The Literature and History of New Testament Times

ent is true. The name of Jesus occurs only twice in the epistle, James 1:1; 2:1, and there is no specific re

finable spirit of the whole. The way in which James treats the covetousness, the pride, the heartlessness, the formalism, the pettiness and the meanness of his readers, is strikingly similar to the way in which his Master dealt with the Pharisees. James does not indeed actually cite the words of Jesus; but the absence of citations makes the underlying similarity all the m

and a Lord who was possessed of a heavenly glory. Ch. 2:1. James, as well as the others, was waiting for the second coming of Christ. Ch. 5:8. He does not directly refer to the saving events that form the substance of Christian faith; but he takes them everywhere for granted. The word of truth through which the disciples have been formed by God, ch. 1:18, the implanted word, v. 21, that needs ever to be received anew, can hardly be anything else than the apostolic gospel as it was proclaimed in the earliest speeches of Peter which are recorded in The Acts, and as it found its rich unfolding in the teaching of Paul. Just because that gospel in

empted to suppose-it builds upon doctrine. In that it agrees with the whole of the Bible. Christianity, as has been finely said, is a life only because it is a doctrine. Only the great saving events o