would certainly have sounded as repulsively and untruthfully to James's readers as 'envy' would to our ears. According to a somewhat interesting variation of the view of the meaning which supposes James to allude to the marriage between God and His covenant people, the sense is given thus: 'God jealously desireth for Himself the (human) spirit that He gave to dwell in us.' This occupies ground that we have already traversed; and thus it will be plain that, in addition to the argument against it derived from its taking 'enviously' as equivalent to 'jealously' (an argument in itself, to my mind, altogether insuperable), it underlies also the serious objection, that the familiar, well-understood phrase, 'the spirit that He gave to dwell in us,' receives another meaning than the Holy Spirit.

On the whole, it seems to me that, with Calvin and many other expositors, we must divide the verse into two distinct questions: Do you think that the Scripture saith it in vain? Doth the Spirit that came to dwell in us' (or 'that He gave to dwell in us') 'lust to envy?' The apostle appeals first to Scripture, and then to their own consciences as educated by Scripture, with regard to that essential antagonism between worldliness and true piety of which he has been speaking in the previous verses. The unemphatic 'it,' which we have to supply in the first question, as often in sentences of the kind, means 'the truth which I have just been enforcing.' He does not refer to any special passage, nor does he need to do so; for, as has been already said, the diametrical opposition between worldliness and the will of God lies at the basis of the whole moral teaching of revelation,—especially worldliness showing itself in the forms he has described-covetousness, envy, and malignity. 'Is all this teaching in the book of God,' James says, 'vain, meaningless?' Then, in another forcible interrogation, he presses the matter home to their consciences. The force of the order of the words in the original may be brought out by stating the question thus: Does desire that takes the direction of envy spring from the Spirit that God gave to dwell in us?' 'Enlightened as you are by God's word

respecting His will, can you for one moment dream, when envy rises in your hearts, that this is a prompting of the Divine Spirit within you?' Thus the appeal is substantially a repetition of that made in the fourteenth verse of the previous chapter, 'If ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not and lie not against the truth'-by asserting, that is to say, that such is the fruit of the heavenly wisdom taught by the Holy Ghost.

To all who know anything of the spirit of the religion or Jesus, these questions obviously carry their own answer; and in all the apostle's readers who were in any considerable measure impressed by what he had said to them, a feeling of deep sadness could not but enter the heart, through a consciousness how much they had neglected compliance with the great moral principles of Scripture,-how lamentably they had yielded to influences very different from those of the Spirit of God, who had been 'given to dwell in them.' Ah, brethren, in what age of the church has such sorrow not been called for? The apostle, then, as it seems to me, bends the line of his remark to respond to this feeling. He bears in mind that the heralds of the cross are pre-eminently the bearers of 'glad tidings,'-bound to remember, even amid their sternest and justest reproofs of sin and defect on the part of Christians, that in the church their great commission is, 'Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.' 'Nay but, brethren, be not despondent'-this, I think, is the thought connecting the two verses-He giveth greater grace;' or rather, perhaps, to bring out the force of the peculiar arrangement of the words in the original, Nay, but greater is the grace He giveth,— greater than the strength of depravity, greater than the power of the spirit of darkness, from whom temptations to envy and all forms of worldliness come. 'The impulses you feel to covetousness, and envy, and anger, are efforts of the strong one who in time past wrought in you, when ye were children of disobedience, to regain his old dominion; but the Spirit that now dwelleth in you is stronger than he, and by His grace will enable you to repel the foe.'

And being ready to give this sustaining grace, He tells us of His willingness, that we may go to Him and cast ourselves upon His love in the appointed way: 'Wherefore He saith!' Now the apostle might have cited innumerable passages giving the assurance of God's readiness to bless; but he chooses one that most clearly and forcibly brings forward the terms of the divine offer, and thus, in conjunction with the declaration of glad tidings, continues the previous strain of solemn warning: 'God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.' This passage is a verse in the Book of Proverbs, translated in our version, 'Surely He scorneth the scorners, but He giveth grace unto the lowly' (Prov. iii. 34). The apostle gives it according to the ordinary Greek version in use among the Jews. The truth exhibited in the statement is one which meets us everywhere in the Bible, that while God 'waiteth to be gracious,' yearning to 'crown us with loving-kindness and tender mercies,' yet He will have all the glory of man's deliverance; and that only those who cordially consent that it should be so can be blessed and saved. So long as we lean on ourselves, counting ourselves the possessors of any moral excellence, we remain outside the sweep of God's salvation. When, sensible of utter unworthiness and feebleness, we cast ourselves wholly on Him (and this very willingness to lean on Him is 'not of ourselves,' but 'the gift of God'), then He rescues us by 'the saving strength of His right hand.' 'God resisteth the proud. He says: "Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation! Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger!' Man was made for simple, child-like dependence on God: anything else is dishonouring to God, and certainly opposed, therefore, to our own true happiness. Now pride, whatever form it takes, is essentially a glorifying of self, and necessarily therefore, so far as it goes, is an attempt to be or to feel independent of God. This spirit, and those who cherish it, God, consistently with His own honour and the good of His universe, cannot but 'resist.' But He 'giveth grace unto the humble.' It is the man who says, 'Father, I have sinned in Thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son,' that

receives the Father's kiss of forgiveness and welcome, and restoration to all the privileges of sonship; it is he who knows and believes that by nature he is, as regards the matters of highest moment, a fool, that is 'made wise ;' he who acknowledges himself utterly weak, that is 'strengthened with might by God's Spirit;' he who sees and feels himself to be full of sin, that is 'made the righteousness of God in Christ,' and 'sanctified wholly.' As the seraphic Leighton says: "God pours out His grace plentifully on humble hearts. His sweet dews and showers slide off the mountains to fall on the low valleys of humble hearts, and make them pleasant and fertile.'1 'The dew that never wets the flinty mountain

Falls in the valleys free :

Bright verdure fringes the small desert-fountain,

But barren sand the sea.' 2

1 Commentary on First Peter, on v. 5, where Peter quotes the same passage from Proverbs that James does here.

2 The late Rev. J. D. Burns, in a little poem entitled Humility.

XXII.

SUBMISSION TO GOD.

'Submit yourselves therefore to God.

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye doubleminded. 9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.'-JAMES IV. 7-10.

IN

6

IN the first part of this paragraph the apostle's thoughts are presented under figures drawn from the military life. This is naturally suggested by the description of worldly men which has preceded, as enemies' of God, and the declaration that God resisteth' the proud. Indeed here, as in many parts of the Epistle, we see the connection of thoughts marked by the use of kindred words; for the original terms translated ' resisteth' and 'submit' are from the same root, and thus we have the junction of thoughts: God' takes a position of resistance' to the proud; 'take you, therefore, a position of submission' to God. The first clause of the seventh verse, 'Submit yourselves to God,' is the theme or text of the whole paragraph. In the following verses it is expanded. Then, after the details, the theme is in the tenth verse in substance repeated, by way of summing up the whole, but with a gracious promise conjoined. This structure reminds us of that of many of the Psalms, and indeed, throughout, the passage is not unlike a psalm in its parallelism and rhythmical flow of expression.

The apostle passes here, as you observe, from argument to injunction. His readers were professing servants of God, for otherwise their conduct would not have been called spiritual