James Vernon Bartlet

“ His was also a humane [4] spirit, a spirit so tender that it saw further than almost any save the Master himself into the soul of womanhood. In this, as in his joyousness, united with a feeling for the poor and suffering, he was an early Francis of Assisi. Luke, “the physician, the beloved physician,” that was Paul’s characterization of him; and it is the impression which his writings have left on humanity. ”

“ The local connexion in question may have been subsequent to that with Antioch, dating from his work with Paul in the province of Asia, and being resumed after Paul’s martyrdom. This accords at once with Harnack’s argument that Luke wrote Acts in Asia [3] (Luke the Physician, p. 149 ff.) , and with the early tradition, above cited, that he died in Bithynia at the age of seventy-four, without ever having married (this touch may be due to an ascetic feeling current already in the 2nd century) . ”

“ His was indeed a religio medici in its pity for frail and suffering humanity, and in its sympathy with the triumph of the Divine “healing art” upon the bodies and souls of men (cf. Harnack, The Acts, Excursus, iii.) ”