Bible Commentaries

THE GIFT OF WISDOM

‘If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.’

James 1:5

This is one of the many beautifully practical thoughts which fill and characterise St. James.

I. What is wisdom?—‘Wisdom’ is not knowledge, though it involves knowledge, for the most learned persons are often the least wise. ‘Wisdom’ is the right use of knowledge. Or take it thus. ‘Wisdom’ is that union of the heart and head when right affections guide the exercise of talent. Or, ‘wisdom’ is power to balance materials of good thought. It is the ability to direct intelligently and usefully the words we speak or the acts we do. Or, a step higher still, ‘wisdom’ is the reflection of the mind of God. Christ is the reflection of the mind of God. Therefore Christ is ‘wisdom.’ And the most Christ-like is the most wise. If you wish to understand ‘wisdom,’ study Christ.

II. The guilt of foolishness.—The memory of most of us need go very little way back to show the necessity for this understanding of God. What a very humbling thing it is to look back and think—I do not now say how sinfully—but how very foolishly we have again and again spoken and acted. And is foolishness much less than sin? Is foolishness not sin? Is it not the ‘idle word’ for which we shall ‘give account’? Was it not the ‘fool’ who said in his heart, ‘There is no God’? and the ‘fool’ who said to his soul, ‘Soul, thou hast much goods’? Was not it the ‘foolish man’ that ‘built upon the sand’? And were not the ‘foolish virgins’ the virgins lost? If ‘wisdom’ were not a thing covenanted, then might a man not be responsible for being unwise. But now that God has promised to ‘give wisdom’ to every one who ‘asks’ for it, it is no longer venial to be foolish. The silly word you say, and the foolish act you do, is left guilty, and without excuse.

III. Asking for wisdom.—To obtain ‘wisdom,’ the first thing you have to do is to recognise it to be a gift. ‘Wisdom’ seems to be such a natural development of mind that we cannot easily get rid of the idea that if we only think enough—think long enough and think deeply enough, we shall think ourselves into wisdom. But to the ‘wisdom’ such as God gave Joseph in the sight of Pharaoh—that ‘wisdom’ of which some asked, ‘Whence hath this man wisdom?’—the wisdom ‘which is first pure’—the ‘wisdom’ no science, no self-discipline, no effort will secure—the road is prayer, only prayer, communion with the Unseen. Now the way to ‘ask’ is practically twofold. There is making it the subject of your stated prayer, and there is also the secret prayer in the heart, darted forth just at the moment when the emergency occurs and the need is felt; and it is of this ejaculatory prayer that St. James is chiefly speaking.

—Rev. James Vaughan.

Illustration

‘The Church asks for your energy, your zeal, your self-devotion. She asks in the world’s name for examples, signal examples of holy consecrated life. She wants men to spend themselves and be spent with whole-hearted, patient continuance in well-doing. She wants workers who are wise of heart. Christ is wisdom; live in His presence; draw daily out of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge which are hidden in Him, and you will not fail, nor be finally discouraged. They that be wise with His wisdom shall turn many to righteousness; shall share in the glory of His perfect kingdom; shall shine as the stars for ever and ever. Go, then, whatever your gifts may be, and lay them down at His feet; lay down the very faculties of thought and feeling; die there to the world, and rise to live for Him alone. And ask in faith for wisdom. Our very prayers fail often in wisdom, but our refuge is in God, Who gives to all men liberally and upbraideth not.

Forgive our wild and wandering cries,

Forgive them where they fail in truth,

And in Thy wisdom make me wise.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE WISDOM OF GOD

‘Ask what I shall give thee.’ So spake the still small voice in the deep silence of the Divinely given dream. And the answer was worthy of the man and the moment. One great want that lay heavy upon Solomon in the daylight of reason followed him behind the veil of darkness into the uncreated light of the Divine Presence. He slept, but his heart was wakeful, alert, quick with high sensibility. His answer was: ‘Give me wisdom, that I may go out and come in before this people.’ And the prayer was answered, for when Solomon awoke from his dream to his duties he found himself established in his kingdom. His ‘people saw,’ we are told, that ‘the wisdom of God was in him.’ Shall not this inspiring vision find its counterpart here to-day?

I. And what is matter of strong encouragement is this—viz. that whenever such things take place, not only does the gift come that is asked for, but it comes ‘liberally’; it comes from One Who in His giving is moved only by His essential nature to pour out the blessing as soon and as fully as His children are ready to receive it. ‘Liberally,’ I said. The word St. James uses occurs but this once in the whole New Testament. The same English word is found once in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 15:14), but in a different connotation; so here in this one place it stands, a measure immeasurable of Divine response to those who ask in faith that wisdom which they find lacking in themselves. Perhaps he had in his mind the gift of a fool—‘He will give little and upbraid much’ (Eccles. 20:15)—so he turns from the sometimes ungracious gifts of men to the unfailing largesses of God.

II. There is yet a further encouragement.—The man who in presence of a great duty to which he inwardly trusts that he is called, whether it be to a throne as a monarch, or in the Church of God to rule or feed God’s flock, he, if his prayer is for wisdom, will kindle in other hearts the same desire, and a multitude of prayers will go up with his and bring yet larger answers down. No sooner had Solomon’s prayer been answered than there began to enter into prayers and proverbs, into sacred literature—devotional and didactic—this thought of wisdom as God’s great gift to men. It became their guide of life. It becomes more and more familiar as we turn over the pages of what we call, in the Canon of Scripture and out of it, the ‘wisdom literature.’ Wisdom was the principal thing. They had no other philosophy of life. It was practical; it was binding; it was a law of conduct; it had right instincts; it built up character upon true foundations. The fear of God was its beginning; the approval of God its end.

III. But when in process of time it became stiff and rigid and mechanical, as, in all rites and rituals, rules and regulations may, another yoke was needed easier than that which Scribes and Pharisees had wrought out. The image of wisdom rose above the law, disengaged itself from the law. The law at its best was given by Moses, but Scribes had made a hedge around it, law around law. It could not quicken; it could not give life. Then the nobler souls remembered ‘Wisdom’ and heard her invitations. They felt her attraction, and tried to account for it. Wisdom was their law, and they followed the clue till they grew prophetic and invested wisdom with personality. She was to them an image of His goodness, an effulgence of the Everlasting Light, an unspotted mirror of the working of God. Then again the prayer of Solomon went up to God; then again the large, the liberal answer came down. ‘O God of my fathers,’ the prayer rang, ‘Who … by Thy wisdom formed man, give me wisdom, her that sitteth by Thee on Thy throne.… Send her forth out of the holy heavens, and from the throne of Thy glory bid her come.’ Let her ‘toil with me.’ Let her teach me ‘what is well pleasing before Thee.’ She shall ‘guard me in her glory,’ ‘and in my doings she shall guide me in ways of soberness.’

So ran once more the prayer for wisdom—for wisdom to live for God, for wisdom to live in His light and in His love, and—nearest approach to the language of Pentecostal clearness—‘Whoever gained,’ the prayer went on, ‘the knowledge of Thy counsel except Thou gavest wisdom, and sentest Thy Holy Spirit from on high?’

—Rev. Chancellor Edmonds.

Illustration

‘The Church has, in her long career, left few niches unoccupied for distinguished men to fill. What she needs most in her young ministers, what she prizes most in her most honoured and trusted leaders, is not their learning, highly as she prizes it, but their wisdom, heavenly wisdom, the thing in them which of all others is likest God. Learned, in any large sense of learned, you may never be; but wise—wise unto salvation—wise to win men to their salvation, you all may be. It is good to know, it is better to be wise. “In you” there are, I trust, these

Ardent, unquenchable fires,

Not with the crowd to be spent,

Not without aim to go round

In an eddy of purposeless dust.’

THE WAVERER

‘He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea.’

James 1:6

The picturesque imagery of this Epistle discloses the mind of one who communed with God as the God of human life, and also as the God of nature. The practical, almost proverbial mould of instruction which the writer employs gives to many of the sentences the familiar shape of the so-called ‘Sapiential Books’ of the Old Testament. Wisdom is the Christian grace especially specified (James 1:5). This is a thoroughly Hebrew sentiment.

I. The sign of instability and purposeless motion.—The soul that is not settled in a firm faith is like this storm-driven wave, driven at the mercy of the wind, heaved to and fro by every tide, in continual and wasting agitation. Isaiah uses this illustration as representing the life of the sinner (Isaiah 57:20), but here St. James is speaking of the weakness which is the result of uncertainty. ‘He that wavereth’—he that is doubting and of two minds, hesitating, undecided, vacillating—not perhaps willingly and knowingly a hypocrite, but sunk in the duplicity of trying to serve two masters; not wicked and denying God or forsaking truth altogether, but halting between two opinions, weak in faith, not relying on God’s will. ‘Woe to fearful hearts and faint hands, and the sinner that goeth two ways” (Ecclesiastes 2:12). Unstable in all his ways, disorder, confusion, unrest are his portion in life.

II. This unrest is one of the familiar characteristics of modern life.—In all ages of transition, not knowing one’s own mind is the trap that fronts every thinker and all that seek for righteousness. Fulness of faith and devotion seem impossible amid the complexity of thought and feeling. There are so many aims, so many gospels, so many answers to the questions of life; and side by side with this genuine wish for truth, there are so many human beings who seem to live quite contented without any answers to the questions at all, even unwilling to be disturbed by the asking of them. These souls, who believe in nothing, and want to believe in nothing, satisfied with their worldly state of mind, show an attitude of perfect indifference to the reality of things in this world or the world to come. But the soul that wills to know, that wishes to win, that cannot live without arriving at some truth, without touching the hem of the vesture of God’s garment of life, this soul must find some certain shore and limit in the ebbing and flowing ocean of human existence.

III. The causes that lead to the wavering and the disturbance are suggested by the Apostle.—‘Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering.’ He who asks without a full trust in God’s eternal steadfastness will naturally find his mind full of many misgivings.

(a) Want of reliance in God. Without the conviction that the universe is being rationally and morally governed by a loving Creator, the meaning of the world is largely unrealised. Without the conviction that the individual life is under the particular, discriminate, and ever-loving eye of a watchful Father, the whole complexity and entanglement of the things of life seem ruled by a godless, hopeless chance.

(b) Selfish dissatisfaction. However pleasant outward circumstances may be, the question comes at times to all persons in all conditions and in all ages, Why am I where I am?

(c) But those only ask in unrest and confusion who rack their minds with a false opinion of their worth and the state of life into which God has called them.

Illustration

‘“Let even a polished man,” says George Eliot in Silas Marner, “get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor himself on the chance that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend’s confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity called chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know.”’

CONSEQUENCES OF SIN

‘Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.’

James 1:15

It would be easy to draw a glaring and harrowing picture. I might take you to our abodes of infamy and wretchedness—to our prisons and our hospitals; and to many a sick and dying bed. I might take you to our own streets, of a night, and to the crowded dens of drunkenness and debauchery! And I might tell you to read there what is sin! and its consequences! But it will be more practical to trace only some of the results of such ‘sins’ as we know belong, the more closely, to ourselves.

I. Every allowed sin kills the power of the perception of truth.—Sin weakens, and tends to destroy, every power we possess. Physical sin weakens physical strength. And both physical and mental sin weaken both mental and spiritual powers. And if the weakening process is allowed to go on, it will weaken till it kills! It will go on till it ‘brings forth death!’

II. One habitually allowed sin will deaden the grace both of the mind and the heart, till, by more and more withering processes, the grace of both will die! Why are so many young men and young women prone to infidelity? Why have they grown sceptical of old and familiar truths—which were dear to their parents and were once dear to themselves? Look at their lives, their worldliness, their frivolity, their private habits, their secret or their open sins! There is the reason. Infidelity is a deadening thing. And ‘sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth that death.’

III. Sin is destructive of all pure love.—A pure and chaste and holy love will not live long with any indulged evil passion! True love is too sacred a thing to stay in a breast with wrong deeds or wicked actions! The wrong love kills the good love. It ‘brings forth death’; and the good love dies.

IV. Sin will paralyse, if not the will, certainly the power, to live to any good purpose.—The consciousness of sin will always come across his mind, when he is speaking, checking him, incapacitating him. ‘Who am I to speak? I, who am living myself so sinfully!’ And that conviction will stop his mouth; it will make his words hollow. And men are keen judges of each other. They very soon discover what is unreal in all your fine talking. And can God bless any effort that such a man makes? He may speak as an angel; but God has not sent him. This sin will turn his most living words to death!

Illustration

‘“Sin” is not “finished” yet. All sin has in it a necessity to increase. Sin makes sin. One barrier broken down, the stream of evil rushes on with a greater force; and another barrier giving way, the current swells, till it scarcely knows a check. But what will “sin finished” be? What will it be when, stripped of its soft and beautiful colours, it stands out, without a mask, in its true and native form? What a monster will every, the least, sin look beside Perfect Holiness! It will need nothing more to make that sin eternal punishment! eternal death!’

THE GIFTS OF GOD

‘Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.’

James 1:17

Thus does the Holy Apostle St. James, to whom, after the Resurrection, had been vouchsafed a special manifestation of his beloved Lord, delight to honour the Great Benefactor of the human race before Whom his soul bowed down in reverent worship.

I. God is the Father of lights.

(a) The lights of the natural world, the sun and moon and stars shining brightly in the heavens own Him as their Lord, and bear testimony to their Creator by their unfading beauty and their wonderful order from generation to generation.

(b) The light of reason and the light of conscience speaking with a still, small voice within the soul of man compel him to turn his eyes heavenward, if he would learn in comfort and in hope the secret of his origin and his destiny.

(c) The light of the prophets of old and the precepts of the law, sometimes obscured by clouds, sometimes hidden by darkness, bursts into a perfect blaze of splendour in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

(d) There is the light, too, that shines from the heavenly city to guide the pilgrim as he toils along; and if, sometimes, the clouds and mists that arise from earth cause its rays to be indistinctly seen, yet still, if eagerly and enthusiastically welcomed, they are bright enough to guide him to his home.

Of these and others innumerable, God is the Father.

II. With God there is no variableness. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Surely we can grasp the thought with eagerness and ecstasy, that God will never change as the long ages of time roll on to eternity. In the midst of all the vicissitudes of our life below, we may, if we will, count upon the love and protection of One with Whom there is no variableness, Who loves unto the end. Neither with God is there any shadow of turning. We, as we turn from place to place, from thought to thought, are for ever creating around us new shadows which darken our way. Each soul has his own shadows which delude and dismay. But with the gift of immortality is planted within the breast a lively hope that some day, by the power of the Cross, we may abide in the presence of the Father of Lights, when the day shall break and the shadows flee away.

III. In one continual stream come down, in rich abundance, the good and the perfect gifts.

(a) Some are national gifts, for which nations are responsible, for which multitudes, in united worship, should render thanks upon their knees.

(b) And there are individual gifts, coming down from the same source, common as the shadows of rain or the shining of the sun. How few of us sufficiently acknowledge their origin, or break forth into praises for the royal bounty.

(c) Then there is the gift of Love, which helps us to bear half the burdens of a toilsome life and sweetens half its many sorrows. The unloving taste not some of the purest joys in which the soul may delight itself and live. There is something imperishable in the joy that arises from the performance of deeds of love to those who are struggling beside us, in whom we recognise the faded image of the God of Love; brotherly love so cleanses and beautifies the soul as to lift it up into a purer life which the changes and chances of mortality can neither defile nor destroy.

These are but a sample of the good and perfect gifts which are continually coming down from above, giving unto life all that is worth living for. There are thousands of other gifts which each heart can number in gratitude for itself. Intellect, courage, faith, hope, peace, competence, and plenty: all are presents from the royal bounty meant for use and cultivation by every soul upon whom they are bestowed.

IV. The day is surely coming on when the Divine Giver shall demand each gift back again with usury; the fruits of each must be manifested in a life dedicated heart and soul unto Christ; each quality of excellence and virtue must be brought to the foot of the Cross and offered there in the devotion of self-sacrificing love; then shall the Father of Lights recognise and receive the disciple of His eternal Son and welcome him to the joy of his Lord.

Rev. W. E. Coghlan.

Illustration

‘Whatever God gives partakes of His own immortality. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My word shall not pass away.” “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord.” How tender, how happy, how holy, how safe must that “gift” be, which is identified with God Himself, “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” A “gift” for ever and ever! Oh! it is a poor thing to have “a gift” which cannot last. At the best it will only be for a few short years. That kind of “gift” does not suit a man. It does not suit his immortality! But this “gift” matches his whole being. It is for ever and ever.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

GOOD AND PERFECT

If anyone should think that to say, ‘Every good thing is a gift from God!’ is a mere truism, and that, therefore, it does not need any special consideration, let him remember that a truism, for this very reason, because it is so simple and so true,—demands the greater care lest we pass it by unheeded and undefined.

I. What is ‘a gift?’—A gift is something that expresses the mind and betokens the love of the giver, and at the same time brings happiness to the receiver. What then is ‘a good gift?’ That which fulfils these two requisitions. And what is ‘a perfect gift?’ That which entirely fulfils these two ends.

II. Is there any difference between ‘a good gift’ and ‘a perfect gift,’ or are we to take it only as a repetition of the same thought, expressing the same meaning, rising to the same climax? ‘A perfect gift’ is one which exactly fits the mind and the taste of the receiver; expresses the whole heart of the giver, and can never be taken away. A gift which has in it perfect adaptation and eternity. Now the world—those who do not love God—have ‘the good gift,’ many, many a ‘good gift’; but God’s own dear children, they have ‘the perfect gift.’ And why? The ‘gift’ fits, and they feel it fits their whole being—body, mind, and soul. They have the gift and the Giver; and both the Giver and the gift are inalienable for ever and ever.

III. Some of us have many ‘gifts.’—They are all ‘from above,’ from the same Father; but from the want of ‘the light’ which should reign in that ‘gift,’ the gift is valueless. Nay, more, it is an unfilled possibility; it is the handle of temptation; it turns to self, to pride, to sin. The ‘gift’ is abused; and in proportion as the ‘gift’ is ‘good and perfect,’ it becomes evil, and it incurs the heavier ‘gift’ of condemnation. But it is right to use every ‘gift’ when it comes; and it is one of the strongest arguments you can ever use with God: ‘Oh! God, Thou hast given me this great gift, now, because Thou hast given me this great gift, give me also the light to understand it, to hold it, to keep it, to use it, to enjoy it. Lord, sanctify both the gift and me by that light to Thy glory.’

Illustration

‘In the collect for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, God is pronounced in the collect to be the Author and Giver of all good things. Whether this was intended or not, the phrase is a most exact echo of the words of St. James in the text. There is a splendid movement in the preamble of the collect, where God is described not only as the Author and Giver of all good things, but the “Lord of all power and might.” It is impossible not to feel how much we owe to Cranmer and his associates for this preamble. It is true that for this magnificent language there is a small Latin basis, but the change which has been made in it amounts to transformation.’

(THIRD OUTLINE)

THE SOURCE OF ALL BLESSING

I. The Sublime Names of God.

(a) The Father. This is comparatively a modern name for God. He was first known as the Elohim; then as Jehovah; then as the Lord; now as the Father.

(b) The Father of Lights. Of sun, and moon, and stars. ‘God is light.’ ‘He is the Sun not of a system, but of all worlds—the great Fountain and Dispenser of light and heat, of power and life, of order, harmony, and perfection.’ All is unclouded splendour. His Son declared Himself ‘the Light of the world’; and figuratively, He Himself sows light for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.

II. The Infinite Kindness of God.

(a) He is the sole Author of every good gift. In looking at experts or men of genius, we say that their skill and genius were born with them, and therefore natural to them. Granted. But all was God-given. Who dowered Bezaleel (Exodus 31:2-5), and Hiram (1 Kings 7:13-14), and Sir Isaac Newton, and Lord Bacon, and other famous men, with their extraordinary gifts? God. Nay, who bestows on ordinary men their ordinary gifts? God (Isaiah 28:24-29).

(b) He is the sole Giver of every perfect boon. Pardon, and peace, and purity. Christ is God’s ‘unspeakable gift’ (John 3:16). He came out of the bosom of the Father (John 1:18). Through Him God gives us every blessing (Romans 8:32).

III. The Unchangeableness of God.

(a) His perfection prevents change. And if so in His nature, so in His character, so in His feeling, so in His covenant. Men change; sinners alter for the worse; and even saints have their fluctuations—not so God. ‘I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.’

(b) His absolute perfection prevents even the shadow of a change. There are changes in the sun, which, in a sense, may be called the father of lights. It rises and sets at various times throughout the year; or rather, by the revolution of the earth, it is ever either increasing or decreasing its light. But God has never, age after age, the least ‘variableness,’ or even the faintest ‘shadow of turning’! How awful yet blessed this assurance! How full of consolation to ‘the heirs of promise’ (Hebrews 6:17-18).

Illustration

‘So far as the management of the material universe is concerned, God has declared unmistakably that He has no favourites. He has given to material forces a law which cannot be broken. We trust Him more because there is no devilish element in nature, no wild impulse rushing with eruptions of curse and blessing into space. We begin to see that nature is but a word, is but a figure of speech, is but a fiction of imagination, is nothing in the world but a reverent synonym for the sum total of the laws which God has impressed upon His universe.’

THE POWER OF THE PULPIT

‘Of His own will begat He us with the Word of Truth.’

James 1:18

Simon and Andrew—called to be fishers of men—were not unknown to the Lord Jesus, nor He to them. They had seen Him as the Lamb of God; they had visited His home and held communion with Him; and they had witnessed some of His miracles. The call was not without preparation, nor was it unreasonable. The promised training to catch men was attractive. The subsequent miraculous draught of fishes was an encouraging sign of success.

I. Not only are the faithful ministers of Christ fishermen, but He who teaches how to fish is in the boat with them; the Gospel net is His own; and every now and then the order goes forth, ‘Let down your net for a draft,’ while the answer of faith is given, ‘At Thy word we will let down the net.’ And men, often the most unlikely, are caught and laid as a sacred offering at the feet of Jesus, meet for the Master’s use. The commission of the Apostle Paul is another case in point. Prepared by a vision of the Lamb of God, like the early Apostles, he was called as follows: ‘I am Jesus Whom thou persecutest. But rise and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness.’ Now observe what ‘a minister and witness’ in our Lord’s estimation really is—‘both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in Me.’ In other words, St. Paul was to ‘catch men’—the end of his ministry was the conversion of souls unto God.

II. St. Paul’s own ministry is in accordance with this commission.—Some persons have thought that he made comparatively little use of the sacraments, because they are so seldom alluded to or mentioned in his writings and speeches. But the fact is, the primary idea in his mind was, not so much the benefits of the sacraments to believers nor the privileges and blessings of those who were already saved, but the preaching of the Word, the reaching of the conscience, the will, the affection, the reasoning powers, by the Gospel—in other words, the bringing men into that status outside of which sacrament and Christian advantages were valueless. What he did himself is what he ordained others to do. Timothy was to ‘preach the Word.’ The manifestation of God’s Word through preaching is the basis of His Epistle to Titus. It is the same with the other Apostles. ‘The truth’ is an expression which serves as a special feature of St. John’s writings—an expression caught from the Saviour’s lips. St. Peter and St. James ascribe every blessing to the Word. St. Jude points out that heresy and viciousness of life were owing to a neglect of ‘the words which were spoken before of the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.’

III. Our Lord not only preached the Word Himself, but He showed from the Parable of the Sower that the primary work of His disciples was to sow the seed of the Word.—Nay, the sower who soweth the Word is our Lord Himself. So St. Matthew tells us. His disciples act as His deputies. He is still the Sower, by whatever instruments or agents he works. Now it is admitted, in some sense and in some cases, that there is a necessity for conversion. But all do not rightly use the one great means by which it is to be effected. The Bible is not in the hands of our people, nor in our churches, nor in our day and Sunday-schools as it used to be. So-called Church teaching is not always sowing the seed of God’s Word. Vague utterances will never really touch or change a heart. To speak about conversion is not to convert. Moreover, conversion is not a mere resuscitation of grace, nor a living up to privileges, nor an outward reformation of life. It is an inward change effected by the Holy Spirit of God—a new birth, manifesting itself in a new life; and the instrument by which, in the case of adults, it is effected is the Word of Truth. To give the Bible, therefore, a secondary place, or to misstate the need of such a conversion and the means by which it is brought about, is never to attain the great end of the Christian ministry.

IV. No section of the Church of England makes light of the pulpit.—But preaching, however interesting, however eloquent, however widely instructive, is not always preaching that will convert. Sermons without any Christ in them, without an adequate estimate of man’s sinfulness, without a declaration, clear and unmistakable, of the design and effect of the atonement, may charm the ear, please the imagination, quickly while away the time, but they will never turn men from darkness to light nor from the power of Satan unto God; nor will sermons about the Church, her apostolicity, her catholicity, her energy and zeal; nor yet will sermons with the mere shibboleths of evangelical truth. If the great end of the Christian ministry be the glory of God in the conversion of souls, we may well ask, Have we aimed at or in any degree attained this glory? Exercising the very widest charity, we must say of a town, of a parish, of a church, how few are really on the narrow path of life and how many are on the broad road of destruction. I pause not to consider whether we and the godly in our congregation who are bound to aid us by prayer and sympathy are to blame in this matter, for I do not look back now to the past, but onward to the future that lies before us. Let repentance deal with the past; let hope animate us for the future.

V. There are three subjects God’s ministers ought incessantly to mention at the throne of grace.

(a) Personal sanctification according to the covenant of grace and the prayer of our great Intercessor—‘Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy word is truth.’

(b) A life for God’s glory.

(c) Ministerial joy. Ministerial joy is more than the joy of large congregations, crowded communions, and satisfactory offerings of money or service, very charming and encouraging as they are in their proper places; it is the joy of noting the signs of the conversion to God and of the sanctifying effects of that conversion. ‘I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.’

—Rev. Canon McCormick.

Illustrations

(1) ‘When Queen Elizabeth tried to check Archbishop Grindal in his preaching zeal, he wrote, “Public and continual preaching of God’s Word is the ordinary means and instrument of the salvation of mankind. St. Paul calls it ‘the ministry of reconciliation’ of man to God. By preaching of God’s Word, the glory of God is enlarged, faith is nourished and charity is increased. By it the ignorant is instructed, the negligent exhorted and incited, the stubborn rebuked, the weak conscience comforted, and to all those that sin of malicious wickedness the wrath of God is threatened.”’

(2) ‘The primitive bishops were the greatest preachers of their time. “It is to preaching that Christianity owes its origin, its continuance, and its progress; and it is to itinerating preaching (however the ignorant may undervalue it) that we owe the conversion of the Roman world from Paganism to primitive Christianity, our own freedom from the thraldom of Popery, in the success of the Reformation, and the revival of Christianity at the present day.” No one can read 1 Corinthians 1, Romans 10, or our Lord’s commission, and the action of our Lord and His Apostles, without seeing the importance of preaching.’

A RULE OF CHRISTIAN CAUTION

‘Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.’

James 1:19

In trying to lead a Christian life we have two main things to do. We have to keep trying to grow better, to be good, and to do right, to grow more holy, more pure, more charitable, more prayerful, and the like. This is one thing. Then, on the other hand, we have to grow less bad, that is to keep striving against sin.

I. The text goes straight to the root of many common sins, and what makes it still more important is, that it applies to all of us equally. Every one is liable to sins of the tongue. Every one is liable to faults of temper. Unfortunately, it is not every one who is aware how much these little common sins—little as people think them, for they are by no means little in reality—it is not every one who is aware how much these everyday faults do towards keeping us back from real holiness of character.

II. You have what may be called a rule of Christian caution, to protect you against the commonest sin which undermines our growth in goodness. I suppose that every one of us feels there is nothing which it is so hard to avoid as getting angry, while on the other hand there is nothing which does our religion more harm than angry feelings. How can a man pray when he is angry?

III. The avoidance of wrath.—St. James says, ‘let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak’: and then in this way we shall be ‘slow to wrath.’ What does this tell us? It tells that when we are moved to be angry, the first thing we must think about is, that we should be ready to listen to whatever the person we are going to be angry with has to say for himself. This sounds very simple, but nothing is really little which helps to keep a man in a holy and God-fearing state of mind. And so it is with this rule. If you will only try it, you will soon see how great a help this little rule will be to you. The next time you feel yourself growing angry, just say this text to yourself: ‘swift to hear, slow to speak.’ Don’t say a word, but listen to what the person you are with has to say. And if he does not say anything, encourage him to speak, but do not say one word that can sound like anger. And while you are checking yourself, just say a short quick prayer to God to be with you and to keep your heart calm and still. God is really very near to you. The Holy Ghost is within you. Pray that the Holy Ghost who is the Spirit of Peace may move over the surface of your soul and still the tempest that is rising. And your prayer will be answered. Even while you listen to what your neighbour has to say, God will drive away the rising anger from your heart, and even though (as men say) you might have had a good right to be angry, the very fact of your not being angry will help to set things straight again, and you will go on with your day’s work quietly and steadily with the sense of God being with you.

IV. We ought all of us to behave in this way quite as a matter of course; for it is upon doing these commonplace things that the reality of our Christian life depends. It is for want of these matters of Christian carefulness and Christian watchfulness that our improvement in Christianity is so spoiled; and, therefore, no doubt it is that God inspired St. James to write in another place, that ‘if any man seem to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, this man’s religion is vain.’ Think what a terrible thing it is for our religion to be all empty, and vain, and fruitless.

Illustration

‘Often it happens that while the angry fit is on, Satan leads you into some further and deeper sin, and then at night he is at your ear to tell you it is no use for such a sinner as you to try and pray to God. He tells you, you ought to be ashamed of such hypocrisy as kneeling down and praying to God at night when you have done so wrong during the day after all your good resolutions in the morning. And then, perhaps, you give way to these thoughts, and go to rest without repenting or confessing your sin, and then the next morning the same thing may happen again, and you go on for days living like a heathen, and all through that one sin of anger letting in a whole flood of sins, and giving the Devil the mastery of you, and shutting you out from God. Many a man’s religion is ruined in this way.’

UNION WITH CHRIST

‘The engrafted Word, which is able to save your souls.’

James 1:21

How is the engrafted Word able to save the soul?

I. How does the graft save the tree?

(a) By changing it.

(b) By infusing new life and vigour into it.

(c) By bringing it into subjection to itself.

II. In like manner, the Word saves the soul.

(a) It makes it holy.

(b) Changes its character.

(c) Brings it into vital union with Christ, making it a branch in that heavenly Vine of which God is the Husbandman.

Salvation is, therefore, not merely an escape from penalty, but our being made holy as He is holy.

III. This supplies us with a test by which we may tell the worth of our religious beliefs and feelings. Are we changed by them from what we once were?—do we now love the things we hated in our unregenerate days?—do we hate the things we once loved?

IV. The most successful cases of grafting are those in which the tree subjected to the process is comparatively young and vigorous. When the tree is too old, the benefit wrought is not always attained. The lesson here is obvious.

EGOISM AND ALTRUISM

‘Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves.’

James 1:22 (R.V.)

There are two great classes of human lives; there are two fundamental differences which separate them. The one class is egoistic, it lives simply for itself; the other, if you will pardon me the word, is altruistic, it lives mainly for the good of others. The one is epicurean; the other is Christlike.

I. The self-indulgent, self-absorbed life ranges up and down many degrees in the social and moral scales. It may be that of the elegant and bejewelled patrician, or it may reek of the gin-shop and the prison. It may assume the guise of languid ease or that of brutal ruffianism; but in all cases it is only selfishness wearing different masks, and in all phases it involves the most despicable state to which human life can sink. And God—speaking in the force of outward circumstances—God, ‘Whose light shines on so patiently, showing all things in the slow history of their ripening’—stamps this life with the seal of His utter reprobation. Oh, how terrible and certain a retribution does this life of selfishness draw down upon itself!

II. How different is the altruistic life, the unselfish life, the life which is given to God and fearlessly lives for the good of its fellow-men—the life, not like those others, earthly, sensual, devilish; but pure, gentle, peaceable, full of mercy and good fruit, without partiality and without hypocrisy! That is the life of heaven; such are the lives of the saints of God. The world has ever recognised the lustre, the loveliness of such a life, though in envy and hatred it has many times slain or slaughtered those who have tried to live it. Rise before us as ye were, ye saints of God, in the beauty of your holiness; show us the lives ‘roses without, lilies within’; the lives white as lilies in their transparent guilelessness, and red as roses in their glowing enthusiasm! Show how gracious a thing a human being may become, in whom the love of God, expanded into infinitude, has led to the abjuration of the lower self.

III. Can such a life be described in a single word?—Yes! and it lies at the centre of all that in all nations of the world has the best right to call itself religion. When Confucius was asked by a disciple to express all the virtues in one word, he answered, ‘Is not reciprocity such a word?’ and by ‘reciprocity’ he meant the Divine rule—‘Do unto thy neighbour as thou wouldst that he should do to thee.’ When Auguste Comte tried to formulate a new religion of Positivism he made its one rule altruism—‘Vivre pour autrui.’ It is Christianity that gives us a word more divine, more all-comprehensive, more steeped in emotion, more radiant with the light of heaven than ‘reciprocity’ or ‘altruism’—and that is the word love. And—let men prate how they will about other things—if the Word of God stands sure, then one truth is supremely important above all other truths, and that is, that we ‘owe no man anything, but to love one another’; that love is ‘the bond of perfectness’; and that ‘love is the fulfilling of the law.’

IV. Consider the bearing of these two lives on the entire condition of the world.

(a) The natural and immediate result of selfishness is utter, hopeless, callous quiescence, contented luxury, absolute neglect. It shuts out the disturbing spectacle of human necessity.

(b) The unselfish life, the life of Christian charity, is opposed to all this. Though all the journals misrepresent and sneer at it, it will try every method in its power—legislative, social, ecclesiastical, individual—whereby it may in any way alleviate the sorrows or reverse the wrongs of the world. It is invincibly hopeful; it is undauntedly courageous; it ‘believes in the soul, and is very sure of God’; it is full of Divine enthusiasm; it leaps amid the laughter of the world into the flaming chariot of zeal, and shakes loosely the slack reins.

How shall we grapple with this overwhelming mass of evil? There are some, thank God! who are grappling with it. Everywhere the work is being attempted by the clergy, and by those who help their work. The poor in many parishes are treated as brethren, and as free men and women, for whom, with all their faults, Christ died.

—Dean Farrar.

Illustration

‘To the egotist class—those who are absorbed by the desires of the mind—belong the ruinous conquerors who from time to time have swept over the earth with sword and flame, and have made her furrows red with the blood of men. “The course you propose,” said Prince Metternich to Napoleon, “would cost the lives of a hundred thousand men.” “A hundred thousand men!” answered Napoleon. “What are a hundred thousand men to me?” Prince Metternich walked to the window, flung it wide open, and said, “Sire, let all the world know that you express this atrocious sentiment!” There you have this egoism on a colossal scale. Yet a man need not be a Napoleon to sacrifice the good of hundreds, and sell the fate of his country for the satisfaction of himself, his party, or his class.

THE DOER’S REWARD

‘This man shall be blessed in his deed.’

James 1:25

It does not define what ‘deed.’ The word is, ‘This man shall be blessed in his doing’; all his doing; whatever he does.

It will come to you in many ways. You have now honoured God, and God will honour you.

I. You will be ‘blessed’ when you are studying.—A light will be thrown upon God’s Word. It will become quite a new book to you; and the reading, or the listening, will be very different to what it used to be; not a thing to be done, but a thing to be enjoyed; a pleasure more than a duty. And those will be very happy times which you will spend with God over His Word,—the happiest; happier than any other conversation that you have in life; dearer to you than the letter of your dearest friend.

II. You will find it in your prayers.—Prayer will become very real. It will be confidential. It will be minute. It will be power.

III. You will find it in your work.—God will soon give you some token to show that He has been pleased with you. I do not know how He may show it,—what He may give you; some worldly success, it may be; or it may be disappointment. It may be a real sorrow. But whichever it be, there will be a sense of being loved and cared for. There will be a Presence. There will be an intention, which brings infinite things very near. There will be a peaceful, restful state of mind. It will follow you in all the details of common life.

And then you will be fulfilling great and worthy ends. You will be living to good purpose. You will be ‘blessed,’ and be a comfort to many.

THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD

‘And to keep himself unspotted from the world.’

James 1:27

As men and women grow older they change. Of all the changes that they undergo, those of their moral natures are often the most painful to watch. We all have a dim idea that if we could have taken the young life and isolated it we could have kept its freshness and purity. Out of the aggregate of the many influences which we call ‘the world’ have come the evil forces that have changed and soiled the life. It has not been himself. He has walked through mire, and the filth has gathered on his skirts; through pestilence, and the poison has crept into his blood. Not merely the evil heart within has shown its wickedness, but the evil around us has fastened upon us. We have not merely been spotted, but ‘spotted by the world.’ Our own experience confirms the Bible conception of ‘the world,’ and so we listen. And here the Bible steps in and describes lives shaped by this cosmos, this total of created things.

I. The stained lives.—Who does not know what this means? There is the outward stain—the stain upon the reputation. How few reputations remain so pure as to be fit patterns for others to follow! Then there are the stains upon our conduct, the impure and untrue acts which visibly cloud the fair surface of our best activity. And then, worst of all, there is the stain upon the heart, of which none but the man himself knows anything. These are the stains which we accumulate. You know what stains are on your lives. Each of us knows. They burn to our eyes, even if no neighbour sees them. You would not think that your children should grow up to the same stains that have fastened upon you; you dream for them of ‘a life unspotted from the world’; yet that dream is almost hopeless; and we soon give it up, and begin making excuses. The worst thing about this staining power of the world is the way in which we come to think of it as inevitable. I said the stain upon the heart was the worst, but there is one thing worse still. When a man not merely tolerates, but boasts of the stains that the world has flung upon him; when he wears his spots as if they were jewels; when he flaunts in your face his unscrupulousness and disbelief as the badges of his superiority. When it becomes reputable to show that we are men of the world by exhibiting the stains it has left upon us, then we see how flagrant the danger; how doubly hard to keep ourselves unspotted from the world.

II. And now, in view of all this, we come to our religion; and we hear St. James telling us, in unsparing words, what ‘pure religion and undefiled before God’ is. Mark, then, how intolerant religion is. She starts with what men declare to be impossible. She refuses to bring down her standards. She insists that men must come up to her. She proclaims absolute standards. She will not say, ‘Your case is a hard one, and for that reason I will waive a part of my demands; for you, religion shall mean not to do this sin or that sin.’ Before every man, in the thickest of the world’s contagions, she stands and cries with unwavering voice, ‘Come out, be separate, keep yourself unspotted from the world.’ There is something sublime in this unsparingness. It almost proves that our religion is Divine when it undertakes for a man so Divine a task. And our religion is not true unless it have this power in it, unless the statesman, the merchant, the man or woman in society, do indeed find it the power of purity and strength. We must bring our faith to this test. Unless our religion does this for us, it is not the true religion that St. James talked of, and that the Lord Jesus came to reveal and to bestow.

III. We go for our assurance to the first assertion of the real character of Christianity in the life of Jesus.—The life of Jesus was meant to be the pattern of the lives of all who call themselves His followers. His was a real human life, and yet the very sinlessness of Jesus has made Him seem to many not to be man, instead of being the type of what manhood was intended to be, and what all men must come to be. The very principle of the Incarnation, that without which it loses all its value, surely is this, that Christ was himself the first Christian; that in Him was displayed the power of that grace by which all believers were to be helped and saved. And so for this reason the life of Jesus was lived in the closest contact with His fellow-men. He passed through the highest temptations to which our nature is exposed; He walked through the same muddy streets of sordid care; He penetrated the same murky atmosphere of passion that we have to go through, and thence He came out pure, and unspotted from the world; thus He is really God manifest in the flesh. As He came forth spotless, so by His power we must come out unstained at last, and ‘walk with Him in white.’

IV. As we study the life of Jesus we are taught that religion is, by its very nature, positive.—Jesus was never guarding Himself, but always invading the lives of others with His holiness. He did not shut Himself up, as it were, in the castle of His life, guarding every loophole, but He made it an open centre of operations from which the surrounding territory was to be subdued. So we learn from Him that our truest safety, our true spotlessness from the world, must come, not negatively, by the garments being drawn back from every worldly contact, but positively, by the garments being so essentially pure that they fling pollution off.

V. We must ever bear in mind the purpose of the Incarnation; we must grasp the bewildering thought of a personal love for our single souls; we must find its meaning in those precious words, ‘Christ died for me.’ Then will the soul, full of profoundest gratitude, look round to see what it has to give to the Saviour in return, and it will find it has nothing to give—save itself. It is its own no longer; it is given away to Christ. It lives His life—Who redeemed it—and not its own. Thus, it is by walking in this new sense of consecration to Him, it will walk unharmed; it will be kept ‘unspotted from the world’ by Christ. More than this; it is by a Christ-like dedication to the world that Christ really saves us from the world. You go to your Lord and say, ‘O Lord, this world is tempting me, and I fear its stains. Shall I run away from it?’ And the Voice comes, as from the opened sky, ‘No, go up close to the world, and help it; feel for its wickedness; pity it; sacrifice yourself for it; so shall you be safest from its infection, and not sacrifice yourself to it.’ It is possible so to be given up to Christ and our fellows, that the lust, falsehood, cruelty, injustice, and selfishness of the world shall not hurt us; it is possible to walk through the fire and not to be burned. But it depends always and wholly upon whether He walks there with us. Let us not trust ourselves, for we are weakness. Trust Him, work for all who need us; so shall we go through all impurity and be gathered safe home at last into the Father’s House.

—Bishop Phillips Brooks.

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‘We practically believe that no man can keep himself “unspotted.” You talk of political corruption which seems to have infected the safest characters, and the answer is: “There’s nothing strange about it; no man can live years in ——, and be wholly pure.” You speak of some point of doubtful conventional morality, and some business men will answer: “That’s all very well for you in your professional seclusion, but that will not do in the street. I should like to see you apply that standard to the work I do to get my bread.” And so of society: “It’s a mere dream to think that social life can be made noble; whoever goes there must expect the spots upon the robe.” But it is not true. Men do go through political life pure; some merchants do pass through the temptations of business life with clean hands and tender hearts; and social life is lighted up with the lustre of the white, unstained robes of many a pure man and woman. But the spots fall so thick that many believe none can escape them; and then men cry, “We are not to blame for the world’s spots upon us.”’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE ALLUREMENT OF THE WORLD

The text places before us a great battle-field with innumerable enemies to fight against; they warn us against a power that may stain and defile, and cause us, after all our work and all our prayers, to miss the end and object of our life. We must visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, but we must also keep ourselves unspotted from the world.

I. What is this world that stains with a crimson stain and sullies the purity of a soul for whom Christ died? It is not that mass of material beauty which the Father hath created; the contemplation of the material world ennobles the soul, and leads it, in worship, to the mighty Creator. The grandeur of the noble mountains and rushing rivers: the beauty of the forests and the meadows; the glittering wonders of the heavens when night has thrown her curtain over the earth below; the contemplation of all these eloquent tokens of Divine power leads the soul in reverence and humiliation to worship the invisible Creator. No; the world that defiles is none of these. It is that unholy thing that laughs at the young man when he bends the knee in prayer, that would give him unclean words for praises, and curses for hymns to God. It is used here in its worst and unholiest sense; it refers to no pleasures that are either lawful or innocent, to no pure merry-making that friends may have with friends. It is no creation of the imagination, but a cruel reality that tempts the soul to ruin. It is everything that is meant to be a blessing exaggerated and abused till it becomes a curse; it is the call of the thoughtless to the wine that sparkles in the cup, the invitation of the immoral to the false and fleeting pleasures of an unholy life.

II. We all know with what eloquence the world appeals to the young just starting in life; how it tells them that ‘pure religion and undefiled before God’ is unmanly and without beauty: fit indeed for weak women and effeminate men, but no fit guide for the true hero in the battle of life. This is the devil’s own favourite lie. There are and have been more true heroes among the soldiers of the Cross than among the votaries of the world. What of the noble army of martyrs who presented a resistless phalanx to the rushing tide of evil and stemmed the torrent with their lives! ‘They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.’ They underwent all this, not for some visible reward that they could see with their eyes and touch with their hands, but in the invincible faith of the Son of God Who loved them, and had promised them ‘a city not made with hands eternal in the heavens.’ The soul that is the noblest and purest by nature, becomes nobler and purer still beneath the light that shines from the revelation of the Gospel of Christ: ‘pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father’ can increase the hero’s courage, deepen the martyr’s self-denial, stifle the unholy word as it rises to the lips, and quench the impure thought in its birth; it can exalt the whole man till he come to his perfect stature, and renew the faded beauty of the image of his God.

III. Let us keep ourselves unspotted from the world.—It is no easy task, the result of one passionate look to heaven, the answer to one heartrending cry for help. It is a daily battle beginning with the morning light, ceasing only for a time when sleep has hushed the tempting voices and lulled the passions to their rest. Sometimes there is an onslaught of almost resistless fury, sometimes the deadly stillness of a dangerous ambush. And still the fight must continue till the last sleep come and the spirit return unto God Who gave it. But we are not alone in the fight. There is the all-prevailing intercession of the Son before the throne of the Father; there are the whispers of the angels and their sustaining help; there is the indwelling of the Holy Ghost; there is the food that Jesus gives for the strengthening and refreshing of the struggling of weary souls. Surely we may be ‘more than conquerors through Him that loved us’; we may be enrolled among the number of those crowned heroes who ‘have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,’ to whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be majesty and dominion for ever.

Rev. W. E. Coghlan.