Palestine. It was only in Palestine that Churches were to be found entirely composed of Jewish Christians; and the troubles that overtook these congregations soon afterwards in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem would go far to account for the ignorance and uncertainty of the early Church as to the authorship and the original destination of this epistle. Moreover, it was in Palestine that the temptations to relapse into Judaism, against which the writer is so anxious to guard his readers, were most formidable. The sacerdotal splendour of the ancient sanctuary threw into the shade the simple forms of Christian worship; and the flames of patriotic zeal burned more fiercely in the Holy Land than among the Jews of the Dispersion. The Hebrew Christians residing there must have felt themselves more and more under the necessity of choosing between their country and their faith, between a revolt against the Romans and a patient waiting for the coming of the Saviour. Exposed to persecution and excommunication at the hands of their fanatical and exasperated countrymen, deeply attached to the religion of their fathers and with a strong love of outward ceremonial, disappointed by the delay of the Second Coming and by the rejection of the Gospel on the part of so many of their kindred, they stood in urgent need of the consolations and the warnings which are addressed to them in this epistle.

Where and when written.-The only clue to guide us as to the place of writing is to be found at chap. xiii. 24: "They of Italy salute you." This may either mean that the writer was sending greetings from the Church in Italy, or from Italian Christians resident in some foreign city from which he wrote. On the whole, the former seems the more natural interpretation. If it be adopted, we may suppose the writer to have been waiting in some Italian city for the arrival of Timothy after his liberation from imprisonment at Rome (xiii. 23).

On this supposition the date of the epistle would be about 68 A.D., which tallies with other indications of time in the epistle. That it was written before the Fall

of Jerusalem is evident not only from the allusions to the sacrificial system as still going on (x. 2-3, etc.) and to the old covenant as 66 becoming old" and "nigh unto vanishing away" (viii. 13), but still more perhaps from the absence of any allusion to the destruction of the Temple. That event, if it had already occurred, would have rendered superfluous any other proof of the transitory and imperfect nature of the Old Testament dispensation.

Its Character and Contents.-In many respects this book has more of the character of a treatise than of

a letter. Its great theme is the superiority of Christianity to Judaism. This superiority it proves not so much by minimising the old covenant which Paul had been obliged to do in vindicating the freedom of his Gentile converts-as by magnifying the new in the sense of its being a fulfilment of the old.

The epistle may be divided into two parts, the first mainly of an argumentative or expository character (i.-x. 18), the second chiefly hortatory and practical (x. 19-xiii.)

(1) In the former the writer seeks to establish the supremacy of Christ and of the Christian Dispensation. After the opening statement (i. 1-3) as to the divine revelation being completed and concentrated in the "Son," he proceeds to show His superiority to the angels, through whom the Law was believed to have been given (i.-ii.), to Moses (iii.), and to Joshua (iv.) But his main efforts are directed to proving His superiority and that of His religion to the sacerdotal system of the Jews. In v.-vii. he shows that Christ, while possessing in common with Aaron all the qualifications of a true priest, belongs to a higher order of priesthood, represented not by Aaron but by Melchizedek. In the story of the meeting of Melchizedek with Abraham (Gen. xiv. 18-20) and the prophetic allusions to the former (Ps. cx. 4) he finds many reasons of an allegorical nature to justify this view. He represents the Head of the Christian Church as the possessor of an unchangeable priesthood, secured by the divine oath-not

transitory, but permanent-exercised not on earth but in heaven-constituted "not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.” In viii.-x. 18, a similar superiority is proved to belong to the Christian Dispensation, with its law written on the heart, and its sacrifice offered "once for all" in a "tabernacle not made with hands," whereby Christ hath "through his own blood" "obtained eternal redemption."

(2) In the course of the argument occasional exhortations and warnings are introduced (ii. 1-4; iii. 7-13; iv. 11-16; v. 12-vi. 20). But the practical application is mainly reserved for the concluding chapters, x. 19xiii. After exhorting his readers to avail themselves of the "new and living way" which has been thus consecrated for them into "the holy place," and warning them against the terrible consequences of apostasy, he comforts their hearts with the assurance that though they may be disowned by the sacerdotal leaders at Jerusalem, they are in the true line of fellowship with the saints and holy men of old, whose devotion had been shown, not by the observance of an outward ceremonial, but by faith in the unseen (xi.) In the next chapter, after exhorting them to patience under their trials through the sustaining power of God's fatherly love, he introduces a striking contrast between the terrors of Sinai and the attractive

glories of Mount Zion. In the last chapter (xiii.) he gives a number of salutary counsels and admonitions, in the course of which he calls upon his readers to go forth unto Jesus (as it were) "without the camp, bearing his reproach," remembering that Jesus Himself "suffered without the gate." He alludes to the sacrifices of praise and well-doing which are required of the Christian, and bids his readers "obey them that have the rule over (them), and submit to them." The epistle concludes with a beautiful benediction, and a few last words of personal explanation and greeting.

CHAPTER XX

THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES

TH 'HERE are seven epistles which from the fourth century have gone under the name of the Catholic (or General) Epistles, viz. James; 1 and 2 Peter; 1, 2, 3 John; and Jude. They were so called in contradistinction to Paul's epistles, which, with the exception of the pastoral epistles, are addressed to individual Churches, also seven in number. In most of the Greek MSS. the Catholic epistles stand next to the Book of Acts, although they were much later than the epistles of Paul in obtaining general recognition in the Church.

"THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES

"1

In common with four other of the Catholic epistles, viz. 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude, this epistle is described by Eusebius (about 325 A.D.) as a disputed book of the New Testament, in the sense of not being universally acknowledged by the Church.

In the fourth century the claims of these and other writings to a place in the New Testament Canon were carefully sifted, the result being to vindicate the character of each of the disputed epistles (as appears from the Decrees of the Council of Laodicea, 364 A.D., and of

1 The Hebrew original of this name is Jacob.

Carthage, 397 A.D.), while a number of other books which, although not in the New Testament, had been read in church along with them were finally disallowed.

With regard to the Epistle of James in particular the rarity of allusions to it in the early Christian writers1 may be accounted for by its circulation being confined to Jewish Christians, as well as by the narrow sphere of labour in which the writer himself moved, his life apparently having been entirely spent in Jerusalem.

66

It

The internal evidence of the book is entirely in its favour, and it is now generally admitted to be a genuine work of "James, the Lord's brother" (Gal. i. 19), who presided for many years over the Church at Jerusalem. (1) The writer's modest designation of himself—“ James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" is against the idea of forgery. (2) The epistle was evidently written for Jewish Christians by one of themselves. speaks of Abraham as our father" (ii. 21); it calls the readers' place of worship "your synagogue" (ii. 2, R. V.); it calls God "the Lord of Sabaoth" (v. 4); it takes for granted an acquaintance with Old Testament characters (ii. 25; v. 10, 17); it alludes to Jewish forms of oath (v. 12); it refers to "the law" as still binding (ii. 8-11; iv. II); and it contains no allusions to those sins of the flesh which figure so prominently in epistles meant for Gentile readers. (3) It bears traces of having been written by a native of Palestine-in its allusions to "the scorching wind" (i. 11), the sea (i. 6; iii. 4), "sweet water and bitter" (the latter referring to the brackish springs of the country, iii. 11-12); the vine, olive, and fig (iii. 12); "the early and latter rain" (v. 7). (4) It shows a familiar acquaintance with Christ's teaching, although in doing so it does not use precisely the language of our Gospels.2 (5) It reflects

1 The earliest express quotation from this epistle is found in the writings of Origen; but the language of Clement of Rome, and still more clearly of Hermas, would lead us to believe that it was known to these writers. Still more significant is the fact that it has a place in the ancient Syriac Version (the Peschito).

2 Cf. i. 5, 6 and Mark xi. 23; i. 25 and John xiii. 17; ii. 5 and Luke