2 Tim. iv. 10. Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.
TO have our minds well established with prin- ciples, is doubtless very desirable : but in matters which are confessedly beyond the comprehension of man, we should be modest and diffident in drawing conclusions from them, lest, through an excessive zeal for one principle, we subvert others which are not less true or less important. An inattention to this rule has been productive of incalculable injury to the Church of Christ : for persons giving themselves up, as it were, to some particular sentiment, have wrested the Scriptures to make every part of them speak the same language ; and have indulged in most acrimonious feelings against all who did not accord with their views. But we should remember, that there are in revelation, as in all the other works of God, depths which we cannot fathom ; and that our
true wisdom is, not so much to be making the Scrip- tures a theatre whereon to display our controversial skill, as to deduce from them the great practical lessons which they were intended to convey. Were we, for instance, to take occasion from the passage before us to argue about the decrees of God, and the final perseverance of the saints, we might dispute well, but it would be to little profit ! but, if we enter upon the subject with fear and trembling, and with a view to our own spiritual advantage, we shall find it replete with the most valuable instruction to our souls.
Let us consider then, I. The fact here recorded —
A more melancholy fact is scarcely to be found in all the sacred records. Let us notice,
L The fact itself— [Demas was a man of great eminence in the Church of Christ. St. Paul, in the salutations which usually close his epistles, twice mentions him in immediate connexion with St. Luke ; " Salute Lucas and Demas." In one of these places he calls Demas one of his fellow-labourers in the work of the Gospel^: in the other, after having mentioned Demas with honour, he gives to another minister, Archippus, a most solemn warning, on account of the lukewarmness which he had mani- fested in the discharge of his ministry : " Say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it''." From hence then we conclude, that he saw no occasion for such an admonition in the case of Demas. Yet behold, we find at last, that " Demas had forsaken him," and gone to a great distance from him,, and altogether aban- doned the work in which he had been engaged. Had we been told, that this servant of Christ had erred in some particular, or even that he had declined in zeal for his Master's cause, we should not have been so much surprised ; because we are aware that the greatest and best of men are but weak, and that there are changes in their spiritual, as well as their corporeal, health : but, when we are informed that he forsook the Apostle, for- sook him too in his greatest extremity, when by reason of his imprisoment and approaching martyrdom he needed all possible support ; and that, in forsaking the Apostle, he forsook his Lord and Master also ; we are confounded, almost as the
a Philem. vcr. 24. >* Col. iv. 14, 17.