ifficult to
say rightly than 'Thank you.' Some people speak them reluctantly and
some too fluently: some givers are too exacting in the acknowledgments
they expect, and do not so much give as barter so much help for so much
recognition of superiority.

The Philippians had sent to Paul some money help by Epaphroditus as we
heard before in Chapter II., and this gift he now acknowledges in a
paragraph full of autobiographical interest which may be taken as a very
model of the money relations between teachers and taught in the church.
It is besides an exquisite illustration of the fineness and delicacy of
Paul's nature, and it includes large spiritual lessons.

The stream of the Apostle's thoughts takes three turns here. There is
first the exuberant and delicate expression of his thanks, then, as
fearing that they might misunderstand his joy in their affection as if
it were only selfish gladness that his wants had been met, he gives
utterance to his triumphant and yet humble consciousness of his
Christ-given independence in, and of, all circumstances, and then
feeling in a moment that such words, if they stood alone, might sound
ungrateful, he again returns to thanks, but not for their gift so much
as for the sympathy expressed in it. We may follow these movements of
feeling now.

I. The exuberant expression of thanks, 'I rejoice in the Lord greatly.'

There is an instance of his following his own twice-given precept,
'Rejoice in the Lord always.' The Philippians' care of him was the
source of the joy, and yet it was joy in the Lord. So we learn the
perfect consistency of that joy in Christ with the full enjoyment of all
other sources of joy, and especially of the joy that arises from
Christian love and friendship. Union with Christ heightens and purifies
all earthly relations. Nobody should be so tender and so sweet in these
as a Christian. His faith should be like the sunshine blazing out over
the meadows making them greener. It should, and does in the measure of
its power, destroy selfishness and guard us against the evils which sap
love and the anxieties which torment it, against the dread that it may
end, and our hopeless desolation when it does. There is a false ascetic
idea of Christian devotion as if it were a regard to Christ which made
our hearts cold to others, which is clean against Paul's experience
here. His joy went out in fuller stream towards the Philippians because
it was 'joy in the Lord.'

We may j