Scriptural Expositions of Dr. Augustus Neander: II. The Epistle of James, Practically Explained

1. Diversities in modes of religious development, and in the consequent forms of faith.

IT is the remark of one of the early Church Fathers, that what Paul says of himself,--viz. that he became all things to all men, that he might win all to the Gospel,--is true in a still higher degree of Him who was in this the Apostle's pattern, of Christ himself. We see it in that manifold variety of manner, adapted to all the varieties in human character and relations, by which, both in his personal labors on earth, and in his spiritual revelations among all nations since his ascension, he has drawn men to a saving knowledge of himself. His manner, while laboring upon earth, is indeed an image of that invisible divine agency extending through all times, in which he evermore reveals himself as the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. This diversity Christ himself indicates, in those parables in which he describes how the kingdom. of God is found; showing at the same time the one thing, in which all must finally agree who would become partakers of the kingdom of God, and the varieties of way and manner in which they are conducted thither. Only those attain. to the kingdom of God who enter it by violence.