tion of Jerusalem. His account has evidently many fabulous elements in it, and cannot be regarded as worthy of any great credit. He tells us that certain of the Scribes and Pharisees set James on a pinnacle of the temple, at the feast of the passover, for the purpose of dissuading the assembled people from believing on Jesus as the Messiah. Instead of doing that, he lifted up a loud testimony for his Lord, which had the effect of convincing many; and then the parties whose device had been foiled, in their rage, cast him down from the lofty terrace or battlement on which he was standing. Not being killed by the fall, he began to pray for them, when they, unmoved by this spectacle, set about stoning him; and, as they were doing so, a fuller took the club with which he used to press the clothes, and striking the Just one on the head despatched him forthwith. Hegesippus adds, "And so he bore witness, and they buried him in the place by the temple, and the pillar still remains on the spot by the temple. He has been a true witness, both to Jews and Gentiles, that Jesus is the Christ, and immediately Vespasian besieged them."

II.

TO WHAT PERSONS IT WAS WRITTEN.

We have touched on this point also in the opening discourse ; but as different views have been entertained regarding it, a few additional remarks may be desirable. The parties addressed were evidently the writer's own countrymen. That appears from the language of the 1st verse, "To the twelve tribes scattered abroad, greeting." This must be understood in a natural sense, not a spiritual,-literally, not figuratively. Though ten of the tribes had been carried away into Assyria, and, to a large extent, absorbed and lost in the population of the regions to which they had been transported, yet remnants of them survived, both in their native land and throughout the East. They were linked together with their brethren of the other two tribes, the members of which were also, from a variety of reasons, scattered far and wide over other countries.

When the whole nation was spoken of, when it was viewed

as embracing, consisting of all its dispersed members, it was still represented, as it is here, by the apostle. Thus Paul, when pleading before Agrippa, spoke of the promise unto which "our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, desire to come." Many things in the Epistle accord with this idea of its Jewish destination. The chosen people were peculiarly addicted to the sins chiefly condemned in it, and they were so to a remarkable extent about this period of their history. James calls the church a synagogue; and the forms of swearing to which he refers were those in use among them, as we learn from other scriptural testimonies. But while Jews, they were also Christians-the former by natural descent, the latter by religious belief. They were the apostle's fellow-disciples. They were the professed followers of Jesus. The corruptions which abounded among them, the evil passions and vicious habits which characterized them, may seem at variance,—indeed incompatible with the idea that they had ever embraced the faith of the gospel. But painful, startling as is the picture here drawn, there is no ground for questioning the fact that it is a picture of persons who belonged to the Christian Church of that period. The writer addresses them in the capacity of a servant, not of God only, but also of the Lord Jesus Christ. He calls them throughout brethren, and evidently not in the merely natural sense, but the gracious, the spiritual. He represents them as having, in common with himself, been begotten by the Word of Truth, and thus made a kind of first-fruits of his creatures. (i. 18.) He speaks of them as having faith, and that in the distinctively New Testament acceptation of the term, "the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ." (ii. 1.) There can be no mistake as to the worthy name by which they were called. (ii. 7.) And he exhorts them to wait patiently for the second advent, as their sure and joyful reaping-time. (v. 7, 8.) There is no doubt a considerable difficulty connected with some passages,-very specially with that in which he addresses rich men as grossly unjust, rapacious, luxurious, even as actual persecutors, yea, murderers of the faithful. (v. 1-6.) It is not easy to conceive of such parties as belonging to the Christian community. Some, bearing more or less these features, may have been really in it; but we are most probably to understand James as here referring to men without it, yet so related to those for whom the Epistle was intended, or otherwise so situated, as to be reached by

his solemn expostulations, warnings, and rebukes. We have endeavoured to explain the sense and application of these strong statements in our exposition of the passages where they occur.

III.

AT WHAT PLACE AND TIME IT WAS WRITTEN.

As to the place, there is every probability that it was Jerusalem. There James seems to have resided in a much more permanent manner than we find the other apostles doing in any of their fields of labour. It was a centre from which he had ready access to the Jews in all those countries, whether more or less remote and frequented, where they were dispersed. It has been observed, too, that there is a variety of allusions in the Epistle to natural phenomena, which exactly accord with the idea that it was written in Palestine.

As to the time, there is far greater uncertainty. Opinion is much divided on the subject. The general belief used to be that it dated from a comparatively late period,-perhaps somewhere about the year 60,-it might be either a little before or after. This conviction was based on two circumstances. First, It was thought that the corruptions which James deals with, so flagrant in their nature and extensive in their influence, could not have crept in among Christians for a considerable time after the reception of the gospel; that they indicate a falling away, a deep degene racy, which could have gone such a length only after being for not

a few years in progress. It was presumed that for a season after their adherence to the faith of the gospel, the parties must have been very different indeed, and that a somewhat lengthened interval was required to account for the prevalence of the evils here exposed and condemned. Secondly, It was inferred from various statements and apparent references that James must have written after certain Epistles of Paul had been put in circulation, and that in particular he controverts a perversion of that apostle's teaching on the subject of justification by faith.

Now, however, it is the prevalent belief of Biblical scholars that

the place in the canon which it held, according to an ancient arrangement of the New Testament, as the first of the epistolary writings, is the correct one; and that it must have been penned at a comparatively early period, probably about the year A.D. 45,certainly before 50. This view is also based on two grounds. First, It is maintained that the style of teaching in it, the form of doctrine, is of a simple, rudimentary type, and points to a time when all was primitive and practical. Secondly, It is thought that it could not have been prepared after the Apostolic Council, recorded in the 15th chapter of Acts, seeing there is no reference in it to the controversy then settled as to the standing of the Gentile converts, as to the relaxation of the Mosaic law in their favour.

It were presumptuous in us to speak confidently where the most competent judges,-men like Neander, Stanley, Alford, Davidson, and many others,—decidedly adopt the opposite view; but we cannot help thinking that the arguments in favour of the later date are not so easily set aside as these writers suppose. It is difficult to conceive that the state of things here described could have existed without a great and even lengthened process of declension. It is indeed alleged that the Jews addressed had simply added a faith in Jesus as the Messiah to their old Judaism, and that they were only nominally and formally Christians. But that does not agree with the representation given in other respects, and we cannot but regard it as at variance with the idea we are warranted to entertain of the Apostolic Ministry and the primitive Church. Besides, we question whether, in a general way, or even to any great extent, the Jews did thus attach themselves to Christianity, except under a far deeper conviction, a far more transforming influence. Then the apparent allusions to Epistles of Paul, that to the Romans, for example, which dates from about the year 58,-seem too distinct and decided to be easily explained away. Compare the following passages by way of specimen, for they are only a selection:" My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience." (James i. 2, 3.) "And not only so, but we glory in tribulation also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience." (Rom. v. 3.)-"Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin,, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." (Jam. i. 15.) "I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner

of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." (Rom. vii. 7, 8, 9.)—“ But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." (Jam. i. 22.) "For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified." (Rom. ii. 13.) Take only one other example," There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?" (Jam. iv. 12.) "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master be standeth or falleth; yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.” (Rom. xiv. 4.) With regard to the disputed matter of justification, it does look as if the apostle here had in view some perversion of the evangelical teaching on that subject. He uses the exact terms employed by Paul (δικαιοῦσθαι, ἐκ πίστεως,

gy), and also the very examples, those of Abraham and Rabab, which he adduces. It is said that it was a Jewish error he was combatting, that of making a correct belief a substitute for practical godliness. But this in substance was the very abuse which Paul himself had to contend against; and the fact of the Jewish tendency in that direction,-an ancestral disposition to rely upon their national creed,--rendered them all the more liable to go astray here, so that warning was peculiarly needful in their case. We can scarcely doubt that it was the distinctively New Testament faith, that of the gospel, which was perverted by the persons now addressed.

With respect to the positive arguments on the other side, I venture to affirm that they are not very forcible. As to the simple, primitive form of the doctrine, that is sufficiently accounted for by the design of the writer. He was dealing with practical abuses rather than with heretical tendencies. He was not so much teaching as exhorting, warning, rebuking. Then, with reference to the want of any allusion to the Apostolic Council, the circumstance, while undoubtedly having some weight, is far from being decisive. James was not called to introduce that matter; for he was writing here to Jews almost, if not quite, exclusively,-not to mixed, but separate religious communities. There might be, probably were Gentile converts among them; but they were comparatively few, and practically did not require to be taken into account. He does not touch on the relation of the one class to the other. His influence with those specially addressed, his believing countrymen, was