that it was his work, when in truth their own flesh and their own heart gave heed to him and gave him room. From him who resists him through God, he fleeth: that is everlastingly true. Not indeed that one victory drives him to final flight; he returns again and again, sometimes immediately after the most shameful defeat. But he must fly, again and again, whenever he encounters that one word-Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve, to Him alone be subject! Before him who thus, in and with God, resisteth him, he fleeth as before the Almighty God Himself. But he who is tempted by Satan to lift himself proudly against the Supreme will find that God must resist him, and all that is devilish in him, even as He resisteth the devil himself. Then is it with the Church of Christ as with the ancient people of God. "He said, surely they are my people, children that will not lie: so He was their Saviour. In His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them and carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled, and vexed His Holy Spirit; therefore He was turned to be their enemy, and he fought against them" (Isa. lxiii. 8-10.)

Draw not nigh then to the devil; give him not advantage by meeting him midway with your lusts, so that he may touch you by them. Rather, Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you! This likewise is a great and most impressive word, like the former; never to be exhausted in preaching, and yet quite enough a sermon of itself. The same word occurs in the prophet, as addressed to God's ancient people: Return unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will return unto you (Zech. i. 3). And when God thus speaketh to us, that of itself is His own first drawing nigh to us, in the attraction of soliciting grace. Thus doth He ever; and when we begin in any degree to hear and to come, O how abundantly He responds, and comes to meet poor sinners! Who among us has not experienced this a thousand times? Which of you, ye adulterers, has not known this in past experience, or knows it not now in present? Let us draw nigh to God, Christians, for we have the abundant right of access in Christ! But, not like His ancient people, with your lips while your hearts are far from Him-with true and sincere hearts, rather, as is fit before the Most High. What then immediately follows in the presence of God? Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. Before God

we shall know what we are, and how it stands with us: either sinners, with those very hands which we would lift up to God, or deceitful and unstable in heart. To the former God criesYour hands are full of guilt; wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil! (Is. i. 15, 16). The latter He keenly tests and reproves; to show them how double-hearted they are, how double-souled; and with what divided allegiance and imperfect submission and partial faith they appear before Him. Be not too hasty with David's word of comfort; I wash mine hands in innocency, and so compass, Lord, Thine altar! (Ps. xxvi. 6). Make your hearts clean; for without that not even the hands are pure.

This makes us all sinners, and in some degree double-minded; the most sincere in purpose will be the least of all disposed to refuse to confess their unfaithfulness. Those who most sincerely draw nigh to God will be most profoundly conscious how much they still need that greater grace. But He giveth it to the humble, the miserable, the penitent; therefore it imports all in their degree to receive St James' call to conversion: Where there is false joy and laughter, let there be lamentation! Where there is still pride in the heart, let it be humbled!

Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be turned to heaviness, and your joy to mourning. This is the word which best suits the adulterers and adulteresses, who deeply need to come down from their proud and lofty elevation into a state of deeper and more troubled repentance: sorrow and lamentation would much better become them than laughter. Hear, ye blinded ones, and bow down your hearts to good counsel! The same Spirit of God who thus exhorts you will also excite within you sorrow, and give you tears, if ye only begin to yield Him His rights, and give Him room. Yea, begin at once to be wise! Say unto laughter, Thou art mad! and to joy, What doest thou? (Eccl. ii. 2). Did ye ever experience a first repentance towards God, ye sinners—why, then, have ye forsaken and forgotten that good beginning, and fallen into the miserable delusion of a vain joy? Turn back to the first sure ground of your covenant with God; ye have indeed double reason for lamentation and sorrow, as being covenant-breakers, and fallen souls. Or, did ye never thoroughly enter into that Divine distress without which at the beginning there can be no complete conversion

and salvation? Be in earnest now, at the last, for the matter with you is tremendously earnest!-But none of us are beyond the necessity of sorrow and lamentation. Our progressive sanctification, after grace received, does not go on in a proud and secure spirit: we must often go back to that original sorrow for sin; often appear before the throne of grace with the lamenting prayer which issues from a broken heart, in order that we may receive new and larger measures of grace. And, ye doubleminded, especially, more or less divided still between God and the world-if ye would truly draw nigh to God, and make pure your hearts, how can that otherwise be than by a new repentance? Canst thou be so merry and satisfied, as if all were well with thee? or, even with hypocritical self-deception, make thy gladness known for joy in the Lord, while His Spirit findeth in thee so much to rebuke and condemn? This very perversion of all right feeling should be matter of bitter lamentation before the Lord! Canst thou so much succumb to the flesh, which thou shouldst crucify, as to be heard indulging in over-loud laughter like the fools (Ecclus. xxi. 29-whilst thou wouldst fain be reputed wise! Canst thou now and then forget utterly that that laughter of fools which Solomon calls madness. is making a mock at sin; and find thy pleasure in that instead of in the company of the pious? (Prov. xiv. 9). Art thou so little under the discipline of the Holy Spirit, art thou so far gone from chastity of heart, that thou canst be found among the children of the world, sharing their filthy discourse, which should be to thee irksome wantonness? (Ecclus. xxvii. 13). Thou hast then much cause to weep before thy Saviour's face, to change thy perilous joy and merriment into mourning, or, as St James' word strictly means, into deeply humbled abasement. For there is still a wretched pride in thy heart; but as long as that is there, thou hast not ended with the great word of Scripture. which St James repeats for all alike, with its exhortation and promise conjoined—Humble yourselves before the Lord,1 and He will lift you up.

This word includes all, from the first conversion to the consummation of holiness. It is the whole plan of salvation; the unvarying and abiding rule for us unto whom the Lord hath come, who know Him, who belong to Him, and who would stand 1 Not as Luther read-Before God.

before Him at the last. Humble yourselves in repentance, in obedience, in patience! The first cry of the Lord to sinners is, I am come to call you to repentance. Him that humbleth himself before Him, He exalts at once with the grace and consolation of forgiveness. But that is the preparation of the soul for a new walk in obedience; and, as far as that is wanting, there is the constant call to repentance. Humble thyself truly and altogether; subject thy desires, thy self-will, thy proudly refractory heart to obedience in His Spirit: when He ruleth thee, thou wilt be more and more exalted in the power of His grace, in order to the sure victory over sin, the world, and the devil. But thou wilt not attain to that without discipline from within and without, discipline which will still abase, afflict, and bow thee down. Endure all this; humble thyself under the mighty hand of God; so will He perfect thy obedience, and exalt thee in His time! (1 Pet. v. 6). Let that pride through which the devil fell, and through which he would cast thee down, be utterly and entirely abolished in thee; so that thou mayest know of nothing but humiliation before the Lord, who so deeply humbled Himself for thee. So shalt thou through Him be exalted, who saith not in vain more than once, "He that exalteth himself shall be abased; but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted!"

XXIV.

EVIL SPEAKING AND JUDGING.

(Ch. iv. 11, 12.)

Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: But if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?

Speak not evil one of another! Another of those exhortations which, both to the world and to the community of Christians, are so urgently necessary: one, therefore, which in a variety of expressions often occurs in the sacred Scriptures-from the ninth commandment, and the many exhortations of the Prophets, down

to the Lord's most weighty saying, Judge not! and the apostolical exhortations to lay aside all malice, and all guile, hypocrisies, envies, and evil speakings (1 Pet. ii. 1). But how does St James reach such an exhortation here? He has been beseeching and warning, Humble yourselves before the Lord! and this now follows quite consistently. For, that sinful and unbecoming judgment and evil speaking has always flowed from the pride which refuses to be humbled before the Lord, and which forgets its own guilt before the supreme and only Judge. At the same time, he thus returns to that which had occupied his mind since the beginning of the third chapter-the warning against sins of the tongue, which through hatred and pride lead to war and contention. He has spoken in ch. iv. 1 of strife and war among brethren, and then in ver. 2 of the underlying principle of hatred and envy: to the same chapter certainly belongs that evil speaking and judging from which so much disquiet, alas, springs, and which so fatally interrupts brotherly fellowship and love. Therefore St James first here inserts the convincing and mournful word, after the previous keen address-Speak not evil one of another, dear brethren !

What is that evil speaking which is so unbecoming to the brethren, and so strictly forbidden by the word and Spirit of God? Surely not every kind of speaking against the sin of others! If one summoned to bear witness of the truth before a judge, appointed to do right in the place of God, gives sincere testimony to a sin which has been committed, in order to its being punished, he does no more than his righteous duty; and the effeminate weakness which would conceal the truth would be no other than sin. When a minister of God, who should not merely beseech in the stead of Christ, but also in His name reprove and warn sinners, discloses the secret shamefulness of sinners' sins, it is only part of his faithful duty, and he would himself sin if he withheld it. When the preacher preaches, according to his Lord's commission-He that believeth not shall be damned! and says to every man who will not come to God's house, in faithful warning-Take heed, lest thou be among those who are condemned! no man can object to him that he is assuming the office of a judge. Nor even then, when he may find it needful and salutary to point one sinner to the plain example of another, that he may in him see himself as in a glass. When the most