Digging Deeper for such a time as this: ***Part 2 of 2*** ST. LUKE THE COMPANION Luke, the beloved physician.—Col. 4:14. Only Luke is with me.—2 Tim. 4:11. BY early tradition, or by putting together incidental indications, we are able to discern that there came from among the men of Antioch one—a physician by profession—who travelled on his missionary journeys with St. Paul, and by and by, before he died, wrote the story of that life of Jesus which lay at the back of all the teaching in which the missionary journeys were engaged. And yet there is something more; for careful and ingenious study has seemed to make it clear that St. Luke’s character as a physician was a genuine and significant thing, and that it remained a strong and influential fact even after he became a missionary. His style, his choice of words, the special events of Christ’s life which he selects for his narration, bear marks of the physician’s habits of thought and speech; and an exceedingly ingenious comparison of times has made it curiously appear that Luke on several occasions came to Paul just when the great Apostle was most overcome with weakness, or was just recovering from some one of the severe attacks which every now and then broke down his feeble strength. Indeed, we feel in these words from the letter to the Colossians, “Luke, the beloved physician,” that Paul is speaking not merely of one who once had been, but of one who now was, in practice of the art of healing. It is a present fact. It is a fact that excites affection. It is as a physician, among other things, that Luke travels with Paul from land to land or shares his long imprisonment at Rome. ¶ Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, author of Rab and his Friends and Marjorie Fleming, was not only a skilful and successful physician, but also a writer whose quality was eminently sanative. He had been richly dowered with the gift of the Healer, and it flowed out from him not more conspicuously in his professional practice than in the charm of social intercourse and the cheerful magic of his pen. I THE PHYSICIAN 1. The companionship between St. Luke and St. Paul was not at first of long duration. Luke joined Paul at Troas and went with him into Macedonia, but parted from the Apostle—the reason is unknown—while yet at Philippi, to join him again after some years had passed—this time also at Troas. Then he accompanied Paul from Troas by Miletus and Cæsarea to Jerusalem, together with a number of companions, including the Jewish Christian Aristarchus of Thessalonica. In Jerusalem, where he saw James and the presbyters, but none of the Apostles (not even Peter), he seems to have stayed only a short time, for he does not represent himself as having been an eyewitness of what befell the Apostle here and in Cæsarea. But when Paul set out as a prisoner on the long voyage to Rome, we find Luke again in his company. With this exception, Aristarchus alone of the Apostle’s friends voyaged with him. Paul was an invalid when he began the voyage. Only one day after the Apostle had begun his voyage he was obliged to land at Sidon to take advantage of the special care of his friends, having obtained the permission of his humane commanding officer. In Malta, where they were compelled to make a considerable stay, Luke (together with the Apostle) had the opportunity of practising his medical art (Acts 28:2f.). In Rome he tarried a considerable time with Paul, as his physician, and took part in the work of evangelization (Philem. 24). Yet he did not, like Aristarchus, share the Apostle’s imprisonment (Col. 4:10). Besides Jesus Justus, Epaphras, Demas, and others, he there made the acquaintance of Mark, the cousin of Barnabas (Col. 4:10). While Demas, who is mentioned in both Colossians and Philemon, along with Luke, deserted the Apostle from sordid motives in 66, after the Apostle’s second arrest, and when his life was in constant danger, Luke remained faithfully with him. “Only Luke is with me” (2 Tim. 4:11)—that is the last we hear of him. But we know from his works that he survived the destruction of Jerusalem, and was still at work a good time afterwards. Two clouds before the summer gale In equal race fleet o’er the sky: Two flowers, when wintry blasts assail, Together pine, together die. But two capricious human hearts— No sage’s rod may track their ways, No eye pursue their lawless starts Along their wild, self-chosen maze. He only, by whose sovereign hand Even sinners for the evil day Were made—who rules the world He plann’d, Turning our worst His own good way; He only can the cause reveal, Why, at the same fond bosom fed, Taught in the self-same lap to kneel Till the same prayer were duly said, Brothers in blood and nurture too, Aliens in heart so oft should prove; One lose, the other keep, Heaven’s clue; One dwell in wrath, and one in love. Two converts, watching by his side, Alike his love and greetings share; Luke the beloved, the sick soul’s guide, And Demas, named in faltering prayer. Pass a few years—look in once more— The saint is in his bonds again; Save that his hopes more boldly soar, He and his lot unchanged remain. But only Luke is with him now:— Alas! that even the martyr’s cell, Heaven’s very gate, should scope allow For the false world’s seducing spell. Ah! dearest mother, since too oft The world yet wins some Demas frail Even from thine arms, so kind and soft, May thy tried comforts never fail! When faithless ones forsake thy wing, Be it vouchsafed thee still to see Thy true, fond nurslings closer cling, Cling closer to their Lord and thee. 2. If we test what we know of Luke by the historical work which bears his name, we obtain the following results: (1) Luke is never mentioned in the Acts, which is just what we should expect if he himself was the author of the book. On the other hand, Aristarchus is mentioned three times—the man who is named with Luke in the Epistles of St. Paul. What reason, then, can we give for the omission of Luke’s name in the Acts? (2) Luke was a physician, and thus belonged to the middle or higher plane of contemporary culture. To this plane we are directed not only by the prologue of the Gospel, but by the literary standard attained in the whole work. The man who could compose speeches like those of Paul in the Acts,—to mention only the most important point,—who also possessed gifts of style and narrative like those of this writer, who knew so well how much to say and could so well arrange his material in accordance with the purpose of his work—this man possessed the higher culture in rich measure. In the familiar “we” passages, one must recognize how carefully Luke distinguishes between “we” and Paul. Wherever it is reasonably possible, in view of historic and literary truth, he emphasizes Paul and keeps the “we” modestly in the background. Let us take into account the narrative in Acts 28:8–10: “And it was so, that the father of Publius lay sick of fever and dysentery: unto whom Paul entered in, and prayed, and laying his hands on him healed him. And when this was done, the rest also which had diseases in the island came, and were cured (more correctly, “received medical treatment”): who also honoured us with many honours.” In this passage attention is concentrated on Paul, so long as historic truth allowed; but Paul’s healing power by prayer and faith could not always be exercised. Such power is efficacious only occasionally, in suitable circumstances and on suitable persons. As soon as it begins to be exercised on all and sundry, it begins to fail, and a career of pretence deepening into imposture begins. Accordingly, when the invalids came in numbers, medical advice was employed to supplement the faith-cure, and the physician Luke became prominent. Hence the people honoured not “Paul,” but “us.” The figures of Paul and Luke walking together through history as the ministers of Christ—the image of theology and medicine labouring in harmony for the redemption of man, for the saving of body, soul, and spirit—are very sacred and impressive. “Not bread alone” but bread before all else For these: the bodily want serve first, said I; If earth-space and the life-time help not here, Where is the good of body having been? But, helping body, if we somewhat baulk The soul of finer fare, such food’s to find Elsewhere and afterward. ¶ John Locke and Thomas Sydenham—the one the founder of our analytical philosophy of mind, and the other of our practical medicine—were not only great personal friends, but were of essential use to each other in their respective departments; and we may safely affirm, that for much in the Essay on Human Understanding we are indebted to its author’s intimacy with Sydenham. And Sydenham, it is well known, in the dedicatory letter to their common friend Dr. Mapletoft, expresses his obligation to Locke. The body is the spirit’s cell, But ’tis the avenue as well Charged, through the finite, to transmit The message of the infinite. ’Tis by the aid of mortal eyes That man immortal truth descries; ’Tis by the aid of mortal ears That he immortal tidings hears, And by the help of every sense May recognize God’s providence. ¶ Able, cautious, and experienced physicians are gifts of God. They are the ministers of nature, to whom human life is confided; but a moment’s negligence may ruin everything. No physician should take a single step, but in humility and the fear of God; they who are without the fear of God are mere homicides. II THE FRIEND Two causes have been advanced in explanation of our friendships—that of natural affinity, as expressed in Montaigne’s eulogy of his friend: “If any man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I can but answer, because it was he, because it was I”; and that deeper conviction that there is something of Divine providence in the circumstances which effect the coming together of kindred souls, as Emerson would have it: “My friends have come to me unsought; the great God gave them me.” It is in this latter view that the secret of Luke’s attachment to and admiration for Paul is to be found. That such a friendship existed, and that it was sustained until the martyrdom of Paul severed the golden bond, is beyond controversy. 1. Foremost among the qualities which equipped Luke for the work of comradeship to which the providence of God had called him was his consecrated culture. Both Luke and Paul had a genuine love of learning, but the scholarship of the one differed in details from that of the other. Paul’s mind was of a deeper, more philosophic mould than that of Luke. And Luke’s was more artistic. The resultant interplay of mind upon mind must have been to the mutual advantage of each. We owe to the pen of Luke an almost perfect portrait of his friend. And we have but to read the Third Gospel carefully, noting the while the studied use of such characteristically Pauline words as “faith,” “mercy,” “grace,” and “remission,” to see the debt that Luke owed to Paul. The accurate scholarship and literary genius of Luke, his rare gift of observation, his careful mode of expression, his capacity for taking pains, which even his easy and polished sentences fail to hide, his refined and sensitive nature, together with his oneness with the high ideals of Paul’s ministry, made him peculiarly the man whom the Apostle needed. Luke had a habit, too, of deliberate self-effacement, and we search in vain for any reference to himself in his writings. He is content to be historian and biographer, but he is careful to make succeeding generations discover for themselves the authorship of this finest biographical fragment in the world. ¶ In society and politics we call those great who have devoted their energies to some noble cause, or have influenced the course of things in some extraordinary way. But in every instance, whether in art, science, or religion, or public life, there is a universal condition, that a man shall have forgotten himself in his work. If any fraction of his attention is given to the honours or rewards which success will bring him, there will be a taint of weakness in what he does. ¶ In his writings Walter Pater shrinks from all definiteness and avoids, by the very habit of his mind, anything like unqualified assertion, employing the impersonal method of parable, or story, or criticism. But throughout, it is a veil which hides nothing that it is profitable for us to know. In Pater’s view, such reticence and self-effacing is but a true man’s modesty. 2. Under the surface of Luke’s narrative of Paul’s journeys and labours there moves a current of strong personal affection and enthusiastic admiration for him. Paul is the author’s hero. His general aim is to describe the development of the Church; but his affection and his interest turn to Paul, and after a time his narrative groups itself round Paul. He is keenly concerned to show that Paul was in perfect accord with the leaders among the older Apostles, but so also was Paul himself in his letters. That is the point of view of a personal friend and disciple, full of affection, and jealous of Paul’s honour and reputation. The characterization of Paul in Acts is so detailed and individualized as to prove the author’s personal acquaintance. Moreover, the Paul of Acts is the Paul that appears to us in his own letters, in his ways and his thoughts, in his educated tone of polished courtesy, in his quick and vehement temper, in the extraordinary versatility and adaptability which made him at home in every society, moving at ease in all surroundings, and everywhere the centre of interest, whether he is the Socratic dialectician in the agora of Athens, or the rhetorician in its university, or conversing with kings and proconsuls, or advising in the council on shipboard, or cheering a broken-spirited crew to make one more effort for life. Wherever Paul is, no one present has eyes for any but him. ¶ Probably Boswell did not realize how matchless a biographer he was, though he was not disposed to belittle his own performances. But his unbridled interest in the smallest details, his power of hero-worship, his amazing style, his perception, his astonishing memory and the training he gave it, his superb dramatic faculty, which enabled him to arrange his other characters around the main figure, and to subordinate them all to his central emphasis—all these qualities are undeniable. ¶ What we want in a biography, and what, despite the etymology of the title, we very seldom find, is life. The very best transcript is a failure, if it be a transcript only. To fulfil its idea, it must have in it the essential quality of movement; must realize the lofty fiction of the divine Shield of Achilles, where the upturning earth, though wrought in metal, darkened as the plough went on; and the figures of the battle-piece dealt their strokes and parried them, and dragged out from the turmoil the bodies of their dead. 3. Throughout the journeyings, it is remarkable with what interest Luke records the incidents from harbour to harbour. He has the true Greek feeling for the sea, a feeling that must develop in every race possessing any capacity for development, and any sensitiveness to the influences of nature, when settled round the Ægean coasts; for the Ægean Sea is so tempting, with its regular winds and regular sunset calm, when the water lies dead, with a surface which looks like oil, dense and glistening and dark, that it seems to invite one to walk upon it. Repeated examination of Acts 27 by experts has shown that, while it could not have been written by a mariner, it must have been written by some gifted man who accompanied Paul on the journey, and who had an appreciation of nature and of the incidents of a sea voyage. If, without recourse to the tradition, we were to ask which one of Paul’s travelling companions was most likely to have been the author of the accounts of these journeys, the most probable answer would be, Luke, the physician. If he is, at the same time, the author of the entire work, it was his own notes, which he had written down in the form of a journal during the voyage, that he incorporated in his history. Even the best memory will not retain for decades all such details as changes in the weather and the movements of the sailors in a voyage lasting for months, and no historian would record in a large work such recollections as he might have, simply because he had not forgotten them. ¶ My strongest impression of my father’s tastes, writes Dr. Pusey’s daughter, was his intense love of the sea. To him, I am sure, it spoke volumes. From my earliest childhood he used to quote the Greek expression of Æschylus, and explain to us children what it meant, “the many twinkling smile of ocean”; and I am sure that it was true to him that— Such signs of love old ocean gives, We cannot choose but think it lives. The ocean did live to him in a way I have never observed in any one else. I cannot fully express what I mean; but I used to watch his face as he gazed out at the sea, and feel that it was to him what it was not to others. He often spoke to me in after years of the waves tossing themselves in wild fury against the boundary God had set them. “Thus far and no farther shall thy proud waves go”; likening it to the impotence of human rebellion against the will of God. He had also a love and enjoyment of beautiful scenery as God’s handiwork, His finger tracing all and imparting to them their beauty. 4. A great deal might be said about the special professional life of Luke, the beloved physician, especially as it is linked to the life of the Apostle Paul. As he and Paul are seen travelling together over land and sea, those two figures taken together represent in a broad way the total care of man for man. Paul is distinctively a man of the soul, a man of the spiritual life. We know him only in his spiritual labours. If he turns aside to tent-making, it is not for the sake of the tents which he can make, but simply that, earning his own living, he may be in true relations to the men whose souls he wants to save. Luke, on the other hand, is physical. His care is for the body. The two together, then, as we watch their figures, climbing side by side over mountains, sleeping side by side on the decks of little Mediterranean boats, standing side by side in the midst of little groups of hard-won disciples—may we not say of them that they may be considered as recognizing and representing between them the double nature and the double need of man? Body and soul as man is, the ministry that would redeem him and relieve him must have a word to speak to, and a hand to lay upon, both soul and body. The two missionaries together make a sort of composite copy of the picture, which St. Matthew gives us of Jesus going “about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.” ¶ At a place called Chighakor, one of the minor chiefs came to Mrs. Bishop for medicine, which she gladly gave him. Lingering in her tent, he asked her why she ministered to people unknown to her, without demanding a recompense. This was her opportunity, and she told him the story of Christ, whose anxiety for the physical well-being of the people whom He had come spiritually to save, was so great that He spent His days in going from village to village to heal their disease and rescue them even from death. ¶ When prescribing to his patients, it was Dr. Daniel Rutherford’s custom to offer up at the same time a prayer for the accompanying blessing of heaven. Beside the unveiled mysteries Of life and death go stand, With guarded lips and reverent eyes And pure of heart and hand. So shalt thou be with power endued From Him who went about The Syrian hillsides, doing good And casting demons out. That Good Physician liveth yet Thy Friend and Guide to be; The Healer by Gennesaret Shall walk the rounds with thee. 5. From the time that Luke adventured himself with Paul, through weal and woe he remained faithful. He had watched the breaking up of the little band; he had seen his leader grow prematurely old through his exacting labours; and he had guessed the issue of the impending trial before Nero. Yet until the end came he would never be absent for long from the side of the man whom he loved as his own soul. Only Luke is with me throbs the human cry of the heart that hungered for the presence of those who felt and understood; but Luke was with him in the intenser meaning of that word—with him in everything that appertained to the spread of the Redeemer’s Kingdom—and for him to desert in the hour of danger not only would have been a violation of trust and honour, a transgression of the most sacred sanctions of life, but would have assumed the proportions of disloyalty to Christ. Name not as friends the men who by you stand In pleasant times, when peace and welfare please you; But him indeed call friend who grasps your hand In that dark day when want and danger seize you. ¶ O God All-wise, who electing St. Luke to be of the number of Thy four Evangelists didst furnish him with abundance of gifts needful or expedient to so great an end, endowments natural and supernatural, human learning and superhuman wisdom, aptitude and goodwill, knowledge and illumination, intercourse with Saints and inspiration of the Holy Ghost: Grant to us, we beseech Thee, hearing ears and seeing eyes that we may profit by his writings; and following in his footsteps may pass by way of life and death into the kingdom of life everlasting. Hastings, J. (Ed.). (1916).The Greater Men and Women of the Bible: St. Luke-Titus. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. - via Logos 5
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 02:14:23 +0000
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