to tend it and use it with love and zeal or its precious faculties will soon be gone.

1:9. "Let the lowly brother."

Willingness for Christ's service, whether it is great or little, is the right condition of mind for all disciples. Pleasure is naturally felt by most at the prospect of a rise in the world. But there are some fine spirits who fain would shrink from anything like exaltation. To these the kindly apostle writes that they may take heart and not fear the greater dangers which of necessity go with a higher call.

I: IO. And the rich in his humiliation." \

God puts down one and raises up another. Psalm 75:7. This seems to be the suggestion of this passage, while it further suggests that the poorest may be "rich toward God," and the rich may be very poor in his sight. Compare Rev. 29: 3:17.

III." The sun rises with the scorching heat."
Compare Isaiah 40: 6-8.

"All flesh is grass":

And all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth,

The flower fadeth :

Because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it.

Surely the people is grass.

The grass withereth;

The flower fadeth,

But the word of our God shall stand forever."

"In this way, too, will the rich man fade away." It is not the rich brother who is to fade away in his goings. It is those who put their trust in riches (S. Mark 10:24). Even money wrongly gotten can be used by him who has turned from his evil ways to make friends who will receive him into the eternal tents (S. Luke, 16:9).

The rich will indeed perish in their journeyings for the sake of gain. We of these latter days as well as the rich Jews to whom these words were first addressed need the same plain reminder.

1: 12. "Blessed is the man who endures temptation.” The apostle links this blessing with those of our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount. S. Matth. 5: 3-II.

1:13.

"Let no one say when he is tempted."

The true Christian neither gives way to sin that grace may abound (Rom. 6: 1), nor does he think for a moment that God and so power invincible is drawing him from the good.

Our Christian heritage teaches us better things than that. It tells us, all things are working together for our good. Good will triumph at last. Yet we are at the same time taught humility and watchfulness over the evil within and without us.

"He tempts no one."

Our God permits temptation, but he himself does not tempt the children of men. He permits them that by them we may be strengthened, if we will, for his greater service. Here is the Christian conflict and the secret of God's ways with men.

I: 14. "Each one is tempted," etc.

No power of hell can force its way into the heart of man without his own consent. Only by a man's own treason can the enemy of his soul enter in and reign there.

I: 15.

"Then the desire, when it has conceived."

The effect of sin is death. The sinful act is mortal. The result is inevitable. As poison to the body so is sin to the soul. There are antidotes to both, but they must be given in time. The door of mercy does not stand open forever, nor can the fountain opened for sin and unclean

ness (Zech. 13: 1) flow on without end. For, as the wisdom of God in Prov. 2: 24-26 says, I have called and ye refused. Yes, as S. Paul puts it (Rom. 6: 23): wages of sin is death."

I: 16. "Do not be deceived." S. James the Wise has been side of the Father's character. tures of the positive side.

I : 17.

"The

dwelling on the negative

He now turns to the fea

Every good giving and every perfect gift,"

This beautiful sentence, more musical still in the Greek, is thought to be a fragment of some Christian hymn. Compare I Cor. 12: 4.

"With whom can be no variation."

There are changes of the heavenly bodies and eclipses of one or another, but there is no such variation with God. Compare Malachi 3: 6.

"I: 18. "He brought us forth by the word of truth."

There is a greater witness to God's goodness than that which is written on the dome of heaven. It is the regeneration of man. The old creation was "by the Word " (S. John 1: 3, 10.) The new is by him also. So tenderly is this declared that a maternal phrase is used,-brought forth. And even though a woman may forget her son (Isaiah 49: 15), yet will he never leave us nor forsake us (Hebr. 13: 5).

1: 20. "The wrath of man does not work the goodness of God."

This warning needs to be sounded in the ears of Christians to-day as ever of yore. We are not less apt than Jonah of old to say quickly and in self-excuse, “I do well to be angry.”

Many a holy work of Church and home has been hin

dered and destroyed in this way! And if these golden words of the first Bishop of Jerusalem had been heeded there never would have been a page of her long history blotted with the blood of a religious war.

I: 21. "The implanted word which is able to save your

souls."

The idea of salvation here conveyed is so potentially and not actually. Tended and cared for, it will grow into a tree of life, whose fruit will heal the wounds of sin. So the growth of this plant of God is largely in the hands of each individual soul of man.

The highest conception of God to the Greek mind was the idea of intellectual sufficiency and contemplation. The Oriental strives for extinction and nothingness. But the Christian is given the sure and abiding hope of the glorified body, the enlightened soul and the perfected spirit working the will and praise of its Maker and Redeemer forever.

I: 22. "Doers of the word."

No acquaintance with the Bible apart from the practise of its precepts will avail the Christian any more than it did the Jew.

Compare Rom. 2:13.

1:25.

"This man will be blessed in his doing."

Here again we have a reminder of the Beatitudes and the close of that sermon of which they are the beginning. The blessedness of this humbly active Christian is like that of the wise man there spoken of (S. Matth. 7:24-25).

I: 26. "If any one thinks he is religious while he does not bridle his tongue."

The first mark of true religion is gentleness of tongue, just as the contrary, blasphemy, is the worst sin of all.

I: 27. Here is the double proof of the perfect life of holiness whose savor is a perpetual incense before the Throne of God. The help afforded the helpless is the first of the two requirements, and it often is a means to bring about the second, that is, that spotless condition of holiness which marks, and will ever mark, the true follower of the Lord Jesus.

"Pure religion. . . . is this," etc.

Compare S. Matth. 25: 40.

66

2:1. My brothers, do not hold the faith. . . . with respect of persons.”

Compare S. Jude, verse 16.

The lesson here taught is distinctly addressed to believers, and its severity is the greater because of the Apostle's unhappy consciousness of its need. What might be endurable in a heathen or a Jew cannot be tolerated for an instant in a professed follower of the lowly Jesus. And this seems to be a further reason for the indignant expostulation and condemnation of verse 14.

Compare 2 Cor. 8:9; Phil. 2:4-7.

Were these fundamental facts of the Christian faith believed in at that time? Are they now? Why then such folly and shame as acceptance of outward appearances according to the dictates of the world's fashionable society?

The true Spirit of Christ does not lead us to contempt for even earthly dignities such as is affected by some of his ignorant followers. For true reverence and submission to constituted authority are in no way condemned by such passages of Scripture as this. Yet the undue excess of these is condemned. The preference for vulgar wealth, the worship of success of and in itself is nothing more nor less than the basest kind of idolatry.