would best suit a lifeless Judaism. It is evident from the general idea of faith as we have explained it, and from the whole train of thought in this epistle, that by means of faith a vital connexion is formed between the Present and the Future. By means of faith, according to the doctrine of this epistle, the Future becomes in some measure a Present to the mind, although this Present has a necessary bearing to a more perfect development, a consummation in the Future. In connexion with faith is given the experience of the glory of the divine word, vi. 5; by faith Christians enter the future world, and become inhabitants of the heavenly Jerusalem, xii. 22. By faith they partake of the powers of the world to come, and obtain a partial anticipation of the Future; faith penetrates through the veil which conceals from human eyes the holy of holies in the heavens, and already enters it; vi. 19.

With respect to the relation between the ideas of this epistle and the ideas of the Alexandrian-Jewish theology as they are represented in the writings of Philo, we must here have recourse to the distinction between religious realism and religious idealism; in other words, that stand-point which considers the positive and historical in religion only as a symbolical clothing of general ideas, and as the means of stimulating and training the mind towards the contemplation of ideas and that stand-point on which religion is acknowledged, not as an object merely of the intellect, but as an independent power in the life, a living communion with God effected by means of certain historical facts, as the highest end of a created being, and a complete satisfaction of his religious wants.

On this complete difference of the religious stand-point, a difference is founded in the interpretation of the Old Testament and of Judaism. Philo viewed the historical and the positive in Judaism only as symbolical veils of general ideas, which for the most part were borrowed from a very different stand-point, and which he attributed to Judaism by an arbitrary disregard of historical accuracy. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews conceives of Judaism, according to its true historical destination and intention-to prepare the way for realizing the kingdom of God through Christ-to prefigure the divine in sensible forms-which would subsequently actually appear among mankind. If he arbitrarily explains

14 some things according to the letter, yet a higher necessity lies at the basis of these meanings, the reference to the facts of religion from which the satisfaction of the religious wants of mankind proceeded, and which were really prepared by Judaism. The predominant idea of this epistle, the highpriesthood of Christ, has a significance entirely real, founded en fact, and relating to the most pressing religious wants of mankind. The Logos in himself is not the high-priest; he can only lay claim to this character in consequence of his having assumed human nature, and thus accomplished, in the manner described, the redemption of mankind. Christ as glorified and exalted to heaven, has actually performed that for the religious life of men which their imperative religious wants sought in the priesthood. On the contrary, Philo calls the Logos himself the high-priest, as the divine reason revealed in creation, by which it is connected with the Deity. This reason, which reveals the highest being, the or, and communicates worthy and elevated ideas of it, is hence called the high-priest of God in the creation. As the ideal ground of the phenomenal world, it mediates for it before God, for in idea all is perfect, but defective in actual appearance. The Logos is hence represented as the κόσμος νοητός, the παράκλητος, the ἱκέτης for the κόσμος αισθητός. This idea is symbolically represented in Melchisedec, and the Jewish high-priest.' Thus we see here, on the one hand, abstract general ideas which can have no significance for the religious life; and on the other hand, appearances taken from the facts of religious experience. On the one hand, the language of religion is arbitrarily explained, according to a speculation which was the production of a foreign soil; on the other hand, according to sentiments founded in the disposition which it was designed and adapted to express. Here it is proper to notice a passage, in which the author of this epistle describes the power of the Logos in a manner resembling Philo's, but which furnishes no suffi

THE DOCTRINE OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

I See Leg. Allegor. iii. § 26, where Melchisedec is spoke of as the symbol of the Logos, ἱερεὺς γάρ ἐστι λόγος, κλῆρον ἔχων τὸν ἔντα καὶ imṛŵs neρì avtov Xoyicóuevos. De Cherubim, § 5, the Logos is termed iepeùs and apophтns for the soul. De Sacrif. Abel et Caini, § 36, ὁ πεφευγὼς ἐπὶ τὸν θεὸν καὶ ἱκέτης αὐτοῦ γεγονὼς λόγος. The high priest in his robes is a symbol of the universe, ἀναγκαῖον γὰρ ἦν τὸν ἱερωμένοι τῷ τοῦ κόσμου πατοὶ παρακλήτῳ χρῆσθαι τελειοτάτῳ τὴν ἀρετὴν υἱῷ. The universe according to the Platonic idea. De Vita Mos, iii. § 14.

cient evidence to assume that he had the language of Philo actually in his thoughts. It is the description (common to both) of the all-penetrating and cutting sharpness of the Logos. But, in the Epistle to the Hebrews,' we have presented to us a matter of religious experience, the living power of divine truth, penetrating, judging, and punishing the soul, the power which lays open all secret wickedness, before which no deception can stand. But Philo understands by the term the power of logical discrimination, especially in reference to the divine. reason, that efficiency by which it fixes the limits of the various kinds of existence, arranges the various classes of creatures, and forms compound bodies from the simple elements.

CHAPTER III.

THE DOCTRINE OF JAMES.

WE proceed from Paul's representation of Christian truth to that of James, which forms a more marked contrast to it than any other in the writers of the New Testament. This is chiefly owing to James's peculiar point of view, and to the difference occasioned by it in the development of the doctrines of justification and faith. But on comparing the two types of doctrine with one another, we shall perceive their essential unity resulting from the Spirit of Christ in both, only that. the views of the latter apostle were not so completely disengaged from the garb of the Old Dispensation, nor wrought out in the same sharply defined form. The contrast that

1 Hebrews iv 12 Ζῶν γὰρ ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ, καὶ ἐνεργὴς, καὶ τομώ τερος ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν μάχαιραν δίστομον, καὶ διϊκνούμενος ἄχρι μερισμοῦ ψυχῆς τε καὶ πνεύματος, ἁρμῶν τε καὶ μυελῶν, καὶ κριτικὸς ἐνθυμήσεων καὶ ἐννοιῶν καρδίας. Quis Rer. divinar. Hæres, § 26, ἵνα τὸν ἀδίδακτων ἐννοῇς θεὸν τέμνοντα, τάς τε τῶν σωμάτων καὶ πραγμάτων ἑξῆς ἁπάσας ἡρμόσθαι καὶ ἡνῶσθαι δοκούσας φύσεις, τῷ τομεῖ τῶν συμπάντων αὐτοῦ λόγῳ, ὃς εἰς τὴν ὀξυτάτην ἀκονηθεὶς ἀκμὴν, διαιρῶν οὐδέποτε λήγει τὰ αἰσθητὰ πάντα, ἐπειδὰν δὲ μέχρι τῶν ἀτόμων καὶ λεγομένων ἀμερῶν διεξέλθῃ, πάλιν ἀπὸ τούτων, τὰ λόγῳ θεωρητὰ εἰς ἀμυθήτους καὶ ἀπεριγράφους μοίρας ἄρχεται διαιρεῖν οὗτες δ τομεύς. Philon. Opera, tom. iii. p. 30, ed. Lips. 1828

here exists we cannot but regard rather as formal than material.

This difference is closely connected with the difference in the formation of the religious character of the two apostles, and with the difference in their respective spheres of labour. As to the latter, we must bear in mind, that James in his peculiar position had not, like Paul, to vindicate an independent and unshackled ministration of the Gospel among the Gentiles in opposition to the pretensions of Jewish legalrighteousness; but that he felt himself compelled to press the practical consequences and requirements of the Christian faith on those in whom that faith had been blended with the errors of carnal Judaism, and to tear away the supports of their false confidence. While Paul was obliged to point out to those who placed their dependence on the justifying power of the works of the law, the futility of such works in reference to justification, and to demonstrate that justification and sanctification could proceed only from the faith of the gospel,-James, on the other hand, found it necessary to declare to those who imagined that they could be justified before God by a faith in the Jewish sense as we have before explained it, that such a faith with which their practice was at total variance, was an absolutely worthless thing.'

It serves to confirm what we have asserted above-that the argumentation in the Epistle of James is by no means directed against Paulthat the example of Rahab adduced in it, cannot be supposed to relate to any use which Paul could have made of it; for the manner in which the doctrine of Faith is unfolded in the 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, could certainly give no occasion to such a line of argument, since in that section, believing confidence is described precisely as a principle which impels to action, and the faith of Rahab is marked as being of a kind that induced her to receive the spies. The very point is here made prominent on which James lays so much stress, and hence we infer that it cannot form an antithesis to his own views. Nor could Paul, in his oral instructions, have made use of the example of Rahab; for in those passages of the book of Joshua there was nothing he could make use of in support of his doctrine of justification by faith Nothing is to be found there respecting a πίστις nor of a δικαιοῦσθη before God, and with those points alone St. Paul was concerned, and for their confirmation he quoted Gen. xv. and Habakkuk ii.; this example of Rahab, which can only be explained from the reference to Paul's doctrine, testifies against the supposed discrepancy in the views of the two Apostles. The citation of such an example can be explained and justified only from the point of view which we have taken.

The apostle affirms, that as a sympathy that shows itself in mere words to the afflicted is worth nothing, so a faith without works is entirely vain. Accordingly, he compares a faith that does not manifest itself by works, to a pretended love that is not verified by corresponding acts, to a sympathy that evaporates in mere words. From this comparison, it is evident that as what he here describes as a pretended love is in his judgment undeserving of the name of love, the same may be said of a pretended faith. But as by arguing against the value of a love that only shows itself in words, he did not intend to depreciate the worth of love itself, just as little could he design to cast a slight on the worth of faith by what he says against the value of a faith that exhibits itself only in outward profession. He considers such a faith which is unaccompanied by works, as dead; it is a faith which is destitute of that divine life which spontaneously producer good works. In reference to this necessary intimate connexion between faith and works, James says, addressing a man who depends on this inoperative faith (ii. 18), "Show me how thy faith can exist without works, and I will prove to thee my faith by my works." "As the body without the soul is dead, so (he says, ii. 26) "faith without works is dead." The comparison is here a general one, without descending to particulars. It is evident, that James could not mean to say that works (the outward act) bear the same relation to faith as the soul to the body, but only (which agrees with the whole train of his thinking) that the absence of works is a proof that the faith is destitute of what corresponds to the soul as the animating principle of the body. Works, therefore, are signs of the vitality of faith.

We shall be assisted in forming correct ideas of his doctrine respecting faith, if we examine the examples which he adduces of genuine and spurious faith; on the one hand, the faith of evil spirits in a God, which only fills them with terror, and, on the other, the faith of Abraham. He here applies the same term rioris to two distinct affections of the soul. In the first case, where the reference is to the faith of evil spirits, the feeling of dependence on an Almighty Supreme Being shows itself as something unavoidable, as an overpowering force, but it is only a passive state (a ráfoc), with which the spontaneity, the free receptivity and.

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