ughts of a noble life in
which we shall not need the stimulus of self-interest or worldly
success to use it to the utmost in acts of service to Him. They who
live in the Lord will labour in the Lord, and they who labour in the
Lord will rest in the Lord.

PERSIS

'Salute the beloved Persis, who laboured much in
the Lord.'--ROMANS xvi. 12.

There are a great number of otherwise unknown Christians who pass for
a moment before our view in this chapter. Their characterisations are
like the slight outlines in the background of some great artist's
canvas: a touch of the brush is all that is spared for each, and yet,
if we like to look sympathetically, they live before us. Now, this
good woman, about whom we never hear again, and for whom these few
words are all her epitaph--was apparently, judging by her name, of
Persian descent, and possibly had been brought to Rome as a slave. At
all events, finding herself there, she had somehow or other become
connected with the Church in that city, and had there distinguished
herself by continuous and faithful Christian toil which had won the
affection of the Apostle, though he had never seen her, and knew no
more about her. That is all. She comes into the foreground for a
moment, and then she vanishes. What does she say to us?

First of all, like the others named by Paul, she helps us to
understand, by her living example, that wonderful, new, uniting
process that was carried on by means of Christianity. The simple fact
of a Persian woman getting a loving message from a Jew, the woman
being in Rome and the Jew in Corinth, and the message being written
in Greek, brings before us a whole group of nationalities all fused
together. They had been hammered together, or, if you like it better,
chained together, by Roman power, but they were melted together by
Christ's Gospel. This Eastern woman and this Jewish man, and the many
others whose names and different nationalities pass in a flash before
us in this chapter, were all brought together in Jesus Christ.

If we run our eye over these salutations, what strikes one, even at
the first sight, is the very small number of Jewish names; only one
certain, and another doubtful. Four or five names are Latin, and then
all the rest are Greek, but this woman seemingly came from further
east than any of them. There they all were, forgetting the hostile
nationalities to which they belonged, because they had found One who
had brought t