4. The true spirit of wisdom appears not in aspiring to teach, but in goodness and meekness of life (ch. iii.). Strife and self-exaltation are fruits of a different spirit, to be resisted and overcome by humble prayer for more grace (iv. 1-10). 5. God's judgment is at hand. The thought condemns censoriousness (iv. 11 et seq.), presumptuous treatment of life (13-17), and the tyranny of the rich (v. 1-6). It encourages the believer to patient endurance to the end without murmuring or imprecations (7-12). It impels the church to diligence in its work of worship, care and prayer (13-18), and in the reclamation of the erring (19-20). The use made by James of earlier material is as important for determining the _terminus a quo_ of its own date as the use of it by later writers for the _terminus ad quem_. Acquaintance with the evangelic tradition is apparent. It is conceived, however, more in the Matthaean sense of "commandments to be observed" (Matt. xxviii. 20) than the Pauline, Markan and Johannine of the drama of the incarnation and redemption. There is no traceable literary contact with the synoptic gospels. Acquaintance, however, with some of the Pauline epistles "must be regarded as incontestably established" (O. Cone, _Ency. Bibl._ ii. 2323). Besides scattered reminiscences of Romans, 1 Corinthians and Galatians, enumerated in the article referred to, the section devoted to a refutation of the doctrine of "justification by faith apart from works" undeniably presupposes the Pauline terminology. Had the author been consciously opposing the great apostle to the Gentiles he would probably have treated the subject less superficially. What he really opposes is the same ultra-Pauline moral laxity which Paul himself had found occasion to rebuke among would-be adherents in Corinth (1 Cor. vi. 12; viii. 1-3, 11, 12; x. 23 seq., 32 seq.) and which appears still more marked in the pastoral epistles and 1 John. In rebuking it James unconsciously retracts the misapplied Pauline principle itself. To suppose that the technical terminology of Paul, including even his classic example of the faith of Abraham, could be employed here independently of Rom. ii. 21-23, iii. 28, iv. 1; Gal. ii. 16, iii. 6, is to pass a judgment which in every other field of literary criticism would be at once repudiated. To imagine it current in pre-Pauline Judaism is to misconceive the spirit of the synagogue.[1] To make James the coiner and Paul the borrower not only throws back James to a date incompatible with the other phenomena, but implies a literary polemic tactlessly waged by Paul against the head of the Jerusalem church. Acquaintance with Hebrews is only slightly less probable, for James ii. 25 adds an explication of the case of Rahab also, cited in Heb. xi. 31 along with Abraham as an example of justification by faith only, to his correction of the Pauline scriptural argument.