'Conflicts and trials done
His glory they behold,
Where JESUS and His flock are one,
One Shepherd and one fold.'"
[1] Anethalete to huper emou phronein. Literally, "you shot forth (as a branch) thought in my behalf." (The English perfect best represents this aorist.) The phrase is unmistakably pictorial, poetical. If I read it aright, it is touched with a smile of gentle pleasantry; the warm heart comes out in a not undesigned quaintness of expression.
[2] tapeinousthai is used in classical Greek of the falling of a river in drought. Perhaps such an image is present in the language here.
[3] Memuêmai: the verb whose root is that of mysterion, mysterium, "mystery." In the Greek world "mysteries" were systems of religious belief and practice derived, perhaps, from pre-Hellenic times, and jealously guarded from common knowledge by their votaries. Admission into their secrets, as into those of Freemasonry now, was sought by people of all kinds, from Roman consuls and emperors downwards; with the special hope of freedom from evil in this life and the next. St Paul's use of this phenomenon to supply language for Christian experience is beautifully suggestive. The knowledge of the peace of God is indeed an open secret, open to "whosoever will" "learn of Him." But it is a secret, a mystery, none the less.
[4] The word Christô should be omitted from the reading, though perfectly right as a note or explanation.—The iochus is the forth-putting of the dunamis—the action of the faculty. He is ready to act (or to bear) in a power always latent, always present, through his union with his Lord. The "all things" so met are, of course, the all things of the will of God, the choice of the Master for the servant in the way of circumstance and trial; not the all things of the mere wish or ambition of the servant.
[5] Philippêsioi: the Greek form represents a Latin Philippenses, by which the residents in the Roman "colony" would call themselves. So Corinthiensis means not a born Corinthian but a settler at Corinth.—Greek tends to represent a Latin syllable -ens by -ês: so Klêmês, Clemens.
[6] See Acts xvii. 1-15.
[7] On the Egnatian road. He made three stages of the distance; Amphipolis, Apollonia, Thessalonica.
[8] Ton karpon ton pleonazonta eis logon hymôn. I venture to render these words as above, as a monetary phrase, relating to principal and interest. It is true that karpos is not found used in the sense of interest, for which the regular word is tokos. But it would easily fit into the language of the money-market. And St Chrysostom's comment here seems to show that he, a Greek, understood it thus: horas hoti ekeinois ho karpos tiktetai (tokos).
[9] For osmê euôdias see Eph. v. 2. The phrase is common in the Septuagint to render the Hebrew "savour of rest," the fume of the altar pictorially represented as smelt by the Deity.