Save James the Lord’s brother.
James appears, to whatever source we may turn for information, as the one authoritative ruler, the one undoubted representative of the Christian society. But whatever the influence he exercised, or the authority be maintained, it was due not to his apostleship, but to those relations which are brought before us by the epithets affixed to his name, “James the brother of our Lord,” “James the Just.” If we open the contemporary Christian records it is to his decision (Acts 15:13) that the council of Jerusalem bows; and to him, taking precedence even of Cephas and John, that Paul communicates the revelation that had been entrusted to him (Galatians 2:9). If we turn to later traditions preserved in Hegessipus, or in the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, he appears before us as the one mysterious bulwark of the chosen people; invested with a priestly sanctity before which the pontificate of Aaron fades into insignificance--as the one universal bishop of the Christian Church. If we look to the impression produced on the mind of the Jewish people, we find that he alone of all the apostles has obtained a place in their national records, whether in the simple narrative of Josephus, or in the wild legends of the Talmud. He was emphatically “the Just”; the predictions of the “Just one” were regarded as fulfilled in his person; the people vied with each other to touch the hem of his garment; after the manner of Elijah he was reported in the droughts of Palestine to have called down rain; and with the austere features, linen ephod, bare feet, long locks and unshorn beard of the Nazarite, he was believed to have gathered round him the admiring populace to ask: “What is the gate of salvation?” And in that striking scene, when at the close of a long life he is described as standing on the front of the temple and bearing witness to the coming judgment of the Son of man, it was with a feeling of bitter disappointment that the Scribes and Pharisees are represented as rushing upon him with the cry, “Woe, Woe, the Just one also is deceived”; and in his cruel death, the Jewish historian, no less than the Christian martyrologist, saw the filling up of the cup of guilt which was to hasten on the final catastrophe of the apostate nation. His chair was preserved as a relic till the fourth century, and the pillar which marked the spot where he fell long remained in the valley of Jehoshaphat, under the precipice from which he was thrown. (Dean Stanley.)