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 echô 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] Êgêsamên: I render the epistolary past by a present tense, which is the English idiom.