well ask ourselves whether there is anything in our lives by which we should thus wish to be remembered.  All our many activities will sink into silence; but if the stream of our life, which has borne along down its course so much mud and sand, has brought some grains of gold in the form of faithful and loving service to Christ and men—­these will not be lost in the ocean, but treasured by Him.  What we do for Jesus and to spread the knowledge of His name is the immortal part of our mortal lives, and abides in His memory and in blessed results in our own characters, when all the rest that made our busy and often stormy days has passed into oblivion.  All that we know of Tertius who wrote this Epistle is that he wrote it.  Well will it be for us if the summary of our lives be something like that of his!

QUARTUS A BROTHER

   ’Quartus a brother.’—­ROMANS xvi. 23.

I am afraid very few of us read often, or with much interest, those long lists of names at the end of Paul’s letters.  And yet there are plenty of lessons in them, if anybody will look at them lovingly and carefully.  There does not seem much in these three words; but I am very much mistaken if they will not prove to be full of beauty and pathos, and to open out into a wonderful revelation of what Christianity is and does, as soon as we try to freshen them up into some kind of human interest.

It is easy for us to make a little picture of this brother Quartus.  He is evidently an entire stranger to the Church in Rome.  They had never heard his name before:  none of them knew anything about him.  Further, he is evidently a man of no especial reputation or position in the Church at Corinth, from which Paul writes.  He contrasts strikingly with the others who send salutations to Rome.  ’Timotheus, my work-fellow’—­the companion and helper of the Apostle, whose name was known everywhere among the Churches, heads the list.  Then come other prominent men of his more immediate circle.  Then follows a loving greeting from Paul’s amanuensis, who, naturally, as the pen is in his own hand, says:  ’I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.’  Then Paul begins again to dictate, and the list runs on.  Next comes a message from ’Gaius mine host, and of the whole Church’—­an influential man in the community, apparently rich, and willing, as well as able, to extend to them large and loving hospitality.  Erastus, the chamberlain or treasurer of the city, follows—­a man of consequence in Corinth.  And then, among all these people of mark, comes the modest, quiet Quartus.  He has no wealth like Gaius, nor civic position like Erastus, nor wide reputation like Timothy.  He is only a good, simple, unknown Christian.  He feels a spring of love open in his heart to these brethren far across the sea, whom he never met.  He would like them to know that he thought lovingly of them, and to be lovingly thought of by them.  So he begs a little corner in Paul’s letter, and gets it; and there, in his little niche, like some statue of a forgotten saint, scarce seen amidst the glories of a great cathedral, ‘Quartus a brother’ stands to all time.