There are probably many who do not recognize the fact that there is an epistle of Jacob in the New Testament; and even those who are quite aware that James is only a form of the word Jacob, which is the real transcription of the Greek,-may yet fail to attach any particular significance to this. Alas! we so commonly read Scripture without even imagining that there is significance everywhere-in a proper name as in everything else-that it probably strikes few, although one would think it plain enough, that there is any particular meaning in this. Yet one can see at once that there is a peculiarity of the epistle with which this harmonizes in a very complete way. It is an epistle to "the twelve tribes scattered abroad." There is no other epistle in the New Testament which recognizes Israel after this manner. In fact, we rightly think of it as in a sense foreign to Christianity to do so. We know that God has promises for Israel which will be fulfilled in a day soon to come:but in the meanwhile the branches are broken off:Israel as a nation is set aside in order that God may fulfil His purpose of taking for Himself a heavenly people out of the world, a people formed of Jews and Gentiles, brought together upon equal terms, and with higher promises than Israel's ever were.

Yet a glance at the book of the Acts is sufficient to assure us how long was the weaning time before those that believed in Israel were content absolutely to separate themselves from the nation to which they belonged. When Paul arrived at Jerusalem, the last time of his being there, it was to find myriads of Jews believing; who, as he was told, were "all zealous of the law."And we know how he was urged himself to go with those who were offering sacrifices at the close of a legal vow, in order to assure every one that he walked orderly and kept the law. It had been indeed allowed that believing Gentiles were not under it. God has made it amply plain; and that is why in the letter with regard to it, with which James himself had prominently to do, it is said:" It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us."This has been taken as if it meant really the Holy Spirit in us, but it is surely not so. We have but to remember how, apart from law, apart from ritual even of every kind, baptism itself displaced from the order which it had among the Jewish converts, the Spirit of God fell upon Cornelius and those with him, while yet they were listening to Peter's word, and Peter distinctly refers to this when questioned at Jerusalem as to how he could go in unto men uncircumcised, and eat with them, when he asks :"Who was I that I could resist God ?"

But this acceptance of Gentiles as Gentiles did not necessarily displace the Jews from their position, a position as the favored family of God. In millennial days, Gentiles will be owned as Gentiles, while at the same time Israel will have their own special place and eminence upon the earth. It was not until after this, and some years afterward, that Paul was chosen to write his epistle to the Hebrews and to bid believers among them to come outside the camp and give up the whole Jewish position. It is in this meantime that the epistle of James evidently has its place. While he, of course, distinctly takes his place as a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and while he writes as to those who had the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, yet they are part of the twelve tribes. Peter also, the apostle of the circumcision, as he distinctly was, writes to the "strangers scattered abroad," or the "strangers of the dispersion," manifestly Jews; but he does not address them, after all, as being such, and in his epistle we see distinctly recognized the position of Christians as living stones built upon that Living Stone which Israel's builders had rejected, and thus built up a "spiritual house, a holy priesthood,"-the complete setting aside of the Levitical one. Peter refers also to the epistle which Paul had written to them, "according to the wisdom given him;" and this is evidently that epistle to the Hebrews which is often denied to be his; but no one can find that other epistle which he wrote, and which Peter expressly puts along with the other Scriptures, while he owns there are in it things "hard to be understood." The complete set-ting aside of the whole Jewish ritual would be necessarily hard enough to be understood by Jewish believers.

With James there is nothing of this kind. He raises no question indeed as to it, and the whole style of his epistle shows the character of things still obtaining among those he addresses. Thus the word for " assembly " in the second chapter is really "synagogue;" which must be intended to have some meaning for us; the only synagogue that we hear of amongst Christians being that which the Lord speaks of in the epistle to Smyrna as the "Synagogue of Satan."

The synagogue exactly showed the Jewish position. With children of God among them, the children of God as such were still scattered abroad. There no distinct gathering together of believers as such; though they might have and did have, no doubt, their separate meetings, yet they were rather a "sect of the Nazarenes" than a distinct body. The apostle here addresses those who were evidently still in that mixed condition. He speaks as in the synagogue. He addresses himself to the rich whose riches are corrupted and whose garments are moth eaten, who have even condemned and killed the just, -to denounce upon them the miseries that would come upon them. He speaks of their wars and fightings, of their killing and desiring to have, their fighting and warring in order to satisfy what was mere fleshly lust. All this is perfectly consistent with what Paul himself might have said when standing in those synagogues, which, as we know, he sought out in the first place to deliver his message there. By and by when they oppose themselves, he shakes his garments, and separates the disciples from them; but to this he is forced, He does not take the ground of separation from the beginning, and if this were so even with Paul at that time, we need not wonder if it were so with James and those gathered within the nation, as in Jerusalem.

All this does not hinder in the least the application of the truth given in the epistle, to believers everywhere. It is evident that it is practice rather than doctrine upon which he dwells; and while it is in the wisdom of God, no doubt, that we should have in the New Testament itself the proof of that intermediate condition between Judaism and Christianity, at least as we find it in Paul, (a condition which obtained for many years,) yet we may be sure that He would not allow this to detract from the blessing that we shall find in this epistle to the twelve tribes.

When we think once more of the name of him who addresses them, there certainly seems a suitability in it that we cannot but recognize. An epistle of Jacob to the twelve tribes ! Is it not as if it were the spirit of their ancestor speaking to them in it? And when we look closely, we shall find that this is truly the case. It is, as it were, the Jacob of the old history that is speaking in it; but a Jacob with his lesson learnt, or he would have really no title to speak at all. It is a Jacob of whom God has made an Israel, while all the more he remembers his old name, and is careful to show how God has wrought in him through the trials which have wrought to make him what he is,-such trials as he calls those whom he addresses to rejoice in, with an assurance of how blessed he is who endures them.

It is not necessary to do more than allude to that history of his so familiar to us all, and which the book of Genesis sets before us. Jacob-Israel is the very pattern of the Spirit's work amongst men. Jacob the supplanter, the man seeking constantly to attain by his own effort, even if he were seeking the blessing which we know he did seek, and which, moreover, God designed for him. With his efforts he only succeeds in putting off from himself that blessing for long years; and in making, as far as could be, the God who was for him to be against him. So that, if after all God will bless, for this He must take him into His own hands, wrestle with him, break down the strength with which he would contend against Him, make it impossible for him to wrestle any more, in order that just in this way he may find that which he has sought, not as wrestling, but as clinging.

The man with the dislocated thigh can only cling, not wrestle; and the laying hold with the hand, of which he is so fond, yet now assumes another character altogether. " I will not let thee go except thou bless me," is such a cry of need as God delights to answer, and such a faith as He is seeking to bring men to. Thus it should be no wonder to us that James' epistle here everywhere dwells upon faith. It may seem, indeed, to many almost the opposite of this. We are familiar with the labor that has been spent to assure us how James, if he be not against Paul's doctrine of justifying faith, as even Luther thought, yet at least is bent upon explaining it in such a way as to guard against the abuse of it. If Paul assures us that Abraham was justified by faith, James, on the other hand, assures us that he was justified by works no less. He puts it as an undoubted fact to which he can appeal:"Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar ? Ye see, then, how that by works a man is justified and not by faith only."

Yet one who reads carefully, and who knows clearly the gospel and his own need, will scarcely make a mistake here. Paul has left room, in fact, for the very doctrine of James, while guarding his own in the most absolute way. "For if," he says, "Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but, he adds, "not before god." He does not say that Abraham was not justified by works, but he does say in the most positive and absolute way that can be, "not before God."

In what other way, then? some may ask. It should perfectly manifest that, if it be not before God, must be before man; and that is what James speaks of here throughout. "A man may say, thou last faith and I have works. Show me thy faith without thy works and I will show thee my faith by my works."The man who shows himself a believer by his works justifies his faith, justifies himself as having it; and that is how James speaks with regard to Abraham. When was Abraham justified by faith? As we know, when, as a childless man, he stood under the starry heavens to have God say to him:"So shall thy seed be."It is there that we have the record :" He believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness." But, says James, "Abraham was justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar." It was then that Scripture was fulfilled which saith:"Abraham believed God." In that wonderful act, his faith was fully manifested. We see how real it was and how operative, for James does indeed tell us that the faith which is not operative is not a living faith; and only a living faith can save. That is not to dishonor faith or to make less of it in any wise, to say that it has of necessity this character of a power that works; as John also tells us, that it is "faith" that "worketh by love."He does not put down these works of Abraham as having to do with his justification before God; or as being needed a tall for God to pronounce upon his faith. On the other hand, for man they are surely needed.

And the works of which James speaks, let us notice, are not such as people would supplement the righteousness of faith with. They are not works of benevolence; they are not works which necessarily make much of the person at all. Thus James can put " Rahab the harlot" along with Abraham in this matter. The very way in which James introduces her here as "Rahab the harlot" may assure us that it is not of what people call "moral works" that he is speaking. Rahab was justified by works when she had received the messengers and sent them out another way. These were works that made her faith plain, and that is the kind of work that he is seeking. They involved what men would call the betrayal of her country, and which could only be rescued from the charge by the faith in her which recognized God in those messengers who had come to her, and bowed in them to the will of God.

Thus it is faith all through that, in fact, James is dwelling upon. Faith is the great worker, as Jacob his father found it, and thus he rejoices, and would have others rejoice, when they " fall into divers trials, "as knowing this, that "the frying of your faith worketh patience." And how much is involved in this! "Let patience have her perfect work," and you are "perfect and entire, wanting nothing." Is it not the moral of Jacob's history? Is it not the man so fond of putting forth his hand, after his own fashion, broken down from all the self-confidence of his own efforts, to find that after all it is "

Man's weakness waiting upon God
Its end can never miss."

That is why our Jacob here makes so much of faith and makes so much of patience too,-makes therefore so much of the trial which works patience,- the breaking down of human strength and human wisdom with all its sinuous energy, which, after all,, left him only to be the "worm Jacob," as God calls him. How this winding of human wisdom, of which men make so much, is like the effort of the poor wriggling worm! How simple and blessed and suited to us this, that, when we have once got down to the prostration of this energy, God is ready for us with all the grace that is His:to give much more than we sought to take, to bless us beyond any conception that we ever had of Him!

Everywhere we shall find that James is holding up before us faith,-that which in itself speaks of the abandonment of all confidence in self,-of all mere human resources,-to turn to One who is absolutely sufficient, and who is absolutely for us. How simple it should be, now that we have Christ, that this is true! How blessed to have in His cross the judgment of man in every way that is natural to him, the setting aside of the old man altogether, in order that we may put on the new man, which is but the man in Christ:the man standing in an excellence which is not his own, and in a power which is divine,-power made perfect in weakness! How well, therefore, we may be set to learn the lesson of James' epistle! How profitable we shall find it just simply to recognize that "if patience have her perfect work," we shall be "perfect and entire, wanting nothing! "

If we could be only sure of this, how simple a thing, one would say, patience would be; but thus the trial which works this detects in us, in fact, the little faith we have. After all that God has done for us, when the triumphant challenge of our hearts should be:"He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things ? " yet how much we can believe in the excellency of our own wisdom, and in the sweetness of our own wills ! How we strive with God, in short; only to receive by it all, and through His very grace to us, a crippled joint as the memorial of our striving! How many are the troubles that we bring upon ourselves; and in which, too, instead of counting the trials joy, we murmur against God because of it ! How few, perhaps, are the works in our lives which James would put into his class of works,-those that are excellent just because of the faith that is in them ! How we stagger when the faith which we accept joyfully as all that is needed for salvation is required to be manifested in our lives, in some practical way, which (as we put it,) must cost us something ! How well may we take up just these opening verses of the epistle of Jacob, and read, and read them, praying God to stamp them upon our hearts, and to make us know the blessedness of a faith, which, after all, we have in the end to come to,-a faith that in the wreck of all self-confidence trusts God for all things, and finds it no mistake!
F. W. G.