written aforetime were written for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of the scriptures we might have hope" (Rom. xv, 4). Several prominent epistles, addressed not to particular churches or individuals but to the Christian world in general, embody. this endeavor. I Hebrews, and the Fulfillment of Types. It may be noted that the quoted passages in the gospels, the Acts, and St. Paul's epistles are detached passages taken mostly from the Psalms and the Prophets. These parts of Scripture, as being probably those in most familiar use, are also copiously drawn upon in the Epistle to the Hebrews; which, indeed, is fuller of quotations and allusions than any other Scripture book. Beyond this, however, and as its most distinctive trait, the epistle founds itself on a whole line of the old literature. That line is the one with which every Jew is familiar; the one, indeed, by which he sets the most store. It is the line which embodies the Mosaic law, the ritual services of the Temple, and the providentially ordered course of history. The writer's aim is to show that the distinctive ideas underlying the Hebrew history and worship - ideas of the ministry of angels, of the rest in the promised land as secured by Moses and Joshua, of the high-priesthood with its duties, of the most holy place, of the whole system of ritual and sacrifice - are merely types and symbols of something to come and, therefore, in themselves unfinal. The perfect fulfillment and clarifier of all these is Christ, who is superior to men and angels and the Mediator of a new covenant. In him is the manhood rest and home after which men of faith aspired through all the dim ages before him. Of these ancient worthies a notable bead-roll is given in the eleventh chapter; men of faith and sturdy energy of whom it is said: "They that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own " (Heb. xi, 14), and yet that they "received not the promise, God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect" (xi, 39, 40). The epistle is thus a masterly résumé and interpretation of the Jewish religious and traditional system, considered as an adumbration of (cf. x, 1) and preparation for Christianity. The Epistle to the Hebrews is evidently intended primarily for some Christian community whose members are Origin and imbued with Jewish ideas, and perhaps living in Aim daily contact with the legal customs of the Old Testament. No community is so fitted to answer these conditions as the church at Jerusalem, the mother church, as it existed before the destruction of the city and the Temple A. D. 70. Of this church the "great three" apostles, Peter and John and James (the last named the brother of Jesus), were the leaders, but as it would seem in the larger capacity of general directors and overseers, and not of men of letters. Besides their leadership there would be needed for the church, especially in its representative and standardgiving capacity, such educative training in their literature as a treatise like this could give, and notably to those who had not seen Jesus but had heard of him from those who had known him (cf. Heb. ii, 3). The epistle was not written, as the Authorized Version assumes,1 by St. Paul. It is in a style and line of thinking quite different from his, though it is so truly in harmony with his ideas that he may well have had some connection with the production of it, perhaps as counselor and adviser. The likeliest account of its origin, as seems to me, is that of Professor Ramsay 2, who believes that it was written from Cæsarea, where Philip the Evangelist lived (Acts xxi, 8), and that its date of composition was A. D. 59, toward the end 1 See title of the epistle in the King James (Authorized) Version. 2 Ramsay, "Luke the Physician," pp. 301 ff. of the procuratorship of Felix, while St. Paul was a state prisoner there. If this was so, the writer may have been Philip himself, who, one of the original seven deacons, became an evangelist and teacher to the Christians in Samaria and other parts who had been Jews (Acts vi, 5; viii, 5–8, 26, 40). NOTE. The Authorship. Other ideas of its authorship have been advocated: that it was written by Apollos, by Barnabas, by Priscilla (Harnack's idea); but these, like the idea here adopted, are all conjectural. The authorship is a secondary matter. The fact remains that the epistle is one of the most valuable documents of the early Christianity, supplying an element without which the New Testament literature, as a rounded and finished whole, would seem distinctly poorer. II James, and the Wisdom from Above. The Epistle of James was written for Christians in all places who had been Jews; being addressed to the twelve tribes which are of the dispersion" (James i, 1). Its author was not James the son of Zebedee, who was put to death A.D. 44 by Herod (Acts xii, 2); nor James the son of Alphæus (= James the less), of whom nothing is recorded (cf. Matt. x, 3; Mark xv, 40); but James the brother of Jesus, who was not one of the original apostles, but became a believer after his brother's resurrection, and later was the primate of the church in Jerusalem. As such, he was in the fitting position to write such an encyclical letter as this purports to be, made up as it is of practical counsels and precepts for the Christian's daily living; not scholarly and theological, but as it were a manual of Christian common-sense. As Hebrews has illuminated and applied the historical and ritual strain in the ancient literature, this Epistle of Its Distinc- James follows into riper significance the strain tive Interest of Wisdom, as represented in such books as Proverbs and Job. There is the same clearness and terseness of phrase; the same use of familiar figures and analogies; the same purpose of giving counsel for the practical relations of life and society. Its tone is that of the Wisdom literature. It defines the uses of trial, the virtue of steadfastness and sincerity, the real spirit of practical religion, the law of Christian liberty, the unity before God of high and humble, rich and poor, the Christian control of the tongue, and many more such things, all genuine Wisdom principles made Christlike. Highest of all, it inculcates, as in fundamental contrast to earthly wisdom, "the wisdom that is from above," which "is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without fickleness, without hypocrisy" (iii, 13-17). It takes the values of Hebrew Wisdom, as James knew them through their favorite Scripture utterances, and raises them to their matured Christian power.1 An immense literary interest attaches to this epistle, considered as the work of James the brother of our Lord. Its Cultural James was not with his greater brother during Source the latter's Messianic ministry, but the boyhood and young manhood of the two must have been passed together during much of the thirty years before Jesus entered upon his public work. The epistle doubtless draws many things from the store of ideas common to the two during their early life in Nazareth. A similar cast of ideas is apparent in the utterances of the brothers. The Epistle of James is remarkably parallel, or at least analogous, in many places, both in its use of illustrative figures and in its interpretations of truth, to the Sermon on the Mount, which comes from Jesus' initial teaching, and to the parables and conversations which reflect his personal method. Thus it embodies much of the line of practical truth with which Jesus' mind was conversant before he became known to his nation through his public utterances. 1 See Genung, "The Hebrew Literature of Wisdom in the Light of To-day," Chapter VIII. It is just the sane practical guidance of this kind that James here gives for the community of Christian brethren, "the twelve tribes of the dispersion," who have supplemented their truest Judaism by committing themselves to the wisdom of Christ. As St. Paul the scholar, with his wonderful insight into the mind of Jew and Greek, has mirrored the theological and Christological values; as the author of Hebrews, imbued with the ancient historic and symbolic lore, has taken this as it was ready to die (cf. Heb. viii, 13) and fixed it upon its permanent antitype: so James, trained in the sound sense of the Nazareth home, has translated "the breath and finer spirit" of wisdom into Christian values, which every common man, whether scholar or not, may understand and live by. III Epistles from Jesus' Personal Circle. Besides these epistles of Hebrews and James, which draw their thoughts largely from the transformed Old Testament values, there are two general epistles from St. Peter, the chief of the apostles, and one from Jude, "the brother of James" (Jude 1), and so of Jesus. These, while aware of the Old Testament stores of truth, address themselves more particularly to the current hopes and perils of the Christian cause and the tendencies which, as it goes on to later conditions, that cause is developing. The First St. Peter's first epistle, written from Rome (which city he names Babylon, v, 13, according to a custom of the early Christians), is much in the manner of St. Paul's pastoral letters, counseling the Christian "sojourners of the dispersion" (i, 1) in their everyday domestic relations servants, wives, husbands to live worthily of their priceless hope, as good citizens and pure-minded men Epistle of |