_A COMMENDATION: GREETINGS: A WARNING: A DOXOLOGY_
ROMANS xvi. 1-27
Once more, with a reverent licence of thought, we may imagine
ourselves to be watching in detail the scene in the house of Gaius.
Hour upon hour has passed over Paul and his scribe as the wonderful
Message has developed itself, at once and everywhere the word of man
and the Word of God. They began at morning, and the themes of sin, and
righteousness, and glory, of the present and the future of Israel, of
the duties of the Christian life, of the special problems of the Roman
Mission, have carried the hours along to noon, to afternoon. Now, to
the watcher from the westward lattice,
"Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea's hills the setting sun;
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light."
The Apostle, pacing the chamber, as men are wont to do when they use
the pens of others, is aware that his message is at an end, as to
doctrine and counsel. But before he bids his willing and wondering
secretary rest from his labours, he has to discharge his own heart of
the personal thoughts and affections which have lain ready in it all
the while, and which his last words about his coming visit to the City
have brought up in all their life and warmth. And now Paul and Tertius
are no longer alone; other brethren have found their way to the
chamber--Timotheus, Lucius, Jason, Sosipater; Gaius himself; Quartus;
and no less a neighbour than Erastus, Treasurer of Corinth. A page of
personal messages is yet to be dictated, from St Paul, and from his
friends.
Now first he must not forget the pious woman who is--so we surely may
assume--to take charge of this inestimable packet, and to deliver it
at Rome. We know nothing of Phœbe but from this brief mention. We
cannot perhaps be formally certain that she is here described as a
female Church-_official_, a "deaconess" in a sense of that word
familiar in later developments of Church-order--a woman set apart by
the laying-on of hands, appointed to enquire into and relieve temporal
distress, and to be the teacher of female enquirers in the mission.
But there is at least a great likelihood that something like this was
her position; for she was not merely an active Christian, she was "a
ministrant of _the Church_." And she was certainly, as a person,
worthy of reliance and of loving commendatory praise, now that some
cause--absolutely unknown to us; perhaps nothing more unusual than a
change of residence, obliged by private circumstances--took her from
Achaia to Italy. She had been a devoted and it would seem particularly
_a brave_[259] friend of converts in trouble, and of St Paul himself.
Perhaps in the course of her visits to the desolate she had fought
difficult battles of protest, where she found harshness and
oppression. Perhaps she had pleaded the forgotten cause of the poor,
with a woman's courage, before some neglectful richer "brother."
Then Rome itself, as he sees Phœbe reaching it, rises--as yet only
in fancy; it was still unknown to him--upon his mind. And there,
moving up and down in that strange and almost awful world, he sees one
by one the members of a large group of his personal Christian friends,
and his beloved Aquila and Prisca are most visible of all. These must
be individually saluted.
What the nature of these friendships was we know in some instances,
for we are told here. But why the persons were at Rome, in the place
which Paul himself had never reached, we do not know, nor ever shall.
Many students of the Epistle, it is well known, find a serious
difficulty in this list of friends so placed--the persons so familiar,
the place so strange; and they would have us look on this sixteenth
chapter as a fragment from some other Letter, pieced in here by
mistake; or what not. But no ancient copy of the Epistle gives us, by
its condition, any real ground for such conjectures. And all that we
have to do to realize possibilities in the actual features of the
case, is to assume that many at least of this large Roman group, as
surely Aquila and Prisca,[260] had recently migrated from the Levant
to Rome; a migration as common and almost as easy then as is the
modern influx of foreign denizens to London.
Bishop Lightfoot, in an Excursus in his edition of the Philippian
Epistle,[261] has given us reason to think that not a few of the
"Romans" named here by St Paul were members of that "Household of
Cæsar" of which in later days he speaks to the Philippians (iv. 22) as
containing its "saints," saints who send special greetings to the
Macedonian brethren. The _Domus Cæsaris_ included "the whole of the
Imperial household, the meanest slaves, as well as the most powerful
courtiers"; "all persons in the Emperor's service, whether slaves or
freemen, in Italy and even in the provinces." The literature of
sepulchral inscriptions at Rome is peculiarly rich in allusions to
members of "the Household." And it is from this quarter, particularly
from discoveries in it made early in the last century, that Lightfoot
gets good reasons for thinking that in Phil. iv. 22 we may, quite
possibly, be reading a greeting _from_ Rome sent by the very persons
(speaking roundly) who are here greeted in the Epistle _to_ Rome. A
place of burial on the Appian Way, devoted to the ashes of Imperial
freedmen and slaves, and other similar receptacles, all to be dated
with practical certainty about the middle period of the first century,
yield the following names: _Amplias_, _Urbanus_, _Stachys_, _Apelles_,
_Tryphæna_, _Tryphosa_, _Rufus_, _Hermes_, _Hermas_, _Philologus_,
_Julius_, _Nereis_; a name which might have denoted _the sister_ (see
ver. 15) of a man Nereus.
Of course such facts must be used with due reserve in inference. But
they make it abundantly clear that, in Lightfoot's words, "the names
and allusions at the close of the Roman Epistle are in keeping with
the circumstances of the metropolis in St Paul's day." They help us to
a perfectly truthlike theory. We have only to suppose that among St
Paul's converts and friends in Asia and Eastern Europe many either
belonged already to the ubiquitous "Household," or entered it after
conversion, as purchased slaves or otherwise; and that some time
before our Epistle was written there was a large draft from the
provincial to the metropolitan department; and that thus, when St Paul
thought of personal Christian friends at Rome, he would happen to
think, mainly, of "saints of Cæsar's Household." Such a theory would
also, by the way, help to explain the emphasis with which just these
"saints" sent their greeting, later, to Philippi. Many of them might
have lived in Macedonia, and particularly in the _colonia_ of
Philippi, before the time of their supposed transference to Rome.
We may add, from Lightfoot's discussion, a word about "the
households," or "people"--of Aristobulus and Narcissus--mentioned in
the greetings before us. It seems at least likely that the Aristobulus
of the Epistle was a grandson of Herod the Great, and brother of
Agrippa of Judea; a prince who lived and died at Rome. At his death it
would be no improbable thing that his "household" should pass by
legacy to the Emperor, while they would still, as a sort of clan, keep
their old master's name. Aristobulus' servants, probably many of them
Jews (_Herodion_, St Paul's kinsman, may have been a retainer of this
_Herod_), would thus now be a part of "the Household of Cæsar," and
the Christians among them would be a group of "the Household saints."
As to the Narcissus of the Epistle, he may well have been the
all-powerful freedman of Claudius, put to death early in Nero's time.
On his death, his great _familia_ would become, by confiscation, part
of "the Household"; and its Christian members would be thought of by
St Paul as among "the Household saints."
Thus it is at least possible that the holy lives which here pass in
such rapid file before us were lived not only in Rome, but in a
connexion more or less close with the service and business of the
Court of Nero. So freely does grace make light of circumstance.
Now it is time to come from our preliminaries to the text.
[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =But=--the word may mark the movement of thought
from his own delay in reaching them to Phœbe's immediate coming--=I
commend to you Phœbe, our sister,= (this Christian woman bore,
without change, and without reproach, the name of the Moon-Goddess of
the Greeks,) =being a ministrant (διάκονον) of the Church which is
in Cenchreæ,= the Ægæan port of Corinth; [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =that you
may welcome her, in the Lord,= as a fellow-member of His Body, =in a
way worthy of the saints,= with all the respect and the affection of
the Gospel, =and that you may stand by her (παραστῆτε αὐτῇ) in any
matter in which she may need you,= stranger as she will be at Rome.
=For she on her part (αὕτη) has proved[262] a stand-by= (almost =a
champion,= one who _stands up for_ others, προστάτις) =of many,=
aye, =and of me= among them.
[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =Greet Prisca[263] and Aquila (Ἀκύλας), my
co-workers in Christ Jesus;= the friends [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =who
(οἵτινες) for my life's sake submitted their own throat= to the
knife (it was at some stern crisis otherwise utterly unknown to us,
but well known in heaven); =to whom not only I give thanks, but also
all the Churches of the Nations;= for they saved the man whom the Lord
consecrated to the service of the Gentile world. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.]
=And the Church at their house= greet with them; that is, the
Christians of their neighbourhood, who used Aquila's great room as
their house of prayer; the embryo of our parish or district Church.
This provision of a place of worship was an old usage of this holy
pair, whom St Paul's almost reverent affection presents to us in such
a living individuality. They had gathered "_a domestic Church_" at
Corinth, not many months before (1 Cor. xvi. 19). And earlier still,
at Ephesus (Acts xviii. 26), they wielded such a Christian influence
that they must have been a central point of influence and gathering
there also. In Prisca, or Priscilla, as it has been remarked,[264] we
have "an example of what a married woman may do, for the general
service of the Church, in conjunction with home-duties, just as
Phœbe is the type of the unmarried servant of the Church, or
deaconess."
=Greet Epænĕtus, my beloved, who is the firstfruits of Asia,[265]=
that is of the Ephesian Province, =unto Christ;= doubtless one who
"owed his soul" to St Paul in that three years' missionary pastorate
at Ephesus, and who was now bound to him by the indescribable tie
which makes the converter and converted one.
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =Greet Mary=--a Jewess probably, _Miriam_ or
_Maria_,--=for she (ἥτις) toiled hard for you[266];= when and how
we cannot know.
[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =Greet Andronicus and Junias,= _Junianus_, =my
kinsmen, and my fellow-captives in= Christ's =war (συναιχμαλώτους);=
a loving and mindful reference to the human relationships which so
freely, but not lightly, he had sacrificed for Christ, and to some
persecution-battle (was it at Philippi?) when these good men had
shared his prison; =men who (οἵτινες) are distinguished among the
apostles;= either as being themselves, in a secondary sense, devoted
"_apostles_," Christ's missionary delegates, though not of the
Apostolate proper, or as being honoured above the common, for their
toil and their character, by the Apostolic Brotherhood; =who also
before me came to be,= as they are, =in Christ.[267]= Not improbably
these two early converts helped to "goad" (Acts xxvi. 14) the
conscience of their still persecuting Kinsman, and to prepare the way
of Christ in his heart.
[Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =Greet Amplias,= _Ampliatus_, =my beloved in the
Lord;= surely a personal convert of his own.
[Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =Greet Urbanus, my co-worker in Christ, and
Stachys=--another masculine name--=my beloved.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =Greet Apelles, that (τὸν) tested man in
Christ;= the Lord knows, not we, the tests he stood.
=Greet those who belong to Aristobulus' people.[268]=
[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =Greet Herodion, my kinsman.=
=Greet those who belong to Narcissus' people, those who are in the
Lord.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =Greet Tryphæna and Tryphosa,= (almost certainly,
by the type of their names, female _slaves_,) =who toil= in the Lord,
perhaps as "servants of the Church," so far as earthly service would
allow them.
=Greet Persis, the beloved woman,= (with faultless delicacy he does
not here say "_my_ beloved," as he had said of the Christian _men_
mentioned just above,) =for she (ἥτις) toiled hard in the Lord;=
perhaps at some time when St Paul had watched her in a former and more
Eastern home.
[Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =Greet Rufus=--just possibly the Rufus of Mar.
xv. 21, brother of Alexander, and son of Cross-carrying Simon; the
family was evidently known to St Mark, and we have good cause to think
that St Mark wrote primarily for _Roman_ readers--Rufus, =the chosen
man in the Lord,= a saint of the _élite_; =and his mother--and mine!=
This nameless woman had done a mother's part, somehow and somewhere,
to the motherless Missionary, and her lovingkindness stands recorded
now
"In either Book of Life, here and above."
[Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =Greet Asyncrĭtus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrŏbas,
Hermes, and the brethren who are with them;= dwellers perhaps in some
isolated and distant quarter of Rome, a little Church by themselves.
[Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his
sister, and all the saints who are with them,= in their assembly.
[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =Greet one another with a sacred kiss;= the
Oriental pledge of friendship, and of respect. =All= (read πᾶσαι)
=the Churches of Christ greet you;= Corinth, Cenchreæ, "with all the
saints in the whole of Achaia" (2 Cor. i. 1).
* * * * *
The roll of names is over, with its music, that subtle characteristic
of such recitations of human personalities, and with its moving charm
for the heart due almost equally to our glimpses of information about
one here and one there and to our total ignorance about others; an
ignorance of everything about them but that they were at Rome, and
that they were in Christ. We seem, by an effort of imagination, to
see, as through a bright cloud, the faces of the company, and to catch
the far-off voices; but the dream "dissolves in wrecks"; we do not
know them, we do not know their distant world. But we do know HIM in
whom they were, and are; and that they have been "with Him, which is
far better," for now so long a time of rest and glory. Some no doubt
by deaths of terror and wonder, by the fire, by the horrible
wild-beasts, "departed to be with Him"; some went, perhaps, with a
dismissal as gentle as love and stillness could make it. But however,
they were the Lord's; they are with the Lord. And we, in Him,
"Are tending upward too,
As fast as time can move."
So we watch this unknown yet well-beloved company, with a sense of
fellowship and expectation impossible out of Christ. This page is no
mere relic of the past; it is a list of friendships to be made
hereafter, and to be possessed for ever, in the endless life where
personality indeed shall be eternal, but where also the union of
personalities, in Christ, shall be beyond our utmost present thought.
* * * * *
But the Apostle cannot close with these messages of love. He remembers
another and anxious need, a serious spiritual peril in the Roman
community. He has not even alluded to it before, but it must be
handled, however briefly, now:
[Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =But I appeal to you, brethren, to watch the
persons who make the divisions and the stumbling-blocks= you know of,
=alien to the teaching which you learnt= (there is an emphasis on
"_you_," as if to difference the true-hearted converts from these
troublers);--=and do turn away from them;= go, and keep, out of their
way; wise counsel for a peaceable but effectual resistance.
[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =For such people are not bondservants of our Lord
Jesus Christ, but they are bondservants of their own belly.= They talk
much of a mystic freedom; and free indeed they are from the accepted
dominion of the Redeemer--but all the more they are enslaved to
themselves; =and by their (τῆς) pious language and their specious
pleas they quite beguile (ἐξαπατῶσι) the hearts of the simple,= the
unsuspicious. And they may perhaps have special hopes of beguiling
_you_, because of your well-known readiness to submit, with the
submission of faith, to sublime truths; a noble character, but
calling inevitably for the safeguards of intelligent caution:
[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =For your obedience,= "the obedience of faith,"
shewn when the Gospel reached you, =was carried= by report =to all
men,= and so to these beguilers, who hope now to entice your faith
astray. =As regards you, therefore,= looking only at your personal
condition, =I rejoice. Only I wish you to be wise as to what is good,
but uncontaminated= (by defiling knowledge) =as to what is evil.= He
would not have their holy readiness to believe distorted into an
unhallowed and falsely tolerant curiosity. He would have their faith
not only submissive but spiritually intelligent (σαφούς); then they
would be alive to the risks of a counterfeited and illusory "Gospel."
They would feel, as with an educated Christian instinct, where
decisively to hold back, where to refuse attention to unwholesome
teaching. [Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =But the God of our (τῆς) peace will
crush Satan down beneath your feet speedily.= This spiritual mischief,
writhing itself, like the serpent of Paradise, into your happy
precincts, is nothing less than a stratagem of the great Enemy's own;
a movement of his mysterious personal antagonism to your Lord, and to
you His people. But the Enemy's Conqueror, working in you, will make
the struggle short and decisive. Meet the inroad in the name of Him
who has made peace for you, and works peace in you, and it will soon
be over.[269] =The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be= (or may we not
render _is?_) =with you.=
What precisely was the mischief, who precisely were the dangerous
teachers, spoken of here so abruptly and so urgently by St Paul? It is
easier to ask the question than to answer it. Some expositors have
sought a solution in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters, and have
found in an extreme school of theoretical "liberty" these men of
"pious language and specious pleas." But to us this seems impossible.
Almost explicitly, in those chapters, he identifies himself _in
principle_ with "the capable"; certainly there is not a whisper of
horror as regards their principle, and nothing but a friendly while
unreserved reproof for the uncharity of their practice. Here he has in
his mind men whose purposes and whose teachings are nothing but evil;
who are to be--not indeed persecuted but--avoided; not met in
conference, but solemnly refused a further hearing. In our view, the
case was one of embryo _Gnosticism_. The Romans, so we take it, were
troubled by teachers who used the language of Christianity, saying
much of "Redemption," and of "Emancipation," and something of
"Christ," and of "the Spirit"; but all the while they meant a thing
totally different from the Gospel of the Cross. They meant by
redemption and freedom, the liberation of spirit from matter. They
meant by Christ and the Spirit, mere links in a chain of phantom
beings, supposed to span the gulf between the Absolute Unknowable
Existence and the finite World. And their morality too often tended to
the tenet that as matter was hopelessly evil, and spirit the
unfortunate prisoner in matter, the material body had nothing to do
with its unwilling, and pure, Inhabitant: let the body go its own evil
way, and work out its base desires.
Our sketch is taken from developed Gnosticism, such as it is known to
have been a generation or two later than St Paul. But it is more than
likely that such errors were present, in essence, all through the
Apostolic age. And it is easy to see how they could from the first
disguise themselves in the special terminology of the Gospel of
liberty and of the Spirit.
Such things may look to us, after eighteen hundred years, only like
fossils of the old rocks. They are indeed fossil specimens--but of
existing species. The atmosphere of the Christian world is still
infected, from time to time--perhaps more now than a few generations
ago, whatever that fact may mean--with unwholesome subtleties, in
which the purest forms of truth are indescribably manipulated into the
deadliest related error; a mischief sure to betray itself, however,
(where the man tempted to parley with it is at once wakeful and
humble,) by some fatal flaw of pride, or of untruthfulness, or of an
uncleanness however subtle. And for the believer so tempted, under
common circumstances, there is still, as of old, no counsel more
weighty than St Paul's counsel here. If he would deal with such snares
in the right way, he must "_turn away from them_." He must turn away
to the Christ of history. He must occupy himself anew with the
primeval Gospel of pardon, holiness, and heaven.
* * * * *
Is the Letter to be closed here at last? Not quite yet; not until one
and then another of the gathered circle has committed his greetings to
it. And first comes up the dear Timotheus, the man nearest of all to
the strong heart of the Apostle. We seem to see him alive before us,
so much has St Paul, in one Epistle and another, but above all in his
dying Letter to Timotheus himself, contributed to a portrait. He is
many years younger than his leader and Christian father. His face,
full of thought, feeling, and devotion, is rather earnest than strong.
But it has the strength of patience, and of absolute sincerity, and of
rest in Christ. Timotheus repays the affection of Paul with unwavering
fidelity. And he will be true to the end to his Lord and Redeemer,
through whatever tears and agonies of sensibility. Then Lucius will
speak, perhaps the Cyrenian of Antioch (Acts xiii. 1); and Jason,
perhaps the convert of Thessalonica (Acts xvii. 5); and Sosipater,
perhaps the Berean Sopater of Acts xx. 4; three blood-relations of the
Apostle, who was not left utterly alone of human affinities, though he
had laid them all at his Master's feet. Then the faithful Tertius
claims the well-earned privilege of writing one sentence for himself.
And Gaius modestly requests his salutation, and Erastus, the man of
civic dignity and large affairs. He has found no discord between the
tenure of a great secular office and the life of Christ; but to-day he
is just a brother with brethren, named side by side with the Quartus
whose only title is that beautiful one, "_the brother_," "our fellow
in the family of God." So the gathered friends speak each in his turn
to the Christians of the City; we listen as the names are given:
[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =There greets you Timotheus my fellow-worker, and
Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipatrus, my kinsmen.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =There greets you I, Tertius, who wrote the
Epistle in the Lord;= he had been simply Paul's conscious pen, but
also he had willingly drawn the strokes as being one with Christ, and
as working in His cause.
[Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =There greets you Gaius, host of me and of the
whole Church;= universal welcomer to his door of all who love his
beloved Lord, and now particularly of all at Corinth who need his
Lord's Apostle.
=There greets you Erastus, the Treasurer of the City, and Quartus=
(_Kouartos_), =the brother.[270]=
* * * * *
Here, as we seem to discern the scene, there is indeed a pause, and
what might look like an end. Tertius lays down the pen. The circle of
friends breaks up, and Paul is left alone--alone with his unseen Lord,
and with that long, silent Letter; his own, yet not his own. He takes
it in his hands, to read, to ponder, to believe, to call up again the
Roman converts so dear, so far away, and to commit them again for
faith, and for life, to Christ and to His Father. He sees them beset
by the encircling masses of pagan idolatry and vice, and by the
embittered Judaism which meets them at every turn. He sees them
hindered by their own mutual prejudices and mistakes, for they are
sinners still. Lastly, he sees them approached by this serpentine
delusion of an unhallowed mysticism, which would substitute the
thought of matter for that of sin, and reverie for faith, and an
unknowable Somewhat, inaccessible to the finite, for the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then he sees this astonishing
GOSPEL, whose glorious outline and argument he has been caused to
draw, as it was never drawn before, on those papyrus pages; the Truth
of God, not of man; veiled so long, promised so long, known at last;
the Gospel which displays the sinner's peace, the believer's life, the
radiant boundless future of the saints, and, in all and above all, the
eternal Love of the Father and the Son.
In this Gospel, "_his_ Gospel," he sees manifested afresh his GOD. And
he adores Him afresh, and commits to Him afresh these dear ones of the
Roman Mission.
He must give them one word more, to express his overrunning heart. He
must speak to them of HIM who is Almighty for them against the complex
might of evil. He must speak of that Gospel in whose lines the
almighty grace will run. It is the Gospel of Paul, but also and first
the "_proclamation made by Jesus Christ_" of Himself as our Salvation.
It is the Secret "_hushed_" throughout the long æons of the past, but
now spoken out indeed; the Message which the Lord of Ages, choosing
His hour aright, now imperially commands to be announced to the
Nations, that they may submit to it and live. It is the vast
Fulfilment of those mysterious Scriptures which are now the
credentials, and the watchword, of its preachers. It is the supreme
expression of the sole and eternal Wisdom; clear to the intellect of
the heaven-taught child; more unfathomable, even to the heavenly
watchers, than Creation itself. To the God of this Gospel he must now
entrust the Romans, in the glowing words in which he worships HIM
through the Son in whom He is seen and praised. To this God--while the
very language is broken by its own force--he must give glory
everlasting, for His Gospel, and for Himself.
He takes the papers, and the pen. With dim eyes, and in large,
laborious letters,[271] and forgetting at the close, in the intensity
of his soul, to make perfect the grammatical connexion, he inscribes,
in the twilight, this most wonderful of Doxologies. Let us watch him
to its close, and then in silence leave him before his Lord, and ours:
[Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =But to Him who is able to establish you,
according to my Gospel, and the proclamation of,= made by, =Jesus
Christ, true to (κατὰ) (the) unveiling of (the) Secret hushed in
silence during ages of times,= [Sidenote: Ver. 26.] =but manifested
now, and through (the) prophetic Scriptures, according to the edict of
the God of Ages, for faith's obedience, published among all the
Nations=--[Sidenote: Ver. 27.] =to God Only Wise, through Jesus
Christ--to whom be the glory unto the ages of the ages. Amen.=
[259] See on προστάτις below.
[260] See 1 Cor. xvi. 19.
[261] Pp. 171-178 (eighth edition).
[262] Lit., "_did prove_": it is the epistolary aorist.
[263] Read Πρίσκαν not Πρίσκιλλαν.
[264] By the late Dean Howson, in Smith's _Bible Dictionary_.
[265] So certainly read, not Ἀχαΐας.
[266] Reading ὑμᾶς.
[267] The perfect, γέγονασι, γέγοναν, imports the permanence of
their blessed position, up to the date.
[268] See above, p. 425, on this allusion, and on _Herodion_, and on
"_Narcissus' people_."
[269] In our short Commentary on the Epistle in _The Cambridge Bible_
we advocate a rather different view of these verses in detail. But the
main reference seems to us to be what it then seemed.
[270] Ver. 24 is probably to be omitted, as an insertion after date.
[271] Gal. vi. 11: "See with _what great letters_ I have written to
you, _in autograph_!" It has been remarked that this great Doxology
bears a literary likeness to other passages which he probably wrote
with his own hand.
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THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.
_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each vol._
FIRST SERIES, 1887-8.
Colossians.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D.
St. Mark.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh.
Genesis.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
1 Samuel.
By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
2 Samuel.
By the Same Author.
Hebrews.
By Principal T. C. EDWARDS, D.D.
SECOND SERIES, 1888-9.
Galatians.
By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
The Pastoral Epistles.
By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
Isaiah I.-XXXIX.
By G. A. SMITH, M.A. Vol. I
The Book of Revelation.
By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.
1 Corinthians.
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The Epistles of St. John.
By Rt. Rev. W. ALEXANDER, D.D.
THIRD SERIES, 1889-90.
Judges and Ruth.
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Jeremiah.
By Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.
Isaiah XL.-LXVI.
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Exodus.
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St. Luke.
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FOURTH SERIES, 1890-1.
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St. James and St. Jude.
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Proverbs.
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FIFTH SERIES, 1891-2.
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1 and 2 Thessalonians.
By JAS. DENNEY, B.D.
The Book of Job.
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Ephesians.
By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
The Gospel of St. John.
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The Acts of the Apostles.
By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II.
SIXTH SERIES, 1892-3.
Philippians.
By Principal RAINY, D.D.
1 Kings.
By Ven. Archdeacon FARRAR, D.D.
Joshua.
By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
The Psalms.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. II.
The Epistles of St. Peter.
By Prof. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.
SEVENTH SERIES, 1893-4.
Romans.
By HANDLEY C. G. MOULE, M.A.
2 Kings.
By Ven. Archdeacon FARRAR, D.D.
1 Chronicles.
By Rev. Prof. BENNETT, M.A.
2 Corinthians.
By JAMES DENNEY, B.D.
Numbers.
By R. A. WATSON, D.D.
The Psalms.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. III.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans, by Handley C. G. Moule