agency. But do not let them think
it an act of faith to dictate to Him, as it were, the necessity of
their physical recovery. "If it be Thy will," is never out of place in
such appeals. Faith can breathe its most absolute and restful reliance
into that "If."

We close the section of Timotheus and Epaphroditus. We have given our
main thought to the light which it throws upon the nature of the
Scriptures, those blessed "men of our counsel." We have scarcely
turned aside to think of the actual "men" of the passage; Timotheus,
and his self-forgetting devotion to the Lord and to St Paul, overcoming
the sensitiveness of a tender nature; Epaphroditus, at once brave and
affectionate, yearning for the old friends in the old scene, restless
in the thought of their trouble about him, yet ready to "throw his life
down as a die" in the cause of God and of His people. But if we have
said little about them, it is not that we do not love their very names,
and feel our union with them.

"Once they were mourning here below";

finding then, as we find now, that the day's burthen is no dream. But
we shall see them hereafter, in the mercy of God, "changed and
glorified," yet the same, where there will be leisure to learn all the
lessons that all the saints can teach us from their experience of the
love of Jesus.

Meanwhile let us pray, with the Moravians in their beautiful Liturgy:

_Keep us in everlasting fellowship with our brethren of the Church
triumphant, and let us rest together in Thy presence from our labours._

[1] _Timotheon_ is slightly emphatic by its place in the Greek; as if
to say, "Though _I_ must still be absent, _he_ will soon be with you."

[2] Not "equal-souled _with myself_"; which would demand rather, in the
Greek, _oudena allon echo isopsychon_.

[3] Possibly, "_entered on_ bondservice," "_took up_ the slave's life,"
with a reference to Timothy's earliest connexion with St Paul (Acts
xvi. 1-3). But the reference to the memories of _Philippi_ is much
more likely. The aorist, _edouleusen_, will in this case gather up
into one the whole recollection.

[4] The _touton_ is slightly emphatic by position, for St Paul is about
to speak of other persons also, himself and Epaphroditus.

[5] _Egesamen_: I render the epistolary past by a present tense, which
is the English idiom.

[6] So I render _apostolon_, to represent something of the _sacredness_
attaching by usage to the word. If I read arigh