This crown 'the Lord hath promised to them that love Him.' Scripture is full of the promise; and simply on this promise rests the believer's hope. When he looks at his own deserts, he can see no crown before him-nothing but darkness and curse; but, 'walking in the light of the Lord,' he can see a reward of grace in the hand of a loving Father, who has promised, and 'cannot lie.' 'Hath He said, and shall He not do it? Hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?' This reward is set before 'them that love Him,' that is, before all the truly pious, for love to God is the essence of piety: wherever it is present, there is spiritual life; and wherever it is absent, how complete soever may be the decorum of moral conduct and outward religious observance, there is spiritual death. Looking back, you will observe the light cast by this clause of the verse on the 'endureth' of the first. In the apostle's view, they that 'endure' and they that 'love God' are obviously the same class. Any measure of 'endurance,' even though nominally in God's cause, yet without 'love,' is valueless before Him. Though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.' And where true love to God exists, awakened by a sense of God's amazing love to us, it will bear, through His sustaining grace, the severest strain. 'Love endureth all things.'

cature of royalty. Did we indeed meet these words, "a crown of life," in the Epistles of St. Paul, we should be justified in saying that, in all probability, the wreath or garland of the victors in the games, the "crown" in this sense, was intended. Paul was familiar with the Greek games, and freely drew his imagery from them, not fearing to contemplate the faithful under the aspect of runners and wrestlers. His universal-Hellenic as well as Jewish-education exempted him from any scruples upon this point. Not so, however, the Christians of Palestine. These Greek games were strange to them, or only not strange as they were the objects of their deepest abhorrence, as witness the tumults and troubles which accompanied the first introduction of them by Herod the Great at Jerusalem, recorded at length by Josephus. Tertullian's point of view, who styles them superstitiosa certamina Græcarum et religionum et voluptatum, would very much have been theirs.'

The argument is obviously equally valid, at least, for James as for Revelation.

IV.

GENESIS OF SIN.

'Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man; 14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. 15 Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.'-JAMES I. 13-15.

`HE apostle has closed his first paragraph by declaring the

seeing that there awaits him the 'crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him.' But many of his readers, he knew, were sensible that they had not 'endured' under trial, but had failed to show persistent and unconquerable love to God. Some of them, perhaps, had under persecution all but apostatized: some among the brethren of low degree' were conscious that they had not rejoiced in their spiritual exaltation, but had murmured at their outward humiliation; some of the rich brethren' were sensible that they had forgotten the transitory, unsatisfying nature of worldly wealth, and too largely placed trust and sought joy there, instead of exulting 'that they were made low :' many, no doubt, in all classes of society, had yielded to the seductive influences of the licentious heathenism around. To all such the apostle says, in the section on the consideration of which we now enter, 'Lay the blame of your sin where it is due on yourselves.' A conviction of personal responsibility and personal guilt must always be the first stage in the passage to true peace. The first part of the mission of the Divine Comforter is to 'convince the world of sin.'

'Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God:

for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man.' You feel here that we pass at once to the bad sense of 'tempt,' that in which the word is commonly employed. Hitherto in the Epistle it has imported 'trial' or 'testing' in the most general way. Here it denotes trial with a malevolent aim, a desire to bring into sin through the test. The sudden transition without explanation to this other use-a transition in English corresponding exactly to what is seen in the original -is somewhat remarkable.

Of the reason given in the second part of the verse— -for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man' the force seems to be as follows::- A tempter to sin must be himself sinful, open to the seductions of evil. Now God cannot thus be tempted. His absolute blessedness, His infinite holiness, remove Him wholly from liability to temptation; and as thus, from His very nature, He cannot be tempted to sin, so from His very nature He cannot tempt to sin.' I may observe, in passing, that this representation of God, simple and obvious as it appears to us, is yet due wholly to revelation. The gods of heathen imagination are always conceived both as liable to temptation to moral evil, and as themselves tempters. The conception of their character comes from man's wicked heart, and the stream cannot rise higher than its source.

'Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God.' Under the consciousness of sin and the terror of punishment, we are all prone to cast blame away from ourselves—generally either on other men or on Satan. In the singularly interesting and instructive narrative given us in Scripture of the first sin, which was in all essential respects the type of all sins, we find this feature exhibited very distinctly. When challenged by God, 'Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?' Adam answers, 'The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.' And Eve, in her turn, says, 'The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.' Every descendant of this fallen pair, save that 'Seed of the woman' who 'bruised the serpent's head,' has

said, or thought, in regard to himself the same things. But subtle as wicked men may be, subtle and powerful and earnest in all evil as wicked angels undoubtedly are, neither men nor devils can compel us to sin. We are free to refuse the evil and choose the good; and it is our welcoming the temptation, our choosing the evil instead of the good, that constitutes sin. In the charge laid against Satan and evil men, however, there may be a proportion of truth: the serpent did tempt Eve, and Eve did tempt Adam. But there is another mode of evading personal responsibility which is wholly baseless, which is indeed utter and awful blasphemy, devolving the blame of our sin upon God. Certain false systems of philosophy (as fatalism and atheism) avow this doctrine in one form or another; and the semi-atheistic materialism so lamentably popular among our men of science at present, has a teaching practically the same, making sin exactly analogous to bodily disease. By some expositors, the apostle has been supposed to refer in the passage before us to such views, as professed by some among his readers. This is altogether improbable, I think, since it is difficult to see how persons holding and avowing such convictions could number themselves among Christians under any circumstances, or, at all events, what could lead them to do so in an age of persecution. In the words he employs, James may perhaps glance slightly at such philosophical theories, as fitted to exercise to some extent an injurious influence even on those that might seem to be placed by their religious belief in a totally different sphere of thought; but he refers immediately and mainly, no doubt, to foolish and wicked thoughts that are apt to rise at times in the minds of all, even of those whose general views appear most opposed to them.

The thought which he rebukes will occur in various forms. Thus 'God has ordained everything that comes to pass: He has therefore ordained that I should yield to the temptation under which I have now fallen.' Now, everything connected with the nature and doings of the infinite God has, and must have, aspects of profoundest mystery for man; and thus it is so,

of course, with His decrees. But regarding them, these things at least are plainly revealed in Scripture, and to be held fast as fundamental truths on the subject: that God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity,' is in no sense or measure the author of sin, and that His decrees do no violence to man's own will. 'The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children; and nothing is more plainly revealed than this, that God hates sin with a perfect hatred, and that all the influences He exerts on man's spirit are for the overthrow of sin. For purposes of infinite wisdom and love, towards the understanding of which glorified saints will grow throughout eternity, God permits in His universe the existence of moral evil; but it is utterly abhorrent to Him; and whencesoever it springs, in no sense or degree does it spring from Him. And with God's eternal providence co-exists entire moral freedom, and, by consequence, the fullest responsibility on the part of man. Jesus was delivered up to death 'by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,' and we see in that surrender the greatest marvel of divine wisdom and love in the history of the universe; yet not less is it true that 'by wicked hands' (by the hands of men who, in their deed, committed an enormous sin) 'He was crucified and slain.'

Another common form of the blasphemous thought against which the apostle warns us is: 'I have been driven to sin by the circumstances in which God has placed me.' If a poor man becomes dishonest, he blames his poverty. The drunkard blames the associates among whom he was thrown, and by whom he has been led on from the pleasant social glass to utter debasement. So in innumerable other cases. Looking back again to the first sin, you find this there: 'The man said, The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.' You observe the implied reproach on God; the intended force of the 'whom Thou gavest to be with me' clearly being, 'Hadst Thou not given me the woman, had I been left as I was at first, I should not have