Wonderful is the great use of small occasions everywhere in Scripture. Minor incidents in a biography are texts for sentences which afford oracles of truth and hope for ever. Local and transitory errors, like that of the Thessalonians about their departed friends, give opportunity for a prophecy on which bereaved hearts are to rest and rejoice till the last trumpet sounds. The unhappy disagreement of two pious women at Philippi is dealt with in words which lead up to the thought of the eternal love of God for His chosen; as if the very unworthiness of the matter in hand, by a sort of repulsion, drove the inspired thought to the utmost height, without for one moment diverting it from its purpose of peace and blessing. And now, in the passage which is to follow, the thought still keeps its high and holy level. It says no more indeed of the Book of Life. But it unfolds in one sentence after another the manifestation here below of the eternal life in all its holy loveliness. It invites Euodia, and Syntyche, and us with them, to the sight of what the believer is called to be, and may be, day by day, as he rejoices in the Lord, and recollects His presence, and tells Him everything as it comes, and so lives "in rest and quietness," deep in His peace; and finds his happy thoughts occupied not with the miseries of self-esteem and self-assertion, but with all that is pure and good, in the smile of the God of peace. The passage now to be translated has surely this among its other precious attractions and benefits, that it stands related to what has gone just before. The precepts and promises are not given as it were in the air; they are occasioned by Euodia and Syntyche, or rather by what they have suggested to St Paul's mind, the crime and distress of an unchristian spirit in Christians. It is with this he is dealing. And he deals with it not by an elaborate exposure of its obvious wrong, but by carrying it into the sanctuary of holiness and peace, there to die. With this recollection let us read the words now before us. Ver. 4. +Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say+ (_ero_), +Rejoice+; I have said it above, as my antidote-word to every subtle error; I come back (_palin_) to say it again, as my antidote to self-will. Your Ver. 5. +yieldingness+, your selflessness, the spirit which will yield in _anything_ that is only of self, for Christ's sake, +let it be known to all men+, let it be proved a reality in real life, by all and sundry who have to do with you; +the Lord is near+, always beside you, to