PERSIS

'Salute the beloved Persis, who laboured much in

the Lord.'--ROMANS xvi. 12.

There are a great number of otherwise unknown Christians who pass for

a moment before our view in this chapter. Their characterisations are

like the slight outlines in the background of some great artist's

canvas: a touch of the brush is all that is spared for each, and yet,

if we like to look sympathetically, they live before us. Now, this

good woman, about whom we never hear again, and for whom these few

words are all her epitaph--was apparently, judging by her name, of

Persian descent, and possibly had been brought to Rome as a slave. At

all events, finding herself there, she had somehow or other become

connected with the Church in that city, and had there distinguished

herself by continuous and faithful Christian toil which had won the

affection of the Apostle, though he had never seen her, and knew no

more about her. That is all. She comes into the foreground for a

moment, and then she vanishes. What does she say to us?

First of all, like the others named by Paul, she helps us to

understand, by her living example, that wonderful, new, uniting

process that was carried on by means of Christianity. The simple fact

of a Persian woman getting a loving message from a Jew, the woman

being in Rome and the Jew in Corinth, and the message being written

in Greek, brings before us a whole group of nationalities all fused

together. They had been hammered together, or, if you like it better,

chained together, by Roman power, but they were melted together by

Christ's Gospel. This Eastern woman and this Jewish man, and the many

others whose names and different nationalities pass in a flash before

us in this chapter, were all brought together in Jesus Christ.

If we run our eye over these salutations, what strikes one, even at

the first sight, is the very small number of Jewish names; only one

certain, and another doubtful. Four or five names are Latin, and then

all the rest are Greek, but this woman seemingly came from further

east than any of them. There they all were, forgetting the hostile

nationalities to which they belonged, because they had found One who

had brought them into one great community. We talk about the uniting

influence of Christianity, but when we see the process going on

before us, in a case like this, we begin to understand it better.

But another point may be noticed in regard to this uniting

process--how it brought into action the purest and truest love as a

bond that linked men. There are four or five of the people commended

in this chapter of whom the Apostle has nothing to say but that they

are beloved. This is the only woman to whom he applies that term. And

notice his instinctive delicacy: when he is speaking of men he says,

'_My_ beloved'; when he is greeting Persis he says, '_the_ beloved,'

that there may be no misunderstanding about the 'my'--'the beloved

Persis which laboured much in the Lord'--indicating, by one delicate

touch, the loftiness, the purity, and truly Christian character of

the bond that held them together. And that is no true Church, where

anything but that is the bond--the love that knits us to one another,

because we believe that each is knit to the dear Lord and fountain of

all love.

What more does this good woman say to us? She is an example living

and breathing there before us, of what a woman may be in God's

Church. Paul had never been in Rome; no Apostle, so far as we know,

had had anything to do with the founding of the Church. The most

important Church in the Roman Empire, and the Church which afterwards

became the curse of Christendom, was founded by some anonymous

Christians, with no commission, with no supervision, with no

officials amongst them, but who just had the grace of God in their

hearts, and found themselves in Rome, and could not help speaking

about Jesus Christ. God helped them, and a little Church sprang into

being. And the great abundance of salutations here, and the

honourable titles which the Apostle gives to the Christians of whom

he speaks, and many of whom he signalises as having done great

service, are a kind of certificate on his part to the vigorous life

which, without any apostolic supervision or official direction, had

developed itself there in that Church.

Now, it is to be noticed that this striking form of eulogium which is

attached to our Persis she shares in common with others in the group.

And it is to be further noticed that all those who are, as it were,

decorated with this medal--on whom Paul bestows this honour of saying

that they had 'laboured,' or 'laboured much in the Lord,' are women

that stand alone in the list. There are several other women in it,

but they are all coupled with men--husbands or brothers, or some kind

of relative. But there are three sets of women, I do not say single

women, but three sets of women, standing singly in the list, and it

is about them, and them only, that Paul says they 'laboured,' or

'laboured much.' There is a Mary who stands alone, and she 'bestowed

much labour on' Paul and others. Then there are, in the same verse as

my text, two sisters, Tryphena and Tryphosa, whose names mean 'the

luxurious.' And the Apostle seems to think, as he writes the two

names that spoke of self-indulgence: 'Perhaps these rightly described

these two women once, but they do not now. In the bad old days,

before they were Christians, they may have been rightly named

luxurious-living. But here is their name now, the luxurious is turned

into the self-sacrificing worker, and the two sisters "labour in the

Lord."' Then comes our friend Persis, who also stands alone, and she

shares in the honour that only these other two companies of women

share with her. She 'laboured much in the Lord.' In that little

community, without any direction from Apostles and authorised

teachers, the brethren and sisters had every one found their tasks;

and these solitary women, with nobody to say to them, 'Go and do this

or that,' had found out for themselves, or rather had been taught by

the Spirit of Jesus, what they had to do, and they worked at it with

a will. There are many things that Christian women can do a great

deal better than men, and we are not to forget that this modern talk

about the emancipation of women has its roots here in the New

Testament. We are not to forget either that prerogative means

obligation, and that the elevation of woman means the laying upon her

of solemn duties to perform. I wonder how many of the women members

of our Churches and congregations deserve such a designation as that?

We hear a great deal about 'women's rights' nowadays. I wish some of

my friends would lay a little more to heart than they do, 'women's

duties.'

And now, lastly, the final lesson that I draw from this eulogium of an

otherwise altogether unknown woman is that she is a model of

Christian service.

First, in regard to its measure. She 'laboured much in the Lord.'

Now, both these two words, 'laboured' and 'much,' are extremely

emphatic. The word rightly translated 'laboured' will appear in its

full force if I recall to you a couple of other places in which it is

employed in the New Testament. You remember that touching incident

about our Lord when, being '_wearied_ with His journey, He sat

thus on the well.' 'Wearied' is the same word as is here used. Then,

you remember how the Apostle, after he had been hauling empty nets

all night in the little, wet, dirty fishing-boat, said, perhaps with

a yawn, 'Master, we have _toiled_ all the night and caught

nothing.' He uses the same word as is employed here. Such is the sort

of work that these women had done--work carried to the point of

exhaustion, work up to the very edge of their powers, work unsparing

and continuous, and not done once in some flash of evanescent

enthusiasm, but all through a dreary night, in spite of apparent

failures.

_There_ is the measure of service. Many of us seem to think that

if we say 'I am tired,' that is a reason for not doing anything.

Sometimes it is, no doubt; and no man has a right so to labour as to

impair his capacity for future labour, but subject to that condition

I do not know that the plea of fatigue is a sufficient reason for

idleness. And I am quite sure that the true example for us is the

example of Him who, when He was most wearied, sitting on the well,

was so invigorated and refreshed by the opportunity of winning

another soul that, when His disciples came back to Him, they looked

at His fresh strength with astonishment, and said to themselves, 'Has

any man brought Him anything to eat?' Ay, what He had to eat was work

that He finished for the Father, and some of us know that the truest

refreshment in toil is a change of toil. It is almost as good to

shift the load on to the other shoulder, or to take a stick into the

other hand, as it is to put away the load altogether. Oh, the careful

limits which Christian people nowadays set to their work for Jesus!

They are not afraid of being tired in their pursuit of business or

pleasure, but in regard to Christ's work they will let anything go to

wrack and ruin rather than that they should turn a hair, by

persevering efforts to prevent it. Work to the limit of power if you

live in the light of blessedness.

She 'laboured much in the Lord,' or, as Jesus Christ said about the

other woman who was blamed by the people that did not love enough to

understand the blessedness of self-sacrifice, 'she had done what she

could.' It was an apology for the form of Mary's service, but it was

a stringent demand as to its amount. 'What she could'--not _half_ of

what she could; not what she _conveniently_ could. That is the

measure of acceptable service.

Then, still further, may we not learn from Persis the spring of all

true Christian work? She 'laboured much in the Lord,' because she

_was_ 'in Him,' and in union with Him there came to her power

and desire to do things which, without that close fellowship, she

neither would have desired nor been able to do. It is vain to try to

whip up Christian people to forms of service by appealing to lower

motives. There is only one motive that will last, and bring out from

us all that is in us to do, and that is the appeal to our sense of

union and communion with Jesus Christ, and the exhortation to live in

Him, and then we shall work in Him. If you link the spindles in your

mill, or the looms in your weaving-shed, with the engine, they will

go. It is of no use to try to turn them by hand. You will only spoil

the machinery, and it will be poor work that you will get off them.

So, dear brethren, be 'in the Lord.' That is the secret of service,

and the closer we come to Him, and the more continuously, moment by

moment, we realise our individual dependence upon Him, and our union

with Him, the more will our lives effloresce and blossom into all

manner of excellence and joyful service, and nothing else that

Christian people are whipped up to do, from lower and more vulgar

motives than that, will. It may be of a certain kind of

inferior value, but it is far beneath the highest beauty of Christian

service, nor will its issues reach the loftiest point of usefulness

to which even our poor service may attain.

Persis seems to me to suggest, too, the safeguard of work. Ah, if she

had not 'laboured in the Lord,' and been 'in the Lord' whilst she was

labouring, she would very soon have stopped work. Our Christian work,

however pure its motive when we begin it, has in itself the tendency

to become mechanical, and to be done from lower motives than those

from which it was begun. That is true about a man in my position. It

is true about all of us, in our several ways of trying to serve our

dear Lord and Master. Unless we make a conscience of continually

renewing our communion with Him, and getting our feet once more

firmly upon the rock, we shall certainly in our Christian work,

having begun in the spirit, continue in the flesh, and before we know

where we are, we shall be doing work from habit, because we did it

yesterday at this hour, because people expect it of us, because A, B,

or C does it, or for a hundred other reasons, all of which are but

too familiar to us by experience. They are sure to slip in; they

change the whole character of the work, and they harm the workers.

The only way by which we can keep the garland fresh is by continually

dipping it in the fountain. The only way by which we can keep our

Christian work pure, useful, worthy of the Master, is by seeing to it

that our work itself does not draw us away from our fellowship with

Him. And the more we have to do, the more needful is it that we

should listen to Christ's voice when He says to us, 'Come ye

yourselves apart with Me into a solitary place, and there renew your

communion with Me.'

The last lesson about our work which I draw from Persis is the

unexpected immortality of true Christian service. How Persis would

have opened her eyes if anybody had told her that nearly 1900 years

after she lived, people in a far-away barbarous island would be

sitting thinking about her, as you and I are doing now! How

astonished she would have been if it had been said to her, 'Now,

Persis, wheresoever in the whole world the Gospel is preached, your

name and your work and your epitaph will go with it, and as long

as men know about Jesus Christ, your and their Master, they will know

about you, His humble servant.' Well, we shall not have our names in

that fashion in men's memories, but Jesus will have your name and

mine, if we do His work as this woman did it, in _His_ memory. 'I

will never forget any of their works.' And if we--self-forgetful to

the limit of our power, and as the joyful result of our personal

union with that Saviour who has done everything for us--try to live

for His praise and glory in any fashion, then be sure of this, that

our poor deeds are as immortal as Him for whom they are done, and

that we may take to ourselves the great word which He has spoken,

when He has declared that at the last He will confess His confessors'

names before the angels in heaven. Blessed are the living that 'live

in the Lord'; blessed are the workers that work 'in the Lord,' for

when they come to be the dead that 'die in the Lord' and rest from

their labours, their works shall follow them.