St Paul's Fellowships in Rome: Timothy

“To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you, and peace,“from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ;” — ROM. i. 7. “To Timothy, my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day; greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy; when I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.” — 2 Tim. i. 2-5.

{Preached at the Porta del Popolo March 5, 1871.)

2 Tim. i. 2.
“Timothy, my dearly beloved son.”

IN prosecuting our theme of St Paul’s residence at ROME, there can be no subject of deeper interest to us than his fellowships with Roman Christians. It is evident from the perusal of the closing chapter in his Epistle, that before he set foot personally in this city, there was already within its walls the nucleus of a flourishing Church. In that postscript chapter (if I may so call it), there are twenty-six believers he individually names, to whom he conveys his apostolic salutations, in addition to two of their “households,” as well as other “brethren “and “saints” (ver. 14, 15). Several of these were natives of the capital, who, on account of an edict of Claudius, had been expelled from their homes on the Tiber, and driven as fugitives to cities bordering on the Mediterranean. In the places of their exile they had become converts to the faith through the Apostle’s preaching. There were others now in Rome, “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord,” whom St Paul had not as yet seen in the flesh. They were only known to him by their steadfast faith, devoted lives, and by their “obedience,” which, as he expresses it, “had come abroad unto all men “(ver. 19). It is interesting, surely, to know from his own lips, that in his manifold journeyings by land and by sea, whether in his hours of solitude, or where surrounded by busy crowds, ROME and its Church had a constant place in his holiest remembrances; for he specially tells us, that “without ceasing he made mention of them always in his prayers “(Rom. i. 9). We cannot think of him, therefore, coming to this ancient metropolis as to a city of strangers, where he would be isolated from Christian sympathy. In that list of names to which I have just referred, there were doubtless not a few of those” brethren,” who, shortly after the Apostle-prisoner landed from his long voyage, met him at Appii Forum; and on seeing whom, after weeks of loneliness and depression, during which no congenial heart had shared the burden of his spirit, he “thanked God and took courage.” It is impossible to affirm, whether any reliance can be placed on the identity of the two localities which I visited this last week, credited by tradition as being the dwellings of the Apostle/” Somewhere, at least, we know (and, at all events, it could not probably be far from one or other of these), the members of the infant Church in Rome met him. In “his own hired house,” wherever it was (to take up the tone of cheerfulness which characterises the closing words of the Acts), “he received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.”

Among other sacred fellowships, however,

* See the description of this visit in Introductory Chapter, p. 29, et seq.

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there is one which stands out with special and pre-eminent distinctiveness. While all who were begotten in the Lord were dear to the Apostle, TIMOTHY has a peculiar halo of interest encircling him, not more in connection with previous years, than with St Paul’s Roman residence. For no one does he long more fervently to come to his house or to his dungeon. When the last days — the last hours, had arrived, how vehemently does he desire his presence! In his second letter, how touching to read twice over, as if to make doubly sure, “Do thy diligence to come shortly to me.” “Do thy diligence,” he repeats, “to come before winter.” We are not told, but we can, at all events, entertain the possibility (the probability), that these appeals were not in vain. We love to dwell on the likelihood of the last closingmoments being soothed by the presence and voice most prized by him; Timothy walking by his side on the Ostian Road, supporting and cheering the Christian hero in his great trial-hour, with those hopes full of immortality, which he himself had so oft proclaimed to others. Though it may be no more than a gratuitous fiction, we felt it, at all events, alike pleasing and impressive, two days ago, in the magnificent Basilica of the San Paolo, to gaze on the juxtaposition of their tombs; the ashes of the great Apostle and of his beloved companion resting traditionally side by side. “They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.” One could not help feeling, that often as the epitaph had been used, it was never more fitting and appropriate than here.*

In adverting for a little to the history of Timothy, let us glance, in their order, at his Youth, his Conversion, and his Work,

s In speaking of the earlier passages of his life, we must change for a moment the scene from ROME, the hired house, the dungeon, and the place of martyrdom, to a distant city in Asia Minor.

See Frontispiece; also Introduction, p, 90.

The family group at Lystra, in Lycaonia, is a pleasing one. The main place, indeed, in that home is vacant. From there being no reference to his father, either in St Paul’s letters to Timothy or in the Acts, we are led to conclude that he had died while his boy was yet young. His father, we are expressly told, was not of Hebrew origin, but a Gentile; a Greek by birth and by religion. We also infer that he was a ’ proselyte of the gate; ’ one of those who, in common with the proselytes of righteousness, had abandoned and renounced the errors and debasements of idolatry, and embraced the worship of the God of Israel. Two other members, however, occupy the house, thus probably bereft of its head; the widowed Jewess, the child’s mother (by name Eunice), along with her own surviving parent, whom she had evidently taken to her lonely home to be “the nourisher of her old age.”

Grace is not hereditary; but it seems to have been so in the case of that mother and daughter in Israel, for the Apostle tells us that they had that richest of dowries, “unfeigned faith,” What had brought them to their remote dwelling at Lystra we are not informed. Doubtless, He, who at that same time sent Lydia from her native town, Thyatira, to distant Philippi, had purposes of similar divine grace and mercy in arranging the residence of that Jewish family in this distant city of idolaters. God had blessed their solitude wTith one object of tender and hallowed interest — “the only son of his mother.” The youthful Timothy is beautifully pictured to us, as imbibing his earliest lessons of heavenly wisdom at the feet of these two devout women.

As I have just observed, there is but one characteristic given of the early school in which he was trained. Its lessons were those of “unfeigned faith; “two words, briefly uttered, but fraught wTith vast significance. From them we infer, that his instructors made him the recipient of their religious belief. He was trained up in the creed of their and his ancestry: from a child he had been taught to” know the Holy Scriptures.” Doubtless such faithful guardians would act up rigidly to the solemn charge enjoined in the olden time:” These words which

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I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and wrhen thou risest up.” If other families in that pagan town shared their belief, they may together (as has been pictured), like Lydia and her little band of followers, have resorted Sabbath after Sabbath to the “proseuchse “or” oratories “by the river-side, and there poured out their hearts in supplication for the blessing of Abraham’s God; that He would hasten the coming of the Messiah promised to the Fathers, in whom first Israel, and, through Israel, all the families of the earth were to be blessed. If so, doubtless the child of their many prayers would accompany them to these sacred resorts, and have his mind filled with the hopes of his race, — -hopes which had already received their most glorious fulfilment in the advent of the great” Consolation of Israel.” But his was more than mere acquaintance with a theological creed — instruction in the articles of the Hebrew religion. He was taught thus early to admire and love, not only the faith, but the “faith UNFEIGNED,” which dwelt in his grandmother Lois and in his mother Eunice. “Unfeigned faith!’ It was that divine thing, a hallowed, consistent example, the utterances and expressions of a piety that went not forth of “feigned lips” It is too possible now, as it was then, to give an intellectual assent to a round of systematic doctrine, — to be the votaries and disciples of a faith that is feigned, — a faith which exercises no ameliorating influence on the heart, no animating and controlling power on the life: a stale, rigid, cold, barren orthodoxy, not countersigned by a corresponding walk and conversation. Not so, was it, in the case of this holy household at Lystra. The injunction of the wise man seems there to have been faithfully followed and fulfilled. “Train” (a word including alike precept and example), — “Train up a child in the way he should go.” There was, in these two conscientious Jewish matrons, the true ring of the religious life; not the base counterfeit coin of earth, but the unmistakable currency of heaven.

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It was under this hallowed roof, then, that the infancy and childhood and youth of Timothy were spent. But for Lois and Eunice, his would have been an unknown name. The Church of Christ may well go to Lystra, and hang garlands of gratitude around the tomb of these two women in Israel. Blessed the child that is under such a household! Blessed still the children enjoying a mother’s prayers! Blessed every one of us, who have the vision of such and similar holy examples, rising up like a green oasis amid the waste of memory!

Let us now turn to his Call or conversion. This latter word is perhaps out of place and misapplied when used in regard to Timothy. In the history of not a few other characters in holy writ, we can point to some memorable crisis, when, by the power of God’s grace and Spirit, a sudden and almost instantaneous change took place in their whole moral natures; when the defiant bulwarks of sin and unbelief and rebellion in a moment fell to the ground, and their entire treasures were surrendered to the Lord,

Such, I need not say, was St Paul himself; when, almost in the twinkling of an eye, the vulture nature was transmuted into that of the dove, that of the lion into the lamb; — when the persecutor, “breathing out threatenings and slaughter,” became the child-like follower of Jesus. And many are there still, who can point to similar experiences. l There, and then, God met me in the way. There was the Jabbok where His angel wrestled with me, and where, in His might I prevailed, and got my new name. There a light, like that on the Damascus highway, brought me to the dust an enemy, a blasphemer, and raised me up a meek disciple. There, in an agony of despair, like the dying felon, I looked on the crucified One, and the gates of mercy were opened to receive me/

But this is not God’s general way of procedure. As in nature, there is a process of gradual development towards maturity, “first the blade, then the ear, after that, the full corn in the ear;” as in the animal economy, there is the same gradual progress from infancy and youth to manhood and age; so is it in the

spiritual life; and so was it in the case of Timothy. He could revert to no such momentous turning-point in his history, when his whole being underwent a sudden transformation. His piety had distilled like the dew of heaven, known only by being seen. As we are told that the Jewish temple of old was reared without “hammer, or axe, or tool of iron” being heard; so had the young altar of his faith risen in silence. The soil of his heart had been prepared by godly parental training; the seed sown had been gradually fostered and matured by holy hands. At the same time, while he thus grew up the child of prayer and of unfeigned faith, an occurrence took place in the city of his dwelling which gave a new impulse to his spiritual life, and altered his whole future destinies. That noble Missionary of heroic faith, with whom he was subsequently to be tenderly associated in this capital, was passing through Lystra, proclaiming the glorious truths of the Gospel. The debased mob, instigated by some opposing Jews who had come from Antioch and Iconium on the evil errand of thwarting his mission, assaulted

St Paul in the open streets with stones, and dragging him outside the city walls, left him there mangled and bleeding. He had apparently anticipated, in thought, his Roman martyrdom, and already joined the M noble army” of these early ages. That life of priceless value was, however, mercifully spared; the furious and cruel attempt only recoiled on the heads of the instigators. It was not without its momentous results. We have every reason to believe that one of the spectators of that outrage was the son of this pious Hebrew home. Accustomed there to the a unfeigned faith “as manifested in the passive virtues of love, and meekness, and submission, — he saw that same” unfeigned faith “manifested in its active form and type of heroic endurance — superiority to physical suffering. The youth’s impressible mind, at that impressible period of life, must have been arrested, by (what never fails to arrest and impress) — the conduct of a man in earnest; — one ready to risk his all, and dear life itself, for the sake of the truth. St Paul was bearing about in his cut and lacerated l68 ST PA UL’S FELLO WSHIPS IN ROME.”

frame “the dying of the Lord Jesus.” and in conjunction with this, “the life also of Jesus5’ (in his meek, calm, and prayerful bearing towards his murderers) was made manifest in his mortal body. In one of its innumerable subsequent instances, the blood of the martyr became the seed of the Church. Next day, he and Barnabas departed from Lystra to Derbe. But they had left ineffaceable footprints behind them. The scene I have just described had stirred the impulses of that young soul. From that hour he claimed a new home, a new father, a new name: “Timothy, my own son in the faith.” St Paul returned from his toilsome missionary circuit after an absence of one or two years, to the old scene of his insult and imminent danger. He found a living stone, which had been polishing during his absence, ready now to take its place in the Spiritual Temple; and he could write, as he did on another occasion, in his eventful diary, “The things which happened unto me, have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the Gospel.” The seed sown by pious parents, watered by his own blood and tears, was now, in ripe fruit, gathered by the sickle; this, in its turn, would yield fresh seed to be scattered elsewhere, and give birth to vaster harvests.

God still takes various means of quickening life in His own children, — those who, like Timothy, may have been piously trained, their affections early won to His service. A startling providence — a family bereavement — a time of critical illness — a rousing sermon; these, and such like instrumental agencies, He employs, to give them more living, realising views of the truth, and to stimulate and foster the energies of their spiritual being. They may before have been slumbering, like Elijah, under their juniper-tree; but some Angel has roused them with his quickening touch, and by the bestowal of fresh pledges of divine love and blessing, they go fearlessly on their wilderness way, with an heroic faith to wThich they were before strangers. Or, like Timothy, they may have received some new and noble impulses from the holy example of others. I believe many of us can similarly revert, in the

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annals of the past, to some aged friend, or neighbour, or relative, who has perhaps now gone the way of all the earth, but whose beautiful life (the embodiment of all the Christian virtues), has to us invested religion with a charm that has never, and can never be forgotten. Mere sermons are transient in their impressions, — they may die away with the voice of the speaker. But those life-sermons are imperishable. Timothy might forget some passages and sentences in the two Epistles written to him by St Paul; but he would never forget that better Epistle, not written with ink; nothing could obliterate its deathless pages. He would never forget that scene of half-completed martyrdom, outside the walls of Lystra; or that other, in long after years (I have already spoken of, as probably witnessed also outside the gates of Rome), when the same devoted champion lay silent under the flash of the sword, which added the greatest to the great cloud of witnesses. Oh for faith and grace, not by word, but by deed, to bear witness to the power and reality of the truth: so that men may take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus; and when our race is run on earth, though dead we may yet speak!

I pass now briefly to Timothy’s work and Apostleship.

St Paul allowed seven years to elapse before his next return to Lystra. By this time Timothy had outgrown boyhood and youth. He was now ready, as a good soldier, for his armour; prepared to be girded with the panoply of which his spiritual father speaks, when he enjoins him to “war a good warfare.” He was not unaware of the perils of such wrork — the penalties of such a service. For his faithful Instructor had, some years previously, specially reminded him, in common with all the other disciples of these Asiatic cities, that “through much tribulation they must enter into the kingdom of God.” But he, as well as the two godly hearts which doated upon him, had counted the cost, and willingly made the sacrifice. They mutually remembered the word of the Lord Jesus, how He said, u If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me: “—” Whosoever loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me.” Both filial and maternal love surrendered to these mightier claims; knowing that whatever forfeiture might be involved in “the present life,” in the “world to come,” the severed family links would be again renewed in “life everlasting” It is from this time forward that he becomes St Paul’s most duteous attendant, and most beloved friend. Lystra, a town of heathen Lycaonia, has the honour of giving a faithful Evangelist to the early Church. As God called Elijah, not from amid the consecrated tribes or cities of Israel, but among the half-Gentile fastnesses of rugged Gilead; so He now finds one of the pillars of His cause, and the main companion of His greatest Apostle, not in Jerusalem or Samaria, — not in Csesarea or even Antioch, — but in this distant Pagan city. St Paul at once cleaves to him with parental love. The soul of the elder Apostle is knit (like that of David to Jonathan): — “Him would Paul have to go forth with him ;; (Acts xvi. 3). It is even an illustration of what one sometimes sees, a sympathetic tie binding together those who are naturally of diverse and opposite characters. The fiery Elijah was different from the calm, tranquil Elisha; yet how affectionate and strong was their union! How vehement was Peter’s attachment to John, as evidenced by their ever-recurring companionship; and yet how different their temperaments! In the one, the prevailing element was contemplation, gentleness, and love; in the other, heroic and often unregulated impulse and passionate zeal. We see the same here. St Paul had, indeed, a beauteously balanced mind, a fine combination of all spiritual virtues; but the predominating ones were doubtless the masculine — bold, vehement, daring, uncompromising — only once in tears, and that not for himself, or evoked by his own sufferings. Timothy again, as we may gather from St Paul’s exhortations to him in the Epistles, inherited more, as it has£reen called, “the feminine” type of character — wanting in some of the sterner attributes needed for an Apostolic age (i Cor. xvi. 10); gentle, pliable, sensitive; dissolved in a woman’s tenderness when bidding his spiritual Father farewell (2 Tim. i. 4). Even in physical make and constitution he was a contrast to the hardy, wiry man, who could buffet wintry seas and brave summer suns — pass undeterred through countries infested by bandits, and at last endure a winter’s dungeon without a cloak to protect him from the cold. Timothy had to be warned against incurring the risk of needless privations. There is a touch of tender interest in the advice of his kind protector (so careless about his own comforts), to take at times “a little wine,” to strengthen his unrobust and fragile frame (1 Tim. v. 23). In their after years, too, how great the discrepancy; although in this respect, also, we are not

without scriptural antecedents of age clinging lovingly to youth, winter clasping early spring or midsummer in its bosom. It is a New Testament repetition of that beautiful picture of the old economy; — aged Eli, the Priest of the Tabernacle, clinging with a brother’s fondness and confidingness to the little child who served before the Lord. Barnabas was St Paul’s fellow-labourer; and, despite of one unhappy occasion of temporary estrangement, they were no ordinary ties of affection which linked together these two noble standard-bearers in the army of the faithful; but hear, in the Great Apostle’s own words, how tenderer far is his relation to Timothy. Almost with a father’s pride over a much loved son, he says, “Ye know the proof of him, that as a son with the father he hath served with me in the Gospel.” That filial service, too, embraced little, trivial things; — things even referring to his own personal comfort, which he might have had scruple in devolving upon others, but which he felt it was using no liberty to put upon Timothy. Take, for example, that notable glimpse of this easy familiarity and intimacy given us at the close of the Epistle, and to which I have already incidentally alluded, when he tells him to open the box at Troas which held his papers and parchments (probably his private memoranda

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and journals, including, it may be, the diploma of Roman citizenship), and bring them along with him to his dungeon; or to fetch the winter cloak (the Roman Poenula), which had formerly been his companion amid the cutting winds of the Pisidian Mountains, or amid the storms of the Mediterranean. Imagining it would no longer be required, he had inadvertently left it behind him at Troas; but he felt his aged frame needed it now, more than ever, to protect from the pestilential damps of a prison home. “Son Timothy,” “My beloved Son,” “My own Son in the faith,” “My work-fellow,” “My brother,” are the expressions which bespeak the depth of his affection. Hear how he writes of him when he is looking back on the manifold friendships of a whole life: a I have no man like minded.” From city to city — and (when separated) from day to day, and from hour to hour — the glory of manhood and the beauty of youth thus went hand in hand. See how these two Christians loved one another!

But notwithstanding this disparity in age, and even in some respects the lack of mental idiosyncrasy, — work, holy work in the Church of their Great Lord, bound them together. On that multiform and diverse work, we cannot now enter. Timothy seems to have shared, not only the hardships, and dangers, and opposition encountered by his illustrious compeer, but to have participated also in his triumphs. What part he had in the conversions of this Roman capital, we are not informed; but it is worthy of note, that in St Paul’s second Epistle to him, noble members of the Church send, at the close, their special salutations; and among these, Pudens and Claudia, — the latter name one of special interest to us, as being that of the daughter of a British king; the only name belonging to our country which occurs in sacred history, but the first of the many women of Britain who have since sustained the faith, and helped on the work of God’s faithful ministers.*

* See Introductory Chapter, p. 55. It has been well observed that, independent of the tie of affection and friendship, it would seem as if some peculiar official connection subsisted between St Paul and Timothy, linking them together as colleagues and The special centre, however, of Timothy’s labours was, not Rome but Ephesus; at that time the greatest city of Asia Minor, and which almost divided with this imperial metropolis a world-wide renown. Here, this young and faithful Evangelist was left to contend, almost single-handed, with the many adverse and baneful influences which surrounded him. His undertaking ministerial duty there, was in itself a beautiful evidence and attestation of his unselfish willingness, in all things, and at all times, to acquiesce in the proposals of his spiritual guide. “I besought thee,” says St Paul,

copartners in the Church of that age: “Timotheus, my work-fellow” (Rom. xvi. 21). Not to speak of the previous Epistles to the Thessalonians, we find the two names occurring, in this conjoint form, in the three letters sent from Rome by St Paul to Philippi, Colosse, and to Philemon. In the first, the initiatory address is “Paul and Timothy, the servants of Jesus Christ.” In the other two, the mention of the name of the elder Apostle is followed by “and Timothy our brother.” It has been further remarked, by the same discriminating writer, when in one of these letters (that to the Colossians) the name of Luke occurs, who was the most constant companion of St Paul (more frequently with him than even Timothy was), it is not thus conjoined with his in the prefix, but simply occurs towards the end, as sending a message of love to the brethren. — See Dr Howsorfs “Companions of St Paul” p. 284.

“to abide at Ephesus.” That expression of the great Apostle’s wishes was enough; he accepted, without remonstrance or hesitation, the responsibilities of the arduous post. His now aged father in the faith seemed, however, keenly alive to the perils of his new position, and his inadequacy in his own strength and from a constitutional timidity, to combat them. These were partly without, and partly within, the Ephesian Church. Outside, there was the intellectual pride and cunning sophistries of its pagan philosophers, — “the opposition of science falsely so called.” There was the religious intolerance and mercenary spirit of the vast multitude of priests and votaries and craftsmen connected with the temple of Diana. There were the subtle arts of the practised magicians and sorcerers. There was the still fiercer bigotry and hate of the Jews, who had numerously settled in this vast emporium of Eastern commerce, and found it a lucrative field for amassing their sordid gains. Then, within the Church, there was the danger, with some, of being contaminated with surrounding worldliness — the prevailing flippancy and voluptuousness of social and fashionable life; with others, there was the risk of giving way to doctrinal defection; with others, of being involved in miserable party factions, or in those controversial disputes which stirred up that “wrath of man which worketh not the righteousness of God.” “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust.” “Hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me in faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus.” “For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love, and of a sound mind.”

Whether Timothy was able fully to profit by the warnings and teachings of his faithful monitor, — to resist this flood of evil, and to prove an example “in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity,” — we cannot tell. We have little to guide us in forming an estimate of his later life and labours. Let us, at all events, cherish the hope, that these were in harmony with his antecedent history and character; that he lived not unworthy of his godly parentage; of the prayers which had hovered over his infant couch, and which had followed him from the city of his early habitation; of the blissful and hallowed companionship which had moulded him in after years, and which had given, in his case, an emphasis to the Psalmist’s words, which perhaps they never had before or since: “I am a companion of them that fear Thee.” There is strong reason to surmise, that at some time or other, although the period is indeterminate, he had been called to submit to a similar cross with his aged father and friend, by wearing the chains of captivity. This we infer from St Paul’s incidental reference at the close of his Epistle to the Hebrews, “Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty” Indeed, some imagine, the reference is to a share of the great Apostle’s first imprisonment at Rome, and that it was before the same terrible tribunal he himself was soon to be sisted, that he charged ’ his son’ to witness a good confession, even as their adorable Master, in the presence of Pilate, had done before them, (i Tim. vi. 12, 13.)

We need not attempt to trace farther,Timothy’s work and career. And as to his latter end, we can only accept, for what it is worth, the testimony of tradition, that on the occasion of a great festival to Diana, in which he endeavoured to raise his protesting voice, he was made a victim to the fury of the fanatic mob, who dispatched him with clubs, close to the gigantic temple of the goddess, and that his body was brought subsequently to Rome.

We love better to think of him (as already described, in relation to the subject we are now pursuing), as the Apostle’s latest, fastest, dearest friend. Previous to St Paul’s imprisonment, they seem to have taken a mutual parting, under an impression that they would never meet again. The faithful son of such an affectionate father had wept bitterly at the thought of seeing his face no more — “I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day; greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy” (2 Tim. i. 3, 4). But God had still spared him. They may yet meet again. The spirit of the old man, like another Jacob, revives, with the hope, that he who had so “fully known his afflictions” in the past (2 Tim. iii. 10), who had been so thoroughly cognisant of fifteen long years of varying tribulation, would be with him when entering the shadows of the dark valley. Timothy was far distant in Asia; but St Paul, as we have seen, earnestly urges him to come with all speed. Yet, owing to the many dangers around, fearing lest even he might be deterred from giving his dying sympathy, he exhorts him to boldness in the cause ot Jesus in this most beautiful letter — the second Epistle. Time forbids us to pause and analyse its touching contents. It bears in its postscript, “Written from Rome, when Paul was brought before Nero the second time.” We may well regard it as the farewell souvenir of a loving friendship; quite what we would have expected from the pen of one, conscious that he might probably be writing his last words. It reminds us of the ray which often bursts out before a troubled sunset, shooting athwart the whole landscape. The Apostle’s memory, like that parting gleam, retraverses the long years of a cherished attachment, and lives them in thought

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over again. He begins with the scenes of childhood at Lystra; a parent’s hallowed home; their mutual prayers, and faith, and tears; Timothy’s public consecration to the ministry; his unfaltering adherence to himself; the persecutions he endured; following up, with solemn, searching counsels, such as a faithful and beloved dying friend alone would use; — one who felt that the moments were fleeting, — that he had but few words to say, and a brief time to utter them. “What mother,” says the sainted Monod, “ever wrote to her son a letter more full of solicitude?” The sentence at the close, “Grace be with yoti, Amen” was probably the last his trembling hand traced.

We can well imagine how these dying exhortations and benedictions would be treasured in hallowed and enduring remembrance. What could be a nobler stimulus to this young soldier of the cross, to fight manfully the battles of truth, than the closing unflinching testimony — the triumphant dying experience, of him whom he regarded with such reverence and love? Would it not brace and support him for a similar hour? That dauntless apostle could tell, how when “all men forsook him,” “notwithstanding, the Lord stood with him and strengthened him.” He could leave, as his dying watchword, a sacred bequest to all similarly called to witness by suffering for the truth: “And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom.” And yet, observe, even when he speaks to Timothy of his readiness for departure, and of the crown of life promised to the faithful unto death, he casts every gem of that crown at the feet of Him who is “THE LORD HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS.” The theme of his life lingers on his lips when about to soar amid ministering seraphim. What heroic confidence, yet what childlike humility, are in these words, penned amid the gloom of his Roman dungeon! — “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand: I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of RIGHTEOUSNESS, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day.”

I repeat, could Timothy forget these words when the moment of his own departure came? Would they not be like an angel whispering to him? Would they not prove like a rod and staff amid the swellings of Jordan?

Be this as it may, we can at all events think of the younger Apostle, now seated by his spiritual Father, among the honoured fcand of those who have “turned many to righteousness:” the companionship, intermitted for a few stormy years on earth, resumed, never to be broken, in the general assembly and Church of the first-born in Heaven!

May we too, in a humbler sense, share in this blissful and honoured association. There can indeed be no possible identity of experience between us and these two sainted men. The times of suffering and martyrdom are, thank God, for the present over; the dungeons of bigotry are for the present closed; the sword of persecution slumbers in its scabbard. But let us seek to imitate them in the lowlier virtues of the everyday Christian character; let us follow them in their faith and love, and in the ceaseless activities of a consecrated life; that thus, when we too come to sleep the last sleep, — not amid the glow of lamps which superstition burns around emblazoned altars, — but wherever our ashes repose (be it amid the quiet seclusion of the old village churchyard at home, where memory keeps ever sacred vigil over the loved and lost), it may be ours, though with infinitely lowlier claims, to covet, as the noblest of epitaphs — that which now in golden letters gleams over the double shrine with which all here are familiar — “To ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST, AND TO DIE IS GAIN.”