in the fields of agriculture, in the heated walks of commerce, in the toiling scenes of artisanship. Yes, and in literature, politics, religion, and even in the guilded halls and the hilarious saloons of voluptuous pleasures and sensational amusements we find "youths that are weary and young men that utterly fall." Poor humanity is heavy burdened; it bows like Atlas with a world on its shoulders. Verily, as of old, so now and everywhere, "people weary themselves for very vanity." To the eye of Christ men everywhere appear as "weary and heavy laden."

Man is here repre

II. HUMANITY DIVINELY RECUPERATED. sented as having his strength renewed. "They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint." All men have a twofold spirit of action-the speculative and the practical.

(1) In the speculative they move upward. They rise into the region of thought and theory, they soar from details to principles, from forms to things, from phenomena to eternal laws, from the seen to the unseen, from the temporal to the eternal. All men, though in different degrees, have a tendency and faculty for this upward movement, but, alas, how feeble, how nervous and potentless they appear in this sphere of action. Even the "youths faint and are weary, and the young men utterly fall." But in this divine recuperation what a change, "they mount up with wings as eagles," &c. They rise from the clouds of ignorance, from the storms of doubt and the tempest of passion, into the calm and sunny regions of eternal realities. In the intellectual domain the elevation is vigorous.

(2) In the practical they move onwards. "They run and are not weary, they walk and are not faint." They have to attend to the actual concerns and duties of earth and time. In this department they are so re-invigorated, so divinely recuperated, that instead of fainting, wearying, and falling, "they run and are not weary, they walk and are not faint." They move on in their temporal duties with increased alacrity and unfailing vigour. It is beautiful to see this recuperative power in nature, investing with new strength and fresh beauty those endless productions of the field and the forest that in winter lay withered and dead.

It is beautiful to see it in the animal creation appearing with new skin, new hair, and new plumage; but how much more beautiful is it to see it in exhausted humanity, enabling it, after having wallowed in the dirt, to mount up on wings as an eagle, and being utterly wearied of the duties of life to walk and not faint.

III.-HUMANITY DIVINELY RECUPERATED BY GENUINE, PRACTICAL RELIGION. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint." Waiting upon the Lord implies (1) A practical realisation of His presence. No one waits upon Him who does not feel Him ever near, the grand object in their horizon and the mighty pulse in their being. (2) A practical recognition of His claims. He claims the supreme love and the loyal service of all. Now this is genuine religion and this only. Religion consisteth not in a theoretical confession of His existence and claims, but in a practical realisation. Now, this practical religion is that by which the mighty Maker of our being recuperates exhausted humanity. There is a religion that weakens, degrades, and crushes humanity. As a fact, a spurious religion has in all ages and countries been the greatest curse of the race, but the genuine is its true help, its saviour. Who does not see that if a man wait upon the Lord, in the true sense, the highest strength must come to him,-strength of confidence in the ALL GOOD, ALL WISE, and ALL MIGHTY; strength of hope for ultimate perfection. This is the strength-renewing power and

nothing else.

LONDON.

DAVID THOMAS, D.D.

"We are all like the Adam in the epic poem who look upon our first night as the last day, and the setting of the sun as the setting of the world. We all grieve for our friends as if there were no better future yonder, and grieve for ourselves as if there were no better here, for all our passions are by birth atheists and unbelievers."-RICHTER.

Homiletical Commentary.

NOTES ON THE EPISTLE OF JAMES.

A Stern Rebuke and a Gracious Message.

Chapter iv. 1-4.—“YE ADULTERERS AND ADULTERESSES, KNOW

YE NOT THAT THE FRIENDSHIP OF THE WORLD IS ENMITY WITH GOD? WHOSOEVER THEREFORE WILL BE A FRIEND OF THE WORLD IS THE ENEMY OF GOD. Do YE THINK THAT THE SCRIPTURE SAITH IN VAIN, THE SPIRIT THAT DWELLETH IN US LUSTETH TO ENVY? BUT HE GIVETH MORE GRACE. WHEREFORE HE SAITH, GOD RESISTETH THE PROUD, BUT GIVETH GRACE UNTO THE HUMBLE."

THE members of the churches, or a considerable number of the members of the churches to whom the apostle sent this letter, were of a very imperfectly sanctified, of a very worldly type. Judging them by their spirit and by their conduct, as these come out in the rebukes he administers to them, we are apt to wonder

James the righteous, is James the charitable.

where there could be room for charity to allow them the name of Christian brethren at all. James is generally supposed to be a somewhat harsh and stern man. His epistle has just to be read in the light of his rebukes to show him to be the very incarnation of the charity his fellow-apostle celebrates, the charity which believeth all things. Men and women with bitter envying in their hearts; with tongues set on fire, worlds of iniquity; with conduct best described by such alien words as "wars and battles," the spirit of their desires, the spirit of Diotrephes, whose name stands for ever as the "other name" for what ought never to be found in any man who calls himself by the Christian name, the lust of power and pre-eminence: men and women of whom all this could be truly said, are yet to be spoken of, to be treated

to

Love

can wound.

and entreated as Christian men and women. Surely, James the righteous was James the charitable! Surely, no one need hesitate say that James, though not the brother according to the flesh of John, the apostle of love, was his brother according to the spirit; that in his heart, along with, nay, as the cause of all the sternness of rebuke, was the love which was bold enough, because it was deep enough, to expose that it might destroy those evil elements which disgraced and obstructed the Christian cause. If this apostle had had the honour of his Master less at heart, his rebukes of that Master's unworthy disciples would have been less keen; if he had been as worldly and self-seeking as these disciples were, he would not have seen their worldliness or self-seekingness so closely as to call forth any rebuke at all; if he had not intensely desired their higher good, he would have let them go on with their wranglings and strifes, till they had proved themselves even beyond the limit of his charitableness, unworthy the Christian name. On the other hand, it is a holy jealousy of his Master's good name, it is an intense spirituality of nature that recoils in indignation from such utter worldliness, it is a profound desire for the deliverance of these church members from every evil. These speak in every line of the apostle, these lie at the heart of every rebuke, these constitute the persuasiveness and the power of every entreaty to "cleanse their hands and to purify their hearts, to humble themselves in the sight of the Lord."

It needs that we should recognise all this to be able to go on to the exposition of what follows. He has said some terrible things already; he has written down and has not blotted out, but has sent to them some terrible sayings,-quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, discerning so clearly the thoughts and intents of the heart that they have recoiled from them, saying they were not meant for them, while all the time their consciences were siding with the apostle and saying, "Yes, they were meant for us." He has said some terrible things already, nothing so terrible as this: "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is

enmity against God? whosoever would be a friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God."

Figurative

The designation is not applied in its literal sense, as, indeed, is evident from the very question the apostle puts in connection with it. James was a Hebrew Christian writing to Hebrew Christians. He and they alike were acquainted language. with the figurative language of the Old Testament, where the covenant between God and His people was so frequently spoken of as a marriage covenant, and where the unfaithfulness of His people to this covenant was spoken of as unfaithfulness to their marriage vows. "Thy Maker is thy Husband." "Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord, for I am married unto you." "Only acknowledge thine iniquity that thou hast dealt treacherously with Me: as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband." (And so in the New Testament.) James and his Hebrew readers were familiar with this figurative language, and when he applied it to them they at once knew that he meant to accuse them of being perilously near the verge of that apostasy, parallel to the forsaking of her husband by a woman, when a disciple no longer finding his chief joy in God, in love to God, in the experience of spiritual desires and the fulfilment of them, seeks this chief joy in the world and in the love of the world,-the lust of the flesh, or the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life. 'Ye adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity against God? whosoever would be a friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God." When a woman forsakes her husband for another, she thereby makes herself the enemy of her husband; she shows that she was his enemy: if she had not been his enemy, if there had been any lingering trace of affection in her she would not have forsaken him; it was because she was estranged from him, alienated from him, at enmity with him, that she forsook him for another. In the same way a professing Christian, a member of Christ's church, a man who says his whole heart and soul go out after the living God, and who has felt something of the truth of all this in his own experience; this man losing his interest in it all, not caring any longer for the spread of the