-It is re

epistle are manifold, and are also very obvious.freshing to have such a manifestation of the great wealth of Christian love in this apostle's heart. It is at least a pleasure if not a profit to see that God's kind hand toward him gave him one such oasis as this in his troubled, anxious, toilsome life-one church to which his mind could revert with apparently no sad associations or reminiscences; one church that had remembered his personal necessities and ministered to their supply; and withal, in such a spirit that Paul could feel free and happy to receive them.

It is also profitable to study such an epistle for the sake of marking the nature of the counsels he gave them; the attainments to which he exhorts them; the really "higher life" as it lay before the mind of the great apostle, and the higher duties to which Paul directs the energies of this best and most hopeful-perhaps most advanced-church ever gathered under his labors. If we may assume that this was, all in all, the best of Paul's missionary churches, and that this group of converts were appreciative, receptive, responsive above any other in his world-wide field of knowledge and care, then surely the study of his words to them ought to be pre-eminently instructive to us as bearing upon the really higher walks of the earthly Christian life.

6

EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS.

CHAPTER I.

THE scope of this chapter is the breathing forth of the apostle's deep love for the church at Philippi, and of his unceasing prayers in their behalf (v. 1-11), with some allusion to his imprisonment at Rome and its results there (v. 12-14), and to divers sorts of professedly Christian work then in progress there (v. 15-18); to his own thoughts in view of living or not living, being himself in a strait between the two (v. 19-24); his dominant expectation as to his immediate future (v. 25, 26); concluding with exhortations to an earnest, fearless Christian life (v. 27-30).

1. Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:

2. Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

A good reason for Timothy's name here lies in the fact that at this writing he was with Paul at Rome; had been with him in his labors at Philippi; felt personally the deepest interest in the church at Philippi, to which Paul bears a very remarkable testimony in this letter (2: 19-23).- -We may notice that Timothy's name appears in the same connection as uniting with Paul in his letter to Colosse; in his second to Corinth; and both his name and that of Silas [Silvanus] in the two letters to Thessalonica. To the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and in all the pastoral epistles, Paul prefixes his own name only.- -Moreover, it may be noticed that Paul wrote as an apostle in every epistle except this to Philippi, those to Thessalonica, and that to Philemon. In these there was no occasion even to allude to his apostolic authority and relations. In this, he is "the servant of Jesus Christ; "-to Philemon, "the prisoner;" while to the Thessalonians he attaches no descriptive epithet to his name.

Paul writes to all the saints, but specifies in particular "the bishops and deacons "- a fact which sufficiently indicates that these and these only were the normal officers of the church-so many orders and no more. Probably the reason for referring to them specially was that they had been active and prominent in gathering and forwarding those supplies for his personal wants

in which this church had distinguished itself and for which Paul felt profoundly grateful to them and to God.

The benediction (v. 2) is in Paul's usual form.

3. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, 4. Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy,

5. For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now;

In v. 5, the meaning is not that he asks for their fellowship as a blessing which they need yet have not, but rather that he is moved to joyful prayer in their behalf by the fact of their having had such fellowship-such free and full-hearted sympathy in the progress of the gospel from their very conversion to that hour. The reference is specially to their generous contributions to his support while laboring elsewhere in his great mission work, and to the spirit which such benefactions implied. We ought to notice the warm heart of this great apostle, his deep sympathy with his faithful converts, his continual and joyful prayer in their be

half.

6. Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

7. Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart; inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace.

I am very sure God has begun his good work in your souls, the proof of it to me being this-that ye are partakers of the same grace which God gave me to suffer unto bonds joyfully for the gospel, and to labor patiently for its defense and confirmation. Confident that God has thus begun his work in you, I know he will perform it-carry it through to its final consummation-at the day of Christ Jesus. His sanctifying work in human hearts, he never leaves unfinished!

The question has been raised whether this "good work begun" had any special reference to their benefactions-their spirit of active sympathy and help in Paul's missionary work. I would reply: That manifestation of Christian spirit and character was very probably prominent in Paul's thought, yet rather as a proof of their real and deep sympathy with Christ than as constituting in itself the whole of their piety. Paul shows in this very connection that he thinks of them as partakers of all the grace which God had given him to labor and to suffer for Christ.

Why does Paul say, "Perform it unto the day of Christ Jesus," instead of saying "unto the day of your death?". —a question particularly interesting as bearing upon another, viz: Did they really look for Christ's second coming before their own death? So some

critics have assumed, but without sufficient ground. For plainly, in Paul's view, death, considered simply as death-the dissolution of soul from body-was a small matter. The meeting with Christ, the entering into the joy of his Lord, was the great thing-so great that it quite eclipsed the other, and therefore naturally gave name to the great event. They (Paul and his brethren) knew as well as we do that death is the limit of the Christian conflict, the point where his destiny is decided; and they also felt (apparently more than we are wont to do) that death is to every saint the personal coming of his Lord to meet him and take his spirit up to its eternal joy in the Lord. "I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also," were words whose significance had become glorious in their thought, and had given coloring to their accustomed mode of speaking of that day. It was this coming of the Lord to their individual souls at their death to take them to himself and to his prepared mansions, that made this dying day "the day of Christ" to their hearts, and in their Christian vocabulary. Note how natural it is for Paul to use this phrase (1: 10): "That ye may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ;" . e., through all your life, till your day of death. Also (2: 16): "That I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain."- -If there were the least occasion for argument to prove that in our passage (16) "until the day of Christ" must mean until your day of death, and not until the day of Christ's second visible coming to raise the dead, we might say-Look at the sense of this passage, and also at the sense of this phrase in its relations to the context. This "day"" is a point of time, and is here put as a limit, a terminus, unto or until which a certain work is to be carried on. This work is the good work of grace, which the Spirit began at their new birth or conversion. When does this work reach its consummation? At what point of time does all temptation to sin cease and all danger of failure, all contingency as to the Christian's future come to its end? Is it at his day of death, or is it at the day of Christ's second coming to raise the dead? To say the lat ter is to assume that the work of sanctification, with all its contingencies, is to pass over into and indeed through the intermediate state and not end till Christ's second coming! But this is by no means the doctrine of Scripture. It is not the doctrine of Paul even in this very chapter; for with him, "to depart at death is to be with Christ a state, compared with the best life on earth, inconceivably "better," and beyond question the real heavenly state. Therefore in Paul's usage, "the day of Christ is the Christian's day of death." Death brings him into the very presence of the glorified Christ.

On this passage, Ellicott remarks: "That Paul in these words assumes the nearness of the coming of the Lord (as Alford supposes) can not be positively asserted. The day of Christ, whether far off or near, is to each individual the decisive day; it is practically coincident with the day of his death, and becomes, when

addressed to the individual, an exaltation and amplification of the term."

8. For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all

in the bowels of Jesus Christ.

9. And this I

pray, that your love may abound yet more

and more in knowledge and in all judgment;

10. That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ; 11. Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.

Paul invokes God to witness not to the fact but to the intensity of his love and longing for his Philippian converts; and noticeably, speaks of this love and longing as being-he does not say, in his own bowels, but "in the bowels of Christ Jesus," in whom his very being is so united, and especially his Christian sympathies, that it seemed to him that Christ's own loving heart was beating within his.

It ought to be instructive to us to mark what such a loving heart (so much of Christ's own heart throbbing in it) would pray for in behalf of those he loved so tenderly. Here it is: "That your love may abound to the result of your having more and more knowledge and spiritual perception of truth in every form; that ye may prove and so approve whatever things are truly excellent; that ye may be pure and blameless (causing none to stumble) against the day of Christ. Against rather than "until” (is the sense of the original), i. e., as preparation for that day rather than as continuing until that day. Being filled with the fruit" (singular as to number) "of righteousness," which phrase, therefore, looks not so much toward Christian virtues in detail as toward intrinsic righteousness of character and conduct as a whole. This comes through Jesus Christ, and is to the glory and praise of God; "glory" being the inherent majesty of God, and “praise" the glorification of it by the homage of his creatures. All real righteousness of character in our race, being the result of God's interposing, redeeming love, inures of right to his eternal honor and praise. Verily this prayer by the apostle for his Philippian brethren groups the precious, vital things of the Christian life, showing what we may well implore both for ourselves and for our brethren in the Lord.

12. But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel;

13. So that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places;

14. And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.