refrain from saying, however undesirous of controversy, that all which unction now implies to the Romanist is quite opposed to whatever force and value are given it in Holy Writ. There unction is enjoined "with the special object of recovery;" its purpose was a present bodily one, and in no way applicable to the future of the soul. "The prayer of faith shall save the sick "i.e., shall heal him; the faithful prayer shall be that which God will answer, and so "raise up" the sufferer. But, it is urged, the next clause has a different force: "If he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." Such is only apparent in our own version, and not in the original. The grammatical sense infers that the sick man is abiding under the consequence of some committed sin, which is "presumed to have been the working cause of his present sickness." So Alford and Bede similarly: "Many by reason of sins done in the soul are compassed by weakness; nay, even death of the body." And the former theologian again : "Among all the daring perversions of Scripture, by which the Church of Rome has defended her superstitions, there is none more patent than that of the present passage. Not without reason has the Council of Trent defended its misinterpretation with anathema; for indeed it needed that, and every other recommendation, to support it, and give it any kind of acceptance. The Apostle is treating of a matter totally distinct from the occasion and the object of extreme unction. He is enforcing the efficacy of the prayer of faith in afflictions (verse 13). Of such efficacy he adduces one special instance. In sickness let the sick with Oil. man inform the elders of the Church. Let them, representing the congregation of the faithful, pray over the sick man, accompanying that prayer with the symbolic and sacramental act of anointing with oil in the name of our Lord. Then the prayer of faith shall save (heal) the sick man, and the Lord shall bring him up out of his sickness; and even if it were occasioned by some sin, that sin shall be forgiven him. Such is the simple and undeniable sense of the Apostle, arguing for the efficacy of prayer; and such the perversion of that sense by the Church of Rome." Not that we should think this and other like cases are wholly intentional twistings of God's word. The Latin Bible is in many places a faulty-though not deliberately unfaithful-rendering of the Hebrew and Greek; and half our differences with Rome arise from such misinterpretations. Allowing the beginning of mischief to have been oftentimes a wrong translation, religious opinions engendered from it, we can understand, would be hardly cast aside, more especially when advantageous to their possessors. Little by little the change of doctrine drew on, and most probably thus:-The aim of the apostolic anointing was bodily recovery, and (again we quote Bishop Browne) "this exactly corresponds with the miraculous cures of early ages; . . . 8o long as such. powers remained in the Church, it was reasonable that anointing of the sick should be retained." But these powers ceased, in the wisdom of God, after awhile; not so, however, the ceremony to which men's minds in distress had been accustomed. It was retained in affection when its nounces these words: "May the true force had departed. But since no outward result remained visible, fervent and mystical teachers could not well avoid searching for the invisible; and thus the area of operations was removed from the flesh to the spirit. The words of Holy Scripture would, with a little straining, bear such a colourable translation: and so was laid the foundation of that belief now current in a great part of Christendom. The Greek Church still practices unction, but rather in memory of a venerated custom, wherein God's mercy was aforetime present; the Latin, unfortunately, is bound by its Council of Trent (Sessio xiv.) to believe "extreme unction to be a sacrament, instituted by Christ, conferring good, remitting sins, and comforting the infirm." Its authorised manual of devotion— (16) Confess your faults one The Crown of Jesus (p. 710)-says, to another.-The meaning attri"Our Lord and Saviour Jesus buted to the words of this verse by Christ, in His tender solicitude for many devout Catholics cannot be those whom He has redeemed by established either from the opinion His precious blood, has been of antiquity, or a critical examinapleased to institute another sacra- tion of the Greek text according to ment, to help us at that most modern schools. "We have," obimportant hour on which eternity serves Alford, “a general injunction depends-the hour of death. This arising out of a circumstance sacrament is called Extreme necessarily to be inferred in the Unction, or the last anointing." preceding example (verses 14, 15). And further explains, "The priest, There, the sin would of necessity in administering this sacrament, have been confessed to the elders, anoints the five principal senses of before the prayer of faith could the body-the eyes, the ears, the deal with it. And seeing the nostrils, the lips, the hands and the blessed consequences in that case feet-because these have been em- 'generally,' says the Apostle, in ployed during life in offending all similar cases, and " one to God. At each anointing he pro-another universally, pursue the and Prayer for, JAMES, V. each Other. same salutary practice of confess-years-centuries, in fact-to deing your sins. . . Confess there-velop into the hard system of comfore one to another-not only to the pulsory individual bondage which elders (presbyters) in the case supposed, but one to another generally —your transgressions, and pray for one another that ye may be healed, in cases of sickness, as above. The context here forbids any wider meaning and it might appear astonishing, were it not notorious, that on this passage, among others, is built the Romish doctrine of the necessity of confessing sins to a priest." Not that all Roman Catholic divines, indeed, have thus read the injunction. Some of the ablest and greatest have admitted "that we cannot certainly affirm sacramental confession to have been meant or spoken of in this place" (Hooker). How then did the gradual perversion take hold of men's minds? The most laborious investigation of history and theology will alone answer the question properly; and here only a brief résumé is possible. There can be little doubt that, strictly consonant with the apostolic charge, open confession was the custom of old. Offenders hastened to some minister of God, and in words, by which all present in the congregation might take notice of the fault, declared their guilt; convenient remedies were as publicly prescribed, and then all present joined in prayer to God. But after awhile, for many patent reasons, this plain talk about sins was rightly judged to be a cause of mischief to the young and innocent; and such confessions were relegated to a private hearing. The change was in most ways beneficial, and hardly suspected of being a step in a completely new doctrine. It needed cost Europe untold blood and confession in the offender, therefore to confess unto him is a matter of such necessity as, being not either in deed, or, at the least, in desire, performed, excludeth utterly from all pardon, and must consequently in Scripture be commanded wheresoever any promise of forgiveness is made. No, no; these opinions have youth in their countenance. Antiquity knew them not; it never thought nor dreamed of them" (E. P., vi. iv. 14). "As for private confession," says Jewel in his Apology, "abuses and errors set apart, we condemn it not, but leave it at liberty." Such must be the teaching of any Church which, in the epigram of Bishop Ken, "stands distinguished from all papal and puritan innovations," resting upon God's Word, and the earliest, holiest, simplest, best traditions of the Apostles of His dear Son. And if an ancient custom has become a universal practice in the Latin communion, presumed to be of sacramental virtue, scholars will tell us that the notion has never been absent altogether from any branch of the Catholic Church; and that in some shape or form it lives in most of those societies which sprang into existence at the Reformation, largely from abhorrence of the tyranny and misuse of confession. The effectual fervent prayer Better, The prayer of a righteous man availeth much in its working. It moves the hand of Him Who moves the world. 'What are men better than sheep or brain, of Prayer. ject to like passions as we If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves, and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every Bound by gold chains about the feet of In Matt. xiv. 2, and Mark vi. 14, we read of John the Baptist, that "mighty works do show forth themselves in him." A nearer approach to the sense would be “they work"-energise, if we might coin a word; and such is also the meaning of the present passage—the prayer of the just, pleading, striving fervently, hath power with God, even like Israel of old, and shall prevail (Gen. xxxii. 28). Some divines trace a literal force in the passage, finding in it an allusion to the Energumens of the 99 mediums of first century (the that age), who were possessed by demons; that, just as these unhappy beings strove in their bondage, so equally-nay, infinitely more-should Christians "wrestle with the Lord." 66 (17) Elias.-James supplies a lacuna in the story of Elijah. In the prophet simply 1 Kings xvii. and sternly tells Ahab "there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." Further on (1 Kings xvii. 41—46) "there is a sound of abundance of rain." In our Epistle we read "prayed earnestly " that Elias literally, prayed in his prayer, a Hebraistic form of emphasis (see margin). He asked for drought, and it lasted three years and a half, so that "there was a sore famine in Samaria." He prayed once more, and the "heaven was Example JAMES, V. of Elias. are, and he prayed ear and the earth brought Chap. v. 17, 18. nestly1 that it 1 Or, in forth her fruit. The effect of might not fervent prayer; the example of rain: and it the earth by the space of his prayer. (19) Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him (20) let him Chap. v. 19, 20. the blessedness ; know, that he of conversion : which con- of bringing home the the lost. verteth an act black with clouds and wind, and from their proper course, till in there was a great rain," and thus time they become of themselves again "the Lord hearkened unto" wandering stars, to whom is rethe voice of a man." Yet Elijah served the blackness of darkness was no demi-god; we even learn for ever" (Jude, verse 13). As how he shrank from his prophet's the leading away was yoke, and longed to die. No one therefore may despair in his petitions, but rather let his " requests be made known unto God;" for men ought always to pray, and not to faint" (Luke xviii. 1). It rained not on the earth. -This Orientalism need not be a snare to the most literal of readers. The punishment, because of Ahab and Jezebel, fell on their own kingdom, and not the whole world. In a similar hyperbole Obadiah told Elijah, concerning this very famine, "there is no nation, or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee" (1 Kings xviii. 10). (19) Brethren. My brethren, it rather ought to be. The last, and, to some, the dearest of the wise Apostle's remarks, is this on conversion; and it fitly closes his loving and plain-speaking Letter. prompted by the devil, so the bringing home is the service of God, and each will have its fit reward. The sinner is riding, as it were, headlong to destruction, when a friend lays hold upon the rein, and literally "converts " him, i.e., turns him round; but, observe, the wanderer is still far from home, and many a weary league must he traverse, even with face turned and kept heavenward, before the end be neared. (20) Let him know.-Or, as it rather seems to be, Know ye: be absolutely sure of this, in a knowledge better than all the Gnostic and Agnostic learning of the day. He which turneth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death-the means thereto being given him by the Saviour of all-and shall hide a multitude of sins; not, of course, his own, but If any of you do err.. those of the penitent, brought back Better thus, If one of you be led by this good servant into the fold. away from the truth, and one con- So is it possible to be a fellowvert him. It is not the wilful worker with Christ (2 Cor. vi. 1), error, so much as the being seduced and a sharer in His work of salby others, who draw the unwary | vation, as, in another sense, we too .1 |