have hesitated, trifled, failed to make up our mind. Perhaps we have too readily said yea

yea, and nay nay, and not so emphatically "If the Lord will". Both in Rom. 1: 10 and

15: 32 we find the expression "by the will of God to come unto you". God reads the

heart. It was good to find in the heart of David the desire to build a house for God,

although it could not be permitted to him.

The apostle Paul has been given to us as an example. A picture was once described in

a catalogue as being "After Rembrandt", and someone prefixed the words "A long way",

making the description read "A long way after Rembrandt". Most of us must come in

this category, "A long way after Paul", yet we have received him as a precious gift from

the Lord, as a pattern, as a guide, one who bids us follow him as he followed his Lord.

Therefore, however far off our following may be, we rest easy when we can find any

parallel between our path and that of the great apostle. When we are thwarted as he was

thwarted, when we are cast down as he was cast down, when we are delivered as he was

delivered, and oh joy! when unconsciously we are falsely accused and misrepresented as

he was. Nothing is so strengthening to one's position than to receive a letter from

someone whose fulminations against one's teaching or character resemble those which

were hurled at the apostle of the Gentiles by the religious leaders of his day.

It will therefore be readily understood that the personal items that the Spirit of God

has included in Holy Writ concerning the apostle Paul are items of too deep an interest

for us to slur over. We are convinced that it is a false species of sanctity that cannot

stoop to these lowly things of daily life. The "high-brow" will be found in religion as

well as in art or music. The God we love marks the sparrow's fall, the Lord we trust

spoke of such trifles as patching old garments. Paul could entrust Tychicus, a beloved

brother and faithful minister in the Lord, with so lowly a message as "my affairs, and

how I do" (Eph. 6: 21).

Can we imagine Tychicus resenting the humble task? He would have been neither the

beloved brother nor the faithful minister if he had. We remember hearing once that the

words of Paul asking for "the books, but especially the parchments", saved the library of

a super-sensitive soul. Have the words or Paul respecting "the cloak that I left at Troas

with Carpus, when thou comest bring with thee" no word of comfort to-day? Is it of no

service to be reminded that the mighty Paul was a man of like infirmities as ourselves?

There is a great deal of hypocrisy which passes for sanctity, that vanishes into the air

upon the searching acquaintance of a few months under the same roof. Let us live in the

company of this man of God, we shall all be the better for it.

We must now turn our attention a little more closely to Rom. 1:, noting the steps that

lead up to the great declaration of verse 17:--