Two Similar and Touching Requests by ARTHUR L. MANOUS

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 29, 1912

Two Similar and Touching Requests

By ARTHUR L. MANOUS

ARTHUR L. MANOUS

During the apostle Paul’s second and last imprisonment at Rome, and just before the coming of winter, he wrote his last epistle, the second epistle to Timothy, in which he urges Timothy to come, if possible, to him before winter. Among the things that the apostle wished Timothy to bring when he would come, he mentions the following: “The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.” 2 Tim. 4: 13.

After quoting this text, one writer remarks: “At his second arrest, Paul was seized and hurried away so suddenly that he had no opportunity to gather up his few ‘books and parchments,’ or even to take with him his cloak. And now winter was coming on, and he knew that he would suffer with cold in his damp prison cell. He had no money to buy another garment. He knew that his end might come at any moment, and with his usual self-forgetfulness and fear to burden the church, he desired that no expense should be incurred on his account.”—“Sketches From the Life of Paul,” Mrs. E. G. White, 1883 edition, page 327.

In the “Modern Speech New Testament,” by the late Richard Francis Weymouth, M. A., D. Lit. (The Baker and Taylor Company, New York), there is the following note on our text: “‘There is a striking parallel to this touching little personal message in the letter written by the martyr William Tyndale, from the damp cell of his prison at Vilvorde, in the winter before his death. He wrote to beg for something to patch his leggings, and for a woolen shirt, a warmer cap, and above all, for his Hebrew Bible, grammar, and dictionary.’—F. W. Farrar, ‘Texts Explained.’”

If such examples and experiences as these do not arouse us to a more thorough study of God’s Word, and to a better improvement of the God-given opportunities we now enjoy, when we are placed in similar circumstances, as some of us most surely will be, we may wish that we had been more diligent.

“But many of all nations and all classes, high and low, rich and poor, black and white, will be cast into the most unjust and cruel bondage. The beloved of God pass weary days, bound in chains, shut in by prison-bars, sentenced to be slain, some apparently left to die of starvation in dark and loathsome dungeons. No human ear is open to hear their moans; no human hand is ready to lend them help.”—“Great Controversy,” page 626.

From “Expository Notes” on the New Testament, by William Burkitt, M. A. (Sorin and Ball, Philadelphia, 1844), we quote:—

“His books, probably the books of the Old Testament, certainly no profane books; for he had no leisure for, no liking to, any such. But especially the parchments; these are thought to be notebooks of his own collecting, in which he had written several things for the help of his memory, and the benefit of the church. Behold here, (1) An eminent pattern of pious studiousness in Paul. Here was an aged man, an aged minister, that had already read much, a prisoner,—no very proper place for study, were prisons then filled with such brutes as they are generally now,—nay, a dying prisoner, one that looked for death and beheading every day; yet aged Paul, dying Paul, can not live without his books; he must still be reading, learning, studying the Scriptures, especially, which are such a vast deep as the line of an inspired apostle could not fathom. Behold, I say, a pattern for such ministers as think they know enough, have studied enough, or are too old to learn; so was not our apostle, when within a few months of his death.”

May God help us to study to show ourselves approved unto him, workmen that need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of God, is my prayer.

Nashville, Tenn.