climax, 'My brother and
fellow-worker and fellow-soldier.' He was in the second place the
minister to Paul's needs. There would be many ways of serving the
captive, looking after his comfort, doing his errands, procuring daily
necessaries, managing affairs, perhaps writing his letters, easing his
chain, chafing his aching wrists, and ministering in a thousand ways
which we cannot and need not specify. At all events he gladly undertook
even servile work for love of Paul.

He had an illness which was probably the consequence of his toil.
Perhaps over-exertion in travel, or perhaps his Macedonian constitution
could not bear the enervating air of Rome, or perhaps Paul's prison was
unhealthy. At any rate he worked till he made himself ill. The news
reached Philippi in some round-about way, and, as it appears, the news
of his illness only, not of his recovery. The difficulty of
communication would sufficiently account for the partial intelligence.
Then the report found its way back to Rome, and Epaphroditus got
home-sick and was restless, uneasy, 'sore troubled,' as the Apostle
says, because they had heard he had been sick. In his low, nervous
state, barely convalescent, the thought of home and of his brethren's
anxiety about him was too much for him. It is a pathetic little picture
of the Macedonian stranger in the great city--pallid looks, recent
illness, and pining for home and a breath of pure mountain air, and for
the friends he had left. So Paul with rare abnegation sent him away at
once, though Timothy was to follow shortly, and accompanied him with
this outpouring of love and praise in his long homeward journey. Let us
hope he got safe back to his friends, and as Paul bade them, they
received him in the Lord with all joy, the echoes of which we almost
hear as he passes out of our knowledge.

In the remainder of this sermon we shall simply deal with the two
figures which the text sets before us, and we may look first at the
glimpses of Paul's character which we get here.

We may note the generous heartiness of his praise in his associating
Epaphroditus with himself as on full terms of equality, as worker and
soldier, and the warm generosity of the recognition of all that he had
done for the Apostle's comfort. Paul's first burst of gratitude and
praise does not exhaust all that he has to say about Epaphroditus. He
comes back to the theme in the last words of the context, where he says
that the Philippian messenger h