The life and work of St. Paul

260 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
shrinking modesty, 1 to console the persecuted Churches of Macedonia, 2 or
face the conceited turbulence of Corinth, 3 or to be the overseer of the Church
of Ephesus, 4 with its many troubles from without and from within. In fact,
no name is so closely associated with St. Paul's as that of Timothy. Not
only were two Epistles addressed to him, but he is associated with St. Paul in
the superscription of
6
five ; he was with the Apostle during great part of his
second missionary journey; 6 he was with him at Ephesus: 7 he accompanied
8 him in his last voyage to Jerusalem he ; helped to comfort his first imprison-
9 ment at Borne he ; is urged, in the Second Epistle addressed to him, to hasten
from Ephesus, to bring with him the cloak, books, and parchments which St.
Paul had left with Carpus at Troas, and to join him in his second imprisonment
before it is too late to see him alive. 10 Some sixteen years had elapsed
11 between the days when Paul took Timothy as his companion at Lystra, and
the days when, in the weary desolation of his imprisoned ago, he writes once
12 more to this beloved disciple. Tet even at this latter date St. Paul addresses
him as though he were the same youth who had first accompanied him to the
hallowed work.
" To him," says Hausrath, " as to the- Christian Achilles, the
Timotheus -legend attributes eternal youth;" this being, according to the
writer, one of the signs that the two pastoral Epistles addressed to Timothy
were the work of a writer in the second century. 13 But surely it is obvious
that if Timothy, when St. Paul first won him over to the faith of Christ, was
not more than sixteen or seventeen years old, he would be still far short of the
prime of life when the Second Epistle was addressed to him ; and that, even
if he were older, there is no more familiar experience than an old man's
momentary forgetfulness that those whom he has known as boys have grown
14
to full manhood.
up
This was the youth whose companionship Paul now secured. Young as
he was, the quick eye of Paul saw in him the spirit of loving and fearful
duty read the indications of one of those simple,
faithful natures which
combine the glow of courage with the bloom of modesty. When Jesus had
sent forth His disciples He had sent them forth two and two ; but this was
only in their native land. It was a very different thing to travel in all
weathers, through the blinding dust and bnrniug heat of the plains of
Lycaonia, and over the black volcanic crags and shelterless mountain ranges
of Asia. He had suffered from the departure of Mark in Pisidia, and hence-
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1 1 Cor. iv. 17 ; xvi. 10, o