What, only Luke!-and Demas gone- The sick, they need thee, not the whole; O Brother still, when all decline Who linked their loving words with thine, Was Christ, or Paul bereft of thee? There is Whose love, when all depart, Clings closer than a brother's heart. The Book called the Acts of the Apostles was written by St. Luke, in continuation of his Gospel; and is supposed to have been produced at the end of the two years' imprisonment which St. Paul suffered at Rome. Upon the enlargement of the latter, St. Luke is said to have left St. Paul at Rome, and to have betaken himself into Egypt and Libya, where he preached the Gospel, wrought miracles, converted multitudes, constituted guides and ministers of religion, and took upon himself the episcopal charge of the city of Thebais. Another account, however, favoured by Epiphanius, relates that St. Luke preached first in Dalmatia and Galatia, and afterwards in Italy and Macedonia. Acts i. 1. *Ruth ii. 14; Acts xx. 37, 38; Tim. i. 15. The place, the time, and the manner of St. Luke's death have none of them been satisfactorily or unanimously determined. He is variously reported to have died in Egypt, in Bithynia, at Ephesus, and at Patræ, a city of Achaia, where he is said to have been seized by a party of infidels, who, for want of a cross, suspended him from the branch of an olive-tree, A.D. 74. Whether from Bithynia, as Hermannus Contractus says; or from Achaia, as say Theodorus, Eusebius, and Platina, it is by common consent allowed that the remains of St. Luke were, about A.D. 358, translated to Constantinople, by order of the Emperor Constantius, and deposited, along with those of St. Andrew and St. Timothy, in the church which Constantine the Great had built in honour of the twelve Apostles.* There are still two doubts to be expressed in connexion with St. Luke. Some authorities hesitate to affirm that he died the death of a martyr at all; and it is not ascertained whether the 18th of October is commemorated because it is the anniversary of his decease, or of the translation of his relics to Constantinople. *St. Jerome: De Viris Illustribus; Baronius: Annales Ecclesiastici. A..D 358. St. Simon and St. Jude, Apostles. OCTOBER 28. HE joint commemoration of these two Apostles was usual from the time of their first allotment of a festival; the date of which, in the absence of any precise historical information, may be referred to the eleventh or twelfth century. Their association in one day derives its fitness not only from their fellowship and community in the same act of martyrdom, but also from their presumed fraternal relationship; which, if it could be established, would make them also severally identical with two of the four reputed brothers of our Lord (Matthew xiii. 55). In the catalogues of the Apostles, Simon is styled the Canaanite, a designation which has given rise to a diversity of opinion; some writers supposing that he is so called from having been a native of Cana in Galilee, whilst others say that the expression contains no reference to his country, but denotes either his former membership with the sect of the Zealots, or else his ardent and enthusiastic temperament, which prompted him to the most impassioned exertions for the propagation of the Gospel, and for the defence of the purity of its doctrines. In any case the fact remains that St. Luke, rendering the Hebrew word by its Greek equivalent, calls him Simon Zelotes, whom St. Matthew and St. Mark call Simon the Canaanite (Matthew x. 4; Mark iii. 18; Luke vi. 15). The sect of the Zealots, to which it is fair to assume that St. Simon belonged, "began in Mattathias, the root of the Maccabean family, and was continued among the Jews till our Saviour's time. They looked upon Phineas as their patron, who, in a mighty zeal for the honour of God, did immediate execution upon Zimri and Cosbi. (Numbers xxv.) They took upon them a power of executing the law upon offenders, without any formal trial and accusation, and that not only by connivance, but with the leave both of the rulers and the people. Under this pretence, their zeal afterwards degenerated into licentiousness and extravagance, and they became the occasion of great miseries to their own nation; as is largely related by Josephus (De Bel. Jud., lib. 4)."* The only account we have of St. Simon in the Holy Gospels is that of his call to the Apostolate; although there is a tradition-to support which, however, the exploded territorial significance of his designation as a Canaanite is all but necessary-that it was at his nuptials that the Lord condescended to perform His first miracle of turning water into wine. On the dispersion of the Apostles after the great day of Pentecost, St. Simon is said to have laboured successively in Egypt, Cyrene, Africa, Libya, and Mauritania. Some of the Greek Menologies expressly assert that he subsequently visited Britain, and that he was crucified by the unbelieving inhabitants, after he had made numerous converts to the faith. Others, again, affirm that he was put to death at Suanir, a city of Persia, at the same time as St. Jude, who, meeting him in Mesopotamia, had accompanied him to Persia. This double martyrdom is generally supposed to have taken place A.d. 74. The following poem from the "School of the Heart," *Nelson: Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England. 66 THE INFLAMING OF THE HEART." 475 and entitled "The Inflaming of the Heart," is an enlightened aspiration after an impartation of that quality, rightly directed, for which St. Simon was famous, and from which he obtained his name of Zelotes. Welcome, holy, heavenly fire, To that grace, Which, with gentle violence, Lord, Thy fire doth heat within, If it feel Thy dissolving power, it groweth Of itself mine heart is dark; I shall see More by it than all the light, Which in fullest measure streams From corrupted nature's beams, Can discover to my sight. Though mine heart be ice and snow To the things which Thou hast chosen, Yet Thy fire will make it glow. |