On the contrary, he bids his hearers rejoice in the Lord alway; he himself thanked God, and took courage; he tells his disciples that he has learnt in whatsoever state he is, to be content. He is poor, yet making many rich. He has nothing, yet possesses all things. He has that peace of God which passeth all understanding, that good part which shall not be taken away. The heathen tyrant can make him a prisoner, but his chains cannot keep him from the glorious freedom of the sons of God. Persecution may drive him from his home, but nothing can rob him of his home eternal in the Heavens. The sword of the Roman may slay him, but to him to die is gain, and he is ready to be offered. He has suffered want, and sorrow, and loss; he has endured perils by land and by sea, by robbers, by shipwreck, by the heathen, and by his own countrymen, but for this S. Paul cares not, he has kept the faith, he has run the race set before him, looking unto Jesus, and he knows that the crown of glory is laid up for him. A great preacher of our day tells us how they brought the news to Athens that the battle of Marathon was won. The swiftest runner had come panting and exhausted with the glad tidings of victory, and worn out with exertion, he dropped, and died on the threshold of the first house he reached, sobbing out with dying breath the words--"Farewell, and rejoice ye, we, too, rejoice." So the Apostle, the prisoner of the Lord, dying daily, and expecting each hour to be his last, tells the glad tidings of Christ's victory over sin and death, and whispers with his dying breath, "rejoice." It is no wonder that such a preacher should have produced marvellous results, and should have begotten many spiritual children, as he tells us, in his bonds. Luke, his fellow traveller through so many varied scenes, was there to comfort Paul the aged in his bonds. Tychicus, who had formerly accompanied him from Corinth to Ephesus, was ready to carry the Apostle's letters to the Churches; and Mark, who had once failed in his ministry, was once more restored to the side of his great teacher. Others, too, were with him, but none perhaps was dearer to S. Paul than a certain slave, Onesimus, who had fled from his master, Philemon, in Colossae. This runaway slave had found his way to Rome, and here probably some one, who had seen him in the house of his Christian master, took pity on the fugitive, and brought him to S. Paul. How tenderly the prisoner of the Lord dealt with the erring slave we can well imagine, as we read the loving words which the Apostle wrote in his Epistle to Philemon. Then, too, we can fancy the prisoner of the Lord talking to his jailor, the stern Roman soldier, who was chained to him night and day. Often in the long night watches, when the care of all the Churches kept S. Paul from sleep, he must have conversed with the warrior so closely linked to him. I think we may believe that a yet closer link than that of the iron chain at