his all unto the older man, rendered him absolute obedience and unswerving loyalty. His life and services were at Paul's command. He was ready to do and dare anything to achieve that which Paul asked and hoped of him. There is something about his loyalty and unquestioning subjection that reminds one of the blind loyalty of a dumb brute to its master. With Paul he could achieve great things. But during his earlier years he was, when left alone, as some Samson shorn of his locks.

Where a situation required merely tact and gentleness Timothy was a splendid success even when left by himself. But let difficulties mount up and men's passions and antagonisms be thoroughly aroused and inflamed, then he was no match for the occasion. Perhaps in later years he was able to cope with such situations, but certainly not at first.

As a Christian man doubtless he would always have been faithful and exemplary without the friendship of St. Paul; but he would always, in my judgment, have moved in a small circle. What he became as a missionary, messenger, and soldier of the Cross, he owed to the transforming friendship, faith, and tuition of the mightiest of the Apostles and the mightiest of friends.

When we turn the question about and ask what was the value of Timothy's friendship to Paul, we have quite another answer to discover. Primarily, he seems to me to have provided an exhaustless receptacle for the inexhaustible outpourings of the

love and tenderness of one of the mightiest hearts which has ever enriched a world. Timothy himself alone afforded St. Paul an almost complete circle of domestic ties and relationships. In this respect he supplied what I may term a "feminine element" otherwise so sadly lacking in the friendships and life of Paul. There can be little doubt that Paul's brooding solicitude for Timothy furnished in itself one of the deepest sources of his earthly happiness. If it were conceivable that Timothy had ever sinned basely or treacherously, it is easy to picture Paul as weeping in uncontrollable anguish as did David over the sins and death of Absalom.

The above is what I always think of first when I ask myself what value Timothy's friendship was to St. Paul. But I do not overlook nor underestimate the years of steadfast co-operation which he rendered in all of Paul's labors and enterprises; and there can be little doubt that when Paul at last yielded the post of Commander-in-Chief of all the armies in Christendom, Timothy was one of the ablest and most efficiently trained of all the Corps Commanders upon whom the new responsibilities were henceforth to rest.

We have already seen how anxious Paul was to have Mark with him as he stood at the gates of death; but to Timothy alone of all his score of friends did he directly write, imploring his presence in that hour when Nero was sharpening his axe and the craven-hearted were fleeing in terror. This alone

is sufficient testimony to what each was to the other and of the transformation wrought in the once timid young Timothy by the power of friendship with such a man as Paul.

CHAPTER VI

Luke-The Biographer of Paul

Our knowledge of Luke is derived from the following passages:-Luke 1:1-4, Acts 1:1-4, 16:10-17, 20:5-15, 21:1-18, 27:1, 28:16, Col. 4:14, 2 Tim. 4:11, Phm. 1:24. And as author and historian,— the Gospel of Luke and The Acts.

W

E characterize Luke as "The Biographer of Paul." This title is both inadequate and inexact as descriptive of Luke himself. He was both something more and something less, than the biographer of Paul. He was something more, for he was the biographer of a greater than Paul, even Paul's Master, Jesus Christ. And he was also the first historian of the Christian church. He was likewise something less than the biographer of St. Paul, for he never undertook to write the life of that great Apostle. Though he tells us much about Paul in the Acts, he neither narrates the story of his early life nor does he describe the tragic end. And though the doings of Paul almost exclusively occupy the last half of the book of Acts, yet even then the story of Paul the man, and also

the story of Paul the missionary and organizer, is strictly subordinate to that larger theme, the unfolding of which Luke has proposed to himself.

The justification of our title for this chapter then, is this, to express the most striking phase of Luke's relationship to his friend Paul. Our purpose is not to give an analysis of Luke's writings, nor a complete and critical study of his life. While the biographical data concerning Paul found in Acts is incidental, and we might almost say accidental, to Luke's history of the Apostolic Church and its missionary expansion into a world power, yet in these data we find the only account in the New Testament which resembles anything like a connected story of Paul's life after his conversion, including a brief summary of the main features of his three missionary journeys, his imprisonments and numerous legal examinations at Jerusalem and Caesarea, and his final voyage to Rome as a prisoner who had appealed unto Caesar. Fragmentary as all this is, yet it is the only story we have of the Apostle's life, and hence our title expresses a relationship of Luke to St. Paul not sustained by any other of the latter's numerous friends.

I

Who Luke Was

The first thing that impresses us when we raise this question, is the scantiness of our exact knowledge concerning a man who wrote one fourth of our New Testament. He never once names himself in all