Herein the apostle places the pre-eminence, the peculiar and
distinguishing excellence, of the Christian religion. The ritual is of
the same kind, (ὁμοουσιον) though not of the same order, with the
religion itself--not arbitrary or conventional, as types and
hieroglyphics are in relation to the things expressed by them; but
inseparable, consubstantiated (as it were), and partaking therefore of
the same life, permanence, and intrinsic worth with its spirit and
principle.
[24] See the epistle of St. James, i. 26, 27, where, in the authorized
version, the Greek word θρησκεια is falsely rendered _religion_;
whether by mistake of the translator, or from the intended sense
having become obsolete, I cannot decide. At all events, for the
English reader of our times it has the effect of an erroneous
translation. It not only obscures the connexion of the passage, and
weakens the peculiar force and sublimity of the thought, rendering it
comparatively flat and trivial, almost indeed tautological, but has
occasioned this particular verse to be perverted into a support of a
very dangerous error; and the whole epistle to be considered as a
_set-off_ against the epistles and declarations of St. Paul, instead
of (what in fact it is) a masterly comment and confirmation of the
same. I need not inform the religious reader, that James i. 27, is the
favourite text and most boasted authority of those divines who
represent the Redeemer of the world as little more than a moral
reformer, and the Christian faith as a code of ethics, differing from
the moral system of Moses and the prophets by an additional motive; or
rather, by the additional strength and clearness which the historical
fact of the resurrection has given to the same motive.
[25] The Greek word εγενετο, unites in itself the two senses of
_began to exist_ and _was made to exist_. It exemplifies the force of
the _middle voice_, in distinction from the verb reflex. In answer to
a note on John i. 2., in the Unitarian version of the New Testament, I
think it worth noticing, that the same word is used in the very same
sense by Aristophanes in that famous parody on the cosmogonies of the
Mythic poets, or the creation of the finite, as delivered, or supposed
to be delivered, in the Cabiric or Samothracian mysteries, in the
Comedy of the Birds.
---- γενετ Ουρανος, Ωκεανος τε
Και Γη.
[26] James i. 25. Ο δε παρακυψας εις νομον τελειον τον της ελευθεριας.
The Greek word, _parakupsas_, signifies the incurvation or bending of
the body in the act of _looking down into_; as, for instance, in the
endeavour to see the reflected image of a star in the water at the
bottom of a well. A more happy or forcible word could not have been
chosen to express the nature and ultimate object of reflection, and to
enforce the necessity of it, in order to discover the living fountain
and spring-head of the evidence of the Christian faith in the believer
himself, and at the same time to point out the seat and region, where
alone it is to be found. _Quantum sumus, scimus._ That which we find
within ourselves, which is more than ourselves, and yet the ground of
whatever is good and permanent therein, is the substance and life of
all other knowledge.
N.B. The Familists of the sixteenth century, and similar enthusiasts
of later date, overlooked the essential point, that it was a _law_,
and a law that involved its own end (τελος), a _perfect_ law (τελειος)
or law that perfects or completes itself; and therefore, its
obligations are called, in reference to human statutes, _imperfect_
duties, i.e. incoercible from without. They overlooked that it was a
law that _portions out_ (Νομος _from_ νεμω _to allot, or make division
of_) to each man the sphere and limits within which it is to be
exercised--which as St. Peter notices of certain profound passages in
the writings of St. Paul, (2 Pet. iii. 16.)--oι αμαθεις και αστηρικτοι
στρεβλουσιν, ὡς και τας λοιπας γραφας, προς την ιδιαν αυτων απωλειαν.