pleasure, but would otherwise terminate wholly in themselves. How
different is this paragraph! Throughout it, side by side, run at once
the most perfect and delicate human courtesy and considerateness, and
suggestions of eternal and spiritual relations, in which "the gift"
touches at every point the heart of the Lord, and the promises of
grace, and the hope of glory. This message of thanks gives us, just in
passing, such oracles of blessing as, "I can do all things in Him that
strengtheneth me," and "My God shall supply all your need." It is on
one side a model of nobility and fineness of human thought and feeling,
on the other an oracle of God. This is just in the manner of
Scripture. "Never book spake like this Book."

Now the close comes. The greetings which those who are one in the Lord
cannot but send to one another in His name, have to be spoken, and then
the scribe's pen will rest.

Ver. 21. +Salute every saint in Christ Jesus+, every holy one of your
circle, holy because in Him; pass the greetings round from my heart to
each member of the Church. And as I write, the Christians now around
me, my personal friends upon the spot, must send their message too;
+there salute you all the brethren who are with me+. And not they
only, but all the believers of the Roman mission, represented around me
in my chamber as I dictate, do the same; and among them one class asks
to join with special warmth; +there+

Ver. 22. +salute you all the saints, but particularly those who belong
to+ (_oi ek_) +the household of the Emperor+ (_kaisaros_); the
Christians gathered from the retainers of the Palace; peculiar in their
circumstances of temptation, and quickened thereby to a special warmth
of faith and love.[11]

Nothing is left now but the final message from the Lord Himself; the
invocation of that "grace" which means in fact no abstract somewhat but
His living Self, present in His people's inmost being, to vivify and to
bless.

Ver. 23. +The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.[12]
Amen.+

The voice is silent; the pen is laid aside. In due time the papyrus
roll, inestimable manuscript, is made ready for its journey. And
perhaps as it now lies drying the Missionary and his brethren turn to
further conversation on the beloved Philippian Church, and recall many
a scene in the days that are over, and which are now gliding far into
the past of the crowded years; and they speak again of the brigh