feeling of want and of the necessity of deliverance from it. Thus, too, in the Old Testament, the rich, the proud, and the ungodly are often ranked together as of one class.

But every external situation may become, according to one's temper of mind, either a help or a hindrance to salvation; and nothing can here injure or promote his interests independently of his own will. Thus may poverty also that physical want which depresses the spiritual nature, which prevents the inner man from awaking to self-consciousness, and to the feeling of his higher spiritual wants-prove an obstacle to the attainment of the kingdom of God. Poverty, too, has its peculiar dangers, and this is not overlooked in this Epistle. In general, however, it was the poor and lowly, pining under the oppressions of the rich and powerful, and under the pressure of physical want, who most readily felt the need of deliverance from spiritual want, from inward poverty of soul. On this feeling of physical need could more easily be engrafted that consciousness of the soul's necessities, through which they might be conducted to the Saviour. As in their case there was nothing to deceive the soul into a seeming satisfaction of its wants, they could the more easily bę drawn to that which furnished the true satisfaction for all its higher necessities. Moreover, the poor in this world could more readily than the rich attain to that poverty of spirit, to which, as Christ says, belongs the kingdom of Heaven. Thus the gospel found, among the Jews, a readier reception from the poor than from the rich; and on this account, Christians were reproachfully called The Poor. We do not mean by this, that all these poor who received the gospel, had been led to

it by true poverty of spirit, and had thus been prepared to receive, as poor and needy, the true riches of the gospel. Among them too was to be found the influence of that carnal mind which prevailed among the Jews; begetting, not the true hope of the heavenward directed spirit, but rather the expectation of a recompense for bodily privations in the imagined carnal enjoyments of the kingdom of Christ. Now the faith of such, if we choose to call it by that name, had its source in the carnal mind of the natural man; and hence, the earlier form of this natural man was transferred with them out of Judaism into a professed Christianity; where it was, as we shall see, opposed and rebuked by James.

As the poorer and lower class, the Christians had, as we have intimated, much to suffer from the persecution and oppression of the powerful and rich; partly on account of their religion, partly for the promotion of selfish interests, their religion serving as the pretext. The rich who called themselves Christians without being so in truth, were infected with the common vice of the rich among the Jews, and failed in the exercise of love and even justice towards their poorer brethren in the faith. Accordingly, we find in this Epistle words of consolation and encouragement for the oppressed and suffering, and of rebuke for the rich both within and without the Church.

CHAPTER I.

PRACTICAL RELIGION.

THE author of the epistle on which we have entered is James, the son of Alpheus, and, according to the flesh, the near relation of our Lord, commonly called James the Less, to distinguish him from James, the brother of John. He was appointed the presiding minister at Jerusalem, and addressed this epistle, full of practical instruction, to the scattered Christian Jews who were dispersed over all the Roman empire, and were waiting and seeking for instruction in the practical as well as doctrinal truths of Christianity. The epistle is called one of the catholic or general epistlesa name which is applied to the epistles of James, and of Peter, and also of John; and means that they were not directed specially and by name to any individual Church, with special reference to its sins or its virtues, but to the Church universal, or to all Christians dispersed and scattered through all the world, many of them having neither the means nor the opportunity of uniting themselves to Christian Churches, and so publicly professing the gospel of Christ. To these James addresses this epistle, "To the twelve tribes"—that is, to converted Jews of all the nations "which are scattered abroad, greeting." They were evidently in great afflic

tion, and therefore he says, what seems a paradox, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations, for the result of these will be that your faith will be tested; if you are tempted to trust in the seen, your faith in the unseen will be put to its trial; if you are tempted by the offer of great wealth to do wrongly, your faith in God and your duty to do rightly because he bids it, is put to the test. And we do not know what we are till we are tested; we do not know the excellence of a ship till she has ridden out a storm, and crossed and recrossed the Atlantic; we do not know how much we can endure until we are put to the trial; we do not know whether our Christianity be a mere name, a profession, or a living power, an abiding principle, till we have entered into temptation. And if, therefore, the result of the trial shall be the mere destruction of the alloy, and the purification of the gold till it reflects the image of God more brightly and purely, then you may count it all joy when you fall into such temptations as these. But while the word "temptation" occurs here in this sense, it is important to explain that James uses it also in another sense. Thus in the thirteenth verse, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God." Now evidently the word is used in two distinct senses: one means trial, ordeal; the other means inducement or excitement to commit sin. In one sense it is true, God tempted Abraham; in another sense it is no less true, God tempts no man; that is, God places us in trial for the testing of our Christian character; but God never excites any man to lust, to covetousness, to evil dispositions, to sin, or to anything connected with it. In no sense is God the author of sin. God sends you, for

instance, sickness; he sends it to be a trial to test your character, and to bring it out in greater beauty and perfection; but you make the sickness a means of impatience, of discontent, of murmuring against God: God is the author of it in the first aspect, your sinful heart is the inspiration of it in the second aspect. In the first sense God tempted Abraham, in the last sense God tempts no man, "But every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed."

Then after he has thus alluded to temptation, he says, "If any of you lack wisdom," that is, heavenly wisdom, the wisdom that is from above, pure, peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, what is he to do? "Let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him." Here then is a simple truth: if any one is destitute of Christian grace, and light, and life, and truth, it is because he has never yet from the very heart asked God to enlighten him and to give it to him. But then he must ask "in faith," that is, believing that God is able, and in Christ has promised and is willing to bestow all that he asks, grace and glory. "For he that wavereth"—that is, that has not faith-" is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed;" to-day it is twenty-four feet in height, and to-morrow it is two feet, or another day it is perfectly calm; it is never the same thing, it is never to be depended upon; it depends upon the wind, the uncertainty of which is proverbial. "For," he adds, "a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." We use the word "doubleminded" in the sense of being deceitful, disingenuous; but this is not the meaning here: it is literally translated, "a man with two souls," and the best illustration of it