jesus; and of the
LOVE which ye have toward ALL the saints, because of the HOPE which is
laid up for you in the heavens."

You now see that these Colossian brethren had the three essentials
that distinguish a Christian from a pagan, a saint from a sinner, and