Bible Commentaries

God's Gifts

James 1:5-8.)

What do we want?—"wisdom." What is the exhortation?— "ask" for it. God never refused wisdom. God cannot refuse that gift. He can refuse wealth. He can refuse honour, he can refuse even health, but he cannot refuse wisdom. He lives to give wisdom; he lives to complete spiritual miracles; he lives to redeem. Let us be careful that we do ask for wisdom—not for mere information, but for that quality of mind which discerns the good from the bad, the right from the wrong, the true from the false; that quality of mind which takes in things in their entirety. I find so many people who are clever only in points. They are too sharp to live. For some points they have a perfect genius, but they have no circular action of brain, their brain does not swing around a horizon; it sees a lamp, it sees a bird, it sees some particular feature with marvellous distinctness, but it never takes in the invisible, the uncalculated, the possible, or the impossible; its processes are not complete and comprehensive processes, they are flashes of the mind, intuitional action; they do not represent largeness, not to say completeness, of view; that is mere cleverness; it is commercial or mechanical ability: but philosophy, genius, slow-going calculation says, I must take in all the points, the one will colour the other, there is a process of equipoise and readjustment and correlation. Fools cannot understand this, and therefore they are flying out at all inclines and angles, and doing all sorts of erratic and unprofitable things.

Wisdom is a large gift, quiet, solemn, majestic, rich in resource, enduring in patience. Yet the sharp man is often applauded, when the slow-plodding mind is left behind, because it cannot move with sufficient velocity. It is marvellous how one quality of mind is often mistaken for another, and how the man of information is often put in the chair, and the man of inspiration is left somewhere at the backdoor. Information is nothing but a momentary convenience: inspiration sees central principles, philosophic beginnings and genesis of things, and is always right because the accident comes, goes, changes colour and attitude, and disappears, but he who grasps the centre and reality of things has a permanent sovereignty; he will not always be standing at the backdoor; the poor, little, clever, well-informed chairman will be dropped out of his chair, and probably nobody will care to go back and bring him up again. Inspiration, or James 1:19-27

THIS word "wherefore" leads us to inquire what the Apostle has been talking about. What was his last sentence? "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Wherefore"—but is it not a feeble "Wherefore"? Is there any vital connection between the doctrine of James 1:18 and the doctrine of James 1:19? In the18th verse we are called to the sublime doctrine of regeneration, or the new birth, the new manhood; in that verse we are reminded that God of his own will begat us with the word of truth; there we touch the point of doctrinal sublimity; this is the very crown of the work of Christ; here is the new race, here is the seed of the Second Adam: but in James 1:19 we are told that because this is so we are to be swift to hear, and slow to speak. There is no sublimity in this exhortation; these are the most elementary aspects of discipline, decency, and self-control. How can we connect the new birth with the simple act of hearing well, and speaking slowly, hesitantly, in a tone of dubiousness and uncertainty? Yet there must be some connection, because of this "Wherefore," which the critics have endeavoured to modify a little, and to set in a new angle, so as not to necessitate a distinct sequence, as if James 1:19 belonged to James 1:18. But it does. James 1:19 is elliptical. That is to say, it leaves out something which the spiritual understanding can easily supply. If James was not an elliptical writer, he yet wrote so tersely, he packed his sentences so closely, that his Epistle is about the longest letter to be found in the New Testament,—not longest in point of number of words, but boundless, endless, in suggestion, in that glimpse power by which a man skims over all the hills to see the lands that roll and fructify in faraway horizons. Let us fill up James 1:19 in the spirit of James 1:18 :—Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear this word—the word of truth by which we are begotten: let him listen with his soul, for the music never ceases; let him be slow to speak, let him keep his opinions a long time until they mellow and ripen, and become sound doctrine, and really seized hold of by the heart, and kept and treasured as the very word of God: do not let him begin too soon to talk, to chatter, to join in the general theological fray, and to speak words he has only heard by the outward ear, and that have not yet got a thorough housing in his heart, his confidence, his love; and especially let us be slow to wrath, and keep ourselves out of those little fuming controversies in which bigots almost frizzle themselves to death, thinking that if they get angry the universe will be kept from tilting over. It is not an exhortation to listen with the outward ear, or an exhortation to speak slowly, or to wait until everybody else has spoken; the injunction directs itself wholly to the word of truth in the18th verse, and calls upon us to be lifelong students of the word, and when we do speak to speak with our souls" whole conviction and undivided love.

The Apostle gives a reason for the suppression of wrath. "For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." Yet we think it does. It is sometimes almost comical to see into what uncontrollable paroxysms of earnestness some people will get into about nothing; and it is instructive to notice how much emphasis is thrown away; all the minor parts of speech, the conjunctions and adverbs and prepositions, all-important in their own places, are made to carry such disproportionate burdens. Do give God some opportunity of working in his own universe. Do not fear that the Church is going down because some man leaves it, or because all men leave it. You cannot injure the Church. We have taken occasion in this People's Bible to say that there can be no weak Church, there can be no poor Church. We betray our own worldliness, and narrowness of outlook, and dimness and obscurity of vision, by talking of Christ's Church as in some cases very poor, very weak. Never! Blessed be God, there can be no weak Church; thrice blessed be God, there can be no poor Church. The moment men begin to attach these limiting and patronising adjectives to the word "Church" they fall from heaven, they are no longer stars of the morning. Given two poor creatures that have not a shilling between them who yet truly love Christ, and live in fellowship with him, and they are neither weak nor poor; but the moment they get the idea that they are a weak Church, they are so far lost; then they go a-begging. Let the word "Church" tower out above all words that would limit and define and qualify it. The Church is but another aspect of Christ. His poverty was an element of his influence. But the wrath of man comes to play precisely where we open a way for it by the use of such words as weak and poor. Stand still, and see the salvation of God. "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree: yet"—and say was ever satire so finished, so complete—"he passed away, and lo he was not; yea, I sought him, and he could not be found." So shall it be with all the enemies of the Cross, with all the assailants of the kingdom of heaven, concerning Christ, as concerning his type, it shall be said, "His enemies will I clothe with shame: but upon himself shall his crown flourish." Nothing depends upon our anger. Is it worth while getting angry with an atheist? Is it really equal to the occasion, looking at its sublimity and at all its higher indications and uses, for a whole Christian community to be boiling with unutterable rage because the heathen have imagined a vain thing? Peace is an element in our power. Faith is quietness, profound belief is repose: if thou, poor fussy James 1:21 :—

"Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls." ( James 1:21)

James is as strong upon the "word" as John is. They may be holding out that expression so as to catch different aspects of it, but it is still the word—the word eternal, or the word incarnated, or the word written, or the word spoken: but still the word; the word of truth, the engrafted word. But we can do nothing with this word until we ourselves are clean. We cannot take God's kingdom into our souls along a path that has been unprepared for its coming and its progress. "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare." So here we have a negative work to do, which is in reality a work of preparation; we must get rid of all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness. Who can hear, if his ears are filled with wax? We must prepare the ear for hearing, lest it can only catch some distant rumble as of inarticulate thunder, and not finer, tenderer, minor music, that whispers its way into the listening and eager heart. We cannot receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save our souls, if we have come to it in the abundance of our prosperity, and in the self-gratulation of our progress, saying, We are men in authority, and can say to this James 1:25). That is easily done? No. Many men look into the Bible and see nothing; because the Bible will not yield its riches of wisdom and suggestion to the merely casual observer, who says he will glance at it, he will look into it, he will bestow some attention upon it. That is not the meaning of James. Looking into, in this case, means two things: first it means stooping; then it means the attitude of peering, intent looking, never taking the eyes off. You thought it was a casual glance, a "looking in" as we use the expression in familiar conversation: whereas it means the stoop of prayer, the penetrating, peering look that says in its very attitude, I am expecting something, it will come presently; do not disturb me: if I turn my eyes away for one moment I may miss it; do not distract me. All language is pictorial. When the great dictionary is written it will be a dictionary of pictures; there need not be much letter-press. At first, of course, words had to be made and remade, and they were fashioned on the pictorial idea; so here we have a man looking—peering ought to be the word—"for whosoever peereth." Have we ever peered into God's Book? We have the same idea in this expression—"into which things the angels desire to peer." They do not glance at them in the course of some flight to distant regions, paying but casual attention to some transient mystery, but they look with all their might; all their nature becomes a faculty of vision. The true hearer in the Church is listening with every part of his body. He will not know until the process is over how his hands are clinging, clinching, and in what attitude he has been sitting the last half-hour; because his soul has been peering, has been on the outlook, on the watchtower; has been saying to itself, "If I look closely I shall see the beauty of the King." So the Apostle is still on the same subject. We are not dealing with "swift to hear, slow to speak," in the commonplace sense of those terms: the Apostle still fixes his mind on the word of God, called in the25th verse "the perfect law of liberty."

"And continueth therein." The word "therein" in our version is written in italics, we may therefore strike it out, and read: "and continueth"—in the perfect law of liberty? No. Continueth in what?—in peering, in looking, in directing to God's testimony a penetrating and undivided look. You have missed much in the Bible because you were not looking just then; you lost one sentence in the discourse, and therefore you lost the whole; you missed the opening prayer, therefore the rest of the service was an embarrassment or a mystery. Blessed is that servant who begins at the beginning, and holds on, persists, continues, peers. Let there be no wavering. "He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double-minded James 1:27

The word "religion" here means religious service. Not religious doctrine, not religious profession of a merely nominal kind; but religious service, activity, conduct. This rendering of the text does not do away with faith, theology, doctrine, or spiritual conviction of any kind; the text is not speaking about that line of things at all. We want a ritual, a ceremonial, a code of action: Very good, says James; if you want that, here it is,—pure ritual, pure religious service, real, honest, useful religious conduct is this. How many persons there are blessed or unblessed with aesthetic taste in religious ritual! What a marvellous study the religious antics of some men afford! They like a splendid service. James the Apostle says, So be it; here is the splendid service, without trumpet or drum or clash of metal, without colour or pomp or studied attitude, here it is: make room at the table for the orphans, gladden by your presence and assistance the houses that have been desolated by death,—pure religious service is this. Yet how to get rid of that little imp of æstheticism, the bowing and beckoning and posturing and rising and falling and intoning, and only omniscience knows what besides! James looks on and says, You think you are religious—pure religious service does not lie along that line at all: the orphans are round about the synagogue hungry and thirsty, or shivering with cold; pure religious service is to make room for them. That is not æstheticism, that does not lie along the genius of flowers and other emblems of nothing. But James is nothing if not practical; he is nothing if not stern, downright real, almost commercial. In James" church we seem to hear the clash of the scales as they go down upon its counter, and we hear his own voice, so clear and definite in tone, saying, We are wanting, we must have more, this will never do: you are weighed in the balance and found lacking. But we were very aesthetic; we took the Lord's Supper upon an empty stomach; we always looked towards the east when we were doing certain things, and toward the west when we were not doing them; we always perfumed the air of the church; we always went in at one door and came out by another: does that stand for nothing? Nothing! Pure religious service, real, downright, honest piety is this, To destroy the hunger of your neighbourhood, and make the desolate sing for joy. We have always been hard upon the Unitarians; we have expelled people from the church for not pronouncing "Shibboleth" with a good emphasis on the h; if any man omitted the h we simply turned him out of church: our motto was, Sound doctrine: does that go for nothing? Nothing! That is not pure religious service. Of course, if James was mistaken, there is an end of the matter; if James had no right to speak on the subject, why quote his text at all? why not override him, or depose him, or ignore him, or forget him? If James has any status in the Church at all, he says that pure religious service, the right programme, is this: "To visit the fatherless," literally the orphan. You should increase your family by feeding the orphans; you should enlarge your service by looking out for real poverty and calling it to your hospitality; you should say Whom can I make happy this day? where can I disperse the cloud, or mitigate the storm, or lighten the weight of the burden? what blind folk can I lead across the thoroughfare, that they be not overrun or injured? where can I invest my soul's truest love of man, because truest love of God? And although you do not know the language of flowers, although you do not know the language of emblems at all, yet you will be regarded in the heavens as having rendered a pure religious service.

But this is very legal; and there are persons who would die rather than be legal in piety. They have a prejudice against that word "legal," principally arising, as nearly every prejudice does, from not knowing what it means. There is nothing so difficult to get rid of as ignorance. Ignorance dies hard. You cut it in two, but still both the pieces begin to wriggle; you have only two worms instead of one. You cut ignorance up syllable by syllable, but every syllable lives, and comes back and sets up a little house of its own. Ignorance is not dispersed by intelligence, paradoxical as that statement may seem to be. A man may know better, and yet retain his ignorance in the form of a prejudice. If you push him and test him intellectually, he will say at the last, I acknowledge that to be so in fact: but what I feel is this. Then he will tell you the action of some deadly superstition upon his soul. The last enemy which shall be destroyed in the Church is superstition. Many persons are afraid of good conduct, lest it should take somewhat from the honour of Christ: on the contrary, I look upon Jesus Christ as the fountain and inspiration of all good conduct. Wherever I find really good conduct, I find Jesus Christ; I say, No man can call Jesus the Lord, and no man can do the works of Jesus, but by the spirit of Jesus, although he may not know it. I will not admit that man can make any other than a waxen flower. Let me find a real flower anywhere, and I will call it a child of the sun; let me find a waxen flower anywhere, and I will say, You keep out of the sun's way, the sun is your enemy, he will kill you with his burning look. There is a morality that is not moral, that we do not praise or even civilly recognise; we denounce it as semblance, hypocrisy: but wherever there is a real morality, a true manner of the soul, a genuine attitude of reverence, worship and aspiration, resulting in beneficence of conduct, we say, This is the garden of Christ, this is a section of Calvary. It is interesting to watch all those persons who are afraid that if they behave too well they will take somewhat from the honour of Jesus. That is an immoral state of mind; our object should always to be to create under the action of the Divine Spirit a simple, massive, noble character.

How is that character to be cultivated? By acts of service. How is a man to be strong enough to stand upright? By stooping down a great deal. The gospel always proceeds after such methods, saying, If a man would save his life, he must lose it; if a man would serve Christ, he must take up his Cross and follow him; if a man would be really dignified, he must be graciously condescending; if any man would be truly religious he must have a large household of orphans and desolate lives. Perhaps there are some who do not understand such doctrine; in a sense I am not sorry for it, in another sense I regret it very much. If the understanding of metaphysics would interfere with the operation of charity, I should regret that understanding unspeakably: it any man should be so taken up with the metaphysics of Christianity as to neglect its morals, I should describe that man as acting foolishly and suicidally. There are persons who do not know the meaning of the word "metaphysics," but they will not be kept out of heaven on that ground. I am not sure that it is a word worth knowing. The metaphysicians have never been a very lovely or united family: one generation goeth and another generation of metaphysicians cometh, and when the next generation comes it begins to denounce the one that is gone. One longheaded, shrewd, farsighted metaphysician has settled everything and published a book upon it; another metaphysician has arisen and torn him all to pieces, and wondered how in the inscrutable providence of God such a man was ever permitted to live; and no sooner has that boaster uttered his gasconade than there rises up immediately behind him another, and he takes him by the neck and shakes him over the pit of his own ruin. So that, on the whole, I am not extremely careful that men should trouble about metaphysicians and metaphysics until the orphans are all fed, and the sore in heart are all healed, and the last shadow has been chased away from the house and the life; then you can begin what is not worth beginning. Pity the man who is so anxious about doctrine that he absolutely forgets the matter of practice. If any man who commits himself to a holy life ignores the existence of doctrine, then he ignores himself. Doctrine, in some form or under some initial aspect or ministry, exists behind everything else: thought first, then word, then deed; that is the succession of action, not in metaphysics only, but in practical life.

Have you ever helped a really poor man? Then you have prayed; you are not an atheist although you thought you were one, you are not even an agnostic, though you had quite an inclination towards that new Greek formation. You have become almost tired of the old Greek "Atheist," because that word had acquired a bad reputation morally; but "Agnostic" was a sort of clean rag, and you thought you might flutter that as if it bore a strange device. But if you have been feeding orphans, you are not even agnostics, you are Christians. Jesus went about doing good, always doing good. He took up little children in his arms; when he set them down again there were men and women, kings and queens. He broke bread, and multiplied it as he gave it away. He never sent anybody from himself to buy or get anything; he had everything in his own soul and in his own gift. Christianity covers a very wide area of life; we may have thought it only covered a point or two here and there, whereas it covers the whole space of being, so that if a man shall dry a tear from the eyes of sorrow the angels shall say, Behold he prayeth! That is not the end, that is but the beginning, but with such a beginning a glorious end must eventuate, it cannot be kept back long; no man can do these works except the Father be in him and with him, and the very doing of these works will lead on and on until the worker clasps the Christ and says, What is all I have done to this work of thine, thou bleeding Son of God, Priest of the universe?

James is very moral, he is quite a schoolmaster in discipline. He is indeed the martinet of the Church. He will not allow a man to be cleanly on the whole, saying, Taking life as it goes, and looking upon the average of things, I think you may be allowed to pass. He takes up the garment, and looks at it through a microscope,—and what an enemy that microscope is to everything that wants to hide itself! When we go back to James and say, We have fed a hundred orphans to-day, and called at places that death had emptied, and kindled a fire on the cold hearthstone in every instance, now may not we go to heaven? he says, No, let me look at your garments. Oh, that demand! There are plenty of kind-hearted souls, naturally impulsive in the right direction, who would feed any number of orphans if you would not look too critically into their lives. May we not hold the garment a little distance off and say, There, who can find fault with that? is it not right? James says, It is not for you to hold the garment, I must hold it in the name of the Judges , and I will tell you, after due criticism tomorrow, precisely the condition of the robe. You thought from the beginning of this exposition that the whole matter was going to resolve itself into one of charity, as who should say, There are orphans: here is bread; I can spare it, therefore take it. No man can be charitable in giving that which he can spare; love does not begin so long as you can "spare" it. It is when the man says, I cannot very well spare this, but I cannot keep it back from him who loved me and gave himself for me,—that is charity. "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity vaunteth not itself, doth not behave itself unseemly, is not puffed up... charity never faileth." Charity does everything but fail. Charity is sometimes mistaken for lunacy; charity is sometimes mistaken for simple exaggeration; and there have been some men who have called it ostentatious—bad men, who see themselves in everything as in a looking-glass, doubling their hideousness or giving some new aspect to their perversity.

But now we have come to a section of the thought which means travail, almost punishment Here is spiritual judgment; here is a criticism of motive. Who can put his motive into the fire and wait until it drops out and take it up again, saying, Behold the fire hath found no dross in this inspiration? In proportion as we are pressed along this direction do we need everything that is evangelical. It is at this point the gospel comes in to supply all our lack. We say to the Apostle, representing the true Judges , Why not acquit us at the point of having visited the orphan and the widows in their affliction? can we not be spared the remainder of the trial? The Apostle says, No: now the garment must be searched, and the searcher must look for spots. Who can stand? Not one.