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LUTHER ON ST. JAMES.

Now how does Luther deal with such a passage as this, from so eminent a source? Curtly enough. More logical or more candid than some of his commentators who have sought to reconcile the irreconcilable, he rejects the authority; declaring that James's entire contribution to the New Testament is but

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an Epistle of straw.”* Marvellous example of the effect which may be produced in an enthusiastic mind, when it dwells, with the partiality of love, on a favorite dogma ! †

That the bold Reformer was entitled to the privilege here assumed, every friend of religious freedom will admit, whatever he may think of good Martin's discretion in the mode of exercising it. Far be it from me to deny to Luther, or to any honest, earnest seeker after truth, the right to judge for himself, as regards the Bible, between the gold and silver and the fication as a reward of well-doing, but only as a consequent of good deeds.

*"Epistola straminea" is Luther's expression: it occurs in his preface to the New Testament. A writer in the Dictionary of the Bible (vol. i. p. 926), says: "Luther seems to have withdrawn the expression, after it had been two years before the world." I find no proof whatever of this. Carlstadt, a contemporary of Luther and the author of a work entitled De Canonicis Scripturis, reprehends Luther for his opinion about James (Hagenbach's History of Doctrines, vol. ii. note to page 241); but the great Reformer was not a man to shrink from an opinion once published, because an opponent attacked it.

The Epistle thus summarily dealt with is filled with the noblest passages, and holds more strictly to the spirit of Christ's teachings than any other embraced in the Canon. Compare James i. 5; i. 26; ii. 8, 9; ii. 13; iii. 17; v. 1; v. 12; the last clause of v. 16, and other texts from this Epistle, with the words of Jesus. This apostle's strict adherence to his Master's doctrine may be partly due to the fact that his Epistle is the earliest in date; being written, as is usually calculated, about twelve years only after Christ's death.

other Apostle, the moral

"Pure religion and unde

James is, more preeminently than any teacher of the New Testament. Where have we a more excellent definition of religion than he has given us ? filed before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep one's self unspotted from the world."

NOT CHRISTIANITY THAT IS ARRESTED.

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hay and straw which it may contain. Then, too, we must admit the great importance of the distinction which Luther sets up between the message and the messenger. We hear God through His works or his interpreters only; and that, as Luther reminds us, "is not to hear God himself.”

This only I assert, that it was not the grand system of spiritual ethics taught by Jesus which was arrested in its progress for centuries, which failed to make headway against human claimants of infallibility, which lost more than half the ground it had gained, which cannot hold its own against the Roman hierarchy to-day-it was but an Augustinian commentary on some of the scholasticisms of St. Paul.

I find abundant proof of this assertion in the gospel record, taken as a whole. In its general aspect what do we find to be its essential features ?

§ 10. SPIRIT AND TEACHINGS OF CHRISTIANITY COMPARED WITH THOSE OF CALVINISTIC AND LUTHERAN THEOLOGY.

Scripture, as a witness, disappeared behind the Augsburg Confession, as a standard."-TULLOCH.*

Men did well, after countless ages marked with fitful struggles only toward the light, to turn over a leaf in the world's chronology, and begin to date its years afresh, from the time when, at last, a Teacher spoke to its heart and to the affections there crushed and to the spirit of God there dormant; instead of addressing its fears, its superstitions, and its evil passions.

Ignorance or cynicism alone denies or overlooks the moral and spiritual progress of mankind. But to what is that progress due? To a spirit inherent in our race as is the vital principle in the bare-limbed, snow-clad forest-tree-a spirit that hardly manifested existence through the long, barren winter of human barbarism, but now, stirred to energy in this spring-time * Leaders of the Reformation (London, 1869), p. 87.

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WHAT IS THE MASTER-PRINCIPLE

of civilization, puts forth, of its kind, fresh, green leafage, to gladden the world.

How is this spirit named? When it stills, in the individual, or the nation, the fierce impulses of combativeness, and bids discard brutal force and substitute the mild appliances of reason, it is called PEACE. When it softens the asperity of human codes, and tempers indignation against the wrong-doer, we name it MERCY. When it seeks, in a neighbor's conduct, the good and not the evil; when it respects, in others, independence of thought and speech, and finds in honest difference of opinion no cause of offence; its name is CHARITY. When it attracts us to our fellow-creatures, of every tribe and tongue, impelling us to take them by the hand and do them good, we call it KINDNESS. By whatever name, under all its phases, a gentle spirit; eminently civilizing, humanizing; the herald of virtue, the dispenser of happiness.

As it happens that, while winter still lingeringly maintains dominion over earth, there sometimes intervenes a day of bright sunshine, harbinger of others, warmer and brighter yet, to come; so is it also with the changing seasons of the spiritual world. There have been gleams of premature brightness shed over an age still too wintry for their maintenance; there floats, sometimes, the faint fragrance of a summer yet afar off.

Of this there have been marked examples, far back in human history. In these we dimly recognize the divine efflation. But we recognize it as we do the remote star in the night-heaven. Star and sun shine upon us alike with celestial light; yet there is one glory of the sun, enlightener of the earth, and another of the pale, twinkling star. And never, in all the history of our race, has the gentle spirit of which I have spoken been heralded to humankind as it was, more than eighteen centuries since, in one of the Asiatic dependencies of the Roman Empire. A voice from Galilee, first heard by fishermen, its earliest teachings caught up by publicans and sinners, has reached, albeit through the din of controversialism, the entire civilized world.

OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY?

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Aside from parasitic subtleties of doctrine which have commonly enkindled zeal in the inverse ratio of their practical importance, what is the master-principle, pervading the entire code of Christian spiritualism and Christian morality,-giving it life and character, conspicuously distinguishing it from the Jewish and all other harsh systems of an austere Past?

It is, as to God, the regarding Him not as an implacable Sovereign, armed with the terrors of the Law, whose wrath is a consuming fire; but as a dear Father-his tender mercies over all his other works-who exacts not long prayer nor formal sacrifice; accepting, as most fitting service to Himself, the aid and comfort we may have given to His suffering creatures. And, as to man, it is the substitution, in all his affairs, whether international, legislative, litigant, executive, or social, of the law of kindness for the rule of violence. It is the replacement, throughout God's world, of war by peace, of severity by humanity: for contention the enthronement of meekness; and for hatred, of love.

We find, indeed, scintillations from such a spirit dating prior to the Christian era: in the Grecian schools of philosophy, especially from the lips of Socrates speaking through the transcripts of Plato; and even coming to us from an earlier school, in the moral code promulgated by the great sage of China, the contemporary of Pythagoras and of Solon. Confucius, twentyfour centuries since, forbade revenge of injuries, commended clemency, denounced self-righteousness, and declared that the very foundation of all law was this, that we should do as we would be done by.*

But what was subordinate injunction or incidental embellishment only in older codes is of the Christian system the soul and essence. Scarce a maxim but it colors; hardly a precept

* TELA: Life and Morals of Confucius, reprinted from the edition of 1691 (London, 1818); pp. 80, 82, 89, 92. But Confucius inculcated hatred of bad men, as of the slanderer, the reviler, the man wise in his own conceit, the fool who censures (p. 91). Compare with this, Matthew v. 43, 44.

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PROFANATIONS OF THE NAME

to which it does not give tone. It is not one of many minis trant spirits, but the presiding deity. Love is the fulfilling of the Law.

It would be wrong to say that such a system was out of place eighteen hundred years ago, under a rule of legal vengeance and a code of retaliation. Even in those days, as long before, the still small voice in human nature, though commonly drowned by the clang of arms and the noisy conflict of rude passions, doubtless bore witness, when it could be heard above the tumult, in favor of the new philosophy; testifying to its justice, sympathizing with its kindly spirit. And to this. steadfast ally within the citadel is to be ascribed its preservation amid the hostile elements around.

Yet one can hardly imagine anything more at variance with the temper of Christianity than the everyday thoughts and doings of men, not only at the period whence it dates, but long thereafter. And it is a thing very remarkable that the name was adopted and revered, age after age, while scarcely pretence was maintained of obedience to the gentle precepts that characterized it. The warrior-monk of Malta, after he had lost, amid luxury and license, every virtue except valor, called himself a Christian. The half-million of crusaders who six centuries since assembled at the call of Father Dominic, and marched forth, the cross emblazoned on their breasts, to exterminate the schismatic Waldenses-laid claim to the title of Christian pilgrims. Torquemada-he who during one brief inquisitoriate burned five thousand heretics,* and gave up ten times that number to torture or other punishment-caused the rack to be stretched and the martyr-fire to be kindled, by the authority of Christianity. Like the disciples demanding fire from heaven to consume the inhospitable Samaritans, these men knew not what manner of spirit animated Him, whom they vainly professed to follow and to serve.

* Variously estimated, by different writers, from two to eight thousand. I have assumed the mean, which I judge from the evidence to be under rather than over the truth.