Triviality

ST. PAUL'S COMPANIONS IN ROME. 709

find that in the year A. D. 64, five years after the time that Tychi- cus and others had left Ephesus in Paul's company for Macedonia, the Apostle despatched him to both Ephesus and Colosse with his epistles which he had written to the churches established at those places (Eph. 6: 21 and Col. 4:7). This was near the close of St. Paul's first Roman imprisonment. Tychicus must have either re- turned to the Apostle to Rome after delivering the letters, or else he must have met him after the latter's release from his imprison- ment, because we find that when Paul wrote to Titus the Bishop of Crete in the following year (A. D. 65), he proposed to send Artemas or Tychicus to him as his messenger, showing that the latter, whom he had dispatched to Ephesus and Colosse in A.D. 64>

must have since then joined him again A year still later on, . . .

namely A.D. 66, St. Paul, during his second imprisonment, in writ- ing to his son in the faith, Timothy, tells him that he had no one with him except Luke, and that he had sent Tychicus away to Ephesus. This must have been a second message to Ephesus, per- haps another epistle which the Apostle entrusted to Tychicus to deliver, for the latter was evidently with him in A.D. 65 as shown above (II Tim. 4: 12). Very little is known about this devoted companion of St. Paul except that he was an Asiatic (Acts 20: 4), and that he was first heard of in connection with the Apostle at Ephesus, so that in all probability he was one of that great preacher's Ephesian converts. According to tradition Tychicus became eventually bishop of Chalcedon, in Bythinia, or Neapolis in Cyprus. Pas de Calais, France. [to be continued .]

TRIVIALITY.

"In youth triviality seems only ludicrous and insignificant, but it slowly envel- ops its victim in its grayish mist, penetrates his brain, pollutes his blood like a poison or the fumes of charcoal, and the man soon becomes like an old signboard eaten through and through with rust. It looks as if something was painted upon

it once upon a time, bat now it is impossible to distinguish what it was."