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Alone in Ephesus
2. It is worth while trying to conceive to ourselves the situation at Ephesus, the atmosphere in which Timothy was called upon to discharge his Christian ministry, for the evidence goes to show that his was a nature likely to be keenly sensitive to the conditions under which his work had to be done.
To begin with, Ephesus was the seat of the worship of Diana; her temple was a magnificent building dominating the entire city, and on it wealth and taste had lavished their utmost. Everything was done to attract the eye, to inspire with awe and wonder. Its courts were daily thronged with worshippers from every quarter of the Roman Empire. Perhaps it was under the shadow of the great temple, and in the presence of all this splendid pageantry of worship, that Timothy had to shepherd the flock of Christ, to lead the unadorned worship, and to administer the austerely simple ordinances of the primitive Church. It must have required a firm courage, an eye undimmed for spiritual things, for a man with Greek blood in his veins, and trained from childhood to think with reverent delight of the Temple at Jerusalem, to hold on unabashed, and not sometimes to be visited with a sort of undefined wish that in some way or other he might be able to blend together the body of a splendid ritual with the soul of a spiritual Christian service. One can imagine him, not exactly ashamed of Christ, but feeling like a dissenter in a cathedral city. He believes himself to be right, but he wishes that he had not to breathe so much of the chilling air of social contempt. Perhaps his position might find a modern parallel in that of a native Christian teacher, whose work shall lie, say in Benares, the metropolis of Hinduism, if the supposition be added that India were not under British but under native rule.
If this was the condition outside the body of Christian disciples, there were elements at work inside that body with which Timothy had to reckon. Oriental speculation had its chosen home at Ephesus, and the Judaizing tendency, which had been rampant in Galatia, was not wholly absent. These two influences, apparently so diverse, conspired against the simplicity that is in Christ. It was beginning to be a cherished dream with certain minds that a sort of eclectic religion might be developed out of a union of philosophic speculation, Jewish ritualism, and the gospel of Christ. These people did not mean to deny the gospel, but only to enrich it; they would rid it of its barrenness, and, in a non-apostolic sense, adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour.
In addition to these religious, or quasi-religious, elements of Ephesian life, we may be sure that there was, ever present, the abounding licentiousness which distinguished populations in which the Greek and the Oriental mingled; the darker vices of the Asiatic were partly veiled by the flashing splendours of the Greek imagination, and, becoming less repulsive, were the more dangerous.
Timothy seems to have been by nature one to whom opposition would always mean distress and pain, to whom firmness would often be difficult and expensive. He was not a man who, when things seemed to be going against him or getting into confusion, could shrug his shoulders and refuse to be harassed. Rather, he seems one to whom antagonism, insolence, isolation, would mean sharp suffering; one whose heart might grow sick as he looked at a gathering storm of hostility and danger; one on whose courage and constancy such a storm would break with a severe if not a staggering shock. His was a character deficient somehow in that useful sort of obstinacy which is an element in some men's power of endurance, and stands them in good stead in hard times. The traits of moral beauty on which St. Paul elsewhere lays stress, in speaking of Timothy, are such as might well consist with this deficiency; they are the attractions likeliest to be wrought by the grace of God in such a nature. Eminent unselfishness; the capacity for generous self-devotion; warm-heartedness and loyalty in personal affection; a spiritual sense which made the care for others' welfare seem instinctive;-these are the features which, as we read the First Epistle to the Corinthians and the Epistle to the Philippians, appear to supplement the impression of Timothy's character which we get from the Pastoral Epistles. There is often in such men an unfailing charm of delicacy and gentleness; they seem as though there had been more summer than winter in their lives; while, with some characteristics which may be misnamed effeminate, there is in them a really womanly power of patience and self-sacrifice. Surely, if we may form any such idea of Timothy, we cannot wonder at St. Paul's intense affection for him, as a constant presence of tenderness and sympathy in the midst of much antagonism and disappointment and anxiety. We cannot wonder that St. Paul should have trusted him largely, and believed that he would rightly bear his high charge as Apostolic delegate over the Church of Ephesus; nor yet can we wonder that, as the Apostle thinks of him in the isolation, the perils, the tangled difficulties of his position, as he thinks of the subtlety of error, the restlessness of idle talk, the malignity of moral corruption, the brutality of persecution, all besetting, or likely to beset, that sensitive temperament, a fear should be continally haunting him lest the strain prove too great.
We may say of Newman, as he said of himself, that he had a “morbidly sensitive skin,” and this is about as bad an equipment for active life in a world of struggle as nature can bestow. That a pre-eminently sensitive man tastes more keenly than others the choice delights of life is probably true, but it is certain that he suffers a thousand miseries which tougher natures never feel. An acute sensitiveness may be allied with, though it is by no means a synonym for, keen sympathy with the sorrows of others, and so may gather round a man a band of grateful admirers; but it will never disarm an opponent, or turn a foe into a friend. Still less will it enable a man to force his way through clenched antagonisms, or to crush resistance as he marches towards his end. Then again a sensitive nature is
Wax to receive, and marble to retain.
It may forgive, but it cannot forget, slights and injuries, buffets and bruises. Forgetfulness of injuries is the blessed lot of those who have inflicted them.1 [Note: G. W. E. Russell, Selected Essays on Literary Subjects, 136.]
3. It was to encourage Timothy in his hard task that St. Paul wrote to him the two Epistles. The First Epistle was sent from Macedonia some time after the Apostle had left Ephesus. Fearing that his return may be delayed he writes this letter to press his original charge more solemnly on Timothy, to encourage him in his work, to guide him in his teaching and dealing with various classes in the Church, and to regulate certain points of Church order which needed organization without delay. The Second Epistle was written from Rome when the aged Apostle was imprisoned for the second and last time. In the interval between the letters the sky had darkened. The Neronian persecutions had broken out and the Church was threatened by a new danger. St. Paul knew that his own days were numbered, and in his loneliness his heart went out to the young evangelist who had been to him more than a son.
In both these letters, but especially in the second, St. Paul seems never tired of enforcing, with every sanction, every appeal, every encouragement that he can use, the paramount duty of unflinching steadfastness. Again and again that duty is impressed on his disciple's conscience, that it may be safe from all risks of forgetfulness or surprise: “God hath not given us the spirit of fearfulness”; “Be not thou ashamed”; “Take thy share of hardship”; “Hold fast the form of sound words”; “Be strong in grace”; “Continue, abide in the things which thou hast learned”; “Be instant in season, out of season”; “Watch thou in all things”; “Endure afflictions.”
When Luther was in the hall, about to be ushered into the presence of the assembly, a veteran knight, George Freundsberg, commander of the guard, touched him on the shoulder, and said kindly, “My poor monk, my poor monk, thou hast a march and a struggle to go through, such as neither I nor many other captains have seen the like of in our worst campaigns. But if thy cause be just, and thou art sure of it, go forward, in God's name, and fear nothing! He will not forsake thee!” A noble tribute from a brave soldier to the courage of the soul!
4. The authenticity of the Pastoral Epistles has been called in question: Renan, in his bold way, calls the writer of them a forger, who perhaps incorporated some authentic notes of St. Paul in his apocryphal composition; and the school of Baur, as might have been expected, gives them short shrift, rejecting the whole of them. Such criticism can be met on its own ground, but is there not another method? Forgery stumbles, not when it sets itself deliberately to delineate character, but when character is not so much carefully outlined as taken for granted, and made the groundwork (almost invisible) of the superstructure. And if we can discover in these letters a character consistent with itself and with its circumstances, if a score of delicate suggestions make us feel that we are dealing with a living man, who is being dealt with by one stronger than himself, whose words vibrate with the personal element, then we feel that we have got into that atmosphere in which the mere literary actor and the forger cannot live, and we gain a new evidence that these two letters are rightly entitled the First and the Second Epistles of Paul the Apostle to Timothy.
5. The Second Epistle to Timothy closes with a pressing and repeated entreaty to Timothy to hasten to St. Paul. The aged Apostle was alone, save for the faithful Luke. Demas had forsaken him, Crescens and Titus had been summoned elsewhere. His friends among the Roman Christians were timorous; not one of them had dared to stand by him when he appeared to make his defence in court. Not thus, he knew, would Timothy act. And so he is entreated to come with all speed, and to bring with him Mark, whose former difference with St. Paul was now happily at an end. And then we notice the little personal touches: the homely directions to bring a cloak and some books which St. Paul needed. Perhaps they would give him some comfort in prison, perhaps he wished to give them to his friends to be kept in memory of him after his death. Above all he needs Timothy himself-Timothy, who had wept when last he parted from him. And yet, despite the repeated bidding that he should come at once, St. Paul seems to feel a presentiment that he must arrive too late. Therefore he speaks words of farewell, infinitely tender and pathetic, yet without a trace of weakness, to his “beloved child.”
Whether Timothy was able to comply with St. Paul's entreaties we have no means of knowing. We like to think of the beloved disciple as comforting the last hours of his master; but, although the conjecture may be a right one, we must remember that it is conjecture and no more.
With the Second Epistle to him ends all that we really know of Timothy. Tradition and ingenious guesswork add a little more, which can be neither proved nor disproved. More than two hundred years after his death, Eusebius tells us that he is related to have held the office of overseer of the diocese of Ephesus; and five centuries later Nicephorus tells us that he was beaten to death by the Ephesian mob for protesting against the licentiousness of their worship of Artemis. It has been conjectured that Timothy may be the “Angel” of the Church of Ephesus, who is partly praised and partly blamed in the Apocalypse, and parallels have been drawn between the words of blame in Rev_2:4-5, and the uneasiness which seems to underlie one or two passages in the Second Epistle to Timothy. But the resemblances are too slight to be relied upon. All we can say is that, even if the later date be taken for the Apocalypse, Timothy may have been overseer of the Church of Ephesus at the time when the book was written.
6. In the relation of St. Paul to Timothy we have one of those beautiful friendships between an older and a younger man which are commonly so helpful to both. It is in such cases, rather than where the friends are equal in age, that each can be the real complement of the other. Each by his abundance can supply the other's want, whereas men of equal age would have common wants and common supplies. In this respect the friendship between St. Paul and Timothy reminds us of that between St. Peter and St. John. In each case the friend who took the lead was much older than the other; and (what is less in harmony with ordinary experience) in each case it was the older friend who had the impulse and the enthusiasm, the younger who had the reflectiveness and the reserve. These latter qualities are perhaps less marked in Timothy than in John, but nevertheless they are there, and they are among the leading traits of his character.
It is difficult to estimate which of the two friends gained most from the affection and devotion of the other. No doubt Timothy's debt to St. Paul was immense: and which of us would not think himself amply paid for any amount of service and sacrifice, in having the privilege of being chosen friend of such a man as St. Paul? But, on the other hand, few men could have supplied the Apostle's peculiar needs as Timothy did. That intense craving for sympathy which breathes so strongly throughout the writings of St. Paul found its chief human satisfaction in Timothy. To be alone in a crowd is a trial to most men; and few men have felt the oppressiveness of it more keenly than St. Paul. To have some one, therefore, who loved and reverenced him, who knew his “ways” and could impress them on others, who cared for those for whom St. Paul cared and was ever willing to minister to them as his friend's missioner and delegate-all this and much more was inexpressibly comforting to the Apostle. It gave him strength in his weaknesses, hope in his many disappointments, and solid help in his daily burden of “anxiety for all the churches.”
While his other friends were St. Paul's “brethren in the Lord,” Timothy became to the childless and wifeless Apostle his “beloved son.” We are right, surely, in thinking that not Barnabas, Luke, Apollos, or any other of his companions, was quite so dear to St. Paul, or was admitted so far into his confidence.
The friendship between these two men, so unequal in years and so different in powers, is one of the most suggestive episodes in the early history of the gospel. It was apparently the one mellowing affection that toned down the impassioned vigour of St. Paul; that bound him tenderly to life, and, when he would spring to grasp the heavenly crown, recalled him with a sigh; that mingled a constant human image with his prayers and brought them trembling on his voice; that, homeless as he was, made him feel amid his wanderings, the sadness of absence and of loneliness.
Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.1 [Note: Emerson.]
In the church of San Paolo at Rome a gorgeous baldacchino surmounts the traditional tomb of Paul the Apostle. In immediate juxtaposition with it, in front of the high altar, is a shrine of more modest pretensions, on which is inscribed the one name, which tells its own touching story-
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