'Herod killed James the brother of John with the sword.'--ACTS xii. 2.
One might have expected more than a clause to be spared to tell the
death of a chief man and the first martyr amongst the Apostles. James,
as we know, was one of the group of the Apostles who were in especially
close connection with Jesus Christ. He is associated in the Gospels
with Peter and his brother John, and is always named before John, as if
he were the more important of the two, by reason of age or of other
circumstances unknown to us. But yet we know next to nothing about him.
In the Acts of the Apostles he is a mere lay figure; his name is only
mentioned in the catalogue at the beginning, and here again in the
brief notice of his death. The reticent and merely incidental character
of the notice of his martyrdom is sufficiently remarkable. I think the
lessons of the fact, and of the, I was going to say, slight way in
which the writer of this book refers to it, may perhaps be most
pointedly brought out if we take four contrasts--James and Stephen,
James and Peter, James and John, James and James. Now, if we take these
four I think we shall learn something.