tained in the one single fact that he was "the disciple whom Jesus loved." Once understand that, from whatever causes, no obstacle intervened between him and that ore divine object which, from the earliest dawn of youth to the last years of extreme old age, was ever impressing itself deeper and deeper into his inmost soul, and his whole work on earth is at once accounted for. Whatever we can conceive of devoted tenderness, of deep affection, of intense admiration for goodness, we must conceive of him who, even in the palace of the high priest and at the foot of the cross, was the inseparable companion of his Lord; whatever we can conceive of a gentleness and holiness ever increasing in depth and purity, that we must conceive of the heart and mind which produced the Gospel and the Epistles of St. John.

One phase, however, of his character there was which might at first sight seem inconsistent with what has just been said, but which nevertheless was the aspect of it most familiar to the minds of the earliest Church. It was not as John the beloved disciple, but as John the son of thunder-not as the apostle who leaned on his Master's breast at supper, but as the apostle who called down fire from heaven, who forbade the man to cast out devils, who claimed with his brother the highest places in the kingdom of heaven-that he was known to the readers of the first three Gospels. But, in fact, it is in accordance with what, has been said that in such a character the more outward and superficial traits should have attracted attention before the complete perfection of that more inward and silent growth which was alone essential to it; and, alien in some respects as the bursts of fiery passion may be from the usual tenor of St. John's later character, they fully agree with the severity, almost unparalleled in the New Testament, which marks the well-known anathema in his Second Epistle, and the story, which there seems no reason to doubt, of Cerinthus and the bath. It is not surprising that the deep stillness of such a character as this should, like the Oriental sky, break out from time to time into tempests of im

passioned vehemence; still less that the character which was to excel all others in its devoted love of good should give indications-in its earliest stages even in excess of that intense hatred of evil without which love of good can hardly be said to exist.

It was not till the removal of the first and the second apostle from the scene of their earthly labors that there burst upon the whole civilized world that awful train of calamities which, breaking as it did on Italy, on Asia Minor and on Palestine almost simultaneously, though under the most different forms, was regarded alike by Roman, Christian and Jew as the manifestation of the visible judgment of God. It was now-if we may trust the testimony alike of internal and external proof—in the interval between the death of Nero and the fall of Jerusalem, when the roll of apostolical epistles seemed to have been finally closed, when every other inspired tongue had been hushed in the grave, that there rose from the lonely rock of Patmos that solemn voice which mingled with the storm that raged around it as the dirge of an expiring world; that under the "red and lowering sky" which had at last made itself understood to the sense of the dullest, there rose that awful vision of coming destiny which has received the expressive name of the Revelation of St. John the Divine.

As it is love that pervades our whole conception of the teaching of St. John, so also it pervades our whole conception of his character. We see him-it surely is no unwarranted fancy-we see him declining with the declining century, every sense and faculty waxing feebler, but that one divinest faculty of all burning more and more brightly; we see it breathing through every look and gesture—the one animating principle of the atmosphere in which he lives and moves-earth and heaven, the past, the present and the future alike echoing to him the dying strain of his latest words: "We love him because he loved us." And when at last he disappears from our view in the last pages of the sacred volume, ecclesiastical tradition still lingers in the close;

and in that touching story, not the less impressive because so familiar to us, we see the aged apostle borne in the arms of his disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there repeating over and over again the same saying, "Little children, love one another," till, when asked why he said this and nothing else, he replied, in those well-known words, fit indeed to be the farewell speech of the beloved disciple: "Because this is our Lord's command, and if you fulfill this, nothing else is needed."

Such was the life of St. John-the sunset, as I venture to call it, of the apostolical age-not amidst the storms which lowered around the apocalyptic seer, but the exact image of those milder lights and shades which we know so well even in our own native mountains, every object far and near brought out in its due proportions, the harsher features now softly veiled in the descending shadows, and the distant heights lit up with a far more than morning or mid-day glory in the expiring glow of the evening heavens.

XLI.

JAMES.

HE character of James is only to be read in his Epistle, for all traditionary notices of his history and habits seem uncertain. We know little of him, except that he was not the James who stood with Jesus on the mount; that he was known as James the Less; and that many identify him with James the Lord's brother, of whom Paul speaks. At the council of Jerusalem he acted, in some measure, as moderator, and his letter as well as his speech shows him to have possessed qualities admirably adapting him for this office -wisdom, calmness, common sense, avoidance of extremes, a balanced intellect and a determined will.

The Epistle of James is the first and best homily extant. It is not what many would now call a "gospel sermon," but neither is the Sermon on the Mount. It has little doctrinal statement and no consecutive argument; it is a list of moral duties, inspirited by the earnestness with which they are urged, and beautified by the graphic and striking imagery in which the style is clothed. James is one of the most sententious, pointed and terse of the New Testament authors. He reads like a modern. The edges of his sentences sparkle. His words are as "goads, and as nails." He reminds us more of Ecclesiastes than of any other Scripture book. Paul's short sentences never occur till the close of his Epistles, and remind us then of hurried pantings of the heart; they are like the postscripts of lovers. James' entire

Epistle is composed of brief, glancing sentences, discovering the extreme liveliness and piercing directness of his intellect. Every word tells. How sharp and effective are such expressions as"When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." "Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." "Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works." "Thou believest that there is one God; thou dost well; the devils also believe, and tremble." "Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing psalms"!

In one of those sentences-"the devils believe, and tremble" -as well as in his quaint and powerful picture of the tongue, we find that very rare and somewhat fearful gift of irony winding and darkening into invective. What cool scorn and warm horror meet in the words, "believe, and tremble"! How formidable does the "little member" he describes become when it is tipped with the "fire of hell"! And in what slow, successive, thunderous words does he describe the "wisdom which is not from above" as "earthly, sensual, devilish"! And upon the selfish rich he pours out a very torrent of burning gold, as if from the Lord of Sabaoth himself, into whose ears the cries of the reapers have entered.

In fine, although we pronounce James rather an orator than a poet, yet there do occur some touches of genuine poetic beauty, of which, in pursuing his swift rhetorical way, he is himself hardly conscious. "Let the rich," he says, "rejoice in that he is made low, because as the lower of the grass, he shall pass away." For a moment he follows its brief history: "The sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways". "fade away" and yet "rejoice," inasmuch as, like the flower, whose bloom, savor and pith have floated up to swell the broadblown lily of day, his adversity withers in the prosperity of God.