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theirs. But still the mere fact that it has been SERM. admitted at all within the range of apostolical doctrine is an indisputable proof that there are times and circumstances when the simple inculcation of a high and pure morality is not only not incompatible with Christian teaching, but the best and only mode of imparting it.

St. James, as I have said, may be looked upon either as the earliest of the Apostles, or as the latest of the prophets. He may be looked upon as the especial teacher of those who like the Christian converts amongst his readers are on the very beginning of their new life, and in this aspect how great an example to those who are or have been concerned with the first formation of Christian Churches! How much might have been spared of useless toil and disappointed zeal on one hand, how much of unchristian superstition and unchristian practices on the other hand, if the first missionaries whether of our own forefathers of the German forests, or of heathen populations in later times, had always remembered that "repentance towards God" must precede "faith in Jesus Christ," that in the order of the Divine dispensations the moral teaching of St. James must go before, or at least accompany, the religious teaching of St. Paul and St. John! Or again, he may be regarded as the especial teacher of those who, like his own Jewish countrymen, have fallen step by step into the degenerate formalism of the last stages of a corrupted faith. And here again, although we need not fear to find

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SERM. any exact parallel amongst Christian nations to the V. last state of that degraded race, yet undoubtedly SERM. II. it is too possible for men to come in the last days even of the Christian religion who shall have the form of godliness without the power, who shall speak much of the doctrines of Christianity, and care nothing for its duties; who shall trust, like the Jews of St. James's time, that oppression, and selfishness, and careless luxury, may be fully compensated by the inviolable sanctity of their descent, by their strict adherence to the letter of the ceremonial law, by their correct belief in the creed of their forefathers. And doubtless wherever such a state of things be found,-wherever the faith in Christ which was preached by Paul has sunk into a dead and formal belief, as in the last age of the Jewish nation was the case with the faith in God, which had been preached by Moses, there is indeed a sense in which St. James may come in to correct the teaching of St. Paul, as he came in before to correct the teaching of Moses. I need not repeat what I said in the Sermon on St. Paul of the words which he used to assert the great principle of spiritual life and freedom; I need not repeat how those words became after the lapse of centuries the symbol of a reviving world, how important it is for each one of us to remember that they are not the text of a worn out controversy, but the very life and soul of our inmost being. But still if ever there has been or may be a time when they shall come to be used as a mere technical formula or party watchword,

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then we may feel thankful to that good Providence SERM. which has secured us against this very perversion by the counter statement which is always at hand SERM. II. to check it in the words of the Epistle which tells us that "a man is justified by works, and not by "faith only." St. Paul has always furnished the rule and standard of our theological confessions, but the exceptions may well be expressed in the language not less inspired, though less frequent, of St. James.

But it is not only to large masses of men, or in particular epochs of the world, that this Epistle has its use. How often are we obliged to acknowledge the great usefulness of books, which are yet without the tone and feeling which we generally expect from religious men! how often have we heard of persons, who, having been by circumstances separated from the religious world, with hardly ever a religious expression on their lips, have yet been so earnestly employed in works of honesty, or justice, or benevolence, that we cannot but think of them as having been engaged in the service of God! It is in contemplating such cases as these that the Epistle of St. James may be most useful, both as a warning and an encouragement. It teaches us not to condemn at once those whose life and teaching is formed on the model which God has been pleased to set before us in the life and teaching of St. James. It may not be the highest excellence, any more than the Epistle of St. James is the most important part of the New Testament; but at the same time it is

SERM. not on that account to be put under the ban of the V. Christian world, any more than this Epistle was

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rejected from the Sacred Canon. It is not the end, but it is the beginning. It is not Christmas, but it is Advent. It is not the teaching of any of the three great Apostles of the whole Christian world, but it is the teaching of the chief pillar of the Church of Palestine. It is the ground of an honest and good conscience which every Christian rite and every Christian truth implies; it is, if rightly and wisely dealt with, no mere superstructure of "hay, straw, "and stubble," which the fiery trial will sweep away, but the very house which He who is the true foundation has Himself declared to be built by "whosoever both heareth His sayings and doeth "them; and the rains descend, and the floods "come, and the winds blow and beat upon that house, and it falls not, for it was founded upon a rock."

e Matt. vii. 24, 25.

THE TRADITIONS OF ST. JAMES THE JUST, AS

NARRATED BY HEGESIPPUS.

THE account of the martyrdom of St. James the Just, which has been so frequently referred to in the previous pages, is found in one of those remarkable fragments which have been preserved to us by Eusebius, from the lost work of Hegesippus, a Christian of Hebrew origin, (as Eusebius conjectures, H. E. iv. 22,) who wrote in the reign of the Antonines and lived at Rome between the years A.D. 157-176. (Hier. Vir. Ill. 22.) Of the history, of which nothing remains but the following narrative, (with the exception of a very few and comparatively insignificant fragments,) we know nothing beyond the information derived from Eusebius, (H. E. iv. 8,) viz., that it consisted of five books, and professed to give an account of the preaching of the Apostles-that its style also, as we can ourselves judge from what remains to us, was extremely simple, and that it contained passages or words in the Hebrew language, a fact of some importance in determining the meaning of some of the chief obscurities in the existing fragments, and thus confirming what would appear likely on other grounds, that the present narrative has not come down to us in its original state.

• Such is the conclusion also at which we should naturally arrive from the variations in the account as we find it in Epiphanius, (Hær. 78. 14,) who though he does not profess like Eusebius to give the words of Hegesippus's narrative, has evidently used it as his groundwork.