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God; thou doest well; the devils also believe, and tremble. Is any among you afflicted?-Let him pray. Is any merry?—Let him sing psalms."

In one of those sentences ("the devils believe, and tremble"), as well as in his quaint and powerful picture of the tongue, we find that very rare and somewhat fearful gift of irony winding and darkening into invective. What cool scorn and warm horror meet in the words, "believe, and tremble!" How formidable does the "little member" he describes become, when it is tipped with the "fire of hell!" And in what slow successive thunderous words does he describe the "wisdom which is not from above," as "earthly, sensual, devilish!" And upon the selfish rich he pours out a very torrent of burning gold, as if from the Lord of Sabaoth himself, into whose ears the cries of the reapers have entered.

In fine, although we pronounce James rather an orator than a poet, yet there do occur some touches of genuine poetic beauty, of which, in pursuing his swift rhetorical way, he is himself hardly conscious. "Let the rich," he says, "rejoice in that he is made low, because as the flower of the grass, he shall pass away." For a moment, he follows its brief history: "The sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways"

-"fade away," and yet "rejoice," inasmuch as, like the flower, whose bloom, savor, and pith have floated up to swell the broad-blown lily of day, his adversity withers in the prosperity of God. "What, again, is life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." Such flowers, indeed, are transplanted from the prophetic forests. There, under the proud cedars, they were overshadowed, and almost lost; here, they bloom alone, and are the more lovely, that they seem to grow amid the fragments of the tables, which Moses, in his ire, strewed along the sides of Sinai-divine rubbish, left, as has not unfrequently been, in other senses, the case, by human wrath, but potent in its very powder.

A little common sense often goes a great way in a mystified and hollow world. How much mist does one sunbeam disperse! James's few sentences-the law in powder-thrown out with decision, pointed by keen satire, and touched with terrific anger, have prevailed to destroy and disperse a thousand Antinomian delusions, and to redeem the perfect "law of liberty" from manifold charges of licentiousness. Even grant we, that, among the unhallowed multitude who have sought to reduce the standard of morals, Luther, like another Aaron, may have mingled, even he must down before the "Man with a word and a blow,” the man Moses, impersonated by James, crying out-as his face's indignant crimson flashes through the glory which the Divine presence had left upon it, and his eye outbeams his face and outruns his hurrying feet, and his arms make a heave-offering of the fire-written tables-"Wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead ?”

Earnestness is a quality as old as the heart of man. Nor is the proclamation of it, as an essential and all-important element, merely of yesterday. It was preached—nay, cursed—into Israel's ears by Deborah, when she spake so bitterly of poor, trimming, tarrying, neutral Meroz, "which came not forth to the help of the Lord." It was asked, in thunder, from Carmel, by Elijah, as he said "How long halt ye between two opinions?" It was proclaimed, through a calm louder than the thunder, by the Great Teacher himself, as he told the docile, well-behaved, money-loving weakling, in the Gospel, and in him, millions-"Go, sell all that thou hast, and take up thy cross, and follow me." And here, when faith in the Cross itself was retiring to rest in the upper rooms of speculative acquiescence, or traditionary acceptance, comes James, stoutly, resisting the retreat. His great demand is "life, action, fruit." Roughly, as one awakens those who are sleeping amid flames, does he shake the slumberers, and alarm the supine. But let those who have been taught by more modern prophets the value of earnestness remember, that James always admits the authority of that faith whence he would expect virtue to spring.

"Faith is dead, being alone;" in other words, it is not the Christian faith at all. That is necessarily a living, fruit-bearing principle. And, strong as his hand is to tear away the subterfuges of the hypocrite, and bold as his spirit is to denounce every shade of inconsistency-every "sham" of that day, and although his tone against oppression and oppressors crashes up into that of the old prophets, and his fourth and fifth chapters be in the very mood of Malachi-yet the whole tenor of his doctrine, and spirit, and language, substantiates his first and only title "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ."

CHAPTER XVI.

JOHN.

THERE is, or was till lately, extant a vuigar Bibliolatry, which would hardly admit of any preference being given to one Scripture writer over another, or of any comparison being instituted between its various authors. This was absurd, even on the ground which the doctrine of mechanical inspiration took. Suppose that the whole Bible came from God, in the same way in which nature is derived from him; yet, who ever was afraid of preferring the Alps to the Apennines, or of comparing the Pacific with the Atlantic deep? So comparisons were inevitable between writers of such various styles as Isaiah and the author of Ruth, the Psalms and the Historical Books; and preferences to all but the mere slaves of a system, were as inevitable as comparisons.

Now, we need not be afraid to avow, that we have our favorites among Scripture writers, and that a leading favorite is John. There was 66 one disciple whom Jesus loved;" and we plead guilty to loving the writer supremely too. It has been supposed by some, that there was a certain resemblance between the countenance of John, and that of Jesus. We figure the same sweetness in the smile, the same silence of ineffable repose upon the brow, the same mild luster in the eye. And, as long as John lived, he would renew to those who had known the Savior the impressions made by his transcendent beauty, for transcendently beautiful he surely was. But the resemblance extends to the features of his composition, as well as of his face. It seems Jesus who is still speaking to us.

The

babe-like simplicity, the artlessness, the lisping out of the loftiest thoughts, the sweet undertone of utterance, the warm female-like tenderness and love, along with a certain divine dogmatism, of the Great Teacher, are all found in an inferior measure in the writings of his apostle. He has, too, a portion of that strange familiarity with divine depths which distinguished his master, who speaks of them always as if he were lying in his Father's bosom. So John seems perfectly at home in heaven, and the stupendous subjects and scenery thereof. He is not like Paul, “caught up to Paradise," but walks like a native through its blessed clime. His face is flushed with the ardors of the eternal noon, and his style wears the glow of that celestial sunshine. He dips his pen in love-the pure and fervid love of heaven. Love-letters are his Epistles-the mere artless spillings of the heart-such letters as Christ might have written to the family at Bethany. Jesus is the great theme of John. His name perpetually occurs; nay, he thinks so often of him, that he sometimes speaks of, without naming, him. Thus, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear, "Because that for his name's sake they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles." In his Epistles, occurs the sentence of sentences, "God is love." Why is not this sentence sown in our gardens in living green; framed and hung on the walls of our nurseries; taught as the first sounds to little ones? Why not call God Love? Why not change the name of our Deity? Why not instruct children to answer, when asked who made you? Love, the Father. Who redeems you? Love, the Son. Who sanctifies you? Love, the Holy Ghost? Surely, on some day of balm did this golden word pass across the mind of the apostle, when, perhaps, pondering on the character, and recalling the face of Jesus, looking up to the glowing sky and landscape of the East, and feeling his own heart burning within him, he spread out the spark in his bosom, till it became a flame, encompassing the universe, and the great generalization leapt from his lips-" God is love."

we shall be like him."

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