the dollar; and in point of humility and meekness and intelligent understanding of the Scriptures they are decidedly worse.

The notion that it is binding on Christians, in case of sickness, to refrain from calling a physician and from resort to medical treatment, and to rely exclusively on prayer and sacramental unction, is founded on the following two verses of the Epistle of James:

"Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him.”*

Does this look like the instituting of a sacrament of religious unction for healing, to be observed by all Christians? It occurs in a series of practical instructions addressed to the "scattered saints of a certain region, as to their duty in certain exigencies then pressing and impending. It is found in this epistle only. There is no allusion in the other apostolic writings to the practice of such a sacrament, nor is it recognized in the early church after the apostles' days. Here is scanty evidence of the solemn instituting of a sacrament of healing for the universal church. Look a little closer at the words. The "anointing," how is it spoken of elsewhere in the New Testament?

1. Sometimes in a religious sense; but in this case always, without exception, metaphorically, by a natural figure of speech drawn from the symbolical or ritual use of consecrating oil in the Old Testament. It is a significant fact that in this sense there is no record of the literal use of oil in the New Testament. The sacramental word xpic, chrio, with its derivatives chrism and Christ, is used to signify consecration, or an "anointing of the Holy Spirit; " never otherwise.†

* Chap. v. 14, 15, R. V.

One thing would seem to have some bearing upon the laborious arguments that have been set forth to show that the story of the four gospels was devised in order to correspond with the prophecy and the expectation of a Messiah, viz., the fact that no one of the four makes any claim that Jesus was a Messiah-Anointed-at all, in the literal and historical sense of the word. It should be added, that while the above-named Greek words are restricted absolutely to the religious use, in the New Testament, the compounds ἐγχρίω and ἐπιχρίω are used in a medical sense.

2. Anointing is sometimes spoken of in the New Testament in a secular sense, with reference to its cosmetic, antiseptic, hygienic, and medicinal uses. And for this sense a wholly secu lar word is used, alɛipo, which is never used in a religious application. Says Archbishop Trench*: "Alɛiperv is the mundane and profane, xpiɛiv the sacred and religious word." The former was used of the rubbing down with oil which was given to a bather coming from the bath or to wrestlers in training for the circus. The trainer, or ring-master, of the circus was called alɛinτns, the man that does the oiling. And this word came to be used in a general way of one who was prepared for any enterprise, to say that he was "oiled up" for it.t

Of course this is the very word to use of the medicinal use of oil as an embrocation. This use was very common and impor tant in the therapeutics of that age and region. We happen to possess abundant contemporary illustrations of this. Celsus, a medical writer under Augustus and Tiberius, speaks repeatedly of friction with oil in fevers and in many other cases. Pliny recommends bathing with oil. Josephus, contemporary with James, mentions an oil bath as part of the treatment of Herod the Great in his last sickness. There are like instances in the Scriptures. Isaiah § describes a neglected sick man covered with ulcers, which had not been treated with oil as they should have been. The Good Samaritan, practicing the surgery of the period, poured oil and wine into his patient's wounds. Such facts throw light on the mission of the twelve disciples narrated in Mark vi. 13, who "anointed (λepor) with oil many that were sick, and healed them," joining to their prayers and benedictions the use of a universally approved curative application.]

So much for the "anointing with oil." And now what is

It has been reasonably suggested that the contrast between the hygiene of the ancients and of the moderns, at this point, is not necessarily to the advantage of the latter. The former habitually followed the bath with an oiling; we, on the other hand, habitually employ a chemical preparation in the bath to dissolve away whatever oily secretion nature has furnished to the skin.

the meaning of "sending for the elders of the church"? A very weighty, useful, and instructive meaning. This body of gifted men, the leaders of the Christian brotherhood, included men endowed with talents fitting them to serve their fellow believers, not only as leaders in worship and teaching, but also in more secular needs. These "gifts" were not necessarily miraculous. The catalogue of them in the First Epistle to the Corinthians * makes separate mention of the gift of miracles among other gifts which clearly were not miraculous. And a notable fact it is, with an important bearing on our subject, that the gift of healing is not included in the gift of miracle-working, but is mentioned separately with gifts of another kind. Among the talents bestowed for the good of the church was a talent for teaching, a talent for exhorting, a talent for managing affairs, a talent for giving money, a talent for comforting the sick and sorrowful,t and a talent for treating diseases. There is not a particle of evidence that this last gift was any more miraculous than the others, and there is distinct evidence to the contrary. In the apostolic days a thing did not have to be miraculous in order to be divine. If a member of the church had a recognized talent for treating diseases, just as if he had a talent for making money, he must hold it as a trust from God to be used for the benefit of men; and this, with the growing skill that would come with each year's experience and observation, was none the less divine for being purely human and natural. It was the counsel of a wise spiritual leader, given apparently in a time of some prevailing epidemic, that at the first outbreak of sickness in a family, instead of beginning on the case with a little amateur domestic practice, or with some simple prescription from the neighbors, or with the incantations of some heathen quack or "medicine-man," they should send at once for the gifted and experienced professional physicians of the community, as well as for the spiritual counselors and comforters.

This text in James begins to grow lucid in the light of other Scriptures, and not only lucid, but luminous. How congruous it is, as we now read it, with the plain, hearty, divine-human common sense that is the pre-eminent characteristic of this epis* Chap. xii. 8-10. † Romans, xii. 6-8.

tle throughout. It clearly teaches the very opposite of what it has been made to teach.

1. It is a square rebuke of those religious enthusiasts who allege their faith as an excuse for neglecting their duties. The writer has this class of pretentious believers in his mind all along They are hearers, but not doers, he says. They take on the show of religion, but do not bridle the tongue, nor keep themselves unspotted from the world. If a brother or sister lack clothing or food, they comfort him with a benediction, "Go in peace; be warmed; be fed." Their faith, that they make much of, is like a dead tree, it never bears fruit. James seems to have seen much of those "higher-life" people, who live in so lofty a spiritual atmosphere that they cannot come down to concrete duties. But in this place he aims his rebuke at that particular class of enthusiasts who apply their antinomianism to the subject of medical practice, and say: "Don't send for the doctor; don't give the patient the benefit of any medicine or any surgical treatment; let him alone and send for some of the sisters, and we will have a little prayer-meeting instead." "No!" says James-and we may imagine the indignation with which he would see his words of sober wisdom perverted to the support of the very folly which he was denouncing. "Send, indeed, for the ministers of truth and spiritual comfort, and join your prayers above the bed of your sick friend; but do not delay sending also for the Christian physicians who are members of the same company of elders. Do not fail to pray for your friend, but with all your praying be sure you do not forget his medicine. Rub him with oil." Doubtless there is promise in the Scriptures to the sick believer, just as there is to the poor and hungry believer. The promise is no more distinct and faithful in the one case than in the other. There is positively not one particle more of encouragement there for a "faith hospital" without physicians or medicines, than there is for a faith hotel with neither kitchen nor victuals nor cooks.

2. There is a distinct caution, in this much-abused text, against quacks, and charlatans, and clairvoyants, and mediums, and seventh sons, and natural bone-setters, and Indian doctors, and the whole miserable and mischievous rabble-rout of traders

in the fears, the ignorance, and the pagan superstition that still linger among us, in high classes as well as in low, to the shame of a Christian civilization. To what extent the common medical practice of James's time was involved with idolatrous or superstitious incantations, we have some curious indications surviving to our own day. In his excavations in Babylon Mr. Layard found a curious collection of bowls inscribed within with adjurations of all sorts of spirits by name, and bearing unmistakable indications of the medicinal liquids they had once held. The capital Ṛ with which your family physician heads his prescription, believing it to stand for "Recipe," in James's time was seriously understood to be an appeal to Jupiter for luck. This command, "anointing with oil in the name of the Lord "the Lord that made heaven and earth, whose is the course of nature, in whose hand are the springs of life and of death-is at once a rebuke to the base superstitions that are at the root of all quackery, and the warrant of a devout, sober, and reasonable science of medicine.

3. Some of the good, honest souls who are counted among the devotees of the Faith Cure will be shocked or grieved, or outraged and indignant, at being told, what is nevertheless true, that what they vaunt as a high and noble form of faith, from which they look down with gentle pity upon their fellow-Christians, is really a subtle form of practical atheism. "Do you not, then, believe in divine healing?" is the question compassionately put to us by these well-meaning folk, in a tone which conveys an implied threat of praying for us. Certainly, we answer, we do not believe in any other kind of healing. We have learned from the Apostle James that all healing is divine; that when the trained sagacity of experienced physicians has been employed, and the treatment which the best science of the time approves has been faithfully applied, with trustful and filial prayer, we are still to remember that not the physician nor the treatment has been the supreme and deciding cause, but a Power above and behind and in them all; that it is the prayer of faith that has healed the sick.

It is a keen remark of a woman whom no one will accuse of an unreasoning zeal for orthodoxy-of Frances Power Cobbe