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their blessed harmony by mingling flat and discordant notes. O with what delight and pleasure, sincerity and joy, do they sing their hymns, while they are ravished with the prospect of the Divine perfections! Could we but see their felicity and hear their music, it would transport us above ourselves, and make us forget and despise all other pleasures to join with them. It may be that we fear, that we cannot sing in so high a note; yet if we do it with like sincerity, our lower key may grace the harmony and compleat the concord. Behold, those blessed spirits who had no need of any Saviour, and who never did offend, do praise God with incessant voices for His mercy and love to us, and seem to invite us, saying, O ye sons of men, "Praise the Lord with us, and let us magnify "His name together." How, then, can we be silent? especially when our glorified brethren, prophets and apostles, saints and martyrs, do also bear a part in this admirable hymn. How justly do we style the object of these praises a glorious name, since all the world resounds its praise! To it Cherubin and Seraphin, angels and archangels, continually do cry, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY; and all the saints in heaven and earth do join to set forth the glory thereof."*

* Dr. Comber on the Trisagium.

T

KE THE EVANGELIST.

List Luke the physician, appe to be an evangelist May it please thee, that

the doctrine delivered date of our scals may be healed, Son Jesus Christ our

.I.

St Luke's day contains-an al of St. Luke's call to the rope-and a prayer, ing for ourselves the aeredices which he pre

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mentioned by name no more Ver Tistment. (Col. iv. 14. In the former of by St. Paul "the The antient fathers, particularly St. IgnaFphesians, suppose that 24 St. Paul, when he speaks yose praise is in the gospel 1. ale churches,' arches," (2 Cor. viii. 18) vets incorporated in our colCases day.

e baying afforded us no account ssery previous to his conversion, en ersed itself, we must be cone perces which tradition has furgim. It is supposed that he doch, the metropolis of Syria,

a city famous for its extraordinary advantages. The pleasantness of its situation, the fertility of its soil, the vast extent of its commerce, the acknowledged erudition of its professors, the civility and politeness of its inhabitants, are circumstances which are celebrated by the orators of antiquity. But this city is still more renowned in the Christian history, because there the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians. It was an university, furnished with schools of learning, and professors of arts and sciences: so that our Evangelist, being born in the very lap of the Muses, must probably have enjoyed a liberal education, his natural talents meeting with the means of improvement. We are informed, that he studied not only at Antioch, but also in all the schools both of Greece and Egypt, whereby he became an accomplished scholar in all the branches of human literature. Being thus furnished with knowledge in all the preparatory institutions of philosophy, he more particularly applied himself to the study of physic, for which the Grecian academies were most famous. His supposed skill as a painter seems to be founded in a mistake.

He appears to have been a Jewish proselyte; and it is probable that he was converted by the ministry of St. Paul during his abode at Antioch, after which from a physician of the body he became a "physician of the soul," even as the fishermen of Galilee were made fishers of men. From the time of St. Paul's journey into Macedonia, St. Luke was his inseparable companion and fellow-labourer in the ministry of the gospel, as appears by his use of the first person plural in recording the history of the Apostle from that period. (See Acts xvi. 10.) He followed the

Apostle in all his dangerous enterprises, was present at his several arraignments at Jerusalem, and accompanied him in his perilous voyage to Rome, where he assisted him in those ministerial offices of which the Apostle's confinement precluded his personal performance. This greatly endeared him to St. Paul, who owned him as his "fellow-labourer," called him "the beloved

physician," and "the brother whose praise. "is in the gospel throughout all the churches." It is probable that he did not leave the Apostle till the latter had finished his course and was crowned with martyrdom. The time and manner of St. Luke's death are wholly uncertain.

It is supposed that our Evangelist wrote his gospel during the time of his association with St. Paul, and that he derived great assistance from him in composing it. He has informed us (ch. i. 1-4) that he was not himself an eye-witness of the facts which he records, but that he received his narrative from those who were; from whence it is evident that he had other help besides what St. Paul could afford.

St. Luke's history which is entitled "The "Acts of the Apostles," was doubtless written at Rome at the end of St. Paul's two years imprisonment there with which he concludes his memoirs. That our Evangelist was its author, appears from the antient Complutensian manuscript copy to which the name of St. Luke is prefixed, from its dedication to Theophilus, from some peculiarities of the style which identify its penman with that of the gospel, and from the testimony of all antiquity.

The labours of our Evangelist in preaching Gospel were doubtless very beneficial during life. But his evangelic compositions have

reached to successive generations. His Gospel and his ecclesiastical history have been and will be instrumental in the edification of the church to the end of the world. His praise therefore in the Gospel, on account of the eminent services which he hath done for the cause of Christianity, will be acknowledged throughout all the churches of Christ, to the time of the consummation of all things.

The term "Evangelist," by which St. Luke is characterized in our collect, has both a more general and a more restricted sense. In its more general sense it signifies a preacher of the gospel, one who proclaims to perishing sinners the

glad tidings of great joy;" in which application of the term every herald of salvation is an evangelist. But in its more restricted sense, it is confined to the four historians of the life of Christ. By his call to the office of an evangelist, in either of these senses, St. Luke became a physician of the soul. His former employment was of a most laudable and beneficial kind. But it is exceeded in dignity and usefulness by that to which he was afterwards advanced, as much as the soul exceeds the body in value. The responsibility, difficulty and labour attached to the profession of a corporeal physician are confessedly great; but they bear no comparison with that responsibility, difficulty and labour, which are attached to the office of a spiritual physician, a minister of the everlasting gospel.

We proceed now to the prayer which our collect founds on the call of St. Luke to be "an "evangelist and physician of the soul." We beseech God, "that by the wholesome medi❝cines of the doctrine delivered by him, all the

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