Ver. 14.
Greet Asyncrĭtus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrŏbas, Hermes, and the brethren who are with them; dwellers perhaps in some isolated and distant quarter of Rome, a little Church by themselves.
Ver. 15.
Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and all the saints who are with them, in their assembly.
Ver. 16.
Greet one another with a sacred kiss; the Oriental pledge of friendship, and of respect. All (read πᾶσαι) the Churches of Christ greet you; Corinth, Cenchreæ, "with all the saints in the whole of Achaia" (2 Cor. i. 1).
The roll of names is over, with its music, that subtle characteristic of such recitations of human personalities, and with its moving charm for the heart due almost equally to our glimpses of information about one here and one there and to our total ignorance about others; an ignorance of everything about them but that they were at Rome, and that they were in Christ. We seem, by an effort of imagination, to see, as through a bright cloud, the faces of the company, and to catch the far-off voices; but the dream "dissolves in wrecks"; we do not know them, we do not know their distant world. But we do know Him in whom they were, and are; and that they have been "with Him, which is far better," for now so long a time of rest and glory. Some no doubt by deaths of terror and wonder, by the fire, by the horrible wild-beasts, "departed to be with Him"; some went, perhaps, with a dismissal as gentle as love and stillness could make it. But however, they were the Lord's; they are with the Lord. And we, in Him,
"Are tending upward too,
As fast as time can move."
So we watch this unknown yet well-beloved company, with a sense of fellowship and expectation impossible out of Christ. This page is no mere relic of the past; it is a list of friendships to be made hereafter, and to be possessed for ever, in the endless life where personality indeed shall be eternal, but where also the union of personalities, in Christ, shall be beyond our utmost present thought.