I will venture then to take it for granted that it was some time in A.D. 61, or at latest early in A.D. 62, that Epaphroditus came, with his collection and his reports, and struggled through his illness, and then prepared to return to Macedonia, carrying this precious Letter with him. We seem to see the scene as he converses day by day with St Paul, and as at length he takes his leave, in charge of this Message of "faith and love." We see a large chamber in one of those huge piles of building, storey over storey, of which imperial Rome was full. The window looks perhaps north-westward, up the stream of the Tiber, towards the distant hills of which Soracte is the most prominent. The sentinel, perhaps himself a convert to the Lord, sits motionless at a little distance, chained to the Apostle. The saints pray, converse, and embrace; and then Epaphroditus descends to set out for Ostia, or for Puteoli, on his way home to Philippi.
"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever." The graves of the blessed ones who worked for the heavenly Master then are more than eighteen centuries old now. But the Letter to Philippi is to-day as new as ever. It is addressed to us, that we too may "believe, unto life everlasting," on "that same Jesus."
[1] Preserved by Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, ii.
[2] Written early in 1896.
[3] Cowper, _Conversation_.
[4] _Philippians_ (ed. i.), p. 30, note.
"Man, like the grass of morning, Droops ere the evening hour; His goodliness and beauty Fade as a fading flower; But who may shake the pillars Of God's unchanging Word? Amen, Himself hath spoken; Amen,--thus saith the Lord. BISHOP E. H. BICKERSTETH.