much as the people is gone astray after Jesus who is crucified, tell us what is the gate of Jesus?” He answered, with a loud voice, ‘* Why ask ye me concerning Jesus, the Son of man ? He sits in heaven, on the right hand of the mighty power, and he is also about to come in the clouds of heaven.” Many being convinced, and saying, ‘ Hosanna to the Son of David!” the Scribes and Pharisees said, “ We have done ill in furnishing so great a testimony to Jesus. Let us go and cast him down.” They went up then and threw him down, and as he was not killed by the fall they began to stone him. And he, turning round, knelt and said, “I beseech thee, Lord God and Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But while they were thus stoning him, one of the priests, of the sons of Rechab, cried, saying, “Stop! whatdoye? The Just One prays for you;” and one of them, one of the fullers, took the club with which he used to press the cloths, and struck it on the head of the Just One. Andso he bore witness, and they buried him on the place by the temple.
The epistle was probably written from Jerusalem, where James would be likely to become acquainted with the condition of the Jews, through those who came up at the feasts. Certain allusions in the epistle go to confirm this. The comparison of the double-minded man to a wave of the sea (i. 6), and the pict- ure of the ships (iii. 4), might well be written by one dwelling near the sea and familiar with it. The illustrations in i. 11, 12—the figs, the oil, the wine, the salt and bitter springs—are furnished by Palestine, as are the drought (v. 17, 18), the former and the latter rain (v. 7), and the hot, parching wind (i. 11), for which the name Kavowv was specially known in Palestine.
The epistle is written from a Jewish stand-point. “ Chris- tianity appears in it, not as a new dispensation, but as a develop- ment and perfection of the old. The Christian’s highest honor is not that he is a member of the universal church, but that he is the genuipe type of the ancient Israelite. It reveals no new principle of spiritual life, such as those which were to turn the world upside down in the teaching of Paul or of John, but only that pure and perfect morality which was the true fulfilment of