he was a native.* A third party find something like a middle path between these two theories, and, holding that Luke was one of the disciples who "walked no more with Jesus" after the unwelcome discourse detailed in the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, believe him to have been reclaimed merely, and not converted ab initio, by the Apostle Paul. Doubt even attaches to his profession; and there is a tradition that he was a skilful painter who executed the pictures of Christ and the Blessed Virgin which are yet exhibited at Rome. Hospinian meets this tradition with an à priori denial, saying that St. Luke "painted Christ and His Mother in the vivid colours of his eloquence, in which he appears to have had an excellent faculty; but that he certainly had no leisure to paint them in any other manner."+ It may be that such a tradition took its rise from confounding the Evangelist with another Luke, an early Greek painter, some of whose works are still preserved. Some authors, again, lovers of doubt and uncertainty, see nothing in the plain description of St. Luke as the "beloved physician" (Coloss. iv. 14), but a figure which is intended to apply to him as a healer of souls only. But the natural and professional meaning of the word physician is not destroyed merely because a fuller and more spiritual significance is induced upon it. The Collect for St. Luke's Day assumes this beautiful duplicity of meaning; which is also the key-note to the following Hymn for St. Luke's Day, for which we are indebted to the Rev. Gerard Moultrie's "Hymns and Lyrics for the Seasons of the Church."

O JESU, O Redeemer,
Physician of the soul,
Receive, receive Thy people,

And cleanse and make them whole.

* Ecclesiastical History; lib. iii., c. 4.
+ De Origine Festoram Christianorum.

THE ALL-HEALER.

For health, for strength, for healing,
The stream is never dry,

Whose fountain-head flows ceaseless
From holy Calvary.

O Lamb of GOD, O JESU,
Upon the altar slain,

The blood of Thine atonement

Shall purge our guilty stain :

Not now in type and figure
Of bull or heifer seen,
The blood of the Redeemer
Shall sprinkle the unclean.

The guests await the summons,
Their robes are white and fair,
Washed in the Blood of JESUS
From sin and from despair:

And He, the great All-healer,
His wine and oil shall pour
Upon their wounds, and bear them
From trouble evermore.

The banquet-hall is ready,

The banquet-hall of CHRIST,

He calls the loved physician,
The blest Evangelist;

The marriage feast awaits him,
The joy of his reward;
Receive, then, faithful servant,

The wages of thy LORD.

467

By those who think of St. Luke as one of the Seventy, it has been held that he was the fellow-traveller with Cleophas when the Lord joined Himself to their society on the way to Emmaus. The least probability that such may have been the case is sufficient to plead in justification of the insertion of a few lines, which, if they cannot be shown to have any right to appear in this place, have at least no special claim to any other throughout our volume. They

are extracted from Cowper's "Conversation;" and the author appends to the narrative a recommendation of it as affording a model of lofty and familiar discourse.

It happened on a solemn eventide,

Soon after He that was our Surety died,
Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined,
The scene of all those sorrows left behind,
Sought their own village, busied as they went
In musings worthy of the great event:

They spake of Him they loved, of Him whose life,
Though blameless, had incurred perpetual strife ;
Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts,
A deep memorial graven on their hearts.
The recollection, like a vein of ore,

The farther traced, enriched them still the more;
They thought Him, and they justly thought Him, one
Sent to do more than He appeared to have done;
To exalt a people, and to place them high
Above all else, and wondered He should die.
Ere yet they brought their journey to an end,
A stranger joined them, courteous as a friend,
And asked them with a kind engaging air
What their affliction was, and begged a share.
Informed, he gathered up the broken thread,
And, truth and wisdom gracing all he said,
Explained, illustrated, and searched so well
The tender theme on which they chose to dwell,
That reaching home, "The night," they said, “is near,
We must not now be parted, sojourn here."

The new acquaintance soon became a guest,
And, made so welcome at their simple feast,

He blessed the bread, and vanished at the word,
And left them both exclaiming, "'Twas the Lord!
Did not our hearts feel all He deigned to say,
Did they not burn within us by the way?"

Now theirs was converse, such as it behoves
Man to maintain, and such as God approves :
Their views, indeed, were indistinct and dim,
But yet successful, being aimed at Him.
Christ and His character their only scope,
Their object, and their subject, and their hope;

GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE.

They felt what it became them much to feel,
And, wanting Him to loose the sacred seal,
Found Him as prompt as their desire was true,
To spread the new-born glories in their view.

469

As St. Luke was a convert and disciple, so he seems to have become the almost inseparable companion and fellowlabourer, of St. Paul. To the great Apostle of the Gentiles, indeed, he seems to have stood in the same relation that Mark occupied to St. Peter; and, as Mark compiled his Gospel from the discourses of Peter, so Luke is represented to have compiled his chiefly from the narrative of St. Paul. "But as in the prologue of his Gospel, it is said that he took many things from those who had companied together with the Lord, and as St. Paul had not done so, the inference is that he did not derive his information exclusively, but only principally, from that Apostle. For many circumstances he must have been dependent upon others beside St. Paul; and it is believed that he had recourse to the Blessed Virgin, as to the Ark of the Testament, and was by her certified of many things, especially such as were known to her only-as, for instance, the Angelic Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, and others of this kind."* The Gospel of St. Luke is said to have given so much satisfaction to the Apostle Paul that he esteemed it the Gospel par excellence; to which he is to be understood as referring whenever he has occasion to allude to an Evangelist (Rom. ii. 16). The Gospel of St. Luke is supposed to have been written during the travels of the author with St. Paul in Achaia; and to have had in view the refutation of various "false and fabulous relations, which even then began to be obtruded upon the world," to supply anything that seemed wanting in the works of the two preceding Evangelists, and also especially to insist upon what belongs to Christ's priestly office and character.

*Durandus: Rationale Divinorum Officiorum.

Dr. Watts devotes a few lines to showing that "Christ is the Substance of the Levitical Priesthood :”—

The true Messiah now appears,
The types are all withdrawn;
So fly the shadows and the stars
Before the rising dawn.

No smoking sweets, nor bleeding lambs,
No kid, nor bullock slain;
Incense and spice of costly names

Would all be burnt in vain.

Aaron must lay his robes away,
His mitre and his vest,
When God Himself comes down to be
The offering and the Priest.

He took our mortal flesh, to show

The wonders of His love:

For us He paid His life below,
And prays for us above.

"Father," He cries, "forgive their sins,

For I Myself have died;"

And then He shows His opened veins,
And pleads His wounded side.

St. Luke particularly endeared himself to St. Paul "by attending him in all his dangers; by being present with him in his several arraignments at Jerusalem; by accompanying him in his hazardous voyage to Rome; where he served his necessities, and supplied those ministerial offices which the Apostle's confinement would not suffer him to discharge, especially in carrying messages to those Churches where he had, planted Christianity; and in sticking to him when others forsook him (2 Tim. iv. 11).”* It is in relation to this text, which, indeed, he takes as a motto, that Dr. Kynaston has written the following poem for St. Luke's Day, which, in his "Occasional Hymns," has for its title, "Only Luke is with me."

*Nelson's Festivals and Fasts.