Philippians 2

1. If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship 2 of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the 3 same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vain- 4 glory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not 5 every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind 6 be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not 7 robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the 8 form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a 9 man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 10 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every 11 name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things 12 in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ 13 is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

12. Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now 13 much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is 14 God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Do all things with- 15 out murmurings and disputings: that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as 16 lights in the world; holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, 17 that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain. Yea, and if I be offered upon the 18 sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all. For the same cause also 19 do ye joy, and rejoice with me.

19. But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timotheus shortly unto you, that I also may be of 20 good comfort, when I know your state. For I have no man likeminded, who will naturally 21 care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s. But 22 ye know the proof of him, that, as a son with the father, he hath served with me in the 23 gospel. Him therefore I hope to send presently, so soon as I shall see how it will go with 24 me. But I trust in the Lord that I also myself shall come shortly. Yet I supposed it ne- 25 cessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, and companion in labour, and fellowsoldier, 26 but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants. For he longed after you all, and 27 was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick. For indeed he was 28 sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, 29 lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I sent him therefore the more carefully, that, when 30 ye see him again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful. Receive him there- fore in the Lord with all gladness; and hold such in reputation: because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, to supply your lack of service toward me.

INFINITE are the mysteries of that piacular suffering and submission, which were passing within the darkened chamber of Christ’s soul, and which no finite mind can ever comprehend! The little that we know is, that he suffers and submits. This is enough. This is the bowing down of the will, the vicarious, mediatory will, to the law which we had injured; to the law in its twofold power, as commanding and as smiting. It is the completest, as it is the most stupendous, oblation unto God which the universe has beheld. In all its parts, it forms the theme of eternal thought and songs. This obedience, even unto death, is the atonement. It is a satisfaction of infinite value made to the will of Jehovah, that is, to Jus- tice. It is an oblation both of doing and of suffering. It fills the cup of duty; it exhausts the cup of penalty. It meekly says to Almighty Justice, “Thy will be done.” The submission of our Lord amid this inconceivable struggle is the pattern and motive for our submission to God’s will. So beautiful a sight, to those who account moral perfection the greatest beauty, was never presented, as in the spotless obedi- ence of Jesus; and so preëminent a part of that obedience is nowhere displayed as in the closing night and day of his life of humiliation. I seem to behold all heaven bending down toward a world on which for forty centuries there has not been one immaculate object, to concentrate its gaze on the “Man of Sor- rows.” “These things the angels desire to look into”; they can not imitate, though they admire. They

“adore and burn”; but such stretches of benevolence are beyond their reach. This is a love which has been the grand attraction of the Church in all ages, and which we celebrate in a sacrament. It is love in its highest exaltation; suffering love; tearful, bleeding, dying love. J. W. A.

1. For “bowels and mercies,” read “tenderness and compassion.” In verse 2, for “being of one accord, of one mind,” read “with united souls being of one mind.” A.

3. The Christian’s love will lead him first of all to discern what is good in another, to discover even in his blemishes his peculiar gifts, that in which he is really superior to himself; while, on the other hand, through a self-scrutiny sharpened by the Spirit which quickens him, he detects with rigorous exactness his own faults. And this self-rigor, united with love, will give leniency to his judgment of whatever may obscure the divine life in others. And this manner of viewing one’s self, in relation to others, will appear, likewise, in his whole conduct in regard to them. N.—There is naturally in all men a kind of fancied infallibility in themselves, which makes them contentious, contrary to the apostle’s rule, Let nothing be done through strife, and as earnest upon differing in the smallest punctilio as in a high article of faith. Stronger spirits are usually more patient of contradiction, especially in doubtful things; and they that see farthest are least peremptory in their determinations. L.

Vainglory. How much more abundant would be our tranquillity, how much happier our lives, how much more attractive to others our Christianity, if the canker-worm of party spirit, vainglory, and contempt of others did not blight the noblest portion of our hidden life! Lowliness of mind. Humility is the secret of true rest, for the lovely heart is also the quiet, the satisfied, the God-hallowed heart. Humility is the secret of true power; for in the kingdom of God no one can accomplish so much as he who has learned to think humbly of himself and highly of the Saviour. Therefore, all God’s dealings with his people have no other object than daily to free them more and more from the dominion of self, in order that Christ may be all to them. Van O.

4. In every age and in every class of life, sympathy is the great craving of the human heart, and if we can be so unselfish as to forget ourselves and show it with the peculiarities of others, we shall be astonished at the rich return—how cold natures open out to a kindly presence, as flowers in spring when the hard frost lifts its repressive hand. And in pursuing such a course we shall best succeed in elevating and broadening our own nature. If we could bring all around us into our own mold, we should only have narrowed ourselves in the process of constraining others. But, if we enter into symsympathy with their pursuits, we not merely grow in unselfishness, but add something to our intellectual nature which was not there before. We have so much more of humanity within us. There can be no finer instance of the way in which we gain by yielding, and make conquests of men and things when we seem to be led captive. Ker.

Let it only be supposed that selfishness has been banished from the Church, and what would ensue? Each denomination of Christians, without sacrificing its distinctive character, would embrace and seek to ally itself as closely with all the rest as a community of interest, hope, and affection could bind it. Each creed would have the necessity and divinity of brotherly love among its primary articles, teaching the Christian that a heart glowing with affection to “the brethren” exhales the incense most acceptable to God; that such love is God in man. Devotion, no longer terminating in itself, would go to God and plead for the world. Piety, no longer seeking after comfort as an end, would find it without seeking; find it in the paths of Christian activity and usefulness. A love which would yearn over the whole human race; a zeal which would be constantly devising fresh methods of usefulness, denying itself, and laying itself out for God; and a perseverance which would never rest till the whole family of man should be seated at the banquet of salvation: these would be the prevailing features of the entire Christian community. The tabernacle of God would be with men upon the earth, God would bless us, and all the ends of the earth would fear him.

5-8. When the Apostle Paul would enjoin the Philippians to “look every man on the things of others,” he points them to “the mind which was also in Christ Jesus.” He does not content himself with merely stating the fact of our Lord’s condescension and death; but, as if the immensity of the stoop which Christ made were too great to be comprehended at once, he follows him downward from point to point, till he has reached the lowest depth of his humiliation. As if he felt convinced that the amazing spectacle could not fail to annihilate selfishness in every other heart, as it had in his own, his only anxiety is that it should be vividly presented before the eye of the mind. Having carried our thoughts up to that infinite height where Christ had been from eternity in the bosom of the Father, he shows us the Son of God divesting himself of his glory; and then he detains our eye in a prolonged gaze on his descending course; condescending to be born; voluntarily subjecting himself to all the humbling conditions of our nature; taking on himself the responsibilities of a servant; still humbling himself, still passing from one depth of ignominy to a lower still; becoming obedient unto death; and that death the most humbling, the most replete with agony and shame—the death of the cross. J. H.

6. The mind of the apostle, as expressed in the original words, is that Christ, previously existing on an equality with God, did not regard this his equality, this his loftiness and glory, a thing to be held fast by him, but gave it up and emptied himself so as to become man. And the very plain words in which this is expressed are: “Who, existing (or being) in the form of God, deemed not his equality with God a thing to grasp at,” i. e., a matter for him to retain, as one who grasps what he is afraid to lose. Thus, by keeping close to the original, the whole preëxistent majesty of Christ is set before us, and “the mind which was in Christ Jesus” is described in all its self-abandonment of divine love. A.

7. We say, using both the Scriptural expressions, that he “became flesh,” and that he “took the form of a servant.” The word “became” intimates the indivisibility of a perfect union; while the word “took” proclaims the immutability of the Divine nature. Thus, God the Word became perfect man; but so that the immutable nature received no injury from that inconceivable miracle. This, however, we have learned by faith; we have not mastered it by inquiry. And, having become man, he saves, by that in him which could share their sufferings, the race that was corporeally akin to himself, in that he paid the debt of sin, by dying for all as man, and “destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” as God, to whom evil is hateful. Proclus.—The nature which had sinned was the nature to be redeemed, and it could be redeemed only by that which was effected in the nature which had sinned. Divinity alone could not be a mediator; humanity alone could not be. The nature of the office, implying two parties, supposes of necessity a sympathy with both; and, as God and man are the parties, none but the God-man can possibly be the mediator. Hence Christ took upon him the form of a servant. Hence “the Word was made flesh.” E. M.—What greater mercy toward the wretched could there be than that which brought the Creator of heaven down from heaven, and arrayed the Maker of earth in an earthly body; which placed on the same mortal level with ourselves him who continues coequal in the eternal existence of the Father; which laid the form of a servant on the Lord of the world; that the Bread Himself might hunger, Strength be made weak,

Health be wounded, and Life die? And all this, that our hunger might be fed, our dryness moistened, our weakness comforted, our iniquity quenched, our charity enkindled! What greater mercy than that the Creator should become a creature, the Sovereign become a servant, the Redeemer be sold, the Exalter be abased, the Reviver be slain? Aug.

8. Obedient unto death. It is to the lifelong obedience of Christ, terminating in that last and greatest act of obedience, death, that the apostle here directs us. The life and the death thus connected with each other by the apostle, though differing in many things, yet resembled each other in this, that they were both vicarious. Christ was our substitute, as Luther delighted to proclaim from his cradle to his cross, from Bethlehem to Golgotha. It was as our sin-bearing substitute that he entered on his life of obedience, and as the same that he finished that life upon the cross. He was the obedient one all his life through; and that obedience was for us; that law-fulfilling was for us; that perfection was for us. In his completeness we are complete; by his stripes we are healed; and by his death we are reconciled. An.—It is not by the mere sufferings endured between Gethsemane and Calvary that Jesus Christ saves us, but by all the sufferings of his life, which constituted throughout one entire passion. His work forms an indivisible whole. He could not save us without suffering and dying; but he did not accomplish the work merely by suffering and death. He accomplished it by all that he was and by all that he performed; by his actions and by his words; by what he did and what he suffered; by his life as by his death. A. V.

9. A name above every name. Along the track of the ages, above all vicissitudes of opinion and feeling, luminous by his own majesty and beauty, appears the Just One, in whom alone the absolute perfection of the Godhead irradiated over human flesh, the praises of earth and heaven evermore accumulating around him, the sweet savor of his name spreading itself through the air we breathe, strengthening the weary, cheering the sad, restoring our souls. O. E. D.—10. The name of Jesus. He took this name on him as though he had chosen it for himself. He bore it about with him as long as he lived on earth, and when he died he died with it above him on his cross. And he bears it now. Think of him on his throne. He has indeed another name written on him there, “King of kings, and Lord of lords”; but when he speaks to us, he says, “I am Jesus still, Jesus your Saviour.” C. B.

Verse 10 should stand, “that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend.” The meaning in the mind of the writer is, that the purpose of this exaltation of the Lord Jesus was, that in his name should all prayer be made; that no man should come to the Father but through him. He himself shows what meaning he attached to the phrase “bowing the knee” in Eph. 3:14. It is with him an expression for offering up prayer. A.

11. Confess that he is Lord.** We feel that he is entitled to be made head over all things, and to have the power, not only of presenting his Church without spot or wrinkle before the presence of the Father, but of collecting the angels under his headship, and extending his grace through all the realms of intelligent being, so as finally to destroy the possibility of sin. This is the grand consummation, and it is a beautiful and glorious reward. He is to finish transgression and to make an end of sin, to redeem and sanctify the Church, and to confirm in holiness every order of unfallen being; so that, when his work is finished and his glory complete, the intelligent universe, by virtue of one grand enterprise of triumphant virtue, shall be bound inviolably to the throne of God. J. H. T.

12. “Work out” ought to be “carry out.” We do not work out our own salvation, for we are saved by grace; but we do carry out our own salvation. A.—“What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder!” Here are joined together, in the compass of one practical exhortation, faith in a finished salvation, and yet work; God working all in me, and yet I able and bound to work likewise; God upholding and sustaining his child to the very end, “perfecting that which concerns him,” making his salvation certain and sure, and yet the Christian working “with fear and trembling,” lest he should come short of the grace of God. A. M.

It must not be forgotten that the Epistles were written, not to make converts, but to edify converts already made. In the Book of Acts we have examples of addresses made to unbelievers. G. P. F.—Remember that none but Christian people have anything to do with these words. To all others this injunction is utterly inapplicable. It is addressed to the “beloved, who have always obeyed”; to the “saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi.” Paul has no idea of giving his disciples a lesson in abstract theology, or laying for them a foundation of a philosophy of free will and divine sovereignty; he is not merely communicating to these Philippians truths for their creed, but precepts for their deeds. Just as little as Scripture gives countenance to the error that makes religion theology rather than life, just so little does it give countenance to the far more contemptible and shallow error common in our day, which says, Religion is not theology, but life; and means, “Therefore, it does not matter what theology you have, you can work a good life out with any creed!” The Bible never teaches unpractical speculations, and the Bible never gives precepts which do not rest on the profoundest truths. A. M.

Work out your own salvation. The apostle has here in view, not the getting correct notions of the grace of God, nor even the exercise of devotional feelings toward God, but mainly the attainment of the mind that was in Christ, the putting off the old man and putting on the new. It is the pursuit, in fact, of practical godliness, such a spirit and demeanor as adorn the gospel. “Only,” saith he, “let your conversation be as becometh the gospel of Christ.” And he then proceeds to point out the details of such a conduct; exhorting them to unity of spirit as brethren, and in the faith and patience of Jesus Christ; to have a tender regard for the welfare one of another, according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus; to be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke, shining as lights in an evil world. In a word, this working out our own salvation is a following out in our daily walk of that deliverance from evil, and from all its consequences, which is brought nigh to us in the gospel. Goode.—Work as well as believe, and in the daily practice of faithful obedience, in the daily subjugation of your own spirits to his Divine power, in the daily crucifixion of your flesh with its affections and lusts, in the daily straining after loftier heights of godliness and purer atmospheres of devotion and love, make more thoroughly your own that which you possess. “Give all diligence to make your calling and election sure”; and remember that not a past act of faith, but a present and continuous life of loving, faithful work in Christ, which is his and yet yours, is the “holding fast the beginning of your confidence firm unto the end.” A. M.

With fear and trembling. He refers to the feeling of personal accountability and helplessness, of insecurity and instability in ourselves, by which we may be ever admonished to continual watchfulness, and to ever-renewed waiting upon God as the fountain of all our strength. This feeling of dependence, the ground-tone of the Christian life, is ever to be maintained. It is this which must combat the presumption of a vain human self-reliance, which, finding itself deceived in the result, so easily gives place to dejection and despair. N.—But why should he that hath assurance of salvation fear? If there is truth in his assurance, nothing can disappoint him, not sin itself; but it is no less true that, if he do not fear to sin, there is no truth in his assurance; it is not the assurance of faith, but the mispersuasion of a secure and profane mind. This fear is not cowardice; it doth not debase but elevates the mind; for it drowns all lower fears, and begets true fortitude and courage to encounter all dangers, for a good conscience and the obeying of God. L.

13. “Of his good pleasure” should be “for his good pleasure.” The meaning is not that God worketh in us to will and to do as he pleases, but so that his will is subserved by our willing and doing. A.—Because it is “God which worketh in us both to will and to do” we are called to “work out our own salvation.” The instinct of every renewed soul realizes this fact, and his every prayer expresses, in one and the same breath, both the divine source and the absolutely voluntary character of all his Christian emotions and activities. How the two interact and blend into one is a beautiful subject for thought, but not to be fully apprehended here, and possibly never. D. B.—Paul blends the two things together, and sees—strangely to some people—no contradiction, nor limitation, nor puzzle, but a ground of encouragement to cheerful obedience. Do you work, “for it is God that worketh in you.” And does the apostle limit the divine operation? Notice how his words seem picked out on purpose to express most emphatically its all-pervading energy, to express with the utmost possible emphasis that all which a good man is and does is its fruit. It is not that God gives men the power, and then leaves them to make the use of it. The whole process, from the first sowing of the seed until its last blossoming and fruiting, in the shape of an accomplished act, of which God shall bless the springing—it is all God’s together!—a thorough-going, absolute attribution of every power, every action, all the thoughts, words, and deeds of a Christian soul to God. No words could be selected which would more thoroughly cut away the ground from every half-and-half system which attempts to deal them out in two portions, part God’s and part mine. With all emphasis Paul attributes all to God. A. M.

To let the divine decrees stretch everywhere and hold all, embracing even these finite activities and this finite freedom as a part of their stupendous machinery, is more than we can master. Nor in the Scripture is any attempt ever made to reconcile the two agencies of God and man. Had such a reconcilement been necessary, God would certainly have suggested it. But now it lies back in the darkness, and we must consent to leave it there. It is one of the secret things belonging unto the Lord God. The things revealed are the facts themselves reconciled—on the one side, a divine efficiency which seems to clasp the universe as with iron arms; on the other side, a human freedom which seems to threaten anarchy. These two elements we must accept and hold them together as we can, denying neither, and abating the force of neither, holding to the divine efficiency without flinching, making our faith stout and masculine with it, holding also to the human accountability, making our faith elastic and agile with it. And, as to the harmony between them, let us never expect to find it in this world. Let us rather leave it, and leave it gladly, for the revelations of eternity. For the present, let us be careful only that God be honored and our own destiny happily accomplished. R. D. H.

A Christian knows God’s providence is in all things, yet is as diligent in his calling and business as if he were to provide for his own happiness. He believes beforehand that God has purposed what he shall be, and that nothing can make him alter his purpose; yet prays and endeavors, as if he would force God to save him for ever. He prays and labors for that which he is confident God means to give; and the more assured he is, the more earnest he prays. He believes his prayers are heard even when they are denied, and gives thanks for that which he prays against. Bacon.

14. Without murmurings. A singular subtlety attaches to the sin of excessive fault-finding, which makes it remarkably difficult of correction. Self-knowledge comes with peculiar slowness to complainers. It is doubtful whether one person in a hundred of those who are conspicuously given to pointing out real or imaginary foibles in their neighbors, and speaking censoriously to their housemates, would be found to be conscious in the least degree of having any other than a charitable judgment, a sweet tongue, and a reasonably contented disposition. But God searches us within and searches us out. These perpetual murmurings make no acceptable music in his ear. They find no pattern or sanction in the gentleness of the conversation of Christ. They disturb the air, ruffle the temper, provoke angry rejoinders, make virtue difficult, discourage penitents, exasperate children, disorder society, and degrade the honor of the Church. They are a gross form of ingratitude to God; for if we were really mindful of the countless mercies we are receiving, how could we find time or heart to speak only of the blemishes or shortcomings of those around us? F. D. H.

15. Saints are the lights of the world; but lights are not kindled in empty halls and unpeopled solitudes. They burn where houses stand thick and crowds throng the busy streets, or shine out at the harbor mouth through the night and tempest—guiding lights by whose welcome gleams the sailor, leaving storms behind, steers his bark into the desired haven. Let such be the aim of God’s people. Living for their sanctification, separate in a sense from the world, and moving, like the stars above it, in a loftier sphere, let them shine with the luster of holy and useful lives, that others, seeing their good works, may glorify their Father which is in heaven. T. G.—Light, pure, rich, varied, dazzling, shines forth from these heavens by day and by night, just as the light of the Christian’s example is to be poured on the darkness of the world. It shines not indeed for display, but for use; not for its own glory, but, like the light that should radiate from the Christian’s life, to illustrate the glory of the great Creator. And if Christian light does not shine forth in the life, we have the highest evidence that it has never been enkindled in the heart. A. B.

16. Holding forth the word of life.** Let your daily life be an unuttered yet perpetual pleading with man for God. Let men feel in contact with you the grandeur of that religion to whose claims they will not listen, and the glory of that Saviour whose name you may not name. Let the sacredness of God’s slighted law be proclaimed by your uniform sacrifice of inclination to duty, by your repression of every unkind word, your scorn of every undue or base advantage, your stern and uncompromising resistance to the temptations of appetite and sense. Preach the preciousness of time by your husbanding of its rapid hours and your crowding of its days with duties. Though no warning against an unspiritual, no exhortation to a holy life might be tolerated, let your own pure, earnest, unworldly character and bearing be to the careless soul a perpetual atmosphere of spirituality haunting and hovering round it. The moral influence of such a life can not be lost. Like the seed which the wind wafts into hidden glades, where no sower’s hand could reach to scatter it, the subtle germ of Christ’s truth will be borne on the secret atmosphere of a holy life into hearts which no preacher’s voice could penetrate. Caird.

17. For “if I be offered” read “if I am even being poured out.” He alludes to present, not merely to possible circumstances, and regards his own blood as the libation being poured out over the sacrifice, as the Jews poured wine (see Num. 28 : 7 ; 15 : 4, etc.). A.—All believers are become, through Christ and in fellowship with him, what he himself is—priests before the God of Jesus Christ. Paul regards as his own priestly calling the apostolic work; as his own acceptable offering to God, the faith planted by him among the Gentiles and the Christian life of the converted heathen world. It is in this sense he speaks in these words to his Philippian brethren of “the sacrifice and priestly service of their faith” as his offering to God. It was customary, moreover, to pour out wine upon the altar, a so-called libation, as a seal of the offering. Paul, foreseeing that his own blood might be poured out in his priestly office of proclaiming the gospel among the heathen, that he might be called to testify to what he preached in the very face of death, and to put the seal of martyrdom upon his life’s work, here speaks of the outpouring of his own blood as a libation—an offering of himself upon the sacrifice. Thus, with confidence, the apostle advances toward so glorious a consummation of his work. Far from needing solace from others, he could call on the Philippians to rejoice with him. N.

21. Their own, not Christ’s.** As if their interest and His were two separate, opposite, irreconcilable things, or as if they had never heard of the grace or the claims of Christ, many Christian professors may be seen pursuing their own ends as eagerly and wasting their substance as selfishly as the world around them. Self is Dives in the mansion, clothed in purple, and faring sumptuously every day—the cause of Christ is Lazarus lying at his gate, and fed only with the crumbs which fall from his table. J. H.—Self-seeking blinds the soul, that it can not see a beauty in Christ nor an excellency in holiness; it distempers the palate, that a man can not taste sweetness in the word of God, nor in the ways of God, nor in the society of the people of God; it shuts the hand against all the soul-enriching offers of Christ; it hardens the heart against all the knocks and entreaties of Christ; it makes the soul as an empty vine and as a barren wilderness; in a word, there is nothing that bespeaks a man to be more empty and void of God, Christ, and grace than self-seeking. Brooks.—More than this, selfishness is the most utter destitution of a human being. It can bring nothing to his relief; it adds soreness to his sorrows; it sharpens his pains; it aggravates all the losses he is liable to endure, and, when goaded to extremes, often turns destroyer and strikes its last blows on himself. H. H.

25-30. Epaphroditus is not so much as named except here and again in the last chapter of this Epistle, yet even by so brief a mention the name is embalmed and consecrated. Besides the testimony to his worth, these verses are remarkable for a refinement of Christian thought and feeling evinced in two or three points. The dangerous illness of Epaphroditus is spoken of with the utmost natural concern. So far is the apostle from chiding the anxiety of the Philippian Church, that he adds a tender expression of his own. He would be himself “the less sorrowful” when they should rejoice in the safe return of their messenger. Here, too, is shown the operation of a true Christian charity, which moves us to relieve the disquietude of others on our account instead of exacting their sympathy. Epaphroditus knew the sympathy which his case would excite among his Philippian brethren, and was in a manner impatient to relieve all such disquietude, as he was now able to do, by giving them personal proof of his recovery. The apostle enters into this feeling, and finds relief in lightening the burden of his companion and of those to whom he returns. How fully the messenger identifies himself with those who sent him, and the apostle with both, each forward to allay the distress and to partake of the joy of the others!

Here also is shown how a loving and devout spirit may lead us to recognize the goodness of God to ourselves in his goodness to others. There is not

anywhere a more exquisite delicacy of sentiment than in Paul’s commemoration of his friend’s recovery. He naturally spoke of his restored health as a mercy from God on that brother; but he adds, “And not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow”: so fully does he identify himself with his friend, first in suffering and peril, and then not less in the deliverance. If the Scriptures have little to say of friendship by itself as a merely human affection, they exhibit its quality and

excellence in examples which make it not the less beautiful because it is not the only and not the principal affection. Could friends stand nearer to each other than Paul and Epaphroditus? Could mere natural sentiment bind them together as closely as the affinity of Christian faith and love? In all ages the Church has nurtured a like union of souls, hallowing domestic ties, intertwining branches of “the true Vine,” knitting together human hearts in the unity of the Spirit. O. E. D.