Bible Commentaries

James 1:3

It sometimes seems a little strange how, after having earnestly prayed to be delivered from temptation, and having given ourselves with shut eyes into God's hand, from that time every thought, every outward influence, every acknowledged law of life, seems to lead us on from strength to strength.

—Mrs. Gaskell, in Ruth (ch. XXIII.).

Never expect thy flesh should truly expound the meaning of the rod. It will call love, hatred; and say, God is destroying, when He is saving. It is the suffering party, and therefore not fit to be the judge.

—Baxter, Saints" Rest (ch. x.).

If the passion have ended, not in a marriage but in a disappointment, the nature, if it have strength to bear the pressure, will be more ennobled and purified by that than by success. Of the uses of adversity which are sweet, none are sweeter than those which grow out of disappointed love; nor is there any greater mistake in contemplating the issues of life, than to suppose that baffled endeavours and disappointed hopes bear no fruits, because they do not bear those particular fruits which were sought and sighed for.

—Sir Henry Taylor, Notes on Life, pp76 , 77.

Reference.—I:3.—Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p122.

James 1:4

A great man is always willing to be little. When he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, dejected, he has a chance to learn something.... In general, every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valour of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

—Emerson, on Compensation.

James 1:4

"In my younger years," said Richard Baxter, "my trouble for sin was most about my actual failings in thought, word, or action. But now I am much more troubled for inward defects, and omission or want of the vital duties or graces of the soul. Had I all the riches of the world, how gladly would I give them for a fuller knowledge, belief, and love of God and everlasting glory! These wants are the greatest burden of my life."

References.—I:4.—W. F. Shaw, Sermon Sketches for the Christian Year, p103. T. Sadler, Sunday Thoughts, p273. J. M. Neale, Readings for the Aged (4th Series), p111. Ibid. Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. i. p355. H. D. Rawnsley, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xv. p1104. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p35. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— James 1:5

This is one of the many beautifully-practical thoughts which so fill and characterise St. James 1:5

"Doctor," said the invalid again, "will you read me just four verses in the Bible?" "Why, yes, my boy, as many as you wish to hear." "No, only four." His free hand moved for the book that lay on the bed, and presently the Doctor read: My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. If any of you lack James 1:5, "If any of ye lack James 1:5

The Aryan nations, before their separation, cherished a belief in a hero or god to whom they owed all their comforts in life: it was he that made the sun shine and the dawn keep her time; and it was to him they looked for the weather they wanted. The first breeds of animals useful to James 1:6-8

In the writings of the Apostle Paul, as well as in the sayings of our Lord Himself, we are reminded of the fact that the faith which achieves great things and uplifts the devout life to the highest excellence set before it, must be an established principle of the soul, and not a passing mood only.

I. The faith that is evanescent is an affectation, and can no more pass as a just constituent of fruitful worship and service than any other kind of vamped-up sentiment. The complete sincerity of faith is proved by its imperturbable persistence. Faith means the deepest thought we have of God; and when that thought swings from side to side like the pendulum, one moment viewing God as true, benign, compassionate, covenant-keeping, and the next letting Him pass out of sight or viewing Him in more or less contradictory aspects, God is not thought of according to His due.

II. The faith that is only momentary cannot satisfy the heart of the Eternal. The life of some winged insects is said to be measured by the hour only, and, unlike bees and ants, they have no need to lay up food supplies which will last through long wintry months. God does not belong to an order of beings whose requirements can be met by what is transient and volatile, and it is impossible to satisfy His mighty insistency by a mood of faith unstable as the morning dew.

III. The blessings we seek in believing supplication are permanent in their duration, and faith is the condition of their tenure as well as of their first attainment. "For by faith ye stand." The double-minded man who never knows himself, who has never found out his own equation in spiritual things, who drifts before moods as gaily as the nautilus spreads its painted sails to the winds, who believes when genial influences combine to make it easy so to do, and morbidly disbelieves at the first temptation which comes to test his faith, is a failure as a suppliant and touches the lowest depths of vanity and frustration when he bends the knee in vacuous prayer.

IV. If we would cherish into an established habit the faith that seeks to spring up and possess our souls, we must never wantonly expose ourselves to influences hostile to faith. And, above all, we must draw near to God in the ways appointed for building up faith.

V. If our prayers are to be marked by unswerving and triumphant confidence, strong qualities must go to the making of our faith, qualities which will stand the strain of waiting and the rebuffs which meet us when we have gone forth to await the fulfilment of our desires. (1) Such an attribute is conscience, less mutable by far than other parts of man's being. God's breath is in it, and the breath of One in whom there is no variation, neither shadow cast by turning, protects this faculty from the weaknesses of its kindred faculties. (2) And in the best sense of the word reason must also enter into our faith if it is to escape the reproach of fitfulness. (3) And then when the conscience and the judgment are assured concerning the great hearer of prayer and the fitness of the things for which we ask, we must put into our prayers that power of will which is one of the most distinctive attributes of our being, and thus will the undivided and coherent man be made to pray.

References.—I:6-8.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p32.

James 1:7

Dr. Marcus Dods wrote at the age of twenty-nine to his friend the Rev. S. R. Macphail: "Be persuaded that God will deliver you from sin, wait on Him, do not sink, do not scoff, do not suffer a shadow of doubt about it. I do not obey my own voice, but yet my past years say, if there is one verse of the Bible that is true it is about the waverer, "Let not that man think that he will receive anything from the Lord". Is it not, Simeon, the turning-point with us all when we can give God His place, believe in Him wholly. Early Letters, p323.

James 1:8

In all religious processions through the city the heralds went first to bid the people cease their work and attend to the ceremony; for just as the Pythagoreans are said to forbid the worship of the gods in a cursory manner, and to insist that men shall set out from their homes with this purpose and none other in their minds, so Numa thought it wrong that the citizens should see or hear any religious ceremony in a careless, halfhearted manner, and made them cease from all worldly cares and attend with all their hearts to the most important of all duties, religion; so he cleared the streets of all the hammering and cries and noises which attend the practice of ordinary trades and handicrafts, before any holy ceremony.

—Plutarch, Life of Numa (XIV.).

Reference.—I:9 , 10.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p195.

James 1:10

Would it not be wiser for people to rejoice at all that they now sorrow for, and vice versa? To put on bridal garments at funerals, and mourning at weddings? For their friends to condole with them when they attained riches and honour, as only so much care added?

—Hawthorne.

Adversity had been so far his friend that it had taken from him all hope of the social success for which people crawl and truckle, and restored him, through failure and doubt and heartache, the manhood which his prosperity had so nearly stolen from him.

—W. D. Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (XXVII.).

Life will be dearer and clearer in anguish,

Than ever was felt in the throbs of delight.

—Lord Houghton.

References.—I:10 , 11.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p264. I:11.—Ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p445.

The Blessedness of Enduring Temptation

James 1:12

The text does not mean that we ought to be glad if temptation comes, nor that temptation is a blessed thing in itself; but that the Christian is blessed who endures it, and who comes out of it approved and strengthened.

I. Let us try to discover the meaning of "temptation" spoken of here. The English word has become so associated with the idea of incitement to evil that it does not fully express what is meant, nor even express it correctly. True, a "trial" or "trouble" is sometimes also a "temptation" in that sense, as we know too well. But no trouble is ever sent by God with the intention of inciting to sin. Perhaps some paraphrase such as this may help us: "Blessed is the man that endureth the test which comes through God—sent troubles, for when he has passed through the testing time, and been approved, he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him." Trials do for us what stormy winds do in nature, for both fulfil God's word and carry out His design.

II. Now the variety of our capacities requires variety in the means used to test and develop them. Hence, in the second verse, we read of "divers" temptations. (1) Trial often comes through prosperity and comfort. For example, those about you may be singularly gentle and yielding. Now this has been one of God's tests to you, though you have never recognised it. How far have you been considerate, trying to find out the wishes which will not be openly expressed? (2) On the other hand, if those about you are cold and irresponsive; if they never reward you with a smile or a word of thanks, do what you may for them; if your quiet acts of self-sacrifice are not so much as noticed, if your love is met by indifference, or even by unkindness, God is testing you by this.

III. What, then, are some of the purposes wrapped up in God's design? His main purpose, according to this chapter, is to strengthen, to test, and to develop faith by its exercise; because faith is the root-virtue from which patience and courage spring. Blessed is the man that endureth the temptation of struggle and effort, for he shall receive the crown of life.

IV. The promise referred to here was given by the Lord Jesus Himself, who, in His personal experience, knew the hardness of our conflict and the painfulness of our sufferings; and it involves the assurance that He Himself is watching over us, measuring our strength, proportioning our trials and duties to the powers of endurance, innate and inspired, so that He will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able.

—A. Rowland, Open Windows and other Sermons, p48

References.—I:12.—W. Wynn, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p102. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No1874. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2Series), p213. Brooke Herford, Courage and Cheer, p217. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3Series), p223. C. Bosanquet, Blossoms from the King's Garden, p111. W. L. Watkinson, The Supreme Conquest, p142. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p443; ibid. vol. ix. p4. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— James 1:13

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,—often the surfeit of our own behaviour,—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a Divine thrusting on.

—Shakespeare, King Lear (Act i. Sc2).

James 1:13

Compare the conversation between Socrates and Adeimantos in Plato's Republic (379 , 13):—"Then that which is good is not the cause of all things, but only of what is as it should be, being guiltless of originating evil."

"Exactly so."

"If that be James 1:14

Oh the hourly dangers that we here walk in! Every sense and member is a snare; every creature, every mercy, and every duty is a snare to us. We can scarcely open our eyes, but we are in danger of envying those above us, or despising those below us; of coveting the honours and riches of some, or beholding the rags and beggary of others with pride and un-mercifulness. If we see beauty, it is a bait to lust; if deformity, to loathing and disdain.

How soon do slanderous reports, vain jests, wanton speeches, creep into the heart! How constant and strong a watch does our appetite require! Have we comeliness and beauty? What fuel for pride! Are we deformed? What an occasion of repining! Have we strength of reason, and gifts of learning? Oh how prone to be puffed up, to hunt after applause, and despise our brethren. Are we unlearned? How apt we are to despise what we have not! Are we in places of authority? How strong is the temptation to abuse our trust, make our will law, and cut out all the enjoyments of others, by the rules and model of our own interest and policy! Are we inferiors? How prone to grudge at others" preeminence, and bring their actions to the bar of our judgment! Are we rich and not too much exalted? Are we poor and not discontented? Are we not lazy in our duties, or make a Christ of them? Not that God hath made all these things our snares, but through our own corruption they become so to us. Ourselves are the greatest snare to ourselves.

—Baxter, Saints" Rest, pp60 , 61.

"There is a popular belief respecting evil spirits," says Scott in a note to the fifteenth chapter of The Abbot, "that they cannot enter an inhabited house unless invited, nay, dragged over the threshold."

"Temptation is a cause of possible sin," says Ritschl, "originating in an impulse, the satisfaction of which appears on first thoughts to be in itself legitimate.... It James 1:17

I. What is the description, the character, of God, as depicted in the Bible? What should we have to take as the title of the Bible if it was a story for which we were asked to find a title? I say there is only one title we could select, and it would be: "God as the Eternal Giver". Open the Bible, and begin with the book of Genesis. We cannot stop to go into it, but there, in picture form, it describes the Eternal Giver giving gifts to mankind—sunshine, air, the gift of life; and

How good is man's life, the mere living

How fit to employ

All the heart, and the soul, and the senses

For ever in joy.

He gives further the gift of love, the love of man for woman, and woman for James 1:17

In optics, if you make a hole in the shutter at noon, or stick a square bit of blackness on the pane, and make the rays from the hole or around the square to pass through a prism, then we have, if we let them fall on whiteness or catch them right, those colours we all know and rejoice in, that Divine spectrum.... The white light of heaven—lumen siccum—opens itself out, as it were, tells its secret, and lies like a glorious border on the Edge o" Dark (as imaginative Lancashire calls the twilight, as we Scotchmen call it, the gloamin"), making the boundaries between light and darkness a border of flowers, made out by each. Is there not something to think of in "The Father of lights," thus beautifying the limits of His light and of His darkness, which to Him alone is light, so that here burns a sort of "dim, religious light"—a sacred glory, where we may take off our shoes and rest and worship?

—Dr. John Brown, In Clear Dream and Solemn Vision.

James 1:17

God is a Being of perfect simplicity and truth, both in deed and word, and neither changes in Himself nor imposes upon others, either by apparitions, or by words, or by sending signs, whether in dreams or in waking moments.

—Plato's Republic (382).

"If I only knew that God was as good as that woman, 1should be content." "Then you don"t believe that God is good?" "I didn"t say that, my boy. But to know that God was good and kind and fair—heartily, I mean, and not halfways with if's and but"s—my boy, there would be nothing left to be miserable about."

—George Macdonald, Robert Falconer.

Speaking of the spirit of the age, in his essay on Dr. Marshall, Dr. John Brown, in Horae Subsecivae, notes how "this great social element, viewless, impalpable, inevitable, untameable as the wind, is—like the great laws of nature—of which indeed it is one—for ever at its work; and like its Divine author and guide, goes about continually doing good.... This is that tide in the affairs of men—a Deo, ad Deum—that onward movement of the race in knowledge, in power, in work, and in happiness, which has gladdened and cheered all who believe, and who, through long ages of gloom and misery and havoc, have still believed that truth is strong, next to the Almighty.... It is a tide that has never turned; unlike the poet"s, it answers the behest of no waning and waxing orb, it follows the eve of Him who is without variableness or the shadow of turning.

Thou hadst not to do with an unconstant creature, but with Him "with whom is no variableness, nor shadow of turning". His love to thee will not be as thine was on earth to Him, seldom, and cold, up and down.

—Baxter, Saints" Rest (ch. I.).

References.—I:17.—A. C. Turberville, The Pulpit, vol. i. p6. R. C. Trench, Sermons New and Old, p163. R. Flint, Sermons and Addresses, p28. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p88. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p229. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p39118.—J. H. Snowdon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p292. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints" Days, p224. T. Binney, Kings" Weigh-House Chapel Sermons, p206. J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. i. p124. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p183. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— James 1:18-22

The new moral birth is sacred—as sacred as the child within the mother's womb—it is a kind of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost to conceal it. And when I use the word "moral" here—or anywhere above—I do not, I hope, mean that dull pinch-lipped conventionality of negation which often goes under that name. The deep-lying ineradicable desires, fountains of human action, the lifelong asp rations, the lightning-like revelations of right and justice, the treasured hidden ideal, borne in flame and darkness, in joy and in sorrow, in tears and in triumph, within the heart—these are, as a rule, anything but conventional.

—Edward Carpenter, England's Ideal, p73

James 1:19

Speaking of the discipline of self-restraint and the stoical repression of feelings in Japan, Dr. Nitobé, in his volume on Bushido (pp106f.), observes that in Japan "when a man or woman feels his or her soul stirred, the first instinct is quietly to suppress the manifestation of it. In rare instances is the tongue set free by an irresistible spirit, when we have eloquence of sincerity and fervour. It is putting a premium on a breach of the third commandment to encourage speaking lightly of spiritual experiences. It is truly jarring to Japanese ears to hear the most sacred words, the most secret heart experiences, thrown out in promiscuous audiences. "Dost thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred with tender thoughts? It is time for seeds to sprout. Disturb it not with speech; but let it work alone in quietness and secrecy"—writes a young Samurai in his diary.

"To give in so many articulate words one's inmost thoughts and feelings—notably the religious—is taken among us as an unmistakable sign that they are neither very profound nor very sincere. "Only a pomegranate is he"—so runs a popular saying—"who, when he gapes his mouth, displays the contents of his heart.""

Compare the advice of Polonius in Hamlet (Act i. Sc3):—

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

Surly judges there have been who did not much admire the "Bible of Modern Literature," or anything you could distil from it, in contrast with the ancient Bibles; and found that in the matter of speaking, our far best excellence, when that could be obtained, was excellent silence, which means endurance and exertion, and good work with lips closed.

—Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets (v.).

While in thy lips thy words thou dost confine, Thou art their lord; once uttered, they are mine.

—Archbishop Trench.

"All the ground near Sir Archibald"s," between Aberdeen and Inverness, "is as well cultivated as most in England. About seven I preached. The kirk was pretty well filled, though upon short notice. Certainly this is a nation "swift to hear, and slow to speak," though not "slow to wrath".

—Wesley's Journal (7th June, 1764).

Johnson.—What I most envy Burke for is his being constantly the same. He is never what we call humdrum; never unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off. Boswell.—Yet he can listen. Johnson.—No; I cannot say he is good at that. So desirous is he to talk, that, if one is speaking at this end of the table, he"ll speak to somebody at the other end.

—Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides (15th Aug.)

References.—I:19.—J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p220. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p9. I:19 , 20.—W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p292. I:19-21.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p279. I:19-27.—R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James 1:20

If a bad-tempered man can be admirably virtuous, he must be under extreme difficulties.... For it is of the nature of such temper to interrupt the formation of healthy mental habits, which depend on a growing harmony between perception, conviction and impulse. There may be good feelings, good deeds—for a human nature may touch endless varieties and blessed inconsistencies in its windings—but it is essential to what is worthy to be called high character, that it may be safely calculated on.

—George Eliot, Essays of Theophrastus Such (VI.).

Reference.—I:20.—Expositor (6th Series), vol. xii. p28.

James 1:21

The stream of custom and our profession bring us to the Preaching of the Word, and we sit out our hour under the sound; but how few consider and prize it as the great ordinance of God for the salvation of souls, the beginner and the sustainer of the Divine life of grace within us! And certainly, until we have thus thought of it, and seek to feel it thus ourselves, although we hear it most frequently, and let slip no occasion, yea, hear it with attention and some present delight, yet still we miss the right use of it, and turn it from its true end, while we take it not as that ingrafted word which is able to save our souls.

—Leighton.

References.—I:21.—A. B. O. Wilberforce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p296. J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Day, p386. I:21 , 22.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No1847.

James 1:22

In the one volume of Sesame and Lilies—nay, in the last forty pages of its central address to Englishwomen—everything is told that I know of vital truth, everything urged that I see to be needful of vital act—but no creature answers me with any faith or any deed. They read the words, and say they are pretty, and go on in their own ways.

—Ruskin, Fors Clavigera (LVIII.).

When President Roosevelt opened the Bible to kiss it, on taking the oath at his inauguration, this text was found to be the place he chose.

References.—I:22.—E. A. Stuart, His Dear Son and other Sermons, vol. v. p17. F. W. Farrar, Sin and its Conquerors, p58. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p188. I:22-24.—H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p49. I:22-25.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No1467. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p25; ibid. vol. iii. pp183 , 448. I:23.—F. St John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p92. I:23-25.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No1848.

James 1:24

"Few people," says Matthew Arnold, in The French Play in London, "who feel a passion think of learning anything from it. A man feels a passion, he passes through it, and then he goes his way and straightway forgets, as the Apostle says, what manner of man he was. Above all, this is apt to happen with us English, who have, as an eminent German professor is good enough to tell us, "so much genius, so little method". The much genius hurries us into infatuations; the little method prevents our learning the right and wholesome lesson from them."

The Law of Life in Christianity—Liberty

James 1:25

There is no more inspiring word in human speech than Freedom, Liberty. It expresses an instinctive craving of the human heart. It awakens a responsive echo in the human breast.

Curiously enough, it has often been a taunt levelled at the Church—and with a certain measure of justification—that it stands in opposition to this noble and legitimate instinct of the human heart. If that is true, then a great error has been committed in direct antagonism to the spirit of the Gospel. The Gospel was announced by the Lord in terms of liberty: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me... to preach deliverance to the captive... to set at liberty them that are bruised". The Christ appeared as the Liberator, the Emancipator.

He came to break oppression,

To set the captive free,

To take away transgression

And rule in equity.

Note the third line—"to take away transgression"—for it is of the essence of the Christian conception of liberty, and we must return to it. But it is important to notice generally that the Christian religion is in entire accord with this noble aspiration of the human heart. If Christianity is to understand itself aright, it must see that liberty is of the very essence of its own constitution. Freedom is the law of the Christian life. The flower of the Christian life can never blossom in its perfection till it expands in the congenial atmosphere of perfect liberty.

I. It is important to notice that there are two kinds of freedom. There is an outer freedom and an inner, just as there is an outer and an inner bondage. The outer is in each case the more obvious. The slavery that holds the body captive is more quickly detected than the tyranny that enthralls the spirit. A man's limbs may be free. He may have every right of the freeborn and yet have the spirit of a slave, held captive in the tyranny of custom or dread, or degrading habit. A James 1:25

As the most far-sighted eye, even aided by the most powerful telescope, will not make a fixed star appear larger than it does to an ordinary and unaided sight, even so there are heights of knowledge and truth sublime which all men in possession of the ordinary human understanding may comprehend as much and as well as the profoundest philosopher and the most learned theologian. Such are the truths relating to the logos and its oneness with the self-existent Deity, and of the humanity of Christ and its union with the logos. It is idle, therefore, to refrain from preaching on these subjects, provided only such preparations have been made as no man can be a Christian without. The misfortune is that the majority are Christians in name, and by birth only. Let them but once, according to St. James 1:25

All civilisation is the yoking of James 1:26

"The thing here supposed and referred to," says Butler in his great Sermon on The Government of the Tongue, "is talkativeness: a disposition to be talking, abstracted from the consideration of what is to be said; with very little or no regard to, or thought of doing, either good or harm.... And this unrestrained volubility and wantonness of speech is the occasion of numberless evils and vexations in life. It begets resentment in him who is the subject of it; sows the seed of strife and dissension amongst others; and inflames little disgusts and offences, which if let alone would wear away of themselves." While thou so hotly disclaimest the devil, be not guilty of diabolism. Fall not into one name with that unclean spirit, nor act his nature whom thou so much abhorrest; that James 1:26

"If the religious spirit," says Mr. Morley in Compromise (pp178 , 179), leads to a worthy and beautiful life, if it shows itself in cheerfulness, in pity, in charity and tolerance, in forgiveness, in a sense of the largeness and the mystery of things, in a lifting up of the soul in gratitude and awe to some supreme power and sovereign force, then whatever drawback may be in the way of superstitious dogma, still such a spirit is on the whole a good thing. If not, not. It would be better without the superstition: even with the superstition, it is good. But if the religious spirit is only a fine name for narrowness of understanding, for shallow intolerance, for mere social formality, for a dread of losing that poor respectability which means thinking and doing exactly as the people around us think and do, then the religious spirit is not a good thing, but a thoroughly bad and hateful thing."

References.—I:26.—Bishop Butler, Human Nature and Other Sermons, p54. J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Bay, p416.

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. The boy changes into the James 1:27

How much it is misunderstood may be seen from the fact that, though the word itself, religion, stands for one of the most beautiful and simple things in the world, there yet hangs about it an aroma which is not wholly pleasing. What difficult service that great and humble name has seen! With what strange and evil meanings it has been charged! How dinted and battered it is with hard usage! how dimmed its radiance, how stained its purity!... To express the religion of Christ in precise words would be a mighty task; but it may be said that it was not merely a system, nor primarily a creed; it was a message to individual hearts, bewildered by the complexity of the world and the intricacy of religious observances. Christ bade men believe that their Creator was also a Father; that the only way to escape from the overwhelming difficulties presented by the world was the way of simplicity, sincerity, and love; that a man should keep out of his life all that insults and hurts the soul, and that he should hold the interests of others as dear as he holds his own.

—A. C. Benson, From a College Window, pp307 f.

One of the hardest burdens laid upon the other good influences of human nature has been that of improving religion itself.

—John Stuart Mill.

James 1:27

Shortly after being made a bishop, Jean Pierre Camus of Belley, consulted St. Francis de Sales upon the difficulty which he felt of keeping chaste amid the temptations into which his love of charity led him inevitably. St. Francis replied: "You must distinguish between persons whose position obliges them to take charge of others, and such as lead a private life which involves no responsibility save for themselves. The first must commit chastity to the care of charity, and if it be real, it will answer to the trust, serving as a wall and rampart; but private persons do well to subject their charity to chastity, and maintain great reserve and caution in their actions. Those in responsible positions are often obliged to expose themselves to temptations inseparable from their duties, and so long as they do not tempt God by presumption, His grace will guard them."

The outward service (θρησκεία) of ancient religion, the rites, ceremonies, and ceremonial vestments of the old law, had morality for their substance. They were the old letter, of which morality was the spirit; the enigma, of which morality was the meaning. But morality itself is the service and ceremonial (cultus exterior, θρησκεία) of the Christian religion. The scheme of grace and truth that became through Jesus Christ, the faith that looks down into the perfect law of liberty, has light for its garment; its very robe is righteousness." On this the twenty-third aphorism in Aids to Reflection, Coleridge has this comment: "Herein the Apostle places the preeminence, the peculiar and distinguishing excellence, of the Christian religion. The ritual is of the same kind, though not of the same order, with the religion itself—not arbitrary and 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.

I myself can hardly conceive a working Ethical society of which the aim would not include in essentials the Apostle's definition of the pure service of religion. We might characterise it as the aim of being in the world and yet not of it, working strenuously for the improvement of mundane affairs, and yet keeping ourselves, as the Apostle says, "unspotted of the world"—that James 1:27

When the time called Christmas came, while others were feasting and sporting themselves, I looked out poor widows from house to house, and gave them some money.

—Fox's Journal (1645).

Thinkers of the most different schools and sects would probably agree that true charity demands of us money, but also something more than money: personal service, sacrifice of time and thought.

—Sir Leslie Stephen, Practical Ethics, p7.

James 1:27

The moment we care for anything deeply, the world—that is, all the other miscellaneous interests—becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping oneself "unspotted from the world"; but lovers talk of it just as much when they talk of the "world well lost".

—G. K. Chesterton.

A white bird, she told him once, looking at him gravely, a bird which he must carry in his bosom across a crowded public place—his own soul was like that.

—Pater, Marius the Epicurean, vol1.

To have one chance in life, in eternity, for a white name, and to lose it!

—James Lane Allen, The Mettle of the Pasture, p404.

After I had spent a month in surveying the curiosities of this city [Venice], and had put on board a ship the books which I had collected in Italy, I proceeded through Verona and Milan, and along the Leman lake to Geneva. The mention of this city brings to my recollection the slandering More, and makes me again call the Deity to witness, that in all those places in which vice meets with so little discouragement, and is practised with so little shame, I never once deviated from the paths of integrity and virtue, and perpetually reflected that, though my conduct might escape the notice of men, it could not elude the inspection of God.

—Milton, The Second Defence.

I firmly believe that it is in keeping our honour spotless that we best perform our duty, both to ourselves and to others—of course I mean honour in its purest and highest sense. Our chief business in this world is with ourselves: "Keep yourselves unspotted from the world". This I know is not at this time a fashionable doctrine.

—J. H. Shorthouse.

References.—I:27.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No2313. H. Rix, Sermons, Addresses and Essays, p73. J. Laidlaw, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p214. B. J. Snell, The Widening Vision, p113. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p408. T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p261. W. Ogg, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p408. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p456; ibid. (5th Series), vol. ix. p220. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— James , p397.