Let us seek to

make disciples of all nations. Let us enter into his mind and give effect to his will in this respect. be deeply imbued with a missionary spirit. O to be concerned as we should be about a perishing world, to give God no rest and ourselves none until the very ends of the earth see his salvation.

What stimulus is there here to such effort!

How great,
A soul

wonderful, the result when a sinner is converted! is saved from eternal death, a multitude of sins is covered. What misery thus averted! What blessedness secured! And such triumphs may be won, such trophies carried off by all Christians. They are not confined to any favoured class or calling. The members as well as the ministers of the Church may labour in this field and there achieve equal, or even greater success. The most humble, obscure believer may have the honour of converting erring brethren or rebellious sinners. The weakest parts, the poorest circumstances, the most contracted sphere and limited influence interpose no effectual barriers. Love and zeal can surmount every obstacle of the kind, and. gain the greatest victories. As all enjoy the privilege, let all feel the obligation. Our first business is ever to make our own calling and election sure, to work out our personal salvation with fear and trembling; but having done that, let us care for the perishing and endeavour to gather souls to Shiloh. Be it ours to raise up the fallen, to reclaim the wandering, to heal wounded saints and dying sinners. We could not have greater encouragement, a more powerful stimulus than that which is here presented. Let us go forward under the animating, inspiring influence of these closing words of the Epistle,"He that converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins."

APPENDIX.

I.

BY WHAT JAMES THE EPISTLE WAS WRITTEN. '

THE question of the authorship of the Epistle is briefly referred to in the opening discourse; but we propose to enter here a little more fully into the subject than would there have been suitable. The writer of it was James, as we find expressly stated at its commencement. There were however two, if not three, apostolic persons who bore that name. There was James, the son of Zebedee and brother of John. He suffered martyrdom at the hands of Herod Agrippa, as we find recorded, Acts xii., vers. 1, 2. This event took place most probably A.D. 44; and it is generally agreed that the state of matters represented in the Epistle could not have arisen at so early a period. For this, and other reasons, we must set aside the idea that he was the author. Then there was James, the son of Alpheus, also one of the twelve. Was it his production? Many Biblical scholars of eminence reply in the negative, and maintain that it proceeded from a third of the name, the James who presided over the Church at Jerusalem (Acts xii. 17; xv. 13; xxi. 18), and is called by Paul "the Lord's brother" (Gal. i. 19). It cannot well be doubted that the last-mentioned party, whoever he may have been, was the sacred writer in this instance. His close connexion with the Jewish Christians, his special interest in them, and great authority among them, made it eminently suitable for him to address them in the commanding manner here adopted. The ascertained traits of his character and habits of his life all harmonize exactly with the general design and tone of the Epistle. But was he a different person from the son of Alpheus? Were the two not identical? Were they not in reality one and the same James? The question is more easily asked than answered. It is

pronounced by Neander, a thoroughly competent judge, one of the most difficult in the apostolic history. Let me first state briefly, as summarily as I can, the grounds on which I think their identity may be maintained, and then reply to the only arguments of any great weight which can be urged on the other side.

1. James, the son of Alpheus, might properly be designated the Lord's brother. Speaking exactly, he was his cousin. This may be made out clearly enough. The mother of Jesus had a sister who, like herself, was called Mary, and she was the wife of Cleophas, or rather Clopas (John xix. 25). We are to identify her husband so named with Alpheus, for these are only different and ordinary ways of rendering the same Hebrew word into Greek. This Mary had two sons, James and Joses (Matt. xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40). In all probability she had a third, Jude or Judas; for there can scarcely be any doubt that the ellipsis is properly supplied when in the lists of the apostles he is made to appear as the brother of James (Luke vi. 16; Acts i. 13.) This is strongly confirmed by the Epistle of Jude, where the writer calls himself "the brother of James." Without taking for granted the point in dispute, we may say that there is a presumption in favour of a fourth, Simon,-the presumption arising from the manner in which he is introduced between James and Jude in the two catalogues of the apostles to which we have last referred. Well, these sons of Mary and Alpheus were our Lord's cousins-german. But how does that explain Paul's language? Thus ;-according to Scriptural usage, they might be denominated his brethren, for that term often signifies nothing more than relatives. Many examples of this might be adduced. Abraham said to Lot, who was his nephew, "We be brethren." Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's brother, being in reality his nephew. Moses, addressing the Jews, spoke of the children of Esau as "their brethren." We need not multiply illustrations.

We advance a step farther, and remark that this is not only a legitimate, but the most natural view to take of the language in this instance. On the contrary supposition, we must have two sets of first cousins, three, if not four, of them on either side, all bearing exactly the same names (Matt. xiii. 55). And this difficulty is not really met by bringing forward, as has been done, a number of cases in which the same thing occurs, so far as separate individuals are concerned. Besides, if these were our Lord's

brothers in the strict, literal sense of the term, they must either have been the sons of Joseph by a former marriage, as some believe, or the sons of Mary herself, as others conclude. Now, no clear, decisive mention is made of either in connexion with children of his or her own, as standing in the parental relation to any, with the exception of the miraculously-conceived, heaven-sent child, Jesus. It appears to me a circumstance pointing strongly in the same direction, that on the cross our Saviour committed his mother to the charge of John; for Joseph being now evidently dead, would it not have been natural to have entrusted her to the filial care of her own family, if she really had such a family? It is said, but they probably were still unbelievers, and so unable to sympathise with her fully. But the ties of blood exist prior to and independently of those which grace originates; and they are ever recognised, preserved, and honoured by Christianity. There is, however, every reason to suppose that the brethren were disciples at this time; at all events, he perfectly knew that they were very soon to become such, for we find them assembled along with the apostles immediately after his resurrection (Acts i. 13, 14). It may be urged that the same argument would apply to the cousins; but there is a great difference in such a case between a mother's own sons and those of a sister. On these grounds we think the inference warranted.

2. It is natural to suppose that it was this James, the son of Alpheus, and no other who presided over the Church at Jerusalem.* He who was placed at the head of the Christian community there, occupied a highly distinguished position and exercised a most commanding influence. He is represented as speaking last in the apostolic council, and giving forth that decision which was unanimously adopted by the assembly (Acts xv. 13-22). Paul classes him along with Peter and John, calling them "pillars," and even giving him the first rank, so far as the order of the names is concerned (Gal. ii. 9). Is it at all probable that any one not of the number of the specially called and qualified apostles would have been elevated to such a place,-that he would have been deferred to,

*This is conceded by Dr Davidson, who yet contends that James, the Lord's brother, was a different person. His view, which is so far peculiar, renders it necessary for him, not only to understand Gal. i. 19 in an unnatural sense, as we shall afterwards shew, but to suppose that Paul speaks of one James in the first, and of another in the second chapter of that Epistle; while there is not the slightest hint to that effect, but, on the contrary, everything fitted to convey the very opposite impression.

as he evidently was, had he not possessed that high and special authority with which they were invested? Then, if we assign the position to a different person,-to a James who did not belong to the twelve, what became of the son of Alpheus? He drops wholly out of sight, and another of the same name is brought forward without the slightest intimation of the change, any word fitted to prevent a confusion natural, inevitable in the circumstances. Thus Luke, in his Gospel and the earlier part of the Acts, speaks only of two who were so called. In the twelfth chapter of the latter book he records the death by martyrdom of one of them, he being the son of Zebedee. Then he goes on with his narrative, introducing a James again and again as a prominent actor, without the faintest hint that he is not the other of the two, the only other referred to in all that precedes. What are we to infer from this way of writing, but that the James thus distinguished was the son of Alpheus.

3. The James who ruled the Jewish Church, and was the Lord's brother, is both expressly and by implication represented as one of the twelve. He is so directly by Paul. "But other of the apostles saw I none, save James, the Lord's brother" (Gal. i. 19). Attempts have been made to shew that this does not necessarily rank him among those strictly called apostles, as that term is sometimes used in a wider sense, being applied to Barnabas, for example; and also, as the form of expression in the original does not absolutely require that the "save" (ɛ¡μn) should qualify "other," but may refer to the whole preceding clause. Granting the proba bility of either supposition, none can deny that the natural and ordinary meaning of the language is against both, and that, to say the very least, we have here the strongest presumption in favour of our conclusion. Besides, this view is strikingly confirmed and placed almost beyond question, when we turn to Acts; for referring to the same visit to Jerusalem, Luke writes, " But Barnabas took him (Paul) and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way" (ix. 27.) He was introduced to the apostles, while he himself tells us in Galatians that he saw Peter, and him only, with the exception of James; and if the latter had not been one of the twelve, how could the plural have been correctly used in the historian's account of the transaction This appears well-nigh decisive.

Without going into minute details, we have set forth the evidence