2 Timothy 4:11

2 Timothy 4:11

Physician and Evangelist.

I. St. Paul had been suffering from serious illness in Galatia. Very soon afterwards St. Luke appears with him, for the first time, in Troas. During subsequent years they were frequently associated together in the closest intimacy, and we have the best reasons for believing that St. Paul's health was always delicate. What so natural as to suppose that the first acquaintance at Troas was marked by the exercise of St. Luke's medical skill, and that the same skill was on many subsequent occasions available for the alleviation of suffering and fatigue?

II. It is no fancy which detects in St. Luke's Gospel the traces of a professional feeling in various incidental passages, as well as in allusions to subjects which may properly be called medical. The main feature, however, of the collect for St. Luke's Day, is that it lays hold of that fact concerning him which has been noted above, and turns it to a spiritual use that is, sets before us this Evangelist and Physician of the soul, and offers up the supplication that, by the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed. Those who are suffering deeply from sorrow or sin do often find in St. Luke's Gospel a special consolation. We could not find anywhere a more wholesome medicine in all times of sin and weakness and temptation, than in those passages concerning prayer, which St. Luke's Gospel, and his Gospel alone, contains for us. If in other places the doctrine delivered by him is soothing and consoling in sorrow, these are medicinal and remedial for the worst diseases of the soul.

J. S. Howson, Our Collects, Epistles, and Gospels,p. 144.

References: 2 Timothy 4:6. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvii., No. 989; W. J. Knox Little, Manchester Sermons,p. 259; P. Brooks, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxix., p. 300; H. Simon, Ibid.,p. 36; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. xxx., p. 341; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 275; Homilist,vol. v., p. 194. 2 Timothy 4:6. Homilist,vol. v., p. 337; 2nd series, vol. ii., p. 617; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. viii., p. 87; A. Maclaren, The Secret of Power,p. 313.