surprised he would have been if, as he leaned forward to Tertius
hurrying to end his task and said, 'Send my love too,' anybody had
told him that that one act of his would last as long as the world,
and his name be known for ever! And how much ashamed some of the
other people in the New Testament would have been if they had known
that their passing faults--the quarrel of Euodia and Syntyche for
instance--were to be gibbeted for ever in the same fashion! How
careful they would have been, and we would be, of our behaviour if we
knew that it was to be pounced down upon and made immortal in that
style! Suppose you were to be told--Your thoughts and acts to-morrow
at twelve o'clock will be recorded for all the world to read--you
would be pretty careful how you behaved. When a speaker sees the
reporters in front of him, he weighs his words.

Well, Quartus' little message is written down here, and the world
knows it. All our words and works are getting put down too, in
another Book up there, and it is going to be read out one day. It
does seem wonderful that you and I should live as we do, knowing that
all the while that God is recording it all. If we are not ashamed to
do things, and let Him note them on His tablets that they may be for
the time to come, for ever and ever, it is strange that we should be
more careful to attitudinise and pose ourselves before one another
than before Him. Let us then keep ever in mind 'those pure eyes and
perfect witness of the all-judging' God. The eternal record of this
little message is only a symbol of the eternal life and eternal
record of all our transient and trivial thoughts and deeds before
Him. Let us live so that each act, if recorded, would shine with some
modest ray of true light like brother Quartus' greeting, and let us
seek that, like him,--all else about us being forgotten, position,
talents, wealth, buried in the dust,--we may be remembered, if we are
remembered at all, by such a biography as is condensed into these
three words. Who would not wish to be embalmed, so to speak, in such
a record? Who would not wish to have such an epitaph as this? A sweet
fate to live for ever in the world's memory by three words which tell
his name, his Christianity, and his brotherly love! So far as we are
remembered at all, may the like be our life's history and our
epitaph!

EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D., Litt.D.

CORINTHIANS
(_To II Corinthians, Chap. V_