spoken of being thus not 'filthiness' (the one) and 'superfluity of naughtiness' (the other), but 'filthiness of naughtiness' and 'superfluity of naughtiness.' The words 'superfluity of naughtiness' have a decidedly odd sound to our ears, and the meaning is not altogether clear. They do not imply, I need scarcely say, that there can be any measure of 'malice' which is not 'superfluous' and wrong. By some, the expression 'all superfluity of naughtiness' has been supposed to denote 'every form in which malice overflows into the feelings and life.' Again, the whole, 'all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness,' or 'all naughtiness's filthiness and superfluity,' may very well mean, I think, 'all the malice which is so polluting and so abundant' in our hearts by nature. But I am rather disposed to consider the horticultural figure, which shows itself plainly in 'ingrafted,' as in the apostle's mind throughout the whole verse; and that the meaning of the first clause is, 'Put away (from the garden of your moral life) all the defilement and rank growth which are found in malignity,' or, more simply, all malignity's defilement and rank growth.' We should strive to have 'every root of bitterness' extirpated, that the tree which yields 'the fruits of the Spirit' may grow.

Accordingly the injunction goes on, 'Receive with meekness the ingrafted word.' 'My Father is the Husbandman,' said the Lord; but, at the same time, every one of us is called to be, in a subordinate sense, the keeper and tiller of his own vineyard. As such we have just been enjoined to remove the disfiguring and destructive weeds of malice and passion. But when God is regarded as the Husbandman, or when the 'Son of man' is set prominently before us as the Sower of the good seed, then our souls are simply the field or garden in which the divine Agent works. The thought of labouring on the soil of his own heart, and that of being simply soil on which God works, are both so perfectly familiar to the Christian, and so clearly seen to be but two sides of the same religious life, that to a spiritual mind there is not the slightest unnaturalness or incongruity, when the apostle passes on at once from speaking to us as tillers, to address us as ground. As ground we are to 'receive the

ingrafted' (or rather ‘implanted') 'word.' Elsewhere described as seed, the word of truth' is here represented as a scion or cutting of a tree. Now, as the seed is 'sown' in every proclamation or exhibition of the gospel, so the scion is 'implanted' in the soil, whenever God brings the truth within our knowledge. But the scion, like the seed, must be welcomed by the ground, 'received' gladly-through faith the truth must become rooted in us—if the fruit of righteousness is to be brought forth. The apostle's charge is, accordingly, that we should 'receive' it in such a spirit as that it may be rooted; and this spirit, with particular reference to the wrath' and 'malice' that he has been forbidding, he describes as a spirit of ‘meekness.' Immediately, this no doubt denotes willingness to learn from all who can teach, without wrangling or arrogant selfassertion. But child-like docility in relation to God is plainly included also; for only a heart which has already been and longs to be more fully taught of God' to be humble and gentle, can thus be 'meek' towards men.

The excellence of the 'word' that has been by God's kindness 'implanted' in his readers, and thus the transcendent importance of putting away everything from heart and life that may prevent its being fully, meekly, lovingly 'received' by us, are exhibited by the apostle in the last clause of the verse, 'which is able to save your souls.' 'The gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation, to every one that believeth,' being His appointed instrumentality for uniting men to Christ, and thus obtaining for them forgiveness, and sonship, and the sanctifying influences of the Spirit. In specially adverting to the salvation of the 'soul' (as in Peter, ‘the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls'), the apostle, we may suppose, intends to bring out prominently the radical and therefore gloriously complete nature of the deliverance. It is no mere amelioration or adornment of the outward life, but reaches that inmost and noblest part of our nature, out of which are 'the issues of life,' and by the condition of which, accordingly, is determined the condition of the whole man; for the body follows the state of the soul, to destruction or to

salvation. At the same time, in thus putting forward the truth that God's salvation is fundamentally a spiritual deliverance, the apostle suggests to all intelligent readers that no mere formal respect to the 'word,' His instrument, but the reception of it into the soul, will bring men into the enjoyment of its blessings; thus illustrating the meaning as well as the reasonableness of his precept, 'Receive the word with meekness.'

6

This twenty-first verse has an interesting parallel in the beginning of the second chapter of First Peter, a passage to which I referred earlier in the lecture: Laying aside all malice' (the same word rendered 'naughtiness' in James), and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, -as new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.' In both, the importance of knowing divine truth-so knowing it, being 'received with meekness,' that it becomes a power, as spiritual nourishment, to make the new man in Christ 'grow'-is set forth very clearly; and at the same time the needfulness, in order to our so knowing the truth, of shunning unchristian tempers and practices. There are here continually action and reaction. Nothing can really eradicate 'malice' and other forms of sinful desire except the influence of the truth; but again, as these evil propensities are subdued, the power of the truth grows in us. By thoughtful, prayerful, earnest effort to vanquish sin, the dimming, begriming incrustations that have gathered on the windows of the soul are removed, and the beams of heavenly light shine in.

VIII.

THE SPIRITUAL MIRROR.

'But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. 23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. 25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.'—JAMES I. 22–25.

THE

HE apostle continues here his treatment of the subject taken up in the verses immediately preceding, and the connection marked by the introductory But' may be paraphrased as follows: 'But whilst I thus enjoin upon you to be swift to hear, ready to receive with meekness the implanted word, bear in mind all that this receiving means, and that mere hearing is by no means all that is implied in it. The word, I have said, is able to save your souls. Now precious, inestimably precious, as are tidings of pardon and peace through believing, the experience of peace does not wholly fill up the idea of the salvation of the soul: one element, indeed the grand element, of this salvation is transformation of character,a radical alteration in the convictions, and feelings, and tendencies of the soul itself,-a change from the love and service of sin to the love and practice of holy obedience. Wherefore, brethren,'

Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.' It is obviously implied here, that the word of which the apostle speaks is in its nature practical, intended and fitted to act on the hearts and lives of those that become

acquainted with it. There is, as you know, much truth on many subjects which, in its place, is valuable, but which has

no immediate bearing on the conduct of life. There is, no doubt, a vast multitude of facts mentioned in Scripture, of which, looked at simply by themselves, the same may be said. That Sihon was king of the Amorites, and that Rabbah was a strong town of the children of Ammon, are truths which cannot well affect our feelings or life. But the Scriptures principally teach' religious truth, of which it is of the very essence to have an immediate bearing on the conduct of life. And the one kind of religious truth revealed in the Bible, 'what man is to believe concerning God,' is such as, when believed, to prompt us, through reverence, and gratitude, and love, to hearty compliance with what is also therein made known as the duty which God requireth of man.' 'Be ye, then, doers of the word, and not hearers only.'

'To be doers' has a force of its own, distinct from that of the simple to do.' You feel that the expression exhibits a habitual occupation. It sets before us as real Christians persons who make the 'doing of the word of God' the main business of their lives,—a business affecting, penetrating, pervading all other business and all pleasure; so that just as, when you speak of an ordinary worldly trade or profession, you say that a man is a teacher, a manufacturer, or the like, so, speaking of character, those that know a Christian intimately should always be able to say of him, ‘He is a doer of the word of God.' In every department of his life such a man will show clearly that he makes this the principal thing,' in matters which men call secular as well as those which they call sacred; for he knows that nothing is really beyond the sphere of religion, beyond the sphere illuminated by the teaching of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. In health and sickness, therefore, in his family circle and in general social intercourse, in the shop or the counting-house no less than at the prayer-meeting or in positive and direct labouring and giving for Christ's cause,— everywhere, in a life of holy energy, and humility, and love, and patience, according to the measure of his faith, he will be a' doer of the word.'

The apostle enforces his injunction by setting forth the