angelic: the final truth has been revealed; the final, because the perfect, religious relation to God has been established and is maintained through Him. Two of the characteristic words of the epistle serve to bring this out. One is 'better' (крEίτTwv), which the writer uses when he compares Christ and Christianity with other religions and their representative figures; the other is alávios, by which he conveys the idea that Christ and Christianity are final, and that there is in truth no ground for comparisons. Thus Christ is 'better' than the angels (1'); in Christianity there is the introduction of a 'better' hope (719); Jesus has become surety and mediator of a 'better' covenant, established upon 'better' promises (7 22, 86); the heavenly sanctuary

into which He has entered with His own blood must be purified with 'better' sacrifices than the earthly (923); the blood of sprinkling-the blood which Jesus shedspeaks 'better' things than that of Abel (1224). This is as though the writer said to men attracted by the old religion, Do not bring it into comparison with what we owe to Christ; it cannot stand it. But when he uses aiúvios, eternal, to characterise the new dispensation in its various aspects, he means more. It is not only that the earlier form of religion with which he had to reckon is surpassed by that which looks to Jesus, but that the latter can never be surpassed. It is the eternal, final, perfect form of man's relation to God; in the strict sense of the term it is incomparable; and it depends for its very being on Christ, and on our faith in what He is and has done for us. It is in this conviction that he speaks of the 'eternal' salvation of which Christ is

author to all who obey Him (59); of the 'eternal' redemption which He won by His own blood (912); of the 'eternal' spirit—the final revelation of divine love

-through which He offered Himself without spot to God (914); of the 'eternal' inheritance promised to those who hear His voice (915); of the 'eternal' covenant established in His blood (1320). When we recognise what these expressions mean, we see that for the writer of this epistle Christ has the same absolute religious significance which He has for Paul. It is not possible, on the ground of the prominence which he gives to the true humanity and the genuine religious experience of Jesus, to argue that for him Jesus was only another man like himself, a perfect pattern of piety indeed, but no more; in his religion-in all that affected his relation as a sinful man to God-Jesus had a place and work which belonged to Him alone. All that God had done for the salvation of men He had done in Him; nay, all that He could ever do. For beyond that offering of Himself which Jesus had once made through the eternal spirit, there remains no more any sacrifice for sin (1026).

IV

CHRIST IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER

The Catholic epistles, which were the last of the early Christian writings to secure a place in the canon, are often taken to represent an average type of Christianity, without the sharp edges or the individuality of

view which we find in Paul, John, or the writer to the Hebrews. If this were so, they might be more important as witnesses to the place of Jesus in Christian faith than the writings of the most original intellects in the Church; for, as Mr. Bagehot says of politics, it is the average man who is truly representative. But the writer cannot agree with this estimate of the Catholic epistles. If for critical reasons we leave Second Peter out of account, it would be hard to imagine writings with a more distinct stamp of individuality upon them than James, Jude, and John. Even the First Epistle of Peter, influenced as it undoubtedly is by modes of thought and turns of phrase which have their most characteristic expression in Paul, is a document which no sympathetic reader could ascribe to the apostle of the Gentiles. It is the work of another mind, a mind with distinct qualities and virtues of its own; and in view of the overwhelming attestation of its authorship, there is no sufficient reason either in its Pauline affinities or in its supposed references to one or another form of legalised persecution, to deny it to Peter. The early chapters of Acts have already shown us the place which Jesus held in the faith and life of His chief apostle, and the impression they leave is confirmed by all we find in the epistle. It emphasises as they do the resurrection of Jesus, and the expectation of His return. It calls on Christians to sanctify Christ as Lord in their hearts (3 15), thus applying to Him words which in Isaiah are applied to Jehovah, just as Peter in Acts similarly applies to Jesus words which refer to Jehovah in Joel (Acts 2 21). The new life of Christians and their hope of immortality

are due to Christ's resurrection (19), and all that they know as redemption from sin has been accomplished by Him (118f., 221, 318). The difficult passage extending from 318 to 4o, about preaching to the spirits in prison and bringing the gospel to the dead, has at least thus much of undisputed meaning in it: there is no world, no time, no order of being, in which the writer can think of any other salvation than that which comes by Christ. In his universe Christ is supreme, angels and principalities and powers being made subject to Him (322). In the salutation of the epistle Christ stands side by side with the Father and the Spirit; and just as in Acts 2 33 and in various Pauline passages (e.g. 1 Cor. 1246, Eph. 218), the three confront man as the one divine causality on which salvation depends. The foreknowledge of God the Father, consecration wrought by the Spirit, and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, these represent the divine action in the salvation of men (12). But probably the most decisive expression in the epistle, as bringing out the significance of Jesus for the religion of the writer, is that which he employs in 120 to describe the Christian standing of its recipients: you, he says, who through Him are believers in God. He does not mean that they did not believe in God before they believed in Christ; there was true faith in God in the world before there was Christian faith. But although it was true, it was not faith in its final or adequate form: that is only made possible when men believe in God through Christ. The final faith in God owes its differentia, that which makes it what it is, its specific and characteristic qualities, to Him. The God in whom the

f.

Christian believes is the God who is Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who gave Him up for us all, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, and who has called us to this eternal glory in Him. There could not be such faith in God, or faith in such a God, apart from the presence of Jesus, His atoning death, and His exaltation to God's right hand; it is only as we believe thus in Jesus that we can have the new Christian faith in God. Jesus is not to the writer one of us, who shares a faith in God which is independently accessible to all men; He is the Person to whom alone the Christian religion owes its character and its being; God would be a word of another meaning to us but for Him. It does not seem to go in any way beyond the truth if we say that with the fullest recognition of what Jesus was and suffered as a man upon earth, the risen Lord, in whom the writer believes, stands on the divine side of reality, and is the channel through which all God's power flows to men for their salvation.

V

CHRIST IN THE EPISTLE OF JAMES

The Epistle of James was long one of the cruces of New Testament criticism. It was regarded by many and is still regarded by some as the earliest of the canonical books; by others it is regarded as among the latest, if not the last of all-a writing which was only in time to secure admission to the canon before the door was shut. It says little, comparatively, about Christ, and the place which He fills in the life of the Christian,

D