he antecedent pain of my captivity and the trials which it
involves.

Ver. 28. +With the more earnestness therefore I have sent him,[10]
that seeing him you may be glad again, and that I may feel less
sorrow+, finding my imprisonment, and also my loss of this dear
friend's company, softened to my heart by the thought of your joy in

Ver. 29. welcoming him back. +Receive him therefore in the Lord+, in
all the union and sympathy due to your common share in Him, +with all
gladness, and+

Ver. 30. +hold in high value such men as he is; because on account of
Christ's work he was at death's very door,[11] playing+ as it were the
+gambler with his life,[12] that he might+ (lit., "may") +supply your
lack+, do the service which you could not do, and so complete your
loving purposes, in regard +of the ministration+ you designed +for me+.

Our present section illustrates well the inexhaustible variety of
Scripture. That pregnant Christian thinker, the late Dr John Ker, has
some good sentences on this subject: "What varieties are in the Bible,
side by side! The Book of Ruth, with its pastoral quiet after the wars
of the Judges, like an innocent child which has crept between the ranks
of hostile armies; the intense devotion of the Psalms after the
speculative discussions of Job, and before the practical wisdom of
Proverbs; the gloom of Ecclesiastes, and then the sweetness of the Song
of Solomon, as sharply divided as the eastern morning which leaps from
the night, or, as an old Greek might have said, silver-footed Thetis
rising from the bed of old Tithonus; Isaiah's majestic sweep of eagle
pinion, with Jeremiah's dovelike plaint; the cloudlike obscurities of
Ezekiel, to be solved, as one might expect, by piercing light from the
sky; and the perplexities of Daniel, to be opened by the movements of
the nations."[13]

What a variety lies before us here!

"Into the heaven of heavens we have presumed,
And drawn empyreal air";

while the Apostle has told us (only fourteen verses above) how Christ
Jesus, in the glory of the Throne, in the Form of God, cared for us men
and for our salvation, and made Himself void, and took the
creature-nature, and died; and how He is now on the Throne again in His
Incarnation, to receive supreme and universal worship. And then again
we came back to earth, yet so as to be led into the deep secrets of the
Lord in the inner life of His saints below; "God is working in you, to
will and to