feet, we owe to the pen of the beloved Physician. Nor must we forget that he is the Church's first and only inspired historian. The proceedings of the first Church Synod, the first Missionary enterprize, the earliest of the many persecutions with which her faith was tried and braced, are recorded for us by him.

So that the debt which we owe him is very great indeed. And yet we know perhaps as little about him as of any of the Apostles, and less than we do of all the other Evangelists. The notices of his personal history are remarkably few and scanty.

Born, it would seem likely, at Antioch, the cradle of the Gentile Church, trained and educated in the medical schools, for which that city was famous, for the work of a physician, he seems to have moved when still quite young to Troas, and settled down there in his profession.

The preaching of St. Paul during his stay at Troas on his second missionary journey, soon attracted the young physician, and he seems to have joined at once the missionary party, and accompanied it to Philippi and other places. He must, later, have visited Colosso also, either for or with the Apostle, for S. Paul sends a

greeting from him to that Church. And later still, and quite at the end of S. Paul's life, we find him still clinging to his old teacher, and the only companion of the aged Apostle awaiting his martyrdom in the dungeon at Rome-" only "Luke is with me."

There are various traditions about his after life and his death. One, that he was the first Evangelist of Africa; another giving him a place in the noble army of Martyrs. But this mention of him by S. Paul in his second Epistle to Timothy is the last inspired one that we have, and so we had best be content to leave his end in the uncertainty which God has not removed.

Thus singularly little is known of S. Luke. And yet his life is not without its own lessons, which it is well that we should remind ourselves of.

1. And first, this. Let us observe that when God set up His kingdom on earth, He did not need the intellect or wisdom of men, though He sometimes vouchsafed to use it.

What a very wide distance, intellectually, there must have been between S. Peter and S. Luke.

S. Peter was the rough uneducated fisherman, who had spent half his life probably in the fishingboats on the lake of Galilee, loving, eager, resolute,

but utterly unread and untaught; whereas in St. Luke we have the refined Scholar, brought up in schools of Antioch, an accomplished painter, educated to a learned profession, of cultivated habits, and probably well versed in other subjects besides those which had been his special study.

And yet here we see God putting the cleverest not first but second, "confounding the world "with the foolishness of preaching," making "the first" (as the world would reckon) "last "and the last first." It was not probably till the apostolic band was completed, and the Church firmly established, that S. Luke was even called to be a disciple; and even then he never became an apostle, nor occupied such a position as the lowest of the twelve. We have long accounts of S. Peter's and S. John's preaching and miracles -not a word of S. Luke's. And what is the lesson which GOD is reading us here but this, that in the most momentous work that could be done for man, He did not need any gifts that man could bring to the accomplishment of it?

But, though He did not need them, He did not despise them, but used them when and how He saw fit. A Gospel which was intended chiefly for Greek readers, who so fit to write it as one

who from his bringing up would be most likely to know the wants, the yearnings, the difficulties of those for whom he wrote? The first Church History, who so able to compile it as the only one of the Evangelists who had the advantage of a liberal education. And so this was S. Luke's work for GOD. For both the half-educated fisherman and the learned physician there was a niche in the Church of Christ. All ranks, intellects, and occupations were pressed into Christ's service, and fitted for it. There was room for all. Nothing so low but it might be elevated and ennobled, nor so nigh but that it might be lifted higher still.

Do not let us then over estimate gifts whether of intellect, or station, or position, or health, or anything else. God does not want any of them. He can do without all. He went to Galilee, and from thence He chose a Peter to be the first pillar of His Church, its teacher and its guide, and to him He gave the keys of His kingdom: when in the schools at Antioch there was a Luke waiting ready to be converted and to relinquish all for his Master's sake. No gifts are of any value in God's sight for their own sake, nor unless we are ready as and when He calls us, to

lay them down at our Master's feet, and dedicate them to His service.

Nor on the other hand, let us despise them, if they are so dedicated. GOD has got his own use for every one of us, great or little, learned or simple. S. Peter was the Church's leader, S. Luke its historian. We can, we must, all do something for GOD in the world before our sun sets behind the everlasting hills; and not something only, but just that very thing which GOD wants done. May we only be found in the Great Day to have understood our work, neither attempting what we are not called to, nor despising what we are!

2. From these thoughts spring another.

We see here this remarkable principle in Christ's dealings with men, that when He called them to Him He did not so much destroy their former occupations as elevate them. When He called the fishermen Peter and Andrew, James and John from their boats, He told them that there was a nobler work in store for them"Follow me," He said, "and I will make you "fishers of men." When S. Luke was led to relinquish, for a time at least, his practice as a physician at Troas, and throw in his lot with the