history of the epistle's reception into the canon is not opposed to this; for, once it was attributed to James, Syria would be more likely to take it up, while the West, more sceptical, if not better informed as to its origin, held back; just as happened in the case of Hebrews. It is the author's conception of the nature of the gospel which mainly gives us pause in following this pretty general disposition of modern scholarship. With all the phenomena of vocabulary and style which seem to justify such conceptions as von Soden's that c. iii. and iv. 11-v. 6 represent excerpts respectively from the essay of an Alexandrian scribe, and a triple fragment of Jewish apocalypse, the analysis above given will be found the exponent of a real logical sequence. We might almost admit a resemblance in form to the general literary type which Spitta adduces. The term "wisdom" in particular is used in the special and technical sense of the "wise men" of Hebrew literature (Matt. xxiii. 34), the sense of "the wisdom of the just" of Luke i. 17. True, the mystical sense given to the term in one of the sources of Luke, by Paul and some of the Church fathers, is not present. While the gospel is pre-eminently the divine gift of "wisdom," "wisdom" is not personified, but conceived primarily as a system of humanitarian ethics, i. 21-25, and only secondarily as a spiritual effluence, imparting the regenerate disposition, the "mind that was in Christ Jesus," iii. 13-18. And yet for James as well as for Paul Christ is "the wisdom of God." The difference in conception of the term is similar to that between Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon. Our author, like Paul, expects the hearers of the word to be "a kind of first-fruits to God of his creation." (i. 18 cf. 1 Pet. i. 23), and bids them depend upon the gift of grace (i. 5, iv. 5 seq.), but for the evils of the world he has no remedy but the patient endurance of the Christian philosopher (i. 2-18). For the faithlessness ([Greek: dipsychia] i. 6-8; cf. _Didache_ and Hermas), worldliness (ii. 1-13) and hollow profession (ii. 14-26) of the church life of his time, with its "theological wrangling" (iii. 1-12), his remedy is again the God-given, peaceable spirit of the Christian philosopher (iii. 13-18), which is the antithesis of the spirit of self-seeking and censoriousness (iv. 1-12), and which appreciates the pettiness of earthly life with its sordid gains and its unjust distribution of wealth (iv. 13-v. 6). This attitude of the Christian stoic will maintain the individual in his patient waiting for the expected "coming of the Lord" (v. 7-11); while the church sustains its official functions of healing and prayer, and reclamation of the erring (v. 13-20).[4] For this conception of the gospel and of the officially organized church, our nearest analogy is in Matthew, or rather in the blocks of precepts of the Lord which after subtraction of the Markan narrative framework are found to underlie our first gospel. It may be