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 Division 
 
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LECTURES 
 
 THE EPISTLE OF JAMES. 
 
PRINTED BY MURRAY AND GIBB 
 FOR 
 
 WILLIAM OLIPHANT AND CO., EDINBURGH. 
 
 HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO LONDON. 
 
 m'gLASHAN and gill, DUBLIN. 
 
 DAVID ROBERTSON, GLASGOW. 
 
 / 
 
lectures!* ^^^ ^ ^-910 
 EXEGETICAL AND PEACTICAL 
 
 THE EPISTLE OF JAMES: 
 
 WITH A NEW TRANSLATION OF THE EPISTLE, AND NOTES ON THE 
 GREEK TEXT. 
 
 Key. EGBERT ''jOHNSTONE, LL.B., 
 
 ARBROATH. 
 
 ANSON D. R RANDOLPH & CO., 
 770 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 
 
UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CONGREGATION 
 
 OF 
 
 PRINCES STREET, ARBROATH, 
 WITH MUCH AFFECTION, 
 
 BY 
 
 THEIR FRIEND AND MINISTER, 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE aim of the author, in writing this book, has been to 
 produce such an exposition of the Epistle as might 
 be useful to Christian readers generally, and might at the 
 same time give some special help to students of the ori- 
 ginal. These objects are by many deemed all but incom- 
 patible with each other ; and certainly there is very much 
 hazard, in trying to attain both, of failing to a considerable 
 extent to attain either. But that the combination, which 
 has always seemed to the author a desirable one, ca7i be 
 made with success, has been proved by the acknowledged 
 usefulness, and this as regards both objects, of several recent 
 expository works of the kind, — such, for example, as those 
 of the late venerated and beloved Dr. John Brown. In the 
 present attempt a little novelty has been introduced in regard 
 to arrangement, which the author trusts may in some measure 
 obviate the difficulties. This consists in the placing in a 
 division of the book by themselves, of all, or almost all, the 
 discussions and remarks which can be intelligible or interest- 
 ing only to persons acquainted with Greek. 
 
 The expository lectures, which occupy the larger part of 
 the volume, were, in substance, delivered from the pulpit in 
 ordinary course of Sabbath ministration. They have since, 
 however, been re-written, and in the course of transcription 
 
viil Preface. 
 
 considerable changes have been made. Some subjects have 
 been treated at greater length than when the discourses were 
 preached ; whilst of others the illustration has been shortened, 
 the original fulness appearing less suitable for a book than 
 for a spoken address. The introductions, which in most cases 
 simply repeated in a brief form the main points brought out 
 in the previous lecture, have been omitted ; and, to secure 
 continuity of exposition, the practical inferences and applica- 
 tions, which usually constituted the conclusions, have also 
 been left out, — the practical character of the whole Epistle 
 seeming to render the retaining of these less needful or de- 
 sirable than had it been largely doctrinal. The basis of the 
 lectures is a careful exegesis, — an endeavour to ascertain the 
 exact shades of thought which the Divine Spirit intended by 
 the words He gave to the apostle. By all who believe not 
 merely that the Word of God is in the Bible, but that the 
 Bible is the Word of God, close attention to the precise force 
 of words and phrases will not be deemed misspent labour. 
 At the same time, the author's aim has been not to write a 
 mere commentary on words, but to bring the apostle, with 
 his human sympathies and his divine inspiration, clearly and 
 fully before the reader, as a friend and counsellor, whose 
 statements and appeals have weight and interest for us as 
 well as for the men of his own time. 
 
 In the new translation of the Epistle, which stands first 
 in the volume, the aim has been to exhibit, with as little 
 deviation as possible from the Authorized Version, the pre- 
 cise sense of the original, according to the best authenti- 
 cated text. The text which has been followed is, in the 
 main, that of Alford;^ but in a few passages the balance of 
 
 1 It may perhaps be permitted to the writer, penning this preface while 
 the death of Dean Alford is still but recent, to express the gratitude which, 
 as a student of the Bible, he has long felt to that distinguished editor and 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 probability has seemed to the author to preponderate in 
 favour of a different reading from his. Now and again, in 
 the course of the lectures, in the illustration of passages of 
 the Epistle where the meaning of the original was, in the 
 author's judgment, different from that given by the Authorized 
 Version, but so slightly as not to call for discussion, the 
 rendering of this new translation has been quoted without 
 remark. This is mentioned here, to explain what might 
 perhaps otherwise seem an oversight. 
 
 In preparing the Notes on the Greek Text, the author's 
 original intention was to confine himself almost wholly to 
 questions immediately connected with translation. But these 
 naturally suggested the discussion also of points bearing 
 rather on exegesis ; and thus the notes grew under his hand, 
 until they came to embrace a reference, more or less full, to 
 almost everything in the Greek Text of the Epistle which 
 calls for special comment. He trusts that these fruits of his 
 grammatical investigation of this portion of the Word will be 
 somewhat helpful to other students. 
 
 In the study of the Epistle, the author has worked with the 
 aid of Calvin, Beza, Bengel, De Wette, Wiesinger, Huther, 
 Lange and Oosterzee, Alford, Poole's Synopsis and Bloom- 
 field's Digest, and of the less strictly critical expositions of 
 
 expositor of the New Testament, and his sense of the great loss sustained 
 by the whole church of Christ in this country through his comparatively 
 early removal. Nothing is easier than to point out serious faults in Alford's 
 great work ; but in the mind of any one who candidly considers the vast- 
 ness of the enterprise he undertook, the only wonder will be that the faults 
 are not more numerous and more grave. The influence of his labours, in 
 the way of exciting increased interest in the study of the Word of God, has 
 undoubtedly been very wide and deep throughout all sections of the church 
 in Great Britain, — more, probably, than that exerted by any other com- 
 mentator of bur time; and the catholicity of his spirit, and clear evangeli- 
 cal ring of his utterances everywhere on the central truths of our faith, 
 are fitted to have a most bracing and healthflil effect on all his readers. 
 
 b 
 
X Preface. 
 
 Manton, Neander, Stier, Jacobi, Wardlaw, and Adam. He 
 has been specially indebted to Wiesinger, Huther, Wardlaw, 
 and Adam. 
 
 He owes very hearty thanks to his friend, the Rev. David 
 Kinnear, B.A. Lond., of Dalbeattie, who has most kindly 
 aided him in the revision of the proof-sheets. 
 
 It only remains to commend to God this humble attempt 
 to expound a portion of His Word. May He forgive its errors 
 and defects, and graciously employ it in some m.easure as 
 an instrument for advancing the cause of truth and righteous- 
 ness ! 
 
 United Presbyterian Manse, Arbroath, 
 March lo, 1871. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 New Translation of the Epistle, 
 Notes on the Greek Text of Chapter i., 
 
 in., 
 
 IV., 
 
 v.. 
 
 Introduction, .... 
 
 Supplementary Note, 
 Lect. i. — ^Joy in Trials, 
 
 II. — Wisdom through Prayer, 
 III. — Rich Poor and Poor Rich, 
 IV. — Genesis of Sin, 
 V. — Good Gifts from God, . 
 VI. — Regeneration, 
 VII. — Receiving the Ingrafted Word, 
 VIII. — The Spiritual Mirror, . 
 IX. — True Religious Service, 
 X. — Respect of Persons, 
 XI. — Unity of God's Law, . 
 XII. — ^Judgment by the Law of Liberty, 
 XIII. — Faith without Works, 
 XIV. — ^Justifying Faith a Working Faith, 
 XV. — Responsibility of Teachers, 
 
 Chap, 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 7 
 
 
 17 
 
 
 26 
 
 
 32 
 
 
 39 
 
 
 47 
 
 
 56 
 
 1-4, 
 
 67 
 
 5-8, 
 
 78 
 
 9-12, 
 
 88 
 
 13-15, 
 
 100 
 
 16, 17, 
 
 no 
 
 18, 
 
 118 
 
 19-21, 
 
 131 
 
 22-25, 
 
 142 
 
 26, 27, 
 
 156 
 
 1-7, 
 
 169 
 
 8-11, 
 
 183 
 
 12, 13, 
 
 192 
 
 14-19, 
 
 202 
 
 20-26, 
 
 214 
 
 I, 2, 
 
 228 
 
xu 
 
 Contents. 
 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LeCT. XVI. 
 
 — Power of the Tongue, . . Chap. 
 
 iii. 
 
 3-6, 
 
 244 
 
 XVII. 
 
 — The Tongue Untameable and In- 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 consistent, .... ,, 
 
 iii. 
 
 7-12, 
 
 258 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 — Earthly Wisdom, . > . . , , 
 
 iii. 
 
 13-16, 
 
 269 
 
 XIX. 
 
 — Heavenly Wisdom, . . . ,, 
 
 iii. 
 
 17,18, 
 
 278 
 
 XX. 
 
 —Origin of Strifes, ... ,, 
 
 iv. 
 
 1-3, 
 
 293 
 
 XXI. 
 
 — Worldliness Enmity to God, . ,, 
 
 iv. 
 
 4-6, 
 
 304 
 
 XXII. 
 
 — Submission to God, ... , , 
 
 iv. 
 
 7-10, 
 
 318 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 —Evil Speaking and Judging, . ,, 
 
 iv. 
 
 II, 12, 
 
 330 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 — Vain Confidence regarding the 
 
 
 
 
 
 Future, , . . . ,, 
 
 iv. 
 
 13-17, 
 
 340 
 
 , XXV. 
 
 —Woes of the Wicked Rich, . , , 
 
 V. 
 
 1-6, 
 
 348 
 
 XXVI.- 
 
 — Patience thi-ough the Blessed Hope, ,, 
 
 V. 
 
 7,8, 
 
 364 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 -—Murmuring against Brethren, . ,, 
 
 V. 
 
 9-11, 
 
 374 
 
 XXVIII.- 
 
 —Swearing, . . . . ,, 
 
 V. 
 
 12, 
 
 385 
 
 XXIX.- 
 
 —Prayer and Praise, ... ,, 
 
 V. 
 
 13-1S, 
 
 396 
 
 XXX.- 
 
 —Confession and Prayer, , . . ,, 
 
 V. 
 
 16-18, 
 
 409 
 
 XXXI.- 
 
 —Error and Conversion, . . ,, 
 
 V. 
 
 19, 20, 
 
 422 
 
NEW TRANSLATION 
 
 EPISTLE OF JAMES. 
 
 1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to 
 the twelve tribes which are in the dispersion, wisheth joy. 
 
 2 Count it all joy, my brethren, whenever ye fall into divers 
 
 3 temptations, knowing that the proof of your faith worketh 
 
 4 endurance. But let the endurance have a perfect work, 
 that ye may be perfect and entire, in nothing lacking. 
 
 5 But if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who 
 giveth to all with simplicity and upbraideth not, and it 
 
 6 shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing 
 wavering ; for he that wavereth is like a billow of the sea, 
 
 7 driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man 
 
 8 think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. He is 
 a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. 
 
 9 But let the brother that is humble m estate glory in his 
 
 10 exaltation, but the rich in that he is humbled, — because 
 
 1 1 as a flower of grass he shall pass away ; for the sun rose 
 with the burning wind, and withered the grass, and the 
 flower thereof fell off, and the grace of the fashion of it 
 perished : so also shall the rich man fade away in his 
 ways. 
 
 1 2 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation ; for when 
 he hath been proved, he shall receive the crown of life, 
 which He promised to them that love Him. 
 
 13 Let none say, when he is tempted, I am tempted from 
 God ; for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth 
 
 14 He any one. But each is tempted, when he is drawn away 
 
 1 5 of his own lust and enticed : then lust, having conceived, 
 bringeth forth sin, and sin, being finished, beareth death. 
 
 A 
 
2 New Translation of 
 
 1 6, 17 Be not deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good 
 gift and every perfect boon cometh down from above, from 
 the Father of the lights, with whom is no variableness or 
 
 18 shadow from turning. Of His own will begat He us with 
 the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits 
 of His creatures. 
 
 19 Wherefore, my beloved bl^ethren, let every man be swift 
 
 20 to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath ; for the wrath of 
 
 21 man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore, 
 putting away all filthiness and rankness of malignity, re- 
 ceive in meekness the implanted word, which is able to 
 save your souls. 
 
 22 But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving 
 
 23 yourselves : because if any be a hearer of the word, and 
 not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in 
 
 24 a mirror ; for he beheld himself, and is gone his way, 
 
 25 and straightway forgot what manner of man he was. But 
 he that looked into the perfect law of liberty, and con- 
 tinued, being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of work, 
 this man shall be blessed in his doing. 
 
 26 If any man think himself to be observant of religious 
 service, whilst not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his 
 
 27 own heart, this man's religious service is vain. Pure and 
 undefiled religious service before our God and Father is 
 this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to 
 keep one's self unspotted from the world. 
 
 n. I My brethren, let it not be with respect of persons that 
 ye hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of 
 
 2 glory. For if there come into your synagogue a man with 
 gold rings, in gay clothing, and there come in also a poor 
 
 3 man in filthy clothing, and ye have respect to him that 
 weareth the gay clothing, and say. Sit thou here in a good 
 place, and say to the poor man, Stand thou there, or sit 
 
 4 under my footstool ; — was not this to waver within your- 
 
 5 selves and to become judges with evil thoughts ? Hearken, 
 my beloved brethren : did not God choose the poor in the 
 world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which 
 
 6 He promised to them that love Him ? But ye dishonoured 
 the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you, and is it not 
 
 7 they that drag you into courts of judgment ? Is it not 
 they that blaspheme the worthy name which was named 
 
 8 upon you ? Yet if ye fulfil the royal law, according to 
 
The Epistle of James. 3 
 
 the Scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye 
 9 do well. But if ye have respect to persons, ye work sin, 
 
 10 being convicted by the law as transgressors. For who- 
 soever hath kept the whole law, but hath offended in one 
 
 1 1 point, is become guilty of all ; for He that said. Do not 
 commit adultery, said also. Do not kill : now, if thou 
 commit no adultery, but kill, thou art become a trans- 
 gressor of the law. 
 
 12 So speak ye, and so do, as they that are to be judged by 
 J 3 the law of liberty ; for the judgment will be without mercy 
 
 to him that showed no mercy : mercy glorieth against 
 judgment. 
 
 14 What is the profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath 
 
 1 5 faith, but have not works ? Can the faith save him ? If a 
 
 1 6 brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and 
 one of you say unto them. Depart in peace, be warmed 
 and filled, but ye give them not the things which are 
 
 1 7 needful to the body, what is the profit ? So also faith, if it 
 
 1 8 have not works, is dead in itself. Yea, a man will say. 
 Thou hast faith, and I have works : show me thy faith 
 without the works, and I will show thee by my works the 
 
 1 9 faith : thou believest that God is one ; thou doest well : — 
 the demons also believe //, and tremble. 
 
 20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without the 
 
 21 works is barren? Was not Abraham our father justified 
 by works, when he offered Isaac his son upon the altar ? 
 
 22 Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by the 
 
 23 works the faith was made perfect; and the Scripture was 
 fulfilled which saith, And Abraham believed God, and it 
 was imputed unto him for righteousness ; and he was called 
 
 24 the Friend of God. Ye see that by works a man is justified, 
 
 25 and not by faith only. And in like manner was not Rahab 
 the harlot also justified by works, when she received the 
 
 26 messengers, and sent them out another way ? For as the 
 body without a spirit is dead, so faith without the works is 
 dead also. 
 
 III. I Be not many teachers, my brethren, knowing that we 
 
 2 shall receive greater condemnation. For in many things 
 we all offend : if any man offend not in word, this is a 
 
 3 perfect man, able to bridle also the whole body. When 
 into the horses' mouths we put the bits, that they may 
 
 4 obey us, we turn about also their whole body. Behold, 
 
4 New Translation of 
 
 the ships also, though they be so great and are driven of 
 fierce winds, yet are turned about with a veiy small helm, 
 
 5 whithersoever the desire of the steersman listeth. So also 
 the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. 
 
 6 Behold, how great a forest a little fire kindleth ! And the 
 tongue is a fire, that world of iniquity. The tongue 
 maketh itself among our members that which defileth the 
 whole body, and setteth on fire the circle of our life, and 
 
 7 is set on fire by hell. For every nature both of beasts 
 and of flying things, both of reptiles and of things in the 
 
 8 sea, is tamed and hath been tamed by man's nature ; but 
 the tongue can no man tame : it is a restless evil ; it is 
 
 9 full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we our Lord and 
 Father, and therewith curse we men, which are made after 
 
 ID the similitude of God : out of the same mouth proceedeth 
 blessing and cursing. These things, my brethren, ought 
 
 1 1 not so to be. Doth a fountain send forth out of the same 
 
 1 2 opening the sweet and the bitter ? Can a fig-tree, my 
 brethren, bring forth olives, or a vine figs ? Neither can 
 salt water bring forth sweet. 
 
 1 3 Who is wise and endued with knowledge among you ? 
 Let him by his good way of life show his works in meek- 
 
 14 ness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter envying and factious- 
 ness in your heart, do not glory against and lie against the 
 
 1 5 truth. This wisdom is not such as descendeth from above, 
 
 16 but is earthly, sensual, demon-like; for where envying and 
 factiousness are, there is confusion and every evil deed. 
 
 17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then 
 peaceable, gentle, easy to be persuaded, full of mercy and 
 
 18 good fruits, without wavering, without hypocrisy; and the 
 fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by them that make 
 peace. 
 
 IV. I Whence come wars and whence fightings among you ? 
 Come they not hence, even from your lusts, that war in 
 
 2 your members ? Ye lust, and have not ; ye kill and envy, 
 and cannot obtain ; ye fight and war. Ye have not, 
 
 3 because ye ask not ; ye ask and receive not, because ye 
 
 4 ask wickedly, that ye may spend it in your lusts. Ye 
 adulteresses, know ye not that friendship with the world is 
 enmity with God ? Whosoever, therefore, is minded to be 
 a friend of the world, maketh himself an enemy of God. 
 
 5 Or do ye think that the Scripture saith it in vain ? Doth 
 
The Epistle of James. 5 
 
 the Spirit that He caused to dwell in us long towards 
 
 6 envy ? But greater is the grace He giveth : wherefore He 
 saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the 
 
 7 humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the 
 
 8 devil, and he will flee from you ; draw nigh to God, and 
 He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye 
 
 9 sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. Be 
 miserable, and mourn, and weep : let your laughter be 
 
 10 turned into mourning, and your joy into dejection. Humble 
 yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will exalt you. 
 
 1 1 Speak not one against another, brethren. He that 
 speaketh against a brother, or judgeth his brother, speaketh 
 against the law, and judgeth the law. Now if thou judge 
 
 1 2 the law, thou art not a doer of the law but a judge. One 
 is the Lawgiver and Judge, He who is able to save and 
 to destroy ; but thou, — who art thou that judgest thy 
 neighbour ? 
 
 13 Go to now, ye that say. To-day and to-morrow we will 
 go to such a city, and will spend there one year, and will 
 
 14 trade, and get gain; (whereas ye know not what shall be 
 on the morrow, for what is your life ? For ye are a 
 vapour, which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth 
 
 1 5 away ;) instead of saying, If the Lord will, we shall both 
 
 16 live and do this or that. But now ye boast in your vain- 
 
 17 glory; all such boasting is evil. To him, then, that 
 knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. 
 
 V. I Go to now, ye rich men, weep howling over your 
 
 2 miseries that are coming on. Your riches are corrupted, 
 
 3 and your garments are become moth-eaten. Your gold 
 and silver is rusted utterly, and the rust of them shall be 
 for a testimony to you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye 
 
 4 laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the hire of the 
 labourers that mowed your fields, which is of you kept 
 back by fraud, crieth ; and the cries of them which reaped 
 
 5 are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye lived 
 in luxury on the earth, and revelled. Ye nourished your 
 
 6 hearts in the day of slaughter. Ye condemned — ye killed 
 — the Just One ; He doth not resist you. 
 
 7 Be patient therefore, brethren, until the coming of the 
 Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious 
 fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receive the 
 
 8 early and the latter rain : be ye also patient, stablish your 
 
The Epistle of James. 
 
 9 hearts, because the coming of the Lord is nigh. Murmur 
 
 not one against another, brethren, that ye be not judged : 
 
 JO behold, the Judge standeth before the doors. Take, 
 
 brethren, for an example of affliction and of patience, the 
 
 1 1 prophets, who spake in the name of the Lord. Behold, 
 we count them blessed which endure. Ye have heard of 
 the endurance of Job : behold also the end of the Lord, 
 because the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. 
 
 1 2 But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by 
 the heaven, nor by the earth, nor by any other oath ; but 
 let your yea be yea, and your nay nay, that ye fall not 
 under judgment. 
 
 13 Is any among you afflicted ? Let him pray. Is any of 
 
 14 good cheer ? Let him sing praise. Is any among you sick ? 
 Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them 
 pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the 
 
 1 5 Lord ; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick man, 
 and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he have committed 
 
 16 sins, it shall be forgiven him. Confess therefore your faults 
 one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may 
 be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth 
 
 17 much. Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we 
 are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it 
 rained not on the land for three years and six months ; 
 
 18 and again he prayed, and the heaven gave rain, and the 
 earth brought forth her fruit. 
 
 19 My brethren, if any among you be led to err from the 
 
 20 truth, and one convert him, let him know, that he which 
 converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a 
 soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins. 
 
NOTES ON THE GREEK TEXT.^ 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. I. In the translation of Paul's Epistles which is given in 
 Conybeare and Howson's admirable work, 8ov\os, connected as 
 here with Gfov or '1t]<tov Xpia-rov, is rendered 'bondsman.' Ab- 
 soluteness and permanence of subjection are, no doubt, ideas 
 intended to be suggested by the word, as distinguished from 
 vTTTjpeTTjs and 8idKovos ; and, had we any English word that would 
 express these without bringing the degrading thought of slavery 
 into association with that willing service of love which is the 
 only true freedom, such would be the right word. But ' bonds- 
 man ' is certainly unsuitable. 
 
 The definit'eness of iv rfj Stao-Tropg, an expression familiar to 
 the apostle's Jewish readers, requires a more definite represen- 
 tation in English than is given by the words of our authorized 
 version — 'which are scattered abroad.' 
 
 ' Greeting ' is an excellent rendering of xa'/'""? ^"^ indeed 
 commonly where the word occurs, as here, in a salutation, the 
 best. But in this place the xa'P"" so obviously suggested the 
 form into which the precept in the next verse is thrown, with 
 xapav, that it seems desirable to show the connection by the 
 
 ' The prominence given in these Notes, particularly in the first part, 
 to points immediately connected with translation is accounted for by the 
 fact, mentioned in the Preface, that the writer's original intention, in 
 planning this part of the book, was simply to support some renderings 
 in the New Version of the Epistle, the propriety of which might not be 
 altogether obvious. 
 
8 The Epistle of James. [ch. i. 3, 4. 
 
 translation. A somewhat marked characteristic of the whole 
 Epistle, indeed, is the frequency with which important and in- 
 teresting links of thought are indicated by the use of the same 
 or kindred words, — links which a translator must endeavour to 
 exhibit. A good illustration occurs in the XetTro/xei'ot with which 
 the fourth verse closes, and the Xeiirerai of the first clause of the 
 fifth. 
 
 3. 'Trying,' of the authorized version, is an unobjectionable 
 rendering of boKiiiiov, and this as regards not merely the root- 
 word, but the particular form ; for 8okihiov here has somewhat 
 the force of t6 SoKty^ta^eii/. ' Proof,' however, has been substi- 
 tuted in the new version, mainly to have a kindred word with 
 'proved,' which, for a reason explained in the note on the 
 passage, I have thought it necessary to introduce in the twelfth 
 verse as the translation of Sd/<t/xoy. 
 
 The sense of vnojiovr] is unquestionably somewhat wider than 
 that of ' patience.' In New Testament usage it means ' endur- 
 ance' or 'perseverance' in rehgious hope and devotedness. 
 See, for example, Luke viii. 15, xxi. 19; Rev. ii. 2, 3. Arch- 
 bishop Trench, in his Synonyms of the New Testament, has an 
 interesting essay on the exact meaning of the word, in which 
 he quotes a definition given by Cicero {De Inven. ii. 54) of 
 paticiitia and pcrseverantia : Paticntia est honcstatis met ntilifatis 
 causa reruvi arduarum ac difficilhim voluntaria ac diutiima 
 perpessio ; per sever antia est in 7-atione bene considerata stabilis 
 et perpetua permansio. 'Ynoixovrj is both of these in one. Pro- 
 fessor Eadie (on Coloss. i. 11) describes the word as denoting 
 'that tenacity of spirit which still holds on, and perseveres, and 
 waits God's time for reward or dismissal.' 
 
 4. 'Yttoimovt], anarthrous in the previous verse, has here the 
 article, having been made definite by its mention there. A 
 similar case occurs in ver. 15 ; but there it is clearly better to 
 leave the article untranslated, because afiapria is personified, 
 and the figurative representation would in English be destroyed 
 by the insertion of ' the,' whereas in Greek, where the article 
 is freely used with proper names, the image is not interfered 
 with. In no branch of Greek grammar have the investigations 
 
CH. I. 5, 6.] Notes on the Greek Text. 9 
 
 of modern scholars obtained more satisfactory and interesting 
 results than with regard to the use of the article : but in an 
 English version its force often cannot be given. In the latter 
 half of the second chapter of this Epistle there is a somewhat 
 unusual number of illustrations both of the delicate use of the 
 article, and of the difficulty to which a translator is exposed. 
 One can but exercise his best judgment, guided by the ascer- 
 tained grammatical principles and the course of the writer's 
 thought. 
 
 5. The position of StSoVros between rov and eeou bestows 
 on it a peculiar force, in the way of setting forth ' giving ' as 
 an attribute of the divine character well known to all the 
 apostle's readers. This, however, cannot be shown in an 
 English version. 
 
 'ATrXwy, in its connection with StSo'j^roy, has its exact meaning 
 illustrated by the use of the equivalent eV aTrXdr^Tt in Rom. xii. 
 8, and the fuller eV anXoTtjTt ttjs Kapbtas in Eph. vi. 5, respec- 
 tively rendered in the authorized version 'with simplicity' and 
 'in singleness of heart.' The specialty of the form of the 
 thought, and with this necessarily somewhat of its exquisite 
 beauty, are lost by the rendering ' liberally.' 
 
 6. As here used, SiaKplvetrfiai means ' to be at variance or 
 issue with one's self Its force in various applications will be 
 seen by referring to Matt. xxi. 21 ; Acts x. 20; Rom. iv. 20. 
 In the first two of these passages it is rendered by ' doubt ;' in 
 the last, very suitably in the connection, by 'stagger.' I am 
 disposed to think that in the places where James employs it 
 the ' waver ' of our translators (following Tyndale, who, how- 
 ever, so rendering it in the first clause of this verse, oddly 
 enough substitutes ' doubt ' in the second) is perhaps the best 
 word ; for it is not so much to the intellectual ' doubt ' that he 
 directs attention as to the instability of the affections and con- 
 duct, the moral ' swaying to and fro,' which really originates the 
 doubt, and is again intensified by it. Now this thought could 
 hardly be more exactly brought out than by ' waver.' Huther 
 says excellently, that ' whilst nia-ns says Yes, and ania-Tia No, 
 diaKpipeadai is the co-existence of Yes and No, with the No 
 
lo The Epistle of James. [ch. i. 8-10. 
 
 preponderant, and thus it leads to dniaTia.' It springs from 
 a dominant unwillingness to lean absolutely on the divine 
 strength, and must therefore be distinguished from weak but 
 real faith, and from those doubts and fears to which the man 
 of strongest faith is subject at times, but which the energy 
 of his faith conquers, as, to use Calvin's comparison in speak- 
 ing on this subject, 'ardor, qucR firmas radices Jecit, quatitur 
 quidem venti impulsu, sed non revellitiir, quin pot'ms suo loco 
 stabilis vianei.^ 
 
 It is perhaps desirable to distinguish the somewhat poetical 
 kXvScov from the ordinary Kvna by using ' billow ' instead of 
 ' wave ;' and, besides, it seems well to avoid the appearance 
 of a play of words ('waver' — 'Avave') which has nothing cor- 
 responding to it in the original. 
 
 8. This verse may be construed in three ways. 'Avrjp blyf/vxos 
 may be regarded as the subject, and what follows as the pre- 
 dicate, with the substantive verb understood. So our author- 
 ized version takes it, with Luther, De Wette, and many others. 
 Winer (Gram. § 59. 10), with whom agree Huther, Wiesinger, 
 and others, makes this verse a continuation of the previous 
 sentence, considering dvrjp to be in apposition with 6 avOpa- 
 TTos iKdvos. Alford, supplying the substantive verb, makes the 
 whole verse predicative. This last construction I am inclined 
 to think on the whole the most satisfactory, for a general 
 statement, such as the first gives, seems hardly so natural as a 
 special predication regarding the man already spoken of, and, 
 moreover, Si^j/vxos, both as importing into the discussion a new 
 and striking thought, and as being a rare word, perhaps coined 
 by James, appears to belong to the predicate rather than the 
 subject ; whilst the second construction hardly accords with 
 the usual simplicity of the apostle's style. 
 
 9. The ' glory ' which our translators have put in the margin 
 is certainly preferable to the 'rejoice' of their text, for this 
 latter exhibits only a part of what is involved in Kavxaa-dai. 
 Theile, cited by Huther, says, '^ Notio gloriandiinvolvit iwtas, i, 
 gatidendi; 2, cojifidentice ; t,, ^xterne express i.^ 
 
 10. Beza, Huther, Alford, and others, take 6 nlovaios here 
 
CH. I. lo.] Notes on the Greek Text. 1 1 
 
 not as qualifying 6 dSeXcpos repeated, but as meaning simply 
 ' the rich man,' assumed to be an unbeliever. Appeal is made 
 in support of this view to the fact that elsewhere in the Epistle 
 (ii. 6, V. i) James speaks of 'the rich,' as a class, as persecutors 
 of the Christians. On this view Kavxaadai, as repeated for this 
 clause, is taken ironically : thus Beza says it is to be under- 
 stood '' contraria significatione, idque non sine aspero sarcasmo, 
 pro TaireivocppoveiTco.^ Alford prefers to take the indicative Kav- 
 xarat. out of Kavxdcrdco; but this is Certainly harsh, and could 
 not, I think, be supported by any analogous construction in 
 the New Testament, unless John xv. 4 or Gal. iv. 12 supply 
 a shght approach to one. The Tar,fivco<ns is held to refer to 
 the destruction impending on all mere earthly grandeur (as 
 Beza has it, m depressione sui glorietur, brevi videlicet secutura), 
 or, by Alford, to the wealth itself, — Phil. iii. 19, third clause, 
 being referred to as explaining the thought. By Calvin, De 
 Wette, Neander, Stier, Wiesinger, and the majority of com- 
 mentators, 6 TvXovaios is regarded as qualifying 6 d8e'k(f)6s re- 
 peated, the Kavxdadm (repeated) taken literally, and the raneiva)- 
 <TLs supposed to designate the ' humbling ' of soul which God's 
 grace produces in His children. At first sight, certainly, as 
 Huther admits, this seems to be the apostle's meaning ; and on 
 the whole it appears to me that we should adhere to it. There 
 were unquestionably so/ne rich men in the primitive church 
 (see I Tim. vi. 17-19), though, as in all ages, particularly ages 
 of persecution, comparatively few : the argument, therefore, 
 against the ordinary view drawn from James's elsewhere speak- 
 ing of the rich being, as a class, non-Christian, has little or no 
 force. The chief real difficulty lies in our having out of ' the 
 rich brother' to take 'the rich man,' regarded simply as such, 
 as subject to napeXevcrfTai, and giving also to 6 TrXoiVto? in the 
 eleventh verse this latter sense. But through the fact of 6 dbeX- 
 (j)bs 6 TaTTiivos and 6 dtiK^os 6 TTkov(Tios being placed in antithesis 
 the differentia is brought so distinctly before the mind, that it 
 appears not unnatural to pass on to the thought of 6 ttKovglos 
 simply considered. Against the view of Beza lies mainly the 
 extreme unnaturalness, looking at the form of the antithesis, of 
 
1 2 The Epistle of J antes, [ch. i. i i-i 3. 
 
 not taking 6 Tr'kova-ios as qualifying a repeated 6 d8eX({)6s. That 
 Kavxda-dco, which in the first clause is a precept of love and 
 sympathy, should, as repeated for 6 irXovcnos, have, without any 
 warning given, the force of a stern withering sarcasm, — this 
 also appears harsh. 
 
 11. By the aorists the apostle throws his illustration into the 
 form of a tale regarding some particular clvdos xoprov on which 
 he had looked ; and the pathos of the little story is felt by 
 every reader. James, who, as is evident from the whole 
 Epistle, had in no small measure the imagination and suscepti- 
 bilities of a poet, loves to set his scenes before us in this way, 
 as real : compare verses 24th and 25th of this chapter, and 
 4th and 6th (ist clause) of the next. 'In no part of the 
 New Testament,' says Winer {Gram. § 40. 5), 'does the aorist 
 express what is wont to be done.' 
 
 By Kav(T(iiv may be meant simply ' burning heat ' (see Matt. 
 XX. 12) ; but the way in which the word is joined to 6 i]Kio^, as 
 if exhibiting an additional parching agent, rather suggests the 
 sense in which it is often employed by the LXX. as represent- 
 ing the Hebrew CTp, the scorching wind from the Arabian 
 deserts. In Jonah iv. 8 we have a very similar description of 
 the conjunction of the powers of sun and hot wind. 
 
 12. i^oKnio^., and the other words from the same root, origi- 
 nally indicate ' testing ' simply, but afterwards * bearing the test 
 successfully.' ' Tried,' the rendering of the authorized version, 
 shows also a similar development of meaning, for example, in 
 the phrase 'a tried friend :' but in this place it seems ambigu- 
 ous, and therefore ' proved ' has been substituted, which whilst, 
 like ' tried,' corresponding to So/ct/xos in its primary sense, sug- 
 gests with more certainty the further thought, ' ^/proved.' 
 
 'o Ki^ptos is wanting in Codices A, B, and Sin. ; in C the 
 article is wanting ; and some cursive manuscripts and versions 
 read 6 eeo'r. Trom the variations it seems probable that there 
 was originally no expressed subject, which copyists supplied by 
 difterent glosses. 
 
 13. ' K-no Qiov is distinguished from invh Qtov as indicating a 
 remoter cause, while the latter marks the immediate agent: 
 
CH. I. 15-17.] Notes on the Greek Text. 13 
 
 compare ver. 14, vtto rTJs tSias e7ri6vfiias f^e'XKoixevos. None but 
 the most daringly impious could ever allow the thought iinu 
 GeoC TTfipd^ofxai to enter his mind : but James refers to delu- 
 sions that even a professing Christian might entertain. See 
 Winer, Grain. § 47, on oko. 
 
 The natural meaning of the verbal adjective dnelpaaTos, in 
 the connection in which it stands here, is beyond doubt, as it 
 seems to me, 'untempted' or 'untemptable ;' and the avros 
 expressed in the following clause, implying an antithesis, sup- 
 ports this view of the meaning, which accordingly is held by 
 the majority of commentators. De Wette, Alford, and others 
 (among whom Alford, through oversight, includes Huther), take 
 the word in its more usual sense, * unversed in.' On the 
 meaning of the word and its construction, see Winer, Gram. 
 
 § 30- 4- 
 
 The Se after Tretpa^et marks a contrast to the 'temptableness' 
 which in the previous clause has been denied of God, or, more 
 exactly, to a thought naturally connecting itself with that : 
 ' Now if God were temptable, it would be conceivable that in 
 some circumstances He might tempt, — but.^ 
 
 15. In the original the verisimilitude of the metaphor is 
 complete, emdvula being feminine. In English, whilst to mark 
 the personification by using a feminine pronoun would perhaps 
 be to give this point too much prominence, yet it is certainly, 
 at the least, desirable to avoid the ' it ' which the authorized 
 version needlessly obtrudes. 
 
 With regard to the force of the article in rj apapria, see note 
 on ver. 4. 
 
 For the second ' bringeth forth ' of the authorized version, 
 ' beareth ' has been substituted, simply because in the original 
 the apostle uses not the same word as before, but a synonym ; 
 and, whatever his reason, it seems better to show this. 
 
 16. In all the other places in the New Testament where 
 jjit] irKavaaBe occurs, it is rendered ' Be not deceived ; ' and a 
 reader of a version, as well as of the original, should have the 
 familiar apostolic appeal recalled to his mind. 
 
 17. ^oais and 8a)pr]p.a claim to be represented in a translation 
 
1 4 The Epistle of James, [ch. i. 19-21. 
 
 by different words ; and if (as is suggested by the frequent use 
 of Swpeav in the sense of ' gratuitously ') a somewhat greater 
 prominence given to the idea of freeness be the specialty of 
 hapri\ia as contrasted with SoViy, then ' boon ' answers the re- 
 quirements well. From the course of the apostle's argument 
 a certain stress seems to be laid on the adjectives aya6r\ and 
 T^iiov ; but such a rendering as ' Every gift that is good, and 
 every boon that is perfect,' would perhaps make the emphasis 
 upon them too great. The words from Trao-a to reXeiov consti- 
 tute a perfect hexameter, which Winer {Gram. § 68) con- 
 siders to have been 'a current poetic sentence, from an 
 unknown source.' 
 
 "Avcodev icTTi Kara^aivov appear to go together in construction, 
 if we may judge from the similar case in iii. 15. But the parti- 
 ciple and substantive verb are not exactly equivalent to Kara- 
 ^aivei. The participle brings out a quality of the gifts spoken 
 of, and has almost the force of ' such as cometh.' This force 
 of the participle is very obvious in iii. 15, from the antithesis. 
 But this thought could hardly be exhibited here in an English 
 version, without giving it undue prominence. 
 
 ig. In the beginning of this verse the reading is somewhat 
 doubtful. Codices A, B, C have as the first word lorre ; then, 
 after the words of address, A has Ka\ ea-Tco, and B, C have eorrw 8e. 
 "nare is found in K, L, and Sin. There are also other minor 
 variations, showing that through some cause the text had fallen 
 into confusion here. Huther, Lange, and Alford read I'ore; 
 but, whether rendered as an indicative or an imperative, this 
 seems hard, unnatural, altogether unlike James's style. "Qa-re is 
 approved by De Wette and Wiesinger, and has been returned 
 to by Tischendorf, who had previously favoured the other. 
 
 21. Dean Alford's suggestion, that ' the agricultural similitude 
 in tfi(f)vTos may have influenced the choice of both the words 
 pvTTapia and Trepto-o-et'a,' appears to me to explain them better than 
 any other view of their reference that I have seen. The use 
 of eiJ.(pvTos in this verse is illustrated by words of Herodotus 
 (ix. 94) regarding a certain Evenius, who, after some incidents 
 
 which are described, avriKa ejxipvTOU p.avTiKi)v elx^} wore Koi ovvo- 
 
CH. I. 22-25.] Notes on the Greek Text. 15 
 
 fxaa-Tos yeveadai. Compare also the use of the sister word 
 (Tvfi(f)VTos in Rom. vi. 5, 
 
 22. De Wette, Wiesinger, Lange, and others, adhere to the 
 rigid rendering of ylveadf, ' become ye.' Theile (cited by 
 Wiesinger) remarks, '■Censuit (apostolus) certe JioJidum esse sivc jwn- 
 diwi satis esse.'' Meyer also throughout his Commentary on the 
 New Testament regularly gives this rendering of the imperative 
 of yiveadai. But Huther shows conclusively, as it seems to me, 
 that this is in many places unnatural, and that practically, in 
 New Testament usage, yivov is equivalent to 'la-di, — the explana- 
 tion being found in the fact referred to in Theile's Jioiidiim satis 
 esse above, that the believer should always be ' becoming ' in 
 larger measure what he already ' is ' in some measure, wise, 
 and holy, and happy. 
 
 23. In TO 7rp6(ju)7rov T^? yevea-ecos the genitive is one of origin 
 — 'the face derived from his birth, given him by his birth.' 
 ' Natural,' of the authorized version, is an excellent rendering. 
 Tyndale has ' bodily,' which is also good, though not so good 
 as the authorized, because further from literalness. The 
 Geneva has the odd rendering, ' his lively face.' 
 
 24. Regarding the aorists, see note on ver. 11. The per- 
 fect dne\r}\v6ep between the aorists shows that, as the man 
 appears before the apostle's mind, he is engaged in the busi- 
 ness or the pleasures of life, the matters which really deeply 
 interest him ; and thus the thought is, ' he beheld himself, and 
 (as you see) he has gone away from the mirror to his business 
 or his enjoyments, and (at and from the moment he left the 
 mirror) he straightway forgot what manner of man he was.' 
 The conjunction of perfects and aorists is fully and admirably 
 explained by Winer, Gram. § 40. 4. 
 
 25. In this verse, which describes the wise hearer of the 
 word, the historical form is continued from the preceding, 
 but now with participles. llapaKv'^as seems, according to its 
 etymology and its use in i Pet. i. 12, to indicate steady 
 earnest looking. This differs from the classical usage of the 
 word : see reff. in Liddell and Scott, sul> v. 
 
 iiapa[x{ivas is not, as the authorized version has it, ' continueth 
 
1 6 The Epistle of y antes, [ch. 1,26, 27. 
 
 therein^ that is, in the law, in obedience to the law. This 
 compound would be unsuitable for the expression of such a 
 thought, the proper form being emiiveiv. compare Gal. iii. 10 
 and Acts xiv. 22. Besides, in the contrasted descriptions of 
 the wise hearer in this verse and the foolish in the preceding, 
 there is a complete parallelism : ' beheld himself,' ' looked 
 into;' 'is gone his way,' 'continued;' 'straightway forgot,' 
 ' not forgetful.' This clearly shows the meaning of napanelvas 
 to be ' continued looking.' 
 
 'AKpoaTrjs iTn\7](Tpovr)s is a Hebraism of a kind not uncommon 
 in the New Testament, in which the genitive of a substantive 
 is used to express quality, in place of an adjective. The words 
 here are therefore equivalent to aKpoarrjs inikr^aixav. Compare 
 ii. 4; Luke xviii. 6 ; Phil. iii. 21. 
 
 In TToirjrfjs epyov the Sense seems general, ' a doer of work,' 
 not 'of f/ie work.' It is true that above, in ver. 22, TroirjTa). 
 Xoyov means ' doers of t/ie word ;' but Xoyos (compare its use 
 in ver. 18) is one of the words (such as vopos, prjpa, and many 
 others) which had come to be regarded almost as proper 
 names, and were often written without the article even whilst 
 the meaning was quite definite. "Epyov does not belong to this 
 class. 
 
 26, 27. 'Religion ' and 'religious,' as representing BprjaKeia and 
 Bprja-Kos, were probably not seriously misleading at the time our 
 authorized version was made, but they certainly are so now. 
 For the meaning of these Greek words, see Trench, Sj/ionyms 
 of the New Testament, First Series, pp. 200-202 ; for the 
 proper rendering • of SoKet here. Trench On the Authorized 
 Version of the New Testament, pp. 123, 124; for the old mean- 
 ing of ' religion ' and ' religious,' Eastwood and Wright's Bible 
 Word-Book, sub vv. 
 
CH. II. I.] Notes on the Greek Text. 17 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. I. By some commentators this verse is considered to 
 be a question, — ' Do ye hold,' etc. ? But the definiteness 
 of the apostle's assumption, in the verses that follow, of the 
 guilt of his readers in the matter, makes it altogether impro- 
 bable that we have here the uncertainty of a question, parti- 
 cularly a question introduced by /^j), which as an interrogative 
 always retains somewhat of its usual force as the subjective 
 particle of negation, at least to the extent of doubt ; — thus here, 
 ' I cannot suppose that you hold ;' ' Surely you do not hold, — 
 do you ?' 
 
 The words eV Trpoa-conoXrjyl/lais have plainly, from their posi- 
 tion, the principal emphasis in the verse ; and in English this 
 can hardly be shown without lengthening out the imperative 
 by 'let.' The apostle's lively 'in, among, environed by, 
 respectings of persons,' cannot, I think, be adequately repre- 
 sented in idiomatic English without a paraphrase somewhat 
 out of place in a simple version; and we must content our- 
 selves with the comparatively prosaic 'with respect of per- 
 sons.' 
 
 The construction of ttjs 86^t]s is difficult. By Erasmus and 
 Calvin it is regarded as a genitive of origin, with the sense, 
 ' in consequence of, or according to, the opinion, or estimate 
 (which you form of individuals),' and is joined closely to fxrj 
 iv Trpoa-conoKrjyl/iais ex^re. Bengel, appealing to Luke ii. 32, 
 Isa. xl, 5, Eph. i. 17, i Pet. iv. 14, takes 86^a as an appel- 
 lation of Christ, * the Glory,' and construes the genitive, there- 
 fore, in apposition with rov Kvpiov. Laurentius and Lange 
 make the genitive dependent on Xpiarov, ' the Messiah of 
 glory,' — which certainly seems an altogether untenable con- 
 struction, seeing that it breaks up what, from the absence of 
 the article before Xpidrov, appears evidently intended for the 
 
 B 
 
1 8 The Epistle of James. [ch. ii. 2. 
 
 familiar proper name, 'Jesus Christ.' Some put t^.? So^?;? 
 imder the government of ttio-tiv, but with variety of view re- 
 garding the meaning : ' the glorious faith ' (Gataker and Hot- 
 tinger; compare Phil. iii. 21) ; 'faith in the glory of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ' (Grotius and others); 'faith springing from, or 
 based on, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the glory,' that is, as Paul 
 has it in Rom. viii. 18, 'the glory which shall be revealed in 
 us ' (Huther). By most commentators the words are held to 
 be dependent on Kvpiov, a connection which our translators, 
 following Tyndale, have exhibited by the repetition of 'the 
 Lord,' and the Geneva version by the rendering, 'our glo- 
 rious Lord Jesus Christ' Bengel's is by far the simplest 
 construction ; but the use of ' the Glory ' as a personal appel- 
 lation is not really supported by the passages he refers to. 
 On the whole, the common view of the construction seems 
 the soundest. The government by Kvpiov of the two genitives 
 r]fiS>v and 86^r]s has no difficulty, similar constructions occurring 
 several times in the New Testament : see Winer, Gram. § 
 30. 3, note 3, and compare particularly 2 Pet. iii. 2 in any of 
 the critical editions. The insertion of 'Itjo-ow y;.pi<Trov between 
 the governing and the governed noun gives beyond question 
 considerable harshness to the construction ; yet if, as may be 
 inferred from i Cor. ii. 8, the name, ' the Lord of glory,' was 
 a not uncommon designation of Jesus in the apostolic age, 
 James and his readers might naturally enough carry on the 
 thought of 'the Lord' to 'of glory,' even though the name 
 comes between. 
 
 2. The aorist subjunctives in this and the following verse 
 appear to indicate priority, according to a very common 
 use of this part of the verb : ' if there have come in,' etc. 
 The apostle places himself in thought at the close of the 
 series of incidents he supposes, and says to his readers, ' If 
 all these things have happened, — now, looking back over 
 them, what state of heart in you do you think they revealed ?' 
 The aorist subjunctives thus come in very naturally, and also 
 the aorist indicatives in the fourth verse. In an English ver- 
 sion, however, the exact translation of a series of aorist sub- 
 
CH. II. 3,4.] Notes on the Gj'eek Text. 19 
 
 junctives like this would sound very heavily and awkwardly, 
 and therefore it seems better to render them by the subjunc- 
 tive of the present, though after this the past in the questions 
 of the fourth verse comes in with less naturalness. Dean 
 Alford, desiring to exhibit the priority, yet feeling the awkward- 
 ness of the literal translation, has, both in the notes on the 
 passage in his Greek Testament and in his Authorized Version 
 Ra'ised, fallen into inconsistency, rendering the aorists in the 
 second verse with a 'have,' and those in the third by the 
 present. 
 
 ^vvaywyr] is found in the New Testament a few times in the 
 sense of ' a congregation, assembly ;' but in the great majority 
 of instances it designates the place, 'a meeting-house.' The 
 name so familiar and dear to the Jewish Christians before 
 their conversion to Christianity seems to have been, very 
 naturally, retained by them for their Christian churches ; and, 
 to preserve the association, the ordinary rendering when the 
 reference is to a Jewish place of religious assembly, ' synagogue,' 
 should plainly be retained here. 
 
 For x/Ji^o-oSaKTwXios what we know of the luxurious habits of 
 the rich in the age when the Epistle was written suggests the 
 rendering 'with gold rings,' rather than 'with a gold ring.' 
 The form of the compound (which is found only here) gives 
 no information on this point ; for whilst, for example, ^pwo""- 
 Trrepos means 'with golden wings,' xP^^-oCcovos means 'with a 
 golden girdle.' 
 
 3. The meaning of the last part of this verse may be, 'and 
 say to the poor man. Stand thou there, or (say to him), 
 Sit under my footstool' But it seems preferable to take the 
 whole from 'Stand ' to the end, including the 'or,' as words of 
 address to the poor man, — the utter carelessness of the officers 
 of the church as to where he put himself, provided only that it 
 was not ' in a good place,' being thus forcibly set forth. 
 
 4. With regard to the use of the aorist exemplified in this 
 verse, see note on chap. i. 11 ; and respecting the particular 
 point of view here, see above, on ver. 2. As to the meaning 
 of hiaKp'iveaBai, see note on chap. i. 6 ; and as to the force of the 
 
20 The Epistle of James. [ch. ii. 5, 6. 
 
 genitive in Kpirai BiaXoyia-ncov TTovqpav, note on chap. 1. 25. The 
 exact meaning of SiaXoyto-/x6f, as here employed, will be found 
 illustrated in Luke v. 2 r, 22. ' Evil-minded judges ' might fairly- 
 enough, though a little loosely, represent Kpirai bioKoyia-pau 
 7rovTjpu>i> ; but from James's tone in regard to 'judging' else- 
 where in the Epistle, it seems probable that here he means to 
 point out two faults, — the needless constituting of themselves 
 'judges' at all, and specially the allovv^ing 'evil thoughts' to 
 have possession of them in connection with their judging. It 
 seems better, therefore, to keep his own order of words. But 
 'of evil thoughts' is so misleading in English, that I have 
 deemed it better to use ' with ' instead of ' of.' 
 
 5. Ta Koa-pco, which is the best supported reading, may mean 
 'in the judgment of the world' (Winer, Gram. § 31. 4, a); 
 but the antithesis suggests rather that more common use of the 
 dative, according to which it expresses the sphere or range to 
 which a general predicate is to be confined {e.g. Rom. iv. 20, 
 fveSwapoidrj rfj Triarei) — ' in (that is, as regards) the world.' 
 
 In f^eXe^aTo ttXovctiovs the construction is exactly analogous to 
 that in Rom. viii. 29, irpoapia-e avfifi6p(j)ovs, ' did predestinate fo 
 be conformed.' 
 
 There is no contrast in this verse between ' rich in faith ' and 
 ' poor in faith,' but between ' poor as regards worldly estate ' 
 and ' rich spiritually.' We see, therefore, that Iv tt'ktth does 
 not (like eV eXe'ei in nXovaios &>v iv iXeei, Eph. ii. 4) indicate the 
 material of which the wealth consists, but the sphere or 
 element in which the wealth is enjoyed and recognised. A 
 literal English translation is ambiguous, but not more so than 
 the Greek. 
 
 6. 'AripaCfiv means ' to s/iorc contempt;' whereas 'despised,' 
 the rendering of the authorized version (as indeed of all the 
 principal English translations except the Rheims), expresses 
 merely the feeling. In other places of the New Testament 
 where the word occurs it is generally translated ' dishonour,' 
 and nowhere but here by ' despise.' 
 
 The avToX in this verse might bear the translation 'them- 
 selves,' but that in the next would have no meanins:, so 
 
CH. II. 8-14.] Notes on the Greek Text. 2 1 
 
 rendered. It is clear, therefore, that the force of both is such 
 as has been given in the version. 
 
 8. The connection intended by the adversative /xeWot is not 
 clear. Tyndale, followed by our authorized version, has left 
 it untranslated, apparently considering it as simply equivalent 
 to /xeV ; but Wycliffe, rightly, has ' netheles,' and the Rheims 
 ' notwithstanding.' By Calvin, Beza, Huther, Wiesinger, and 
 others, the sense is supposed to be semi-ironical, thus : ' If, 
 however, (in caring for these rich as ye do,) ye are (according 
 to your own conceptions) fulfilling the royal law, so far well.' 
 Alford takes the meaning to be, ' If, however, (notwithstanding 
 these cruelties and blasphemies of the rich,) ye (in your dealings 
 with them as with others) fulfil the royal law, that is well.' A 
 simpler and more natural view than either of these seems to 
 me to be, that the apostle merely pauses for a moment in his 
 strain of exposure and rebuke of sin, to throw in the kindly 
 remark that, though addressing his readers generally in this 
 strain, still he knew there were many among them who did not 
 merit condemnation in reference to the matter in hand : ' If, 
 however, (lamentably prevalent as I know such respect of persons 
 as I have described to be,) ye (any to whom this letter comes) 
 fulfil the royal law (by avoiding respect of persons), ye do well.' 
 
 9. To afiapriav epyd^eade there is an expression exactly parallel 
 in Matt. vii. 23, ol ipya^oyavoi. TTju dvofiiav, rendered in the 
 authorized version 'ye that work iniquity;' and there is no 
 reason why we should deviate here from the ordinary transla- 
 tion of epydCea-dac. The phrase with this verb, as Theile ob- 
 serves, '' gravius fere est qiiam dfiaprlav noLe'iu, dp-apTaveiv.^ 
 
 13. Regarding the rendering of KaraKavxarai., compare note 
 on chap. i. 9. 
 
 14. In 77 TTia-Tis the use of the article is precisely the same as 
 in chap. i. 4, 17 i)Tvop.ovr], and i. 15, 17 afiapria, 'faith' having been 
 made definite by being mentioned immediately before. Con- 
 sequently, though the rendering ' t/iis faith ' would be some- 
 what too strong, yet the meaning plainly is ' the faith which the 
 man supposed says he has ' — ' such faith as there is in a case of 
 the kind supposed.' The question is not one of universal 
 
2 2 The Epistle of yames. [ch. ii. 15-18. 
 
 reference, 'Can faith save?' but, 'In the case supposed, can 
 the faith there found save ?' The speciahy of the reference is 
 shown further by the pronoun ahrov. 
 
 15. The connection marked by Se here is somewhat like 
 this : ' The answer to the question whether faith that has not 
 works can save a man may perhaps not be altogether obvious 
 to you, but take a similar case with regard to charity, and you 
 will see the matter clearly.' Our English idiom, far less lively 
 than the Greek in the indicating of the more subtle links of 
 thought, requires 8e to be translated by ' and ' in many cases 
 where the contrast is but slight, as, for example, at the be- 
 ginning of ver. 16 ; and in the case before us the omission of 
 the conjunction seems necessary in translation. 
 
 The construction which we have in this verse, of a predicate 
 in the plural with a subject consisting of singulars disjoined by 
 T], is frequently found in classical Greek (see Klihner, Gram. 
 § 242, note 4) ; but the other and more strictly logical con- 
 struction is the usual one in the New Testament (see Winer, 
 Gram. § 58. 6, b). The unexpressed thought leading a writer to 
 make the predicate to such a subject plural (in the case before 
 us, 'a brother or sister, or any number of them ') is well shown 
 here by the use in the next verse of the plural of the pronoun 
 of reference, airo^s. A very similar logical irregularity occurs 
 in the i6th verse, in the use of the second person plural Score, 
 where, in strict correspondence to the e'lTrr) ns of the former part 
 of the sentence, the third person singular should stand. 
 
 17. The authorized version, with many of the older com- 
 mentators, takes Kad'' iavTTjv here as employed in the same way 
 as Kad' eavTov in Acts xxviii. i6, regarding it as equivalent to 
 Ka6' iavTrjv cvaa. Wycliffe, Tyndale, and the rest of the earlier 
 translators (following the Vulgate, /;/ semet ipsa), render the 
 phrase by ' in itself,' connecting it immediately with ' dead.' 
 The position of the words and the course of thought decidedly 
 support this view of the meaning, — ' dead in itself,' — not as 
 regards the production of fruit merely, but to the very root. 
 
 18. The way in which aXX' epet rts is used in i Cor. xv. 35, 
 and the similar epeTs oZv fioc in Rom. ix. 19, naturally leads a 
 
CH. II. 19.] Notes on the Greek Text. 23 
 
 reader to think that here also we have an objector to the 
 apostle's argument introduced ; and accordingly various at- 
 tempts have been made by commentators (Kern, Huther, and 
 others) to explain the words that follow on this view. These 
 explanations seem all forced and unnatural, except perhaps 
 that according to which o-i — Kd-yw are taken as equivalent to 
 f/XXo? — Ka\ aXXos, and the remark supposed to be, ' One has 
 faith, and another works (and perhaps either may save a man).' 
 Then what follows is held to be James's answer to this obser- 
 vation. But the curtness and obscurity of the words, supposing 
 them to have been intended to bear this sense, are sufficient, 
 when we remember James's habitual explicitness of style, to 
 make it in the highest degree improbable that such was his 
 meaning. The words, naturally understood, plainly express 
 James's own sentiments ; and hence the opinion of the great 
 majority of interpreters has been that, simply to give liveliness 
 to the discussion, he introduces an interlocutor on his own side 
 of the question. The force of dWa here seems to be ' But 
 further,' introducing a yet stronger statement, and is excellently 
 given by the 'yea' of the authorized version, or Tyndale's 
 'yea, and.' A very similar use of dXka occurs in Mark xiii. 
 24. With regard to the use of the future epel, where a less 
 decided form might seem more natural, see Winer, Gram. 
 § 40. 6. 
 
 19. In the New Testament 6 StajSoXos is regularly used for 
 Satan, the prince of the powers of darkness, Saifiouiov (or, a few 
 times, daifiav) as regularly, as here, for one of his subordinate 
 agents. Clearly, therefore, a translation also ought to recog- 
 nise one ' devil,' many ' demons.' 
 
 Alford objects to rendering Tna-Tevova-i here 'believe ?/,' 
 saying that the meaning is not merely 'believe this truth,' 
 but ' ^/lus far are believers in common with thyself.' But this 
 'thus far' (which, of course, must belong to the thought, — 
 otherwise the specification in the previous clause of the par- 
 ticular truth believed would be altogether irrelevant) is, as it 
 seems to me, exactly what is suggested by ' it.' For the idea 
 of ' thus far ' the Greek idiom did not in a case like this, where 
 
24 The Epistle of James, [ch.il 20-24. 
 
 it is quite unemphatic, employ a pronoun ; ours does. Similarly, 
 in German, Luther and De Wette both have '■ glauhen es.' 
 
 ' Tremble ' is somewhat too weak for (PplcTo-ovcn, (fipia-a-eiv 
 being exactly equivalent to the Latin horrere. But we seem 
 to have no better representative, neither 'shudder' nor 'quake' 
 being quite suitable. 
 
 20. Both the readings viKph. and apyr] have good manuscript 
 authority, but the latter is decidedly to be preferred, because 
 while there was considerable chance of a transcriber changing 
 it into vfKpa, which occurs in verses 17 and 26, there was very 
 little of his altering v^Kph into a word which does not occur 
 elsewhere in the Epistle, and indeed but rarely in the New 
 Testament. 'Ap^j) plainly does not mean here merely ' idle ' in 
 regard to the works of holiness that faith ought to produce, for 
 thus we should have only the statement that ' faith without 
 works is without works.' It is obviously used with a reference 
 to the great question which is the subject of the whole discus- 
 sion, ' Can a faith which has no works save a man' (ver. 14)? 
 'Apyi), then, means ' unproductive, unfruitful ' of the blessings 
 of salvation ; and thus the connection with what follows is 
 most natural and close, for the apostle proceeds to show that 
 in all cases where faith is known to have been justifying, 
 ' productive ' of salvation, such as those of Abraham and Rahab, 
 it evidently had works. As apyh^ is used by Peter (2d Epist. 
 i. 8), it seems very nearly equivalent to the aKapiros with which 
 it is joined : and in classical authors the word is applied to 
 'unproductive' capital or fields (see, in Liddell and Scott's 
 Lexicon, references to Xenophon, Demosthenes, and Isocrates). 
 
 23. Where the passage here cited originally occurs (in Gen. 
 XV. 6) the LXX. begin the sentence with koI ; but where it is 
 quoted in the New Testament, both here and in Rom. iv. 3, Se 
 is substituted. Winer considers that this was done of set pur- 
 pose, and that it ' renders enia-Tevde more forcible, not to say 
 almost antithetical' {Gram. § 53. 10, 2). 
 
 24. Moj/oj/ belongs closely to Trlarecos. A construction some- 
 what similar is that of the adverbial phrase Kad' vTrep^okrju with 
 oSoi/, in I Cor. xii. 31. Compare Winer, Gram. § 54. 2, If. 
 
CH. II. 25, 26.] Notes on the Greek Text. 25 
 
 25. In fK^oKova-a, as distinguished from eKuiyi^aa-a, the idea 
 of urgency is no doubt implied, but this cannot well be given 
 in an EngHsh version without overstating it. ' Thrust forth,' 
 Alford's rendering (after that of the authorized version in Acts 
 xvi. 37, which there is suitable enough), seems to me objection- 
 able on this ground. 
 
 26. Winer {Gram. § 18. 8) refers to to awfia x^P'S' nvevfxaTos 
 as a case where the article may with equal propriety be either 
 employed or omitted. Xaph rod nvexmaros would mean ' with- 
 out the spirit' connected with the particular body in question, 
 whilst, as the words stand in the passage, the thought is in 
 form more general, though, of course, substantially the same. 
 
26 The Epistle of James. [ch. iii. i- 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. I. On the New Testament use of the imperative of 
 ylveaBai, See note on I. 2 2. IloXXot may be regarded as be- 
 longing to the subject, limiting it — 'Be not, many of you, 
 teachers ;' or it may be considered a part of the predicate 
 — 'Be ye not a multitude of teachers' (compare the use of 
 TToXXol ytVeff^m, ' to become a multitude,' Gen. vi. i, LXX.). De 
 Wette, Huther, and others, prefer the former; Beza, Schneck- 
 enburger, Lange, the latter, — which is evidently also the view 
 of the meaning set forth in the rendering of the authorized 
 version, and by Tyndale and the Geneva in their somewhat 
 paraphrastic translation, ' Be not every man a master.' If the 
 latter view of the sense be the true one, we can scarcely but 
 recognise in the form of the exhortation a touch of something 
 very like grave humour. There is no very strong argument to 
 constrain a decision either way, but probability seems to me 
 slightly in favour of the opinion that ttoXXoI belongs to the pre- 
 dicate ; and therefore, with only the substitution of ' teachers ' 
 for the now misleading 'masters,' I have retained the render- 
 ing of the authorized version, which Alford also has done, 
 though supporting in his note Huther's view. 
 
 2. IloXXa is ofteTi used adverbially in the New Testament, as 
 in classical authors, in the sense of 'often' (Matt. ix. 14) or 
 ' much ' (Mark i. 45). But here the apostle seems by the word 
 to indicate the many 7i)ays in which we may offend, from which 
 immediately afterwards one way, ev Xo'yw, is singled out for 
 special remark. It is to be regarded therefore as an accusative 
 of reference, ' in many things.' 
 
 3. 'iSoi-, with which the tcxtiis receptus begins this verse, has 
 very little manuscript authority; i'Se is better supported; but by 
 far the best authenticated reading is d 8e. The course of error 
 is obvious. A copyist writing to dictation might easily, from 
 
CH. III. 5.] Notes on the Greek Text. 27 
 
 the similarity of sound, substitute "ihc for d hi (comp. Rom. ii. 
 17, various readings), and then tSe might most readily be 
 changed into its synonym Ihov for the sake of uniformity, this 
 latter form presenting itself at the beginning of the next verse, 
 and also in the fifth. The connection marked by Se here seems 
 to be exactly of the same kind as in ii. 15, on which see note : 
 ' This may appear to you a very strange saying, that the man 
 who can control his tongue can bridle also the whole body ; but 
 an analogy may illustrate and enforce it, an analogy from man's 
 dealing with the horse, whose whole body is governed when the 
 tongue is brought under restraint.' In an English version, our 
 idiom requires the omission of the conjunction here, as in ii. 
 15. Et here has plainly the sense of 'if (as we regularly do),' 
 that is, very nearly, ' when.' The arrangement of words shows 
 the emphasis to rest on ruiv "nnraiv, the case of the animal 
 being adduced to illustrate that of man ; and an endeavour has 
 been made to exhibit this in the version also. 
 
 The link of thought shown in the original by xa^i-^ayi^yw^i- — 
 xaXivovs cannot be made very obvious in an English version ; 
 for we can neither without awkwardness put ' bridle ' instead 
 of ' bit,' nor employ such a compound as ' bridle-bit.' 
 
 5. Both oXiyov and tjXlkov, as the adjective to nvp, have good 
 manuscript authority, the latter somewhat the stronger. If 
 Tj'KiKov be read, then the natural rendering is, ' How great a fire 
 lights up how great a forest !' — the conflagration being looked 
 at in its ultimate extent, and the smallness of the spark that 
 originated it merely suggested by the context. So De Wette 
 translates. With this, however, as Wiesinger points out, the 
 verb dvdnTfi does not suit ; for ' consumes ' would be required, 
 whilst it means ' kindles.' Huther and Alford take rjXiKov in 
 the sense of ' how small,' translating ' How small a fire kindles 
 how great a forest!' But to employ the same word in one 
 sentence in the sense of ' how small ' and ' how great ' is cer- 
 tainly harsh, and altogether alien to James's ordinary style. 
 The form of expression in English most nearly corresponding, 
 'What a fire kindles what a forest!' is, if taken in this sense, 
 not nearly so strained as the Greek, because ' what a' is much 
 
28 The Epistle of James. [ch. hi. 6. 
 
 more a phrase of undecided signification than tjXlkos, which 
 always, in the first instance, clearly and distinctly suggests to 
 the reader ' how ^reaf ! ' Considering, then, how easily a mis- 
 take of eye or ear might lead a transcriber to substitute jjXikoi/ 
 for oXiyov, seeing that, as Bengel says, J>/a//a est alliteratio ad 
 rfK'iKTjv suhsequens, it seems best to hold (with Bengel, Kern, 
 Theile, Wiesinger) by the textus receptus. 
 
 By many v\r]v is taken in the general sense given by the 
 rendering in the text of the authorized version, 'matter.' So 
 Jerome {ifi Esai. 66), '■Parvus ignis qiiam grandevi succendit 
 mato-iam / ' So also Tyndale and the Geneva, ' How great a 
 thing a little fire kindleth !' Beza specifies '■ struem lignorum' 
 But certainly much more life and beauty are given to the 
 image if we take the word in its original sense, which our 
 translators have given in the margin as an alternative render- 
 ing, ' a wood ' or ' forest.' 
 
 6. Ourtus before the second jj yXaaaa having no good autho- 
 rity, some interpreters make the first clause of the verse a 
 short sentence by itself, and then join 6 Koo-/io<r to what follows. 
 Thus Neander translates : ' As the world full of unrighteousness 
 stands the tongue among our members, defiling the whole 
 body,' etc. But this seems a harsh construction, and it is better 
 to adhere to the ordinary, putting 6 Koa-fios in apposition with 
 
 the first Tj yXtocrcra. 
 
 The article before koo-hos means 'the (well-known).' Our 
 idiom commonly employs ' that ' in such a case, particularly 
 where, as here, we have after the predicate words which are, 
 and must be shown to be, not an addition to the predicate, but 
 in apposition with the subject. 
 
 Kadla-Tarai is here, and in iv. 4, most inadequately rendered 
 by 'is.' In 2 Pet. i. 8 the active of the verb is rightly ren- 
 dered by 'make,' and in Rom. v. 19 the passive by 'be made.' 
 So here and in the next chapter the middle voice (for middle 
 the form seems to be) has no doubt some such force as ' maketh 
 itself,' ' maketh himself The tongue is a bold and powerful 
 agent of mischief, which among the members 'takes the posi- 
 tion of,' ' steps forward as ' {Sie stellt sich hin, tritt aiif, Wie- 
 
CH. III. 6.] Notes on the Greek Text. 29 
 
 singer) the chief moral corrupter. Thus Kadia-TaTm, setting 
 forth strictly the initial movement, corresponds to avdnTei of 
 the preceding verse. 
 
 Wiesinger regards koX (pXayiCovcTa — koI (pXoyi^ojiivq as subor- 
 dinate to (TTTiKova-a, being explanatory of it, — ' both setting on 
 fire, etc., and being set on fire,' etc. This construction, though 
 legitimate, is not necessary, for the participles may all be 
 co-ordinate. But the fact that all three have but one article 
 shows them to belong very closely to each other; comp. iv. 
 II, 14. 
 
 The expression rov Tpo^ov Trj^ yevea-eas is difficult, and has 
 received a vast number of interpretations. The idea of a 
 'course' may be set aside at once, for 'to set a course on fire' 
 seems language that has no definite meaning. In the accented 
 manuscripts, too, we find rpoxw, not rpoxov : now the gram- 
 marians confine the sense of 'course' to the latter (Winer, 
 Gra7)t. § 6. 2). Tpoxo? is applied to anything circular, a 
 ' wheel, hoop, orb.' reVeo-i? means ' birth, origin,' with various 
 secondary applications. The closeness of the relation of the 
 participial clauses to each other (see above) seems to require a 
 reference to the individual life and character; and support to 
 a certain extent is given to this conclusion by the fact, that in 
 the only other place where James uses the word yivea-is (i. 23) 
 it means ' the birth' of the individual spoken of. ^Vo. are not 
 of necessity, however, led (with Wiesinger, who is brought to 
 this view of the meaning by his construction of the participles, 
 above mentioned) to deem tov rpoxov t^s yeveaecos as almost a 
 synonym for oXov t6 o-mpa, a sense which the figure cannot well 
 be brought to yield. If a reference to the individual must be 
 looked for, this at once sets aside the view held by many, 
 that by the image is indicated the succession of generations ; 
 and also the rendering of De Wette, Alford, and others, ' the 
 orb of the creation' (the words being taken as equivalent to t6v 
 kvkXov t^s KTicreccs), which appears, besides, too strong a hyper- 
 bole to be really effective for James's hortatory purpose. It 
 appears to me that something like ' the wheel ' (or ' the revolving 
 circle,' the thought of motion which we instinctively associate 
 
30 The Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 8- 1 4. 
 
 with 'wheel' being very prominent in Tpox°^-: through its etymo- 
 logical connection with rpix'^) 'of one's life' (a sense in which 
 yei/eo-ts is found in Plato : see De Wette), — or, with the same 
 sense, but keeping to the meaning of ykveais in i. 23, and 
 regarding the genitive here, as there, as one of origin, ' the 
 birth-given' (that is, 'natural') 'revolving circle,' — is the trans- 
 lation that exhibits the apostle's thought. In regard to the 
 meaning, see the Lecture on the passage. 
 
 8. ^ h.KaTa(jTaTov has better manuscript support than aKaTuax^-rov, 
 the reading of the received text. The rendering ' unstable,' 
 given of the word in i. 8, would be weak in its connection 
 here, and therefore 'restless' has been substituted. 
 
 Winer {Gravi. § 59. 8, b) regards aKaTaa-jarov Kamv and 
 nea-TT] lov 6avaTr](p6pov as exclamations, annexed with an inde- 
 pendent constmction. But it is at least equally natural to 
 take them as our translators have done ; only, 'it is' must be 
 suppHed before 'full,' as well as before the previous words, 
 because the gender of pedTf] shows that it is not in immediate 
 connection with kqkov, but attached as a predicate to 17 yXacrcrd 
 iuTiv understood. 
 
 13. ' Conversation' is now unquestionably misleading as the 
 representative in English of dfaarpoiprj. Yet one cannot but 
 regret having to abandon it, for etymologically it is a perfect 
 rendering. 
 
 14. 'Epideia is not to be confounded with epcs, as our trans- 
 lators and many interpreters have done. The words are 
 expressly distinguished in 2 Cor. xii. 20 and Gal. v. 20; and 
 indeed, if etymologically connected with each other at all, they 
 are so only remotely. 'Epidela is from epidos, ' a hired servant,' 
 and therefore means originally ' labouring for wages,' and hence 
 ' self-seeking, factiousness, caballing.' See Alford on Rom. ii. 
 8 ; or Lightfoot, Ellicott, or Eadie on Gal. v. 20. 
 
 The apostle having chosen to employ the compound Kara- 
 Kavxda-de, apparently to show clearly that he meant tt]! dXrjOeias 
 to be in connection with it as well as with yj^evdea-de, it seems 
 desirable to bring this out in translation, even though the 
 double ' against' sounds a little oddly. 
 
CH. III. 1 5- 1 7-] Notes oil the Greek Text. 31 
 
 15. In regard to ecrrti/ auadeu KaTepxoufvrj, see note on i. 17. 
 
 On the rendering of Satjuoi/tcoS?;?, compare note on ii. 19. 
 
 17. The verbal adjectives in -tos are used with some variety 
 of meaning, but in regard to dSiaKpiTos and avviroKpiros here 
 there cannot be very much doubt. 'H <To(pia (that is, here, 
 6 (To(j)6s) dvvnoKpiTos icniv is plainly equivalent to 6 a-o<p6s ovx 
 vnoKpiveraL (middle voice). Similarly, therefore, ddiaKpiros is 
 naturally taken to mean ov SiaKpiveTai (middle) ; and it is reason- 
 able to suppose that hiaKpiveaQai here has the same meaning as 
 elsewhere in the Epistle. In regard to its meaning, see note 
 on i. 6. 
 
32 The Epistle of James. [ch. iv. 1-3. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. I. 'EireC^ei' directs attention to the statement of the 
 source of the wars, which follows : similarly in i. 27, ovrx] ia-riv. 
 The word not being employed elsewhere in the New Testa- 
 ment except with a local reference, Michaelis regards it as 
 used here in the same way as in John xviii. 36, where it is 
 equivalent to c'k tov Koafiov tovtov, and would render therefore, 
 ' Come they not from this world' (as in iii. 15 the false wisdom 
 is described as eVi'yetos), — 'even of your lusts?' This is in- 
 genious, but the other is much more obvious and natural, and 
 the causal use of evreiideu is common in classical authors. 
 
 'u8ovfi, properly * pleasure,' is clearly used here for ' the 
 desire of pleasure.'' So in Xen. Memor. i. 2, Iv rw alr^ aaiiaTi 
 
 (TviJ.7re(pvTev^evai rfj '^pvxjj al rjSoval TTfidovaiv avrrjv nrj cra)(})pov€lv, 
 aXKa TTjv Tax'iCTTrjv eavrals re kol ra crajxaTi xapi^eaOai. 
 
 2. <boveveTe is difficult ; but there is no various reading to 
 help us. Erasmus (followed by Luther, Calvin, Beza, Tyndale, 
 and many others) adopted (pdove'ire from conjecture ; and 
 Grotius suggested (})ovaTe, from the rare verb (f)ovaa>, ' I am 
 athirst for blood, murderous.' But mere conjecture we dare 
 not accept in dealing with the text of the Word of God. 
 
 3. The use of the active alrelre between two middles, alre^a-Bai 
 and ahe'ia-de, is odd, it being impossible to discern any differ- 
 ence in meaning. Wiesinger attempts to exhibit a distinc- 
 tion, but unsuccessfully. In i John v. 14, 15, 16 we have a 
 similar mingling of the voices in the case of this same verb ; 
 there, however, a distinction is apparent, in that, where the 
 active is used, the petition is expressly said to be on behalf 
 of another. But compare also Luke xv. 6, 9, o-vy/caXel — a-vyKa- 
 Xetrai. 
 
 'El/ rats f]8ovais tanavav is not exactly ' to consume upon the 
 lusts,' as the authorized version has it, for this would require 
 
CH. IV. 4> 5-] Notes on the Greek Text. 33 
 
 ftf. The eV marks the sphere in which the expenditure takes 
 place, ' in, in gratifying.' Practically, the sense is the same. 
 
 4. That iJLOLxa^Lbes alone is the true reading, seems beyond 
 reasonable dispute. Codices A, B, and Sinaiticus have it. 
 From the somewhat startling character of the expression it is 
 easy to see how fioixol koX might come to be prefixed ; whilst, 
 supposing the original to have had all three words, the omis- 
 sion of the first two is inexplicable. Tischendorf in his seventh 
 edition remarks on the passage, ' Loco identidein considerato, 
 non possum quin teneani etiammim Icctionem jam in editione 
 a?ini 1841 ^ me defensam^ that is, ixoixaXlBes alone. 
 
 ' Friendship Tinf/i the Avorld ' is substituted in the version 
 for 'friendship a/ the world,' the mutual character of the 
 relation being thus made more clear, and uniformity of ex- 
 pression established (corresponding to that in the original) 
 with the antithesis, ' enmity with God.' In regard to the force 
 of Kadia-rarai, See note on iii. 6. 
 
 5. The meaning of this very difficult verse is so fully dis- 
 cussed in the Lecture, that comparatively little needs to be 
 said here. The only question of any importance regarding 
 the text has reference to the respective claims of KaT(pKr]a-ev of 
 the tcxtus 7-eceptus and KaraiKicreu. The latter has the great 
 weight of Codices B and Sinaiticus in its favour. Codex A 
 has KaTcoK€i(Tfv, which may have sprung by itacism from either 
 of the others. Having the support of the most ancient manu- 
 scripts, and being perhaps rather the more difficult reading, 
 KaTciKiaev is probably the true word, though there is good au- 
 thority for the received text also. The view of the meaning 
 according to which irpos (pdoi/ov ennrodel means 'jealously de- 
 sireth,' is exposed to the objection (an extremely grave one, 
 as it seems to me) that nowhere is (f)66vos used, like C'i^os, of 
 the divine jealousy, or indeed in any but a bad sense ; and 
 therefore, if appHed to God, it would have sounded as offen- 
 sively in the ears of James's readers as ' envy ' would in ours,- 
 and this even if taken not as ' invidiose' simply, but as ' usque ad 
 ifividiatn^ Then in addition, if (with De Wette, Huther in his 
 first edition, Alford, and others) we take irvevfia as subject, 
 
 c 
 
34 The Epistle of James. [ch. iv. 5. 
 
 enmoBel most unnaturally lacks an object (contrast, for ex- 
 ample, Phil. i. 8, cos iniTToBa} ivavTas v[j.as) ; whilst if (with Theile, 
 Wiesinger, and Huther in his second edition) we take irvivjxa 
 as object, and therefore in the sense of 'the Jnonan spirit,' 
 we oppose the usage of the whole New Testament in regard 
 to this peculiar thought, the ' indwelling Spirit.' 
 
 A case of Xeyet ending a question, with the force of ' saith it,' 
 the ' it ' referring to what precedes (very similar, therefore, to what 
 is found in this verse, according to the view of the meaning 
 supported in the Lecture), occurs in i Cor. ix. 10. There, 
 however, the reference is to a direct quotation, not merely to 
 the general teaching of Scripture on the subject under dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 The meaning of eirnrode'iu np6s is illustrated by the use of the 
 phrase in the Septuagint, at the beginning of the 42 d Psalm : 
 
 ''Ov TpoTTOv iivviToQei t) eXa(pos enl ras 'nr)yas twv vbdriav, ovtcos ini- 
 
 TTodel fj yj/Dxi H-ov 7r,oos ae, 6 Qeos. This passage favours the 
 ordinary rendering of irpos (pSovov ; and whilst it cannot be 
 held to have weight against the construction of irpos rpdovov as 
 equivalent to an adverb, this use of Tvpos being common in 
 classical writers, it certainly may be adduced with great force 
 in opposition to the rendering of I.uther, Bengel, Stier, and 
 others, ' against envy.' It is in the highest degree improbable 
 that to any Hellenistic reader, accustomed to the words eVt- 
 TTodel irpos 0-e, 6 Qeos, James's Trpos (})d6vov ininode'i would ever sug- 
 gest 'againsl.' To express 'lusteth against,' Paul (Gal. v. 17) 
 uses the regular and unambiguous construction of Kara with 
 the genitive. The use of npos in the sense of 'against' rarely 
 occurs except in connection with verbs or phrases containing 
 the notion of hostiUty (compare Luke xxiii. 12, Acts vi. i ; 
 and see Winer, Gram. § 49, on Trpos), and never, one may 
 safely say, with such a verb as ewinode'li'. 
 
 Supposing the beginning of the 42d Psalm, which has been 
 quoted, to have been familiar to James's first readers (a 
 supposition in every way probable, when we consider how 
 familiar it is now to devout Christians), may not an explana- 
 tion of the apostle's use of the peculiar expression np6s 
 
CH, IV. 6.] Notes on the Greek Text. 35 
 
 cf)66vov fTTinodd, and a key to the meaning of the passage, be 
 found in the idea that he intended to carry their minds back 
 to the psalm ? The use of the words ' panteth after,' in any 
 rehgious connection, would, I apprehend, at once suggest that 
 verse to the minds of most Christians who know the English 
 Bible at all well ; and in all likelihood (irmodel irpbs would 
 do the same to the minds of the Jewish Christians, the more 
 especially as imnodel occurs twice in the verse, as ' panteth 
 after' does in the authorized version. Putting the psalmist's 
 fj yj/vxri iiov in a glorious New Testament setting, by substituting 
 for it TO TJvevfia b KarcoKLaeu iv rifxlv, 'the (Divine) Spirit that 
 He gave to dwell in us,' the apostle says that He inmoQa, irphs 
 — what? As the remembrance of the grand old words of the 
 psalmist, irpos ae, 6 Qfos, Came over the readers' minds, we 
 can imagine the absolute self-loathing produced in their souls 
 by the thought that in the place of ae, 6 Qeos, they were in 
 danger of putting cf)66i^ov, the base worldly ' envying ' which 
 is directly antagonistic to God ; for, as the apostle had told 
 them in the immediately preceding sentence, ' Whosoever is 
 minded to be a friend of the world, maketh himself an enemy 
 of God: 
 
 6. The explanation given of the comparative [nl^ova is 
 necessarily dependent mainly on the view taken of the mean- 
 ing of the fifth verse. By Gataker, Winer, Kern, and many 
 others, it is held to mean 'greater than the world can give;' 
 by Bengel, eo majorejn, quo longius recesseris ab invidia ; by 
 Stier, ' increasingly and ever greater, in proportion as we 
 believe the word and follow the Spirit ;' by De Wette, Wie- 
 singer, Huther, and Alford, 'greater than if He had not for 
 us this jealous love.' To me it seems that the 8e and the com- 
 parative and its emphatic position are all best explained by 
 supposing (as in expounding the compositions of any lively 
 writer in any language we often have to do,— in Paul's Epis- 
 tles, for example, very frequently) a reference to an inter- 
 mediate unexpressed but obvious thought: 'Your consciences 
 tell you, brethren, that this " envy," which is from the world, 
 not from God's Spirit, has much power over you ; and you 
 
o 
 
 6 The Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 7-1 
 
 grow almost despondent as you think how much influence 
 the old man of sin still has, even though the Spirit dvvelleth 
 in you : but be of good cheer, for greater is the grace He 
 giveth than the power either of your own depravity or of 
 Satan.' 
 
 7. The aorist imperatives in this exhortation express urgency, 
 — ' do these things at once ' (Winer, Gram. § 43. 3, a) ; and 
 the force is intensified by the absence of connecting particles 
 at the beginning of the sentences. 
 
 With reference to the not uncommon use in the New Testa- 
 ment of an aorist passive with seemingly the force of a middle, 
 — as tiTTOTayjjTe here, and TanfivadrjTe in ver. 10, — see Winer, 
 Gram. § 39. 2. 
 
 8. It is perhaps impossible to distinguish very exactly be- 
 tween the senses of Kadapos and ayvos. Speaking generally, 
 however, the former suggests purity under the aspect of clean- 
 ness, freedom from stain, — the latter, in accordance with its 
 etymological connection with Syios and sacer, the purity asso- 
 ciated with separation and consecration to the service of God, 
 and particularly chastity. See Trench's remarks on the words 
 in his Synonyms of the New Testament. The rendering of our 
 
 translators, 'cleanse and purify,' is admirable, — 'purify,' 
 
 like ayi/t'o-are, leaving room for a special reference to the 
 figure of adultery before employed, but not necessarily sug- 
 gesting it. 
 
 II. Three times in this short sentence the apostle reminds 
 the believers of their 'brotherhood,' that they may see the 
 atrocity of evil-speaking and harsh judgment. The rise from 
 aSeXc^oO to the fuller tov ahik(\)ov avTov is remarkable, and 
 shows the earnestness of his anxiety to bring this point clearly 
 before them. 
 
 13. In this and the next two verses we find a somewhat 
 unusual number of various readings. It is not improbable 
 that, from the nature of the paragraph, it was often quoted 
 by preachers when denouncing vain confidence, and that the 
 varieties of expression which naturally arose in oral citation 
 ultimately found their way into the manuscripts. 
 
CH. IV. 1 6.] Notes on the Greek Text. 37 
 
 Kat (which has better support than ij) between arjuepou and 
 avpiou, may mean, similarly to its use in 2 Cor. xiii. i, ' to-day, 
 and — in the case of some other of you — to-morrow;' but it is 
 simpler, and exhibits more strikingly the foolish confidence of 
 the men, to take the words as stating the intended duration of 
 the journey. 
 
 Huther and others doubt whether the sense of ' such a ' (that 
 is, as we say colloquially, "such and such a'), which our 
 authorized version, after Tyndale and the Geneva, attaches to 
 TT]u8€, can be justified by the usage of the word ; and certainly 
 the passage from Plutarch, cited by Winer (Gram. § 23. 5) 
 in support of it, is at the least doubtful. But it does not seem 
 very natural to take the word SetKTiKcos, ' this city here,' — and 
 hardly possible, if crrjiiefjov koI avpiov be taken as intimating that 
 the city is distant two days' journey ; whilst, if the meaning be 
 ' this (which has been spoken of in our conversation),' or the 
 like, ' such a ' is not an unsuitable translation. 
 
 16. Kavxaa-dai is regularly followed by f'u, to express the 
 ground of the 'glorying,' as in i. 9, 10. If such be the force of 
 ei> here, then the meaning is, that these men ' exult ' in the fact 
 of their being daring enough to speak so loftily and indepen- 
 dently regarding their future. This, however, brings in a some- 
 what remote thought, which, from the iraaa Kaixwi-^ Toiavrr) 
 
 following, appears to take the principal place. Now the whole 
 context indicates that it is not merely glorying regarding their 
 arrogant confidence as to the future against which the exhorta- 
 tion of the apostle is directed, but this arrogant confidence 
 itself, and the utterances which spring from it. It appears 
 probable, therefore, that Kavxaadai simply designates such proud 
 speeches as have been quoted in ver. 13, such speeches them- 
 selves being in truth the expression of exultation in fancied 
 independence. In this case we must hold eV to be used in 
 the same way as in the third verse of this chapter (on which 
 see note), to exhibit the state or sphere. So Huther and 
 others. 
 
 The best word for dXaCoveia seems to be ' vain-glory,' sug- 
 gested by Dean Alford. In i John ii. 16, the only other place 
 
38 The Epistle of James. [ch. iv. 16. 
 
 in the New Testament where the word occurs, it is rendered 
 'pride;' but levity, leading to ostentation, has a prominence 
 in aka^ovda which is not brought out by ' pride.' The plural, 
 setting forth the various forms and degrees of the sinful feeling 
 in different persons, cannot well be retained in an English 
 version : compare ii. i, eV Trpoo-coTroXTj^t'atr. 
 
CH. V. 3.] Notes on the Greek Text. 39 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 3. 'x^iiv, connected with ets naprCpiov ea-rai, is by many in- 
 terpreters taken in the sense of 'against you,' given by the 
 authorized version (after the Geneva, but not Tyndale, who 
 has ' unto you'). The phrase occurs a considerable number 
 of times in the New Testament, and our translators render it 
 sometimes with ' against,' and sometimes with ' unto.' It may 
 fairly be questioned whether ' unto ' be not the meaning in all 
 the places. This is certainly the sense which occurs first to a 
 reader ; and the fact that Luke, who more than once has the 
 construction with the dative, employs in ix. 5 for ' against ' the 
 
 unambiguous construction with eVi (els fxaprvpiov en airovs), 
 
 suggests it as at least likely that to his mind the dative in this 
 connection meant simply 'unto.' 
 
 The plural aapnas is used rather with reference to the various 
 parts of the body, than because the apostle is speaking of a 
 plurality of persons. In 2 Kings ix. 36 the LXX. employ ray 
 a-apKas of Jezebel alone. 
 
 In two of the uncial manuscripts the sentence is marked as 
 ending with a-apKas vpav^ — as TTvp being attached to the follow- 
 ing ; and this connection of the words has been adopted by 
 several commentators, Grotius, Wiesinger, and others, who 
 take the passage as being nearly parallel to Rom. ii. 5, 
 
 Grjcravpi^eLS (TtavTa opyfjv eV fjpepq opyrji, and interpret tllUS : 
 
 ' ianqua7n ignem opes istas congessistis.^ But 6t]cravpi^eLu does 
 not require an expressed object (comp. Luke xii. 21, i Cor. 
 xvi. 2, 2 Cor. xii. 14); and when the force of ev ecrxdrais 
 Tjpfpais is understood, on which the stress of the sentence with 
 iBrja-avplaare rests, it will be felt that to join on «? zriip would 
 crowd and weaken that sentence. 
 
 * For the last days,' the rendering given of iv (axdrais rjpepais 
 
40 The Epistle of James. [ch. v. 4. 
 
 by the authorized version (after the Geneva, but not Tyndale, 
 who has ' in your last days '), is supported by Beza and others, 
 but is beyond doubt grammatically indefensible. The use of 
 eV T^/xf'pa opy^s in Rom. ii. 5 (quoted a few lines above) 
 may seem to justify this interpretation, but these words do 
 not belong in construction to the verb, but to opyiji/ — ' wrath 
 (which shall be manifested) in the day of wrath.' The ex- 
 pression iv ea-xarais rififpais occurs in 2 Tim. iii. I, and, with 
 the article, in Acts ii. 17. As to the omission of the article, 
 see Winer, Gram. § 19. i, remarks on Kaipos. In the present 
 passage the force of the argument might be sufficiently brought 
 out without taking the rjixepais as definite, — thus, ' in last days, 
 in a closing or final time,' in an age when everything most 
 loudly called for unworldliness and purity of life. 
 
 4. The authorized version has ' reaped ' twice, but the ori- 
 ginal has distinct words, which, whatever the apostle's reason 
 for varying, it seems desirable to render by distinct words 
 in English. Compare i. 15. The same objection lies against 
 ' crieth — cries,' as the representatives of Kpd(ft. — /3oai ; but it is 
 perhaps impossible to find an English word that would corre- 
 spond to either of the Greek words so well as ' cry,' 
 
 The sense in which James here employs dnoaTepelv, ' to keep 
 back fraudulently, withhold what is due,' is quite classical, and 
 is found also in the LXX. See Mai. iii. 5, a passage so 
 strikingly parallel to the present in thought and expression, 
 that it almost seems as if James intended a reference to it. 
 
 Huther (followed by Alford) takes d<f)' vfiav with Kpa^ei, ' crieth 
 from you,' that is, from your cofters, where it ought not to be ; 
 and refers to Gen. iv. 10 and Ex. ii. 23. The use of the 
 personal pronoun, however, when not the men themselves but 
 only their purses or coffers are meant, is harsh, and altogether 
 unsupported by the passages mentioned, where in the one 
 place the LXX. have eV r^s 7^9, and in the other cmo rajy 
 epyu>v. It seems better, therefore, to adhere to the old con- 
 struction, connecting a0' Ip-av with dTTea-Tfprjpevos ; and if we 
 suppose the fact to have been present to the apostle's mind, 
 that the great landowners of whom he is speaking in most 
 
CH. V. 5-7.] Notes on the Greek Text. 41 
 
 cases negotiated with their labourers not immediately, but 
 through stewards, the use of aixh instead of vivh need cause no 
 difficulty. The fraud was ' from ' the rich men, being in accord- 
 ance with their spirit and general instructions, but it was com- 
 mitted immediately 'by' their subordinates. Regarding this 
 use of OTTO, see note on i. 13. 
 
 5. Tpv(f)av (which occurs only here in the New Testament) 
 and aTraraXav (found also in 1 Tim. v. 6) are very nearly syno- 
 nymous ; but in the former luxurious living seems to be the 
 more prominent idea, in the latter, the lavish expenditure in- 
 volved in luxurious living. The rich man '■faring sumptuously 
 every day' is brought before us by the one, the prodigal 
 '■wasting his substajice vf'iih riotous living' by the other. See 
 Trench, Synony^ns of the Neiv Testament, s. vv. 
 
 Kapbia designates the seat of feeling of every kind, whether 
 of the loftiest spiritual affections, as below in ver. 8, or of the 
 mere animal satisfaction derived from the gratification of bodily 
 appetites. The reference here is plainly to every mode of 
 ministering to ' the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and 
 the pride of Ufe.' Compare the use of Kap8ia in Luke xxi. 34, 
 and in Acts xiv. 17. 
 
 7. As to the force of the aorist imperative, see note on iv, 7. 
 In the case of a word like paKpodvpelv, which designates what 
 ought to be a constant state of Christian feeling here below, 
 this imperative points most prominently to the first step, one 
 decided effort of energetic faith to raise patience to the posi- 
 tion of influence in the heart that it should occupy. In the 
 a-TTjpl^are of ver. 8 this force of the aorist imperative is plainer, 
 from the meaning of the verb. In enjoining duties which from 
 their nature call for occasional efforts of faith, rather than one 
 decisive act, and the maintenance of a state thereafter, the 
 apostle uses the present imperative. See instances in verses 
 9, 12,- 13, 1 6. A comparison of the present imperatives in 
 ver. 13 with the aorists in ver. 14 illustrates the point par- 
 ticularly well. These all belong to one series ; but the prayer 
 and praise may and should be off'ered often during the re- 
 spective states of mind spoken of, whilst the summoning of the 
 
42 The Epistle of Jmnes. [ch. v. 9, 11. 
 
 elders is a single act, which it is supposed will not need to 
 be repeated. 
 
 9, ' Grudge ' was used in early English quite in the sense of 
 ' murmur.' Latimer, for example, speaks of ' grudging against 
 God,' and Chaucer of Judas ' grudging ' against Mary, when 
 she anointed the Saviour with the precious ointment. In the 
 age of the publication of our authorized version, however, the 
 word was coming to be used in the sense of a secret resent- 
 ment, and hence our translators have in some places (such as 
 Mark xiv. 5 and Acts vi. i) substituted ' murmur ' for ' grudge ' 
 of Tyndale and the Geneva version; but in the verse before 
 us and i Pet. iv. 9 they have retained the old word. 
 
 II. The received reading el'Sere and the imperative i'Sere have 
 both good manuscript authority ; but the latter (approved by 
 Tischendorf) is somewhat the more difficult of the two, and 
 therefore probably the original. Huther, adopting it, puts a 
 colon after Kupt'ov, thus placing reXoj under the government 
 of rjKovaare, and then continues, "iSere oTi — ' See (from this) 
 that, etc' But, had this been the intended construction, the 
 imperative would certainly have had an oZv^ or some similar 
 connective, to indicate its close logical dependence on the 
 preceding statement. The construction must be, as marked 
 by Tischendorf, Ka\ t6 reXos Kvpiuv 'idere, the object words 
 standing before the verb, because through the antithesis the 
 emphasis is on them. 
 
 The authorized version, rendering on by ' that ' here, makes 
 the clause a second object to t'Sere or e'ldtre, stating fully the 
 truth regarding the divine character which was illustrated in 
 ' the end given by the Lord ' to Job's history. But it seems 
 simpler to take it as giving a reason for the injunction koI t6 
 Te\os Kvpiov i'Sere, — ' Because a most precious truth regarding 
 the Lord is seen there, which is fitted to bring you much com- 
 fort in your trials.' Even with the reading el'Serf, which this 
 sense of Sn does not seem to suit so well as it does the im- 
 perative, it has nevertheless been preferred by most commen- 
 tators, and is found in all the English versions before the 
 authorized. Alford remarks well that the repetition of ' the 
 
CH.v, 13-16.] Notes 071 the Greek Text. 43 
 
 Lord ' appears much more natural on this view of the meaning 
 of on than on the other. 
 
 13. By some grammarians KaKorrafJel ns eV vulv, and the other 
 similar sentences in this series, are regarded as not interroga- 
 tive, but direct statements of the supposed case as if real ; 
 thus, 'Some one among you is afflicted (let us suppose).' A 
 series very like the present occurs in i Cor. vii. 18, and fol- 
 lowing verses ; and the grammatical structure there is explained 
 in the same way. See Winer, Gram. § 41. 3. This view of 
 the construction seems logically correct, but, in English at 
 least, the thought appears to be more simply brought out by 
 the interrogative form than in any other way, whether inserting 
 a ' let us suppose,' or, as Wycliffe and Tyndale do, supplying 
 'if at the beginning. Indeed there appears to be a certain 
 feeling of the naturalness of the interrogative form which leads 
 holders of the view of Winer into occasional inconsistency. 
 Thus, as Huther mentions, Alexander Buttmann in one place, 
 criticising Lachmann, who has put marks of interrogation, 
 speaks of these as unnecessary, but in his own edition of the 
 New Testament has done the same. Dean Alford, too, in the 
 passage in i Corinthians uses commas, in James marks of 
 interrogation ; whilst in each place referring in his margin to 
 the other as having a precisely similar construction. 
 
 15. Huther, followed by Alford, takes Kav here in the sense 
 of ' even if,' asserting that nowhere in the New Testament does 
 it mean ' and if.' In Luke xiii. 9, however, it has clearly this 
 meaning ; and the sense in the verse before us appears to run 
 decidedly more smoothly if we take it so here also, as most 
 interpreters have done. 
 
 16. 'Evepyovfievi] has been very variously understood. Only 
 three of the views, however, as it seems to me, are grammati- 
 cally defensible. By Hammond, Michaelis, and others, it is 
 regarded as a passive, meaning ' inwrought (by the Holy 
 Spirit) ;' by most interpreters as a middle, but taken in dif- 
 ferent senses, Huther and Alford, holding it to be a middle, 
 adhere to the strict participial meaning ' working,' that is, ' in 
 its working ' or ' by its working.' The great majority of inter- 
 
44 The Epistle of James. [ch. v. i 7. 
 
 preters, agreeing with these last in regard to the voice, hold 
 the participle to be used as very nearly equivalent to the 
 adjective evepyris, 'operative, full of energy' (i Cor. xvi. g ; 
 Philem. 6; Heb. iv. 12: comp. especially this last reference). 
 Michaelis's view of the meaning brings out a most impor- 
 tant truth, and one perfectly relevant to the point in hand ; 
 and the fact that the passive of ivfpyelv does not occur else- 
 where in the New Testament (the two passages in which by 
 some commentators forms of the verb have been understood 
 passively, 2 Cor. i. 6, iv. 12, being more naturally explained 
 on the supposition that the forms are middle), would not of 
 itself weigh much against it. But the apostle, if it had been 
 his intention to bring in this new and weighty thought, would 
 certainly not have left it to be doubtfully suggested by the 
 use of one ambiguous word, but would have filled up the 
 expression. Huther's view, according to which ivepyovp.evq is 
 nearly equivalent to bia tov ivepyda-Bai, lies under the objection 
 of making the word utterly weak, adding really nothing to the 
 thought of the sentence ; for in what way conceivable could 
 any prayer ' avail ' except ' by its working'? To use the word 
 thus is altogether unlike the vigorous trenchant style of James. 
 The ordinary interpretation lies under no serious objection. 
 The tendency of participles in all languages to pass in sense 
 very much into adjectives sufficiently explains the form, and 
 the meaning is in every way satisfactory. ' Energetic ' would 
 perhaps be the best English rendering, but the word in this 
 connection might sound somewhat oddly ; and, seeing that in 
 fact fervour is the ' energy ' of prayer, it appears best to retain 
 the old familiar ' fervent.' The very curious double rendering 
 of our translators, ' effectual fervent,' is probably due to a com- 
 promise between conflicting opinions in the committee of 
 translators ; and it is wholly their own, for the earlier versions 
 have ' fervent ' simply, with the exception of Wyclifife's and the 
 Rhemish, which have ' continual,' from the Vulgate ' assidua.^ 
 
 17. The well-known Hebrew construction of the infinitive 
 absolute with a definite form of the same verb, to express 
 strength or intensity, is often in the Septuagint rendered by 
 
cii. V. 19.] Notes oil the Gi^eek Text. 45 
 
 the junction to a verb of the dative of a cognate substantive. 
 
 Thus in Gen. ii. 17, Qavara dnodaufia-de ; Deut. XX. 17, dvadefxart 
 
 dvadefiuTif'tTe. James's irpoaevxii irpov-qv^aro is obviously a Con- 
 struction of the same kind ; and it is plain that here the most 
 fitting representative of the class of adverbs ('surely,' 'utterly,' 
 and the like) by which the thought is brought out in English, 
 is ' earnestly.' De Wette, followed by Huther and Alford, 
 objects to the introduction of such a word as ' earnestly,' on 
 the ground that the cognate dative is intended simply to 
 bring out into prominence the idea of the verb ; but it is not 
 easy to see how in modern languages this prominence could 
 well be expressed otherwise than by an adverb. Alford trans- 
 lates ' prayed with prayer,' explaining this to mean ' made it a 
 special matter of prayer.' Now, ' prayed specially,' which is 
 the force of the explanation, appears to lie under the same 
 objection which is made to 'prayed earnestly,' whilst there is 
 no evidence that it exhibits the apostle's meaning better, and 
 some probability (at least if the meaning commonly assigned 
 to ivepyovpiv-q in the previous verse be retained) that it does not 
 exhibit it so well. 
 
 19. The aorist subjunctives here, and the aorist participle 
 fnia-Tpeyj/as in the next verse, simply show the priority of the 
 acts expressed by these verbs to those expressed by the futures 
 crwo-et and KoKvylfei. Compare note on ii. 2. 
 
LECTURES 
 
 EPISTLE OF JAMES. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE Epistle of James has from very early times been 
 grouped with the two of Peter, the three of John, and 
 that of Jude, under the name of ' Catholic, or General, 
 Epistles.' This designation has been variously understood ; 
 but the ordinary view of the meaning, that these letters are 
 thus named because they are addressed not to particular per- 
 sons or churches, but to Christians in general, or at least to 
 classes of readers spread over a wide area, is the most natural 
 and satisfactory. The second and third Epistles of John, 
 indeed, are addressed to individuals ; but it is easy to under- 
 stand how these short letters were classed along with the first of 
 the same writer, which is so much longer and more important. 
 The writer of the letter announces his name at the outset as 
 ' James.' The fact that to the name he appends only the very 
 general description, ' a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ,' shows him to have been one whose prominence in the 
 church was such that his name alone at the head of a docu- 
 ment of this kind would, at least for the Jewish Christians to 
 whom he writes, suffice to distinguish him from all others ; and 
 the contents of the letter prove him to have had so intimate an 
 acquaintance with the condition of the congregations of Jewish 
 Christians, and presuppose such admitted authority to give them 
 
48 LediLres on the Epistle of yames. 
 
 advices and injunctions, that we can scarcely but consider 
 him to have been in all likelihood one who stood in close 
 official relations to them. He was either an apostle, then, or 
 at least a man almost of apostolic note and influence, and 
 was specially connected with the churches of the circumcision. 
 Now, as we are told in the twelfth chapter of Acts, the Apostle 
 James, the son of Zebedee and brother of John, suffered 
 martyrdom in the year 43 or 44 of our era, which is earlier 
 than the probable date of the Epistle. But we find a James 
 spoken of in Acts and in Paul's writings as for many years the 
 most prominent minister of the church at Jerusalem, and a man 
 of great weight among the Christians generally, particularly the 
 Jewish Christians (Acts xii. 17, xv. 13 foil., xxi. 18; Gal. ii. 9, 
 12). Everything accordingly points to him as the author of 
 the Epistle, and the all but universal opinion in the church 
 has been that it was written by him. 
 
 Whether this James was one of the apostles has been 
 much debated. In the lists of the Twelve there certainly 
 occurs the name of another James besides the son of Zebedee, 
 described always as 'James the son of Alphaeus.' But James, 
 the influential minister at Jerusalem and the probable writer 
 of the Epistle, is spoken of in Gal. i. 19 (for to him beyond all 
 reasonable doubt, when we compare that verse with the ninth 
 and twelfth verses of the next chapter, the reference is) as ' the 
 Lord's brother,' and is thus identified with the James who in 
 the Gospels (Matt. xiii. 55 ; Mark vi. 3) is named among the 
 ' brethren ' of Jesus. Now is this description compatible with 
 the other, "^' the son of Alphaeus,' so that both maybe, held to 
 refer to the same man? An opinion very prevalent in the 
 church has been that the term ' brother ' is used in this case 
 loosely for ' a near relative,' and that those described as 
 ' brethren ' and ' sisters ' of the Lord v.'ere the children of 
 Alphseus, and, through father or mother or both, cousi?is of 
 the Saviour. Of late years, however, the whole subject has 
 been very carefully investigated afresh, and the more that it has 
 been studied, the more doubt has grown regarding the sound- 
 ness of this view; and the most probable conclusion from all 
 
Introduction. 49 
 
 the data seems to be that the ' brethren ' and ' sisters ' of the 
 Lord were either children of Joseph and Mary, or of Joseph 
 by a former wife.' In this case James, ' the brother of the 
 Lord,' and the author of the Epistle, must be distinguished 
 from James the son of Alphaeus, and was not one of the twelve 
 aposdes. Paul's words in Gal. i. t8, 19, 'I went up to Jeru- 
 salem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days ; but other 
 of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother,' 
 seem to include this James among the apostles;" and other 
 passages (i Cor. ix. 5, xv. 7) appear to imply the same. But 
 this does not at all render it necessary to suppose that he was 
 of the original Twelve. There is reason to think that, besides 
 Paul, who by express appointment of the divine Head of the 
 church was added to the Twelve, some others of the foremost 
 ministers were, either by similar though unrecorded definite 
 appointment, recognised as apostles, or at least, according to 
 a somewhat loose use of the name, popularly called apostles. 
 Such was the case with Barnabas certainly (see Acts xiv. 4, 
 14). The position of James may have been, and probably was, 
 similar. But on any view, whether he was one with ' the son 
 of Alphaeus,' and therefore of the Twelve, or an added apostle, 
 or simply one of the foremost men of the primitive church, 
 next to the apostles, it is plain from every reference made to 
 him that he was deemed by all a man of the very highest 
 
 ^ For a full discussion of the question, see the supplementary note at the 
 close of this Introduction. 
 
 2 Not so decidedly, however, as might at first sight appear ; for not un- 
 frequently, both in the New Testament and in classical Greek, i\ (nM loses 
 almost entirely its exceptive force for that of a simple adversative particle, 
 'approaching nearly to Lxxk ' (Lightfoot on Gal. i. 7). See Matt. xii. 4; 
 Luke iv. 26, 27 ; Rev. xxi. 27. An examination of these passages will 
 show clearly that Bishop Ellicott hardly exhibits his usual admirable gram- 
 matical exactness, when {^Historical Lectures on the Life of our Lord, p. 9^) 
 he speaks of the strictly exceptive meaning as ' the only sound grammatical 
 interpretation which the words of Gal. i. 19 can fairly bear.' The 'infot in 
 the first clause of the verse certainly favours the exceptive sense, but surely 
 scarcely obliges us to take it, as Dr. Lightfoot in his note appears to think ; 
 for the contrast in it may be solely with Peter (ver. 18), and not with James 
 at all. 
 
 D 
 
50 Lectures on the Epistle of James. 
 
 Christian wisdom, richly endued with the Holy Ghost, and 
 that an official writing from him to the churches would be re- 
 ceived as having plenary inspiration and apostolic authority. 
 
 Of the life of this apostle we know but Uttle. John mentions 
 in his Gospel (vii. 5) that the 'brethren of the Lord' did not 
 believe on Him, — the statement referring to a period less than 
 a year before the crucifixion. No exceptions are stated or 
 suggested, and therefore it is probable that James is included. 
 After the resurrection a special appearance of the Lord was 
 granted to him (i Cor. xv. 7), and it is not unlikely that from 
 that we are to date his clear apprehension of the Messiahship 
 and divinity of the Brother whom for many years he had lived 
 with and seen so closely, and yet known so little. Regarding 
 the time between the ascension and Pentecost, it is mentioned 
 that the eleven apostles ' continued with one accord in prayer 
 and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of 
 Jesus, and with His brethren'' (Acts i. 14). The next mention 
 of him is in connection with Paul's first visit to Jerusalem after 
 his conversion (Gal. i. 18, 19), about ten years after the ascen- 
 sion of the Lord. The way in which he is spoken of here 
 implies that by this time he was in high repute among the 
 Christians at Jerusalem ; and all references to him afterwards 
 clearly indicate that, of all the permanent pastors in the Holy 
 City, he was beyond question the most prominent and influ- 
 ential. Peter, after his deliverance from Herod's- prison, said 
 to the friends assembled in the house of Mary the mother of 
 John Mark, ' Go, show these things unto James, and to the 
 brethren' (Acts xii. 17). At the council of the apostles and 
 elders at Jerusalem, to consider the relation of Gentile con- 
 verts to the Jewish law, it was James who proposed the resolu- 
 tion that was accepted by all, — a resolution well fitted to bring 
 peace to the troubled churches (Acts xv. 13 foil.). And speak- 
 ing of his visit to Jerusalem at that time, Paul says : ' When 
 James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived 
 the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barna- 
 bas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the 
 heathen, and they unto the circumcision' (Gal. ii. 9), The 
 
Introduction. 5 1 
 
 last mention that we have of him in Scripture is in connection 
 with that visit of Paul to Jerusalem which brought about his 
 imprisonment. James presided at the reception by the brethren 
 of Paul's heart-gladdening report of the progress of the gospel 
 among the Gentiles (Acts xxi. 18, 19). A tradition preserved 
 by the ecclesiastical historian Hegesippus, a Jewish Christian 
 of Palestine, who wrote probably not more than a century after 
 the death of James, tells us that, from his eminent purity of 
 character, and the rigour of his adherence to the Jewish cere- 
 monial system, he was generally known as James the Just, or 
 Righteous, and this among the Jews who did not believe in 
 the Messiahship of Jesus, as well as among the Christians. 
 These are probably facts, though round them in the statements 
 of Hegesippus we find a considerable accretion of manifest 
 untruth, from the fertile fancies of the descendants of those 
 who had known and loved the great pastor of the church of 
 Jerusalem. Of the death of the apostle we have accounts both 
 by Josephus and Hegesippus ; but they do not agree with each 
 other, except to the effect that he met with a violent death 
 through the hatred of some influential Jews who were virulently 
 opposed to Christianity. This statement, put thus generally, 
 can scarcely be doubted ; and the martyrdom falls probably 
 within the last seven or eight years before the destruction of 
 Jerusalem, that is, from four to twelve years after James's last 
 appearance in the Acts of the Apostles. 
 
 It is clear, then, from everything we know regarding the 
 character, and views, and official position of James, that from 
 none of the apostles could an epistle addressed especially to 
 the Jewish Christians be more naturally looked for, and that a 
 letter to them from him would carry with it the very greatest 
 weight. And when we examine the Epistle, we find it in all 
 respects what we should anticipate from such a man. His 
 chief aim is plainly to impress his readers with a conviction 
 that true Christianity is always a great moral power, and will 
 therefore reveal itself through growth in the strong virtues and 
 tender graces of holiness. To the Sermon on the Mount, the 
 great exposition of the law of the kingdom of heaven, there is 
 
5 2 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes, 
 
 a constant undertone of reference ; and, indeed, the whole letter 
 might almost be regarded as a commentary on that Sermon. 
 Conversion, faith, justification, regeneration, the divinity of 
 the Lord Jesus, and the blessed hope of His second coming, 
 are expressly alluded to in the letter ; but, on the whole, the 
 specialties of Christian doctrine are little touched upon — less 
 than in any other book of the New Testament. The reason- 
 ings of the apostle evidently presuppose in his readers a 
 knowledge of Christian truth; and his great aim is to con- 
 vince them that this knowledge will not really benefit them, 
 unless godliness of hfe show that it has been received with 
 welcome by the heart, ' out of which are the issues of life.' 
 The aspect in which James loved to contemplate Christianity 
 was obviously that of the glorious flower into which the bud of 
 the religion of the old economy had opened ; and hence it was 
 natural for him to call the gospel system, looked at in its moral 
 relations, 'the law,' 'the perfect law of liberty.' ' His,' says 
 Neander, 'was pre-eminently the standing-point of Jewish 
 piety, as it manifests itself in the forms of the Old Testament ; 
 and under this he had been entirely formed, when faith in 
 Jesus as the promised Messiah was superadded : and hence- 
 forth he beheld Judaism, in which he had hitherto lived, trans- 
 figured. Christianity appears to his mind as true Judaism. 
 The Spirit of Christ glorifies the forms of the Old Testament, 
 and leads them to their true fulfilment. Something would be 
 wanting, had we not James in the New Testament. His 
 standing-point was of peculiar service in bringing over devout 
 Jews to the faith of the gospel. To a Paul, who was elected 
 for the conversion of the Gentile nations, it would have proved 
 a hindrance ; to James, in the sphere of action assigned to him 
 among unmixed Jews, in Palestine and Jerusalem especially, it 
 was serviceable.'^ 
 
 In form this Epistle is simple and natural. Being called 
 forth evidently by reports which had reached the apostle re- 
 
 ' A very full and satisfactory discussion of James's doctrinal teaching will 
 be found in Schmid's Biblical Theology of the New Testament, pp. 338-374 
 (Clark's Foreign Theological Library). 
 
Introduction. 53 
 
 garding serious faults that had shown themselves in many of 
 the Jewish Christian churches, particularly bigotry, bringing 
 with it angry dissensions and vituperations, and worldliness, he 
 passes on by natural transitions from one point to another, 
 exhibiting duty and reproving sin. The style is lively and 
 earnest, and an abundance of apt similitudes proves that the 
 writer had in no small degree the eye and imagination of a 
 poet. In several places, especially paragraphs in the last two 
 chapters, both the sentiments and the diction forcibly remind a 
 reader of utterances of the old Hebrew prophets.-^ 
 
 Considering James's official relations to the church at Jeru- 
 salem, it is in every way probable that the Epistle was written 
 in that city, and we may suppose it to have been sent in the 
 first instance to the Jewish Christian communities in the neigh- 
 bouring regions of Syria ; unless we take the term ' the Disper- 
 sion,' employed in the first verse (see Exposition of that verse), 
 to be used in a very wide sense, as including all the Jews not 
 resident in Jerusalem, in which case the letter may have been 
 sent first to some congregation in Judsa or Galilee. 
 
 The date cannot be determined so easily or decidedly. It 
 seems, on the whole, most probable that the letter was written 
 before Paul's Epistles, and indeed before the council held at 
 Jerusalem on the relations of Gentile Christians to the Jewish 
 law (a.d. 50), Had it been written after Paul's magnificent 
 arguments on justification by faith were in circulation, it seems 
 likely that, in the observations made in the second chapter on 
 justification, we should have found some statement showing 
 clearly to the readers that James was not opposing Paul, but 
 
 ' The Greek of James approaches nearer to classical purity than perhaps 
 that of any other New Testament writer. Considering how decided a 
 Hebrew he was in feeling, this is certainly remarkable. He must have 
 been one of those men whose aptitude for apprehending the delicacies of 
 language is such that, if they speak a foreign tongue at all, they cannot but 
 speak it with elegance. If the view be sound, which has been maintained 
 with much learning and ability by Dr. Roberts in his Discussions on the 
 Gospels, that in the New Testament age all teaching and preaching in 
 Palestine were carried on in Greek, not Aramaic, James and his brother 
 apostles must have had constant practice in the use of Greek. 
 
54 Lectures on the Epistle of James. 
 
 a misapprehension and abuse of the doctrine which Paul held 
 in common with his brethren, and of which he had been 
 honoured to be the great expounder;^ and had it been written 
 later than the meeting of the council, at a time when alm.ost 
 every Jewish congregation must have included some Gentiles, 
 the apostle could hardly have avoided touching on the delicate 
 questions connected with the intercourse of Jews and Gentiles. 
 The ' devout men out of every nation under heaven,' who at 
 the ever-memorable Pentecost received the knowledge of the 
 Messiahship of Jesus, must have carried this blessed knowledge 
 home with them to all parts of the civilised world, and given 
 it to many of their brethren ; and thus we cannot doubt that, 
 within a very few years of the ascension of the Lord, there 
 were many Jewish Christian communities in ' the Dispersion.' 
 And those moral defects upon which the Epistle dwells are 
 precisely such as might arise in churches of this class in an 
 extremely short time, being indeed such as were very common 
 in the Jewish synagogues, and thus most likely to show them- 
 selves in Christians who had been brought up in Judaism. An 
 argument against the supposition of an early date for the 
 Epistle has been based on some imagined references in it to 
 I St Peter, and to one or two of Paul's Epistles. But it has no 
 weight; for the similarities of expression are merely such as 
 would naturally arise from the fact that from the very beginning 
 the apostolic testimony must of necessity, amid much freedom 
 and variety, have yet, on many cardinal truths, assumed set 
 forms of expression, which were greatly prized and very useful' 
 throughout the church — commonplaces of Christian theology. 
 It seems most probable, then, all things considered, that the 
 Epistle was written before, but not long before, a.d. 50, and 
 that it is the earliest of the books of the New Testament. 
 
 I It may be said that this argument proves nothing, because it might be 
 applied with as much force in the other direction'; for if James wrote first, 
 might we not expect Paul to have referred to him somewhere? This is 
 hardly sound, however ; for we have no reason to think that the specialties 
 of James's teaching were at all so widely known and discussed as those of 
 Paul's. 
 
Introduction. 55 
 
 The Epistle of James received universal acceptance in the 
 church, as of canonical authority, somewhat later than many 
 other parts of the New Testament. This is easily explained, 
 when we remember the early history of the church, by the 
 jealousy that the Gentile Christians would naturally feel in 
 regard to a treatise so distinguished by Jewish colouring, and 
 also by the seeming opposition in which at first sight James's 
 teaching regarding justification stands to that of Paul. A 
 strong argument for the authenticity of the Epistle is found 
 in the fact that it appears in the very early Syriac version of 
 the Bible called the Peshito, from which the Apocalypse and 
 several of the Epistles are excluded, evidently from their not 
 having been as yet fully recognised as canonical. This judg- 
 ment, coming from the region to which in all probability the 
 Epistle was first sent, and where all the facts regarding it were 
 most likely to be accurately known, is of the highest import- 
 ance. Luther, as is well known, doubted the authenticity of 
 the Epistle, mainly because of its teaching on the subject of 
 justification ; but this ground of hesitation totally disappears on 
 a careful examination of the apostle's meaning. By Calvin, 
 and the Reformers generally, the Epistle was fully received. 
 ' On the whole,' as the case has been admirably put by Alford, 
 ' on any intelligible principles of canonical reception of early 
 writings, we cannot refuse this Epistle a place in the canon. 
 That that place was given it from the first in some parts of the 
 church ; that, in spite of many adverse circumstances, it gra- 
 dually won that place in other parts ; that, when thoroughly 
 considered, it is so consistent with and worthy of his character 
 and standing whose name it bears ; that it is marked off by 
 so strong a line of distinction from the writings and epistles 
 which have not attained a place in the canon : all these are 
 considerations which, though they do not in this any more than 
 in other cases amount to demonstration, yet furnish, when 
 combined, a proof hardly to be resisted, that the place where 
 we now find it in the New Testament canon is that which it 
 ought to have, and which God in His providence has guided 
 His church to assign to it' 
 
56 Lectures on the Epistle of ya7nes. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 
 ON 'the brethren of the lord.' 
 
 The question who 'the brethren of the Lord' were is not 
 without importance in one or two of its bearings ; and the 
 student who looks into it finds in it an interest even greater 
 than can exactly be measured by its importance, — an interest 
 due partly to our natural longing to know clearly all that can 
 be known of the home-life of the Saviour, and partly perhaps, 
 as in the case of many other historical problems, to the con- 
 stancy with which an absolutely certain solution evades us 
 when we seem to be nearest it. It seems desirable, therefore, 
 to treat the matter in a note a little more fully than could con- 
 veniently be done in the Introduction. 
 
 The data in Scripture for forming a judgment on the sub- 
 ject are these : — 
 
 1. The language employed in Matt. i. 25 and Luke ii. 7, 
 first clause, naturally suggests, but does not of necessity 
 imply, that Mary bore other children after Jesus. 
 
 2. Several times in the Gospels we read of the Lord's 
 'brothers' (a better form in this discussion than 'brethren,' the 
 latter from its modern use having a little tendency to mislead), 
 and in two places also of His 'sisters' (Matt. xii. 46, 47, xiii. 
 55 ; Mark iii. 31, vi. 3; Luke viii. 19; John ii. 12, vii. 3, 5, 
 10 ; also Acts i. 14). 
 
 3. In all these passages, except John vii. 3-10, the 
 'brothers' are spoken of in connection with Mary the mother 
 of Jesus. 
 
 4. By John (vii. 5) it is said that the 'brothers' of Jesus 'did 
 not believe on Him.' The remark is made in connection with 
 a conversation that took place between Jesus and them less 
 than a year before the crucifixion. 
 
 5. The names of the 'brothers' (probably all, from the 
 manner in which they are brought in) are mentioned by two 
 of the evangelists as ' James and Joses (or Joseph, for the 
 
Siipplementary Note. 57 
 
 reading varies in Matthew), and Simon and Judas' (Matt. xiii. 
 55 ; Mark vi. 3). Of these, two at least came to be prominent 
 teachers, and to occupy an apostoHc or semi-apostohc position 
 in the early church, as is shown by Paul's words in i Cor. 
 ix. 5. One of these was James, for many years the most 
 prominent of the Christian ministers in Jerusalem, and in all 
 likelihood the author of the Epistle. Paul (Gal. i. 19) expressly 
 calls him ' the Lord's brother.' Another was Judas, or Jude, 
 the writer of the Epistle bearing that name, for he at the 
 beginning of the letter announces himself as ' the brother of 
 James;' and the name of 'James' simply in the early church 
 could point to none but the well-known James ' the Lord's 
 brother.' It has been shown in the Introduction, that sup- 
 posing this James and this Jude to have been recognised as 
 apostles by the early church, we are not at all thereby obliged 
 to consider them to have been of the number of the original 
 Twelve. 
 
 6. In all the lists of the Twelve Apostles (Matt. x. 3 ; Mark 
 iii. 18; Luke vi. 15; Acts i. 13) we find one named 'James 
 (the son) of Alph^us.' 
 
 7. In Luke's lists, in his Gospel and the Acts (see reff. 
 above), one of the apostles is named ' Judas (the brother) of 
 James.' He is probably the same as the Lebbseus and 
 Thaddseus of the other Hsts. Whether the supplement should 
 be ' brother' here is very doubtful, and it seems more probable, 
 according to the usage of the language, that 'son' is meant. 
 Certainly, looking at the forms of expression, particularly in 
 the list in Acts, it appears natural to conclude, that if we 
 rightly render 'James the son of Alphasus,' then we should 
 also render 'Judas the son of James,' for the constructions 
 (which stand very near each other) are absolutely identical. 
 Supposing the sense to be that Judas was the son of James, 
 we have no means of identifying that James. 
 
 8. In John xix. 25 it is said that 'there stood by the cross 
 of Jesus His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife 
 of Cleophas' (more exactly 'Clopas'), 'and Mary Magdalene.' 
 Now this may intimate that IMary the wife (some have thought 
 
58 Lectures on the Epistle of yames, 
 
 ' daughter' the right supplement) of Clopas was a sister of Mary 
 the Lord's mother. The sentence is ambiguous, however ; for 
 it may speak not of three Avomen, but of four, the names or 
 designations being grouped in pairs ; thus, ' His mother and 
 His mother's sister, Mary the Avife of Clopas and Mary Magda- 
 lene.' This construction is exactly similar to that in the list 
 of the apostles as given by Matthew (x. 2-4). There seems 
 much probability that the words should be taken in this way ; 
 for, though not impossible, it is certainly extremely unlikely that 
 two sisters should both have borne the same name. The old 
 Syriac version, the Peshito, inserts a conjunction, in order to 
 show distinctly that the translator understood four persons to 
 be spoken of : ' His mother, and His mother's sister, and 
 Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.' It seems not 
 improbable that this insertion represents some tradition on the 
 subject. 
 
 9. Among the names of the loving women who beheld the 
 crucifixion and visited the grave, we read of a Mary who is 
 called 'the mother of James and Joses' (Matt, xxvii. 56), 'the 
 mother of James the Little (for such is the exact rendering) 
 and Joses' (Mark xv. 40), 'the mother of James' (Mark xvi. i ; 
 Luke xxiv. 10), 'the mother of Joses' (Mark xv. 47), 'the 
 other Mary,' as distinguished from Mary Magdalene (Matt, 
 xxviii. i). The James here referred to may have been ' the 
 son of Alphaeus.' The fact that in two of these passages the 
 name of 'Joses' is added to that of ' James,' and that in one 
 of them the mother is described by her relation to ' Joses ' 
 alone, seems to show that whilst this James was a man well 
 known in the church, yet his brother was equally or almost 
 equally so. This renders it likely that he was not the 'James 
 the Lord's brother,' whose name, in the age when the Gospels 
 were pubhshed, took rank with that of Peter, and John, and 
 Paul. 
 
 10. In John xix. 26, 27, it is related that Jesus, on the 
 cross, seeing His mother and John standing near, said to 
 Mary, ' Woman, behold thy son,' and to John, ' Behold thy 
 mother,' and that John ' from that hour took her unto his own 
 
Supplementary Note. 59 
 
 home.' Is this conduct of Jesus and of John compatible 
 with the supposition that at the time Mary had sons and 
 daughters ? This question is discussed near the end of this 
 note. 
 
 11. In the first chapter of Acts, Luke, in his hst of the 
 apostles, names 'James the son of Alph^us.' In the twelfth 
 chapter he mentions the martyrdom of the other Apostle 
 James, the son of Zebedee. In the fifteenth chapter he intro- 
 duces, evidently as a man of prominence, one whom he calls 
 simply ' James.' Is it not natural to suppose that by this 
 James he means the son of Alphceus, of whom he had spoken 
 in the first chapter? Had we no other information to guide 
 our judgment, such would certainly be the natural conclusion ; 
 but if we suppose another James to have been so distinguished 
 at the time when the book of Acts was published, that the 
 mere name would at once suggest him to all readers, the case 
 is altered. 
 
 12. To these Scripture statements falls to be added, as 
 among the data for a judgment on the subject, the conjecture 
 that Alphffius and Clopas are different forms of the same 
 Aramaic name. This is not impossible ; but from the fact 
 that in the Syriac versions, made by men who, we can hardly 
 but suppose, must have known well about Aramaic names and 
 their renderings, different forms are employed for Alpheeus and 
 Clopas, it seems probable that they are distinct. 
 
 13. It may also be added that, according to a statement 
 of the early historian Hegesippus, the name of a brother of 
 Joseph, Mary's husband, was Clopas. 
 
 14. Among the factors in the formation of opinion on this 
 subject, has entered in illegitimately, but most influentially, 
 aversion to the thought that Mary the mother of Jesus bore 
 any other children. Springing up at a very early period, as 
 ascetic notions regarding marriage gained strength, this feeling 
 grew so potent and wide-spread, that Mary's perpetual virginity 
 became throughout Christendom a most cherished article of 
 belief. Even among Protestants, to whom the Mariolatry and 
 asceticism of the Church of Rome are utterly offensive, this 
 
6o Lectures on the Epistle of yames. 
 
 feeling exercises considerable power, and over certain tem- 
 peraments probably always will. But it certainly finds no 
 support in Scripture, either in the language of respect uniformly 
 employed regarding marriage, or in what is said specially of 
 the wedded life of Joseph and Mary (see datum i above). 
 
 The most prevalent opinion on the subject has been, that 
 Alph^us, supposed to be the same as Clopas {data 12, 13), was 
 the husband of a sister of Mary the mother of Jesus, who was 
 also named Mary (8, 9) ; that their children, who were thus 
 cousins of Jesus, were from some cause associated unusually 
 closely with their aunt, Mary the Lord's mother ; that by a 
 loose use of the term they were commonly known as 'the 
 brothers of the Lord ;' and that at least two of them, James 
 and Jude (7), were in the number of the Twelve Apostles. To 
 this theory the strong objection lies at the very outset, that, as 
 has been conclusively shown by Dr. Lightfoot, it was wholly 
 unknown in the church till near the end of the fourth century, 
 when it was put forth by Jerome, avowedly to remove all 
 doubt regarding the perpetual virginity of Mary. Had it been 
 well founded, tradition would scarcely have left it altogether 
 unmentioned. In itself, the theory involves doubtful assump- 
 tions, — that Alphjeus and Clopas were one (12), and that 
 ' Mary the mother of James and Joses ' (9) was a sister of the 
 mother of Jesus (8). Again, supposing those called 'the 
 brothers of the Lord ' to have been really His cousins, it is in- 
 explicable that, their mother being alive, they should always, 
 when spoken of under the name ' the brothers of the Lord,' be 
 associated with Mary the mother of Jesus, and never with their 
 own mother. Further, supposing two, or even only one, of 
 these ' brothers ' to have been in the number of the Twelve, it 
 appears very strange that John makes his statement regarding 
 unbelief (4) without mentioning any exceptions. Finally, the 
 employment of the words ' brother ' and ' sister,' when intended 
 obviously to express a definite family relationship (not loosely 
 for ' fellow-Christian' or the like), in any other than the strict 
 sense, is wholly contrary to New Testament usage, and finds 
 very inadequate support in the Old Testament. Lot is called 
 
Supplementary Note. 6i 
 
 a ' brother ' of Abraham, and Jacob of Laban, they being 
 really nephews ; but the word is not used of any more distant 
 connection. The suggestion made by some advocates of the 
 cousin theory, that, Alphgeus having died, Joseph may have 
 adopted his children, accounts in a measure for the use of the 
 words ' brothers ' and 'sisters;' but it does not at all obviate 
 the other objections, and it is totally unsupported by any hint 
 in Scripture or tradition. On the whole, it is difficult to resist 
 the impression that this theory would never have arisen, and 
 would never have found such acceptance as it has, but for 
 the influence of feeling and dogma {14). The fact that, by 
 rejecting this view, we are left with two families in each of 
 which are a James and a Joses (5, 9), and perhaps (7) also a 
 Jude, need cause no difficulty, for these were very common 
 Jewish names ; and if the two sets of brothers were cousins to 
 each other, their having the same names is all the more easily 
 understood. 
 
 That those called ' the Lord's brothers ' were children of 
 Joseph by a former wife, appears to have been the view gene- 
 rally entertained in the church before the time of Jerome. By 
 some, TertuUian and others, they were considered to have been 
 children of Joseph and Mary. The weight in favour of the 
 former of these opinions, which would otherwise belong to the 
 fact that it was the prevailing one in those early times, Avhen 
 we might suppose some authentic tradition on the point to 
 have still existed, is very greatly diminished by the considera- 
 tion that, almost from the very first age, the sentimental and 
 dogmatic influence already spoken of (14) was to some extent 
 in operation. Either of these views satisfies many of the re- 
 quirements of a candid exegesis ; and it is not easy to choose 
 with much decision between them. In support of the opinion 
 that those named the ' brothers ' and ' sisters ' of Jesus were 
 such by a real physical relationship (as children of Mary), these 
 arguments present themselves — that this accords with what 
 Matt. i. 25 and Luke ii. 7 naturally imply (i), and that it 
 accounts perfectly for the closeness of their association with 
 Mary, as described in the various statements made regarding 
 
62 Lectures on the Epistle of James. 
 
 them in the Gospels. Moreover, on the view that they were 
 children of Joseph by a former wife, these ' brothers ' must have 
 been, at the time when our Lord was engaged in His public 
 ministry, considerably over thirty years of age, the eldest pro- 
 bably not much under forty. But the statements made regard- 
 ing them in the Gospels appear naturally to imply that they 
 were still unmarried, and residing with Mary. Now, consider- 
 ing how early the Jews usually married, and that at least two 
 of these 'brothers' did actually marry (see i Cor. ix. 5), the 
 supposition that they were so old at the time of the incidents 
 recorded by the evangelists appears unlikely. Further, the 
 genealogies of the Lord given by Matthew (ch. i.) and Luke 
 (ch. iii.) both, in form at least, show our Lord's connection with 
 David through Joseph, His reputed father, thus proving Him 
 to be, according to the ordinary principles of Jewish law, the 
 heir to David's throne. The argument on the genealogies 
 seems to imply that there was no older son in Joseph's family. 
 It is true that at the very outset, in the case of Solomon, it was 
 made clear that the succession to David was not necessarily 
 to be according to primogeniture ; yet, when a genealogical 
 argument is employed in such a matter, without any note re- 
 garding exceptional arrangements, we naturally think, beyond 
 question, of primogeniture. Now, on the view that these 
 ' brothers ' were sons of Joseph by a former wife, the Lord 
 Jesus was obviously not the eldest in His reputed father's 
 family.^ 
 
 The only serious difficulty, as it appears to me, affecting the 
 view that they were children of Mary as well as Joseph, is 
 found in the fact that on the cross Jesus entrusted His mother 
 to John, that he might care for her as her son (10). Dr. 
 Lightfoot thinks that, against the opinion that Mary at the 
 time had four sons living, besides daughters, these statements 
 tell with 'fatal effect,' whilst he regards them as 'powerless' 
 
 1 From the conduct of these ' brothers' as described in Mark iii. 21, 31, 
 or the tone of their language as recorded in John vii. 3, 4, no decided 
 conclusion can be drawn whether they were older or younger than the 
 Saviour. 
 
Supplementary Note. 63 
 
 against the view that these were merely Joseph's children, 
 which accordingly he adopts. ' Is it conceivable,' he says, 
 * that our Lord would thus have snapped asunder the most 
 sacred ties of natural affection ? The difficulty is not met by 
 the fact that her own sons were still unbelievers. This fact 
 would scarcely have been allowed to override the paramount 
 duties of filial piety. But even when so explained, what does 
 this hypothesis require us to believe ? Though within a few 
 days a special appearance is vouchsafed to one of these 
 brethren, who is destined to rule the mother church of Jeru- 
 salem, and though all alike are converted to the faith of Christ, 
 yet she, their mother, living in the same city, and joining with 
 them in a common worship (Acts i. 14), is consigned to the 
 care of a stranger, of whose house she becomes henceforth the 
 inmate.' Dr. Eadie, on the other hand, says : ' The objection 
 has never appeared to us to be of very great force ; for we 
 know nothing of the circumstances of the brothers, and there 
 may have been personal and domestic reasons why they could 
 not receive the beloved charge. They might not, for a variety 
 of reasons, be able to give Mary such a home as John could 
 provide for her. As we cannot tell, it is useless to argue. We 
 are wholly ignorant also of their peculiar temperament, and 
 their want or their possession of those elements of character 
 which would fit them to tend their aged and widowed parent. 
 Especially do we know, however, that up to a recent period 
 they were unbelievers in her divine First-born ; and though He 
 who did not forget His mother in His dying moments foreknew 
 all that was to happen, still their unbelief might disqualify them 
 for giving her the comfort and spiritual nursing which she re- 
 quired to heal the wounds inflicted by that " sword " which was 
 piercing her heart, as she contemplated the shame and agony 
 of the adored Sufferer on the cross. Every attention was 
 needed for His mother at that very moment ; and He seized 
 that very moment to commend her to John, who had been to 
 Him more than a brother, and would on that account be to 
 her more than a son. John was standing by, and so was His 
 mother ; so that perhaps his ministrations to her had already 
 
64 Lectures on the Epistle of James. 
 
 commenced.' To me the difficulty appears greater than it 
 seems to do to Dr. Eadie ; and whilst the argument exhibited 
 in the latter part of the quotation given above would have 
 great force, supposing that John had taken Mary home with 
 him only for a few days or weeks, it seems hardly to have much 
 weight if, according to the natural force of the words employed 
 by the evangelist, and the uniform testimony of early tradition, 
 we believe him to have displayed towards her a filial care till 
 her death. But as regards the view espoused by Dr. Lightfoot, 
 these same facts are perhaps not so utterly ' powerless ' in the 
 way of presenting an objection as he assumes. Considering 
 the closeness of the association of the ' brothers ' with Mary, 
 and, according to all appearance, the thoroughly affectionate 
 nature of their relations, it seems strange, even on the supposi- 
 tion of their being only her step-children (not so strange, cer- 
 tainly, as if we deem them her own, but still strange), that the 
 Lord should have given her to another. John may have been 
 her nephew, — a comparison of John xix. 25 (interpreted as 
 speaking of four women) with the lists given by Matthew and 
 Mark of the women who witnessed the crucifixion, suggesting 
 that perhaps Salome, the wife of Zebedee, was the unnamed 
 sister of Mary. Still the bequest to him seems strange. But 
 it was obviously understood and acquiesced in unhesitatingly 
 by all parties concerned ; and in all likelihood, as Dr. Eadie 
 says in the beginning of the passage quoted above, its ex- 
 planation was found in some circumstance or combination of 
 circumstances connected with the position of the ' brothers,' 
 which we cannot now determine. The necessity of our falling 
 back on this supposition holds, as it seems to me, whether 
 we deem them to have been children of Mary, or only 
 step-children. The mode in which ' Mary, the mother of 
 Jesus, and His brothers,' are spoken of in connection with 
 each other in Acts i. 14, makes it not altogether impro- 
 bable that the whole family were still together, residing with 
 John. 
 
 On the whole, it appears to me that the theory which 
 regards ' the Lord's brothers ' as His cousins is utterly unten- 
 
Supplementary Note. 65 
 
 able, and that, whilst the views that they were children of 
 
 Joseph by a former wife, and that they were children of 
 
 Joseph and Mary, are both defensible, yet the balance of 
 probability is in favour of the latter.^ 
 
 ^ . In addition to discussions found in the writings of the Fathers, a con- 
 siderable body of literature has grown up on the question in modem times, 
 both in German and English. The most recent detailed disquisitions that 
 I have met with are Dr. Lightfoot's Dissertation in his Commentary on 
 Galatians, and a long note by Dr. Eadie in his Cotnmentary on the same 
 Epistle. An excellent condensed statement of opinions and arguments is 
 contained in Andrews's Life of our Lord, pp. 97-108, 
 
JOY IN TRIALS. 
 
 ' James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes 
 which are scattered abroad, greeting. 2 My brethren, count it all 
 joy when ye fall into divers temptations : 3 Knowing this, that the 
 trying of your faith worketh patience. 4 But let patience have her 
 perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. ' — 
 James i. 1-4. 
 
 THE Epistle begins, like most of the apostolic letters, and 
 indeed like the letters of the ancients generally, with an 
 announcement of the name of the writer, and of that of the 
 persons addressed. After giving his name, he describes him- 
 self, you observe, as ' a servant of God.' The holiest of men 
 is no more than this. Of Messiah the Prince, Jehovah says 
 ' Behold my Servant.' God graciously gives His people many 
 titles of honour : He calls us ' kings and priests,' ' children, 
 and, if children, then heirs ;' but the spirit of ' a servant,' 
 simple wilUngness to obey Him, underlies all such relations : 
 whatever else we may be, we are servants. 
 
 ' Ajid of the Lord Jesus Christ^ In gospel times, all true 
 acceptable service to God must have in the heart of him who 
 renders it this conjunction. Only as we see the claims of 
 Jesus to be our Master and King, and discern God's character 
 as revealed in Him, can we sincerely serve God. ' When the 
 Comforter is come,' said Jesus to His disciples, ' He will con- 
 vince the world of sin ' (that is, of refusal to be servants of 
 God), ' because they believe not on Me.' In Christ God has been 
 made flesh, and has dwelt among us, full of the grace, and the 
 truth, and the holy beauty of heaven. God is thus in Christ 
 brought very close to us all, and the whole mass of sin in our 
 natures, every sinful affection and energy, will necessarily show 
 
68 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 itself in antagonism to Him. Rejection of Christ, then, is 
 plainly for gospel hearers the grand manifestation of sin. So 
 the test of character for us, brethren, — the test whether all 
 that may seem beautiful in our life springs from love to 
 God and consequent hatred of sin, or from mere earthly 
 influences, — the criterion by which 'he that serveth God'' is 
 to be discriminated from 'him that serveth Him not^ — is our 
 belief or unbelief in Jesus, ' This is God's commandment,' 
 writes the Apostle John emphatically (as if he would say, ' the 
 commandment in which is gathered up the statement of all 
 duty '), ' that we should beUeve on the name of His Son 
 Jesus Christ.' All this scriptural teaching, you observe, as- 
 sumes the divinity of the Lord Jesus, losing all pertinence and 
 force on any other view ; and the testimony given in support 
 of that vital doctrine by such a conjunction of names as we 
 have in the verse before us, must be recognised by every 
 candid reader. No mind unwarped by sinful prejudice can 
 fail to see, that to associate the name of any, the highest con- 
 ceivable, mere created being with that of God the Father in 
 the way in which James here associates that of Jesus, would be 
 a glaring insult to the divine majesty. 
 
 Some have thought that the description, ' a servant of Jesus 
 Christ,' proves the James who wrote the Epistle not to have 
 been an apostle. The argument is not sufficient, seeing that 
 an apostle, when writing to persons whom he knew to be 
 already well acquainted with his position in the church, and 
 ready, therefore, to receive his instructions with due reverence 
 and confidence, might prefer to designate himself by some 
 more general term, thus coming nearer to his readers, classing 
 himself with them or with their office-bearers, instead of giving 
 prominence to the peculiar dignity of the apostleship. So 
 John, you remember, in the beginning of his second and third 
 Epistles, calls himself 'the elder.' It is interesting, however, 
 supposing James to have been a brother of the Lord according 
 to the flesh, to see how entirely he sinks the earthly relation- 
 ship. He understood the Saviour's 'Yea, rather blessed are 
 they that hear the word of God and keep it.' 
 
VER. I.] yoy in Trials. 69 
 
 ' To the twelve tribes 7ohich are scattered abroad.^ The body 
 of Israelites that returned to Palestine from the Captivity con- 
 sisted mainly of members of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. 
 The ten tribes that formed the kingdom of Israel, as distin- 
 guished from that of Judah, had been carried away to the 
 east at a much earlier period than the others ; and thus, when 
 the permission to return came, these tribes, in which for many 
 generations the religious tie connecting them with Canaan had 
 been very weak, had settled down firmly among the heathen, 
 with whom, no doubt, they gradually became completely inter- 
 mixed. Pious persons from these ten tribes, however, asso- 
 ciated themselves with the colony that returned, or with the 
 portion of Judah and Benjamin that continued in Babylonia, 
 but clung to the faith of their fathers. There still remained, 
 therefore, a body of worshippers of Jehovah which might truly 
 be called 'the twelve tribes of Israel;' and in all likelihood 
 this name, so full of interesting memories for devout and 
 patriotic Jews, was in not unfrequent use. Paul, you may 
 remember, employs it in his speech before Agrippa, speaking 
 of the hope of Messiah cherished by ' our twelve tribes ' (Acts 
 xxvi. 7). To the words 'the twelve tribes' James adds, ^ that 
 are scattered abroad^ more exactly, ' that are in the Dispersion.' 
 ' The Dispersion ' was a name in common use among the Jews 
 for the condition in which since the Captivity great numbers 
 of their race had been, or sometimes for those who were in 
 that condition. Not merely did a great number, as we have 
 seen, remain in Babylonia ; but of the descendants of those 
 who returned to Palestine, multitudes were led, for commercial 
 and other reasons, to emigrate to various countries, so that in 
 course of time Jews were to be found in almost all parts of the 
 Roman Empire. This state of things, then, or those who were 
 in it, had the name of ' The Dispersion.' John tells us that 
 on one occasion, when Jesus said to His enemies 'Ye shall 
 seek me, and shall not find me,' they said among themselves, 
 ' Whither will he go, that we shall not find him ? Will he go 
 unto the dispersed (or, more exactly, ' the Dispersion ') among 
 the Gentiles' (vii. 35)? James's Epistle, then, is addressed to 
 
70 Lectures an the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 the Jews of the Dispersion, the Jews Hving out of Palestine.^ 
 The whole tenor of the letter shows that it was written to the 
 Christians among these Jews. This limitation is found in the 
 address, however, only when it is read in connection with the 
 designation which the writer has given of himself. ' To the 
 Jews of the Dispersion, — all of them for whom the words of 
 a serva?it of the Lord Jesus Christ have interest and value,' — 
 such, no doubt, substantially is the meaning. The breadth of 
 the form of address was fitted to proclaim that to all Israel, 
 professedly ' waiting for the consolation ' of their nation, the 
 voice of ' a servant of Messiah ' ought to be welcome ; and 
 at the same time to remind the believing Jews — often, no 
 doubt, charged by their unbelieving countrymen with being 
 renegade Israelites, recreant to the religion of their fathers 
 — that they were the true ' children of Abraham,' having 
 accepted God's way of fulfilling His promises with like simple 
 faith as Abraham had shown in accepting the promises them- 
 selves. 
 
 Having announced his name and intimated to whom he 
 writes, the apostle closes his preliminary words by the formula 
 of salutation customary in the letters of the Greeks : ' Greeting^ 
 The chief captain who had apprehended Paul begins his letter 
 to Felix in this way : ' Claudius Lysias to the most excellent 
 governor Felix, greeting' (Acts xxiii. 26). And it is an inte- 
 resting fact, one of those little manifestly undesigned coinci- 
 dences which are often so important in the way of evidence, 
 that the only other apostolic document, besides this Epistle, 
 in which this particular form of salutation occurs, is the circular 
 letter issued by the apostles and elders assembled at Jerusalem, 
 which embodied James's proposal, and therefore in all like- 
 lihood was drawn up by James (Acts xv. 23).^ 
 
 1 The mystical sense which some have attached to the words, ' the twelve 
 tribes in the Dispersion, ' supposing them not specially to designate Jews, 
 but Christians generally as the spiritual Israel, living in this world as 
 strangers and pilgrims, is obviously altogether out of place and umiatural 
 in the address of a letter. 
 
 ^ The same form of salutation is i?ietitioned hy John (2d Ep. 10, 11), but 
 only incidentally. 
 
VER. 
 
 2.] Joy in Trials. 71 
 
 The apostle proceeds now to his letter itself. His great object 
 in writing it was evidently to impress on his readers the fact 
 that Christianity is not a faith merely, but, through the power 
 of faith, a life ; and, in connection with this, to point out to 
 them some special dangers, and reprove them for some special 
 and already notorious defects. Many of them, it appears, were 
 at the time exposed to persecution of one kind or another. 
 With the subject of trouble, therefore, as prominently occupy- 
 ing their thoughts, and being of very great importance in its 
 bearings on religious life, James naturally begins. And the 
 particular form of his commencement is perhaps suggested by 
 the salutation that he has just given, which in the original is 
 the verbal form of the word in the second verse rendered 'joy.' 
 We find not unfrequently in this Epistle the form of the con- 
 nection between sentences or paragraphs determined by words, 
 whilst a close connection of thought is generally obvious also. 
 ' James to his readers wishes joy.' ' But how is it possible that 
 we should have joy, environed with troubles as we now are?' 
 This would be a very natural thought in the minds of the 
 readers. To this the apostle responds : 
 
 ' My brethren^ coimt it all joy when ye fall ijito divers tempta- 
 tions.^ The word ' temptations,^ meaning, according to its de- 
 rivation, ' trials,' has, like the Greek word which it represents, 
 a considerable breadth of signification. It is often used in the 
 New Testament for troubles of any kind, these being looked 
 at as ' tests ' of character. Thus Jesus said to the apostles, 
 * Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations ' 
 (Luke xxii. 28). Paul, in his address to the elders of Ephesus, 
 said : ' Ye know after what manner I have been with you, serv- 
 ing the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears, 
 and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the 
 Jews' (Acts XX. 18, 19). And Peter speaks of his readers as 
 being * in heaviness through manifold temptations' (i Pet. i. 6). 
 '■Joy ' is plainly used here for ' a ground of joy ;' and ' all joy * 
 means 'nothing but joy,' 'pure joy,' or, more loosely, 'the 
 highest joy :' as when Peter says, ' Servants, be subject to your 
 masters with all fear ^ (i Pet. ii. 18), or Jude speaks of his 
 
72 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 having given * all diligence to write of the common salvation ' 
 (Jude 3). 
 
 The apostle's injunction, then, is that his readers should 
 'count it a ground of pure joy when they fell into divers 
 troubles.' To the worldly man this is an utter paradox ; but 
 Christians understand it. It is not meant that we are to look 
 on afflictions, considered simply by themselves, as a ground of 
 joy. This is impossible ; it is opposed to the very constitution 
 of our nature. Now Christianity, as you know, proves its 
 divine origin, its having the same Author as man himself, by 
 its adaptation in every respect to our deepest nature, its op- 
 posing itself nowhere to the nature that God gave us, but only 
 to the perversities that have been introduced by sin. The 
 Bible, therefore, does not require that we should count pain, 
 looked at simply in itself, as a good thing, a source of joy. 
 According to the Epistle to the Hebrews, ' no chastening for 
 the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.' The persecuted 
 Christians, too, to whom Peter wrote, were ' for a season in 
 heaviness through manifold temptations,' and he does not 
 reprove them for it. The Lord Himself, in suffering, said : 
 'My soul is exceeding sorrowful;' 'Father, if it be possible, 
 let this cup pass from Me.' Christians would be glad if 
 the ends of affliction could be gained otherwise; but seeing 
 that, according to God's infinite wisdom, this bitter medicine 
 is needed to conquer the disease of sin, we are enabled by His 
 grace to accept it meekly and thankfully, and amid the natural 
 suffering to have, according to the measure of our faith, com- 
 posure of spirit, or even great joy, in contemplating the blessed 
 results of tribulation. In the degree in which we are enabled 
 by the Spirit to apprehend the truth that nothing but love 
 sends the troubles that come on God's children, will our feeling 
 under them be one of 'nothing but joy.' That the precept of 
 the Holy Ghost here given through James can be obeyed, was 
 shown in the first days of the Christian church, by such cases 
 as those of the apostles, who 'rejoiced that they were counted 
 worthy to suffer shame for Christ's name,' and of the Hebrew 
 believers, who ' took joyfully the spoiHng of their goods;' and has, 
 
VER. 3.] yoy in Trials. 73 
 
 no doubt, been illustrated in the experience of many children 
 of God in all ages, ' Divers^ of many different kinds, are the 
 afflictions that God sends, — varied discipline, according to the 
 varied requirements of different persons, or of the different sides 
 of character in the same person ; but however numerous, and 
 diversified, and severe, and long-continued, troubles may be, 
 our Almighty Father can give strength to ' count them all joy.' 
 
 Observe, however, that the precept, and the promise of 
 needed grace which is involved in it, as in all God's precepts, 
 have reference to troubles which we ^ fall into^ Trials are 
 not to be sought for or rushed into : on the contrary, all lawful 
 means suggested by experience or thought are to be brought 
 into action to avert or mitigate them. Asceticism, or a perverse 
 ambition for martyrdom in any form, has indeed, as the Apostle 
 Paul says, 'a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, 
 and neglecting of the body ;' but it is wholly alien to the spirit 
 of Scripture. What joy may be felt amid such self-induced 
 * temptations,' will be a joy of foolish arrogance, not that true 
 happiness springing from holy trust and hope, which those may 
 and through divine help will feel, who have quietly waited for 
 the discipline of the Lord, and in His providence 'fall into' 
 troubles. 
 
 The apostle proceeds in the third verse to give the reason 
 why believers should 'count it all joy when they fall into 
 divers temptations ;' which is, that the testing of our faith, 
 effected through affliction, is intended by God, and therefore 
 eminently fitted, to strengthen our spiritual life, and in parti- 
 cular to ripen the sweet grace of patience and constancy. 
 
 ' Knowijig this, that the trymg of yottr faith tuorketh patience.' 
 Affliction is a ^ trying of our faith.' This was evidently a com- 
 monplace of oral apostolic teaching, for the expression occurs 
 in the very same form in the First Epistle of Peter (i. 7). The 
 heart of man, brethren, ' is deceitful above all things,' and even 
 the Christian knows very little of himself. Affliction lets down 
 a blazing torch for him into the depths of his own nature, — 
 and he sees many things which he little expected to see. He 
 finds his faith weak where he thought it strong, his views dim 
 
74 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes. [ch. i, 
 
 where he thought them clear, his pride strong and stubborn 
 where he thought it broken ; and he cries to his Father for a 
 fuller sanctification. Thus afflictions of every kind are ' trials,' 
 testing and revealing agencies. Through them, to give know- 
 ledge to the believer, the Master, Himself all-knowing, tries 
 him as gold and silver are tried by fire. 
 
 And thus the 'trying of our faith worketh patience;'' that is, 
 it elaborates in the soul constancy in the faith and hope of 
 Christ. The meaning of the original word, as you will gather 
 from this explanation, is somewhat wider than that of our 
 'patience:' it denotes ' perseverance ' in confidence and love 
 and devotion to God in Christ. James assumes that there is 
 faith, real living faith, though it may be feeble. Where there 
 is but an empty profession, or a mere dreamy sentiment, un- 
 based on firm and intelligent convictions of truth, the fire of 
 trouble will burn it up. When the sun is risen with its burning 
 heat, the grain on the stony ground, having no root, withers 
 away. Satan turns to evil what God had adapted for good, so 
 that the trial worketh impatience rather than patience. But 
 where there is true faith, affliction naturally leads to deeper 
 thought than under other circumstances on sin and its deserts, 
 and thus frees the heart from the control of self-righteousness. 
 The sense of weakness leads to earnest wrestling with God in 
 prayer; and experience of the sustaining grace thus obtained 
 strengthens and exhilarates hope with regard to the time to 
 come. The impression made by affliction of the perishable 
 nature of mere earthly delights, draws the thoughts forth to the 
 blessedness that God has in store for them that love Him ; and 
 the troubles of the present time are felt to be immeasurably 
 outweighed by the ' exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' 
 Thus through the trial of our faith is wrought ' patience,' — a 
 humble but firm determination to cling more than ever to the 
 God who sent the troubles in Fatherly love, who sustains us in 
 the midst of them, who will give glory and unmingled felicity 
 by and by. 
 
 ''Knowing^ the spiritual helpfulness of afflictions, then, we 
 should ' count them all joy.' And plainly our measure of sue- 
 
VER. 4-] yoy in Trials. 75 
 
 cess in the discharge of this most difficult duty will depend on 
 the clearness and fulness with which we 'know' their useful- 
 ness. Here, as everywhere in religion, it is by an intelligent 
 apprehension of God's will that we become strong ; it is ' the 
 truth ' that ' makes us free.' 
 
 The apostle continues: '■But let patie?ice have her perfect 
 work.'' Sore trouble is hard to bear unrepiningly, very hard 
 to bear, as James here enjoins, joyously. Satan and the 
 depravity of our hearts are always lying in wait, ready to 
 make us murmur and break away from trust in God. Even 
 the meekness of Moses and the patience of Job did not bear 
 up under all temptation, but these holy men ' spake unad- 
 visedly with their lips.' And in the case of many of those to 
 whom James wrote, where the trials spoken of were no doubt 
 persecutions for religion, there was very serious danger of their 
 apostatizing altogether from Christ. ' If you are to profit by 
 your sufferings, then,' he says, 'and not to incur tremendous 
 loss, let your endurance, your constancy in love and trust even 
 amid adversities, have a perfect work. It is doing a great 
 work ; it is refining and ennobling your whole nature ; it is 
 building up a stately temple of holy character to the glory of 
 God ; it is the instrument employed by God to " keep you 
 unto salvation." Oh, let it put the copestone on the temple ; 
 let it have its work perfect, for " he that endureth to the end 
 shall be saved," and he only.' 
 
 ' That ye may be perfect and entire, wa?iti?ig 7iothing^ The 
 term ' perfect ' is sometimes applied in the New Testament to 
 the ultimate holiness and blessedness of the saints in heaven. 
 But it is frequently employed also in speaking of Christians in 
 this life. Thus used, it has sometimes reference to our state 
 of acceptance with God, as one of complete justification : thus, 
 for example, Jesus ' by one offering \v2^h perfected iox ever them 
 that are sanctified.' In other instances, of frequent occurrence, 
 the word describes a 'maturity,' a ripeness and richness of 
 knowledge and character, such as might be supposed to mark 
 the full-grown man, as contrasted with the babe in Christ ; and 
 the naturalness and obviousness of this for those among whom 
 
76 Lectures on the Epistle of ya7nes. [ch. i. 
 
 the apostolic writings were first circulated will be evident, 
 when I mention to you that the same Greek word here 
 rendered ' perfect ' is often employed to designate simply a 
 full-grown man. Thus, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, ' Strong 
 meat belongeth to than that are of full age' (v. 14); and in 
 the First Epistle to the Corinthians, ' In malice be ye children, 
 but in understanding be men' (xiv. 20). That in this use of 
 the word, ' mature in character,' complete freedom from defect 
 is not intended, is strikingly shown by Paul's words in the 
 Epistle to the Philippians, ' Let us therefore, as many as be 
 perfect, be thus minded' (iii. 15), immediately after he has said, 
 obviously with reference to absolute hohness, ' not as though I 
 had already attained, either were already perfect.' Through 
 their approximate perfection, their ripeness of character and 
 manliness of Christian judgment, such Christians see all the 
 more clearly, and feel all the more deeply, the measure of still 
 remaining defect, and press towards the mark of absolute per- 
 fection.^ Our apostle's injunction then is, that in time of 
 trouble we should ' let patience have her perfect work, that we 
 may be mature Christians;' and probably the precise force of 
 ' perfect ' is explained by the ' entire ' which follows, and further 
 illustrated, as if to bring the importance of this point with 
 special vividness before us, by * wa?iting nothing.' All of us, 
 my brethren, in religion as in intellectual culture, are in danger 
 of being one-sided. Yielding to natural temperament, we are 
 apt, whilst cultivating certain departments of Christian thought 
 and activity, to neglect others. The believer of a contem- 
 plative disposition, for instance, may shrink from taking his 
 proper share of exertion in the church's work ; whilst another 
 Christian, strenuous in labour, may forget to some extent that 
 the tree of piety can bring forth fruit to perfection only when 
 watered with the dews of the Spirit through prayer and quiet 
 communion. Thus the new man has deformities, growing in- 
 harmoniously, without fitting proportion of parts. And there 
 
 1 The most thorough investigation which I have seen of the New Testa- 
 ment use of ' perfect ' is in a sermon by the Rev. Thomas Binney on Ccl. 
 i. 28, published with three others under the title Four Discourses. 
 
VER. 4.] , yoy in Trials. 77 
 
 are some elements of holy character which can be acquired 
 only in trouble. The beautiful graces of resignation and sym- 
 pathy can grow only in a soil through which has passed the 
 ploughshare of afifiiction, and which has been watered by the 
 rain of tears. Therefore it is that God ' scourgeth every son 
 whom He receiveth,' and ' every branch in the true vine that 
 beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.' 
 Let constancy under trial, then, dear brethren, ' have her work 
 perfect, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.' 
 
78 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 II. 
 
 WISDOM THROUGH PRAYER. 
 
 ' 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. 6 But let 
 him ask in faith, nothing wavering : for he that wavereth is like a wave 
 of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. 7 For let not that man 
 think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. 8 A double-minded 
 man is unstable in all his ways.' — ^James i. 5-8. 
 
 AT this point the thought naturally occurs to the mind of 
 a reader of the Epistle : ' I am sadly wanting in power 
 to exhibit this grace of patience ; I am unable to discern 
 clearly or to keep my heart steadily fixed on those truths which 
 are fitted to maintain holy peace within it, but lose myself in 
 a crowd of conflicting thoughts and feelings.' This thought is 
 taken up and responded to by the apostle : the fo7-m of the 
 connection here again, according to what I have already men- 
 tioned to be a characteristic of James's style, being determined 
 by a word, the word 'wanting,' or, as it might — and indeed, to 
 show the connection, should — have been rendered, 'lacking,' in 
 the last clause of the fourth verse. With obvious reference to 
 this word, he goes on : 
 
 * If (strictly, But if) any of you lack wisdofti, Id him ask 
 of God.'' Wisdom, in the Bible sense of the word, is the grandest 
 and rarest of the acquisitions possible to man. Knowledge, 
 to a certain extent, is common and easy; but to know and to 
 be wise are by no means the same thing. Knowledge is a 
 most efficient handmaid to, but a most inefficient substitute for, 
 that queenly regulative discretion which sees and selects worthy 
 ends, and the best means of attaining them. This is wisdom. 
 
 ' Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one. 
 Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells 
 
VER. 5.] Wisdom through Prayer. 79 
 
 In heads replete with thoughts of other men ; 
 Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. 
 Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, 
 The mere materials with which wisdom builds, — 
 Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place, 
 Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. 
 Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much ; 
 Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.' 
 
 Cowper's Task, vi. 88-97. 
 
 It is evident that, if ' the chief end of man is to glorify God 
 and to enjoy Him for ever,' then wisdom in the highest sense 
 is simply another name for religion ; and indeed that, looking 
 at the matter from the point of view which an immortal creature 
 ought to take, there is no real wisdom at all where religion is 
 wanting. Suppose the owner of a factory for the making of 
 some dehcate and expensive fabric were to bestow great atten- 
 tion on certain departments of the manufacture, and exhibit 
 much ingenuity in devising improvements on the machinery and 
 processes connected with these departments, but neglected 
 other branches, and above all, gave little heed to the grand 
 purpose of the whole, so that he produced unsatisfactory and 
 unsaleable material, — none of us would say that this was a wise 
 man of business. An actual case of the kind is not very com- 
 mon, for the interests of this world keep men from such out- 
 rageous folly ; but, alas, it is by no means rare to see a man 
 of much worldly sagacity heedless of the great ends of his 
 being, — diligent in the twisting of a certain thread, or the pre- 
 paration of a certain dye, for the web of life, whilst yet the web 
 itself, looked at in the light of the Lord, is worthless. True 
 wisdom lies in the subjection of all our capacities and energies 
 and affections to the control of high moral principles, and the 
 consequent faithful application of them all to noble moral 
 uses ; and ' the fear of God is the beginning — the foundation 
 — of this wisdom.' 'Happy,' says he whom we designate em- 
 phatically ' the wise man,' ' is the man that findeth wisdom, 
 and the man that getteth understanding : for .the merchandise 
 of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain 
 thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies ; and 
 
8o Lectures on the Epistle of y antes. [ch. i. 
 
 all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto 
 her. Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left 
 hand riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, 
 and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that 
 lay hold upon her ; and happy is every one that retaineth her.' 
 It is clear from the context that the reference of James in 
 the passage before us is specially to the wisdom needed in 
 times of trouble, in order to obtain spiritual improvement from 
 God's discipline, and 'let patience have her work perfect.' 
 Wisdom for this is the highest of all, and the most difficult of 
 attainment. Active performance of God's will is easier than 
 patient endurance of His will, — to do well not so hard as to 
 bear well. The apostle's ' z/j' in ' if any man lack wisdom,' 
 does not imply doubt. All men do, and in this world always 
 Avill, 'lack wisdom ;' and there are few clearer evidences that 
 a man's lack is very grievous than his supposing he has none. 
 The 'if seems to have reference rather to the occurrence of 
 circumstances in the experience of the apostle's readers calling 
 for the exercise of this kind of wisdom, and thus bringing out 
 their sense of want, and is therefore almost equivalent to 
 'whenever.' We are all apt to think ourselves wise, until 
 circumstances arise that test the wisdom. Young people, say 
 from seventeen to five-and-twenty years of age, have often 
 much stronger impressions of their ability to journey safely 
 and successfully through life, than, if they come to real know- 
 ledge of themselves, they ever have afterwards, when they have 
 had experience of the difficulties of life. And so, probably, 
 many Christians believe that they are able to endure affliction 
 well, till they fall into it. Those of us who have personally 
 undergone sore trials, or have with attention and thoughtful- 
 ness witnessed the trials of others, know well what an over- 
 whelming sense of weakness and ignorance comes over the 
 heart at first, and v;hat a deep impression is made of the need- 
 fulness of special wisdom to guide and sustain. And where 
 the Christian is subjected to long-continued trial, a sense of the 
 necessity of constant supplies of wisdom from above, if patience 
 is to have her work perfect, grows stronger day by day. 
 
VER. 5-] Wisdom through Prayer. 8i 
 
 ' Let him ask of God, — and it shall be given him' This is 
 plainly an echo of our Lord's words in the Sermon on the 
 Mount, 'Ask, and it shall be given you,' — one proof among 
 many that are afforded by this Epistle of the profound impres- 
 sion which that divine exposition of the law of the kingdom 
 had made on the mind of James. 
 
 It was a touching acknowledgment of one of the wisest and 
 best among the ancient heathen, ' I know nothing certainly, 
 except that I know nothing.' He felt that he 'lacked wisdom.' 
 But whither could he turn to obtain it ? Men around could 
 not help him, for they were merely less sensible of their ignor- 
 ance. The living God was unknown to him, — groped after 
 indeed dimly and wistfully, 'if haply he might find Him,' but 
 not seen to be a Friend, a Father, with whom His children 
 may hold communion, and ' ask' of Him. We know this ; and, 
 indeed, the familiarity of the truth, as a commonplace of Chris- 
 tianity, obscures to us the grandeur of the thought that the 
 Infinite One, the ' King eternal, immortal, and invisible,' is 
 willing to hold fellowship with His creatures — that He listens 
 to the cry of the contrite heart — that, having by our sins 
 earned the 'outer darkness,' we may yet 'ask' heavenly light, 
 true ' wisdom,' from the ' Father of lights,' the ' only wise 
 God.' 
 
 ' And it shall he given him.' As certainly as He is Himself 
 the * only wise God,' the only Fountain of wisdom, will He 
 make streams of that wisdom refresh and fertilize the souls of 
 those who ask Him. As certainly as He gave us our souls, 
 with all their faculties and their capacities of wisdom, so 
 certainly, in answer to prayer, will He guide to the apprehen- 
 sion by our souls of all needed truth, and to a realizing sense 
 of its power to sustain and comfort under every form of trial 
 Prayer obtains this true wisdom, — prayer only, prayer always. 
 As believers grow in prayerfulness, then, they grow in wisdom ; 
 and no less certainly, as they grow in wisdom, they grow in 
 prayerfulness. 
 
 ' That giveth to all men liberally, and iipbraideth not' The 
 apostle in these words exhibits the abundant ground of en- 
 
 r 
 
82 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes. [ch. i. 
 
 couragement that we have to pray. In the original, the posi- 
 tion of the participle rendered ' that giveth,' sets giving forth 
 in a peculiarly graphic way as a grand characteristic of God. 
 ' God is love ;' and this — His nature — reveals itself to us, His 
 creatures, in giving. He is ' the giving God,' and we see this 
 everywhere, alike in providence and in grace. ' He giveth to 
 all life, and breath, and all things.' 'He gave His only-begotten 
 Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but 
 have everlasting life ;' and having ' delivered Him up for us 
 all, how shall He not, with Him, also ixtt\y give us all things?' 
 The first of these quotations illustrates the truth that, in the 
 widest sense, God 'giveth to alt.'' ' The eyes of alt wait upon 
 Thee, and Thou givest them their meat in due season.' ' He 
 maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and 
 sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.' But whilst this is 
 true, and whilst a great encouragement to prayer is found in 
 the universal beneficence of God ; yet, in the connection in 
 which 'alt' stands in the passage before us, it seems most 
 natural to take it in a limited sense — ' all who ask Him, all 
 petitioners.' ' Pray for wisdom,' says the apostle, ' for God 
 answers every true prayer ; and it is in accordance with the 
 principles of His economy of grace to bestow His richest gifts 
 on those who ask them.' ' The righteous cry, and the Lord 
 heareth.' ' He will regard the prayer of the destitute,' and 
 ' fulfil the desire of them that fear Him.' 
 
 And to all sincere petitioners He 'giveth liberally^ — with 
 unstinted hand, with glorious munificence. Jacob asked 
 for ' bread to eat and raiment to put on,' and God makes 
 him ' two bands.' Solomon prayed for ' an understanding 
 heart,' and God said unto him, ' Because thou hast asked 
 this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life, neither 
 hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of 
 thine enemies, but hast asked for thyself understanding to 
 discern judgment \ behold, I have done according to thy 
 words : lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding 
 heart ; so that there was none like thee before thee, neither 
 after thee shall any arise like unto thee. And I have also 
 
VER. 5.] Wisdom tk rough Prayer. ^-^ 
 
 given thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches and 
 honour ; so that there shall not be any among the kings like 
 unto thee all thy days.' The prodigal thinks of the position 
 of ' an hired servant,' and his Father says, ' Bring forth the 
 best robe, and put it on him ; and put a ring on his hand, and 
 shoes on his feet.' Sweet and beautiful, Jiowever, as this word 
 ' liberally ' is, the apostle's own word is something even more 
 comprehensive and encouraging. It is the adverbial form of 
 the term employed in Rom. xii. 8, ' He that giveth, let him 
 do it with simplicity ;'' and Eph. vi. 5, 'Servants, be obedient 
 to them that are your masters according to the flesh, /// singlc- 
 ficss of your heart.' The exact meaning here, therefore, is that 
 God gives 'with simplicity,' 'with singleness of spirit :' He 
 does not, as men often do, give and yet in effect not give : He 
 does not give, and yet, by an unkind manner, or by subsequent 
 ungenerous exactions, neutralize the benefit of His giving : His 
 kindness in giving does not, as so often with men, ' fold in ' 
 upon another motive of a selfish nature : His giving is without 
 any duplicity, with singleness of aim to bless the recipient, to 
 reveal the love of His own nature for the happiness of His 
 creatures. 
 
 '■And iipbraiddh nof is pretty nearly an expansion, in a 
 negative form, for the sake of clearness and emphasis, of 
 the thought already given in ' liberally,' 'with simplicity ;' just 
 as in the previous verse we had ' entire ' explained by ' wanting 
 nothing.' We may easily weary human benefactors. Those 
 who have often shown us kindness are apt to feel continuing 
 it a burden ; and even if they do continue it, there is much 
 chance of our hearing painful references to the frequency and 
 largeness of our applications, and reproaches for the little pro- 
 fitable use to which we have turned their former generosity. 
 Under these circumstances, a suppliant may well enter the 
 house even of one whom he has good cause to acknowledge as 
 a friend with hesitation and fear. But God, in His giving, 
 ' upbraideth not.' He makes no mention of our past folly and 
 abuse of His kindness. The beginning of the new life exhibits 
 the character of the whole : the Father runs and falls on the 
 
84 Lectures on the Epistle of fames. [ch. i. 
 
 neck of His penitent petitioning prodigal, and ' loadeth him 
 with benefits.' He never tells us that we have come to Him too 
 often, or have asked too much ; nay, He always employs His 
 past kindness as an argument to induce us, through trust in 
 His love, to ask for more and greater blessings. ' I am the 
 Lord thy God,' He says, ' which brought thee out of the land 
 of Egypt ; — open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.' And such 
 is the confidence of His people : on mercies past they build 
 up a sure hope of new and more wondrous mercies to come. 
 ' The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and 
 out of the paw of the bear. He will deliver me out of the hand 
 of this Philistine.' ' The Lord hath been mindful of us ; He 
 will bless us.' 
 
 Considering all these things, then, my brethren, — considering 
 the constancy and magnitude of His past mercies, and the 
 unweariedness and tenderness of His grace, — surely ' if any 
 man lack wisdom,' it becomes him to ' ask of God ' with 
 humble boldness and lively hope. 
 
 ' But let him ask 171 faith, nothing wavering.' Witliout faith 
 there can be no true prayer. Manifestly, ' he that cometh to 
 God must believe that He is, and that He is a Rewarder of 
 them that diligently seek Him.' Outward form of service 
 there may be, but there can be no real approach of the soul 
 to God, no ' asking of God ' by the heart for any blessing, 
 unless we have faith in His existence, and pardoning mercy, 
 and willingness to hear prayer, all conjoined with a deep con- 
 viction of our need of His help. And faith must, in breadth 
 of apprehension, be proportioned to the fulness of revelation 
 given. For gospel hearers, therefore, the only acceptable 
 prayer is that offered in simple dependence on the mediation 
 of the Lord Jesus. The words rendered in the present pas- 
 sage '■nothing waveritig,'' occur also in Acts x. 20, where they 
 are translated ' doubting nothing.' ' Arise,' said the Holy 
 Spirit to teter, when Cornelius's messengers were at the gate, 
 ' and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing, for I 
 have sent them.' This passage illustrates the meaning here : 
 ' Let him ask in faith, doubting nothing in regard to his need 
 
VER. 7.] Wisdom through Prayer. 85 
 
 of heavenly help, or to God's willingness to grant help ; let all 
 arrogant trust in any fancied wisdom of his own be laid aside, 
 and let him entertain a childlike, unhesitating conviction that 
 God can and will supply his need in the way that will best 
 promote the suppliant's good and His own glory.' 
 
 ' For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with 
 the wind and tossed.'' ' For the doubter is as unsteady and aim- 
 less, as untrustworthy with regard to gaining any end that needs 
 determined perseverance in a certain course, as a billow on the 
 sea, driven hither and thither by every shift of wind.' He who 
 lurestles with God, — who, like the importunate widow, is deter- 
 mined ' not to faint ' in entreaty, — this man ' as a prince has 
 power with God.' 'The fervent — energetic — prayer of a right- 
 eous man availeth much.' But what can be expected to result 
 from the poor, weak, nerveless prayer of a doubter ? God 
 would have our supplication to be, not like the wind-driven 
 surge, but like the strong current of a rapid river, sweeping 
 away obstacles, bearing steadily onward to throw itself into 
 the ocean of the divine grace. 
 
 ' For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of 
 the Lord.^^ This '■for' is co-ordinate with that in the previous 
 verse, introducing a second reason why the petitioner should 
 ask 'in faith, nothing wavering.' The first reason, which we 
 have^ust considered, was that a wavering or doubting sup- 
 pliant exhibits a worthless, aimless instability of character; the 
 second, bringing out explicitly what is suggested by the first, 
 is, that such a person has no reason to expect an answer to his 
 prayers. When we present a request on a matter of import- 
 ance to a fellow-creature, particularly one much higher in rank 
 than ourselves, common respect requires that we should have 
 well-defined views on the matter, that we should not drift this 
 way and that, but know what we want, and that he to whom we 
 
 ' Comparing this verse with the fifth, we naturally regard God the Father 
 as meant by ' the Lord ; ' and this is James's usual application of the name. 
 In the other epistles, ' the Lord ' commonly designates Christ. James's use 
 of the word, so common in the Old Testament, accords exactly with the 
 peculiar type of his piety; and when he applies it to Christ (as in i. i, ii. 
 I, V. 7, 8), the ascription in it of Divinity is all the more distinct. 
 
86 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes. [ch. i, 
 
 apply can give it to us. Is it reasonable, then, — is it other than 
 grievous folly and sin, — to bring ' wavering ' into the audience- 
 chamber of the King of kings ? To God belongs all the glory 
 of man's salvation ; and, consistently with the principles of His 
 moral administration, He can save only those whose hearts 
 consent that to Him all the glory shall belong. He ' resisteth 
 the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.' He says, ' Woe 
 unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation ;' 
 but ' He satisfieth the longing soul, and fiUeth the hungry soul 
 with goodness.' Now a man who prays — or thinks he prays — 
 yet in heart doubts through all his devotion, has still a proud, 
 self-asserting spirit ; his hesitation springs from unwillingness to 
 believe and to confess that he is strong only when he receives 
 of God's strength, and wise only as he draws from the fountain 
 of God's wisdom. He will not cast himself wholly on the 
 divine help. But God will have no half honour; therefore 
 ' let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the 
 Lord.' 
 
 '■A double-viinded man is unstable in all his way si' The 
 word ' is,' as you will see from its being printed in our Bibles 
 in Italic type, is a supplement of the translators. Some sup- 
 plement of the kind is needful in English ; but, according to 
 the connection of the sentence with what precedes, it should 
 rather stand at the beginning, thus : ' He is a double-minded 
 man, unstable in all his ways.' This is a further description, 
 terse and pointed, of the doubting suppliant's real character. 
 Observe that the man is not exactly a hypocrite. He is a 
 man of divided heart, or who seems almost to have two 
 souls, — one disposed to lean on himself and to seek wisdom 
 and strength and satisfaction in the world, the other disposed 
 to look to God, and seek help and happiness from Him. How 
 vivid a picture it is ! Is there not reason to fear that it re- 
 presents with sad exactness the spiritual state of many in the 
 Christian church ? Such a person, the apostle adds, is ' un- 
 stable in all his ways.^ An inconsistency of life results neces- 
 sarily from the dissension of spirit, the divided heart. The 
 man, 'halting between two opinions,' would fain conjoin the 
 
VER, 8.] Wisdom through Prayer. 87 
 
 service of God and mammon, would fain 'fear the Lord' and 
 at the same time ' serve his own gods.' Hesitation, incon- 
 sistency, varying purpose and effort, exhibit themselves there- 
 fore everywhere in his life. In his business pursuits and in 
 his pleasures there must often be changefulness and manifest 
 indecision, resulting from perplexities and difficulties which to 
 the mere worldling — the man of no religious feeling — are alto- 
 gether strange; and, on the other hand, in religious services 
 and Christian work of every kind, his fitfulness and want of 
 thoroughness betray the divided heart. A poor, miserable, 
 ignoble character this, brethren, — a character which is utterly 
 incompatible with the enjoyment of true peace through God's 
 favour and fellowship. ' Let not that man think that he shall 
 receive anything of the Lord.' 
 
Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. i. 
 
 III. 
 RICH POOR AND POOR RICH. 
 
 'Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted ; lo But the 
 rich, in that he is made low : because as the flower of the grass he 
 shall pass a^way. 1 1 For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning 
 heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and 
 the grace of the fashion of it perisheth : so also shall the rich man 
 fade away in his ways. 12 Blessed is the man that endureth temp- 
 tation : for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which 
 the Lord hath promised to them that love Him.' — James i. 9-12. 
 
 THE connection of this paragraph appears to be mainly 
 with the exhortation of the second verse, on which all 
 that has come between is dependent ; with a reference, how- 
 ever, also to the statement in the eighth verse. ' Have joy, 
 I say, in tribulations ; and the true way to avoid that double- 
 mindedness and instability which would prevent such joy is 
 to keep the eye much directed to those particular aspects of 
 our spiritual condition that are specially fitted to counteract 
 the misleading tendencies of outward circumstances.' Such, 
 as it seems to me, is substantially the force of the present 
 passage, and its relation to the preceding. 
 
 ' {But) let the brother of hnv degree rejoice in that he is exalted.'' 
 '■The brother^ means simply 'the Christian.' ' The brethren ' 
 and 'the saints' were the usual terms employed by believers 
 in the first age to designate members of the church. The 
 name ' Christians,' which, as we are told in the Acts of the 
 Apostles, originated at Antioch, apparently about eight or 
 nine years after our Lord's ascension, was given in all likeli- 
 hood by the heathen, and only gradually came to be accepted 
 and exulted in by believers themselves. How sweet a term 
 ' brother ' is ! Were its force universally understood and felt 
 throughout the church of Christ, what a loud and emphatic 
 
VER. 9,] Rich Poor and Poo?^ Rick. 89 
 
 reiteration would thus everywhere and continually be given, 
 such as even the inattentive world could not but hear, of 
 Heaven's testimony regarding the objects of Messiah's reign : 
 ' Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will 
 towards men ! ' Sin has filled the world with dissensions and 
 hatreds. Jealousy and anger, private quarrels and public wars, 
 are the natural fruits of depravity. The essence of sin being 
 selfishness, self-glorification and self-enjoyment, its constant 
 tendency is to disintegrate society — to make men, as far as 
 regards affection, isolated units, looking always on their own 
 things, and not on the things of others, except with the eye 
 of envy and greed ; so that even among persons that God in 
 His providence has linked most closely — parertts, brothers, 
 sisters — coldness, or even bitter alienation, often enters in. 
 What influence can neutralize this tendency to mutual re- 
 pulsion, and establish among men peace, and love, and happi- 
 ness? The growth of international commerce, the diffusion 
 of sound principles of trade, judicious legislation on matters 
 where there is a conflict or supposed conflict between the 
 interests of different sections of a community, — these and 
 other things of similar influence may do somewhat to diminish 
 active hostility, or even increase kindliness, between nations, 
 or classes in a nation ; but no power can deeply and lastingly 
 counteract the alienating energy of sin, no power can make 
 men feel and act towards each other as ' brethren ' — whom 
 'God hath made of one blood' — except vital Christianity. 
 ' One is your Master (your Teacher),' said Jesus, ' even 
 Christ, and all ye are brethren ; ' or, as He stated the same 
 principle on another occasion, ' Have salt in yourselves, and 
 have peace one with another.' The truth taught to humble, 
 candid souls by the One Master is the only salt that can pre- 
 serve humanity from the corruption of sin ; the only salt which 
 (like Elisha's cruse at Jericho), when thrown into the bitter 
 fountain of a heart — of a world — full of hatred, can change 
 it into a spring of the living waters of love, fitted to give 
 health and pleasure, to diffuse fertility and beauty. ' Of His 
 own will the Father of lights begat us with the word of truth ;' 
 
90 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 and believers, being thus all children of the same God, neces- 
 sarily, in the measure of the clearness and liveliness of their 
 faith, feel themselves to be 'brethren' of each other; and as 
 ' God is love,' His image in His children will be recognised 
 mainly in a character full of love, filial love to Him, brotherly 
 love to all fellow-Christians, compassionate love to the world. 
 My friends, let us think out the questions suggested to our 
 consciences by this scriptural name for a Christian — ' brother.' 
 If believers generally fully understood and acted out the truth 
 that the church is a brotherhood, how immeasurably would 
 her power be increased, alike to give happiness to her own 
 members, and to prevail with the unconverted to enter in 
 and share her joy ! How legible and persuasive an epistle of 
 Christ would she then be, telling everywhere that 'God is 
 love,' and that the gospel is fitted to make men, in heart and 
 life, like God ! It is when the church shall be ' fair as the 
 moon ' with holy beauties, the beauties of love, that she shall 
 be ' terrible as an army with banners ' to Satan and his hosts, 
 — then, not till then. 
 
 ' Of low degree.' Then, as now, there were many poor Chris- 
 tians. And among the Jews who embraced Christianity there 
 was a special cause of poverty, in the intense bigotry of their 
 unbelieving countrymen, through which, in all likelihood, many 
 were in one way or another deprived of their former means of 
 earning a livelihood, simply because they called the hated 
 Nazarene their Lord. It is evident from various statements 
 in the New Testament, that in the apostolic age distress pre- 
 vailed very widely among the Christian Jews in Palestine, — 
 largely, no doubt, from the cause I have mentioned ; and it is 
 reasonable to suppose that to some extent the same cause 
 acted among those ' in the Dispersion.' Poverty, therefore, was 
 often most evidently a form of suffering persecution for con- 
 science sake ; as in our own day it often is, for example, 
 among Jews or Hindoos who become Christians. Whatever 
 the immediate cause of his humble worldly position might be, 
 however, you will observe that the Christian ' of low degree ' is, 
 none the less for his low degree, a ' brother ' in the apostle's 
 
VER. 9-] Rich Poor and Poor Rich. 91 
 
 view. A truth this, — and the apostle's prominent exhibition of 
 it here, — well fitted to comfort these poor Christians : their 
 poverty was no barrier to their sharing fully in the privileges of 
 God's family. And it is a truth important to be borne in mind 
 by others. The application in the church of mere worldly 
 standards and estimates of men, is altogether alien to the spirit 
 of brotherhood. If one professing Christian entertain for an- 
 other anything like a feeling of disregard, dislike, contempt, 
 simply because that other is poor, lacks education, is destitute 
 of some of those graces of manner which men obtain through 
 intercourse with polished society, this proves his heart to be, 
 to a very large extent, uncontrolled by Christian truth. Our 
 Master, the Lord from heaven, was a working carpenter ; and 
 the disciple who ' leaned on His bosom ' was not one of the 
 believing ' honourable counsellors,' but a poor fisherman. 
 
 The poor brother is enjoined by the apostle to ' rejoice iit that 
 he is exalted.^ The original word rendered ^rejoice'' is a very 
 strong one, commonly translated elsewhere ' glory ' or ' boast ;' 
 and thus the paradox of grace is exhibited in the most striking 
 form. Amid the depressing influences of poverty, the Christian 
 is to keep his eye fixed on his real dignity, and glory in it. 
 His present low position is merely in external things, and con- 
 sequently temporary, and is appointed him because his heavenly 
 Father sees poverty to be needful for the good of his soul ; his 
 dignity belongs to the man himself, considered apart from sur- 
 roundings, and is thus unending, like himself The various 
 representations given in Scripture of the relation of believers to 
 God, and the blessings connected with that relation, are most 
 graciously adapted to cheer under all aspects of the ' low de- 
 gree.' Many of those to whom James wrote were no doubt 
 slaves : these are told that they are ' the Lord's freedmen.' If 
 the carnal eye looked upon these poor believers as ' the filth 
 of the world and the offscouring of all things,' faith could see 
 in them Jehovah's 'jewels.' However lowly their birth was 
 reputed here, they were ' sons of God ;' however intense their 
 penury here, they had ' the true riches,' laid up in a treasure- 
 house 'where no thief could break through or steal.' They 
 
92 Lectures on the Epistle of yarnes. [ch, i. 
 
 might have to hunger often for the food of the body, but they 
 had in abundance ' bread of hfe,' which would sustain them for 
 ever. They were obHged to associate with, and were them- 
 selves ranked among, the despised of the world ; but they could 
 with confidence look forward to a ' crown of glory,' to the fel- 
 lowship of angels, to the beatific vision of God, and close, un- 
 interrupted communion with Him. And their very tribulations 
 were to the eye of faith an evidence of their dignity, for they 
 were Fatherly chastisements ; and in so far as they suffered on 
 account of religion, they were companions of Jesus in His 
 sufferings, and might take home to their hearts the sweet 
 assurance that they should ' also reign with Him.' 
 
 The precise connection of what follows with the preceding 
 is somewhat doubtful. Perhaps the general idea of ' trial ' or 
 ' temptation ' (any thing or state that tests, wealth as well as 
 poverty) had entered the apostle's mind before he gave the 
 injunction of ver. 9, which we have just been examining. Or — 
 and, as it seems to me, this is more probable — the important 
 precept for the rich may have been suggested to him, as ob- 
 viously it most naturally might, by the mention of the poor, 
 and is thus a digression from the main line of remark, to which 
 he returns at the twelfth verse. 
 
 ' But the rich, in that he is made low.'' It is clear, from the 
 general tone of the writings of the apostles, that there were 
 very few wealthy men in the primitive church. Few had energy 
 to face the current of j)ublic feeling in the upper classes of 
 society, which then ran strongly against the profession of Chris- 
 tianity, as in all ages it has run strongly against earnest, active, 
 living Christianity. Still there were some in the church here 
 and there, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimath^a. It was 
 ' hard,' then as now, but not impossible, ' for a rich man to 
 enter into the kingdom of God.' Timothy received from Paul 
 a charge for some members of the church who were ' rich in 
 this world.' Now, obviously, the sjDecial spiritual danger of 
 wealthy Christians (the danger, therefore, on which the charge 
 of Paul just mentioned bears) is, that they may ' trust in un- 
 certain riches.' The ' deceitfulness of riches ' is such tliat, 
 
VER. lo.] Rich Poor and Poor Rich. 93 
 
 through the falsehoods whicli the unwise possessors of wealth 
 are induced to believe with regard to its power, they lament- 
 ably often neglect the great salvation, and throw away their 
 souls. The more their beneficent God ' loadeth them with His 
 benefits,' the less, in many cases, they think of Him or desire 
 to serve Him. Our apostle's direction, accordingly, to the 
 Christian brethren to whom God has given wealth, is to look 
 not on what the world deems their exaltation, but on the 
 humbling of heart which, through the gracious dealings of the 
 Divine Spirit with them, they have received. Set high through 
 God's providence in earthly station, they had spiritually, if they 
 were true Christians, been made low in their own eyes through 
 convictions of sin and unworthiness. ' Cherish this contrite 
 heart,' says the apostle ; ' live much in the contemplation of 
 those aspects of truth which are fitted to drive away high 
 thoughts of self, and rejoice in that infinite mercy which has 
 led you to see that by nature you are wretched, and miserable, 
 and poor, and blind, and naked. Seek not happiness in 
 luxury and splendour; put off all pride of spirit; remember 
 that before God you must appear as you are, not as you 
 seem; put on, therefore, as the elect of God, humbleness of 
 mind ; be clothed with humility, for God resisteth the proud, 
 but giveth grace to the humble. In the Spirit's testimony 
 to your growing humility you may rejoice ; for he that exalteth 
 himself shall be abased, but he that humbleth himself shall 
 be exalted.' Such appears to be the force of the apostle's 
 injunction. 
 
 The respective duties, then, in the contrasted cases, are 
 these : ' Let the brother who outwardly is in a low position 
 rejoice that God has made him high in real dignity, and let 
 the wealthy brother rejoice that God has made him low in 
 spirit ;' or, as we may express it — giving perhaps a yet more 
 distinct representation of the force of James's words, by avail- 
 ing ourselves of the fact that ' humble,' the usual rendering in 
 our version of the original word here translated 'low,' has very 
 nearly the same latitude of reference as that original word, 
 denoting sometimes outward circumstances and sometimes 
 
94 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 feeling — ' Let the brother who is humble in. position rejoice 
 in that he is exalted, and the rich in that he is humbled.' 
 
 The extreme spiritual danger of the rich man leads the 
 apostle to speak of this a little further, illustrating the folly of 
 cherishing confidence or pride in mere external grandeur by 
 a beautiful comparison showing its perishableness. For an 
 immortal being like man, it is surely utterly irrational to place 
 supreme trust and take supreme delight in any pleasure or 
 possession which is not, like himself, imperishable. A wealthy 
 worldling, feeling this in the depths of his soul, is sometimes 
 almost led, through the deceitfulness of his riches, to dream 
 that they are an imperishable possession. A very long life of 
 luxury and splendour at least, he supposes, is surely before 
 him, the end of which he will try not to think of; and he 
 trusts, too, that in a sense he will live to all generations, — 
 that his name and his glory will endure in a line of rich and 
 honoured children. ' Their inward thought is, that their 
 houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling-places to 
 all generations : they call their lands after their own names.' 
 ' Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years ; take 
 thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.' O the folly and the 
 madness ! ' Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of 
 thee.' ' Like sheep they are laid in the grave ; death shall feed 
 on them ; and their beauty shall consume in the grave from 
 their dwelling.' ' Let the Christian brother who is rich, then,' 
 says the apostle, ' delight in the grace that has made him poor 
 in spirit, and not in his external greatness ; because as the 
 flower of the grass he shall pass azuay. For the sun is no sooner 
 risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the 
 flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth : 
 so also shall the rich man fade away i7i his waysJ' The term 
 rendered here '■ burning heaf is often used for a hot, desolating 
 wind which blows over parts of Western Asia from the deserts 
 of the east and south, and which is known as the sirocco. It 
 was this that the Lord sent upon Jonah, after the gourd had 
 withered ; and it is to it that David refers in the words, ' As 
 for man, his days are as grass : as a flower of the field, so he 
 
VER. T I.] Rich Poor and Poor Rich. 95 
 
 flourisheth ; for the wind passeth over it, and it is gone ; and 
 the place thereof shall know it no more.' In the passage be- 
 fore us, then, the apostle appears to conjoin the sun and this 
 wind as agents of destruction; thus: ' The sun is no sooner risen 
 alofig wii/i the burning wind.' 
 
 The figure which we have here is common in Scripture to set 
 forth the brevity and uncertainty of life ; and the words of James 
 are but a variation of a well-known passage in Isaiah : 'The voice 
 said. Cry. And he said. What shall I cry ? All flesh is grass, 
 and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field : the 
 grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord 
 bloweth upon it : surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, 
 the flower fadeth : but the word of our God shall stand for ever ' 
 (Isa. xl. 6-8). The image is one which very naturally suggests 
 itself to a thoughtful, observant, imaginative Eastern. He walks 
 forth into the fields at early morn, whilst the dew-drops are still 
 smiling up to the dawn, and he sees all around a rich carpet 
 of long and verdant grass, among which many beautiful wild 
 flowers delight the eye. Wandering again in the cool of the 
 evening to the same field, he finds that the intense heat of the 
 sun and the blast of the scorching sirocco have desolated the 
 beauty of the morning, — the grass withered, the flowers faded 
 and dead. Even so is it, he thinks, with human life, — now gay, 
 and beautiful, and happy ; but ' the Spirit of the Lord — the hot 
 wind of Jehovah's judgments — bloweth upon it,' and it withers 
 away : for ' surely the people is grass.' In the passage before 
 us a special application of the figure is made to the rich man, 
 he and his splendours being represented by the ''flower of the 
 grass.' So in Peter (ist Ep. i. 24): 'AH flesh is as grass, 
 and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.' As amid the 
 monotony of green the gay wild flowers, by the richness and 
 variety of their hues, attract the eye, so riches and rank give 
 prominence to their possessors among the crowd of mankind. 
 But the ' flower of the grass ' fadeth with the grass : so the 
 honoured and the mean pass alike to the grave. The rich and 
 the poor meet together there ; and as to-day a pauper is carried 
 from his garret to the churchyard, so to-morrow he who but a 
 
96 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 few days ago was the envied enjoyer of wealth and luxury may 
 be borne forth from his halls and pleasure-grounds, and ' the 
 place that once knew him know him no more.' As the flower 
 withers, so also shall the rich man fade away — and this ' /// 
 his ways ' — in the very midst of his activities, his purposes to 
 ' pull down his barns and build greater,' his busy pursuit of 
 pleasure, and power, and greater riches. How immeasurable, 
 then, is the folly of setting the heart on mere outward splen- 
 dour, of seeking to be clothed with the garments of mere 
 earthly glory, since these must all perish, and those who had 
 no other raiment must stand naked in the presence of God ! 
 
 Before passing from this part of the paragraph, it is proper 
 to mention that some interpreters consider the rich man spoken 
 of in the tenth verse not to be a professing Christian at all ; it 
 being supposed that, whilst there were wealthy men in the 
 church here and there, yet these were so very few that the 
 mere word ' rich ' would at once suggest a member of the per- 
 secuting class. According to the most recent form of this 
 view, from the injunction of the ninth verse, ' Let the poor 
 Christian rejoice,' is to be taken for the next clause simply an 
 assertion of fact, thus : 'But the rich (man, not 'brother' — the 
 wealthy worldling) I'ejoices in his humiliation,' — in that wealth 
 and splendour which, as God sees the matter, are degrading to 
 him. As the Apostle Paul puts it, ' their glory is in their 
 shame.' The figure that follows, of the perishing flower, will 
 then illustrate wherein this humiliation or degradation lies. 
 The mere possession of riches is not in itself a sinful thing, a 
 humiliation or source of shame ; on the contrary, wealth is a 
 ' talent,' to be faithfully ' occupied ' for the Master : but to 
 seek supreme happiness in perishable riches, and the transitory 
 splendour that riches can supply, — this for an immortal soul, 
 for a nature made to enjoy God's favour and fellowship, is a 
 humiliation, a debasement passing all description. ' The rich 
 worldling glories in what, as glo7'ied in, is a shame to him.' 
 The meaning thus given to the passage is in itself important, 
 and suits the context well ; for you will see how fitted a state- 
 ment like this was to keep the poor persecuted believers (the 
 
VER. 12.] Rich Poor and Poor Rich. 97 
 
 only class whom, according to this interpretation, the apostle 
 addresses throughout the paragraph) in a right frame of heart, 
 when they were tempted to be ' double-minded ' and ' unstable' 
 through envy of their rich persecutors. The parallelism of the 
 two clauses also is on this view very exact : the poor Christian 
 should rejoice in his real though not seeming greatness, while 
 the rich enemy of God rejoices in his real though not seeming 
 debasement. The only serious objection to this view of the 
 meaning — an objection, however, so serious, as it appears to me, 
 as to be fatal — lies in the unnaturalness of the supplements, the 
 generic 'man' instead of the special 'brother,' and particu- 
 larly the assertion ' rejoices ' for the injunction ' Let — rejoice.' 
 The translation of the clause (the first half of the tenth verse) 
 in our authorized version represents the original exactly ; so that 
 even the mere English reader, reading the ninth verse and that 
 clause together, can judge for himself of this unnaturalness. 
 
 The twelfth verse gives the spirit of the whole passage from 
 the beginning of the chapter, and sends home its teaching 
 with power to the hearts of thoughtful readers, setting before 
 them the glory and felicity which through God's grace await 
 those that ' hold the beginning of their confidence stedfast unto 
 the end.' In ' Blessed is the man that endiireth temptation ' we 
 have not a simple repetition of the doctrine of the second 
 verse : an explanation of that seeming paradox is introduced. 
 It is not, ' Blessed is the man that is exposed to temptation,' but 
 ' that endiireth ' — ' bears with patience ' — ' displays constancy 
 under trial.' 'Behold,' says our apostle elsewhere, 'we count 
 them happy which endure.' The wicked man suffers; he does 
 not ' endure^ in the Scripture use of the word. It is only when 
 ' patience has her work perfect ' that the blessing comes. Only 
 those who have a spirit made willing to bear right on to the 
 end what God sends (and this not through efforts after a heart- 
 less and unnatural Stoicism, but in childlike submission to the 
 divine will) are ' blessed,' ' happy,' sustained in holy peace and 
 filled with bright hope, under His' chastenings. 
 
 The truth, or at least one truth, which inspires this blessed- 
 ness is exhibited by the apostle in the words that follow : 
 
 G 
 
98 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. l 
 
 ' For when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life.'' The 
 meaning of the words translated '■ 7vhen he is tried'' is 'being 
 approved, found to stand the trial.' The word here rendered 
 ' tried ' has ' approved ' as its representative in every other 
 place of the New Testament where it occurs \ and ' tried ' is 
 obviously intended by our translators to have the same mean- 
 ing, as when we speak of a ' tried friend,' or when we read in 
 Isaiah (xxviii. 16), 'Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a 
 tried stone.' In James's words there is probably an allusion 
 to the testing of metals for their purity in a furnace, — the 
 figure fully exhibited elsewhere : ' The Messenger of the cove- 
 nant is like a refiner's fire : and He shall sit as a refiner and 
 purifier of silver : and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and 
 purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the 
 Lord an offering in righteousness ' (Mai. iii. 2, 3). The man who 
 stands the test shall 'receive the crown of life.'' His time on 
 earth may be full of sadness ; he may walk much in the valley 
 of the shadow of death, and may even be called on to prove 
 himself faithful unto a martyr's death ; but yonder there await 
 him the blessedness and glory of the heavenly life, which is ' a 
 crown ' of princely dignity : for ' they which receive abundance 
 of grace and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by 
 Jesus Christ' With Paul this is 'a crown of righteousness,' 
 with Peter ' a crown of glory,' with Isaiah ' a crown of glory 
 and a diadem of beauty,' and with the Saviour Himself, as here, 
 * a crown of life.' Oh, brethren, how sustaining is the prospect 
 that the apostle opens to us here ! With a ' crown of life ' be- 
 fore him, will not the enlightened and prayerful Christian be 
 cheered and upheld, even if he be called on to be, like the 
 apostle of the Gentiles, 'in deaths oft?' ^ 
 
 On the ' crown of life ' Archbishop Trench has some interesting re- 
 marks in his Commentary on the Epistles to the Seven Churches, p. 102 
 (with immediate reference to the occurrence of the expression in Rev. ii. 
 10). ' Is this crown,' he asks, 'the diade^n of royalty, or the garland oi 
 victory ? I believe, the former. It is quite true that o-rsipavos is seldom used 
 in this sense, — much oftener S/aSjj^a ; yet the ^'golden crovras" (o-rsipavo/) of 
 Rev. iv. 4 can only be royal crowns (compare v. 10). Srlipavoj, too, is the 
 word all the evangelists employ of the "crown of thorns," evidently a cari- 
 
VER. 12.] Rich Poor and Poor Rich. 99 
 
 This crown '■the Lord JiatJi promised to them that love Him. ^ 
 Scripture is full of the promise ; and simply on this promise 
 rests the believer's hope. When he looks at his own deserts, 
 he can see no crown before him — nothing but darkness and 
 curse; but, 'walking in the light of the Lord,' he can see a 
 reward of grace in the hand of a loving Father, who has pro- 
 mised, and 'cannot lie.' 'Hath He said, and shall He not 
 do it? Hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?' 
 This reward is set before ' them that love Hi/n,' that is, before 
 all the truly pious, for love to God is the essence of piety : 
 wherever it is present, there is spiritual life; and wherever it is 
 absent, how complete soever may be the decorum of moral 
 conduct and outward religious observance, there is spiritual 
 death. Looking back, you will observe the light cast by this 
 clause of the verse on the 'endureth' of the first. In the 
 apostle's view, they that ' endure ' and they that ' love God ' 
 are obviously the same class. Any measure of ' endurance,' 
 even though nominally in God's cause, yet without 'love,' is 
 valueless before Him. ' Though I give my body to be burned, 
 and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.' And where true 
 love to God exists, awakened by a sense of God's amazing love 
 to us, it will bear, through His sustaining grace, the severest 
 strain. ' Love endureth all things^ 
 
 cature of royalty. Did we indeed meet these words, "a crown of life," in 
 the Epistles of St. Paul, we should be justified in saying that, in all proba- 
 bility, the wreath or garland of the victors in the games, the "crown" in 
 this sense, was intended. Paul was familiar with the Greek games, and 
 freely drew his imagery from them, not fearing to contemplate the faithful 
 under the aspect of runners and wrestlers. His universal — Hellenic as well 
 as Jewish — education exempted him from any scruples upon this point. Not 
 so, however, the Christians of Palestine. These Greek games were strange 
 to them, or only not strange as they were the objects of their deepest abhor- 
 rence, — as witness the tumults and troubles which accompanied the first 
 introduction of them by Herod the Great at Jerusalem, recorded at length 
 by Josephus. Tertullian's point of view, who styles them superstitiosa 
 certaniina GrcBcarum et religionum et voluptahtm, would very much have 
 been theirs.' 
 
 The argument is obviously equally valid, at least, for James as for Reve- 
 lation. 
 
lOO Lectures on the Epistle of y antes. [cii. i. 
 
 IV. 
 
 GENESIS OF SIN. 
 
 ' Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God : for God 
 cannot be tempted with evil, neither temptetli He any man ; 14 But 
 every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and 
 enticed. 15 Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin ; 
 and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.' — ^James i. 13-15. 
 
 THE apostle has closed his first paragraph by declaring the 
 ' blessedness' of ' the man that endureth temptation,' 
 seeing that there awaits him the ' crown of life, which the Lord 
 hath promised to them that love Him.' But many of his 
 readers, he knew, were sensible that they had not ' endured' 
 under trial, but had failed to show persistent and unconquer- 
 able love to God. Some of them, perhaps, had under persecu- 
 tion all but apostatized : some among ' the brethren of low 
 degree' were conscious that they had not rejoiced in their 
 spiritual exaltation, but had murmured at their outward humi- 
 liation ; some of ' the rich brethren' were sensible that they 
 had forgotten the transitory, unsatisfying nature of worldly 
 wealth, and too largely placed trust and sought joy there, in- 
 stead of exulting 'that they were made low :' many, no doubt, 
 in all classes of society, had yielded to the seductive influences 
 of the licentious heathenism around. To all such the apostle 
 says, in the section on the consideration of which we now 
 enter, ' Lay the blame of your sin where it is due — on your- 
 selves.' A conviction of personal responsibility and personal 
 guilt must always be the first stage in the passage to true peace. 
 The first part of the mission of the Divine Comforter is to 
 ' convince the world of sin.'' 
 
 '■Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God : 
 
VER. 13-] Genesis of S 171. loi 
 
 for God cannot be tempted ivith evil, neither tempteth He any 
 ma?!.^ You feel here that we pass at once to the bad sense 
 of 'tempt,' that in which the word is commonly employed. 
 Hitherto in the Epistle it has imported 'trial' or 'testing' in 
 the most general way. Here it denotes trial with a malevolent 
 aim, a desire to bring into sin through the test. The sudden 
 transition without explanation to this other use — a transition in 
 English corresponding exactly to what is seen in the original 
 — is somewhat remarkable. 
 
 Of the reason given in the second part of the verse — ^for 
 God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man ' — 
 the force seems to be as follows : — ' A tempter to sin must be 
 himself sinful, open to the seductions of evil. Now God cannot 
 thus be tempted. His absolute blessedness, His infinite holi- 
 ness, remove Him wholly from liability to temptation ; and 
 as thus, from His very nature. He cannot be tempted to sin, 
 so from His very nature He cannot tempt to sin.' I may ob- 
 serve, in passing, that this representation of God, simple and 
 obvious as it appears to us, is yet due wholly to revelation. 
 The gods of heathen imagination are always conceived both 
 as liable to temptation to moral evil, and as themselves 
 tempters. The conception of their character comes from 
 man's wicked heart, and the stream cannot rise higher than 
 its source. 
 
 ' Let no man say, 7vhen he is tempted, I am tempted of God.'' 
 Under the consciousness of sin and the terror of punishment, 
 we are all prone to cast blame away from ourselves — generally 
 either on other men or on Satan. In the singularly interesting 
 and instructive narrative given us in Scripture of the first sin, 
 which was in all essential respects the type of all sins, we find 
 this feature exhibited very distinctly. When challenged by 
 God, ' Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee 
 that thou shouldst not eat?' Adam answers, 'The woman 
 whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and 
 I did eat' And Eve, in her turn, says, 'The serpent beguiled 
 me, and I did eat.' Every descendant of this fallen pair, save 
 that 'Seed of the woman' who 'bruised the serpent's head,' has 
 
102 Lectures on the Epistle of James . [ch. i, 
 
 said, or thought, in regard to himself the same things. But 
 subtle as wicked men may be, subtle and powerful and earnest 
 in all evil as wicked angels undoubtedly are, neither men nor 
 devils can compel us to sin. We are free to refuse the evil 
 and choose the good ; and it is our welcoming the temptation, 
 our choosing the evil instead of the good, that constitutes sin. 
 In the charge laid against Satan and evil men, however, there 
 may be a proportion of truth : the serpent did tempt Eve, and 
 Eve did tempt Adam. But there is another mode of evading 
 personal responsibility which is wholly baseless, which is indeed 
 utter and awful blasphemy, devolving the blame of our sin 
 upon God. Certain false systems of philosophy (as fatalism 
 and atheism) avow this doctrine in one form or another ; and 
 the semi-atheistic materialism so lamentably popular among 
 our men of science at present, has a teaching practically the 
 same, making sin exactly analogous to bodily disease. By 
 some expositors, the apostle has been supposed to refer in 
 the passage before us to such views, as professed by some 
 among his readers. This is altogether improbable, I think, 
 since it is difficult to see how persons holding and avowing 
 such convictions could number themselves among Christians 
 under any circumstances, or, at all events, what could lead 
 them to do so in an age of persecution. In the words he 
 employs, James may perhaps glance slightly at such philoso- 
 phical theories, as fitted to exercise to some extent an injuri- 
 ous influence even on those that might seem to be placed by 
 their religious belief in a totally different sphere of thought ; 
 but he refers immediately and mainly, no doubt, to foolish 
 and wicked thoughts that are apt to rise at times in the minds 
 of all, even of those whose general views appear most opposed 
 to them. 
 
 The thought which he rebukes will occur in various forms. 
 Thus : ' God has ordained everything that comes to pass : He 
 has therefore ordained that I should yield to the temptation 
 under which I have now fallen.' Now, everything connected 
 with the nature and doings of the infinite God has, and must 
 have, aspects of profoundest mystery for man ; and thus it is so, 
 
VER. 13-] Genesis of Sin. 103 
 
 of course, with His decrees. But regarding them, these things 
 at least' are plainly revealed in Scripture, and to be held fast 
 as fundamental truths on the subject: that God, who 'is of 
 purer eyes than to behold iniquity,' is in no sense or measure 
 the author of sin, and that His decrees do no violence toman's 
 own will. ' The secret things belong unto the Lord our God ; 
 but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to 
 our children ;' and nothing is more plainly revealed than this, 
 that God hates sin with a perfect hatred, and that all the in- 
 fluences He exerts on man's spirit are for the overthrow of 
 sin. For purposes of infinite wisdom and love, towards the 
 understanding of which glorified saints will grow throughout 
 eternity, God permits in His universe the existence of moral 
 evil ; but it is utterly abhorrent to Him ; and w^hencesoever 
 it springs, in no sense or degree does it spring from Him, 
 And with God's eternal providence co-exists entire moral 
 freedom, and, by consequence, the fullest responsibility on the 
 part of man. Jesus was delivered up to death ' by the de- 
 terminate counsel and foreknowledge of God,' and we see 
 in that surrender the greatest marvel of divine wisdom and 
 love in the history of the universe ; yet not less is it true 
 that 'by wicked hands' (by the hands of men who, in their 
 deed, committed an enormous sin) ' He was crucified and 
 slain.' 
 
 Another common form of the blasphemous thought against 
 which the apostle warns us is : ' I have been driven to sin by 
 the circumstances in which God has placed me.' If a poor 
 man becomes dishonest, he blames his poverty. The drunkard 
 blames the associates among whom he was thrown, and by 
 whom he has been led on from the pleasant social glass to 
 utter debasement. So in innumerable other cases. Looking 
 back again to the first sin, you find this there: 'The man 
 said. The woman whom Thou gavest to be with vie, she gave 
 me of the tree, and I did eat.' You observe the implied re- 
 proach on God ; the intended force of the ' whom Thou gavest 
 to be with me ' clearly being, ' Hadst Thou not given me the 
 woman, had I been left as I was at first, I should not have 
 
I04 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 sinned.' Similar is the spirit of the rich man's petition to 
 Abraham in the parable : ' I pray thee therefore, flither, that 
 thou wouldest send him to my father's house : for I have five 
 brethren ; that he testify unto them, lest they also come into 
 this place of torment.' There is here an attempt at self- 
 justification. He would suggest that he has been in circum- 
 stances of insufficient religious light and influence, and that 
 to them was due his life of self-indulgence, and his coming to 
 the place of torment. The answer of the patriarch may be 
 regarded as conveying God's response to all accusations of this 
 kind : 'If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will 
 they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.' These 
 words say in substance : ' The Divine King is not " an austere 
 man," or one who " reaps where He has not sown ;" He will 
 make all allowances for circumstances, and never exact more 
 than is reasonable. If He calls on men, then, to live lives 
 of holy obedience, and holds them responsible. He has at the 
 same time given ample light ; He has spoken in many ways 
 clearly and impressively of their danger ; and if they sin, it 
 is not because of their circumstances, but because they will 
 not hear.' 
 
 A third form of the charge brought against God, and the 
 only other which I shall mention, is one that occurs probably 
 not unfrequently to the minds of persons who plunge into 
 gross sensual indulgence : ' I am constitutionally of a very 
 ardent temperament ; my animal passions are strong : there- 
 fore it is that I live riotously ; I cannot help it ; I am made 
 so.' Hear poor Burns ('a name,' as has been well said, 
 'never to be mentioned but with admiration, and pity, and 
 strong moral disapprobation '), — hear him addressing God 
 thus : 
 
 ' Thou know'st that Thou hast formed me 
 
 With passions wild and strong ; 
 And listening to their witching voice 
 
 Has often led me wrong.' 
 
 And in another place he makes the muse of his country 
 address the poet himself thus : 
 
VER, 13-] Genesis of Sin. 105 
 
 * I saw thy pulse's maddening play 
 Wild send thee pleasure's devious way, 
 Misled by fancy's meteor ray, 
 
 By passion driven : 
 But yet the light that led astray 
 
 Was light from heaven.'^ 
 
 This has been well answered by another Burns, also a true 
 
 poet :- 
 
 ' It could not be ; no light from heaven 
 Has ever led astray : 
 Its constant stars to guide are given, 
 And never to betray. 
 
 ' When passion drives to wild excess, 
 And folly wakes to shame. 
 It cannot make the madness less 
 To cast on heaven the blame. 
 
 ' The light that seemed to shine on high. 
 And led thee on to sin. 
 Was but reflected to thine eye 
 From passion's fire within. 
 
 ' O spurn the guilty thought away ! 
 Eternity Avill tell, 
 That every light that led astray 
 Was light that shone from hell.' 
 
 All such fancies as we have now been considering, all 
 attempts of every kind to throw off from ourselves responsi- 
 bility for our sins, are delusions of the devil to draw us to 
 destruction. By nothing in our constitution, by nothing in the 
 circumstances in which God's providence has placed us, or 
 the influences which He permits to act upon us, are we laid 
 under a necessity of sinning. Reason has been given to us, 
 — and truth revealed to guide the reason, — to hold the animal 
 passions under control, and to derive for the service of God 
 helps, not hindrances, from circumstances of every kind. We 
 may, if we would, shun sin ; and we sin, simply because we 
 
 1 These passages from Burns have been quoted also by Dr. Wardlaw, 
 who comments on them with his characteristic earnestness and sound 
 judgment. 
 
 * The late Rev. James D. Bums of Hampstead. 
 
io6 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes, [ch. i. 
 
 choose to sin. ' This is the condemnation, that Hght is come 
 into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, be- 
 cause their deeds were evil.' ' Ye will not come to me, that 
 ye might have life.' 
 
 In the words which follow, the apostle proceeds to set forth 
 the real spring of sin. ' But every man is tempted, when he is 
 drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then, when lust hath 
 conceived, it bringeth forth sin.'' The word ^ lust'' here, as com- 
 monly in Scripture, is not to be taken in the narrow sense in 
 which we now generally use it, but denotes ' sinful desire' of 
 every kind, desire for any pleasure, or supposed pleasure, 
 which in nature or degree is opposed to the will of God, — be 
 it from wealth, ease, revenge, bodily gratification, or any other 
 source. What God has placed around us for our enjoyment 
 is in itself not evil, but good, — if we would use it, and not 
 abuse. ' The corruption that is in the world' is there, the 
 Apostle Peter tells us, 'through lust;' which John, classifying 
 its forms, describes as ' the lust of the flesh,' ' the lust of the 
 eyes,' and ' the pride of life,' — exemplified, all of them, at the 
 very first appearance of sin on the earth. ' And when the 
 woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was 
 pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she 
 took of the fruit thereof, and did eat' 
 
 Observe the distinctness and emphasis with which the 
 apostle brings out personal responsibility : ' Every ' (rather 
 ' each ') ' man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust.' 
 This is as if he said : ' Be under no delusion, brethren, on this 
 matter of surpassing moment. To think of God as the author 
 of sin is blasphemy : devils and wicked men can do you moral 
 harm only by your consenting to let the evil into your hearts : 
 with yourselves rests the blame ; and you cannot cover your 
 responsibility with abstract principles regarding human nature ; 
 you cannot hide yourselves among the crowd of a fallen race ; 
 each individual among you is tempted, and that by his own 
 lust.' 
 
 This Epistle is throughout practical, and the apostle intro- 
 duces doctrinal statements or discussions only in so far as they 
 
VER, I5-] Genesis of Sin. 107 
 
 bear immediately upon the conduct of life. Here, accordingly, 
 we have no investigation of the moral character of desires 
 themselves, or of the origin of their depravity. In these 
 matters his readers might easily lose themselves in a cloud of 
 metaphysics, and miss the point of conviction to which he 
 wishes to bring them. He assumes the existence of a de- 
 praved nature (which, according to the view of the divine 
 character that has been given in the previous verse,. could not 
 have derived its depravity from God) ; and then, taking from 
 the experience of each of his readers any clear, decided breach 
 of the divine law, such as the conscience of every one would 
 readily suggest, he proceeds to show how that sin arose, and 
 this with singularly graphic force. The sinful desire within us 
 (some affection of the ' carnal mind,' which ' is enmity against 
 God ') is represented as a wicked woman, who by meretricious 
 wiles strives to entrap the unll^ which is in fact man himself, 
 morally considered. She '■draws him away'' from the con- 
 templation of true pleasures and noble aims, and ' entices ' him 
 to give himself wholly up to her. For a time, it may be, he 
 resists, thinking of God, of grace, of judgment, of hell, remem- 
 bering perhaps a mother's prayers or a father's dying counsels. 
 Still she plies her arts, and at last he yields, — the will consents 
 to the wicked wish, — prompting becomes purpose, desire de- 
 termination ; and the fruit of the unhallowed union of Will 
 and Lust is clear, well-defined, actual Sin. ' Every man is 
 tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. 
 Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin.' How 
 vivid and powerful this representation is, my brethren ! How 
 distinctly does the experience of all of us — our memory of the 
 genesis of our sins — attest the truthfulness of the picture ! 
 
 * A7id sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.'' ' Lust,' 
 we have seen, ' bringeth forth sin;' but 'the end is not yet.' 
 The wretched line of posterity does not close here : sin, too, 
 has its offspring; for ^ when it is finished'— -when it has run 
 its natural course — it * bringeth forth death' ^ The working 
 
 ^ In the original, the fact that the words for ' lust ' and ' sin ' are both 
 feminine contributes to the verisimilitude of the figurative reprasentation. 
 
i"o8 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 of sin does not end with the angry speech, the He, the act of 
 dishonesty or sensual indulgence : it hardens, darkens, debases 
 the nature, renders the heart opener than before to all evil in- 
 fluences, and less open to all good ; and unless the divine 
 mercy in Jesus Christ intervene, will certainly at last yield as 
 its result death, in the most comprehensive and awful sense of 
 that word. From the nature of things, death, in the great Bible 
 use of the term — ^blight and desolation over the whole man, 
 spirit, soul, and body — is the consequence of sin. Sin renders 
 intercourse with God, who is the Fountain of life, impossible. 
 It consists in the exercise of feelings that in their own nature 
 are utterly inconsistent with true happiness ; and it increases 
 constantly in strength, in malignity, in power to destroy the 
 peace of the soul. Death follows sin as naturally, and by as 
 constant a law, as the deadly nightshade bears poison berries. 
 Besides, looked at apart from these essential tendencies of sin, 
 the relation which it bears to conscience and to the justice of 
 God renders the connection between it and death — between 
 iniquity and misery — indissoluble. Death is ' the wages of sin,' 
 due to it in justice. Under the righteous administration of the 
 affairs of the universe by God, there is the same obligation in 
 justice that sin should be followed by death, as that a labourer 
 should receive the recompense he has been promised and has 
 worked for. Sin is spiritual death, and every act of sin in- 
 tensifies the spiritual deadness ; to sin, and sin alone, is due 
 that awful and mysterious change which severs soul from body, 
 and which we commonly call death ; and when sin is ^finished'' 
 — when it is allowed to go on to its legitimate issues — ' it 
 bringeth forth'' that intensity of misery, transcending our present 
 powers of conception, which John calls ' the second death,' 
 and which the Lord Himself, ' the Faithful Witness,' describes 
 as ' outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of 
 teeth.' Oh, my brethren, may God in His infinite mercy grant 
 that to all of us the depth of meaning in these awful words 
 may for ever remain an undiscovered secret ! 
 
 Observe how fully arid strikingly the apostle exhibits the 
 contrast between God's work and that of sinful desire; and 
 
VER. I5-] Genesis of Si7i. 109 
 
 how conclusively he has established his proposition, that though 
 trial for man's good is from God, tciuptation to sin cannot be 
 from Him. Trial ' worketh patience ' — this is God's purpose 
 in sending it ; and when 'patience has its work perfect,' when 
 the tried ' endure ' their trials, God pronounces them ' blessed,' 
 and gives them at last ' the crown of life^ ^ But wicked desire, 
 when man's will has yielded to it, ' bringeth forth sin ; and sin, 
 when it is finished, bringeth forth death' God gives life ; but 
 by man himself always comes death.^ 
 
 ^ See verses 3, 4, 12. 
 
 * Compare Gen. ii. 7 ; Rom. vi. 23 ; I Cor. xv. 21. 
 
I lo Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 V. 
 GOOD GIFTS FROM GOD. 
 
 ' Do not err, my beloved brethren. 1 7 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 I. 16, 17- 
 
 THE expression rendered here ' Do not err ' occurs several 
 times in the New Testament, but in all the other places 
 is translated 'Be not deceived.' It has always a reference to 
 what has preceded, and at the same time introduces a new and 
 impressive aspect of the truth on which it is said to be of im- 
 portance not to err, or an argument in its support. It always 
 intimates that the matter under consideration is one of great 
 moment ; thus : ' Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for 
 whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap:' 'Be not 
 deceived : evil communications corrupt good manners ' (Gal. 
 vi. 7 ; I Cor. xv. 33). Here, accordingly, it sets forth the vast 
 importance of right views regarding the origin and growth of 
 sin. Our views on this subject cannot but most materially 
 affect our feeliiigs and our life. Where the blasphemy that 
 God is the author of sin is in a defined form thoroughly enter- 
 tained by the mind, the man cannot be a Christian : where 
 the thought, when it rises, is not at once with horror repelled, 
 religious vitality must be very low, if life can exist at all. If a 
 right estimate be wanting of the fulness of man's moral re- 
 sponsibility, there can manifestly be no correct appreciation of 
 the nature and evil of sin, of the divine character, of the nature 
 of the Saviour's work, or of His claims on our gratitude and 
 devotion ; and thus by false conceptions here the whole struc- 
 ture of Christian faith and hope and holiness is undermined. 
 In every aspect in which the thought that God tempts to sin 
 can be presented, however modified or disguised, it is utterly 
 
VER. 1 6.] Good Gifts from God. 1 1 1 
 
 impious, unspeakably dishonouring to God, and destructive to 
 the soul. Good cause, therefore, has the apostle for his earnest 
 appeal, ' Do not err ' — ' Be not deceived.' 
 
 This warning, you observe, naturally brings up before our 
 minds the great importance everywhere ascribed in Scripture 
 to correct views of religious truth generally. It is the teaching 
 of the Bible, that while the spring of evil in man is a perverse 
 will, a desire to disobey God, yet wicked emotion and action 
 arise immediately from the false views with which the blinding 
 influence of the perverse will on the judgment fills the mind, — 
 false views of God, and of ourselves, and of the relation in 
 which we stand to God. ' Wherefore doth the wicked contemn 
 God?' asks the Psalmist ; and he proceeds to give the answer : 
 '■ He hath said in his heart. Thou wilt not require it.' Miscon- 
 ception regarding God as a living God, who marks men's hearts 
 and lives, and will judge them, can alone account for so mon- 
 strous a state of soul. Error being thus the source of sin, — the 
 suitable instrumentality for His purpose, who ' gave Himself for 
 us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto 
 Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works,' is a revelation 
 of truth ; and in exact proportion as this truth is understood 
 and believed — its meaning clearly seen, and its importance 
 vividly realized — is the removal of sin from our hearts and 
 lives. ' The truth shall make you free,' was the Lord's declara- 
 tion to the sin-enslaved Jews ; and His prayer for His people 
 was, ' Sanctify them through Thy truth ; Thy word is truth.' It 
 may be safely said, that there is no error in religious doctrine 
 which is not in its nature fitted to affect injuriously religious 
 feeling and conduct. The digression from truth may seem 
 slight, as a footpath may start from a high road at a very 
 small angle of divergence ; but follow it up, and you might 
 soon find yourselves far away from any point on the high 
 road, travelling through a diff'erent region. It is grievously un- 
 charitable (but there are few things that uncharitableness has 
 oftener done in the history of the world) to attribute to a 
 man who professes a particular opinion, all either of doctrinal 
 inferences or practical results which you see, or think you see, 
 
112 Lectures on the Epistle of y antes. [ch. i. 
 
 to follow legitimately from his oj^inion : for many counter- 
 acting agencies may be at work to neutralize the poison of 
 error, so that many men are much better than their creed, and 
 if they saw all the fair deductions from their avowed opinions, 
 would fling these from them with horror, like one who suddenly 
 discovered that he had been cherishing a serpent in his bosom. 
 But for ourselves, my brethren, we cannot be too careful in the 
 formation of our religious opinions ; and this not merely with 
 reference to cardinal matters of faith, but even to what may seem 
 subordinate points. ' Let us not err, my beloved brethren : ' 
 let us not be led away by glittering plausibilities, but think ear- 
 nestly and conscientiously, looking at subjects and statements 
 not simply in the aspect in which they are first presented to 
 us, but all round, praying much always for God's Spirit, that 
 we may ' walk in the light of the Lord.' 
 
 Observe the affectionate manner in which the apostle makes 
 his appeal : ' my beloved brethren.^ We have a fine example 
 here for all controversial dealing. Passionate denunciation 
 raises up in opposition all the fierceness or sullenness of a 
 man's nature, and thus deafens the soul to the voice of truth. 
 Love is by many degrees the most powerful solvent of ob- 
 stijiacy and prejudice. It is with the 'bands of love' that 
 the erring are by far the most likely to be drawn back to the 
 right way. ' The servant of the Lord,' says the Apostle Paul, 
 ' must not strive ; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, 
 patient ; in meekness instructing those that oppose them- 
 selves ; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the 
 acknowledging of the truth ; and that they may recover them- 
 selves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by 
 him at his will.' 
 
 I said above, that wherever the expression ' Do not err ' (' Be 
 not deceived ') occurs in the New Testament, it always has a 
 reference to what has preceded, and at the same time intro- 
 duces a new and impressive aspect of truth on the point under 
 discussion, or an argument in its support. Here, accordingly, 
 having in the previous verses stated negatively the truth on 
 the matter he has in hand, — thus : * God is in no sense or 
 
VER. 1 7.] Good Gifts from God. 1 1 3 
 
 degree the author of sin,' — the apostle proceeds now to ex- 
 hibit such positive truth regarding the divine character as puts 
 in the strongest hght the folly and wickedness of the sup- 
 position that God could tempt to sin. ' God is love ; and, 
 in accordance with this His nature, His conduct to men is 
 characterized by boundless benevolence ; and, in particular, 
 the awakening and fostering of spiritual life in men is wholly 
 His work : must it not, then, be utterly foolish and blasphemous 
 to ascribe the authorship of the death in sin to Him who is the 
 Author of life in holiness, and who, from His nature, is in all 
 things consistent and immutable ?' Such seems to be the argu- 
 ment exhibited in the seventeenth and eighteenth verses. 
 
 In addition to this logical connection of these verses with 
 the preceding section in the line of argument now stated, 
 there is also a connection in the form or way of setting forth 
 the truth, which it is important to notice, as it shows the 
 naturalness of phraseology that at first sight might appear 
 somewhat unnatural. The apostle's mind is occupied with 
 the thought of birth, generation, fatherhood. He has told 
 us that when man's will has been ' drawn away and enticed ' 
 by his lust, then lust, conceiving, ' bringeth forth sin ; and sin, 
 when it is finished, bringeth forth death.' This mode of look- 
 ing at the matter is carried on ; and thus God naturally comes 
 before us as a Father, ' the Father of lights,' who '■begat us with 
 the word of truth.' 
 
 The first statement of the apostle in his positive teaching 
 regarding God's relations to men is, \hdii ^ every good gift and 
 every perfect gift is from above, and comet h dozen from the Father 
 of lights' No very substantial or obvious distinction can be 
 drawn between ^ good gift' and ^perfect gift' (or rather, per- 
 haps, ' perfect boon,' for the words are different in the original, 
 though as nearly as may be synonymous). The apostle wishes 
 to state the truth very emphatically and impressively, in opposi- 
 tion to the falsehood that evil influences are from God. ' Nay, 
 my brethren, every gift that is good, every boon that is perfect, 
 this is from heaven ; but not what is evil.' Such seems to be 
 the force of his words. 
 
 H 
 
1 14 Lectures on the Epistle of James . [ch, i. 
 
 The statement is true, taken with the most general reference. 
 All the beauty, and comfort, and joy in our lives come from 
 God ; and this as bounties, as free gifts to us, the undeserving. 
 Whatever intermediate agencies He may have chosen to em- 
 ploy, yet to Him the gifts are wholly due ; and we should 
 never rest in the view merely of secondary agencies, but rise 
 in thought to the great Fountain of life and joy, and praise 
 the divine love. It is God that 'healeth our diseases, re- 
 deemeth our lives from destruction, and satisfieth our mouths 
 with good things.' ' The earth is full of the goodness of the 
 Lord.' ' O Lord, Thou preserves! man and beast. How ex- 
 cellent is Thy loving-kindness, O God ! Therefore the children 
 of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.' 
 
 It is evident, however, from the nature of the argument on 
 which the apostle is engaged, that he speaks of God's gifts 
 here with special reference to their action on the soul of man ; 
 for he is exhibiting the truth which stands opposed to the 
 error that God is the author of sin. It is by no means im- 
 probable that the direct influences of the Holy Ghost were 
 primarily in his thoughts, in speaking of ' good gifts' At least 
 the expression would very naturally suggest to him (or be 
 suggested to him by) the words of Jesus in the Sermon on 
 the Mount, ' If ye, being -evil, know how to give good gifts 
 unto your children, how much more shall your Father which 
 is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him ?' (Matt. 
 vii. ii); of which last expression the Lord Himself, by the 
 form in which He repeated the declaration on another occa- 
 sion, showed the chief reference in His mind to be to divine 
 influence on the heart : ' How much more shall your heavenly 
 Father give t/ic Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?' (Luke xi. 
 13.) I have before had occasion to remark that the Sermon 
 on the Mount had evidently made a peculiarly deep impression 
 on this apostle, and exercised great sway in the formation of 
 his cast of religious thought, and over the language of the 
 Epistle. In the verse before us, then, as it appears to me, he 
 says : ' All the influences brought into action on men's hearts 
 which are in their nature good and perfect, and tend to make 
 
VER. 17.] Good Gifts from God. 115 
 
 men good and perfect, all the enlightening and quickening 
 dealings of the Holy Ghost, are from God.' - But, further, 
 everything that God has created may, under certain circum- 
 stances, exert power over our moral nature. All these things 
 too, then, the apostle would have us understand, are in their 
 original tendency, as designed by God, \^ood^ and helpful to 
 man's soul. As they come from the divine hand, they are, as 
 regards moral influence, as well as in all other respects, ^per- 
 fect ' in their kind ; and if, in the influence they actually exert 
 on men, there be anything bad or imperfect, drawing to sin and 
 not to holiness, this element has entered from another source 
 than God — even, as the apostle has already told us, from 
 man's perverse desires. ' Corruption is in the world through 
 lust.'' The harvest-field, waving with golden grain, is in itself a 
 ' good gift,' a ' perfect boon,' fitted and designed to fill the soul 
 with thankfulness and love to the great Giver, though the 
 fertility may swell the possessor's heart with sinful pride and 
 self-confidence, tempting him to say, 'Soul, thou hast much 
 goods laid up for many years ; take thine ease, eat, drink, and 
 be merry.' ' Every gift that is good, and every boon that is 
 perfect, is from above, and cometh down from the Father of 
 lights.' 
 
 This peculiar name here given to God, ^ the Father of lights,' 
 calls now for consideration. By the statement that 'every 
 good gift is frojH above' — 'from that world yonder,' as we in- 
 stinctively conceive the apostle saying, pointing upward — the 
 thoughts of any reflective and imaginative person might very 
 easily be carried at once to that glorious effulgence of light 
 which the sun is pouring forth on the world from day to 
 day, quickening and gladdening all nature, as both in itself a 
 ' good gift ' of God, and a lively type or picture for the heart 
 of that boundless outflow of kindness, that golden radiance 
 of blessing, ever streaming forth from heaven to undeserving 
 men. To a Hebrew, to whose warm Eastern imagination 
 the language of figure and symbolism was almost as natural 
 as the plainest prose is to us, the thought I have mentioned 
 could hardly fail to occur, remembering as he did that every- 
 
1 1 6 Lectures on the Epistle of fa7nes. [ch. i. 
 
 where in his ancient Scriptures light is the favourite image for 
 every kind of 'good and perfect gift' — for knowledge, for 
 hohness, for happiness, for all excellences of mind and heart, 
 for whatever is most noble, and beautiful, and precious. 
 ^ Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright 
 in heart.' ' The Lord is my light and my salvation ; whom 
 shall I fear?' ' There be many that say, Who will show us any 
 good ? Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon 
 us.' To ' the twelve tribes scattered abroad,' therefore, nothing 
 could appear more natural than the apostle's expression, 
 ' Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, and 
 cometh down from the great Creator of the lights,^ — the grand 
 primal Fountain of all that illumines, and enlivens, and glad 
 dens in the universe. The reference is in the first place, no 
 doubt, to the material. luminaries, particularly the two great 
 lights that God has set in the sky — the sun ' to rule the day,' 
 and the moon ' to rule the night ;' but this simply as the 
 starting-point of thought regarding all those joys and excel- 
 lences, those myriad ' good gifts and perfect boons,' of which 
 light is the type. The use of the term 'Father^ for 'Creator' 
 is due, as I have already explained, to the figure of birth or 
 generation which runs through the whole passage, and which 
 we find showing itself again in the next verse, in ' begat.' It 
 is not impossible that James had in his mind the words spoken 
 by Jehovah Himself to Job out of the whirlwind, ' Hath the 
 rain a father.'' or who hath begotten the drops of dew?' (Job 
 Xxxviii. 28.) 
 
 In the words which follow, ' tvith whom is no variableness^ 
 neither shadoiv of turning^ there is an implied contrast be- 
 tween God, the Creator of the lights, and all the lights He has 
 created, material or spiritual. The ' gifts,' which are ' good 
 and perfect ' as they come from Him, are marred by the weak- 
 ness and folly of man ; and the lights of the firmament, which 
 symbolize these, have, by God's appointment, revolutions and 
 variations. The sun is not always with us. He leaves us to 
 the gloom of night — a night at some seasons longer than the 
 day; and this gloom of night is not always dispelled by the 
 
VER. 17-] Good Gifts front God. 117 
 
 moon, 'walking in brightness:' for she, too, has her times of 
 darkness. Sometimes, also, in the revolutions of the earth, and 
 of its satellite the moon, the sun is eclipsed from us by the 
 intervention of the moon, or the moon by the shadow of the 
 earth. But ' with the Father of lights there is no variableness, 
 nor any shadow frofu turning,'' — any shadow, that is to say, 
 caused by revolution ; for this appears to be the meaning, and 
 not what the English words ' neither shadow of turning ' most 
 readily import, 'not the slightest turning,' 'not a shadow of 
 change.' The statement is obviously substantially equivalent 
 to that of John, ' God is light, and in Him is no darkness at 
 air (ist Ep. i. 5). 
 
 We have here, you observe, an important link in the apostle's 
 argument, which may be stated thus : ' God cannot be in any 
 sense'or measure the author of sin; for sin is darkness,-^ whereas 
 God is light, light that knows no darkness, no shadow, — essen- 
 tially, eternally, immutably light.' He is 'the same yesterday, 
 and to-day, and for ever,' the Giver of ' good and perfect gifts,' 
 of nothing but ' good and perfect gifts.' Storm and earthquake 
 have great ends of kindness to work out. Afflictions, as God 
 designs them, are among His choicest blessings. The final 
 judgments on the obstinately impenitent are designed and 
 needed to maintain the honour of the divine government, and 
 thus secure the highest and everlasting good of the moral uni- 
 verse. ' Every gift that is good, and every boon that is perfect, 
 is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with 
 whom is no variableness, neither any shadow from turning.' 
 
 In a world such as this is — a world of confusions, of sins, and 
 struggles, and sorrows — even the ' lights ' that the church of 
 God enjoys will always be subject to 'change' and ' shadow,' 
 though their Creator knows none; but it will not be so with 
 her always. She counts Him faithful who hath promised : 
 ' Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon with- 
 draw itself : for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and 
 the days of thy mourning shall be ended.' 
 
 ' Compare I John i. 6, and indeed the whole of the first part of that 
 Epistle. 
 
1 1 8 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes. [ch. i. 
 
 VI. 
 
 REGENERATION. 
 
 ' Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should be a 
 kind of first-fraits of His creatures.' — ^James i. i8. 
 
 THIS is a verse of very great interest. The truth set forth 
 in it is in itself one of unspeakable importance ; and 
 the statement of it here has a special value for students of this 
 Epistle, from the fact that it exhibits more clearly and fully than 
 any other passage what sceptically-inclined persons have often 
 questioned — the perfect harmony between the teaching of James 
 and that of the other apostles respecting the way of salvation, 
 the essence of evangelical truth. The object James had 
 mainly in view led him to draw the attention of his readers 
 chiefly to the fruits of piety ; here its roots are described, very 
 briefly, but with marvellous completeness and beauty, and in a 
 form so Pauline, that probably most persons who heard the 
 words quoted apart from the context would look for them first 
 in Romans or Ephesians. 
 
 The statement is, that ' God, the Father or Originator of all 
 enlightening and quickening influences, has of His free will 
 originated a new life in us Christians, by means of the word of 
 His truth, and to the intent that we might be a kind of first- 
 fruits of His creatures.' The connection with the previous 
 argument is somewhat on this wise : ' Consider the greatest of 
 all His good and perfect gifts; He has given us life : how is 
 it conceivable that He, immutable, always consistent, without 
 variableness or shadow from turning, could be the author of 
 death r 
 
 We have brought before us in this verse, then, the subject of 
 
 regeneration or the new birth, that great change of heart else- 
 
 " where spoken of as a new creation, or a resurrection from the 
 
VER. i8.] RegejieratioTi: 119 
 
 dead, a dying to sin and becoming alive to righteousness ; the 
 subject which, of all that can occupy our attention, is of incom- 
 parably the greatest practical moment. Formal division will 
 aid us in clearness of exposition, 
 
 I. The nature of regeneration is set forth by the apostle in 
 the words, ' God begat us.' 
 
 It consists, then, in the origination of a new life. For a 
 moral creature to live, according to the grand Bible use of the 
 word, is for him to give up all the powers and capacities that 
 God has bestowed upon him to the ends for which God 
 bestowed them, — the devotion of all his faculties to the obey- 
 ing of God, and the seeking for satisfaction to all his cravings of 
 happiness in God's favour and fellowship. If this be life, then 
 certainly observation and candid self-scrutiny will give to all 
 who listen to their teaching the same testimony as that implied 
 in the apostle's words, — that by nature we are all destitute of 
 this life, all ' dead in trespasses and sins,' being prone to what 
 is evil, and averse to whatever is in the highest sense good. 
 According to Bible teaching, nothing is morally good in 
 God's sight but what springs from love to Him and regard for 
 His will. What man calls his natural goodness, then — the 
 ' good-heartedness, good temper, good humour,' which is often 
 found in many that care nothing for religion — is not goodness 
 before God ; for it is but a product of indolence, or self- 
 indulgence, or, at the best, nervous constitution. 'The heart 
 is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.' ' In 
 Thy sight shall no man living be justified.' By nature, men 
 are spiritually dead. 
 
 But Christians have spiritual life. They have been 'be- 
 gotten' by the Father of lights — 'born again.' Their views and 
 feelings on every point connected with the moral relations 
 between them and God have been radically changed. They 
 now admire, love, trust, and delight to obey Him whom for- 
 merly they dreaded, hated, shunned to think of. They have 
 been ' transformed by the renewing of their minds,' so as to 
 'prove' in personal experience how 'good and acceptable and 
 perfect' the will of God is. The desires and tastes of the* 
 
I20 Lectures on the Epistle of Jmnes. [ch. i. 
 
 soul are different now from what they were before. In 
 the heart, where sensuality or greed or frivolity held sway, 
 purity and seriousness and noble aims now reign ; and 
 out of the purified heart are pure and holy issues of life. 
 Many objects of former affection are loved still, but for 
 new reasons substituted or added, and with new wishes re- 
 garding them. Thus, to the natural instinct of parental 
 love now conjoins itself, as the ruling element, a tender de- 
 votedness and watchful anxiety for the spiritual interests oi 
 those regarding whom Jesus is now heard saying to father and 
 mother, 'Feed my lambs.' Many objects which formerly 
 engaged interest engage it no more, or in a greatly lessened 
 degree. Many things that were before looked at with satis- 
 faction, or pursued with eagerness, now excite loathing and 
 horror. Companions that were merely hearty, jovial men of 
 the world, are cherished companions no longer, and occasional 
 association with them brings sadness rather than satisfaction; 
 excess now and again in some form of animal enjoyment, 
 which was once deemed but a trifle, is now seen to be sin 
 and abomination in the sight of God, and looked upon with 
 disgust ; the study of the Bible has now a genuine and deep 
 interest ; prayer is felt to be pleasant, because it is a real 
 approach of spirit to God ; and work done for the Saviour, 
 be it preaching the gospel in the wilds of Africa, or quietly 
 handing in a tract from door to door at home, is felt to be 
 reasonable and sweet. Our passing into this new state of 
 thought and feeling is regeneration. 
 
 You will observe, then, that, being the introduction of a new 
 life, a new life for the whole man, spirit, soul, and body, re- 
 generation is plainly a radical change. The heart is ' directed 
 into the love of God.' The fountain is purified, that by all 
 the channels of the nature a pellucid stream of holiness may 
 be carried throughout the whole being, to refresh and beautify. 
 A change of external conduct, therefore, however striking and 
 pleasant, is not, taken by itself, the 'great change.' Reforma- 
 tion, in our ordinary use of the term, does not necessarily prove 
 regeneration. When a drunkard or a licentious man becomes 
 
VER. 1 8.] Regeneralion. 121 
 
 sober, chaste, industrious, a good citizen, a kind father or son 
 or friend, this is an admirable change, a change for which the 
 man deserves high respect, and which gives very good ground 
 for hope that he has been ' bom again.' Yet it may be the 
 result of influences not at all of a religious kind, but belonging 
 strictly to this world. Reformation proves regeneration, only 
 where it springs from regard to the will of God, loved as a 
 pardoning God in Christ Jesus. 
 
 Being a radical change, regeneration is altogether distinct 
 from a respectable development of natural character. We often 
 see a boy, reared by discreet, especially Christian parents, 
 ripening under kind providential influences into a useful man, 
 an honoured member of society. As he grows, he ' puts away 
 childish things.' Manly thought awakens manly sensibility ; 
 he acquires some sense of the seriousness of life, as a scene 
 of difficulty and conflict ; emergencies rouse up slumbering 
 energies ; and a certain dignity of character is formed, which 
 commands respect. But if this be all, then there is here no 
 regeneration. There may be in an unregenerate man comely 
 graces, refined sensibilities, magnanimous impulses, and even 
 some interest in religion. ' One thing is needful / and it is 
 possible to have very many things that are beautiful and 
 pleasant, and yet not to ' choose that good part.' A certain 
 ruler came to Jesus, and, kneeling, ' asked Him, Good Master, 
 what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life ? And Jesus said 
 unto him. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit 
 adultery. Do not kill, Do not steal. Do not bear false wit- 
 ness. Defraud not. Honour thy father and mother. And he 
 answered and said unto Him, Master, all these have I observed 
 from my youth. Then Jesus, beholding him, loved him, and 
 said unto him, One thing thou lackest : go thy way, sell what- 
 soever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have 
 treasure in heaven : and come, take up the cross, and follow 
 Me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved, 
 for he had great possessions.' How much must have been 
 beautiful in this young man's character, when Jesus 'loved 
 him!' And yet he was not regenerate. He was 'grieved,' — 
 
122 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. l 
 
 'very sorrowful;' hut he '■went away:'' he could not give 
 up all for Christ — could not take the will of God as his 
 rule in everything. ' One thing he lacked,' but that was the 
 ' one thing needful.' His attractiveness of character was the 
 work of God, indeed, (for from Him come all things that are 
 beautiful and noble — ' every good gift,') but not by way of 
 regeneration : it was only a fair flower springing from the 
 root of nature, under peculiarly favourable circumstances in 
 divine providence, and 'like the flower of the grass' to pass 
 away. Now regeneration is the introduction of a new life, a 
 life imperishable, everlasting. 
 
 And this life is that of children of God. This most wonder- 
 ful and precious truth also is evidently involved in the apostle's 
 declaration that ' God begat us.' In a true sense all mankind 
 are children of God, as being His moral creatures, made by 
 Him in His own image, and continually sustained by His care 
 and goodness. ' As certain even of the heathen poets have 
 said, We are His offspring.' But, alas, we have not remained 
 in our home ; we have wandered away into the ' far country ' 
 of sin, and have striven to forget our Father's house and our 
 Father's love. Yet that love yearned over the prodigals ; and 
 His grace in Christ Jesus raises believers to a new and blessed 
 relation of sonship, in which His covenant love secures the 
 eternal continuance of a filial spirit, and thus that we shall 
 abide in our Father's house for ever. ' As many as received 
 Jesus, to them gave He power to become sons of God, even to 
 them that believe on His name.' ' Come out from among the 
 wicked, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not 
 the unclean thing ; and I will receive you, and will be a 
 Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, 
 saith the Lord Almighty.' How illustrious is this dignity, my 
 brethren ! When Cowper, in his exquisite ' Lines on receiving 
 his Mother's Picture,' says, 
 
 ' My boast is not that I deduce my birth 
 From loins enthroned and rulers of the earth, 
 But higher far my proud pretensions rise, 
 The child of parents passed into the skies ; ' 
 
VER. 1 8.] Regeneration. 123 
 
 we feel that there is here shown a true appreciation of essential 
 worth and dignity. If the richest spring of honour, then, con- 
 nected with earthly parentage be to be descended from those 
 whose characters bore the charm of Christian goodness, how 
 ineffable the dignity must be to be His children, of whose 
 infinite radiance of holy beauty the highest moral loveliness of 
 earth is but a faint reflection ! ' Behold what manner of love 
 the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called 
 the sons of God !' 
 
 II. The apostle exhibits to us the instrumentality of regene- 
 ration, in the statement that ' God begat us with the zvord of 
 truth' The gospel of Jesus Christ — the Bible, of which the 
 gospel is the substance — is emphatically and by pre-eminence 
 ' the word of truth,' ' to which whatever is contrary is imposture, 
 and whatever is compared to it insignificant.'^ Now the con- 
 stant statem.ent of Scripture is, that the new life is produced 
 by this ' word of truth,' understood and believed. Thus Peter 
 tells us that men are ' born again, not of corruptible seed, but 
 of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth 
 for ever, the word which by the gospel is preached unto you,' 
 and that it is ' by God's exceeding great and precious promises' 
 that we ' become partakers of the divine nature ;' and the 
 Lord Jesus Himself says, ' The words that I speak unto you, 
 they are spirit, and they are life.' Wilful ignorance, wilful 
 misconception of the divine character, and our own, and the 
 relations in which we stand to God, — this is the immediate 
 spring of sinful feeling and action. Wilful ignorance of God 
 is described by the Apostle Paul as one great distinguishing 
 characteristic of those who shall finally be condemned, ' when 
 the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with His mighty 
 angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on thetn that know not 
 God.'' The unregenerate man shrinks from the thought of 
 God, a living, observing, judging God. In all his difficulties 
 and sorrows he would seek refuge anywhere rather than in the 
 counsel and help of God, because he does not know Him to 
 be ' merciful, and gracious, and long-suffering;' but having be- 
 1 Robert Hall. 
 
1 24 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 come ' vain in his imaginations, with his foolish heart darkened,' 
 deems Him to be a cold and austere being, whom it is impos- 
 sible to please or to love. Or perhaps, shrinking as really 
 from the thought of the sin-hating Being that the instincts 
 of his conscience assure him God in truth is, he succeeds in 
 half-persuading himself that he has to do with a God weakly- 
 placable, like those many earthly parents whose self-indulgent, 
 foolish fondness is so often proved by results to be in reality 
 terribly cruel. Now, as from ignorance of God springs sin, 
 with its constant fruits, sorrow and fear, so from the knowledge 
 of God arise holiness and joy, life and godliness. As to ' know 
 not God' necessarily involves to be wicked and to be unhappy, 
 which are the essential elements of death, so ' this is life 
 eternal, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom 
 He hath sent.' Such knowledge can be obtained only through 
 the faith of the gospel, a hearty acceptance of God's testimony 
 concerning Himself as gracious in Jesus Christ. When a man 
 believes the * word of truth,' it convinces him of sin : for no 
 man, looking at his character in the ' light of God,' can help 
 crying out, ' Unclean, unclean !' ' God be merciful to me, a 
 sinner !' His suspicion and dread of God, too, which afore- 
 time barred his heart against even honest consideration of the 
 divine claims on his service, are removed by the gospel, telling 
 us that in Christ He is ready to ' receive us graciously,' to guide 
 and watch over us with Fatherly love, and to make us happy 
 in His presence for evermore. The icy barriers of suspicion 
 are melted by the rays of the sun of righteousness, and the 
 streams of filial affection ripple joyously on towards God. 
 Thus through the 'word of truth' we enter into spintual 
 life. 
 
 III. We have set before us the Author of regeneration, the 
 Origi7iator of the new life, in the apostle's statement that ' He 
 {the Father of lights) begat us with the word of truth.' This 
 indicates not merely that God gave us the Bible, the ' word of 
 truth,' itself * a good and perfect gift,' but also that it is He 
 who, by an influence graciously exerted on the soul, leads men 
 to believe it. The communication of truth in Scripture is full 
 
VER. iS.] Regefieratio7i. 125 . 
 
 and clear, fitted to convince and satisfy a candid mind ; but by 
 nature our souls, instead of being candid, are so beclouded by 
 wilful prejudice, that, left to ourselves, no one of us would 
 with seriousness and openness of heart consider the truth. We 
 have mental faculties sufficient to apprehend the meaning of 
 the Bible and the force of its evidence, but the alienated will 
 refuses to bring these freely into play on the subject. The 
 mental eye could see, but amid sunlight streaming all around 
 the sinner obstinately keeps his eyes closed. But God by His 
 action on the will induces men to open their eyes, and thus 
 see the truth and feel its force. Thus He regenerates. His 
 spiritual children are ' born not of blood, nor of the will of the 
 flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.' ' God, who is rich 
 in mercy, hath quickened us' (made us live) ' together with 
 Christ ; for by grace are we saved, through faith, and that not 
 of ourselves : it is the gift of God.' 
 
 And this divine action on the soul is through the Holy 
 Spirit. In the blessed economy of grace, the Father is set 
 forth as originating the plan of redemption ; whilst the Spirit 
 applies the blessings purchased by the Son. Our deliverance 
 is of the Father, by the Son, through the Spirit. The Holy 
 Ghost is the grand immediate agent in regeneration. Through 
 Him we are ' renewed in the whole man after the image of 
 God.' To Him are due alike the beginning and the growth of 
 spiritual life. As with the old creation, so with the new : but 
 that He ' breathes into man the breath of life,' our souls would 
 continue utterly torpid and insensate, ' dead in trespasses and 
 sins.' It is He that clears away the mists of prejudice, that 
 impels to attention to the truth, that bends the stubborn heart, 
 and turns it from iniquity. Blessing the means of grace. He 
 makes the good seed of the word germinate, waters the tender 
 plant continually with the genial rain of His heavenly influ- 
 ences, and makes it bring forth the fruits of godliness and peace. 
 Or, according to another scriptural representation, God's people 
 are ' temples of the Holy Ghost,' in which ' He dwells,' — not 
 fitfully, as an uncertain lodger, now here, now there, but as in a 
 home which He delights to make beautiful and happy. 
 
126 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch, i. 
 
 Regeneration, then, is of God, ' the Father of lights,' through 
 His Spirit. 
 
 IV. The tdtimate cause of regeneration -is exhibited in the 
 words, ' Of His own will begat He us.' It is from spontaneous 
 kindness that God originates this new life. If we were to trace 
 the history of kind deeds among men, we should often find 
 that the persons who perform them receive the impulse to some 
 extent from others. But it cannot be so with God. 'Who 
 hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being His counsellor 
 hath taught Him?' And there is in us by nature nothing to 
 attract the affectionate interest of a holy Being ; everything to 
 avert it. Death ^q \s3nq earned 2.% tuages ; 'eternal life is the 
 gift of God,' the gift of free grace. ' Not by works of right- 
 eousness which we have done, but according to His mercy 
 God saves us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of 
 the Holy Ghost.' ' Blessed be the God and Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual bless- 
 ings in heavenly places in Christ, according as He hath chosen 
 us in Him before the foundation of the world : having pre- 
 destinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to 
 Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will:' 'That, 
 according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the 
 Lord.' 
 
 The words ' of His own will ' have, as you will observe, a 
 special emphasis from their position ; and this corresponds to 
 the original. The apostle would have us see that a portion of 
 the force of his argument is found here. The argument is this : 
 ' God cannot be in any sense or degree the author of sin, for 
 from Him come good gifts, and nothing but good gifts. Look 
 in particular at the most precious blessing any of us have or 
 can have — spiritual life : that is from God, and given in spon- 
 taneous kindness, proving it to belong to the very nature of God 
 to do good. How is it conceivable, then, that He should be 
 the author of spiritual death?' 
 
 V. The apostle brings before us God^s pjirfose in regenera- 
 tion, in the words, ' Of His own will begat He us, that we 
 should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.^ By some expo- 
 
VER. 18.] Regenei^ation. 127 
 
 sitors the reference of this '7w' is supposed to be exdusively 
 to the first Christians — those of the age when James wrote ; 
 and some have been disposed to Hmit it to but a portion of 
 these, — namely, the primitive Javish Christians, because the 
 message of glad tidings was ' to the Jew first.' Now, beyond 
 doubt, a certain fulness and specialty of significance are thus 
 gained for the word 'first-fruits;' yet I cannot but think that, 
 had such a limited reference of the clause been intended by 
 the apostle, the limitation would have been marked in some 
 way, especially seeing that the words occur at the close of a 
 paragraph exhibiting principles of universal validity and im- 
 l^ortance. Besides, if the chronological position in the history 
 of God's church of certain believers be thought of as consti- 
 tuting them ' first-fruits of His creatures,' it would seem that 
 Abel and Enoch and the other faithful antediluvians have this 
 dignity. It appears to me altogether unnatural to regard the 
 '■■we'' as having any other sense than 'believers in Christ' 
 generally ; and taking this reference, we shall find the apostle's 
 statement rich in precious teaching. 
 
 The grand ultimate purpose of all God's doings — the end 
 in which is summed up all good — is ' the praise of His glory.' 
 That set forth here is a subordinate purpose, and one the 
 statement of which was eminently fitted to touch and impress 
 the apostle's readers. In the Jewish ceremonial law — 'a 
 shadow of good things to come ' — it was enjoined that the 
 first-fruits of the ground should be taken to the tabernacle or 
 temple, and there presented by the priest as an offering to 
 God. * Thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, 
 which thou shalt bring of thy land that the Lord thy God giveth 
 thee, and shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place 
 which the Lord thy God shall choose to place His name there. 
 And the priest shall take the basket out of thine hand, and set 
 it down before the altar of the Lord thy God. And thou shalt 
 speak and say before the Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to 
 perish was my father ; and he went down into Egypt, and so- 
 journed there with a few, and became there a nation, great, 
 mighty, and populous : and the Egyptians evil entreated us, 
 
128 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes. [ch. i. 
 
 and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage : and when 
 we cried unto the Lord God of our fathers, the Lord heard our 
 voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labour, and our 
 oppression : and He hath brought us into this place, and hath 
 given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and 
 honey : and now, behold, I have brought the first-fruits of the 
 land which Thou, O Lord, hast given me. And thou shaft 
 set it before the Lord thy God, and worship before the Lord 
 thy God' (Deut. xxvi. 2, 4-7, 9, 10), The meaning of this 
 usage was an acknowledgment that all the harvest was God's ; 
 and, more widely, that ' the earth is the Lord's, and the ful- 
 ness thereof.' Even so, Christians are regenerated, and thus 
 spiritually brought nigh to God, ' presented ' (speaking in 
 Scripture phrase) by God 'to Himself,'^ as representing all 
 His creatures, which are His by every right, though His sinful 
 moral creatures refuse to acknowledge His right. In this 
 description of Christians there are thus imphed, as you ob- 
 serve, two things in particular. One is special consecration ; 
 and this, as you know, by cheerful, loving self-surrender. The 
 regenerate, impelled by the mercies of God, 'present their 
 bodies living sacrifices, holy, acceptable unto God,' feeling 
 that this is ' their reasonable service.' The other is special 
 dignity and precioiisness, such as was always considered to 
 attach to the first-fruits, from the close relation into which 
 they came to God. The spiritual Israel are 'the Lord's 
 portion,' ' a peculiar treasure unto Him,' ' kings and priests 
 unto the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Our 
 dignity is higher even than that of angels, through our peculiar 
 union to Christ — through the fact that One in our nature sways 
 the sceptre of the universe. Neither the measure of self-con- 
 secration nor the manifestation of dignity is complete here 
 below ; but by and by will be attained the fulness of both, 
 when ' the hundred and forty and four thousand shall sing the 
 new song before the throne.' ' These,' says he who saw the 
 visions of the Lord in Patmos, ' are they which follow the 
 Lamb whithersoever He goeth ; these were redeemed from 
 ^ Eph. V. 27; compare Col. i. 22, Jude 24. 
 
VER. 1 8.] Regeneration. 129 
 
 among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the 
 Lamb.' 
 
 The figure here may be looked at also in a somewhat dif- 
 ferent aspect. I have observed that God 'presents' the re- 
 generate 'to Himself As the great Husbandman — if I may 
 so speak — He brings these first-fruits to the temple of the 
 glory of His own grace. So, as a Jewish farmer recognised 
 in the sheaf which he brought to God a cheering pledge of the 
 rich harvest that, through the divine kindness, would fill his 
 garners, similarly God looks w-ith complacent joy on the re- 
 generate as the first-fruits of a great harvest to come •} and this 
 not of men only, but of all the ' creatures ' of God. The re- 
 ference of James's word ''creatures'' cannot naturally be taken 
 as less wide than that of 'creature,' or, more exactly, 'crea- 
 tion,' in the familiar passage of Paul : ' For the earnest expec- 
 tation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons 
 of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not 
 willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same 
 in hope ; because the creature itself also shall be delivered 
 from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of 
 the children of God. For we know that the whole creation 
 groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now ' (Rom. viii. 
 19-22). What the meaning of these wonderful words is, or 
 of James's, which manifestly set forth the same truth in a 
 condensed form, we can but very faintly conjecture. But they 
 plainly point to the 'new heavens and new earth, wherein 
 shall dwell righteousness,' and intimate that at ' the rrtanifesta- 
 tion of the sons of God,' all nature, according to its capabili- 
 ties, will be invested with beauty and filled with sympathetic 
 joy. Paradise will be restored. From every creature of God 
 all trace of the curse will be removed, except from those moral 
 creatures who, by obstinate unbelief, refused to have it taken 
 away, and chose death rather than life. 
 
 ^ This particular force of the figure had of course a special fulness in the 
 first age of the church, yet it holds amply still ; and, seeing that the harvest 
 is in some way to include the lower creation also, will hold till the con- 
 summation of all things. 
 
 I 
 
130 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 You see now, brethren, the conckisiveness, the irresistible 
 force, of the apostle's argument : ' Since the purpose of God 
 is to bring His creatures into joy and beauty, and ye Christians 
 have, through His spontaneous kindness, received a new life, 
 and that the life of His children, to the intent that ye might 
 be the first-fruits of His ransomed creation, — can anything be 
 conceived more foolish and blasphemous than to count Him 
 the author of sin, which is the spring of wretchedness and 
 death ?' 
 
VERS. 1 9-2 1 .] Receiving the Ingrafted Word. 1 3 1 
 
 VII. 
 
 RECEIVING THE INGRAFTED WORD. 
 
 ' Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to 
 speak, slow to wrath : 20 For the wrath of man worketh not the 
 righteousness of God. 21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and 
 superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the ingrafted 
 word, which is able to save your souls.' — ^James i. 19-21. 
 
 THESE verses introduce a new subject, — one, however, 
 into which the last statement of the previous paragraph 
 naturally leads, as the writer indicates by his ' Wherefore' ' The 
 word of truth,' as we have seen, is the instrument of regenera- 
 tion ; by this the new life is begun : by this also it is (so the 
 thought of the apostle, and, as he knows, of all his intelligent 
 readers, advances) that Christians ^r^a/ in wisdom and holiness. 
 Our Lord Himself tells us that it is through ' the truth ' we 
 are ' sanctified,' through ' the truth ' that we are ' made free,' 
 emancipated from the bondage of guilty fears and of depraved 
 tendencies. ' If you wish, then,' the apostle proceeds in the 
 paragraph on the consideration of which we now enter, ' to 
 attain to the maturity of Christian manhood, to the measure 
 of the stature of the fulness of Christ (and it belongs to the 
 very essence of genuine religion to be dissatisfied with present 
 attainments, and reach forth towards higher, even towards 
 complete spiritual likeness to the Lord), then, with such strong 
 longings as new-born babes have for their natural sustenance, 
 desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby ; 
 for in no other way can ye grow. Watch and pray, too, that 
 everything in your state of heart which is fitted to obstruct 
 your seeing truth or feeling its force may be removed, so that 
 with godly simplicity you may wait on the Lord, and listen to 
 His word.' Such appears to be the substance of the paragraph. 
 
1^2 
 
 Lechtres on the Epistle of yames. [ch. i. 
 
 The line of thought is very similar to that found in the close 
 of the first and beginning of the second chapter of Peter's First 
 Epistle. 
 
 ' Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let ez'ery man be stoift to 
 hear.' This injunction, and the others with which it stands 
 connected, the apostle would have us understand, are intended 
 by him for all members of the Christian society — for those of 
 considerable attainments in knowledge and strength of cha- 
 racter, as well as for the ignorant and immature. ' Every man ' 
 is to be ' swift to hear'—tQz.dy and eager to avail himself of 
 all opportunities of increasing his acquaintance with the 'word 
 of truth.' The reference of the apostle is, of course, to every 
 mode of obtaining such knowledge. In his days, and for many 
 centuries after, so long as books could be multiplied only by 
 the slow and laborious process of transcription, and were con- 
 sequently very costly, the ear was, in the case of all except a 
 very few, the sole avenue by which the knowledge and thoughts 
 of others entered the mind. In philosophy, politics, religion, 
 or any other sphere of thought, instruction was almost exclu- 
 sively oral ; and hence such an exhortation as that of the 
 apostle here, to study truth, to seek instruction, most naturally 
 assumed the form of an injunction to '■hear.'' In our time, 
 through the marvellous and most blessed agency of the printing 
 press, Bibles abound, and can be procured at such a trifling 
 cost, that they are within the reach of the very poorest of the 
 people. On every subject, too, there are books in great 
 numbers, and but few among us cannot read. Instruction 
 from books is therefore very largely open to us; and to it 
 also the spirit of the apostle's injunction extends, its force 
 plainly being, ' Let every man be eager to grow, by every 
 means, in knowledge of the truth.' 
 
 As I have already shown in the introductory paragraph of 
 the lecture, it is clear from the connection that we are to fill 
 up the terms of the injunction with 'the Avord of truth,' as the 
 thing to be 'heard' or studied. There are many things in 
 which we act wisely in being sloiu to hear : there is much in 
 current talk and literature which is profane, impure, and false ; 
 
VER. 19-] Receiving the Ingrafted Word. 133 
 
 much, too, that is utterly trifling and unprofitable, — no more 
 fitted to benefit either head or heart than the shouting of the 
 Ephesian mob, when 'all with one voice about the space of 
 two hours cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.' As far 
 as possible, my brethren (and I appeal especially to the young, 
 who in this matter are under peculiarly strong temptations), 
 let us avoid — unless when, from particular circumstances, duty 
 appears clearly to call us to it — reading or listening to what is 
 opposed to sound religion or good morals. Even persons who, 
 on the whole, are settled in right principles, are liable to serious 
 injury from influences of this kind ; and vast multitudes who, 
 from the peaceful enclosure of a quiet and orderly childhood's 
 home, have gone forth into the desert of a wild and wicked 
 life, could trace the beginning of their deplorable wanderings 
 to their being ' swift to hear ' what they knew their parents 
 and their God disapproved. And with regard to talk and 
 literature that is simply light, not wicked, let us remember that 
 life is too short, and has too much that claims to be learned 
 and to be done in it,, to justify our giving a very large portion 
 of it to what at the best, in our expressive popular phrase, 
 can but ' kill time.' Those whom God has taught the value 
 of time feel that it has litde need to be 'killed :' it goes away 
 from us all too quickly without that. The wise Apostle Paul 
 would have us ' 7-edcem the time ' — buy it back from worldliness 
 and indolence at the cost of self-sacrifice. 
 
 The best way to keep ourselves right in these respects is to 
 be ' swift to hear ' ' the good word of God,' anxious through 
 the diligent use of all our opportunities to grow in the know- 
 ledge of divine truth. This implies having the ear open to the 
 voice of creation and providence, telling us of God's wisdom, 
 and power, and goodness. The Christian alone can study 
 nature and history to the highest ends (for ' the secret of the 
 Lord,' as Creator and Ruler as well as Saviour, ' is with them 
 that fear Him ') ; and every judicious believer will, so far as 
 his opportunities permit, give heed, as ' day unto day uttereth 
 speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.' He who 
 gives obedience to the apostle's precept will read the Bible 
 
1 34 Lee hires on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 diligently too ; and this with the earnest purpose of one who 
 knows that he is digging where hidden treasure lies, and with 
 the reverence and affectionate interest of one who in the writ- 
 ten word hears God's voice, ' a voice from the excellent glory,' 
 addressing to him personally a message of warning and of 
 peace. James's appeal calls upon us also to give regular 
 attendance at the house of God. No cause should keep us at 
 home which we should be afraid to plead before Him ; and, 
 in hearing a discourse on Bible truth, let us brace ourselves up 
 to definite purpose-like listening, with a real wish to grow in 
 knowledge and in grace. The Bible lying unused on the shelf 
 from one Lord's day to another, the wilful half-day's or occa- 
 sional whole day's absence from public worship, the wandering 
 eye or habitual sleepiness in the sanctuary in persons whose 
 eye is always bright and their mind alert in the shop or the 
 counting-house, — the commonness of these things among us, 
 my brethren, gives very saddening evidence that it is possible 
 for men and women to bear the Christian name, and yet be 
 very far from '■ swift ^ to hear that truth which, if their pro- 
 fession mean anything, it declares that they believe to be the 
 only sustenance of the life of their souls. 
 
 ' Slow to speak,' continues the apostle. It is an old saying, 
 that ' many a man has had to repent of speaking, but never 
 one of holding his peace.' There is very much truth in this ; 
 and yet, no doubt, like many such terse proverbial expressions 
 of human experience, it is not to be taken in all its breadth. 
 Beyond question, far more ground for repentance has been 
 given by speech than by silence ; yet sometimes a right- 
 minded man finds much cause for regret that he failed at 
 the proper moment to say a needed word of counsel, or com- 
 fort, or reproof. For to speak ' the word of truth ' seasonably 
 and lovingly, as God gives opportunity, to instruct ' the igno- 
 rant and them that are out of the way,' and stimulate and con- 
 sole and strengthen Christian brethren, — this is a sacred duty. 
 ' Let him that heareth say, Come.' 'Exhort one another daily, 
 while it is called to-day, lest any of you be hardened through 
 the deceitfulness of sin.' In the dark days of ancient Israel, 
 
VER. 19.] Receiving the Ingrafted Word. 135 
 
 the remnant ' that feared the Lord spake often one to another ; 
 and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remem- 
 brance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord, 
 and that thought upon His name.' And this is an aspect of 
 truth that needs to be brought prominently forward ; for there 
 is reason to fear that, in the case of many Christians, indolence 
 and constitutional reserve lead to much sinful neglect of oppor- 
 tunities given by God in His providence for uttering a word in 
 season. But the judicious Christian will be very careful when, 
 and where, and what he speaks on any subject, and especially 
 on religion. Knowing the power of words for good or evil, and 
 their solemn irrevocableness, feeling strongly how fragmentary 
 and mingled with misconceptions the knowledge of even the best 
 informed and most thoughtful of us is, the wise believer will be 
 much ' swifter ' to hear than to speak ; so that, not shrinking 
 from speaking, where to speak is plainly his duty, he will at 
 the same time never be rash, will not speak except where he 
 sees duty clear, and then will carefully weigh his words. Such 
 is evidently the meaning of the apostle's counsel to be ' sloiv 
 to speak^ taken in a general sense. 
 
 But I think there can be little doubt from what follows that 
 there is a particular reference here to keen religious contro- 
 versy, and to the unkind insinuations and personal reflections 
 to which it often leads. When important truth is assailed, it 
 must be defended ; but then, most of all, caution, thoughtful- 
 ness, and self-control are necessary. From various allusions 
 in the New Testament, it appears that, whilst certain of the 
 elders of each church were set apart to ' labour in the word 
 and doctrine,' yet in the meetings for public worship of the 
 Christians of the first age the proceedings were to some extent 
 of a conversational kind, the assembly being regarded as a reli- 
 gious confei^ejice. This system has some obvious advantages, 
 but it has also some equally obvious dangers, into which, it is 
 clear from statements and advices in various parts of the apos- 
 tolic writings, many of the congregations fell. The meetings 
 too often became scenes of wranghng, of attempts at self- 
 display, of the manifestation of unchristian tempers in the 
 
136 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch, i. 
 
 midst of debates on Christian truth ; and the evils were found 
 so to predominate over the good, that the practice was soon 
 altered to that followed in most Christian assemblies now. 
 The special immediate force of our apostle's injunction here, 
 then, seems to me to be this : ' In your assemblies for worship, 
 or wherever, under any circumstances, religious conversation, 
 particularly the discussion of religious doctrine, springs up, let 
 your great desire be to have your minds instructed and your 
 hearts warmed. Let each brother listen kindly, respectfully, 
 and thoughtfully to what his brethren say ; and in any part he 
 may himself take in the discussion, let him not be rash or in- 
 considerate, let him not be influenced by vanity or the mere 
 love of controversy and excitement, but by a simple desire to 
 help on the ascertainment of truth for the spiritual benefit of 
 all. Thus let every man be swift to hear, slow to speaks 
 
 But, further — '•slow to wrath.' This counsel may be in- 
 tended to have some bearing on both the injunctions preced- 
 ing, for anger may spring up both in hearing and speaking 
 of religion. Unpalatable truth often excites in a hearer's 
 mind ill-will to him who sets it forth. Paul asks the Galatians, 
 'Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the 
 truth?' And persons who are pricked in their consciences, but 
 kick against the pricks, are always ready to admit some such 
 hard thoughts of faithful ministers. But the danger of unholy- 
 wrath is mainly with those who are ' swift to speak,' and the 
 precept now before us seems to rise immediately out of the 
 reference to speaking. A man who delights to put himself 
 forward in debate, whether with tongue or pen, whether on 
 the floor of the hall of an ecclesiastical assembly or in a 
 gathering of Christian friends by a fireside, is extremely apt 
 to be carried away into undue heat of feeling, and thus both 
 himself show an unholy temper, and stir it up in those around. 
 
 You will observe that the apostle does not teach that anger 
 in itself, in all circumstances, is -wTong. As we are to be ' slozo 
 to speak,' but must sometimes speak, so we are to be ^ sloic 
 to wrath.' There is such a thing as ' being angry and sinning 
 not.' The Lord Jesus on one occasion, we are told, looked 
 
VER, 20.] Receiving the Ingrafted Word. 137 
 
 round on a group of narrow-souled, uncharitable, wicked men 
 ' luith anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.' A 
 Christian's soul may and should be stirred with holy indigna- 
 tion, when he sees or hears of illustrations of the unutterable 
 meanness or revolting cruelty to which depravity sometimes 
 debases the enemies of God. But it becomes us to be ' slow' 
 — ^very slow — 'to wrath:' for there is no instinctive feeling 
 of the soul into which oftener or more easily sinful elements 
 enter; none more apt to be indefensibly excited, or, even 
 when the grounds are reasonable, carried to an unreasonable 
 degree ; none more prone to wither the peace and beauty of 
 our own Christian life and that of all around us. The wise 
 and loving Christian ' is not easily provoked.' ' He that is 
 slow to anger is better than the mighty ; and he that ruleth 
 his spirit than he that taketh a city.' 
 
 The twentieth verse gives a weighty reason for compliance 
 with this last injunction : ' For the wrath of man ivorketh not 
 the righteousness of God.' ' The righteousness of God'' is an expres- 
 sion which is employed in Scripture in various senses. Here 
 it denotes that ' righteousness' or holy character in man which 
 God loves to see, and which He forms through the ' word of 
 truth' and the intluences of His Spirit. ' Worketh ' has very much 
 the force of 'produces;' as above, in the third verse, 'The 
 trying of your faith tvorketh patience.' You observe the an- 
 tithesis : 'man's wrath — God's righteousness.' As I have said, 
 the 'righteousness' is 'God's,' not merely because He approves 
 it, but because it comes from Him. Being the chief element 
 of spiritual life, it is in regeneration originated by God through 
 the 'word of truth,' and is by Him, through means of that 
 same ' word,' sustained. As this righteousness, then, comes 
 wholly from God, and opposes itself at every point to man's 
 depraved nature, it is plain that words and deeds which are 
 prompted by the anger that wells up from the fountain of 
 Pianos depravity cannot be helpful to God's righteo7is?iess, either 
 in ourselves or in others, but must have a blighting, deadening 
 power. As we have seen, there may be a righteous anger, an 
 anger which belongs to the 'righteousness of God' here spoken 
 
138 Lectures on the Epistle of Raines. [ch. i. 
 
 of; but the apostle assumes that anger, as it actually shows 
 itself among us, has always in it more or less that is wicked, 
 carnal, of man, not of God. Such anger cannot work out God's 
 righteousness. It rouses up the evil principles in our souls 
 into greater activity than at other times. Amid the tempest 
 of passion, the thoughts and feelings even of a genuine ser- 
 vant of Christ seem almost to break loose from that grasp 
 by which they are commonly held in sweet ' captivity to the 
 obedience of Christ.' To men around it presents a most 
 unalluring misrepresentation of the gospel's influence, and 
 evokes from their hearts those mists of pride and prejudice 
 which are most fitted to hide God and His truth from them. 
 Controversy, even among Christian brethren, is no doubt 
 sometimes useful, and indeed necessary ; angry feeling in such 
 controversy, never. ' Wrath' is surely utterly out of place in 
 the discussion of a religion which is based on the atonement 
 of Christ, the gentle ' Lamb of God,' and built up in the soul 
 by the Spirit of God, who descended as a gentle ' dove.' 
 
 The very solemn and impressive statement of the twentieth 
 verse leads naturally into another precept, in which the line of 
 duty indicated in the 'swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to 
 wrath,' is still further marked out. ' The wrath of man worketh 
 not the righteousness of God : wherefore lay apart all filtJiiness 
 and superfluity of 'laughtiness, and receive with meekness the 
 ingrafted tuord.^ ' Naughtiness ' is a word now scarcely ever 
 employed except of children's misdeeds, but in the older Eng- 
 lish it was in common use in the general sense of ' wickedness. ' 
 The original word which it here represents, while denoting 
 ' wickedness ' generally, is often used with the special sense 
 of ' malice, malignity ;' and the dependence, shown by ' where- 
 fore,' of this verse on the preceding statement regarding 
 ' anger,' proves, as it seems to me, that this special meaning 
 is intended here. ' Filthiness ' may be, and has been by 
 some expositors, taken by itself, as indicating 'moral pollu- 
 tion' of every kind; but both the course of thought and the 
 mode of expression appear to suggest that we should join it, 
 as well as ' superfluity,' with ' naughtiness ;' the two things 
 
VER. 2 1.] Receiving the Ingrafted Word. 139 
 
 spoken of being thus not ' filthiness ' (the one) and ' super- 
 fluity of naughtiness' (the other), but 'filthiness of naughti- 
 ness ' and ' superfluity of naughtiness.' The words ' super- 
 fluity of naughtiness ' have a decidedly odd sound to our ears, 
 and the meaning is not altogether clear. They do not im- 
 ply, I need scarcely say, that there can be any measure of 
 ' malice ' which is not ' superfluous ' and wrong. By some, the 
 expression ' all superfluity of naughtiness ' has been supposed 
 to denote ' every form in which malice overflows into the feel- 
 ings and life.' Again, the whole, 'all filthiness and superfluity 
 of naughtiness,' or ' all naughtiness's filthiness and superfluity,' 
 may very well mean, I think, ' all the malice which is so pol- 
 luting and so abundant'' in our hearts by nature. But I am 
 rather disposed to consider the horticultural figure, which shows 
 itself plainly in ' ingrafted,' as in the apostle's mind throughout 
 the whole verse ; and that the meaning of the first clause is, 
 ' Put away (from the garden of your moral life) all the defile- 
 ment and rank growth which are found in malignity,' or, more 
 simply, ' all malignity's defilement and rank growth.' We 
 should strive to have ' every root of bitterness' extirpated, that 
 the tree which yields 'the fruits of the Spirit' may grow. 
 
 Accordingly the injunction goes on, '■Receive with meekness 
 the ingrafted word.'' ' My Father is the Husbandman,' said the 
 Lord ; but, at the same time, every one of us is called to be, in 
 a subordinate sense, the keeper and tiller of his own vineyard. 
 As such we have just been enjoined to remove the disfiguring 
 and destructive weeds of malice and passion. But when God 
 is regarded as the Husbandman, or when the ' Son of man ' is 
 set prominently before us as the Sower of the good seed, then 
 our souls are simply the field or garden in which the divine 
 Agent works. The thought of labouring on the soil of his own 
 heart, and that of being simply soil on which God works, are 
 both so perfectly familiar to the Christian, and so clearly seen 
 to be but two sides of the same religious life, that to a spiritual 
 mind there is not the slightest unnaturalness or incongruity, 
 when the apostle passes on at once from speaking to us as 
 tillers, to address us as ground. As ground we are to ' receive the 
 
140 Lectures on the Epistle of y antes. [ch. i, 
 
 higrafted'' (or rather ' implanted') ' word.' Elsewhere described 
 as seed, the 'word of truth' is here represented as a scion 
 or cutting of a tree. Now, as the seed is 'sown' in every 
 proclamation or exhibition of the gospel, so the scion is ' im- 
 planted' in the soil, whenever God brings the truth within our 
 knowledge. But the scion, like the seed, must be welcomed by 
 the ground, 'received' gladly — through faith the truth must be- 
 come rooted in us — if the fruit of righteousness is to be brought 
 forth. The apostle's charge is, accordingly, that we should 
 ' receive' it in such a spirit as that it may be rooted ; and this 
 spirit, with particular reference to the 'wrath' and 'malice' 
 that he has been forbidding, he describes as a spirit of ' meek- 
 ness' Immediately, this no doubt denotes willingness to learn 
 from all who can teach, without wrangling or arrogant self- 
 assertion. But child-like docility in relation to God is plainly 
 included also ; for only a heart which has already been and 
 longs to be more fully ' taught of God' to be humble a.nd 
 gentle, can thus be ' meek' towards men. 
 
 The excellence of the 'word' that has been by God's kind- 
 ness 'implanted' in his readers, and thus the transcendent 
 importance of putting away everything from heart and life that 
 may prevent its being fully, meekly, lovingly ' received ' by us, 
 are exhibited by the apostle in the last clause of the verse, 
 ' ivhich is able to save your souls! ' The gospel of Christ is the 
 power of God unto salvation, to every one that believeth,' 
 being His appointed instrumentality for uniting men to Christ, 
 and thus obtaining for them forgiveness, and sonship, and the 
 sanctifying influences of the Spirit. In specially adverting 
 to the salvation of the '■soul' (as in Peter, 'the end of your 
 faith, even the salvation of your souls'), the apostle, we may 
 suppose, intends to bring out prominently the radical and 
 therefore gloriously complete nature of the deliverance. It is 
 no mere amelioration or adornment of the outward life, but 
 reaches that inmost and noblest part of our nature, out of 
 which are ' the issues of life,' and by the condition of which, 
 accordingly, is determined the condition of the whole man ; 
 for the body follows the state of the soul, to destruction or to 
 
VER. 2 1.] Receiving the Ingrafted Word. 141 
 
 salvation. At the same time, in thus putting forward the truth 
 that God's salvation is fundamentally a spiritual deliverance, 
 the apostle suggests to all intelligent readers that no mere 
 formal respect to the ' word,' His instrument, but the reception 
 of it into the soul, will bring men into the enjoyment of its 
 blessings ; thus illustrating the meaning as well as the reason- 
 ableness of his precept, ' Receive the word with meekness.' 
 
 This twenty-first verse has an interesting parallel in the be- 
 ginning of the second chapter of First Peter, a passage to which 
 ■ I referred earlier in the lecture: 'Laying aside all malice' 
 (the same word rendered 'naughtiness' in James), 'and all 
 guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, — as 
 new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye 
 may grow thereby.' In both, the importance of knowing divine 
 truth — so knowing it, being ' received with meekness,' that it 
 becomes a power, as spiritual nourishment, to make the new 
 man in Christ ' grow' — is set forth very clearly ; and at the 
 same time the needfulness, in order to our so knowing the 
 truth, of shunning unchristian tempers and practices. There 
 are here continually action and reaction. Nothing can really 
 eradicate 'malice' and other forms of sinful desire except the 
 influence of the truth ; but again, as these evil propensities are 
 subdued, the power of the truth grows in us. By thoughtful, 
 prayerful, earnest effort to vanquish sin, the dimming, begrim- 
 ing incrustations that have gathered on the windows of the 
 soul are removed, and the beams of heavenly light shine in. 
 
142 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes. [ch. i. 
 
 VIIT. 
 THE SPIRITUAL MIRROR. 
 
 ' But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own 
 selves. 23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like 
 unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass : 24 For he beholdeth 
 himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner 
 of man he was. 25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, 
 and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of 
 the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.' — ^James i. 22-25. 
 
 THE apostle continues here his treatment of the subject 
 taken up in the verses immediately preceding, and the 
 connection marked by the introductory '• BiiV may be para- 
 phrased as follows : ' But whilst I thus enjoin upon you to be 
 swift to hear, ready to receive with meekness the implanted 
 word, bear in mind all that this receiving means, and that mere 
 hearing is by no means all that is implied in it. The word, I 
 have said, is able to save your souls. Now precious, inestimably 
 precious, as are tidings of pardon and peace through believing, 
 the experience of peace does not wholly fill up the idea of the 
 salvation of the soul : one element, indeed the grand element, 
 of this salvation is transformation of character, — a radical 
 alteration in the convictions, and feelings, and tendencies of 
 the soul itself, — a change from the love and service of sin 
 to the love and practice of holy obedience. Wherefore, 
 brethren,' — 
 
 ' Be ye doers of the tcord, and not hearers only, deceivhig your 
 own selves' It is obviously implied here, that the word of 
 which the apostle speaks is in its nature practical, intended 
 and fitted to act on the hearts and lives of those that become 
 acquainted with it. There is, as you know, much truth on 
 many subjects which, in its place, is valuable, but which has 
 
VER. 2 2.] The Spiritual Mirror. 143 
 
 no immediate bearing on the conduct of life. There is, no 
 doubt, a vast multitude of facts mentioned in Scripture, of 
 which, looked at simply by themselves, the same may be said. 
 That Sihon was king of the Amorites, and that Rabbah was a 
 strong town of the children of Ammon, are truths which cannot 
 well affect our feelings or life. But ' the Scriptures prijicipally 
 teach' religious truth, of which it is of the very essence to have 
 an immediate bearing on the conduct of hfe. And the one 
 kind of religious truth revealed in the Bible, ' what man is to 
 beheve concerning God,' is such as, when believed, to prompt 
 us, through reverence, and gratitude, and love, to hearty com- 
 pliance with what is also therein made known as ' the dut^ 
 which God requireth of man.' ' Be ye, then, doers of the word, 
 and not hearers only.' 
 
 * To he doers ' has a force of its own, distinct from that of 
 the simple ' to do.' You feel that the expression exhibits a 
 habitual ocaipaiion. It sets before us as real Christians persons 
 who make the ' doing of the word of God ' the main business 
 of their lives, — a business affecting, penetrating, pervading all 
 other business and all pleasure ; so that just as, when you speak 
 of an ordinary worldly trade or profession, you say that a man is 
 a teacher, a manufacturer, or the like, so, speaking of character, 
 those that know a Christian intimately should always be able 
 to say of him, ' He is a doer of the word of God.' In every 
 department of his life such a man will show clearly that he 
 makes this ' the principal thing,' in matters which men call 
 secular as well as those which they call sacred ; for he knows 
 that nothing is really beyond the sphere of religion, beyond 
 the sphere illuminated by the teaching of the Holy Spirit in 
 the Bible. In health and sickness, therefore, in his family 
 circle and in general social intercourse, in the shop or the 
 counting-house no less than at the prayer-meeting or in 
 positive and direct labouring and giving for Christ's cause, — 
 everywhere, in a life of holy energy, and humility, and love, 
 and patience, according to the measure of his faith, he will be 
 a ' doer of the word.' -^ 
 
 The apostle enforces his injunction by setting forth the 
 
144 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. i. 
 
 solemn consideration, that persons who are ' hearers only ' 
 ' deceive their own selves.^ Such persons evidently altogether 
 misconceive the nature of true religion, and thus cheat them- 
 selves with reference to their position before God. Knowing 
 that the study of divine truth, through reading the Bible, giving 
 attendance on the public ordinances of grace, and otherwise, 
 is a most important duty, — is, indeed, the road leading towards 
 the gate of everlasting life, — they allow themselves, through 
 man's natural aversion to all genuine spirituality, to be per- 
 suaded by the wicked one that this is the sum of all Christian 
 duty, and itself the gate of life, so that in mere ' hearing ' they 
 enter in, and all is well with them. To rest satisfied with the 
 means of grace, without yielding up our hearts to their power 
 as means, so as to receive the grace and exhibit its working 
 in our lives, is manifestly folly of the same class as that of a 
 workman who should content himself with possessing tools, 
 without using them. — madness of the same class as that of a 
 man perishing with hunger, who should exult in having bread 
 in his hands, without eating it, — but folly and madness as im- 
 measurably greater than these, as the ' work of God ' (John 
 vi. 29) transcends in importance the work of an earthly artisan, 
 and ' life with Christ in God ' the perishable existence of earth. 
 Yet, alas, brethren, there is reason to fear that, with "great 
 numbers of professing Christians in all sections of the church — 
 persons who attend the house of God, listen with a fair mea- 
 sure of diligence to the proclamation of truth, and, it may be, 
 in intercourse with their friends rather love to talk of sermons 
 and ministers and orthodoxy — this is all; whilst yet they are 
 impressed with the conviction that they are certainly Christians 
 — nay, perhaps singularly excellent Christians — forgetting that 
 any degree of religious profession, where the heart is destitute 
 of the love of God, and the life not consecrated to His service, 
 is in His sight utter mockery. On no point are the warnings 
 and appeals of our Saviour and His apostles more earnest and 
 solenm than on this. Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, 
 how H^l^id : ' Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, 
 shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the 
 
VER. 23.] The Spiritual Mirror. 145 
 
 will of My Father which is in heaven. Therefore, whosoever 
 heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them, I will liken 
 him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock : and 
 the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew 
 and beat upon that house ; and it fell not, — for it was founded 
 upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of 
 Mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, 
 which built his house upon the sand : and the rain descended, 
 and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that 
 house ; and it fell ; and great was the fall of it.' ' When once 
 the Master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the 
 door, then shall ye begin to say. We have eaten and drunk 
 in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in our streets. But 
 He shall say, I tell you, T know you not whence you are : 
 depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.' 
 
 In the verses which follow, the apostle brings forward with 
 considerable fulness the great reason for the injunction here 
 given, — the fact which is implied in his statement that those 
 ' deceive themselves ' who are * hearers of the word only.' 
 Such persons show that the word has no poiver over them. It 
 remains outside them; for though it may have entered the 
 mind, yet it plainly has not penetrated into the affections and 
 will, which morally constitute the man. Whatever impression 
 is made on the heart is but transient. Now, only when the 
 word ' dwells' (Col. iii. 16) in the heart, not fitfully but perma- 
 nently, and when, consequently, it regulates the life not fitfully 
 but permanently, — it is only in this case that the word brings 
 the blessings and glories of salvation. This is substantially the 
 meaning of the paragraph ; but the truth is presented, as you 
 see, in a very interesting and graphic way, under the figure of a 
 mirror, and a man looking at himself in it. 
 
 ' For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like 
 tinto a man beholding his natural face in a glass.'' The expres- 
 sion '■ his natural face'' (literally, ' the face of his birth ') seems 
 intended to suggest, through the specialty made prominent, the 
 line of interpretation for the figure. We are, in expounding, 
 to think of the spiriiiial countenance, the face of the soul, as 
 
 K 
 
146 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes. [ch. i. 
 
 contrasted with ' the natural face,' which obviously is in mean- 
 ing practically the same as ' bodily face.' 
 
 As a general rule, a person looks into a mirror for a definite 
 end, which can be soon attained ; and then goes away to the 
 work or the pleasures of life. He glances at his features, 
 makes the little arrangements in his personal appearance for 
 which a mirror is helpful, and then leaves the glass, and thinks 
 no more of it or of what he had seen in it. So little of definite 
 and lasting impression, indeed, has been made on him, that he 
 is better acquainted with the features of his friends than with his 
 own. Such, no doubt, is ordinary experience, except where 
 persons are under the influence of a silly vanity in regard to 
 their personal appearance. Taking the facts to be as now de- 
 scribed, the apostle says that people contemplate the features 
 of their souls as carelessly, if they be ' hearers of the word, and 
 not doers.' The force of the illustration, regarded as an argu- 
 ment, is somewhat as follows : ' To make but a brief survey of 
 the natural face in the glass, to spend but a little time on that 
 bodily adornment for which the mirror is intended as an aid, 
 and thus to receive but a slight and evanescent impression of 
 our bodily appearance, may be very fitting, since the body is in 
 every point of view the inferior part of man, and is appointed 
 to moulder to dust. But the case is altogether different with 
 the soul. To know the features of our souls intimately, to look 
 at them carefully, to bear them much in mind, and to strive 
 by every means that their beauty may be increased, — this is the 
 part of a wise man, this is a sacred duty : for the soul is im- 
 mortal ; and according to the care we bestow on it here, will be 
 its condition in eternity. The soul which, by divine grace, is 
 through faith and prayer and earnest Christian effort cleansed, 
 beautified, and adorned, shall in heaven stand before God 
 clothed in the beautiful garments of salvation ; whilst the soul 
 that is heedless of holy beauty, and by the love and practice 
 of sin disfigures itself, marring its lineaments more and more 
 from day to day, shall appear in His presence in nakedness, 
 uncomeliness, and fear. One day certainly a voice of power 
 shall say, He that is holy, let him be holy still ; and he that is 
 
VER. 2 4-] The Spudtual Mirror. 147 
 
 filthy, let him be filthy still. Let the mirror which God has 
 given for our souls, then, be used with conscientious and loving 
 diligence. Study yourselves therein, and let the remembrance 
 of its revelations of your spiritual features be ever present with 
 you, that, knowing your natural sinfulness, you may grow into 
 the image of God's holiness.' 
 
 According to the figure, every one who 'hears the word' 
 beholds his spiritual image, the features of his soul, in a glass ; 
 which glass evidently is the ' word ' spoken of, the testimony 
 of God in Scripture. Conscience might to some extent serve 
 as such a mirror ; but, alas, through the influence of our depra- 
 vity, this mirror has been greatly flawed, and become very dull 
 in its reflection. Now, in the graphic delineations of the divine 
 word we see ourselves as we really are. He who ' compasseth 
 our path and our lying down, and is acquainted with all our 
 ways,' who ' searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the 
 imaginations of the thoughts,' has in the Bible given His decla- 
 ration of our spiritual condition ; and thus every man who with 
 any attention reads the Bible, or waits on a gospel ministry, 
 must see with some degree of clearness both the defilement 
 and uncomeliness of the countenance of his soul, and at the 
 same time (for, through God's grace, more is shown in this 
 glass than man's depravity) how alone purity and beauty can 
 be obtained. The seeing of these things in God's mirror is 
 common to all persons who in any measure attend to the 
 word, — though with very varied degrees of clearness. 
 
 From this point, however, we have two distinct classes. The 
 mere'SxQZXQx (the hearer that ' doeth not') follows in every respect, 
 in his use of the mirror which God has given for the soul, the 
 same course as men generally follow in using the mirror that 
 shows the ' natural face ; ' ^ for he beholdeth himself and goeth his 
 way, atid straightway forgdteth what manner of ma7ihe 7uas.' 
 
 He ^beholdeth himself^ but not with much interest, not as if 
 it were a matter of vital importance to see himself as God sees 
 him. He could look at a machine, or a picture, or an Act of 
 Parliament, so intently as to have the whole accurately and 
 vividly before his mind. He can look at himself, too, with 
 
148 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 much enjoyment, in the picture painted by his own vain fancy. 
 But the countenance which the faithful mirror shows, with all 
 its hard lines and all its traces of pollution — this he does not 
 care to contemplate minutely. Pride and unbelief enter in ; 
 and so he ^ goeth his ivay ' to his farm or his merchandise, his 
 library or his ball-room. He gives but little time to God's 
 mirror. If each of us were to construct a time-table for any 
 average week of his life, setting down honestly in separate lines 
 the number of hours spent in secular work, in recreation of one 
 kind or another, and in studying God's will, ' looking not at the 
 things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen,' many 
 a gospel hearer would be most painfully startled by the results 
 brought out. Nay, even confining the inquiry to the day that 
 God claims as peculiarly His, what proportion of its hours is 
 given to definite purpose-like religious reading or meditation, — 
 the statement of facts would often not be pleasant for us to look 
 at. We are all too ready to ' go our way ' from God's mirror. 
 
 ' Ajid straightway forgetteth what manner of man he tvasi' 
 His mind never having been very earnestly occupied with the 
 truth, his thoughts regarding it, such as they were, are soon 
 driven out by thoughts on more congenial matters. ' He that 
 received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word, — 
 and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, 
 and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and 
 he becometh unfruitful.' The forgetfulness occurs '■straight- 
 way^ The man has been listening, it may be, to a faithful, 
 searching sermon, and under it has been somewhat impressed 
 with a sense of his sinfulness and helplessness ; yet before he 
 reaches home, perhaps, the seriousness has gone from him. 
 Oh, how many of us, brethren, know from experience the 
 frequent and deplorable evanescence of religious impressions ! 
 In our Sabbath exercises every voice seems to say, 'I go, sir;' 
 but the morrow tells another tale. ' O Ephraim,' cries the 
 Lord through His prophet, ' what shall I do unto thee ? O 
 Judah, what shall I do unto thee ? for your goodness is as a 
 morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away.' 
 
 * But whoso looketh into the perfect latv of liberty, and con- 
 
VER. 25.] The Spiritual Mirroj\ 149 
 
 tinueth therein, he being not a foi-gctfiil_ hearer, bid a doer of the 
 work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.^ 
 
 In contrast with the careless, unbenefited hearer of God's 
 word, whom the apostle has sketched for us in the two pre- 
 vious verses, we have here exhibited the wise hearer, and this 
 mainly in unfigurative language ; though the ' looking ' is an 
 evidence that the image of the mirror is still in the apostle's 
 mind, at least at the outset. In place of the ' glass,' however, 
 we have the thing signified by the glass described to us by the 
 very striking expression, ' the law of liberty.^ The reference of 
 this name has been understood in more than one way ; yet if 
 we regard the connection of the verse with what precedes and 
 what follows, and also attend to the apostle's use of the same 
 expression in the twelfth verse of the next chapter, as illus- 
 trated by the immediately preceding context, we cannot have 
 much doubt, as it appears to me, what was in his mind. The 
 ' law of liberty ' is evidently, from the course of the argument, 
 another name for the ' word of truth,' by which God regene- 
 rates ; and the hearty acceptance of which constituted ' the 
 faith of our Lord Jesus Christ,' and was the root of the 
 'religion' professed by James's readers (i. iS, 27, ii. i). But, 
 no less evidently, while it is the gospel that is in his thoughts, 
 it is the gospel regarded specially in its sanctifying aspect, as 
 * the power of God unto salvation ' from spiritual debasement 
 and pollution ; or, more exactly, ' the law of liberty ' is the 
 divine law considered as taken up into the grand redemptive 
 system, which has for its purpose to make men spiritually 
 like God, ' holy and without blame before Him in love,' — the 
 divine law, as those who are in Christ see it, exhibited under 
 the gospel with new motives and in connection with new spiri- 
 tual influences, — the ' old commandment, which we had from 
 the beginning,' and yet ' new' in Christ. 
 
 The code of morals exhibited by God in ' the word of truth ' 
 is for the Christian a binding ' law.^ Recognising God as his 
 rightful and absolute King, the believer feels that every expres- 
 sion of His will with regard to the conduct of His human sub- 
 jects has for him obligatory force. In accepting Jesus as his 
 
150 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 Saviour, he has renounced all trust in obedience to the law as a 
 mca?js of earning eternal life, acknowledging that for a depraved 
 creature this is hopeless work, but rejoicing that Christ, as his 
 representative, has yielded perfect obedience, which God's 
 tender mercy will reckon as his. In this respect, then, he is 
 'not under the law, but under grace' (Rom. vi. 14). Yet his 
 knowledge that he is ' under grace ' only leads him to feel the 
 more deeply his subjection to the divine law as the rule of life : 
 he is ' not without law to God, but under the law to Christ ' 
 (i Cor. ix. 21). And through this ^ to Christ^ — through the fact 
 that all the relations of the believer to God are /// Christ — the 
 law is for him ' the law of liberty.'' We are sensible of a vague 
 ness in this language which contributes to its grandeur. Every 
 relation binding closely together these two, which to the unwise 
 seem foes, law and liberty, is implied here. The divine law, as 
 seen by the Christian, exhibits liberty, gives liberty, is liberty. 
 
 The ' light of the Lord ' shows sin to be a slavery, brethren 
 — a cruel bondage. Nought but slavery could keep that 
 noble creature of God, the soul of man, ahenated from the 
 absolutely Good and Beautiful, indisposed to think of Him, 
 occupied continually with things that cannot by possibility 
 aiford any rational or lasting happiness. Sin is an oppressive 
 power, malignantly holding our spirits back from their true 
 good, degrading them and weighing them down, so that they 
 cannot soar towards those lofty objects of contemplation and 
 effort for which they were made. And the clearest proof of 
 the crushing nature of this bondage is the fact that, till the 
 light of Christ illumines the soul, the chains are almost wholly 
 unseen. In lands where the accursed system of man holding 
 his fellow as a chattel exists, the thoughtful mind sees the 
 clearest evidence of the utter abominableness and monstrous- 
 ness of the iniquity, not so much in looking at the slaves who 
 feel and lament their condition, as in the case of those whose 
 whole natures from their infancy have been so degraded by 
 the sight and experience of cruelty and pollution, that their 
 hearts scarcely rise to the vague idea that all this is unnatural, 
 or that God made such as they are to be other than beasts of 
 
VER. 25.] The Spiritit,al Mim^or. 151 
 
 burden. Like this is the slavery of sin ; nay, so completely 
 are things spiritual inverted before the sinner's mind, that he 
 counts himself free, and. deems obedience to God a thral- 
 dom. * Let us break asunder the bands of the Lord and His 
 Anointed,' he says, 'and castaway their cords from us.' 'Pro- 
 mising' to themselves and all who act like them 'liberty,' 
 unbelievers ' are the slaves of corruption ; for of whom a man 
 is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.' 
 
 But the Christian sees things as they really are, and his will 
 is brought into unison with God's will, so that he loves to do 
 what he ought to do. He finds that in obedience to God, and 
 there only, all the powers of his nature find full, free play, and 
 all his capacities of happiness full gratification. This is spiritual 
 freedom. Such freedom has been enjoyed under all the stages 
 of the revelation of God's grace, in the measure in which the 
 love and beauty of His character were apprehended. ' I will 
 walk at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts,' says the Psalmist. 
 Yet, no doubt, from the comparative darkness that prevailed 
 during the old economy, the buoyant feeling of freedom was 
 attained to in any high degree by but few. Lighted up by the 
 meridian beams of the Sun of Righteousness as, since Pente- 
 cost, have been the richness and tenderness of the divine love 
 in Christ, all believers in Jesus should, in a measure far exceed- 
 ing that which was possible for ancient saints, exult in the sense 
 of liberty ; ' for we have not received the spirit of bondage again 
 to fear, but have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we 
 cry, Abba, Father.' ' My yoke is easy,' said the Master, ' and 
 my burden is light' * This is the love of God, that we keep 
 His commandments ; and His commandments are not grievous.' 
 To the servant of God under the Christian dispensation, then, 
 the King's law is, with peculiar fulness, ' the law of liberty,' 
 o^ freedom to live up to the capabilities of his being. He 
 enjoys 
 
 ' A liberty unsung 
 
 By poets, and by senators unpraised, 
 
 Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the powers 
 
 Of earth and hell confederate take away ; 
 
 A liberty which persecution, fraud, 
 
1 5 2 Lectures on the Epistle of jfaines. [ch. i. 
 
 Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind ; 
 Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more. 
 He is the freeman whom the trtith makes free, 
 And all are slaves beside.' 
 
 Cowper's Winter Morning Walk, 538-544, 733, 734. 
 
 By the epithet ^perfect,' which the apostle apphes to the- 
 ' law of liberty,' some interpreters suppose him to point out 
 the superiority in fulness and clearness of the exposition of 
 moral duty given by the Lord Jesus and His apostles to that 
 contained in the Old Testament. Now, there can be no doubt 
 that the whole of the expression here employed, especially the 
 reference to ' hberty,' was fitted and intended to bring up be- 
 fore the readers' minds the glorious completeness of the revela- 
 tion of duty as well as of grace which had been granted to 
 them, as contrasted with that which their fathers had enjoyed ; 
 yet nothing in our apostle's course of thought, either here or 
 in any other part of the Epistle, leads us to think that he means 
 this to be more than suggested in a secondary and incidental 
 way. He plainly thinks primarily of the moral law of God, as 
 made known under all the economies, — under all of them a 
 'law of liberty' for those who apprehended its spirit and 
 'walked with God,'- — under all of them '■perfect^ as being a 
 transcript of the divine character. His object in drawing 
 attention so prominently to the grandeur and sweetness of the 
 law is, evidently enough, to impress his readers with the tran- 
 scendent importance for their own good of ' not hearing only, 
 but. doing' God's will; and, indeed, for all the thoughtful, his 
 words anticipate the express declaration which comes after- 
 wards, that ' the doer' of the law ' shall be blessed in his 
 deed.' 
 
 In the apostle's description of the wise gospel hearer, we 
 find made prominent three points of contrast with the con- 
 duct of the foolish man delineated in the previous verse. In 
 the first place, this man ' looketh ' into the spiritual mirror. 
 The word rendered ' behold ' in the twenty-third and twenty- 
 fourth verses does not necessarily, taken by it§elf, imply care- 
 lessness; but that used here does seem, according to New 
 
VER. 25.] The Spiritual Mirro7\ 153 
 
 Testament usage (and this naturally, from its etymology), to 
 imply intentness of gaze ; and as the apostle passes with 
 marked purpose from the use of the one word to that of the 
 other, this idea is obviously meant to stand out distinctly. The 
 case here is not that of an object casually meeting the eye, 
 and thus being ' beheld.' This man 'stoops down beside' the 
 word of God (such is the precise force of the term) • he alters 
 his position with definite intention to contemplate the object 
 carefully. Man's natural aversion to serious religious thought 
 — an aversion springing from pride, or fear, or pure frivolity of 
 spirit — this is the grand obstacle to the progress of Christ's 
 cause. If men would only gravely and honestly look at their 
 own character and prospects, and at the gracious offers made 
 by God in Christ, all would be well. Seriousness is the true 
 ' mother of devotion.' Seriousness, then, we have here in the 
 way in which this man ' looketh into the perfect law of liberty.' 
 
 But again, whilst the foolish hearer, having ' beheld himself,' 
 'goeth his way,' the wise man '■ continueth (looking).' The 
 '■therein'' which our translators have supplied is somewhat mis- 
 leading ; for it means (most naturally at least) ' in the law, in 
 obedience to the law,' — a sense which dislocates the antithesis, 
 and makes the next clause tautological. The man ' continues 
 looking,' looks not earnestly only, but perseveringly. There 
 are those who, having listened to the word attentively, 'anon 
 with joy receive it, and dure for a while ; but, having no root 
 in themselves, in time of temptation fall away.' These persons 
 have seen some sides of gospel truth, and been attracted by 
 them ; but not having prosecuted the study of the word, they 
 find by and by that difficulties occur for which the views they 
 had taken of truth had not prepared them, and thus they are 
 'offended.' The true disciple of Christ is always learning of 
 Him. 
 
 We have yet one point more in the contrast. The foolish 
 hearer ' straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was,' as 
 shown in the glass of divine truth ; whilst the crowning excel- 
 lence of him whom we are now contemplating is that he is ' not 
 a forgetful hearer, hut a doer of the work,'' or rather, simply, 'a 
 
154 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. i. 
 
 doer of worki' This is the third feature in the conduct of the 
 wise hearer ; but it holds such a relation to the first two, that, 
 as you will observe, it is not connected with them, in the 
 apostle's sentence, quite as they are connected with each 
 other. A man may ' look ' who does not ' continue looking ;' 
 and therefore the apostle is careful to describe the person who 
 is before his mind as one who ' looks, ajid continues looking.' 
 But, these two things being given, the third follows of neces- 
 sity, from the power on man's mind and heart of divine truth, 
 earnestly and perseveringly looked at. Accordingly he brings 
 in the last feature in such a way as to express this : ' being 
 ("thus" or "consequently" we might supply) not a forgetful 
 hearer, but a doer of work.' The man who avails himself 
 sedulously of all opportunities of growing in the knowledge of 
 God's will, carries the remembrance of what has occupied his 
 attention into all the scenes of life. In the bustle and strain 
 of daily work we naturally and reasonably lose all thought ot 
 the mirror for the 'natural face;' but the revelations of the 
 spiritual mirror, often and with deep interest contemplated, 
 remain with him who saw them, and, more or less consciously, 
 are powers over him at all times, in all circumstances. He is 
 the very opposite of the 'forgetful hearer;' and his remem- 
 brance — necessarily operative, from the nature of the truth seen 
 and believed — leads him to shun sin, and in every waj^, as God 
 gives him opportunity, to labour in God's cause. From the 
 very nature of the case, he is 'a doer of work.' To speak of 
 a candid and persevering student of God's will who does not 
 in practice try to do God's will, is to utter that which is absurd, 
 self-contradictory. 
 
 Having described wise dealing with the word of God, 
 the apostle pronounces him who so deals with it 'blessed.' 
 ' Whoso looks — and that perseveringly — into the perfect law 
 of liberty, and thus comes to have the remembrance of it ever 
 with him, and to be a doer of the work it enjoins,' — '■ tJiis man^ 
 says James emphatically, as if to concentrate on him, for ad- 
 miration and imitation, the eyes of all readers, ' shall be blessed 
 in his deed,' or, more exactly, as the margin has it, ^in his 
 
VER. 2 5-] The Spiritual Mirror. 155 
 
 doing' of the work. The ' blessedness ' of the righteous will 
 have its glorious completeness only in heaven, when the King 
 says, ' Well done, good and faithful servants, enter ye into the 
 joy of your Lord.' Yet even here, '■in the doing'' of God's will 
 the saint experiences 'a joy that is unspeakable and full of 
 glory.' ' The judgments of the Lord are more to be desired 
 than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey 
 and the honeycomb ; and in keeping of them there is great re- 
 ward^ ' Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience 
 that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, 
 but by the grace of God, we have our conversation in the 
 world.' The supreme 'blessedness' of every Christian, bre- 
 thren, is to know himself growing liker his Lord. Now, as he 
 ' continues looking ' into the ' glass ' of Scripture, he sees ever 
 more and more clearly, not the likeness of himself merely, 
 but that of the Master, who has come to stand very near His 
 servant ; and thus, ' beholding in the glass the glory of the 
 Lord,' he is, by the energy of the Spirit, through the trans- 
 forming power of love, ' changed into the same image, from 
 glory to glory.' By and by we shall see Him no longer ' as in 
 a glass, darkly,' but 'face to face :' the reflection of the Alto- 
 gether Lovely will give place to the ' open vision.' Then the 
 * blessedness ' will be perfect, because ' when He shall appear, 
 we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.' 
 
 ^ 
 
1 56 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 IX. 
 
 TRUE RELIGIOUS SERVICE. 
 
 ' If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, 
 but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain. 27 Pure 
 religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, — to visit 
 the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself 
 unspotted from the world.' — James i. 26, 27. 
 
 THESE verses are closely connected with what precedes. 
 The apostle wishes to impress on his readers the vast im- 
 portance of being 'doers, and not hearers only;' and he knows 
 the great advantage of exhibiting a particular example illustra- 
 tive of any general principle, — not merely from its making the 
 meaning clear, but because, in morals especially, general prin- 
 ciples are apt to slip from thought, whilst examples lay hold 
 of heart and conscience like grappling irons. A general prin- 
 ciple of duty is to our feelings very often like an exquisitely 
 chiselled and most beautiful statue in a gallery of art, looked 
 at with admiration, but cold, dead, destitute of all connection 
 with our daily life, — an example, like a living, loving, wise 
 friend and adviser, whom we meet at every turn in our life. 
 The apostle proceeds, accordingly, to show what ' doing God's 
 word ' is by special cases : and this first negatively, mentioning 
 one easily recognised feature which characterizes the no?i-doer; 
 then positively, describing modes of conduct which, with more 
 or less fulness, are found in doers. 
 
 First, negatively : ^ If any man among you sectn to be religious, 
 and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this ma?i's 
 religion is vain.'' Our authorized version, admirable on the 
 whole alike for accuracy and for perspicuity and beauty of 
 expression, appears to lack somewhat of its customary excel- 
 lence in the rendering of this verse ; for in one or two points 
 
VER. 26.] True Religious Service. 157 
 
 it is obscure, if not misleading. The sentence would have 
 been clearer, if in the middle clauses the participial form had 
 been retained which they have in the original, thus : ' whilst 
 bridling not his tongue, but deceiving his own heart.' Again, 
 the question very naturally arises, How can a man seem at all 
 to be religious — how could any person take him for religious — 
 when his religious pretensions are completely and obviously 
 refuted by his unbridled tongue, 'his speech bewraying him?' 
 But the word translated ^ seem'' has reference merely to the 
 existence of an opinion, not to the existence of any apparent 
 ground for this opinion ; and in the present case the opinion 
 is the man's own. The meaning therefore is, ' seem to him- 
 self or 'think himself;' just as, for example, in Paul's words 
 to the Corinthians : ' If any man among you seemeth to be wise 
 in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise' (i 
 Cor. iii. 18), But after these little things have been rectified, 
 there still remains the chief misleading element in the transla- 
 tion, — which, however, is not due to any ignorance or careless- 
 ness on the part of the translators, but to a change since their 
 days in the meaning of the words '■religion'' and '■religious.^ 
 
 Change of meaning is a source of error that has affected 
 a considerable number of words in the English Bible ; and 
 there is plainly more danger of misunderstanding passages 
 where these occur, than passages where words occur that are 
 now entirely out of use. When you meet such a word as 
 * ouches,' ' taches,' ' days-man,' you see at once that it is a 
 stranger in modern English ; and if you wish to understand 
 what you read, and do not merely go over a chapter mechani- 
 cally, under the idea that you are serving God and benefiting 
 yourselves by passing the eye over the words, you ask a well- 
 informed friend, or consult a book, what the obsolete word 
 means. But when you read, ' If any widow have children or 
 nephews^ and do not know that everywhere in our version 
 this word means * grandson ;' when you are told that Paul 
 and his company 'took up their carriages., and went up to 
 Jerusalem,' or that ' David left his carriage in the hand of the 
 keeper of the carriage^ and forget that with our translators 
 
158 Lectures on the Epistle of James . [ch. i. 
 
 'carriage' meant 'baggage;' when you hear Paul saying to 
 the Athenians, 'As I passed by, and beheld your devotions, 
 I found an altar,' and do not -know that by these the trans- 
 lators intend the outward objects connected with what we now 
 call devotion — temples, images, and the like;^ — in these and 
 other similar cases you might easily go unconsciously alto- 
 gether astray as to the sense of the passage. Words wholly 
 unused in the English of our own time ' are like rocks which 
 stand out from the sea : we are warned of their presence, and 
 there is little danger of our making shipwreck upon them. 
 But words like those which have been just cited, as familiar 
 now as when our version was made, but employed in quite 
 different meanings from those which they then possessed, are 
 like hidden rocks, which give no notice of their presence, and 
 on which we may be shipwrecked, if I may so say, without so 
 much as being aware of it.' ^ 
 
 By far the most serious of the misconceptions arising from this 
 source of error are those connected with the words '■religion'' and 
 ' religions^ especially in the passage before us. At the time our 
 translation was made, these words seem to have been generally, 
 if not always, employed with reference to the outward forms in 
 which what we now usually call 'religion' — reverence and love 
 to God — showed itself. The words do not occur often in our 
 Bible, — nowhere in the Old Testament, and but a few times 
 in the New ; but in every case they refer to what we may 
 call the body, not the said, of religion — to forms of worship, 
 under which there might or might not be true piety. ' Godly ' 
 and ' godliness ' are the terms our translators employ for the 
 spirit of religion. In the verses before us, the words in the 
 original which ' religion ' and ' religious ' are used to represent 
 unquestionably refer to worship, or, generally, to the form or 
 embodimetit of religion. I have gone into this matter with 
 
 ^ I Tim. V. 4 ; Acts xxi. 15 ; i Sam. xvii. 22 ; Acts xvii. 23. Some in- 
 teresting and valuable remarks on this source of error are to be found in the 
 second chapter of Archbishop Trench's work entitled, On the Authorized 
 Version of the Ne^u Testament. 
 
 " Trench. 
 
VER. 26.] True Religions Service. 159 
 
 some fulness, because I am persuaded that the last verse of 
 this chapter, misunderstood, has often been applied as an 
 opiate to their consciences by persons who, feeling that they 
 loved the world and the things of the world more than they 
 loved Jesus Christ, would fain believe that a life of outward 
 decency and some kindness to the poor constitutes the whole 
 of religion — the whole of piety. What the apostle states is 
 that, where piety exists in the soul, stainless morality and 
 earnest philanthropy form its proper and legitimate outward 
 expression. 
 
 Gathering up what has been said in regard to various points 
 in the rendering, we may give the translation of the verse 
 thus : * If any man among you think himself to be observant 
 of religious service, whilst at the same time bridling not his 
 tongue, but deceiving his own heart, that man's religious 
 service is vain.' The case supposed is that of a ' hearer of 
 the word,' — a person, say, who attends the house of God with 
 considerable, perhaps great regularity, to whom the Bible is 
 not by any means an unfamiliar book, and who regards his 
 character with complacency, but all the while has a tongue that 
 is * unbridled^ unrestrained by Christian judgment and feeling. 
 
 The tongue, you observe, needs to be ' bridled' Like all the 
 other members, it is by nature yielded up as an * instrument of 
 unrighteousness,' under the impulse of unholy passions. By 
 nature its course is wild and destructive, like that of a spirited 
 horse, infuriated, and free from bit and bridle. The apostle 
 assumes, too, that Christian principle will bridle it. ' For this 
 purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy 
 the works of the devil,' and among them falsehood, profanity, 
 unkind, unclean, unprofitable talk. The gospel of Christ is 
 ' the power of God ' to effect this, to save the soul from the 
 corrupting power of the devil, to bring men to yield up the 
 tongue, with all the other members, 'as instruments of right- 
 eousness unto God.' * Whoso,' then, Mooketh into the perfect 
 law of liberty, and continueth looking, he being not a forget- 
 ful hearer, but a doer of work, this man bridleth his tongue.' 
 
 The apostle's statement here implies still further, that brid- 
 
i6o Lectures on the Epistle of Jajnes. [ch. i. 
 
 ling the tongue is a peculiarly excellent test of ge?iuine religion. 
 From drunkenness, uncleanness, and other gross and obvious 
 vices, many are led to abstain through influences unconnected, 
 or but indirectly connected, Avith religion ; but whilst every 
 true Christian — every person really spiritually-minded — will 
 with more or less thoroughness and success bridle his tongue, 
 there must be very few cases, if any, in which this is habi- 
 tually done by an unconverted person. The government of 
 the tongue is a task so difficult, that he who has grace to 
 accomplish it, has grace to accomplish anything. Think of 
 the facility and rapidity with which sins of the tongue ai-e com- 
 mitted. Almost before we are conscious that a thought has 
 entered the mind, before we have taken a moment to ponder 
 its nature or the consequences of uttering it, it has leapedinto 
 outward life as a spoken sentence. Again, think of the great 
 scope there is for going wrong. To most of the other sins 
 which take an outward form temptations present themselves 
 but occasionally ; and if we desire it, we may to a consider- 
 able extent keep ourselves clear of the circumstances in which 
 the temptations occur. But business and the general inter- 
 course of life cannot be carried on without speaking, and 
 therefore there is always abundant scope and temptation 
 for offences of the tongue. The words any one of us speaks 
 during one day of average talkativeness would, I suppose, if 
 printed, go far to fill a fairly-sized volume. Speech is con- 
 tinually passing from us on the most varied subjects ; and 
 thus, as it is far more difficult for a military commander to 
 keep a post to which there are many approaches, than one 
 where he is safe if his force is concentrated on two or three, 
 so the habitual and thorough government of the tongue is a 
 singularly difficult duty. Still further, consider how little help 
 one has to the right discharge of this duty from popular feeliiig 
 on the subject. ' You know how very little importance men 
 generally attach to sins of the tongue. Is not the tendency 
 of our minds to reason thus : A hasty word, vented in a 
 moment of excitement, a slight misrepresentation, a profane 
 joke, an impure innuendo — why, it is all empty breath, nothing 
 
VER. 26.] True Religions Service. i6i 
 
 serious is intended by it, and a man may be a very good man 
 who indulges in such words occasionally.'^ 
 
 When you think of these things, my brethren, is it not plain 
 that nothing but deep, decided piety will habitually, thoroughly, 
 on all subjects, in all circumstances, bridle the tongue? This 
 can do it, this will do it. Every believer, according to the mea- 
 sure of the intelligence and liveliness of his faith, bridles his 
 tongue; for he knows that God's judgment on words is not as 
 man's. ' I say unto you,' was the solemn declaration of the Lord 
 Jesus, * that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give 
 account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou 
 shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. 
 A good man, out of the good treasure of the heart, bringeth forth 
 good things ; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth 
 forth evil things.' It is evident that, however lightly men may 
 regard the conduct of one who speaks words which ought not 
 to be spoken, ' the Lord will not hold him guiltless.' 
 
 Thus, looking into the matter closely, you see that nothing 
 could well be either a truer or a more easily consulted index 
 of the character of the heart than the character of the tongue 
 — lawless or * bridled,' regulated constantly by reverence and 
 love for God and His law. 
 
 Hence it follows that a professor of Christianity, a man who 
 believes himself to be an acceptable worshipper of God, and 
 who yet ' bridleth not his tongue,' necessarily ' deceiveth his 
 0W71 heart •' for through such conduct he plainly takes rank, 
 not among ' the doers of the word,' but among the ' hearers 
 only,' of whom the apostle has already said, in the twenty- 
 second verse, that they 'deceive their own selves.' Such a 
 man cheats himself, in that he fancies that a decorous ob- 
 servance of ordinances and a freedom from some of the 
 coarser vices prove piety, though all the while his corrupt, 
 unhallowed speech betrays a corrupt, unhallowed heart. 
 
 ' Dean Goulburn, in a sermon preached in the school chapel at Rugby, 
 and printed as an appendix to his excellent little book, The Idle IVord. To 
 this sermon I have been indebted, in writing the present lecture, for several 
 valuable hints. 
 
 L 
 
1 62 Lectures oil the Epistle of yames. [ch. i. 
 
 Or, if the apostle's reference in 'bridling not the tongue' 
 be, in the first instance, and especially — as, from the connec- 
 tion of the verse with what precedes, I am inclined to think — 
 to unchristian bitterness in religious discussions,^ then these 
 persons may even, and no doubt often do, ' deceive their 
 own hearts^ to the extent of fancying that their unbridled 
 speech itself, their fierce and uncharitable declamation on be- 
 half of what they deem orthodoxy, is a service rendered to 
 God — that their 'wrath' is fitted to 'work His righteousness.' 
 This special reference of the ' deceiving ' — ' cheating them- 
 selves with the idea that their angry and arrogant speech is 
 honouring to God' — appears to me almost certainly the true 
 one, because thus a distinct and impressive thought is brought 
 out ; whilst, if we give the word only the general sense — 
 'cheating themselves with the thought that they are Chris- 
 tians, when they are not' — then it is difficult to discriminate 
 this from the force of the closing statement in the verse, to 
 which we now come. 
 
 ' This man's religion ' — that is, as we have seen, ' religious 
 service ' — ' is vain,' ' empty and profitless.' The apostle, ex- 
 perienced in human weakness, would be very far from saying 
 that all who sometimes, or even often, are guilty of violent or 
 otherwise unguarded utterances, are thereby absolutely proved 
 to be irreligious. Yet, certainly, those with whom this is 
 frequent have much cause to doubt of their piety. Persons 
 who look largely to their theological bitterness, or their keen 
 denunciation of the moral halting of their neighbours, as evi- 
 dence of their standing before God, are trusting to a broken 
 reed. And wherever a man's tongue is habitually unbridled, 
 then, many though his prayers may be, great his knowledge of 
 truth, high his hopes, decorous his general life, still ' his reli- 
 gious service is vain,' — it lacks life and power, — it is a body 
 without a soul, — and it meets no acceptance with God : for 
 ' out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh,' and 
 
 1 The figure of ' bridling ' one can hardly help feeling to have a peculiar 
 appropriateness, if passion, bursts of angry invective, be the sin of uhe 
 tongue particularly in the writer's mind. 
 
VER. 27.] TriLe Religious Service. 163 
 
 therefore a mouth full of wrath and bitterness cannot but re- 
 veal a heart full of envy and malice and uncharitableness, — a 
 heart that has not yet felt how marvellous is the love of Christ, 
 and thus by the divine ' gentleness ' been made truly ' great,' 
 
 Having thus pointed out the non-'- doer of the word ' by de- 
 scribing a feature easily recognised, and which evidently was 
 to be seen lamentably often among the professing Christians of 
 that age, — and in most ages of the church since too, for men 
 slow to hear, but swift to speak, and speak arrogantly and 
 unlovingly, have never been wanting in her ranks, — the apostle 
 goes on now to depict the * doer,' and thus show how Christ 
 would have men serve Him. ' The religious service ' of the 
 man who has been set before us in the twenty-sixth verse — very 
 fair in his own esteem — was in truth, before the eye of God, 
 sullied with a broad black stain, — a stain that came from within, 
 from a polluted heart, and thus made the whole ' vain.' In 
 what follows we have in contrast a description of ^religious ser- 
 vice pure and undefiled^ These two epithets are as nearly as 
 possible equivalent in meaning, — the one exhibiting the idea 
 positively, the other negatively ; and they seem to be joined 
 here simply to give emphasis to the thought. But further, the 
 'religious service' now to be depicted is 'pure and undefiled 
 before God' — that is, ' in His sight or estimation.' The views 
 of men on the nature of acceptable worship are very varied ; 
 but it is God ' with whom we have to do.' It is His view on 
 the subject that alone will be regarded at the great judgment : 
 how transcendently important it is, then, that we should accept 
 that view now ! By the words rendered ' God and the Father'' 
 is meant, undoubtedly, '■our God and Father'' — He who 'be- 
 gat us with the word of truth.' Now, wherever in Scripture 
 an addition is made to the simple name of God, there is 
 implied in the addition something by way of argument or 
 illustration specially bearing on the point before the writer. 
 This special force here is obvious and striking. ' To us Chris- 
 tians God has given life, and the life is that of His children. 
 This is our supreme dignity, the chief spring of our joy. Now, 
 what can be a true and acceptable embodiment or exhibition 
 
164 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 of this new spiritual life, except such an outward life as bears 
 the image of our Father, such a life as mirrors His love and 
 holiness, who is Father of the fatherless, and Judge of the 
 widows, and of purer eyes than to behold evil ? ' 
 
 In accordance with what is thus, as we see, naturally sug- 
 gested by the name ' our God and Father,' the ' pure and 
 undefiled religious service ' of His children is set forth by the 
 apostle as falling into two great divisions — active philanthropy 
 and personal holiness. This is plainly not altogether exhaus- 
 tive, but sufficient for his purpose. He wishes to bring im- 
 pressively before his readers those elements of true ' service ' 
 in which many of them were grievously lacking. The third 
 great division, attention to 'religious ordinances' — in our ordi- 
 nary limited application of the expression — attention to prayer, 
 to the study of the Bible, to public worship, and to the sacra- 
 ments, he leaves unmentioned ; because, as the whole course of 
 his previous remarks has shown, those for whom he primarily 
 wrote were not seriously neglectful of these duties, regarded 
 simply as outward services, but in too many cases deemed them 
 the sum-total of the proper embodiment of religion. 
 
 ' The father/ess and widows ' are clearly enough representa- 
 tive classes. Their case is meant to suggest the general cate- 
 gory of ' all that need temporal or spiritual help — all who, from 
 any cause, require the active display of Christian love.' Thus, 
 as I have already said, this branch of ' religious service ' is 
 active philanthropy. ' The widow and the fatherless ' are often 
 referred to in the Bible as claiming peculiar sympathy, and the 
 feelings of all of us attest the justice of this representation. 
 And an Oriental widow (particularly when through any cause 
 cut off from the aid of her natural connections — father, brother, 
 and the like — as, no doubt, among the Jewish Christians was 
 often the case through the woman's conversion) 'presents a 
 case of even more absolute destitution than with us : for, in the 
 East, any resources of remunerative occupation to a woman 
 can be scarcely said to exist ; and the comparatively secluded 
 habits of life which custom exacts, prevent her from pressing 
 her claims and wants upon the attention of others with that 
 
VER. 
 
 27.] True Religious Service. 165 
 
 vigour and effect which among ourselves a widow may properly 
 do.'i 
 
 True piety, the apostle says, will impel us '/<? visiV the 
 destitute, in order to give comfort and aid. The word is one 
 employed of God's manifestations of grace. ' Blessed be the 
 Lord God of Israel,' exclaims good Zacharias, 'for He hath 
 visited and redeemed His people, and hath raised up an horn 
 of salvation for us.' So, when Jesus raised from the dead the 
 widow's son at Nain, 'there came a fear on all, and they glorified 
 God, saying, A great prophet is risen up among us, and God 
 hath visited His people' (Luke i. 68, 69, vii. 16). The em- 
 ployment of the term in the passage before us, regarding 
 God's children, has manifestly reference to visits made in their 
 heavenly Father's spirit of tender love and pity. The need 
 and the purpose of the ' visit' which constitutes an element in 
 true 'religious service,' are further defined by '/// their affliction.^ 
 Many visits — many visits to ' the fatherless and widows ' even 
 — may have nothing of religion connected with them ; but 
 when the existence of need draws men, through the working of 
 Christian love, to strive to satisfy the need, there is a religious 
 deed. 
 
 Christians act in the spirit of the principle here laid down, 
 when they give money to build and maintain asylums for 
 the sick and destitute, and to send Bibles and missionaries to 
 the heathen at home and abroad. But this is not all that 
 is required. The apostle's statement evidently intimates that 
 vital religion in the soul will reveal itself hy personal exertion 
 in the way of Christian help to others, as its legitimate embodi- 
 ment. In our age, at least as fully as in any previous age of 
 the world, men believe in the power of money, — and money 
 certainly can do many things ; but it cannot buy the position 
 before God of Christians ; nor, in the case of true Christians, 
 can it buy advancement in the divine life. Too many are 
 disposed to compound for personal effort, by giving to chari- 
 table institutions. The sound principle on the subject, I 
 apprehend, is that 'this we ought to do, and not to leave the 
 ' Kitto's Daily Bible Illustrations, viii. 58. 
 
1 66 Lectures 07i the Epistle of James. [ch. i. 
 
 other undone.' Town missionaries and Bible-women are most 
 necessary and most useful ; yet I cannot help believing that 
 the Christian who, because there are such agencies, and he 
 helps to maintain them, abstains from personally ^visiti?ig the 
 fatherless and widows in their affliction,' sinfully darkens and 
 enfeebles his own spiritual life. And persons who can take 
 time for much recreation of various kinds, and who, in the 
 midst of a day which they would declare to be quite full of 
 business, could yet certainly make time to consider some new 
 remunerative piece of business which unexpectedly presented 
 itself, and accomplish all the rest besides, — such persons can- 
 not at the bar of conscience plead want of time for the dis- 
 charge of Christian duty. Few things, dear brethren, are 
 more quickening and strengthening to the life of the soul than 
 a visit made in a Christian spirit to a house of mourning. We 
 meet Jesus there : ' /was sick, and ye visited Me : inasmuch as 
 ye have done it unto one of the least of these, My brethren, ye 
 have done it unto Me.' 
 
 The other great division of 'pure and undefiled religious 
 service' to which James draws our attention, is personal purity 
 of life: ^ and to keep himself unspotted from the worlds This 
 covers the whole range. ' The worW here, as often in Scrip- 
 ture, particularly in the writings of the Apostle John, designates 
 the men and things here below, regarded as pervaded and 
 controlled by the great evil spirit whom Jesus Himself called 
 the * prince of this world.' By nature we are all ' of the world ;' 
 but 'as many as receive Jesus Christ, to them gives He power 
 to become sons of God, even to them that believe on His 
 name,' — and these ' are not of the world, even as He is not of 
 the world ;' for to this end ' He gave Himself for our sins, that 
 He might deliver us from the present evil world, according to 
 the will of our God and Father.' Yet, being not taken ' out of 
 the world,' but left in it for a time, to be its ' lights,' its ' salt,' 
 and for these ends expressly called on to have much inter- 
 course with the men of the world, we are liable to be conta- 
 minated by its evil, and thus be but dim 'lights ' — 'salt' that 
 has almost ' lost its savour.' Hence the urgency of Bible 
 
VER. 2 7-] True Religious Service. 167 
 
 pleading with Christians, * Be not conformed to this world ;' 
 * Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world,' 
 and the like. The duty of the child of God is ' to keep himself 
 unspotted from the world,' — his character ever a garment of 
 stainless white. God alone can so 'keep' us, and His gracious 
 help will be bestowed abundantly ; for the prayer of the great 
 High Priest for His people — Him whom the Father ' heareth 
 always' — is, that God will 'keep them from the evil.' But while 
 poiver is only from Him, there must be care with us. ' Keep 
 thyself pure,' says Paul to Timothy. We must ' work out our 
 own salvation with fear and trembling,' for the very reason 
 that we know 'it is God' — the God of all grace — 'which 
 worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.' 
 
 It is important to observe that the two characteristics which 
 James describes — active love to the needy, and personal purity 
 — belong both to every truly Christian life. There are, I doubt 
 not, non-Christian people, who, from a certain constitutional 
 delicacy of spirit, favoured by education and surroundings, 
 live a life of beautiful personal purity, but have little love or 
 care for others. And, on the other hand, there are not a few 
 kindly worldlings and sensualists, men personally given to 
 drunkenness perhaps, or uncleanness, or profanity, or utter 
 frivolity, who yet, simply from natural temperament, from 
 impulse and not from principle, pity and help those who are 
 in trouble. But in ' religious service pure and undefiled,' in 
 the life which is the legitimate ' issue ' from a renewed heart, 
 are found both benevolence and purity of character. Active 
 love is an essential element in it no less than self-restraint, and 
 self-restraint no less than active love. 
 
 Looking over the whole of the apostle's statement in this 
 verse, then, brethren, we find him here, as so often, echoing 
 declarations made by his Master in the Sermon on the Mount ; 
 for Jesus too has told us that piety exhibits its presence in us, — 
 that we take rank among the 'blessed' of God, — when we are 
 'merciful,' and when we are 'pure in heart.' How perfect 
 such teaching ! How divine ! And how gloriously complete 
 is the model that the Lord's own earthly life has set before us ! 
 
1 68 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. |_ch. i. 
 
 His coming from heaven was ' to visit the fatherless in their 
 affliction,' the fatherless who had criminally made themselves 
 such by wilful alienation from their true home, — and to bring 
 them gladness by recalling them to their Father's presence and 
 grace. ' He went about doing good ;' and when imagination 
 calls Him up before our view in His ministry, the ear seems 
 at once to hear a ' Son, Daughter, be of good cheer : go in 
 peace ; thy faith hath saved thee.' If we seek a representa- 
 tive scene from the records of that wondrous life, none more 
 naturally occurs than this : ' When He came nigh to the gate 
 of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only 
 son of his mother, and she was a widow : and much people of 
 the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, He had 
 compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And He 
 came and touched the bier : and they that bare him stood 
 still. And He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And 
 he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And He de- 
 livered him to his mother.' Certainly no embodiment in 
 ' religious service ' of love and consecration to such a Saviour 
 can be more fitting than ' to visit the fatherless aiid widows in 
 their affliction.^ And amidst the freest converse with the men 
 c^f the world — often the most depraved — for the working out of 
 His purposes of love, yet the exquisite beauty, the unsullied 
 purity, of His character, stood out clear and glorious. By His 
 bitterest foes the challenge remained and remains unanswered, 
 'Which of you convinceth Me of sin?' He '^kept Himself 
 imspotted from the world;'' so that, 'when the prince of this 
 world came, he had nothing in Him.' 
 
CH. II.] Respect of Persons. 169 
 
 J 
 
 X. 
 
 RESPECT OF PERSONS. 
 
 *My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord 
 of glory, with respect of persons. 2 For if there come unto your 
 assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come 
 in also a poor man, in vile raiment ; 3 And ye have respect to him 
 that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him. Sit thou here in a 
 good place ; and say to the poor. Stand thou there, or sit here under 
 my footstool ; 4 Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are be- 
 come judges of evil thoughts? 5 Hearken, my beloved brethren, — 
 Hath not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs 
 of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him ? 
 6 But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and 
 draw you before the judgment-seats ? 7 Do not they blaspheme that 
 worthy name by the which ye are called ?' — James ii. 1-7. 
 
 ANEW section of the Epistle begins here, — connected, 
 however, naturally and obviously with the preceding. 
 'Genuine religion in the heart,' the apostle has said, 'will express 
 itself in holiness of life, in a lofty morality, comprising personal 
 purity and earnest devotion to the glory of God through the 
 good of men : if a man love God, he will strive to keep God's 
 law of liberty.' But certain serious violations of this law 
 had become lamentably common in the Christian communi- 
 ties, and were doing much to neutralize their influence for 
 good. One of these James proceeds now to point out and 
 reprove. 
 
 ' Aly brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 the Lord of glory, with respect of persojis.'' The words that are 
 last in our version stand in the original immediately after 
 ' My brethren,' and on them rests the emphasis : thus, ' Do not 
 with respect of persons hold the faith.' A peculiar pungency, 
 
1 70 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. ii. 
 
 which can hardly be represented in an English translation, is 
 given to the reproof in the original by the particle rendered 
 'with,' strictly ^ in.' Its force is similar to that which it has 
 in the sixth verse of the first chapter, where '/;/ faith' means 
 'enveloped in faith as in an atmosphere.' So here, 'in the 
 midst of, or environed by, respect of persons ;' respect of 
 persons, too, shown in many ways, for the noun in the original 
 is plural. The meaning is pretty fully brought out by such a 
 free rendering as, ' Let not respect of persons be a character- 
 istic of the manner in which you maintain faith in our Lord 
 Jesus Christ.' 
 
 You observe how clearly the apostle teaches here that the 
 primary or fundamental element in religion — the root of the 
 divine life in man — is faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. His 
 particular purpose in writing the Epistle leads him to dwell 
 mainly on the practical side of Christianity, the 'pure and 
 undefiled religious service before our God and Father,' of 
 which he has just spoken — the fruits rather than the root. 
 But in this verse, especially taken in connection with the sin- 
 gularly rich and precious statement of truth that he has given 
 in the eighteenth verse of the first chapter, we are very plainly 
 taught that hearty acceptance of God's testimony concern- 
 ing His Son is the spring from which reviving, fertilizing, 
 purifying streams flow forth throughout the whole man. Chris- 
 tians, like all their fellow-men, were by nature dead in sins ; 
 but of His own will God originated life in them, and this 
 through the word of truth regarding Jesus, received by 
 faith. This is manifestly the doctrine set forth in these two 
 verses. To be a Christian, therefore, is fundamentally to 
 have faith in Christ. To the anxious sinner inquiring the 
 way of salvation, James, no less decidedly than Paul, says, 
 ' Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.' 
 James, no less decidedly than Paul, ' counted all things but 
 loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his 
 Lord, — yea, counted all things but dung, that he might win 
 Christ, and be found in Him, not having his own righteous- 
 ness, which was of the law, but that which is through the faith 
 
VER. I.] Respect of Persons. 171 
 
 of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.' It is of 
 importance to notice this, because the last verses of the first 
 chapter have been taken by many as containing a description 
 of the whole of religion, and therefore as teaching a doctrine 
 which the apostle would have rejected with abhorrence ; and 
 because in the latter part of the present chapter there are 
 modes of expression that many have deemed to be directly 
 opposed to the doctrine of justification by faith alone, as fully 
 set forth by Paul. 
 
 To all candid thinkers on the subject, it must be evident 
 that a character, however outwardly beautiful, of which love 
 to God is not the soul, the grand animating principle, cannot 
 be pleasing in His sight ; for moral beauty that springs only 
 from earthly motives is but a subtler form of the disloyalty 
 to the King of the universe, which elsewhere reveals itself in 
 gross outward sin. The first and great commandment in the 
 moral law — inevitably such, our consciences tell us, if there is 
 a God at all — is, ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ; ' and a 
 scheme of morality which puts this out of view is as defective 
 as a scheme of the planetary system which should leave out of 
 account the relations of the planets to the central sun. Now 
 sin has prejudiced men against God, and nothing but the 
 sight of His true character which faith in Christ gives will 
 teach us to love and revere Him. To believe in Christ is 
 therefore the very first step towards a true morality — a 
 morality pleasing to God. ' Then said they unto Him, What 
 shall we do, that we might work the works of God ? Jesus 
 answered and said unto them. This is the work of God, that 
 ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.' ' Abide in Me, and 
 I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it 
 abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in Me : for 
 without Me ye can do nothing.' 
 
 ' Talk they of morals ? O, Thou bleeding Lamb, 
 The grand morality is love of Thee. ' 
 
 On the believer in Jesus, God looks with complacency and 
 tender Fatherly affection ; and his good works, being prompted 
 
1 72 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 by his faith, are really a religious service, a worship, a sacri- 
 fice, with which ' God is well pleased.' ^ 
 
 In speaking of ' the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ,' our 
 apostle goes on to add to that ordinary name the designation, 
 * The Lord of glory ^ The words ' The Lord'' here are, as you 
 see from their being printed in italics in our Bibles, a supple- 
 ment inserted by the translators from the preceding expression. 
 Now the connection of the ^ of glory' may be, and has been, 
 supposed to be different. For example, it may be brought 
 into immediate dependence on the ' faith,' and we may con- 
 strue thus, — ' the faith of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ,' 
 that is, faith in His exaltation, regarded as an expression of the 
 Father's perfect satisfaction with His Son's atoning work ; or 
 thus, — ' faith (resting on our Lord Jesus Christ) in the glory,' 
 that is, in the future glory of His people. The latter of these 
 very well brings out the argument which we shall see to be 
 involved in the 'of glory;' but this is done with at least 
 equal clearness and force by the construction of our trans- 
 lators, — which seems to be, on the whole, the most natural. 
 Jesus is ' the Lord of glory,' in all the grand generality of the 
 expression : .the Possessor, as God, of an essential, infinite 
 glory : the King of glory, who as Mediator has * sat down at 
 the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, all power given 
 
 1 ' Do not deceive yourself in forming an estimate of your own religious 
 character. If you have no faith' in Christ, no affiance of the heart in Him, 
 no belief in the expiating power of His blood, you lack the substantial part 
 of true religion. Harbour not a thought of this kind : " If I am benevolent 
 to my fellow-creatures, and pure in my moral conduct, is not that enough, 
 without troubling my head about principles and motives in maintaining 
 any particular doctrine?" Emphatically, it is not enough. Wilt thou 
 know, O vain man, that works without faith are a shadowy, unsubstantial 
 thing, — a thin, impalpable vapour, which escapes us when we try to grasp 
 it, — an apparent superficial motive-power, but not at all brought to bear 
 upon the heart, the conscience, and the springs of the character ! Flatter 
 not thyself, as thousands of thousands have done to their eternal ruin, on 
 the mere possession of benevolence and integrity. If thou hast no faith 
 in Jesus, thou hast not even the outward appearance of true religion, not 
 even the show of it, to advance at the last great day.' — Dean Goul- 
 burn's Occasiojial Sermons f pp. 44, 45. 
 
VER. I.] Respect of Persons. 173 
 
 Him in heaven and in earth, and a name which is above 
 every name ; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 
 of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the 
 earth ; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ 
 is Lord, to the glory of God the Father:' the Fountain of glory, 
 from whom, in whom, alone we can have true glory. 
 
 * Of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory,' 
 then, says our apostle, ' let not respect of persons be a character- 
 istic.^ To a thoughtful Christian mind this simple statement 
 of the injunction contains overwhelming argument in its sup- 
 port. Faith in Christ and respect of persons are diametrically 
 opposed to each other ; so that in proportion as the one is 
 cherished, the other necessarily is weakened. To speak of 
 respect of persons, therefore, as a * characteristic ' of faith in 
 Christ, or, more exactly, of having our faith ' enveloped in 
 respectings of persons,' is almost a contradiction in terms ; 
 and thus the form into which the apostle throws his precept 
 exhibits with singular pungency and force the inconsistency 
 and absurdity of professing Christians whose conduct seemed 
 to show that they were attempting to combine the two. Faith 
 in Christ is a cordial acceptance of the gospel of God's mercy, 
 which is not a message to this or that class of men, but to men 
 universally, to men regarded from that moral point of view in 
 which we all by nature constitute one class, — sinners, who have 
 earned death as our wages. A man who believes the gospel 
 has come to feel himself the fellow-sinner of all around, has 
 become convinced that his relations to God are of immeasur- 
 ably greater moment than any he can hold to his fellow-crea- 
 tures, and has passed into a sphere in which he recognises all 
 his fellow-Christians as in a high and peculiar sense his brethren, 
 members with him, through the grace of their common Saviour, 
 of the family of God. In this family, rich and poor, wise and 
 feeble-witted, those who aforetime were respectable worldlings 
 and those who aforetime were bold sinners, meet together on 
 terms of perfect equality ; their salvation is a ' common salva- 
 tion ; ' the faith of poor Joseph is ' Uke precious faith ' with 
 that of the Apostle Paul. 
 
1 74 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 Groaning under the inequalities and oppressions of the 
 world, political enthusiasts have thought that by simple 
 changes in forms of government complete deliverance could 
 be attained. A foolish fancy ! Wisely devised political 
 arrangements can do something to benefit men's condition ; 
 but so long as sin reigns, true brotherhood can be only 
 a vision, for the tendencies of moral evil are always to dis- 
 union and hatred. Satan 'was a murderer from the begin- 
 ning.' That the revolutionary convulsions of France in the 
 end of last century, which were expected by so many honest 
 spirits to bring in an age of liberty, and equality, and frater- 
 nity, should in fact bring in a * reign of terror ' and a crushing 
 despotism, was nothing more than natural, when sin and un- 
 belief were rampant, religious influences contemptuously thrust 
 aside, and nought leant on but the arm of flesh. But the church 
 of Christ is a brotherhood, a ' fraternity,' distinguished by true 
 'equality,' and regulated by the law of 'liberty.' For 'respect 
 of persons ' to enter here, for regard to worldly distinctions to 
 intrude itself as a governing influence in the sphere of religious 
 feeling and action, — this is utterly aUen from the spirit of the 
 gospel. The incongruity of this with ' the faith of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ ' is especially obvious when we remember that He 
 is the ' Lord of glory.' In the light of His glory, all worldly 
 distinctions should be seen to be very trifling. In His house, 
 among His brethren, to give importance to the fleeting glories 
 of earth should be deemed an insult to the riches of His grace, 
 from which comes true lasting glory to all His people. For 
 even now allXxxi^o. believers, though they may be clothed in rags, 
 and glad to receive the crumbs that fall from rich men's tables, 
 are children of God, sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty; 
 and there awaits them all ' an exceeding and eternal weight of 
 glory,' seeing that 'when He shall appear we shall be like 
 Him,' and He will take us home ' to sit upon His throne,' and 
 enjoy all the blessedness and honour of the heavenly kingdom. 
 ' My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the 
 Lord of glory, with respect of persons.' 
 
 I need hardly say that nothing in the apostle's precept is 
 
VERS. 2-4-] Respect of Persons. 175 
 
 intended to forbid the fullest recognition in ordinary life of 
 the distinctions of society. It can never be wrong — indeed, 
 the whole spirit of Scripture, and many express injunctions, 
 call upon us — to give to those that God in His providence 
 has placed in positions of authority, or of greater prominence 
 and influence than ourselves, the customary marks of respect, 
 not in any spirit of mean subservience, but in the spirit of 
 freemen — 'the Lord's freedmen.' We are to 'render to all 
 their due, honour to whom honour.' The principle stated by 
 our apostle here is, that in matters where Christians have to 
 act simply and distinctively as professors of Christianity, members 
 of Clirisfs church, not as citizens or members of general society, 
 they are not to allow worldly considerations of any kind to sway 
 them. 
 
 He illustrates his meaning in the verses that follow, by an 
 instance. The case is given in the form of a supposition ; 
 but it is plain that James knew well that such an incident as 
 he describes often occurred in the meetings of the Christians. 
 ' For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, 
 in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor ma7i in vile rai- 
 meiit ; and ye have respect to him that zveareth the gay clothing, 
 and say unto him. Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the 
 poor. Stand thou there, or sit here mider my footstool : are ye not 
 then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts V 
 
 By some expositors the scene of the incident here depicted 
 by the apostle is supposed to be a sitting of the congregation, 
 or of the body of elders, as a kind of comi, to investigate dis- 
 putes among the members of the church ; and that the fault 
 pointed out is as if in an ordinary court of justice, in the trial 
 of a case between a poor and a rich man, the judges were at 
 the very outset to show marked favour to the rich. This view 
 is founded mainly on the word ''judges'' in the fourth verse, 
 and is thought to be supported by ^ synagogue^ which is the 
 strict rendering of the word in the second verse, given by our 
 translators as ' assembly.^ We know that in the Jewish syna- 
 gogues trials were held, and sometimes punishment inflicted ; 
 and there are in the New Testament several allusions to this 
 
1 76 Lectures on the Epistle of ymnes. [ch, ii. 
 
 practice. 1 This view of the reference here, however, is not by 
 any means required by the fact that these words are employed, 
 and, on the whole, appears unnatural, ^Judges ' may, without 
 any difficulty, be taken quite generally and loosely ; and the 
 use of ^ sy?iagogue^ in an Epistle addressed to 'the twelve 
 tribes which are scattered abroad,' seems merely to prove 
 what of itself might have been thought very likely, — that in 
 many cases the Jewish members of Christian churches re- 
 tained for their place of religious assembly the old name, 
 familiar and dear to them in Judaism. Very similarly, we 
 ourselves, if explaining to children what ' synagogue ' means, 
 should naturally enough describe it as 'a Jewish church;^ just 
 as, not unmisleadingly for some readers perhaps, the assertion 
 of the town-clerk of Ephesus, that Paul and his company were 
 innocent of pillaging heathen temples, takes with our translators 
 the form of a statement that they were not ' robbers of churches ' 
 (Acts xix. 37). 
 
 There can be little doubt, I think, that James refers to 
 one of the ordinary meetings of the Christians for worship, 
 which, like our own, were open to any person who chose to 
 come ;^ and you observe how with two or three firm strokes 
 the picture is made to stand out before us. The arrange- 
 ments of the house for the public worship of the Christians 
 are, we must suppose, similar to those of the synagogue. 
 There are some seats more prominent than the rest, probably 
 a little elevated ; and on these, the. ' chief seats,' which in 
 the synagogue the scribes and Pharisees loved to occupy, sit, 
 no doubt, the elders and deacons of the church. On these 
 brethren, among other more serious responsibilities, rests the 
 duty of assigning seats to strangers who may come into the 
 meeting, — and who may be either unbelievers, heathen or 
 Jewish, or Christians from other places. The ordinary con- 
 gregation has assembled, then, and the seats are pretty fully 
 occupied, when the door opens, and two strangers enter, one 
 evidently from his dress and demeanour a person of consider- 
 able wealth, the other as plainly a poor man. One of the 
 1 See, for example, Acts xxii. 19. ^ See i Cor. xiv. 23. 
 
VER. 4.] Respect of Persons. 177 
 
 office-bearers immediately rises, and beckoning to the well- 
 dressed man to come forward, courteously invites him to sit 
 beside himself, ' in a good place ; ' while to the poorly attired 
 he says carelessly, 'Stand yonder, or sit here on the floor 
 beside my footstool.' 
 
 Now, says the apostle, when a scene like this occurs, ' are 
 ye not partial in yourselves V — rather, ' do ye. not (or, yet more 
 exactly, the case being conceived as a fact, and the question 
 here put as if a narrative had been related, "did ye not") 
 waver in yourselves ? ' The word is the same as that used in 
 the sixth verse of the first chapter, and there rendered ' waver.' 
 The force of the question is, clearly, ' Did you not show that 
 your faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, was 
 very weak, or very dim ? Did you not evince forgetfulness of 
 the grand principles which you profess to believe ? Did you 
 not, by your special desire to secure, through your deference 
 and attention, the rich man as a member of the church, show 
 a want of trust in Jesus, and a reliance on an arm of flesh, as 
 if His kingdom 7vere of this world ? ' 
 
 ' Ajid are {ye not) become judges of evil thoughts V The 
 natural meaning of the authorized version is : ' Have you not 
 constituted yourselves judges that evil thoughts exist in the 
 mind of the poor man, so as to call for your exhibition of cold- 
 ness or harshness, but that such are absent from the soul of 
 the rich man ? ' But the more natural and probable construc- 
 tion is to regard the ' evil thoughts' as belonging to the 'judges' 
 themselves, — as we speak of ' judges of integrity,' ' of wisdom,' 
 or the like, in the sense, ' who are men of integrity,' or ' of 
 wisdom.' In the sixth verse of the eighteenth chapter of 
 Luke, ' the unjust judge ' is, strictly rendered, ' the judge of 
 injustice;' and similarly, in the twenty-fifth verse of the first 
 chapter of James, ' a forgetful hearer ' is, strictly, ' a hearer of 
 forgetfulness.' So, in the verse before us, the meaning is 
 ' evil-minded judges.' The apostle here charges those who 
 acted in the way he has described with two faults. The one 
 was their constituting themselves judges of character at all. 
 Here, I apprehend, as so often in the Epistle, we have a 
 
 M 
 
1 78 Lectures on the Epistle of yames, [ch. ii. 
 
 reminiscence of words in the Sermon on the Mount, 'Judge 
 not' 'When one calmly considers such conduct as I have 
 described,' James says, ' it means that you gratuitously and 
 rashly made yourselves judges of character, and expressed 
 your judgment by your doings.' But secondly, they had 
 judged on altogether false and immoral principles, such as 
 that the soul of a man who has good clothes and a gold ring 
 is therefore a better soul, more worth saving, than the soul of 
 a poor man, — that this world's wealth of itself, apart from all 
 other considerations, entitles a man to prominence among the 
 brethren of the Lord Jesus. 
 
 Partiality of this kind was nowise confined to the time of 
 James. Springing as it does from the carnality which is 
 found by nature in every human heart, and which leaves some 
 of its roots of bitterness even in regenerate souls, its fruits 
 show themselves in the church in all ages. Literal parallels 
 to the case here described by the apostle would not be hard 
 to find among us. You find exactly the same tendency often 
 showing itself, too, when congregations are called on to elect 
 their spiritual office-bearers. Certainly, the mere fact that 
 they elect a Aian of wealth or general influence by no means 
 proves, of itself, that this spirit has been at work ; for where 
 the essential spiritual qualifications are present — true and ardent 
 piety, and Christian intelligence and judgment, — then wealth 
 and influence are to a certain extent additional recommenda- 
 tions, seeing that they are in themselves means of usefulness, 
 which can be turned to special account by one occupying a 
 prominent position in the church. Yet there is always great 
 danger of a congregation being led away by external glitter to 
 elect persons spiritually unsuitable. Again, spiritual overseers 
 are in hazard of paying but slight attention to delinquencies 
 of the rich, whilst under similar circumstances the poor would 
 have been sharply dealt with. Ministers are under some temp- 
 tation, too — occasionally, I could suppose, very strong temp- 
 tation — to keep back, or exhibit with modified colouring, 
 aspects of truth which they have reason to believe unpalatable 
 to some of the wealthy among their hearers. Everything of 
 
VERS. 5-7.] Respect of Pei'sons. 1 79 
 
 this kind obviously comes under the sweep of James's rebuke 
 in the passage before us. 
 
 Observe the stress which God lays on what we are apt to 
 deem little things. For our ' idle words ' He tells we shall be 
 called to account. Looking over the incident that James has 
 described, we can suppose it very likely that neither the rich 
 man, nor the poor man, nor the person who assigned them 
 their respective places, would think much on the subject; 
 but God marked it with condemnation. In a ship becalmed 
 near the shore, one can imagine the captain intently watching 
 pieces of loose sea-weed as they drift past : they are small and 
 worthless, but they show the experienced eye the direction and 
 the rate of dangerous currents. Even so, little things in con- 
 duct often show the direction and the force of strong currents 
 of character. 
 
 In the three verses that follow, the apostle exhibits the 
 wickedness and the folly of such conduct as he has described, 
 bringing out forcibly the justice of his statement that persons 
 guilty of it were ' evil-minded judges,' — acting on utterly un- 
 christian principles. Affectionately and earnestly he solicits 
 their diligent attention to his observations : ' Hearken, my be- 
 loved brethren^ The particular incident he had sketched might 
 seem an absolute trifle ; but the state of feeling which revealed 
 itself by that incident was seriously dishonouring to God, and 
 antagonistic to the progress of His cause in the world. The 
 principles involved, therefore, claimed very careful considera- 
 tion. The argument following — which, according to a favourite 
 style of James, is set forth in a series of pointed questions — 
 is to this effect : ' In your church procedure you pay much 
 attention to the wealthy, but disregard the poor. Now, while 
 such conduct under any circumstances reveals a mean soul, 
 yet for a man who seeks his portion simply in this world it is 
 no doubt natural, and often from his point of view prudent. 
 But you, according to your profession, have loftier aims ; and 
 regarding heaven as your home, you desire to breathe even on 
 earth a heavenly spirit, taking God's estimate of everything as 
 yours, and trying to be in character like Him. Think, then, 
 
i8o Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 how very far you are, in this respect of persons which you 
 practise, from reflecting the divine image ; nay, how directly 
 opposed your conduct is to His whom you call your Father. 
 Has not the whole history of the church proved that mainly 
 from the class of those whom the world, according to its 
 standard of reckoning, counts poor, God in His sovereignty 
 has chosen men and women to be, through faith, truly and en- 
 duringly rich, and to be, as His children in Christ, heirs of the 
 blessedness and glory of the heavenly kingdom ? But the poor 
 man of my story, who came into your assembly — a representa- 
 tive of the class so honoured by God — ye treated with dis- 
 honour. On the other hand, rich men, simply because they 
 are rich, ye honour. As Christians, you profess to believe that 
 the only thing truly worthy of honour in God's creatures is 
 holiness, devotion to His service, helpfulness to His cause, — 
 the reflection of His character, which you honour supremely. 
 Now, is wealth moral excellence, or is it necessarily connected 
 with moral excellence? Have the rich, as a class, been in 
 any age conspicuously God-fearing? Nay, in your own ex- 
 perience, is it not the rich that oppress you Christians ? Is it 
 not they that drag you into courts of justice, harassing you by 
 accusations, simply because you believe in Christ ? Is it not 
 they that blaspheme the infinitely honourable name of the 
 Lord Jesus, which was named over you when in baptism you 
 severed yourselves from the world, and became His ? If you 
 give special honour to the class who, as a class, thus dishonour 
 Him and oppose His cause, do you not make yourselves 
 sharers in their misdeeds, and seem to be ashamed of being 
 associated with that worthy name?' 
 
 The fulness of this paraphrase, and the general simplicity of 
 the passage, render it unnecessary to say very much more in 
 the way of explanation. You observe that the apostle speaks 
 of * the rich' and 'the poor' as classes, in order to show clearly 
 the wickedness of the conduct of those whom he is reproving ; 
 for they too looked at the classes, despising this man simply 
 because he was one of the poor, and paying special respect to 
 that, simply because he was one of the rich. His statements, 
 
VERS. 5-7-] Respect of Persons. i8i 
 
 then, being made generally of the two classes, naturally admit 
 exceptions, it may be many. A vast number of the poor, it is 
 to be feared, are not spiritually rich; and some of the rich 
 are truly honourable, because they love and revere the worthy 
 name of Jesus. And yet, beyond all question, wealth has been 
 in all ages a serious obstacle to men's becoming religious. The 
 abundance of present and tangible good, instead of awakening 
 thankfulness and devotion to the Giver, far oftener deadens 
 all longing after nobler and abiding sources of pleasure. In 
 the Psalmist's days the church was ' fhe congregation of God's 
 poor : ' the apostles of the Lord Jesus, and plainly all but 
 a very few of those who ' heard Him gladly,' were poor 
 men ; and in every age since, it has been found that ' not many 
 mighty, not many noble ' enrolled themselves under the banner 
 of the Captain of salvation, or at least so ' fought the good 
 fight of faith ' as to prove that they were sincerely on the Lord's 
 side. 
 
 The spiritual exaltation of the outwardly poor James 
 ascribes, in language as explicit as Paul ever employs, to 
 God's sovereign election. Poverty is not an excellence or 
 ground of desert, any more than wealth is in itself a demerit ; 
 and the impenitent poor will receive righteous condemnation 
 and. punishment as well as the impenitent rich. * God hath 
 chosen the poor.' Our Lord pointed to the fact that by Him 
 ' to the poor the gospel was preached,' as one evidence that 
 He was ' He that should come,' God's commissioned and 
 anointed Servant; and that any of them welcome the glad 
 tidings proclaimed to them, is due, to God's spontaneous grace, 
 for ' of His own will begat He us with the word of truth.' 
 ' Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight' Ac- 
 cordingly the being ' rich in faith'' is the result of the 'choos- 
 ing ' by God. ' Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings 
 in heavenly places in Christ ; according as He hath chosen us in 
 Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy 
 and without blame before Him in love^ The full exhibition of 
 James's meaning is, ' Hath not God chosen the poor in the 
 
1 82 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 world to be in faith rich ;' as when we say, ' The men of Israel 
 chose David king,' that is, ' to be king.' 
 
 ' The poor as regards the world ' (for this seems the most 
 natural meaning of the reading found in the oldest manu- 
 scripts) become, through God's grace, '■rich infaithi' 'Faith' 
 here may be conceived as the wealth in which they are rich, 
 as elsewhere (Eph. ii. 4) God is described as 'rich in mercy :' 
 and this is undoubtedly the sense that first suggests itself for 
 the words. The apostle's purpose, however, is evidently to 
 set over against worldly poverty spiritual riches generally, not 
 merely wealth in one particular grace ; and thus it seems 
 better to take the meaning ' rich through faith,' or ' rich in the 
 sphere of faith,' as contrasted with that of sight, — which the 
 original words will bear quite as well as that first mentioned. 
 The treasures, then, are all the gifts of the Spirit — the peace, 
 and wisdom, and holiness which Christians enjoy through their 
 faith. They have this spiritual wealth even now, and their 
 prospects are ineffably lofty. Being through faith children 
 of God, they are, ' if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and 
 joint-heirs with Christ,' ' heirs of the kingdom,^ to whom Jesus 
 ' will grant to sit with Him in His throne, even as He is set 
 down with His Father in His throne.' To every true believer 
 this glorious future is absolutely secured by the assurances of 
 Him whp cannot lie. ' He hath promised the kingdom to them 
 that love Him.'' Has not Jesus said in express words, ' Fear 
 not, little flock ; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give 
 you the kingdom ? ' And, indeed, as He tells us elsewhere, in 
 a solemn and sublime passage of which our apostle's words are 
 plainly a reminiscence, ' the kingdom ' which ' the blessed of 
 His Father' are to 'inherit' (receive as 'heirs') has been ^pre- 
 pared for them from the foundation of the world.' 
 
VER. 8.] Unity of God's Law. 183 
 
 XL 
 UNITY OF GOD'S LAW. 
 
 ' If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself, ye do well : 9 But if ye have respect to persons, 
 ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors. 10 For 
 whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is 
 guilty of all. 1 1 For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also. 
 Do not kill. Now, if thou commit no adulteiy, yet if thou kill, thou 
 art become a transgressor of the law.' — James ii. 8-I1. 
 
 THE first two of these verses obviously sum up the teach- 
 ing of the paragraph, enunciating the grand general 
 principle regarding our duty to others, and declaring that 
 respect of persons is opposed to this. In the eighth verse 
 there is in the original an introductory particle which our 
 translators have passed over, probably because they took it as 
 equivalent to another (one of the components of this), which 
 simply indicates tlie first part of an antithesis, and is often left 
 unrendered. But in every other place in the New Testament 
 where that here employed is found, it introduces something 
 which modifies what has preceded, or is in some way divergent 
 from the line of observation previously pursued, having the 
 force of 'but,' ' nevertheless,' ' however.' It seems reasonable 
 to take it in the same sense here. The connection of thought 
 I apprehend to be somewhat as follows : ' I have spoken 
 severely, knowing that deference to mere earthly distinction 
 has sadly intruded itself among you. Still many of you may 
 in this matter be acquitted by your consciences, and these I 
 praise.' 'I have expressed myself sharply. If, however, ye 
 (any of the Christian churches to which the letter was written) 
 fulfil the royal law, then ye act as Christians should. But 
 (ver. 9) let me repeat my solemn testimony and warning, — If 
 ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin.' 
 
184 Lectures on the Epistle o/yajnes. [ch. ii. 
 
 The particular law of God which the apostle quotes he calls " 
 ' royaV or 'kingly,' because it is that which has been given to 
 govern with supreme authority our conduct to our fellow-men, 
 and to control absolutely all principles and precepts on this 
 subject. To this law all schemes and rules of duty to our 
 fellows are subordinate. However beautiful and justly influ- 
 ential they may be in their own sphere, this has a ' glory that 
 excelleth,' this wears the crown and sways the sceptre. To it, 
 on every matter of doubt and difficulty in this department of 
 morals, lies an appeal ; to it the appeal ought always to be 
 carried; and its decision is final. By '■fulfilling' this kingly 
 law the apostle means, as is plain from the whole tone of his 
 address here, honest and earnest endeavour, in reliance on 
 divine strength, to keep it. This passage gives no sanction to 
 the unscriptural and dangerous opinion, that it is possible in 
 this life perfectly to obey God's law. He speaks, too, of ' ful- 
 filling the law according to the Scripture^ in distinction from 
 the glosses and perverted readings of it which the carnal wisdom 
 of the world has devised. The truly wise man goes to God's 
 own authorized statute-book; and those who 'fulfil' the law, 
 as found there, ^ do well^ act worthily of the Christian profes- 
 sion, ' adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour.' 
 
 The great precept here called ' the royal law' — ' Thoti shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself ' — occurs first in the book of Levi- 
 ticus, in the midst of a number of injunctions on points of 
 detail (Lev. xix. 18). It was taken by the Lord Jesus and 
 placed in conjunction with the command, ' Thou shalt love 
 the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
 and with all thy mind ; ' and these two together were exhi- 
 bited by Him as comprehending all moral duty, — a summary 
 of the law which God had at first written on man's heart, 
 but which now, through the fall, is so sadly defaced and per- 
 verted. *0n these two commandments,' said Jesus, 'hang 
 all the law and the prophets' (Matt. xxii. 37-40). The 
 ' neighbour ' spoken of in the law is shown by the parable .of 
 the good Samaritan, put forth by the Lord in reply to a 
 question on the subject, to be every fellow-member of the 
 
VER. 8.] Unity of God's Law. 185 
 
 human race, or more particularly, with reference to the active 
 display of love, every human being that God places us in 
 circumstances to benefit. Our sentiment of humanity is to 
 be co-extensive with the race of humanity. 
 
 The ^ as' of the precept is naturally taken as expressive 
 both of measure or degree, and of mode. We are to love 
 our fellow-men in the same degree as we love ourselves : and 
 we are to love them in the same way ; our love for them is 
 to have the same characteristics-^sincerity, activity, and con- 
 stancy — which belong to that we entertain for ourselves. By 
 many interpreters the element of degree is excluded altogether 
 from the meaning, on the ground that, ' from the constitution 
 of human nature, obedience to such a precept is impossible.' 
 But I may appeal to your own feelings, when the law is quoted 
 to you, whether degree be not one idea — indeed, the foremost 
 idea — you attach to the ' as ; ' so decidedly, I am sure, in the 
 case of every one of you, that very strong reasons would be 
 needed to prove that this thought was not intended to belong 
 to it. If by ' human nature,' in the argument just cited, be 
 meant fallen human nature, even when brought under the 
 control of Christian principles, then this line of reasoning 
 would go much further, and would exclude at least the re- 
 ference to thought and feeling of any of God's command- 
 ments ; seeing that it is impossible for us in this life to, keep 
 our souls absolutely pure — to refuse unvaryingly the sanction 
 of the will, even for a moment, to desires of a kind offensive 
 to God. Yet, as you know, our Lord's teaching everywhere, 
 and very fully in the Sermon on the Mount, is express in 
 regard to this spiritual reference, this exceeding breadth, of 
 alt God's moral laws. If by 'human nature,' however, be 
 meant our first nature, our nature apart from depravity and 
 simply as it came from the hand of God, and if, from the 
 constitution of this, it is impossible to love our neighbour 
 in the same degree as ourselves, — then the argument is con- 
 clusive, for between God's creatures as He made them, and 
 the laws intended for them by Him, there cannot be any in- 
 congruity. But is the assumption true ? Do you not think, 
 
1 86 Lectures on the Epistle of y ames. [ch.ii. 
 
 my brethren, that in heaven, where God's ideal of human 
 character is realized, we shall love our neighbours as much 
 as ourselves? Shall we not rejoice in their joys as warmly as 
 in our own ? Now God's moral laws always have the ideal 
 perfection of character in view. They exhibit holiness without 
 defect as man's duty, though divine grace bears long with much 
 defect in the actual obedience to them of Christ's people, and 
 is preparing us, through the growth of earth, for the perfect 
 ripeness of heaven. 
 
 The practical application of this law, looked at as implying 
 equality of degree (as of that other rule, which sets before us 
 a yet loftier and more wonderful measure of love : ' This is 
 My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved 
 you'), will be somewhat on this wise. When the icy fingers 
 of selfishness chill the soul, and the whisper rises, ' Have I 
 not loved my neighbour, my brother, enough?' the still small 
 voice of conscience answers, ' Be not weary in well-doing : 
 hast thou loved him with the intensity of thy love to thy- 
 self? Hast thou cared for his interests with the same 
 ardour as for thine own? Hast thou shown to him. the 
 same devotedness as to thyself, or affection like the love 
 with which Jesus devoted Himself for thee ?* 
 
 Extremely difficult questions of many kinds might very 
 easily be suggested regarding the carrying out of this 'royal 
 law,' especially looked at with relation to degree, — diflUculties 
 arising out of the complexity of human relations and in- 
 terests, and the distinctions in love itself, as an aff"ection of 
 instinct, of benevolence, and of complacency or satisfaction, 
 — difficulties such as in multitudes of cases it might be impos- 
 sible wholly to solve. The solution of many of them, I am 
 persuaded, is to be looked for in the force of the word ' neigh- 
 bour,' by which God Himself intimates that those who are 
 brought near to us in various ways have the first claim on our 
 love, considered as a practical energy. To the priest and 
 Levite and Samaritan the poor wounded man was given by 
 God in His providence as ' neighbour,' more than, at the 
 time, to any other people in the world. The one recognised 
 
VER, 
 
 8.] Unity of GocTs Law. 187 
 
 and accepted the gift and the duty ; the others failed to do so. 
 So by kinsmanship, and many other connections of hfe, which 
 the Christian judgment must discern for itself, God in His 
 providence brings some of our fellows peculiarly close to us, 
 and constitutes them ' neighbours ' in a special sense, and 
 with a special claim. Christian love embraces the world in 
 its interest and sympathies ; but its practical^ action is out- 
 ward, in widening circles. 'Andrew first findeth his own 
 brother, Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the 
 Messias.' ' If any provide not for his own, especially for 
 those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is 
 worse than an infidel.' ' As we have therefore opportunity, 
 let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of 
 the household of faith.' 
 
 Besides equality of degree, the '■ os'' of the ' royal law ' 
 enjoins also similarity in mode. Love to our neighbour is 
 to have the same characteristics, the same sincerity, activity, 
 and constancy as self-love, and to display itself in similar 
 ways. In this aspect, the precept before us is obviously 
 equivalent in force to that of our Lord in the Sermon on 
 the Mount, ' All things whatsoever ye would that men should 
 do to you, do ye even so to them : for this is the law and the 
 prophets ;' — that is, whatsoever things you might reasonably 
 expect from them, were they in your place, and you in theirs. 
 Observe the singular wisdom and beauty of such rules as these, 
 by which the self-love that is ever present with all of us, and 
 the irregularities and excess of which are the main sources of 
 sin, is laid hold of and itself employed as a guide to holiness. 
 By your zeal for the maintenance or advancement of your 
 own health, property, and reputation, by your shrinking from 
 anything that approaches to self-injury, by your eager desire (if 
 you be a true Christian) for your own spiritual welfare, your 
 growth in holiness and peace, — by these things be directed as 
 to your duty to your neighbour : love him after the same 
 fashion. ^ 
 
 1 This thought is expanded, with characteristic thoroughness and force, 
 by Barrow, in a sermon on Matt. xxii. 39. 
 
1 88 Lee hires oil the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 Oh, brethren, if this ' royal law' were carefully and constantly 
 followed by all in the world who are servants of Christ, — for 
 them and those immediately around them the blessedness 
 and beauty of the ' new earth' would seem almost already 
 come, and speedily the waste places everywhere would 're- 
 joice and blossom as the rose.' Consistent obedience to this 
 precept throughout the church would be of itself an evange- 
 listic power immeasurably surpassing anything else she could 
 bring into action. ' If ye fulfil the royal law according to the 
 Scripture, ye do well' 
 
 In the ninth verse, the apostle returns to the supposition 
 that he had dwelt upon in the earlier verses. He knew that, 
 in reference to many of the congregations to which the letter 
 was written, it was only too well founded ; and he is desirous 
 to impress upon them that conduct of the kind he has de- 
 scribed is in the judgment of God no trifle, but a serious 
 moral offence. ' If ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin.'' 
 The expression in the original seems to convey even greater 
 severity of condemnation. Strictly, the meaning is, ' ye work 
 sin ;' as elsewhere we have, ' Depart from me, ye that work 
 iniquity,' and, on the other side of character, ' He that feareth 
 God and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him ' (Matt, 
 vii. 27,; Acts x. 35). The force appears to be, 'habitually 
 practise :' ' this respect of persons having become your cus- 
 tomary procedure, and thus exhibiting a constant state of 
 feeling, you are continually working sin.' To establish this 
 strong statement, James goes on, '■and are convinced of the 
 law as transgressors.' ' Convince' is used here, as elsewhere 
 in our version (for example, in John viii. 46), in the sense in 
 which we now commonly employ another verb from the same 
 root — ' convict.' This clause, as I have said, is intended to 
 account for the use of the stern word ' sin ;' and this connec- 
 tion would perhaps be better brought out by adhering to the 
 participial form of the original, ' being convicted by the law as 
 transgressors,' or by ' seeing that you are convicted.' ' The 
 law of God ' (either that particular ' royal law ' already men- 
 tioned, or rather the divine law in general, of a part of which 
 
VERS. 10, II.] Unity of God's Law. 189 
 
 that is a summary) 'judges you, and in God's sight convicts 
 you, whether you yourselves at present recognise its decision 
 or not. For to have respect of persons is plainly inconsistent 
 with the principle of the commandment, Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself.' Respect of persons is obviously, in its 
 very nature, to some extent a limiting of what God has ex- 
 pressed universally. He says ' thy neighbour,' and we say ' my 
 rich neighbour,' 'my neighbour of exactly the same way of 
 thinking in religious matters,' or the like. The good Samaritan 
 did not turn away from the poor wounded traveller because his 
 features showed that he was not a Samaritan but a Jew. 
 
 You see, brethren, how gravely our inspired apostle viewed 
 this intrusion of worldly considerations into the sphere of 
 purely religious thought and feeling. He evidently saw here 
 not merely what was likely to cause some annoyance to an 
 individual treated with neglect or contempt, but the working 
 of that very evil and most destructive tendency under which 
 the church has suffered deplorably all down its generations, — 
 the tendency to distrust the support of the unseen divine King, 
 to doubt the almighty energy of faith, to lean on man, and trust 
 to earthly buttresses, as if Christ had never said, ' My kingdom 
 is not of this world.' 
 
 The tenth and eleventh verses are intended to impress yet 
 more deeply on the readers of the Epistle a conviction of the 
 serious light in which the apostle — and indeed his Master, 
 speaking by him through His Spirit — regarded such respect 
 of persons as has been described. James has called their 
 conduct ' sin,' and the fact that they were ' convicted by the 
 law as transgressors ' showed it to be such ; for, as we are ex- 
 pressly told elsewhere, 'sin' and 'the transgression of the law' 
 are convertible terms, co-extensive (i John iii. 4). But to 
 James's readers this would appear ' an hard saying.' All men 
 are prone to think that the law of God, strictly so called — the 
 law as a stern condemning judge — takes cognizance only of 
 large matters. There is a vast number of acts into which 
 our consciences tell us that an element of moral wrongness 
 enters, which yet, counting them little, we consider to be 
 
1 90 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. il 
 
 scarcely sins, or transgressions of God's law. Society often 
 calls sins of this kind by half-jesting names, attenuating and 
 palliating, that, by the subtle power of words, the feeling may 
 be deepened which the heart desires, that these are trifling 
 matters, not within the sweep of law. When, for example, 
 the fulfilment of a disagreeable engagement is evaded through 
 the pretence of illness, or when a lady instructs her servant 
 to tell certain persons, if they call, that she is not at home, 
 whether she be really at home or not, — this class of falsehoods 
 is named ' white lies.' Among the Jews, the teaching of the 
 scribes and Pharisees, which dwelt mainly on isolated pre- 
 cepts instead of broad principles of duty, had a tendency to 
 produce the impression that, whenever men could persuade 
 themselves that any act or course of conduct did not fall 
 within the exact letter of any particular prohibition, then it was 
 not within the range of the law at all. Accordingly, having 
 called the respect of persons ' sin,' ' transgression,' James an- 
 ticipates an objection arising from such views and feelings, to 
 this effect : ' This may be a violation of a single point of pro- 
 priety or duty ; but surely it is not sin^ not a breach of laiu.^ 
 The apostle's answer is : ' Whosoever shall keep the whole law, 
 and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For He that said, 
 Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now, if thou 
 co^nmit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor 
 of the laiu.^ 
 
 Here he shows the supposed objectors, you observe, that 
 God's law constitutes a grand unity ; that everything which in 
 any measure is morally wrong, is a violation of this one glorious 
 body of law ; and consequently, that even if a man could keep, 
 and did keep, all the commandments of God except one, the 
 breach of that one makes him, in the fullest sense of the words, 
 a violator of God's law, and liable to punishment. The only 
 difficulty in the verses lies in the words 'guilty of all' They 
 must be explained by the course of thought, and particularly 
 by the words 'transgressor of the law,' in the end of the 
 eleventh verse, to which plainly, from the argument, they are 
 used as very nearly equivalent. The apostle does not mean 
 
VER. 1 1.] Unity of God's Law. 191 
 
 to say that all sins are equally heinous, or that a man who has 
 told one lie is necessarily as great a sinner as one who has 
 broken all the commandments of the Decalogue. He means 
 that a man who has broken one commandment cannot shelter 
 himself under the idea that he has merely violated a precept 
 isolated from the general law of God, but is guilty of a breach 
 of the law which iticludes all the commandments, and thus has as 
 really, though it may be not so glaringly, placed himself in 
 opposition to God, as if he had broken all the commandments. 
 The apostle lays down as his fundamental proposition, that 
 the atithority on which the law rests is one: 'He that said. Do 
 not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill.' We might con- 
 ceive the Scripture to have been partly the word of God, partly 
 the utterance of men unguided by God. In this case some 
 precepts might have been from God, whilst others were only 
 the suggestion of human wisdom. But ' all Scripture is given 
 by inspiration of God.' This is the general truth, of which the 
 apostle's argument leads him to make the part prominent, that 
 all which the Bible declares to be divine law is really such. 
 From this fundamental proposition, it follows that the essential 
 principle pervading every point of the law, even the tnitiutest, is 
 one. The law is a transcript of the divine character. It con- 
 tains many details for our guidance; but of this body of law love 
 is the soul, all-pervading : for ' God ' (whose character the law 
 expresses) 'is love.' A breach of the law in its minutest detail, 
 therefore, is a breach of love : as, when a man strikes another 
 severely on one of his limbs, he hurts not that limb only, but 
 the whole man, because life and sensation are everywhere. 
 But further, the spirit of true obedience to the laiu is one — loving 
 respect and submission to God as the Author of the whole law. 
 Such obedience is necessarily implicit and impartial. If a 
 man selects certain commandments to obey, if he 'picks and 
 chooses ' among God's precepts, it is plain that he follows his 
 own will, not God's ; and the same spirit that leads him to 
 break one, would, under other temptations, lead him to break all. 
 There is here no true obedience to God. His sincere servants 
 * esteem all His precepts concerning all things to be right.' 
 
192 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 XII. 
 JUDGMENT BY THE LAW OF LIBERTY. 
 
 * So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. 
 13 For he shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no 
 mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.' — ^James ii. 12, 13. 
 
 THE twelfth verse contains an earnest practical appeal, 
 founded on the whole preceding discussion ; and this 
 is enforced in the thirteenth by a very solemn and pointed 
 statement of the respective results of the two courses of life 
 which men may pursue. 
 
 The injunction in the twelfth is so framed as to remind the 
 readers of some momentous doctrinal truths. One of these is, 
 that ' tue shall be judged^ To any one who looks at the course 
 of history, either of individuals or nations, with an eye that 
 sees no deeper than the outer covering of things, it may seem 
 as if God, having created His world, and established certain 
 general physical laws, had then left it to develope for itself its 
 good and evil, joy and sorrow, — unheeded, uncared for. ' One 
 generation goeth,' after a life of thoughtlessness and sin, ' and 
 another cometh,' to idle through the same frivolous round ; 
 and still no voice of solemn rebuke comes forth from the ' ex- 
 cellent glory.' A Howard and a John WiUiams live lives full 
 of self-sacrificing devotion to God and to their fellow-men ; 
 yet no visible diadem of heavenly beauty is set by a divine 
 hand upon their brows, and for them too, as for the thoughtless 
 and the base, ' it is appointed to die.' In the nineteenth cen- 
 tury of gospel light men repeat the crime of Cain — slaveholding 
 nations repeat the oppressions of Egypt — the iniquities of our 
 great cities cry to the Lord, as did the sins of Sodom and 
 Gomorrah ; and still the sky is not cleft by the destroying 
 bolt of God's wrath. Nay, so strangely assigned seem the 
 
VER. 12.] ytidgment by the Lazu of Liberty. 193 
 
 portions of men at times — the wicked revelling in prosperity, 
 and God's servants draining the ' waters of a full cup ' of 
 trouble — that even believers are tempted to say, ' How doth 
 God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High ? ' And 
 scoffers, ' walking after their own lusts,' and exulting in their 
 fancied impunity, say, ' Where is the promise of His coming? 
 for, since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they 
 were from the beginning of the creation.' 
 
 But all such thoughts are foolish and false ; ' for the eyes of the 
 Lord are upon the ways of man, and He seeth all his goings.' 
 ' He knoweth the way of the righteous ;' and ' there is no dark- 
 ness nor shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity may 
 hide themselves.' And though in the riches of His goodness He 
 bears long with sinners, that His forbearance may ' lead them 
 to repentance,' yet He has not left us without manifold witness 
 that even now He is sitting in judgment. The awful visita- 
 tion of the flood, when desolation swept over the world of the 
 ungodly, who were buying and selling, planting and building, 
 marrying and giving in marriage, and scofifingly asking, ' Where 
 is the promise of His coming?' until the day that t^ie fountains 
 of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven 
 opened, — how loud a voice of solemn warning has this for 
 our modern world ! National judgments, varied and most 
 distinct, from the overthrow of the cities of the plain to the 
 sea of blood into which their national sin of slaveholding 
 recently brought our brethren in America, have continually 
 been attesting that God is the Governor among the nations. 
 And every sickness, every bereavement, every stroke of ad- 
 versity, should be felt by each individual as a ' coming of the 
 Son of man' to him for gentle judgment, to remind him that, 
 though day passes after day now in comparative quiet and 
 monotony, yet certainly one day the Lord shall come in His 
 glory, — 'the judgment shall be set, and the books opened. 
 For all the judgments of time are but prelusive of one great 
 solemn, sublime event, when time shall be no longer. The 
 last stage in the ripening of the bitter fruits of sin, the final 
 crisis in the history of its working among men, will then have 
 
 N 
 
194 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 come. All disguises shall be removed, the secrets of all hearts 
 and lives made known, and the solemn sentence which shall 
 have eternal issues shall be pronounced from the throne, and 
 responded to by each heart as divinely righteous. ' Behold, 
 the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute 
 judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among 
 them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly com- 
 mitted, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners 
 have spoken against Him.' 
 
 * Day of wrath, that dreadful day ! 
 Heaven and earth shall pass away. 
 What shall be the sinner's stay ? 
 How shall I be safe that day ? ' 
 
 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, my 
 brethren, who has left us in no darkness on these questions of 
 tremendous moment ! 
 
 ' Jesus is the sinner's stay ; 
 In Him we shall be safe that day.' 
 
 For, as you see, to Christians the law which is to be the 
 standard of judgment is a '■law of liberty' This magnificent 
 expression has been already explained, in the observations 
 made on the twenty-fifth verse of the first chapter; but the 
 way in which it is applied here calls for a few further remarks. 
 It means, as we saw, the moral law, looked at, however, not 
 apart from the gospel of salvation, but as incorporated with it, 
 as in integral connection with its historical facts and its ' ex- 
 ceeding great and precious promises.' The only true liberty 
 for man is that which is given by Christ, the freedom which 
 flows from our being made partakers of the blessings of His 
 redemption, and which indeed, when we take the word in its 
 broadest sense, is but another name for salvation. By nature 
 we are enslaved to base tendencies; and as we are thus 
 morally in bondage, so legally we are criminals, ' condemned 
 already,' prisoners in the hand of divine justice, and liable at 
 any moment to be consigned to the ' outer darkness ' for ever. 
 The constant effort of the unregenerate to forget God and 
 
VER. 12.] Jtidgment by the Law of Liberty. 195 
 
 shun all serious religious thought, is but an attempt to deafen 
 the ear of conscience to the clank of their chains. But the 
 Lord God has sent His Son * to proclaim liberty to the cap- 
 tives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound ;' 
 and with this ' glorious liberty ' Christ ' makes His people 
 free' through 'the truth.' Believing the truth, we are 'justified 
 by faith;' and to 'be 'justified ' means to be emancipated from 
 subjection to the curse of the law, for ' there is no condemna- 
 tion to them which are in Christ Jesus.' And the same faith 
 of the truth, which thus delivers from liability to punishment, 
 breaks also the fetters of depravity, because it arouses in the 
 soul a supreme love of God and holiness. You observe, then, 
 that the freedom given by Christ is not lawlessness. It was 
 God's regard for His law, conjoined with His love to the 
 sinner, that provided the wondrous plan of redemption ; and 
 the death of Christ, accordingly, has in every aspect ' magni- 
 fied the law, and made it honourable.' ' He gave Himself for 
 us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity,' that is to say, 
 might deliver us from the power of our natural disposition to 
 disobedience ; and the same faith through which we pass into 
 the condition of freedom from the curse of the law, introduces 
 convictions and awakens desires which make that law for the 
 first time truly the rule of our lives. We see its beauty now, 
 and love it. ' It is no longer an external thing, commanding 
 with stern voice and terrible threats, but an internal, written 
 on the fleshly tables of the mind, and sweetly constraining, by 
 impulses springing up spontaneously in the heaven-born soul, 
 to follow after holiness, to abound in all the fruits of right- 
 eousness.' ^ 
 
 Now it is by this ' law of liberty,' the apostle tells us, by 
 the moral law looked at in vital connection with the facts and 
 promises of the gospel, that believers are to be judged. For 
 unbelievers the standard of the trial is the moral law simply 
 considered, with its stern obligations, its ' Do this, and thou 
 shalt live,' but ' Cursed is every one that continueth not in all 
 things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.' 
 ^ Dr. Adam's Exposition of James, p. 177. 
 
196 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 But for all those who have truly accepted Christ as their 
 Saviour, the law has the curse erased by their Saviour's hand. 
 The Judge of all the earth will show in the face of the moral 
 universe that He does all things righteously and well : the works 
 of the ungodly shall be produced as the ground of condem- 
 nation, the works of the godly as evidences of their having 
 cordially accepted forgiveness through free grace. Thus the 
 decisions of the judgment-day will be a great public attestation, 
 under circumstances of inconceivable solemnity and sublimity, 
 that ' the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal 
 life through Jesus Christ our Lord.' 
 
 On the facts which we have been considering the apostle 
 ounds an earnest appeal to his readers to cultivate holiness : 
 ' So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law 
 of liberty.' Christians should remember continually their sub- 
 jection to the great law which expresses for us the character of 
 God — their being * under the law to Christ.' We should have 
 much before our minds and hearts the fact that to glorify God 
 — the end for which we were made at the first, and for which 
 we were created anew in Christ Jesus — is to keep His law; 
 that 'without holiness no man shall see the Lord ;' that sincere 
 and growing conformity to the divine law is the only satisfac- 
 tory evidence of our having given ourselves up to be saved 
 through Christ, seeing that to it will be the appeal on the great 
 day of final account. And the fact, too, that the law under 
 which Christians are placed is the ' law of liberty ' should be 
 much before us, as fitted to stimulate and sustain us in the 
 narrow way of godliness. When our hearts sink under the 
 sense of our spiritual weakness, how cheering to remember that 
 for all true believers the law is indissolubly incorporated with 
 the gospel ; that a Saviour who was once ' tempted like as we 
 are ' is looking down upon us with pity, and ready to give us 
 new strength ; and that, at the last, the obedience of a Chris- 
 tian to the law will not be rigidly and sternly scrutinized, as if 
 claiming to be a meritorious ground of everlasting life, but 
 lovingly surveyed as an evidence of true spiritual union by 
 faith to the Living One. The comforts of the gospel, there- 
 
VER. 12.] yudgment by the Law of Liberty. 197 
 
 fore, and the motives which it presents to holy obedience, 
 ought to be often pondered by the child of God, that he may 
 be spurred to ardour in the divine life, and thus experience in- 
 creasingly the sense of 'liberty' — the joyous buoyancy of spirit 
 which we may and should have in keeping God's law — that 
 sweet constraint of the love of Christ which is perfect freedom. 
 
 ' Think of these things, brethren,' says our apostle, ' and let 
 the fruit of your ponderings be seen in your whole outward 
 life.' '■So speak ye, as they that know and consider the truth on 
 this matter.' We commonly think little of words, because we 
 little know their power and importance. There is perhaps no 
 class of sins against which our Lord and His apostles give 
 more frequent and earnest warnings than sins of the tongue. 
 James has already urged the importance of being 'slow to 
 speak,' and ' bridling the tongue ;' and in the third chapter he 
 discusses the subject with considerable fulness. The distinct 
 and decisive place that this particular part of morals is to 
 have in the reckoning at the judgment is emphatically exhi- 
 bited by our Lord : ' I say unto you, that every idle word that 
 men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of 
 judgment ; for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy 
 words thou shalt be condemned.' And in immediate connec- 
 tion He gives the reason : ' O generation of vipers, how can 
 ye, being evil, speak good things ? for out of the abundance of 
 the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good 
 treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things ; and an evil 
 man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.' ' So 
 speak ye,' then, watchfully, purely, truthfully, lovingly, ' as they 
 that shall be judged by the law of liberty.' 
 
 ^ Aiid so doJ Our actions of every kind should be such as 
 may reasonably be expected of a man who thinks of judg- 
 ment and the ' law of liberty.' An unconverted man, being 
 spiritually in an atmosphere of darkness and falsehood, — for 
 Satan, the ' prince of this world,' is ever a liar, and untruth 
 the element in which he delights to envelope his subjects, — is 
 naturally inconsistent : his deeds may often not accord with his 
 words, and neither words nor deeds may truthfully rej)resent 
 
tqS Lectures on the Epistle of J antes, [ch. ii. 
 
 his thoughts and feelings. But a Christian, a child of light and 
 truth, having through faith in Jesus Christ received into his 
 mind certain grand principles, which are in their nature fitted 
 to control more or less obviously his whole life, will plainly, in 
 so far as he yields himself up to the power of these principles 
 — in other words, in so far as he approaches the character of a 
 perfect Christian — be consistent : his words and his deeds will 
 agree, and both will truly exhibit his state of mind and heart. 
 We must hQ doers of the word, not hearers or talkers only. He 
 who is to sit on the great white throne, judging the world, has 
 already given solemn warning on this point : ' Not every one 
 that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven ; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in 
 heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have 
 we not prophesied ' (spoken well, — taught others impressively 
 and wisely) ' in Thy name ? and then will I profess unto them, 
 I never knew you : depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.' 
 ' So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the 
 law of liberty.' 
 
 In the thirteenth verse we have a singularly striking and 
 impressive enforcement of the injunction given in the twelfth. 
 Substantially the argument is : ' For those who now prove their 
 faith in the Lord Jesus to be vital, by habitually speaking and 
 acting according to the law of liberty, shall in the great day be 
 judged by that law of liberty — the law as read in the gospel of 
 saving grace ; but those who disregard it shall be tried by the 
 law apart from the gospel.' James, however, throws this into 
 another form, which brings out these truths also, — truths hold- 
 ing everywhere the highest prominence in the teaching of the 
 Saviour and His apostles, — that ' love is the fulfilling of the 
 law,' and that the love to God which is ' the fulfilling' of the first 
 table is not really found except where there prevails the love 
 to man which is ' the fulfilling ' of the second ; ' for he that 
 loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love 
 God whom he hath not seen ? ' You observe, too, that instead 
 of employing the general term ' love ' our apostle specifies 
 ' mercy.' This does not in the Bible mean exclusively, as 
 
VER. 13.] yudgfiient by the Law of Liberty. 199 
 
 usually in modern English, '■forgiving kindness/ but 'active 
 pity,' of which forgiveness of injuries is a most important 
 branch. The sense of the word is well illustrated by the pas- 
 sage that follows the parable of the good Samaritan : ' Which 
 now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that 
 fell among the thieves ? And he said. He that showed viercy 
 on him.' In choosing this word in place of the general term 
 * love,' James no doubt has in mind the contemptuous ' un- 
 merciful ' treatment of the poor in some of the Christian assem- 
 blies, with the reproof of which his present line of remark 
 started. But he desires to remind us also that the heaven- 
 born grace of Christian love, whilst elevating and purifying 
 the natural affections, will always go further, revealing itself in 
 active fruit-bearing compassion to the spiritually or temporally 
 needy, because they are needy. This evinces the spirit of 
 brotherhood to Him who came to ' destroy the works of the 
 devil' — ignorance, and sin, and wretchedness. 
 
 ' He shall have judgment without mercy ^ says the apostle, 
 '■that hath showed fio ??iercy.^ This is a principle which we 
 find set forth everywhere in Scripture. The chief aim of the 
 gospel is to produce in men a spirit resembling God's, who 
 'is love;' and those that persistently retain the image of the 
 'prince of this world,' who hates love, exclude themselves 
 thereby from salvation. ' Forgive us our debts, as we forgive 
 our debtors.' 'But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, 
 neither will your Father forgive you.' ' Then his lord, after 
 he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I 
 forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: shouldst 
 not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even 
 as I had pity on thee ? And his lord was wroth, and delivered 
 him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto 
 him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, 
 if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their 
 trespasses.' ' Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, 
 Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for 
 the devil and his angels : for I was an hungered, and ye gave 
 Me no meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink. Verily 
 
200 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. ii. 
 
 I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least 
 of these, ye did it not to Me.' 
 
 On the other hand, ' viercy rejoiceth (or " glorieth ") against 
 jiidgment.^ The meaning is : ' Where a man's hfe is character- 
 ized by active Christian compassion towards the sinful and the 
 suffering around him, he may, and he does, look forward to the 
 judgment with calm confidence.' But our apostle, according to 
 his wont, expresses the thought with much liveliness and bold- 
 ness. ' Mercy' and ' (condemning) Judgment' are conceived of 
 as rulers in two distinct spheres ; and in regard to all who are 
 in Mercy's domain, cleaving to her in love, she tells Judgment 
 confidently that he, the stern king, cannot take them away 
 from her. She points to the cross of Christ, and Judgment 
 confesses that all his claims on those within her bounds were 
 indeed fully satisfied there, through the death in their room of 
 the Son of God. I cannot resist the impression that, whilst 
 the mercy which reigns in a Christian's heart is undoubtedly, 
 from the antithesis of the clause to the preceding, the apostle's 
 primary reference, yet one end of his choosing the abstract 
 ' mercy,' instead of the concrete ' merciful man,' was to leave 
 room for the believing heart to expatiate on the general 
 thought of ' fruit-bearing pity,' and in particular to trace up the 
 human mercy to its fountain in the mercy of God. A heart 
 full of mercy through faith in the mercy of God in Christ, and 
 relying always and simply on that divine mercy, — this heart 
 ' rejoiceth against judgment.'' 
 
 The force of this statement is twofold. It intimates, first, 
 that the man who by a merciful character proves his having a 
 vital faith in God's mercy, is through Christ safe; and secondly, 
 that he has a blissful sense of safety. The 'peace that passeth 
 all understanding ' which the gospel is fitted to impart, grows, 
 as a rule, with the growth of holiness — that is, of the spirit 
 and life of love ; for thus, in our becoming like Christ, evi- 
 dence is ever increasing that we are Christ's. For despondent 
 believers the best medicine is energy in Christian work, the 
 cultivation of 'mercy.' The selfish and unmerciful man 
 'trembles,' as, through His. providence or His word, God 
 
VER. 13.] ytidgment by the Law of Libei^ty. 201 
 
 'reasons of judgment to come,' — conscience recognising 'a 
 certain fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery indignation, 
 which shall devour the adversaries;' whilst, as the Apostle 
 John has it in a passage strikingly parallel to that of James 
 now before us, ' He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, 
 and God in him ; and herein is our love made perfect, that 
 we may have boldness in the day of judgment : because as 
 He is, so are we in this world' (i John iv. 16, 17). 
 
202 Lectures on the Epistle of yanies. [ch. ii. 
 
 XIII. 
 FAITH WITHOUT WORKS. 
 
 ' What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and 
 have not works? can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister be 
 naked, and destitute of daily food, 16 And one of you say unto them, 
 Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled ; notwithstanding ye give 
 them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it 
 profit ? 17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. 
 18 Yea, a man may say. Thou hast faith, and I have works ; show 
 me thy faith without thy M'orks, and I will show thee my faith by my 
 works. 19 Thou believest that there is one God ; thou doest well : 
 the devils also believe, and tremble.' — ^James II. 14-19. 
 
 WE begin here another section of the Epistle. In the 
 preceding, the apostle, starting with the truth plainly 
 exhibited in the first verse of the chapter, that the root of 
 spiritual life in man is ' the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ,' 
 has shown that a certain line of conduct which he describes 
 is entirely inconsistent with this 'faith,' — wholly alien to the 
 spirit of Christ's religion ; and has wound up the paragraph 
 by the awfully solemn declaration, that a man who is desti- 
 tute of the spirit of kindness to his fellows, one that shows 
 nothing in his character of the image of God, who ' is love,' 
 — this man, however loud his profession of religion, however 
 orthodox his creed, however high his hopes, shall at the last 
 be condemned, being subjected to 'judgment without mercy.' 
 He is naturally led now to make some remarks on the nature 
 of saving faith, bringing out this as one grand essential charac 
 teristic of such faith, — that it is operative, productive of thefriiif 
 holiness. 
 
 It is evident that there were some in the Christian church 
 of the first age, as indeed there have been in the church of 
 every age, who with more or less fulness and consciousness 
 
VERS. 14-19.] Faith withoitt Works. 203 
 
 rested in the thought that privilege is saving grace, — that know- 
 ledge of the truth, accompanied by some measure of belief, 
 brings salvation, — however barren the belief may be — though 
 it be but the cold, uninterested assent which can hardly be 
 otherwise described than as the absence of positive disbelief. 
 There were then in all likelihood, as now, very few who stated 
 such as their opinion, or even clearly defined it to their own 
 minds ; yet vast numbers, then as now, rested quietly in the 
 soul-destroying impression that the knowledge of truth, with 
 assent, necessarily constitutes saving faith. The Jews were 
 very largely under its influence. Paul sets their state of feeling 
 before us with much liveliness : * Behold, thou art called a 
 Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and 
 knowest His will, and approvest the things that are more ex- 
 cellent, being instructed out of the law ; and art confident that 
 thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which 
 are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes ; 
 which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law. 
 Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thy- 
 self? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou 
 steal ? Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, 
 dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorrest idols, dost 
 thou commit sacrilege? Thou that makest thy boast of the 
 law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God ? For 
 the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through 
 you, as it is written' (Rom. ii. 17-24). Now, remembering 
 that the persons whom James primarily addressed in this 
 Epistle were Jews who had embraced Christianity, we can 
 easily see how their previous training had prepared the way 
 for satisfaction on the part of many of them with a mere 
 inoperative assent to the truths of the gospel. 
 
 Throughout the apostle's discussion the name ^ faith'' is taken 
 in a broad and general sense, covering any degree of accept- 
 ance of Christian truth ; his object being to show that the grand | 
 test of a man's impression or belief being that deep, radical, 
 abiding conviction which alone unites vitally to Jesus Christ,! 
 is its producing the fruit of earnest devotion to God's glory. 
 
204 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 He begins his remarks by the question, evidently arising 
 naturally out of the reference in the preceding verse to the 
 unmerciful professor of religion, ' What doth it profit, my 
 brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works V 
 In this supposed case, you observe, the apostle gives promi- 
 nence to the man's ' saying that he has faith,' evidently implying 
 that persons of the class he has in his thoughts have usually 
 much more of profession than of religious belief or feeling. 
 Still the man is not a conscious hypocrite, a wolf in sheep's 
 clothing, an infidel who for purposes of his own calls himself 
 a believer. He has received some religious impressions ; he 
 assents in a loose and general way to the doctrines of the Bible, 
 and he considers himself a Christian. The apostle's arguments 
 throughout the paragraph all proceed on the supposition that 
 the man whose religious position he is considering has some- 
 thing which, in a vague and liberal application of the word, 
 may be spoken of as ^ faith.'' But he ^ has not works' In 
 these words the apostle already assumes that radical vital faith 
 will show itself in operation on the character. The person 
 supposed may be a man of great activity, full of ' works ' of a 
 kind, — a man to whom those around point as conspicuous for 
 energy, making his personal influence felt through every pulsa- 
 tion of a large business, rapidly building up for himself a great 
 fortune. All this, we know, may be true ; and yet, says the 
 apostle, while he ' says he has faith,' and has it of a kind, he 
 ' has not works,' — such ' works ' then, manifestly, as a faith 
 worthy of the name, a cordial, radical belief of the gospel, 
 must from its nature produce. Impelled by the mercies of 
 God, seen and felt through faith, the true believer ' presents 
 his body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,' feeling 
 this to be * reasonable service.' He is no longer 'conformed 
 to this world;' but through ' the renewing of his mind' by the 
 faith of the truth is ' transformed,' so as to obtain experimental 
 acquaintance with the ' good, and acceptable, and perfect will 
 of God.' ' The grace of God, bringing salvation, teaches him 
 that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, he should live 
 soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world.' 
 
VER. 14.] Faith without Works. 205 
 
 'If a man say he hath faith, but have not works, what doth 
 it profit ? Can faith save him V Now, that faith can save a 
 man, and that nothing else can, is written throughout the 
 Scriptures as with a pencil of liglit. The essence of the gospel 
 is, 'For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten 
 Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have n 
 everlasting life' (John iii. 16). And the power of faith to save C 
 has already been expressly set before us by the apostle in the \ 
 twenty-first verse of the first chapter, where we are told that / j^ 
 ' the implanted word,' when ' received with meekness ' — that is, \ 
 believed with childlike simplicity — 'is able to save our souls.' 1 
 You see, then, that in the clause before us the apostle is not 1 
 speaking of faith universally, but of this magi's faith, and all 
 faith like it. Indeed, a more exact rendering of James's words 
 would be 'The faith' — such faith as has been described, a faith 
 that is unaccompanied by works, — ' can this save him?' The 
 apostle propounds the question, and leaves it to the conscience 
 and common sense of his readers to give the answer. ' When 
 you think,' he seems to say, ' that sin is infinitely hateful to 
 God, and in its nature utterly inconsistent with true happiness, ^ 
 
 — that sin alone brought that death into the world from which 
 
 God in the gospel offers deliverance, — that the very name of 
 "Jesus" was given expressly because He was to "save His 
 people/ww their sins,'' — can you consider it possible that such 
 a faith as I have described, a faith which does not impel the 
 man to good works, but allows him to continue indulging his 
 natural sinful tendencies, can save him ? Does not the simple 
 statement of the case show the supposition to be wholly absurd ?' 
 
 Observe, brethren, the suggestiveness of the conjunction of 
 these two questions : ' What doth it profit ? Can his faith save 
 him?' His profession of Christianity and barren assent to its 
 doctrines might ' profit ' him in some things. It might as an 
 opiate lull the soul to a treacherous and fatal repose, mistaken 
 by him for the 'peace of God which passeth all understanding.' 
 It might also under certain circumstances, such as those which 
 exist in our country at present, be helpful to his worldly ad- 
 vancement. But this is not the ' profiting ' to be thought of 
 
2o6 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes, [ch. ii. 
 
 in connection with religion. In self-examination, the one point 
 to be ascertained is whether our faith, our religion, is such as 
 will bring ' profit ' at "the judgment ; whether it is 'a house 
 founded on a rock,' which will stand when ' the rains descend, 
 and the floods come, and the winds blow and beat thereon,' — 
 a house which, being built of stone, and not of ' wood, hay, or 
 stubble,' will endure the trial by fire in the ' great and terrible 
 day of the Lord.' 'As a snare,' said Jesus, ' shall that day come 
 on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch 
 ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy 
 to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand 
 before the Son of man.' 'And now, little children,' urges the 
 beloved apostle, ' abide in Him, that, when He shall appear, 
 we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at 
 His coming.' No religion should satisfy us, my brethren, 
 _L which will not ' save ' us, — no religion, therefore, which is not 
 distinguished by the graces of Christian character, for these are j 
 *■ things that accompany salvation.^ 
 
 In the fifteenth and sixteenth verses the apostle illustrates 
 the emptiness and uselessness of a barren faith, such as has 
 been described, by a comparison drawn from ordinary life, and 
 with reference to another spiritual principle — that of charity. 
 It is plainly a most efficient mode in many cases of bringing 
 clearly before the mind the true character of conduct towards 
 God, to look at something similar in the relations of man to 
 man. What with reference to God we fail to see clearly, 
 through the mists of prejudice, is visible and tangible with 
 reference to man. * If ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not 
 evil ? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil ? Offer 
 it now unto thy governo7' : will he be pleased with thee, or 
 accept thy person ? saith the Lord of Hosts.' 
 
 James supposes the case of a '■ brother or sister'' (that is, in all 
 likelihood, according to ordinary Scripture usage, not ' a fellow- 
 member of the human race ' merely, but ' a fellow-Christian, a 
 fellow-member of the household of faith') who is ^ naked ^ (by 
 which is meant, no doubt, ' thinly clad,' according to a frequent 
 use of the original word) ' afid destitute of daily food.'' To such 
 
VER. 1 6.] Faith without Works. 207 
 
 a one, having not only the general claims of a destitute fellow- 
 creature, but the special claims of a fellow-Christian, he supposes 
 one of his readers (observe how pointedly the case is put : ' one 
 of you ^ possibly implying a rebuke for some notorious neglect 
 on this very head), to whom the sufferer makes application, or 
 who at least in some way comes into contact with him, to 
 say, ^Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled.^ 'Peace be to 
 you ' has been in Western Asia, all down the ages, the ordinary 
 salutation and parting wish. The words of address here, you 
 see, are courteous and kind : * Farewell ; I hope that Providence 
 will open up a way for your obtaining food and clothing, and 
 that soon you will enjoy every comfort.' As ^uords, they are 
 excellent. Now, brethren, kind words from a kind heart are 
 in themselves very good things, often falling on the bruised 
 spirit with such refreshing and strengthening power as the 
 wine and oil of the good Samaritan exerted on the traveller's 
 poor bruised body ; and we deny ourselves and others much 
 happiness, when we are niggards in the use ;of an instrument 
 of good which is ever so ready at hand and so fitted to benefit. 
 Even in the case mentioned by our apostle, if we suppose 
 nothing given but simply these words spoken to the poor 
 brother by another obviously nearly as poor as himself, unable 
 to give material help,' but sincerely sympathetic, how full of 
 sweetness and refreshing the words would be — * as cold water 
 to a thirsty soul !' But the person meant in the apostle's illus- 
 tration is clearly one able to help as well as speak kindly. 
 Now for such a man, with a well-filled storeroom and an ample 
 wardrobe, to use great swelling sentences of benevolence, and 
 yet send away the poor brother or sister starving with hunger 
 and shivering with cold — to be liberal of good words, which 
 cost nothing, but altogether averse from giving to the poor of 
 the worldly goods which God has given to us, — how utterly 
 hollow and heartless this is 1 
 
 We all know, brethren, that this illustrative case* is not drawn 
 from anything peculiar to the age or country of the apostle, but 
 from a form of the working of human depravity sadly common 
 in every age and country. The type of charity, cheap and con- 
 
2o8 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 temptible, which he here holds up to view is by no means extinct. 
 Modern society — the modern church — also has its men who are 
 fluent in the language of generosity, its women who would weep 
 over a scene of Avretchedness touchingly described in a novel, — 
 and yet of their abundance give to the poor only most scantily 
 and grudgingly, or, it may be, in their pecuniary dealings with 
 the persons they employ, and in other ways, even 'grind the 
 faces of the poor.' What a destitution of all right principle and 
 noble feeling is here ! ' What doth it profit V asks the apostle. 
 What good is there for anybody ? Will the hunger of the poor 
 brother or sister be appeased by generous words? Will good 
 wishes serve the place of clothing to them ? Will expressions 
 of sympathy, coming from the lips of one who has so evidently 
 a hard, un sympathizing heart, bring them comfort? And to 
 the man himself, who puts good words in the place of kind 
 deeds, can his utterances of benevolence yield permanently the 
 satisfaction of a good conscience ? Will not every indulgence 
 of such idle sentiment under the name of charity make the heart 
 harder, and draw the chains of selfishness closer round the 
 soul ? And if kind words unsupported by kind deeds continue 
 till the end, will not the Judge's declaration on the great day 
 be, ' Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye 
 did it not to Me ; depart from Me, ye cursed ?' What, then, 
 doth it profit? 'Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his 
 brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion 
 from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him ? My little 
 children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed 
 and in truth.' 
 
 In the seventeenth verse the apostle applies the illustration 
 to the matter in hand : '■Even so faith, if it hath not works, is 
 dead.' He assumes, you observe, by his ' even so,' that in the 
 judgment of all his readers the charity in the case supposed, 
 which went no further than words, was ' dead.' Life worthy of 
 the name involves action, fruit-bearing : here there was plainly 
 a mere image of love, as destitute of energy as a corpse, or a 
 tree withered from the roots. A sentiment there might be, 
 but it was an utterly valueless and contemptible thing, because 
 
VER. 17.] Frdth without Works. 209 
 
 unproductive. Now a faith that does not rule the life, is 
 exactly like such charity : ' Faith, if it hath not works, is dead^ 
 To this statement James adds the words, as our translators 
 tell us in their margin, * by itself^ which in their text they 
 render ' behig alone.^ This is a sense that the expression may 
 bear, as in the statement that ' Paul was suffered to dwell by 
 himself (Acts xxviii. 16). But the supplement ^ being,^ which 
 is needed to make the words yield the sense our translators 
 intend, is hardly justifiable, constituting them, as it does, a 
 separate clause ; and the sense itself, even supposing it legiti- 
 mately obtained, is not very satisfactory, for it is simply a 
 repetition in another form of ' if it hath not works,' and this 
 without adding strength or clearness to the argument. It 
 seems preferable, therefore, in every way, to take the sentence 
 thus : * Faith, if it hath not works, is in itself dead.' This 
 rendering is quite as accordant with usage as the other, and 
 suits better the position of the words. It gives advance to 
 the argument also, for thus we move onward from observation 
 of phenomena to a judgment as to the cause. Life has 
 evidences. If, in that which has the appearance of a man, 
 we can find no activity, no pulse, no breath, no vital heat, 
 we know certainly, however great the resemblance to a living 
 man in many things, that there is no life there. It may be 
 a statue, where life has never been, or a corpse where life 
 was but yesterday, — but beyond doubt there is no life now. 
 Now, not less certainly than a living man breathes, and a 
 living tree puts forth leaves, does a living faith prompt to holi- 
 ness of life. ^Wherever, then, a faith 'hath not works,' a candid 
 thinker will not merely recognise the fact that the outward 
 beauty of leaf and fruit is wanting, but that the tree/ the faith, 
 'is in itself dead.'' 
 
 This statement carries with it the solemn significance that 
 such faith cannot save. For salvation is life, given through 
 our being 'quickened together with Christ;' and it cannot but 
 be that the faith through which this life is originated and sus- 
 tained, is itself an energy, a living power. From no ' dead 
 faith ' can eternal life spring. 
 
 o 
 
2IO Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 The first words of the eighteenth verse, which, strictly ren- 
 dered, are, ' But some man will say^ lead one to expect an 
 objection to the apostle's argument, such as Paul supposes 
 made to his teaching regarding the resurrection, in ' But some 
 man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what 
 body do they come?' (i Cor. xv. 35.) It is plain, however, 
 on examining the statement made, that the person introduced 
 as speaking holds precisely the apostle's views, and argues, as 
 the apostle has been doing, with the man who trusts in an 
 inoperative faith. It thus appears that we have here simply 
 an illustration of that liveliness of style which pervades the 
 whole Epistle, the discussion being thrown for a little into a 
 dramatic form. The force of the introductory particle seems 
 to be * But further,' or, as our version has it excellently, ' Yea;'' 
 the connection of thought being, I think, somewhat like this : 
 * What I have now stated, that inoperative faith is dead, may 
 appear to you an hard saying ; but something even stronger 
 may be put forward on the subject. A Christian whose life 
 shows the fruits of faith may reasonably, in this controversy, 
 question the very existence of a faith that bears no fruit, and 
 challenge the man who trusts in such a faith to prove its exist- 
 ence. Not merely is it dead, but one may doubt whether 
 there is even a corpse or a statue — whether there is anything 
 of faith — whether, instead of intellectual assent, there be not 
 a kind of torpid unbelief 
 
 The Christian whom the apostle introduces to maintain the 
 cause of truth opens his case thus, addressing the man of 
 unproductive faith : ' Thou hast faith, and I have works.'' The 
 point of distinction in the controversy is thus put forth into 
 prominence : ' I strive by God's help to live a holy life ; and 
 thou assertest thyself to have, and at the outset I assume that 
 thou hast, faith, but no holy life.' Now comes the challenge, 
 ' Shozu me thy faith without thy -works, and I will shoiu thee 
 my faith by my works ;^ or rather, according to the best 
 authenticated reading, ' Show me thy faith without the works 
 (that are its proper fruits), and I will by 7?iy works show 
 thee the faith (from which the works naturally spring).' This 
 
VER. i8.] Faith without Works. 211 
 
 challenge proceeds on the assumption that in true religion, 
 of which faith is the root, there will inevitably be something 
 visible; and that this is, or should be, admitted by all pro- 
 fessing Christians. Whilst the supreme relations of religion 
 are between the soul and God, it is also plainly intended by 
 God, that by every one in whom religion is found a power 
 should be exerted on society. Jesus says to His people, ' Ye 
 are the light of the world.' ' Fulfil this necessary condition of 
 religion, then,' says the challenger before us ; ' make thy faith 
 visible, let it be a light of the world, — without the works that 
 it legitimately produces, seeing that thou disregardest these : I, 
 on my side, will show thee by my works the faith which gives 
 them birth.' As the fruit on the tree demonstrates to all be- 
 holders the existence of a root, though it is hidden ; as our see- 
 ing light proves to us that there is a luminous body somewhere ; 
 as from the streamlet on the mountain side we know that far 
 up there is a fountain ; so, by a consistent life of holy earnest- 
 ness and patience, we have shown to us the faith of the heart 
 which prompts it. But if a so-called fire sends out no light or 
 heat, if a so-called fountain gives forth no water, we not merely 
 lack evidence of their being what they are said to be, but we 
 have positive proof against it, and therefore disbelieve it. 
 There can be no doubt, then, of the issue of the challenge, 
 * Show me thy faith without the works.' The thing cannot be 
 done. Now, according to the clear teaching of Scripture, faith 
 has visible results : therefore what calls itself faith, but is un- 
 able to s/iow its existence, cannot in any proper sense be con- 
 sidered faith — indeed, is not a reality. 
 
 Throughout several verses following this, the form of direct 
 address to an individual, who represents all that trust in a 
 mere unproductive faith or assent, is continued. At first 
 sight, it seems most natural to suppose that the whole pas- 
 sage is to be regarded as the discourse of the intelligent 
 fruit-bearing Christian whom the apostle has introduced in 
 the eighteenth verse. Closer examination, however, leads 
 to doubt on this head. In the twenty-fourth verse, plainly 
 enough, we have James himself addressixig his readers gene- 
 
2 1 2 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. ii. 
 
 rally — *Ye see;' and that verse closes the argument from 
 Abraham's history, the first part of which has the form of 
 address to a single person. It seems clear, therefore, that 
 at some point he sets aside the ' man ' of the eighteenth 
 verse, whilst retaining the pointed ' thou ' which the * man ' 
 had begun. By some interpreters this point is fixed at the 
 beginning of the nineteenth verse. To me it appears more 
 natural to place it at the beginning of the twentieth, where 
 another section of the argument commences. Of course, as 
 regards the sense, this is a matter of entire indifference, the 
 * man ' being in everything intended as an exhibitor of James's 
 own views. 
 
 He has shown the nulHty of his opponent's 'faith ;' yet in 
 Christian love he will not leave him without another appeal, 
 in which, going back, he takes him up on his own ground : 
 ' Suppose, however, that the faith thou claimest has an exist- 
 ence, what then ? Such a faith, which does not purify and 
 elevate the moral nature, will not bring happiness ; and this 
 the experience of the most wretched class of God's creatures 
 abundantly illustrates.' ' .77^1??/ bdievest that there is one God.'' 
 This cardinal article of the belief both of Jews and Christians 
 he selects as representing an orthodox creed generally — as 
 certainly held by the Jewish professing Christian whom he 
 addresses, even if in some respects his creed might be un- 
 sound — and as one which fully and pointedly, without 
 weakening modifications and explanations, he could ascribe 
 also to the evil spirits. ' Thoti doest well.'' ' Thus far, good. 
 It is a truth, and one of transcendent importance. But ob- 
 serve, the dei'ils also believe {it) — a?jd tremble.'' The devil ' abode 
 not in the truth, because there is no truth in him ;' and there- 
 fore * when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is 
 a liar, and the father of it.' Yet, whatever falsehoods he has 
 persuaded himself and his angels to receive, he and they have 
 no doubt 'that there is one God.' But their belief exerts no 
 beautifying effect on their character, — awakens no love or re- 
 verence for the one true God ; and indeed, in their hatred to 
 Him, they have striven with deplorable success to induce men 
 
VER. 19.] Faith without Woi'ks. 213 
 
 to worship many gods : for behind the deadness of the stocks 
 and stones is everywhere the energy of the spirits of the abyss ; 
 so that, in fact, 'the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they 
 sacrifice to devils, and not to God' (i Cor. x. 20). And as 
 their character remains unimproved by their ' faith,' so is it 
 also, according to the infinite rectitude of the divine admini- 
 stration, with their position and prospects. Their belief in the 
 unity of God only deepens their anguish, since they know that 
 no help to them can come from any quarter, and that, how- 
 ever they may oppose themselves to Jehovah, yet they struggle 
 in vain against the One Almighty, — who, as they themselves 
 confess (Matt. viii. 29), will at last deprive them even of the 
 measure of wretched liberty they now have, and ' cast them into 
 the lake of fire and brimstone, to be tormented day and night 
 for ever and ever.' ' The devils believe — aiid tremble.^ One 
 may safely say that there is nothing in all literature more 
 perfect, rhetorically, than this tremendous and utterly wither- 
 ing close of the first part of the discussion. 
 
214 Lechires on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 XIV. 
 JUSTIFYING FAITH A WORKING FAITH. 
 
 * But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead ? 21 Was, 
 not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac 
 his son upon the altar ? 22 Seest thou how faith wrought with his 
 works, and by works was faith made perfect ? 23 And the Scripture 
 was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed 
 unto him for righteousness : and he was called the Friend of God. 
 24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by 
 faith only. 25 Likewise also, was not Raliab the harlot justified by 
 works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out 
 another way ? 26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith 
 without works is dead also.' — James ii. 20-26. 
 
 ON the surface of this passage there hes obviously a seem- 
 ing contradiction of that element in the teaching of 
 Scripture elsewhere which we often call distinctively ' evan- 
 gelical,' and, in particular, of many express statements of the 
 Apostle Paul, especially in the Epistles to the Romans and 
 Galatians. Thus, in Romans we read, 'Therefore we con- 
 clude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the 
 law' (Rom. iii. 28); and in Galatians, 'Knowing that a man 
 is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of 
 Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we 
 might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works 
 of the law : for by the works of the law shall no flesh be jus- 
 tified' (Gal. ii. 16). Here, on the other hand, James says, 
 ' Ye see how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith 
 only.' Now, believing, as we do, that the Bible is the Word 
 of God, — that though the subordinate human authorship was 
 various, yet the whole is the utterance of the one Divine Spirit, 
 — it necessarily follows that we cannot suppose any statements 
 in it to be really contradictory of each other. The existence 
 of such would plainly unsettle the whole basis of our faith. But 
 
VERS. 20-26.] Justifying Faith a Working Faith. 2 1 5 
 
 in His revelation of Himself to us in the Bible, just as in 
 His revelation of Himself in providence, God has not en- 
 tirely withheld difificulties. In both He offers a knowledge 
 of Himself, His character and will, to candid souls — to minds 
 and hearts that are willing to be fair and reasonable — that are 
 truly desirous to know Him, and therefore ready to read text 
 in connection with context. Such souls find the difficulties 
 helps to faith, not hindrances. ' It is one of the great beauties 
 of the Scriptures, that the sacred writers, in the calm con- 
 sciousness of truth, in the use of popular as distinguished 
 from philosophical language, affirm and deny the same verbal 
 proposition, assured that the consistency and intent of their 
 statements will make their way to the heart and conscience.' '^ 
 
 Seeing that there is a ^{^'j^^l opp^'^i'']'^''' between the state- 
 ments of Paul and James, we must look for the reconciliation 
 either in the employment by the writers of the sa me word s in 
 somewhat diffisrentsensgs, or in their contemplating the matter 
 under discussion from different points of._y iew, or perhaps 
 partly in the one and partly in the other. Some interpreters 
 find the solution of the difficulty in a twofold use of the word 
 'justify;' holding that, whilst Paul undoubtedly speaks of 
 the act of God's free grace in which a sinner is accepted 
 as righteous in His sight, James uses the word to designate 
 what takes place when a man is to himself or those around 
 him proved or shown to have been thus accepted by God, 
 which is done by the consistent holiness of his life. The 
 one is actual — a justification of the man ; the other is declara- 
 tive — a justification of the vad.vi'?, faith. But, according to this 
 view, the latter part of the twenty-fourth verse could scarcely 
 have any meaning ; for if the apostle's reference be not to a 
 justification of the man before God, but to a justification or 
 attestation of his faith to his own judgment or that of others, 
 what satisfactory sense could be attached to the statement, 
 that ' a man (that is, on this view, a man's faith) is justified 
 by works, and not by faith only ? ' Other expositors believe 
 the solution of the difficulty to be found in the supposition, 
 ^ Dr. Hodge, on i Cor. viii. i. 
 
2i6 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 not of a dififerent use of words, but of a jjifferent point oi 
 view . This opinion appears to me the true one. I cannot 
 but think that the ' justification ' of which our apostle speaks 
 is acceptance before God ; while there is perhaps also, but 
 quite in a subsidiary way, a lively reference in his mind to the 
 attestation of this justification to the individual himself — the 
 witness of the Spirit that he is a child of God. The verses 
 before us are, beyond a doubt, as it seems to me, intended as 
 an illustration of the point raised in the fourteenth verse, the 
 first verse of this paragraph, 'Can his faith save him?' — which, 
 again, stands in closest connection with the truth exhibited in 
 the twelfth and thirteenth verses, that * we should live as those 
 who are to be judged.' The course of the argument there- 
 fore requires that the 'justification ' be taken as substantially 
 equivalent to ' being saved^ — as the justification which will be 
 of supreme moment when we come to be '■judged^ 
 i It is important to remember that the apostolic epistles are 
 
 I not, in the technical use of the phrase, ' confessions of faith,' — 
 not systematic bodies of divinity built up with passionless 
 (exactness, — but effusions warm from the hearts of men glowing 
 .iwith zeal for souls, and who warn, teach, plead with their 
 I fellow-men in their letters, just as they did in their sermons, in 
 forms varying according to the particular requirements of those 
 they addressed. Paul, and Peter, and James, are not geogra- 
 ' phers seated on a hill-top, quietly mapping out the features of 
 the country round, but soldiers in intense earnest fighting on 
 the plain for the honour of their Lord, captains marshalling 
 their troops of arguments and appeals against various mani- 
 Ijfestations of error and sin. The form of their line is of neces- 
 |l sity constantly regulated in great measure by the form of that 
 I -of the enemy; and sometimes, in the progress of the fight, two 
 i of the Lord's captains, with their bands, might seem to a spec- 
 || tator at a distance as if they were facing each other in opposi- 
 |] tion ; but looking more closely, we find that in truth there is 
 l' an enemy between, whom they are assailing, — the one in front, 
 and the other in rear. The case before us is somewhat of this 
 kind. In the passages quoted above from the Epistles to the 
 
VERS. 20-26.] y testifying Faith a Working Faith. 2 1 7 
 
 Romans and the Galatians, and indeed in a great part of his 
 writings, Paul opposes kgalisjn, or self-righteousness, — the error 
 of those who, under various disguises of their real position, 
 ding to the covenant of works, and are disposed to trust 
 wholly or partially to their earni?ig heaven by holiness. To 
 these foolish dreamers Paul exhibits the glorious truth, that 
 justification is of grace through faith. James, on the other 
 hand, in the paragraph before us, and more or less obviously 
 and directly throughout the whole Epistle, opposes antiiiomian- 
 isiii, — the error of those who theoretically, or in far greater 
 numbers practically, without defined views on the subject, put 
 holiness of life aside, as if assent to the truths of the gospel, or 
 a conviction that they are certainly Christians, released them 
 from the obligation to live ' soberly, righteously, and godly.' ^ 
 
 The full doctrine of Scripture on the subject under dis- 
 cussion is, that a sinner is justified not on the ground of 
 anything in his personal character, but by divine grace, solely 
 through faith in Jesus Christ, — such faith, however, as 'worketh 
 by love,' and is thus a ' victory overcoming the world,' — a 
 potent principle, revealing its energy in producing devotion 
 of life to the service of God. In the writings both of Paul 
 and James there is evidence that each of them held and 
 taught the whole of this doctrine in its integrity; but, from 
 the nature of the error most prevalent and clamant among 
 those whom respectively they had immediately in view, Paul 
 specially maintains the first part of the truth, James specially 
 
 ' Dr. Lightfoot, in a long note on 'The faith of Abraham,' in his Com- 
 mentary on Galatians (pp. 156-162), gives some interesting and valuable 
 information regarding the rabbinical discussions on that subject. He shows 
 that Gen. xv. 6 ' was a common thesis in the schools of the day ' (the age 
 of Paul and James), and that ' the meaning oi faith was variously explained, 
 and diverse lessons drawn from it. ' A Christian apostle and a rabbi ' might 
 both maintain the supremacy of faith as the means of salvation ; but faith 
 with St. Paul was a very different thing from faith with Maimonides, for 
 instance. With the one its prominent idea is a spiritical life ; with the 
 other, an orthodox creed: with the one, faith is allied to liberty ; with the 
 other, to bondage ' — the bondage of subjection to an external rule of ordi- 
 nances. It is to be remembered that James's readers had been brought up 
 under rabbinical teaching. 
 
 1 
 
+- 
 
 2 18 Lechires on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 the second. Or, putting it in another form : To those who, 
 being * ignorant and out of the way,' ask, ' What must we 
 do to be saved?' Paul answers, 'Believe — have faith — in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and ye shall be saved.' To those who, 
 knowing this, and professing to rest their hopes on it, ask, * Is 
 all faith saving ; and if not, how shall we ascertain Avhether 
 our faith is ? ' James replies, ' Faith without works is dead.' 
 To unbelievers in Christ, Paul says, ' Ye can be justified only 
 through faith ; your best works, apart from faith, are dead 
 tuorks.^ To professed believers in Christ, James says, ' If ye 
 have not the works of faith, then ye are not justified : a faith 
 which is alone — which has no Works — is 2. dead faith ^ Both 
 apostles teach that true spiritual life is found always and only 
 ||vvhere faith reigns in the soul, and reveals its power in the life. 
 ■Rightly understood, understood according to the drift of the 
 'context and the general spirit of his Epistle, this passage of 
 James no more makes justification dependent on works as 
 its meritorious ground, than the teaching of Paul connects it 
 with an inoperative faith — a barren, uninterested assent to 
 truth. ' Oh, it is a living, quick, mighty thing this faith,' says 
 , Luther in his preface to the Epistle to the Romans ;^ ' so that 
 ; it is impossible but that it should do all good things without 
 intermission. It does not ask whether good works are to be 
 done ; but before the question could be asked it does them, and 
 I is always doing them. He who does not these good works is 
 a man without faith ; he is looking about him for faith and 
 good works, but knows neither the one nor the other : all his 
 words about them are idle babbling. Faith is a living confi- 
 dence in the grace of God, — so confident, that it would die a 
 thousand deaths in reliance on it. And this confidence and 
 ; knowledge of the grace of God make the heart merry and alert 
 ' towards God and all His creatures. Hence man is free without 
 force to do what is right, to serve every one, to bear all suffer- 
 • ings, out of love to God and in His praise, who hath shown him 
 ! such grace. Yea, it is impossible to separate wo?'ks from faith — 
 1 as impossible as to separate burning and shining from fire.' 
 ' Quoted by Stier. 
 
. VER. 20.] ytistifyhig Faith a Working Faith. 219 
 
 James has already illustrated in various ways the truth which 
 he wishes to impress on his readers — that of the operative, 
 fruit-bearing nature of saving faith. In the present paragraph 
 he illustrates it by instances. These are introduced by a stem 
 and searching question addressed to the professing Christian 
 who believes in the sufficiency of a barren faith. With deep 
 solemnity and loving severity, the apostle, in the very form ot 
 address he employs, exhibits to the man his true condition 
 before God : he was a ' vain man ' — ' utterly empty, destitute 
 alike of vital religion and of good sense.' Then he asks him, 
 ' Wilt thou knozii that faith without works is dead V The ' Wilt 
 thou'' has its full significance — 'Art thou willing?' It was here 
 that the real difficulty lay, not in any obscurity of the subject. 
 * If any man be 7villi/ig to do God's will, he shall know of the 
 doctrine, whether it be of God;' but those who are unwilling 
 to do are unwilling to know, for they 'love darkness rather 
 than light, because their deeds are evil.' The force of this 
 twentieth verse, in connection with what follows, is obviously 
 this : ' If you have a willingness to know, then listen, and you 
 will hear irresistible evidence.' You observe, then, that what 
 follows is plainly meant to prove the proposition stated in this 
 verse, that 'faith without works is dead,'^ — which indeed we 
 find repeated at the close of the argument in express terms, as 
 the sum of the whole matter : ' For as the body without the 
 spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.' 
 
 The nature of the argument now brought forward I appre- 
 hend to be this : ' Let us look at any of the cases of piety 
 mentioned in Scripture, and which we are in the habit of 
 referring to as illustrations of justification by faith, and you 
 will find that in all of them the faith was operative.' Both of 
 the cases that are here cited are mentioned also in the 
 catalogue of the eminent for faith contained in the eleventh 
 chapter of Hebrews, which is no doubt simply a reduction 
 to writing of instances that were often brought up in preach- 
 ing, especially to congregations of Jews. The first example 
 
 1 In regard to the meaning of the well-supported reading u.pyh, for nxfu, 
 see the Notes on the Greek Text. 
 
2 20 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 adduced by James is naturally that of Abraham, ' the father 
 of all them that believe,' the representative man of faith. 
 Now, asks the apostle triumphantly, 'was not he whom we 
 Jews proudly and affectionately call our father, the great 
 founder of our race, justified by works^ loJien he offered Isaac 
 his soil 7i_pon the altar V He puts the matter first in a general 
 form, ^hy works^ and then specifies the one 'work' in the 
 patriarch's history which all readers of his life would at once 
 single out as the pre-eminent evidence of his devotion to the 
 will of God, — his offering Isaac on the altar, — a sacrifice com- 
 pleted, so far as the father's entire subjugation of self-will was 
 concerned, and arrested only by the divine command. 
 
 This statement in the twenty-first verse (for statement it 
 obviously is, though expressed interrogatively) does not con- 
 tain the whole argument; and in order to understand this part 
 correctly, we must look at what follows, and then come back to 
 it. The proposition, you remember, which the example has 
 been adduced to support, is that ' faith without works is dead ;' 
 or, which is the same thing, and the aspect looked at in the 
 examples, that ' all living faith has works.' In the twenty-first 
 verse Abraham's ' works ' have been mentioned, and one of 
 them specified. In the two verses that follow, James goes on 
 to show the connection of '' faith ' with these ' works.' ' Seest 
 thoti^ (rather, perhaps, as in the margin, ' thou seest') ^ that 
 faith 7vroiight with his works, ^ — prompting, operating on and 
 by them. ' Whenever you seek for Abraham's faith, you find 
 it at tvork ; and, on the other hand, whenever you contemplate 
 his works, and ask for the principle producing them, you find 
 that to be /d!////.' '■And hy the works the faith was viade per- 
 fect^ — that is, either simply ' was exhibited in glorious fulness ' 
 (as when Jesus says to Paul, ' My strength is viade perfect in 
 weakness ' — 2 Cor. xii. 9), or ' attained its legitimate develop- 
 ment or completion.' The meaning is not that works supply 
 anything defective in the grace of faith itself, but that they 
 reveal it in its fulness of wealth and beauty, as by the leaves 
 and fruit a tree is made perfect. 
 
 The passage which, in the twenty-third verse, James quotes 
 
VER. 23.] y ustifyiiig Faith a Working Faith. 221 
 
 from the Old Testament (Gen. xv. 6), is expressly cited by 
 Paul both in the Epistle to the Romans (iv. 3) and in that to 
 the Galatians (iii. 6), as a most distinct and explicit statement of 
 the doctrine of Just if cation by faith alone ; the exact force of the 
 words probably being this : 'Abraham believed God, and it (his 
 faith) was reckoned to him unto (that is, so as — not meritoriously, 
 but instrumentally — to bring into) justification.'^ Abraham had 
 ' believed God,' and through his faith been justified, long before 
 the wonderful transaction in the land of Moriah ; and, indeed, 
 the words quoted here from Genesis have reference, in their 
 original application, to an incident that occurred many years 
 before that. When our apostle, then, says that at the offering 
 up of Isaac (for obviously of it he is still speaking) this ' scrip- 
 ture tvas fitlflkd,' the meaning must be, that the faith which 
 had been 'imputed to Abraham for righteousness' long before, 
 and also God's approval of that faith, were exhibited with 
 special fulness and clearness. God's justifying act introduces the 
 believer into a justified state, in which he is ' kept by the power 
 of God through faith ' (the same faith by which he was brought 
 into the state) ' unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last 
 time.' The patriarch's perseverance, then, in justifying faith 
 was signally illustrated in his wiUingness to offer up his son at 
 God's command ; and the divine approval of it — the fact ot 
 its being ' imputed to him for righteousness' — was also most 
 distinctly attested on the same occasion : for ' the angel of the 
 Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Now I know 
 that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, 
 thine only son, from Me ; and because thou hast done this 
 thing, in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will 
 multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven ; and in thy seed 
 shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast 
 obeyed My voice.' 
 
 • As a further evidence of God's approval of the faith that 
 ' wrought with Abraham's works,' and which exhibited itself 
 in such glorious strength under the terrible test, James pro- 
 
 ^ Compare the use of in '^inu.iotvvny in Rom. x. lo ; and see Hodge's 
 exhaustive note on Rom. iv. 3. 
 
22 2 Lectures' on the Epistle of yames. [ch. ii. 
 
 ceeds to recal to the minds of his readers the closeness and 
 dignity of the patriarch's relation to God, shown by the fact — 
 one which ' the twelve tribes scattered abroad ' knew well 
 and' delighted in — that their great father '■ %uas called'' (that 
 is, according to the constant Scripture usfe of the expression, 
 ' was, and was acknowledged to be') ' the Friend of GodH This 
 name, which Isaiah has in a well-known passage, where God 
 says, ' Thou, Israel, art My servant, Jacob whom I have 
 chosen, the seed of Abraham My friend' (Isa. xli. 8), was a 
 favourite designation for Abraham with the Jewish Rabbis, 
 and became, indeed, so current in the East, that now in the 
 Mohammedan countries, ' El- Khulil- Allah' (the friend of God), 
 or more usually simply ' El-Khulil' (the friend), has superseded 
 altogether his proper name.^ 
 
 Now, gathering up the apostle's statements regarding Abra- 
 ham, what we find, as you observe, is simply this, that his 
 faith was operative, and specially showed its power in that 
 amazing work of self-sacrifice in the land of Moriah. No 
 other principle, indeed, could have triumphed over the appeals 
 of natural affection, carnal reason, and seeming self-interest, as 
 faith on that occasion so completely did. Works were the 
 flower or fruit of his faith; and at the altar in, Moriah that 
 scripture obtained a most striking fulfilment or verification, 
 which says that Abraham lu as justified through faith. ^Vhen, in 
 the light of these statements, then, we look back to that made 
 in the twenty-first verse, that '■Abraham was justified by works, ^ 
 what can it mean, but that by the faith which showed itself in 
 his works he was justified, — the works being regarded not as 
 in any degree meritorious, but simply as the evidence of a real 
 and vital faith 1 If this be not the sense, then what follows, 
 and particularly the citation in the twenty-third verse, is wholly 
 irrelevant and meaningless. 
 
 In the twenty-fourth verse James states the inference to be 
 drawn concerning the subject in hand from these reasonings 
 on the case of Abraham : ' Ye see how that by works a man is 
 
 ' This is now the name in ordinary use for Hebron, the town with which, 
 in life and death, Abraham was so closely connected. 
 
VER. 24-] y^istifying Faith a Working Faith. 223 
 
 justified^ and not by faith only.'' By this he means, that, in con- 
 sidering our relations to God and prospects for eternity, we 
 should not be contented if we see in our minds some such 
 assent to divine truth as in a liberal use of the word may be 
 called faith, but should carefully examine whether it be an 
 operative, fruit-bearing belief; for only this is saving faith. 
 Startling and unevangelical as the words of the apostle here 
 seem to be, taken by themselves, no one who has candidly 
 and intelligently followed the train of his argument can be 
 misled as to his meaning, or as to the perfect harmony be- 
 tween his teaching and that of the Apostle Paul. There can 
 be no question that the great cardinal doctrine that justification 
 is by faith alone, was well known and, professedly at least, 
 fully received by the readers of this Epistle, as by all others 
 of the primitive Christians ; and that it could never enter their 
 minds for one moment, that James or any of the apostles 
 entertained the slightest doubt of its being the very truth of 
 God, Differences of opinion and practice on some points there 
 might be among the first teachers of Christianity ; but no in- 
 spired servant of Him who summed up His gospel in the words, 
 * God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, 
 that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have ever- 
 lasting life^ could for an instant be held to doubt that salvation 
 is through faith alone. That the full theological expression 
 'justification by faith' was current in its well-defined sense at 
 a very early period in the history of the church, too, is shown 
 by the language which, in the Epistle to the Galatians, in a 
 passage partly quoted near the beginning of this lecture, Paul 
 declares himself to have addressed to Peter at Antioch : ' We 
 who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, 
 knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, 
 but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in 
 Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, 
 and not by the works of the law ; for by the works of the law 
 shall no flesh be justified' (Gal. ii. 15, 16). Under these cir- 
 cumstances, our apostle could, without danger of misleading 
 his readers, throw his statement of most important truth into 
 
224 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 the form which he has here given it. He could with safety- 
 expose a deplorable abuse of the doctrine of justification by 
 faith alone, and exhibit the nature of saving faith, in a way 
 which, by its seeming at first sight to contradict the doctrine, 
 would lay hold of men's memories and excite them to thought. 
 The apparent opposition and real harmony between the 
 declarations of James and Paul may be illustrated by an 
 analogy. Suppose a thunderstorm, by which lives and pro- 
 perty have been destroyed, and that an intelligent child in the 
 desolated district, whose ears had been stunned by the peals 
 of thunder, and his eyes dazzled with the glare of the light- 
 ning, should ask a friend, * Was it the thunder or the lightning 
 that caused the destruction?' The answer would be, that 
 'terrible as the noise of the thunder is, yet the destruction is 
 caused by lightning alone, without the thunder.'' But if the further 
 question be proposed, 'Is a// lightning of a destructive kind?' 
 then the answer will be, * No ; destruction is not caused by light- 
 ning alone, without thunder^ — the noiseless 'summer lightning,' 
 as it is sometimes called, which we often see playing near us 
 in sheets of flame at the close of a sultry day, being harmless. 
 The two answers, when we look at them simply as isolated 
 statements, flatly contradict each other, you observe ; but when 
 we regard them in connection with the respective questions 
 that elicited them, they are both true, and both fitted to help 
 the inquirer to a full view of the subject in which he is in- 
 terested. Similarly, to him who asks, ' Is it faith that justifies, 
 or works ?' Paul replies, * Faith alone justifies, without works.' 
 , To him who, knowing and believing this, asks further, ' But 
 ' does all faith justify?' James answers, 'Faith alone, without 
 works, does Jiot justify,' — for an inoperative faith is dead, 
 powerless, unprofitable. Both statements, looked at in con- 
 nection with the questions they are respectively meant to 
 answer, are true, and both of vast importance. Faith alone 
 justifies, but not the faith which is aloiie.^ 
 
 ^ The illustration given in this paragraph is simply an amplification of a 
 hint contained in a letter of the late Rev. Frederick Robertson of Brighton, 
 printed in his Life (vol. ii. p. 64). 
 
VER. 25-] yiLstifying Faith a Working Faith. 225 
 
 Our apostle proceeds to bring forward another instance of 
 justifying faith, and to show that in that case too the faith pro- 
 duced works. As has been already mentioned, Rahab is one 
 of the heroines of faith commemorated in Hebrews ; and it is 
 probable, therefore, that her case was one not unfrequently 
 cited in the discussions of the Jews regarding the nature and 
 power of this grace. James's object in here referring to it 
 in particular is not far to seek, and is suggested indeed in 
 the original by an introductory particle marking slight con- 
 trast, which our translators have not rendered. The position 
 which the apostle is maintaining is, that all justifying faith is 
 operative ; and it is plain that the wider the range of classes 
 represented by his illustrative instances, the more effective is 
 his argument. Now, no persons could well be further apart 
 in everything except their faith than Abraham, the illustrious 
 father of God's chosen race, and poor, ignorant Rahab, brought 
 up in the midst of heathenism, and actually at one time living 
 a life of immorality. If genuine justifying faith bore in her 
 as well as in Abraham the fruit of good works suitable to her 
 circumstances, then it may fairly be concluded (these persons 
 representing the extremes) that the faith of all the justified is 
 fruit-bearing. Rahab, in Jericho, pondering the reports that 
 had reached her of the character and doings of the God of 
 Israel, had come through the teaching of His Spirit to have 
 faith in Him, — ^justifying faith, our inspired writer tells us, — 
 faith, the approval of which by God was evinced in His rais- 
 ing her to a position of dignity in Israel, and giving her the 
 lofty honour of being an ancestress of the Messiah. Now her 
 faith, like Abraham's, had very manifest visible effects. She 
 ' received'' Joshua's messengers kindly, because they were ser- 
 vants of the God of Israel. She exerted herself, too, at much 
 personal risk, to deliver them from the danger to which they 
 were exposed in a hostile city, ' sending them out ' with urgency, 
 in deep anxiety for their safety,^ — and this by ' another 7vay,' 
 showing her heartiness and her inventiveness in the cause of 
 Israel by not leaving the men to the hazard of an attempt to 
 
 ' Urgency is implied in the original word translated ' sent out. ' 
 P 
 
226 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. ii. 
 
 pass out through the well-guarded city gate, by which they had 
 come in, but letting them down from her window, which over- 
 hung the wall. All justifying faith, then, we see, in whatever 
 class of persons it is found, produces works, varying in kind 
 according to circumstances, but all expressive of love to God, 
 and trust in Him. 
 
 From the nature of the case — from the nature of God, and 
 man, and salvation — it must be so : '■for as the body without the 
 spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.' James here 
 closes his discussion of the great subject by repeating, as now 
 conclusively demonstrated, the proposition with which in the 
 twentieth verse this section began. The form of his compari- 
 son somewhat startles us, habituated as we are to think of 
 faith as the spirit or animating principle of religion, and godly 
 works as the body. But, as you will remember, throughout 
 the whole disquisition from the fourteenth verse, the term 
 ' faith ' has been taken in a very wide sense, as including any 
 measure of assent to divine truth, from the barest and coldest 
 to the most intense and influential ; and the persons for whose 
 benefit mainly the apostle's observations have been intended 
 were such as the man spoken of in the fourteenth verse, who 
 * said he had faith, but had not works.' Naturally enough, 
 then, in the image before us, fai^j, thought of as the holding 
 and professing of a creed, is •rep.re.seuied as a ' body,\ which 
 ^ without the spirit' of loye, and trust, and obedience, 'is dead.' 
 Strictly speaking, you observe, the ' spirit ' is not ' works ' them- 
 selves, but rather the principle in the soul, the energetic con- 
 victions and affections, by which ' works ' are produced ; but 
 the apostle, to bring his argument home, adheres to the term 
 that he has employed throughout the discussion, the sense 
 being sufliciently clear. The solemn and impressive state- 
 ment made in this verse very fittingly winds up this great 
 argument. No one who has honestly and thoughtfully fol- 
 lowed it can entertain any doubt that the only faith which 
 can be pleasing to God is such a profound and influential 
 belief of His truth as reveals its presence in the soul by moral 
 beauty and earnest devotedness in the outward life. A sup- 
 
VER. 26.] y testifying Faith a Working Faith, 227 
 
 posed and professed faith which has no such results is a dead 
 thing; and only where there is spiritual life in God's moral 
 creatures, can He regard them with complacency. An inopera- 
 tive faith is a corpse passing to corruption — utterly loathsome 
 in His sight. 
 
2 28 . Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iii. 
 
 XV. 
 
 RESPONSIBILITY OF TEACHERS. 
 
 ' My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the 
 greater condemnation. 2 For in many things we offend all. If any 
 man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to 
 bridle the whole body.' — ^James in. I, 2. 
 
 IN this chapter the apostle discusses the sins of the tongue, — 
 a new subject, but one naturally arising out of the pre- 
 ceding. Whenever mere adherence to a creed becomes the 
 matter mainly regarded among a body of professing Christians, 
 and the influence of the creed on heart and life sinks almost 
 out of view, — whenever questions of orthodoxy, however im- 
 portant in themselves, exclude vital religion from the fore- 
 ground of thought, — talk on points of doctrine and church 
 procedure will superabound, and, through the absence or 
 feebleness of Christian love, will lead to bitter wrangling and 
 many forms of sin. The history of the church affords a multi- 
 tude of illustrations of this tendency. Many of the Jewish 
 Christians to whom James wrote, no doubt brought with them 
 into their Christianity much Pharisaic leaven received from 
 their training in Judaism. Among them, consequently, one 
 can easily suppose the tendency I have mentioned to have 
 been peculiarly strong ; and from the apostle's tone it is 
 obvious that, in fact, it had shown itself to a considerable 
 extent James's strong feeling on the subject of religious 
 wranglings has already spoken out again and again : ' My 
 beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to 
 speak, slow to wrath ; ' ' If any man among you seem to be 
 religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own 
 heart, this man's religion is vain' (i. 19, 26). In this chapter. 
 
VER. I.] Responsibility of Teachers. 229 
 
 however, he takes up the subject more fully, and by touching 
 on the dangers connected with over-fondness for talk on reli- 
 gious matters, is led to enlarge on the sins of the tongue 
 generally. 
 
 He begins his remarks with the advice, ' My brethren, he not 
 many masters!' It is not improbable that, from the ambiguity 
 of the English word ' master^ some of you have failed to attach 
 a definite sense to these words, or perhaps have attached a 
 wrong one. The radical idea of the word is that of superiority 
 and government; but in the particular relations of an instructor, 
 the 'master' of a school, to his pupils, the idea of teaching 
 becomes the most prominent. Very often in the New Testa- 
 ment the word has this special meaning, as when Jesus is 
 addressed as ' Master,' when Nicodemus is spoken of as 'a 
 master of Israel,' and the like. In these cases the word in the 
 original means simply ' teacher,' not a master as contrasted 
 with a servant or slave. So also in the passage before us the 
 reference is not (immediately at least) to lordship over others — . 
 to conduct and character like that of Diotrephes, who ' loved 
 to have the pre-eminence ' (3 John 9) — but simply to teaching. 
 James's injunction is, ' Be not many of yon teachers^ or, accord- 
 ing to the force of the rendering in our authorized version, 
 * Be not (each congregation of you) a mnltitude of teachers 
 (instead of learners).' It is not easy to decide which of the 
 two renderings brings out the exact shade of meaning in- 
 tended. 
 
 As I have had occasion to mention in a previous lecture, we 
 gather from various statements in the apostoHc writings, that in 
 the first age the public religious services of the church were to 
 some extent of a conversational character. From the begin- 
 ning the apostles gave the churches a regular organization, 
 ordaining elders, on whom (and particularly on one or more of 
 them whose gifts seemed specially to qualify them for * labouring 
 in the word and doctrine ' as well as ruling) rested mainly the 
 duty of conducting public worship and instructing the congre- 
 gation ; but, at the same time, an opportunity was freely given 
 for exposition or exhortation by other members. * Despise not 
 
230 Lecttires on the Epistle of y antes, [ch. hi. 
 
 prophesyings,' is an instruction given by Paul to his spiritual 
 children at Thessalonica ; and we cannot doubt that, so long 
 as extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost for prophesying and 
 other modes of benefiting the brethren were bestowed on be- 
 lievers, the system of free converse in the public assemblies 
 was on the whole advantageous. It is evident, however, that 
 even then it offered to many a strong temptation to display 
 and disputatiousness; and gradually everywhere, the miraculous 
 gifts ceasing, it was found needful to introduce the system which 
 has ever since prevailed in the church. James's advice in the ''-f 
 words before us, then, — an advice plainly implying that serious 
 abuses of the privilege of free speech in the meetings of the 
 church already existed, — is that his readers should not in great 
 numbers press forward as exhorters and instructors in the 
 public assemblies of the brethren. There were grave spiritual 
 hazards connected with this, even where men had considerable 
 religious knowledge ; and for very many the proper place was 
 manifestly that of learners, not teachers. 
 
 From the mode in which the public services of religion are 
 generally conducted in the church now, our apostle's advice to 
 the congregations of his time is not usually, with exactly its 
 original reference, applicable to a modern congregation. With 
 regard to these public services, however, in the form in which 
 we have them, the spirit of the injunction might not unfaith- 
 fully, I think, be given thus : ' Cultivate a teachable and impres- 
 sible disposition, — a disposition to seek spiritual good rather 
 than to criticise.' But observe what I mean by ' criticise.' 
 Every minister whose heart is in his work, and who has sound 
 ideas regarding the objects of the work, and the way in which 
 these are to be gained, delights in an intelligent congregation, 
 attentive and thoughtful, disposed to weigh all that he says to 
 them for themselves, bringing it all to the touchstone of ' the 
 law and the testimony.' It is truly mournful that so many 
 members and adherents of Christian churches seem to throw 
 away upon the world all the understanding God has given 
 them ; so that, while thoughtful and inquiring among their 
 goods and merchandise, shrewd and penetrating, taking nothing 
 
VER. I.] Responsibility of Teachers. 231 
 
 on trust, but sifting carefully everything that concerns their 
 secular prosperity, they put their minds to sleep when they 
 open their Bibles or enter the sanctuary. In saying that the 
 spirit of the apostle's advice here may partly be represented 
 by ' My brethren, be not a multitude of critics,' I am as far as 
 possible from referring to that criticism which is involved in 
 considerate, discriminative hearing of the word by candid and 
 right-hearted persons. Would that tlie Divine Head of the 
 church would make such criticism abound ! — for this is the 
 life of a congregation. Ay, and the knowledge, too, that there 
 are among one's flock members here and there who, from their 
 abilities and education, are qualified to analyse their minister's 
 arguments, or review for themselves his expositions, — this is 
 a most healthful stimulus to exertion, not unneeded at times 
 even by the most conscientious servant of God. 
 
 But there is another kind of criticism, very different in spirit 
 from that of which I have spoken, and wholly opposed to it in 
 tendency. The spiritual evil, or at least one prominent among 
 the evils, against which James's exhortation was directed, was, 
 no doubt, the indulgence of the pride of knowledge — of an arro- 
 gant conviction, very often in persons who were really extremely 
 ignorant and foolish, that they had no need to learn anything 
 from their brethren, but were fully equipped as teachers. Now 
 I am afraid that a carping and supercilious spirit, which, if 
 those who indulge it thought out the matter, they would find 
 to rest very much on the same basis, is far from uncommon in 
 our congregations. These people come to God's house not to 
 receive food for the mind and heart, but to judge composition, 
 and orthodoxy, and manner of delivery. They act rather as if 
 they were members of a court of examiners, trying a student's 
 qualifications for the ministry, than either as enlightened Chris- 
 tians or anxious inquirers after salvation, hearing for the good of 
 their souls the words of eternal life from their pastor and God's 
 servant. To a minister visiting a member of his congregation, 
 on whom the shadow of death had fallen, the dying man said, ' I 
 think, sir, the word of the Lord makes comparatively such little 
 way among church-goers mainly because so many hear sermons 
 
232 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 to criticise rather than to learn ; and so on the way home, or 
 during the Sabbath evening afterwards, if they speak on the 
 subject at all, it is far oftener about little matters connected 
 with the preaching, than about the truth declared as truth for 
 their hearts.' These words are weighty, I think — weighty with 
 such solemn truth as the shadow of death is calculated to bring 
 out into special vividness before the soul. 
 
 But looking to the form as well as the spirit ofthe apostle's 
 words, we find in them thus also very important instruction for 
 ourselves, no less than for the churches ofthe twelve tribes 
 scattered abroad,' to which they were primarily addressed. 
 We must not press his principle further than he himself, and 
 the Holy Ghost, speaking through him, intended it to go. 
 His meaning clearly is, that whenever in any Christian com- 
 munity a large proportion of the members give themselves to 
 teaching rather than learning, there is much reason to fear 
 that something is weak and wrong somewhere ; just as, in a 
 civil community, if a very great number of persons put them- 
 selves forward to act as magistrates, giving their time and 
 thoughts more to the regulation of the affairs of others than 
 to the regulation of their own, there would, beyond question, 
 be a good deal of unsatisfactory regulation, and much detri- 
 ment to the commonwealth in various ways. 
 
 Were the Apostle James living in our day, he would no doubt 
 remember and echo his Lord's words, who, 'when He saw the 
 multitudes, was moved with compassion on them, because they 
 fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shep- 
 herd. Then saith He unto His disciples. The harvest truly is 
 plenteous, but the labourers are few : Pray ye therefore the 
 Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His 
 harvest.' He would lament that, with unparalleled openings 
 among the nations for the extension of the gospel — with the 
 cry sounding out from every side in the ear of the church, 
 ' Come over and help us ' — still comparatively such a small 
 number of young men are found in our schools of theology 
 preparing for the work of the ministry. And he would seek 
 earnestly to impress on our Christian youth, that slight — in 
 
VER. I.] Responsibility of Teachers. 233 
 
 very many cases most miserably and inexcusably small —as are 
 the worldly inducements connected with the ministerial office, 
 and awfully solemn and weighty as are its responsibilities, yet 
 the work is in its nature incomparably the noblest of all work, 
 and the joys springing from the conscientious discharge of 
 its duties will certainly in the eternal world be peculiarly 
 lofty and sweet ; whilst even on earth, amid many things to 
 sadden and discourage a faithful minister, he has often com- 
 forts specially refreshing and cheering. Remembering, too, and 
 echoing Paul's injunction to 'all the saints in Christ Jesus 
 at Philippi' — the private members as well as the 'bishops 
 and deacons' — to ' shine as lights in the world, holding forth 
 the word of life,' and the command given by the Saviour in the 
 Apocalypse, ' Let him that heareth say, Come,' — James, were he 
 living now, would rejoice to see multitudes of believers, gifted 
 with discretion, and self-knowledge, and intimate acquaintance 
 with Scripture, teaching the ignorant, pleading with the way- 
 ward, or trying to instruct Christian brethren less enlightened 
 than themselves, at their homes, or in classes or meetings of 
 various kinds. In regard to labour of this sort by Christians 
 of this sort, James would say, as Moses did when Eldad and 
 Medad prophesied in the camp, 'Would God that all the 
 Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His 
 Spirit upon them ! ' 
 
 Yet, while all this is true, and truth which it is of the 
 highest importance for us all to bear in mind, still, on the 
 other hand, the Divine Spirit says to us through our apostle, 
 * My brethren, be not many masters.' There are most serious 
 spiritual dangers connected with the rash assumption of the 
 position of a religious teacher, — dangers both for the per- 
 sons themselves who take the position, and for those whom 
 they undertake to instruct. This is a fact which needs to be 
 borne in mind particularly in seasons of religious excitement. 
 At such times num.bers of young and inexperienced converts, 
 in the ardour of their first love to their Saviour (a flame, as 
 Dr. Wardlaw well observes, 'usually blended with more or 
 less of smoke '), are impelled by their feelings to come forward 
 
234 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 into considerable prominence as 'masters of Israel;' and in 
 cases of this kind, — the ballast to the moral nature that Christian 
 experience supplies being wanting, in many instances also that 
 which is afforded by a good general education, — little religious 
 knowledge showing itself, and perhaps less prudence, — there is 
 obviously very great peril that the teacher may be puffed up 
 into a most arrogant and foolish self-confidence, that his pupils 
 may be miserably ill-taught, or indeed, simply through their 
 master's ignorance, seriously misled, and that in various ways 
 no little occasion may be given to the enemies of the Lord to 
 blaspheme. 
 
 Both sides of the truth on this subject need to be care- 
 fully pondered by us, brethren : on the one hand, the clear 
 injunction, ' Let him that heareth say. Come ;' and on the 
 other, the no less clear injunction, ' Be not many masters,' 
 The decision in regard to each Christian's immediate duty 
 must be left to his own judgment, through which, if he candidly 
 weigh the matter, and pray for God's guidance, the Spirit will 
 give him light. But this one general principle, at all events, 
 will, I apprehend, be in all cases a safe one, — that no person 
 is called upon to become in any formal way a ' master ' until, 
 for a considerable time and with considerable success, he has 
 been a learner. 
 
 James supports his injunction by a very solemn and impres- 
 sive argument : ' Knowing that we shall receive the greater con- 
 demnation.^ Teachers have a specially heavy responsibility. 
 The universal principle in God's dealings with His moral 
 creatures is, that according to the measure of opportunity is 
 the measure of responsibility. Now the office of a religious 
 teacher is necessarily one of considerable influence, and con- 
 sequently of proportional responsibility for the exercise of the 
 influence. Truth is God's instrument for quickening, comfort- 
 ing, and sanctifying men ; and hence, when one who is looked 
 to as an instructor fails ' rightly to divide the word of truth,' 
 others, many perhaps, are led astray by him, and thus withheld 
 to some extent from experiencing the blessed power of the 
 gospel. In many cases this may be done through culpable 
 
VER. I.] Responsibility of Teachers. 235 
 
 ignorance merely ; but there are strong temptations also at 
 times, through motives of worldly interest, to conceal or slur 
 over some portions of the divine testimony. How incalculable 
 is the evil that may thus be wrought ! The deviation from the 
 King's highway of truth may seem very slight, yet some hearers 
 of this teaching may, by temperament or circumstances, be 
 induced, to follow the divergent path right on, every step carry- 
 ing them further from the way of peace, until ' their feet 
 stumble upon the dark mountains.' In olden days in Canaan, 
 had a man, fleeing to a city of refuge, been misdirected with 
 regard to the road by one who professed to know it, and been 
 therefore overtaken by the avenger of blood, and slain, what a 
 heavy burden of responsibility would have rested on the head 
 of the misleading guide ! How, then, shall we estimate the 
 awfulness of the guilt contracted in giving misleading direc- 
 tions to a soul anxious to flee from the wrath to come ! Twice 
 in the prophecies of Ezekiel have we the solemn warning : 
 ' Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of 
 Israel : therefore hear the word at My mouth, and give them 
 warning from Me. When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt 
 surely die, and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to 
 warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life, the same 
 wicked man shall die in his iniquity : but his blood will I re- 
 quire at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn 
 not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die 
 in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.' And you 
 remember Paul's declaration before the elders of Ephesus 
 regarding his ministry among them : ' I take you to record 
 this day that I am pure from the blood of all men ; for I have 
 not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God ;' 
 implying that in the New Testament church he felt the same 
 blood-guiltiness, the guilt of the death of souls, to rest on an 
 unfaithful minister. 
 
 You will observe, however, that the apostle's words are not 
 * greater responsibility,' but ' greater co7ide7n7iation^ It is true, 
 indeed, that the strict meaning of the term employed in the 
 original is 'judgment,' which our translators give in the margin 
 
236 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes, [ch. hi. 
 
 as an alternative rendering ; but New Testament usage leaves 
 no room for doubt that where the word is connected, as here, 
 with ' receive,' a condemnatory judgment is intended. Some 
 interpreters take ^ condemnatioit' here in a very wide sense, 
 including not merely the doom of the lost, appointment to 
 positive suffering, but also deprivation of the highest rewards 
 of grace, — as in the case of the man in the parable, who, having 
 with his pound earned five pounds, was made ruler of only five 
 cities, while his neighbour, who with his pound had earned 
 ten pounds, obtained from his gracious master the dominion 
 of ten cities ; or of those teachers of whom Paul speaks in 
 the third chapter of First Corinthians, who, having built on 
 the one foundation, Jesus Christ, are saved, but having through 
 culpable ignorance and folly built into the wall of the temple 
 
 * wood, and hay, and stubble,' see their work burned, and thus 
 suffer loss, and are themselves saved only like persons dragged 
 
 * through fire.' On this view, the logical connection between 
 the clause before us and the next is immediate and perfect ; 
 thus : ' We who are teachers — all of us, apostles as well as 
 others — shall receive greater condemnation than those who in 
 positions of less influence err like us, — condenmation, I say, for 
 in many things we all offend.' Even the most faithful teacher, 
 the man who, ' having turned many to righteousness, shall shine 
 as the stars for ever and ever,' stands in regard to wisdom and 
 devotedness far below the position to which, had he used his 
 opportunities to the full, he might have attained, and ' in many 
 things offends.' This wide sense of * condemnation,' however, 
 does not seem to accord with Scripture usage, and indeed 
 appears to oppose itself to express Scripture teachings for ' there 
 is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus' — even 
 to those of them who are ' saved so as by fire.' The real 
 meaning and connection, I apprehend, may be thus exhibited : 
 
 * Knowing, as ye do or ought to do,^ that if we who are teachers 
 act unfaithfully, we shall receive greater condemnation than 
 others, — and condemnation, alas, is no impossible or even un- 
 
 ^ The ^knowing,'' being closely associated with the command, 'Be not 
 many masters,' may be held to have itself somewhat of an imperative force. 
 
VER. 2.] Responsibility of Teachers, 237 
 
 likely issue, for in many things we all offend.' The sternest 
 sentence will certainly be for him who not merely is himselt 
 without the wedding garment, but has by his teaching or his 
 example kept others out of the feast-chamber, or induced them 
 to enter without the wedding garment. The apostle's humility 
 leads him to class himself with the other teachers, in speaking 
 of their spiritual hazards (' we shall receive '), just as similarly, 
 through tenderness of conscience, he says in the ninth verse of 
 this chapter, ' With the tongue bless we God, and with the 
 tongue curse tue men.' 
 
 The proper meaning of the word ^offend,' which exactly 
 represents the term employed in the original, is to strike the 
 foot against some obstacle — ' to trip ' or ' stumble.' In the 
 metaphorical application the idea obviously is, that for the 
 exercise of all the powers which God has given us He has 
 appointed a way in which we should walk ; that is to say, 
 He has bestowed these powers upon us for certain ends ; and 
 to ' offend ' or stumble is simply to employ them for other 
 ends, or at least to fail to employ them for those appointed 
 by God. Now, ^ in many things we all offend.'' The ground 
 here pointed to by James for his assertion of the risk of 
 ' condemnation,' is one which will be recognised as valid by 
 all who either believe the Bible or know themselves. A man 
 who counts himself sinless simply illustrates the deceitfulness 
 of the heart ; for ' if we say that we have no sin, we deceive 
 ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' 
 
 To the argument derived from the universal weakness and 
 sinfulness of man our apostle appends another, founded on 
 the peculiarly great facility with which men fall into offences 
 of the tongue. ' If any man offend not in word, the same is a 
 perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.'' The exact 
 connection of these words with the preceding, and their argu- 
 mentative force, may be brought out thus : ' In many things 
 we all offend ; and to avoid offending with the tongue is pecu- 
 liarly difficult — so difficult, indeed, that it may safely be said, 
 that a man who has sufficient strength of principle and spiritual 
 vigilance to offend not in word, is able also to bridle the whole 
 
238 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 body. Now, in regard to speech, a person who occupies the 
 position of a teacher obviously has particularly great spiritual 
 dangers, seeing that so much of his work has to be done by 
 speaking ; that in prosecuting it he is liable to be drawn into 
 heated controversy ; and that from the prominence given him 
 by his office, the influence for evil upon others of his offences 
 of the tongue is likely to be great. Considering these things, 
 brethren, do not rashly assume this heavy responsibility.' But 
 whilst such appears to be the relation of the latter part of the 
 second verse to what goes before, the statement contained in 
 it is expressed in the widest form, and leads from the remarks 
 regarding teachers and their responsibilities into that most 
 interesting and impressive paragraph on the power and un- 
 tameableness of the tongue generally, which constitutes the 
 larger part of this chapter. 
 
 The essence of the passage, looked at in its logical relation 
 to the injunction in the first verse, is simply the truth that 
 ' it is extremely difficult to avoid sinning with the tongue ;' 
 but instead of putting it in this bald form, James supposes 
 the case of a man who is free from offences of this class, and 
 remarks that one who has reached this point of excellence is 
 '■perfect^ — the master of all his constitutional tendencies to 
 evil. To the moral power of a man who can govern his tongue 
 there are no limits. By 'perfect ' appears to be intended here, 
 as in the fourth verse of the first chapter, a maturity of reli- 
 gious life, a ripeness and richness of knowledge and character, 
 such as may be supposed to mark the full-grown man, as 
 contrasted with the babe in Christ. In the other passage just 
 referred to, it is explained by the added words, ' entire, want- 
 ing nothing ;' which teach us that whilst intensity, depth in the 
 action of religious principle and feeling, is implied, yet breadth 
 of range, the action of godliness over every department of our 
 inner being and our outward life, is also an essential element, 
 and in that passage the most prominent. Similarly, in the pre- 
 sent place, the explanation is appended, ^ able also to bridle 
 the whole body' The ^ and' which introduces this last clause 
 in our version is merely a supplement by the translators, and 
 
VER. 2.] Responsibility of Teachers, 239 
 
 the meaning would really be clearer without it. A ' perfect ' 
 man is one who, through the energies of his Christian prin- 
 ciple, can * bridle^ or hold in firm restraint, his ' lohole body^ 
 all its organs of voluntary action, and the propensities which 
 work in them, — one in whom not certain classes of passions 
 merely are duly governed, but the whole man, the whole life, 
 is regulated by religion. 
 
 To ' offend,' we have seen, is to employ our powers for 
 other ends than God has appointed, or at least to neglect 
 employing them for the appointed ends. Now the purposes 
 for which speech has been bestowed upon us are these : to 
 carry on the business of life, to minister to the needful mental 
 refreshment of ourselves and others, to help our fellow-men by 
 instruction, encouragement, and comfort, and (the highest use 
 of all) to praise God and hold direct communion with Him. 
 When speech is devoted to these ends in suitable proportions, 
 and to no other ends, there is freedom from ' offending in word.' 
 Addressing Christians as he is, one can hardly suppose that the 
 apostle, in here speaking of the extreme difficulty of avoiding 
 offences of the tongue, has mainly before his mind such gross 
 offences as profanity or deliberate calumny ; for sins like these 
 one can scarcely imagine committed by any one who has given 
 himself to the Saviour, at least except under circumstances 
 of the very strongest temptation. But however true this is 
 in regard to the grossest forms of sin of the tongue, yet even 
 for experienced Christians there is great hazard of falling 
 into many offences in ■ word, through the sudden temptations 
 that are continually emerging in the ordinary intercourse of 
 life. How often the fretting cares of business strike out the 
 sparks of angry words ! In our social gatherings for the solace 
 of life, how strong the temptation is frequently found to be to 
 argue for victory rather than for truth, to give interest and 
 pungency to conversation by running down the character of 
 absent acquaintances, to point a joke at the expense of per- 
 fect truthfulness, and in some society at the expense of perfect 
 purity or perfect reverence for the word of God ! If we were 
 candidly, before we retire to rest, after any day of lively inter- 
 
240 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iii. 
 
 course with our fellows, to look back, trying to recal what we 
 had said, and how we had said it, and surveying these in the 
 light shed by conscience and divine revelation on the proper 
 purposes of speech, would many of us have great satisfaction 
 in our review ? 
 
 One prominent cause of ' offences in word ' is undoubtedly 
 the tendency, which is very strong in the vast majority of 
 people, to speak much more than is needful or desirable. ' In 
 the multitude of words,' says the wise man, ' there wanteth 
 not sin ; but he that refraineth his lips is wise.' The exhorta- 
 tion given in the first chapter by our apostle, with particular 
 reference to religious discussions, is of great importance and 
 value for the intercourse of life generally : ' Let every man be 
 swift to hear, slow to speak.' If we review the talk in which 
 we have taken part in any one day, what an amount do we find 
 to have been spoken that was not at all worthy to be said, not 
 at all fitted either to instruct or to give rational amusement ! 
 what a mass of mere ' idle words,' — words not perhaps having 
 anything wrong in them, as we say, yet wholly inoperative with 
 reference to any of the great ends of speech ! ay, what a mul- 
 titude too, in many cases, of positively hurtful wrong words ! 
 For example, are not nine-tenths of what we say or hear said 
 on personal character usually hurtful and wrong ? Conversa- 
 tion turns on such subjects largely because really valuable 
 thoughts are wanting, whilst yet there is a desire to say some- 
 thing, — something that may interest at least the lower if not 
 the higher elements of our nature. Is conversation on per- 
 sonal character often perfectly truthful and charitable, perfectly 
 free from the imputation of imaginary motives, or from some 
 form of detraction which ministers by comparison to the vanity 
 of the speaker ? ' Judge not,' said the Master, ' that ye be 
 not judged : for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be 
 judged ; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured 
 to you again.' The more we think of this matter, the more 
 we shall be humbled, by feeling how little we have used God's 
 noble gift of speech for the noble purposes for which it was 
 bestowed — how much we have abused it to the dishonour of 
 
VER. 2.] Responsibility of Teachers. 241 
 
 God, and the injury of ourselves and our fellows. To be free 
 from 'offending in word,' to employ the tongue for the great 
 ends that God intended, and for no other ends, — this will task 
 the highest energies of the most experienced Christian. 
 
 The case which the apostle supposes, of a man who ' offends 
 not in word,' is one which will not with absolute exactness be 
 reahzed : for, beyond question, speech is among the ' many 
 things' mentioned in the previous clause in which we 'all 
 offend ;' and indeed, as we have already seen, the truth under- 
 lying and forming the basis of the argument here is, that we 
 are more apt to ' offend in word ' than in anything else. But 
 James would have us take home this thought, that in propor- 
 tion as a Christian advances towards complete government of 
 the tongue, does he grow in spiritual maturity. We all know 
 that nothing is generally esteemed to be a better evidence of 
 the state of a man's heart, than the habitual tone of his con- 
 versation. Just as we see the measure of his intellect by the 
 subjects on which he can speak, and loves to speak, so from 
 the usual character of his talk we form decided conclusions, 
 legitimately enough, at least within certain limits, regarding his 
 amiability, his manliness, his piety. As naturally as a fountain 
 sends out into the channel of the stream such water as gushes 
 up from the depths, and thus by tasting the water in the stream 
 we know the sweetness or the bitterness of the water in the 
 fountain, however hidden it be ; so ' out of the abundance of 
 the heart the mouth speaketh,' 'How can ye, being evil, 
 speak good things?' 'A good man, out of the good treasure 
 of his heart, bringeth forth good things ; and an evil man, out 
 of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil things.' It is impossible 
 permanently to prevent this. ' My heart was hot within me,' 
 says the Psalmist; 'while I was musing, the fire burned : then 
 spake I with my tongue.' Hence the best test of the moral 
 condition of the affections is the ordinary tone of cotiversation. 
 To a youth of a fair countenance Socrates said, ' Speak, friend, 
 that I may see thee.' A habitual purity, lovingness, and dis- 
 creetness of language, then, proves that the heart is filled with 
 love to God and man. In regard to Jesus, the only absolutely 
 
 Q 
 
242 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 perfect man, it is written not only that He ^ did no sin/ but 
 also that 'no guile was found in His mouth;' that 'when He 
 was reviled, He reviled not again ; when He suffered, He 
 threatened not;' and that 'grace was poured into His lips.' And 
 in the degree in which our holiness of language approaches 
 His, we have reason to beHeve that our inner nature has been 
 ' changed by the Lord the Spirit into His image.' 
 
 But whilst thus, like pure waters from a pure fountain, a wise, 
 chastened, godly use of the tongue is a direct and natural issue 
 from holiness of heart, the apostle's words present prominently 
 the aspect of restraint — ' bridling^ — which must be one aspect 
 of all holiness in man so long as he is here below. Now that 
 power to control the tongue is an evidence of ripe godliness, 
 appears when we consider such points as these : the facility and 
 rapidity with which sins of the tongue are committed ; the great 
 scope for ' offending ' afforded by the manifold needs and ap- 
 plications of speech ; and the strong influence exerted against 
 earnest effort in this department of morals, by the light opinion 
 generally entertained even in Christian society of this class of 
 offences. You know how little is thought of a ' hasty word,' 
 ' a slight exaggeration or misrepresentation,' or the like. Men 
 are apt to say, or at least to speak as if they thought, ' Our 
 lips are our own, who is Lord over us?' and hence multitudes 
 who would recoil with horror from the thought of being un- 
 punctual or dishonest in matters of money, and who count 
 themselves harmless and kindly, are most unjust and cruel in 
 language, — cheating their neighbour, without scruple, of his 
 reputation — murdering the good name which may be to him 
 more precious than his life. Considering all these things, then, 
 it is plain that if a man takes a grave view of this subject, and 
 is watchful against sins of the tongue, he will certainly be in all 
 other departments also vigilant, upright, pure, godly, — that he 
 who has grace to ' offend not in word,' has grace to accomplish 
 anything. 
 
 Besides being a most satisfactory evidence of general moral 
 discipline, Christian government of the tongue is also an efir- 
 cient instrumefit of such discipline — a means of ' bridling the 
 
VER. 2.] Responsibility of Teixchei^s. 243 
 
 whole body.' That this thought is involved in the apostle's 
 words in the latter part of the second verse, is clearly shown by 
 the illustrations which he goes on to adduce, — the bit, and the 
 helm, which direct the 'whole body' of the horse — the whole 
 mass of the ship. To suggest this, indeed, and thus lead the 
 way to the other important and impressive statements regard- 
 ing the tongue, which it was his purpose to lay before his 
 readers, may have been the chief reason for his giving the 
 passage before us the peculiar form it has, — a form certainly 
 not the most natural if merely the argumentative connection of 
 the words with the injunction in the first verse be regarded.^ 
 The point in morals to which he here calls our attention is 
 one of much interest, and one with which every person who 
 has with any considerable measure of seriousness and success 
 endeavoured to rule himself has some acquaintance. Energetic 
 effort directed towards the regulation of the tongue has a most 
 healthful influence on the whole nature. A man of violent temper, 
 who, when the gust of passion comes, has Christian wisdom 
 and power of will enough to ' keep the door of his lips,' will find 
 not merely that he is saved from speaking words which might 
 cause him and others sorrow, but that through prayerful, persis- 
 tent efibrts of this kind, the power of the evil spirit within him 
 is broken, — as certainly as, in cases where passion finds free 
 utterance, the power of the demon steadily grows. Or again, 
 where vanity is a besetting sin, in no direction is the action of 
 a manly Christian will more likely to be helpful, than in the 
 endeavour to suppress all words of self-exaltation, — or of self- 
 depreciation, which is very often, and in persons of the class 
 supposed would almost certainly be, only a very thinly dis- 
 guised egotism. Whatever be our special spiritual weakness 
 and peril, it is the part of true wisdom to say, with David, ' I 
 will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue ; I 
 will keep my mouth with a bridle;' praying with him always, 
 at the same time, ' Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth.' 
 
 1 This argumentative connection, indeed, he intimates to be not solely, 
 perhaps not even mainly, in his mind, by omitting an introductory particle 
 of dependence or conjunction. 
 
244 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. in. 
 
 XVI. 
 POWER OF THE TONGUE. 
 
 ' Behold, we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us ; and we 
 turn about their whole body. 4 Behold also the ships, which, though 
 they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned 
 about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth. 5 
 Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. 
 Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth ! 6 And the tongue 
 is a fire, a world of iniquity ; so is the tongue among our members, 
 that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature ; 
 and it is set on fire of hell.' — James hi. 3-6. 
 
 THESE verses abundantly illustrate a fact which must 
 strike every attentive reader of this Epistle, rigidly 
 practical though its substance is — that the writer had in a high 
 degree a poet's eye and sympathies. He had a keen and deli- 
 cate perception of the analogies between the spiritual and the 
 outer world, and felt that for one who can understand them 
 these are often not merely interesting and pretty, but fitted to 
 instruct and impress, — to illustrate, in the true sense of the 
 word — casting ligJit for mind and heart on what by itself may 
 seem obscure. He went through the world with his eyes 
 open. He was at once reflective and imaginative ; and to a 
 soul of this natural temperament — and which by the gracious 
 work of the Divine Spirit had been made sensitive to religious 
 impressions — everything around had something to show of 
 God, and truth, and duty, — something to warm the heart, or 
 guide the laggard, erring feet in the ways of holiness and 
 peace. In some respects we see in the world very much what 
 we look for. A man who has not thought seriously and 
 savingly of death, and sin, and Christ, could tell you, on return- 
 ing from a visit to some great city, of the vast traffic, the mag- 
 
VERS. 3-6.] Power of the Tongue. 245 
 
 nificent buildings, the gay attire of the people ; if an educated 
 and observant man, he might be able to speak also of recent 
 inventions and improvements in the arts that he had seen : but 
 ask him how the work of the Lord prospered there, and you 
 would find that he had seen very little casting light on that 
 matter. But Barnabas, when he was at Antioch, '■saw the grace 
 of God, and was glad : for he was a good man, and full of tjje 
 Holy Ghost and of faith.' The last clause explains the first. 
 And so it is everywhere, alike in the observation of inanimate 
 nature and of life. With many there is nothing but the mere 
 physical act of vision ; no learning, no growth of the soul in 
 wisdom, or energy, or happiness. As with the peasant of 
 whom Wordsworth sings, 
 
 ' A primrose by a river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 And it was nothing more ;' 
 
 SO with a vast number of men and women. The beauty of crea- 
 tion tells them nothing of the beauty of the character of the 
 Creator ; the grandeur of creation nothing of His glory. Even 
 in Christians, partly from mental indolence, partly from spiritual 
 carelessness, the ear is but too often deaf to the rich harmonies of 
 nature ; the eye blind to the writing with the finger of God on His 
 creation and His providence, — the myriad and most valuable 
 illustrations of truth and duty that the eye unsealed by the Holy 
 Ghost should see all around. Power to discern the analogies 
 between the outward world and the inner life is given to men 
 in very varied degrees ; yet something of this poetic power, I 
 believe, is possessed by all, and true religion is most of all 
 things fitted to quicken and purify it ; and were our minds and 
 hearts more exercised in this direction, a new interest would, 
 beyond doubt, be given to every department of our lives, and 
 spiritual strength and wisdom and joy would grow. 
 
 You remember how constantly the Lord Jesus illustrated His 
 teaching by analogies from the material world ; and you know 
 how instructive and precious these illustrations are felt to be, 
 both by the babe in Christ and by the wise and experienced 
 believer. The sheepfold, the corn-field, and the vineyard, the 
 
246 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 candlestick in the house and the children playing in the 
 market-place, the sublimest objects in creation and the com- 
 monest acts and scenes of human life, were made tributary to 
 the elucidation and enforcement of spiritual truth. And the 
 manner in which the Lord and His inspired servants speak of 
 these analogies, and reason from them, suggests that that is 
 but an imperfect view which regards the images as, whilst 
 happily chosen and highly useful, yet only incidentally, and 
 for the time, accommodated to this purpose of illustration. 
 Are we not rather to consider that to serve for this very use 
 of casting light on spiritual truth was a definite purpose, 
 perhaps the grand purpose, of the existence and the form of 
 external nature, of the material laws which man applies in his 
 inventions, of the necessities that govern human life, individual 
 and social ? As the earthly tabernacle was made according to 
 the pattern shown on the mount, so the persons and things 
 and relations of our outer world are i??iages, in the full sense of 
 the word — reflections — of profound spiritual truths, — a sacred 
 writing, intelligible only to the eye that is enlightened by faith. 
 The relation of father and son among men was i?ite?ided to 
 shadow forth ineffable truth regarding the Godhead ; the 
 natural sun, to call up before our hearts the great spiritual 
 Light of the world ; thorns and briars, to tell us of sin ; the 
 birth and parental training of children, to speak to us of the 
 new birth and God's Fatherly discipline.^ The Christian eye 
 and mind and heart, therefore, should be far more occupied 
 than they usually are in studying this commentary, if I may so 
 phrase it, given us by God Himself on His own Bible teaching. 
 Our apostle evidently had much enjoyment in this study. He 
 loved to read the writing of his heavenly Father on the ' wave 
 
 1 Archbishop Leighton thus begins his fifteenth Theological Lecture (on 
 'Regeneration') : — 'The Platonists divide the world into two, the sensible 
 and intellectual world. They imagine the one to be the type of the other, 
 and that sensible and spiritual things are stamped, as it were, with the same 
 stamp or seal. These sentiments are not unlike the notions which the 
 masters of the cabalistical doctrine among the Jews held concerning God's 
 sephiroth and seal. Therewith, according to them, all the worlds, and every- 
 thing in them, are stamped and sealed. And these are probably near akin 
 
VER. 3-] Power of the Tongue. 247 
 
 of the sea driven by the wind and tossed ' — on the ' flower of 
 the grass that passeth away ' — on the mirror that reflects the 
 ' natural face ' — on the horse and its bridle, the ship and its 
 helm, the fire and its fuel. 
 
 The illustrations of the horse and the ship stand in immediate 
 connection with the statement made in the close of the second 
 verse. This, as we have seen, exhibits not merely an evidence, 
 but a means, a most efficient instrumentality. To those who 
 have not thought on the subject, it may be a startling statement, 
 that by the regulation of the tongue, such a little member, — 
 by self-restraint with regard to words, so quickly spoken, so 
 soon forgotten, — the whole body, its organs and propensities, 
 may be kept under sway ; ' yet,' says the apostle, ' if you will 
 only look around, you will see at once a striking analogy, in 
 the way of physical restraint by means of the tongue, to that 
 spiritual restraint by its means of which I have spoken, — an 
 analogy singularly exact in all its details. I have said that the 
 man who offends not in word is able to bridle the whole body. 
 This word " bridle," if you think of it, brings before your 
 minds a strong and fleet horse, an animal naturally wild and 
 ungovernable, self-willed and capricious, like human nature 
 under the impulses of depraved lusts and passions. But man, 
 guided by his reason, obtains complete control over the animal, 
 so that he can make it follow his will instead of its own, — com- 
 pelling the lower nature to be submissive to the higher. Now 
 how does he do this ? He puts a bit in its mouth, he bridles its 
 tongue, and so controls the whole body. By having command 
 of the mouth, he has command of all.' 
 
 Looking at this illustration as an argument, it plainly does 
 not prove all that the apostle has stated in the previous verse. 
 
 to what Lord Bacon of Venilam calls his parallela signacula and symboli- 
 zantes schematismi. According to this hypothesis, those parables and meta- 
 phors which are often taken from natural things to illustrate such as are 
 divine, will not be similitudes taken entirely at pleasure, but are often in a 
 great measure founded in nature and the things themselves. ' 
 
 Leighton does not commit himself to acceptance of the view ; but it 
 seems clear, from the way in which this passage is connected with the rest 
 of the lecture, that it had at least much interested and pleased him. 
 
248 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. hi. 
 
 He does not intend it to do this. But it does clearly enough 
 show these things, at least, that a little instrument applied at 
 the right point will often effect great results ; and that man 
 signally evinces the power and grandeur of the reason that 
 God has given him, when he makes such applications. The 
 bearing which these facts have on the apostle's counsel to be 
 careful in regard to words, if we wish to have universal holiness, 
 is not far to seek. And in the analogy itself there is for all 
 whose eye and ear are opened to every form of God's teaching 
 something very suggestive ; the truth which the apostle brings 
 up, you observe, being this, when stated in its most general 
 form, — that it is by restraining the month, the tongue, that man 
 obtains and keeps control over the animal nature. 
 
 Another illustration, most graphic and complete, that man 
 often controls a vast and most complicated machine by a very 
 small instrument applied at the right point, is drawn from the 
 steering of a ship. Even in the apostle's days many of the 
 vessels trading in the Mediterranean were of what we still call 
 considerable size, probably from five hundred to a thousand 
 tons burden.^ The vessel in which Paul suffered shipwreck at 
 Malta carried, in crew and passengers, nearly three hundred 
 persons, and Josephus tells us that six hundred were on board 
 a ship in which he sailed. In our day, when ships are built of 
 a size sufficient for the conveyance, if need be, of small armies, 
 whatever argument the apostle founded on the largeness of the 
 vessels of his time is plainly intensified many-fold. In looking, 
 then, at one of these great floating houses (or, as one might 
 describe some ships of modern times, floating towns), and re- 
 membering not merely their unwieldiness in themselves, but 
 their exposure to the furious tempests of ocean, the thought 
 connected with them most astounding and most suggestive is 
 that one man (the ^governor' of the ship, as our older English 
 called the steersman) should, by the movements of a small in- 
 
 1 Much interesting information regarding the ships of the ancients will be 
 found in a dissertation on the subject in the late Mr. Smith of Jordanhill's 
 admirable treatise on The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul, and in the 
 twenty-third chapter of Conybeare and Howson's Life and Epistles of St. Paid. 
 
VER. 5-] Power of the Tongue. 249 
 
 strument at the stern, sway the whole, direct the vessel over 
 thousands of miles to its intended port, and often make even 
 seemingly opposed winds and billows serviceable to its progress 
 in the desired course. Man's strength, even at its fullest 
 stretch, applied directly in any way, would be utterly vain ; 
 yet the man who has control of the helm which reason has 
 constructed governs, by the exertion of comparatively but little 
 strength, the whole of the vast mass. The bearing of the 
 illustration on the apostle's purpose is plainly this : ' Let no 
 one deem the statement extravagant, that he- who governs his 
 tongue will thereby regulate his whole body; for a power 
 applied at the right point is often incomparably more efficient 
 then a far greater power brought into action directly on the 
 whole mass.' 
 
 Besides this general teaching, however, it seems to me, 
 taking both of the apostle's illustrations together, that he pro- 
 bably had in his mind the two great causes of difficulty in the 
 way of man's bridling the whole body : the power of natural 
 perversity, or what I have already spoken of as the animal 
 nature ; and the power of temptation, the evil influences of the 
 world and the world's prince, driving us hither and thither. 
 To the man who governs the little instrument, the tongue, he 
 has ascribed the power of governing the whole body ; and with 
 reference to both classes of difficulties in the way of doing this, 
 he exhibits striking and instructive analogies. With the little 
 bit man controls the horse's self-will j with the little helm he 
 governs and directs the ship, "even amid the external and often 
 most violent impulses 'of fierce winds.' 
 
 In the fifth verse we have the formal application of the illus- 
 trations to the point in hand : * Even so the tongiie is a little 
 meinber^ — very small in proportion to the whole body, or even 
 when compared with many other parts of the body — ^just as 
 the bit in a horse's mouth is but a little thing when compared 
 with the horse, and the helm when compared with the ship — 
 * and (jet) boastcth great things' This is not precisely what we 
 expect. The statements and illustrations hitherto have had 
 reference to the actual possession of power, not to mere claims 
 
250 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 or boasts regarding its possession; and therefore we look 
 rather for the assertion that the tongue, though so small a 
 member, ' doeth great things,' as the bridle and the helm do ; 
 and in particular, that the wise regulation of the tongue does 
 much to secure wise control over the whole man. This is the 
 logical drift of the apostle's statements and illustrations, and is 
 2. part of what he says here. The tongue, however — being the 
 organ of speech — he, in accordance with his usual liveliness of 
 style, introduces as asserting its own power. Little as it is, yet 
 it^ claims, truthfully enough, to be the accomplisher of '■great 
 { things.^ It can sway ' the fierce democracy.' It can still wild 
 passions, excite high hopes, rouse flagging energies to bright 
 activity. It can proclaim the gospel of Christ, crying, ' Ho, 
 every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters ; ' and thus 
 bring rest, joy, and godliness to sinful, sorrowing hearts. 
 All this is true, and yet the apostle's spirit is sad ; for he 
 remembers that in the vast majority of cases the tongue is 
 ungoverned, and exercises much of its power not for good, but 
 for evil. This is the thought which is amphfied in the para- 
 graph that follows, and it finds some expression even here in 
 the use of the word * boast^ a term naturally suggestive of 
 extravagance and vainglory. The apostle's idea in his words 
 here, therefore, fully developed, -appears to be something like 
 this : ' Like the bridle and the helm, the tongue, though so 
 small, wields great power, which might be, and under the firm 
 government of a Christian spirit is, productive of great good ; 
 but, alas, as a rule this little member is braggart and wicked, 
 and thus its power is exerted for evil.' 
 
 The previous examples have not merely shown in a general 
 way the power of little things, but specially how, when wisely 
 applied and controlled, a Httle thing may be made to work to 
 worthy and admirable ends ; herein suggesting to the apostle's 
 readers the importance of cultivating the government of the 
 tongue, with a view to ' bridling the whole body.' But already 
 in ' boasteth,' as we have seen, has appeared an acknowledg- 
 ment of the sad truth, that the tongue is in the vast majority 
 of cases undisciplined, and thus works harm. Hence the 
 
VER. 5-] Power of the Tongue. 251 
 
 apostle proceeds to illustrate the measure of evil that a little 
 thing uncontrolled may effect. Nothing is smaller than a 
 spark; yet, ' behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth /' 
 You will observe that, the marginal reading for ^matter' is 
 ^wood;' and this, which is the proper and usual meaning of 
 the original word, is greatly more in accordance with the pic- 
 turesque style of this Epistle, and of this passage in particular, 
 than the vague general term 'matter,' or 'mass of materials.'^ 
 The picture is one which had no doubt been seen again and 
 again, both by James and his readers. Joel, speaking of a 
 time of sore drought, says, ' O Lord, to Thee will I cry : for 
 the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the 
 flame hath burned all the trees of the field. The beasts of the 
 field cry also unto Thee : for the rivers of waters are dried up, 
 and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.' 
 Indeed, the picture was a familiar one in the poetry of the 
 ancients generally, as an image of rapidity and destructiveness. 
 Homer, for example, speaks of enemies falling below the blow 
 of one of his heroes : 
 
 * As when the winds with raging flames conspire, 
 And o'er the forests roll the flood of fire, 
 I In blazing heaps the grove's old honours fall, 
 
 And one refulgent ruin levels all.' 
 
 Iliad, Pope's transl. xi. 201-204. 
 
 In the prairie region of America, sudden fires of this kind are 
 among the most serious dangers to which travellers are ex- 
 posed. A spark from the camp fire of some careless hunter 
 falls among the long parched grass near, which in a moment 
 bursts into a blaze ; and the flame spreads with appalling 
 rapidity, carrying desolation and terror perhaps for fifty or a 
 hundred miles, till it comes to places where it finds no fuel, 
 and dies of exhaustion. Occasionally, in our own country, in 
 summers of extreme and long-continued heat, we read in the 
 
 ' The primitive meaning of the word ' matter ' also, as of its Greek repre- 
 sentative, is 'wood.' The beautiful island of Madeira received its name 
 (the Portuguese foiTn of our ' matter ') from the fact that, when first dis- 
 covered, its hills were clothed to their summits with noble timber. 
 
252 Lectures on the Epistle of Jmnes. [ch. hi. 
 
 newspapers of fires raging for days in woods — fires kindled by 
 a mere spark from some passing locomotive on a railway, or 
 in some other way equally casual. 
 
 * Behold, then,' says the apostle, * how great a forest a 
 little fire kindleth : and the tongue is a fire.' His reference 
 is obviously not to the tongue as it might be, but as it is — 
 in all men by nature, and to a lamentable extent even in 
 many who are Christians — ungoverned, abused. ' An un- 
 godly man,' says the Book of Proverbs, ' diggeth up evil ; 
 and in his lips there is a burning fire.' The chief points of 
 analogy are obviously destnidiveness and rapidity of diffusive- 
 ness. Fire is often spoken of by our newspaper writers as the 
 * devouring element ;' and though the expression is so hack- 
 neyed as to have in great measure lost its force, yet it is in 
 itself most truthful and expressive. Water, when it bursts its 
 bounds, carries ruin, and fear, and sorrow along its course ; but 
 terrible as are its outbreaks, still the far more frequent and 
 extensive devastation wrought by fire makes fire always rise up 
 first in our minds when we think of destructive agencies ; and 
 for it, as we know, is reserved the final destruction of our 
 world : in the * day of God ' ' the heavens, being on fire, shall 
 be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.' 
 And to the creatures that God has made capable of feeling 
 pain, perhaps no pain is more excruciating than that caused 
 by fire. No more terrible torture has been devised for poor 
 humanity by the keenest ingenuity of malevolence than that 
 of the stake and faggots. In this element, then, brethren, so 
 destructive and so potent to cause agony, see an image of the 
 power of the tongue to produce ruin and wretchedness. Cha- 
 racter, peace, health^property, — what cannot a false, calumnious, 
 impiifeTmrgue destroy ?— what does it not destroy every day, 
 as our own observation tells us, if we only look and think ? 
 All this is done by a little word, as from a spark may come the 
 conflagration that levels the noble forest. Again, the rapidity 
 with which fire often spreads over a vast area plainly consti- 
 tutes one of the points of similarity to which the apostle wishes 
 to call attention. In the drought of an Eastern summer, a flame 
 
VER. 6.] Power of the Tongue. 253 
 
 seems scarcely to have begun its destructive work on one side 
 of a field, before it appears careering exultingly near the other. 
 So with words. How fast and how far does calumny travel ! 
 Wise old Homer's standing epithet for 'words' is 'winged.' 
 Like the birds of the air, they are fleet and wide of range. Or 
 like the multitudes of little seeds which we see every autumn 
 floating past on the breeze, each balanced on its own tiny 
 wing, our words go far and wide, each the germ for some soul 
 of a plant of utility and beauty, or of a useless and poisonous 
 weed. And, impelled by the influences of a wicked world, our 
 wicked words generally go fastest and farthest. 
 
 The principal causes of destructive fires, too, are the prin- 
 cipal causes of the tongue's evil work. Sometimes the cause 
 is definite, conscious malignity. A man hates his neighbour, 
 and sets fire to his house or his stack-yard, — or he scorches 
 his reputation by scattering lies. Now and again desire of 
 sport is at the root of the matter. The Romans believed 
 that Nero set the city on fire, that he might enjoy the sight 
 of the blaze. So, according to the inspired proverb, 'it is 
 sport to a fool to do mischief;' and, in particular, 'as a mad- 
 man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man 
 that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport?' 
 But by far the commonest cause of destructive fires, as you 
 know, is simple ivant of care and thought. So, too, with the 
 tongue. A vast amount of the injury which it does is caused 
 by words spoken in sheer heedlessness, without anything like 
 definite, conscious ill-intent, — words spoken, it may be, merely 
 to fill up a gap in conversation, or to give to conversation 
 a little more sprightliness and piquancy. 'The tongue is a 
 fire ;' and, brethren, just as the man who, from malignity, or 
 desire of sport, or simple want of thought, has kindled a con- 
 flagration, possesses often little or no power to stop its ravages, 
 however anxious he then may be to do so, — nay, as its fury may 
 soon become resistless by any human agency, — so with the fires 
 that words light up. This is the most solemn thought connected 
 with the exercise of God's great gift of speech, — that words once 
 spoken are irrevocable. We can thereafter, in most cases, do 
 
254 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 but little to alter their tendency or check their power. They 
 have sprung into the world as influences for good or evil, and 
 we may hear their echo from many sides at the great Judgment. 
 
 Leaving this figure for a little, the apostle proceeds to de- 
 scribe the tongue as * a world of iniquity^ or, more exactly, 
 * the world (that is, as I think the article may here be correctly 
 paraphrased, " that notorious world ") of iniquity.' This is a 
 very strong and startling expression, well fitted to arrest the 
 attention of the inconsiderate, and lead them to think some- 
 what of the power of sins of the tongue, which by many are 
 looked upon so lightly. The notion of vasi?iess is obviously 
 intended to be suggested by ' world.' In the ordinary use of 
 the tongue there is an enormous mass of moral evil. Besides 
 this general notion of vastness, however, the name 'world,' 
 under which we comprehend in thought earth, and sea, and 
 sky, and all things that exist in these, brings in also this idea, 
 that all-kiftds-oi_\m<\^^^y are to be found gathered up in the 
 work of an ungoverned tongue. Of some sins it is the pecu- 
 liar instrument ; and of all sins it may be, and in a very large 
 number of instances is, the minister, fosterer, fanner, propa- 
 gator. The apostle's language here, then, has a somewhat 
 similar force to that of Paul, when he calls the love of money 
 'the root of all evil ;' not thereby intimating that all sin has as 
 a matter of fact sprung from covetousness, but that that vice 
 is of such a nature as readily to lead to the breach of any of 
 God's commandments, and that an inconceivable number of 
 all classes of sins do actually spring from it. So with the 
 tongue. By it the blasphemer defies God, the liar utters his 
 falsehoods, the seducer pours forth his destroying flatteries, 
 the slanderer blasts his neighbour's good name, the traitor 
 spreads sedition and disturbs the peace of nations. The 
 tongue 'diffuses error, kindles strife, inflames the passions, 
 stimulates to vice, originates crime. It breaks hearts, em- 
 bitters families, distracts communities, divides and destroys 
 churches.'^ 
 
 But the apostle continues : ' So is the tongue among our 
 1 Dr. Adam's Exposition of James, p. 234. 
 
VER. 6.] Power of the Tongue. 255 
 
 members ' — such is the position of evil influence which it takes 
 up — 'fhaf it dcfikth the whole body.'' The mind of the apostle 
 here obviously reverts to what he had said a little before, and 
 illustrated by the analogies of the horse's bit and the ship's 
 helm, — that the man who rules his tongue can ' bridle also 
 the ivhole body' The actual state of things among all men 
 by nature, and to a sad degree even among Christians, shows 
 a deplorable contrast with this ideal. The tongue has power 
 over ' the whole body ;' but it is power for evil — power not for 
 purifying and ennobling, but for defilement. The introduction 
 in the previous clause of * world ' shows that the apostle is 
 not confining himself strictly to the image of fire ; yet from 
 the last clauses of the verse it is manifest that this is mainly 
 in his mind, and it seems therefore most natural to suppose 
 the idea in ' dcfileth ' to be that of sullying, blackening like 
 smoke. Not merely does the flame of the tongue's fire scorch 
 and consume, as has been already suggested, and is fully ex- 
 hibited in the next clause, but its smoke pollutes the whole 
 body. This is an instructive and impressive aspect of sin, 
 which the young in particular would do well to ponder. We 
 care much for these perishable bodies of ours — for their com- 
 fort and their adornment \ and within certain limits this is 
 needful and right : yet let us ever bear in mind, that to the 
 eye of God, and of all in the universe who see things in the 
 light of God, there is no true beauty, no adornment that will 
 bear minute examination, except that of hohness. When the 
 bodily powers are instruments of sin, when the eyes range to 
 and fro after vanity, when the mouth utters or the ear greedily 
 drinks in false, and impure, and uncharitable words, when 
 the feet * walk in the counsel of the ungodly,' and the hands 
 carry out that counsel, — then, however great the physical love- 
 liness, however elaborate and tasteful the outward adorning, in 
 God's sight the 'whole body' is 'defiled,' repulsive, loathsome. 
 ' Now,' says our apostle, ' the tongue has such an influential 
 position among our members, that by its utterances of malignity, 
 greed, uncleanness, it excites the lusts which act through all 
 the various bodily organs, and thus brings universal pollution.' 
 
256 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 This is a statement confirmed by the experience and observa- 
 tion of us all. 
 
 The tongue, moreover, ' setteth on fire the course of nature.'' 
 It is not easy to define the exact significance of this expres- 
 sion. As it stands, it appears to mean, — ' sets the world, or the 
 [whole creation, in flames,' To this these objections present 
 themselves, — that such a strong hyperbolical statement is hardly 
 consistent with our apostle's style, either in the context or else- 
 where ; and especially, that as this clause, like that immediately 
 preceding, appears to stand in close connection with ^ so is 
 the tongue {such is its influential position) among our members,^ 
 we expect a reference to its power for evil, not on the world 
 generally, but on the character or immediate relations of the 
 individual to whom the ungoverned tongue belongs. There 
 has been much debate among interpreters as to what exactly 
 the apostle means here. It seems to me that ^setteth on 
 fire the revolving circle of one's ?iature^ which is perhaps as 
 literal a translation of the original words as could well be 
 given, conveys a satisfactory sense. Having in the previous 
 clause spoken of the tongue's defiling power on the whole 
 man, looked at strictly by himself, he proceeds here, I appre- 
 hend, to its injurious power on him as a member of society ; 
 exactly according to the order followed in the seventeenth 
 verse, in describing the characteristics of heavenly wisdom. 
 The life of each of us in the world may be conceived as a 
 ' circle ' of influences of various kinds, acting on the persons 
 and institutions around us, — a circle which is in ceaseless re- 
 volution, seeing that every moment of our social life brings 
 in some new element. All these influences, then, the apostle 
 says, are fired, inflamed, by the action of the tongue; and, 
 by immediate inference, the persons also with whom, as the 
 circle revolves, the influences come into contact, are fired or 
 inflamed by it, with anger, licentiousness, covetousness, 
 malice, or any other passion, according to circumstances. 
 Something like this, I think, is the meaning of this rather 
 obscure statement; and thus understood, the truthfulness and 
 the force of the picture are alike manifest. 
 
VER. 6.] Power of the Tongue. 257 
 
 There remains yet one solemn and awful fact on the subject 
 to be brought forward. ' The tongue lights a devastating fire 
 all around,' the apostle has said, — ' and it is set on fire of hell.' 
 The figure is bold and striking, and the truth which it exhibits 
 is a very awful one. When the prophet cried, ' Woe is me, for 
 I am a man of unclean lips,' one of the seraphim touched 
 those lips with a live coal from God's altar. Jesus came into 
 the world, as He tells us, ' to send fire on the earth,' the blessed 
 fire of the Holy Ghost, to enlighten the understanding, warm 
 the heart, and consume sin ; and at Pentecost the outpouring 
 of the Spirit was manifested visibly in the resting on the apostles 
 of tongues of fire. I cannot help thinking that probably both 
 Isaiah's vision, and especially that wondrous scene at Pente- 
 cost, which must have printed itself so deeply on the memories 
 of all who were privileged to witness it, were present to the 
 apostle's mind when he wrote the words now under considera- 
 tion. There was fire from heaven for lips and tongue : the fire 
 which the tongue has by nature is kindled from hell. The evil 
 of the tongue, like all sin, came from Satan's temptation of the 
 founders of our race ; and from him it is ever receiving fresh 
 strength, as James's words intimate, — for his statement is not 
 merely that the tongue ' was,' but that it ' is habitually set on 
 fire of hell.' You cannot but feel, brethren, that this repre- 
 sentation is singularly impressive. How appalling the thought 
 should be to the careless talker, the man of unchastened lips, 
 that his words are really Satan's, for which yet he himself is 
 responsible \ that his utterances are doing on himself and 
 those around him the devil's work ; that, when he pours forth 
 from his lips profane, or impure, or unkind language, he is, 
 in truth, breathing out flames lighted from the bottomless pit ! 
 
258 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 XVII. 
 THE TONGUE UNTAMEABLE AND INCONSISTENT. 
 
 ' For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in 
 the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind : 8 But the tongue 
 can no man tame ; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. 9 There- 
 with bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, 
 which are made after the similitude of God. 10 Out of the same mouth 
 proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not 
 so to be. 1 1 Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water 
 and bitter? 12 Can the fig-tree, my brethren, bear olive berries ? 
 either a vine, figs ? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh, ' 
 — ^James III. 7-12. 
 
 THIS passage exhibits the tintameableness of the tongue, 
 and its grievous inconsistencies. By the introductory 
 '' for^ the paragraph is set before us as presenting the ground 
 of the previous statements. The apostle has been dwelling, 
 as we have seen, on the intensity and wide diffusion of the evil 
 wrought by the tongue, piling up figure on figure to illustrate 
 the terrible power of this little organ; employing language, 
 indeed, which to a person who has not thought carefully on 
 the working of words would seem almost extravagant. Here 
 he proceeds to point out evidence. He has been speaking 
 with particular fulness of the devouring and often resistless 
 energy of the tongue, under the figure of fire; and now he sup- 
 ports this, saying in substance, that if we only look abroad we 
 shall see that this organ is indeed utterly wild and untameable. 
 The statement of the seventh verse simply leads on to that 
 of the eighth, and strengthens it. The greater the power and 
 skill of man to tame are seen to be, the more, obviously, the 
 energy and wildness of the tongue are exhibited, seeing that 
 
VER. 7.] The Tongue Untameable. 259 
 
 it defies all that power and skill. The apostle, as you see, 
 by his amplification of the preliminary statement, so floods the 
 background of his picture with light, that no one can fail to 
 see the untameableness of the tongue standing out against it 
 with startling impressiveness. The general idea is, ' Man can 
 tame all the inferior races of creatures ;' but you observe how 
 each part of the statement is expanded : ' Every kind of beasts, 
 and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, 
 and hath been tamed of mankind.' Where we have *^/r^i-' and 
 '■serpents' here, the original has the more comprehensive terms 
 'flying creatures' and 'creeping things,' — the one including 
 winged insects as well as birds, and the other all classes of 
 reptiles. The classification, which is evidently for practical 
 purposes complete, is the same as that given in the ninth 
 chapter of Genesis, where the grant of power over the crea- 
 tures is renewed to Noah, the second father of our race. The 
 margin of our version shows 'nature' as the strict meaning of 
 the word rendered ' kind' in the beginning and end of the verse ; 
 and we have here presented, in truth, a somewhat different and 
 deeper thought than merely that of ' race.' ' Every nature,' 
 says the apostle, ' every special temperament and instinct 
 throughout the animal creation, can be subdued by the peculiar 
 nature of man — his constitutional superiority through reason.' 
 This happens now, and is a fact of daily observation, — ' every 
 animal nature is tamed;' ' and hath been tamed:' all do^vn the 
 ages, from the grant of dominion to Adam and the renewal to 
 Noah, this power of man has been proved. The thought 
 underlying this last expression, and intended to come out into 
 the reader's full consciousness when he considers the assertion 
 made in the next verse, is plainly this : ' During all these gene- 
 rations, as now, the power of man over all the lower creatures 
 has been clearly shown ; yet at what point in all these ages 
 could you find any man able to tame the tongue?' Of course 
 the apostle does not intend to say that actually representatives 
 of each of the almost innumerable species of living creatures 
 have been tamed by man, neither does the force of his illustra- 
 tion at all require any such extreme supposition. All he means 
 
26o Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. hi. 
 
 to say is, that ample evidence of this power over all classes of 
 creatures is afforded by observation and history. The lion and 
 the elephant have been taught to draw man's chariot, the hawk 
 to hunt for him in the air, the fishes to come near him with 
 trustfulness for their food, the serpent to submit to the charmer, 
 and even the savage crocodile ('the leviathan' of Job, who 'is 
 made without fear, and is a king over all the children of pride ') 
 has been made by obedience to acknowledge the supremacy of 
 man. Such cases as these supply the fullest proof that nothing 
 of this kind is to be counted beyond the power of human skill 
 and patience, firmness and gentleness. 
 
 '■But the to7igue can no man tame.^ The tongue became a 
 wild creature at the same time as lions and tigers. In para- 
 dise it and they were lovingly obedient to man ; but when sin 
 came, it and they revolted. The grant of superiority to the 
 creatures was renewed, under an altered form — the dominion 
 of fear, not of love. * The fear cf you, and the dread of yon ^ said 
 God to Noah and his sons, ' shall be upon every beast of the 
 earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth 
 upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea : into your 
 hand, are they delivered.' This did not extend to the tongue. 
 Vast as the taming powers of man are, and have ever been 
 proved to be, all experience shows that this wild creature ' no 
 ma?i can tame.'' The statement, you observe, is put in the 
 most general way : ' No man has skill or strength to 'tame 
 either his neighbour's tongue or his own.' I need scarcely 
 remark that, so far as regards each man's own use of the 
 glorious gift of speech, this inability is purely moral, due 
 simply to a weakness of will. Were there as real, clear, 
 decided a desire to tame the tongue as there is on the part 
 of any man who undertakes the taming of one of the animals 
 to succeed in the enterprise, there would be success here as 
 well as there ; but the will is weakened and perverted through 
 depravity. 'Joseph's brethren,' the sacred historian tells us, 
 'hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.' That 
 ' could not ' may fairly stand as a representative of all cases 
 of the tongue's untameableness j and thus the apostle's teach- 
 
VER. 8.] The Tongue Untameable. 261 
 
 ing here, like all teaching everywhere in the Bible on man's 
 moral condition, leads us up directly to our dependence on 
 God. 'No man can tame the tongue:' 'With man this is 
 impossible ; but with God all things are possible.' Let the 
 unconverted man, then, who has found resolution after reso- 
 lution to bridle his tongue fail utterly, see in this failure ' a 
 schoolmaster to bring him to Christ,' that in Him he may 
 receive strength from above. And let the Christian remember 
 that in nothing is the natural wildness of the flesh more apt to 
 show itself than in the use of speech, and be especially earnest 
 in layijig hold, by the prayer of faith, on the strength of God 
 for dominion over the tongue. In the statement made in this 
 verse, you will see, is presented fully the basis of that made in 
 the second verse of the chapter, and with which, from the 
 similarity or indeed identity of the figure employed, it seems 
 to have been immediately connected in the apostle's mind : 
 ' If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, 
 and able also to bridle the whole body.' 
 
 The apostle, continuing his sketch of the tongue's charac- 
 teristics, says that ' // is an unruly eviV — an unrestrainable, un- 
 governable instrument of wickedness. This is simply a forcible 
 summing up of the previous statement. Modern editors of the 
 Greek Testament, however, following the authority of the oldest 
 and best manuscripts, have substituted in the text, for the word 
 rendered ' unruly,' another, differing from it only by two letters, 
 and which thus might easily be mistaken by transcribers. The 
 approved reading means ' restless,' ' continually changing,' — the 
 same epithet that in the first chapter is applied to the ' double- 
 minded man,' and there rendered ' unstable.' This gives a 
 new, interesting, important thought ; a thought which presents 
 one reason for the untameableness of the tongue just spoken 
 of, and at the same time leads the way into the statements 
 which follow regarding its inconsistencies. The tongue, says 
 the apostle, is '^ restless evil:^ it flits constantly from one sub- 
 ject to another, from one sphere of wrong-doing to another ; 
 from slander it glides into impurity, from impurity into arro- 
 gance, from arrogance into frivolity, from frivolity into anger : 
 
262 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 so that, when a man is trying to tame it in one sphere, it 
 suddenly escapes him, and exuhs in its wild freedom in another. 
 
 But yet further, the tongue is '///// of deadly poison.' It is 
 like a serpent highly charged with venom, and from which no 
 one can extract the fangs. As David has it, ' Evil men have 
 sharpened their tongues like a serpent ; adders' poison is under 
 their lips.' And this poison of error, and profanity, and calumny, 
 and unclean language, is ' deadly poison.' Slowly it may be, 
 but surely, it kills reputation, or peace, or hope for eternity. 
 It was the poison of the old serpent's words to Eve, ' Ye shall 
 not surely die,' that made her and all of us die in trespasses 
 and sins ; and like Satan's tongue are in a degree the tongues 
 of all his children. Standing as these words of the apostle 
 do between the description of the tongue as a * restless evil,' 
 and his detailed illustration of its inconsistencies, it seems to 
 me probable that its restlessness especially in the form of in- 
 consistency on the part of professing Christians, was prominent 
 in his mind when he wrote them, — and that thus the special idea 
 which we are to attach to them is that the careless, wicked 
 language often heard from the lips of those who have named 
 the name of Christ, is perhaps above all other language ' full 
 of deadly poison.' 
 
 This remark brings us to the consideration of the iiicon- 
 sistencies of the tongue, of which James speaks in the next 
 four verses. Inconsistency is not by any means necessarily a 
 bad thing. We not unfrequently hear public men condemned 
 simply on this ground ; whereas the tmth is, that inconsistency 
 is often most beautiful and honourable. Not to speak of the 
 fundamental opposition between earlier and later utterances on 
 religious subjects, — which may prove that the great vital change 
 of thought and feeling has come between, — the man who on 
 any question of importance and difficulty does not hold, and 
 if need be express, at forty years of age opinions somewhat, it 
 may be considerably, different from those he entertained at 
 twenty, can scarcely have thought much regarding them, or 
 allowed the light of experience to illuminate his mind. Or, to 
 take a case more nearly analogous to that before us, — often when 
 
VER. 9.] The Tongue Inconsistent. 263 
 
 a man's soul is deeply stirred, and conflicting emotions are 
 struggling within him, most obvious inconsistency, even in the 
 same conversation, is felt by candid hearers to be at the least 
 pardonable, because it is so natural. But the inconsistency of 
 which our apostle speaks in this paragraph, — to 'bless God, 
 and with the same tongue to curse men, which are made after 
 the similitude of God,' — this is in the very highest degree sin- 
 ful and injurious. To '■bless God^ — to praise Him with thank- 
 fulness and love — to pronounce Him ineffably blessed in the 
 possession and exercise of His own perfections, — this is the 
 noblest use of speech, as it is the loftiest act of the soul. To 
 ' bless the Lord, who forgiveth all our iniquities, who healeth 
 all our diseases, who redeemeth our lives from destruction, who 
 crowneth us with loving-kindness and tender mercies, who 
 satisfieth our mouths with good things,' — to sing, ' O Lord, I will 
 praise Thee ; behold, God is my salvation : I will trust, and not 
 be afraid ; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song,' 
 — for this use, above all others, the tongue was given us. 
 
 ' Therewith,' says the apostle, ' bless we God, even the Father,' 
 or rather, ' our God and Father.' This is the peculiarly close 
 and endearing relation in which the believer delights to think 
 of God, and to address Him — as our reconciled Father in Jesus 
 Christ ; and only those who thus know Him as their Father 
 can truly, lovingly, and gratefully ' bless ' Him. Its mention 
 here is peculiarly appropriate. The designations of God in 
 Scripture are never selected at random, as, I am afraid, they 
 often are in our prayers and other religious utterances. The 
 study of the connection in which they stand will always dis- 
 cover a delicate beauty in them, or a special argumentative 
 force. That before us has occurred already in this Epistle, 
 in the last verse of the first chapter, where the apostle speaks 
 of ' true and undefiled religious service before our God and 
 Father' being ' to visit the fatherless and widows in their afflic- 
 tion.' There the name most manifestly involves an enforce- 
 ment of the duty enjoined, irresistibly cogent to the Christian's 
 heart, seeing that he is called on to care for those destitute 
 ones who, as children of the common Father, are his own 
 
264 Lecttires on the Epistle of James . [ch. iii. 
 
 brothers and sisters. In the present place the same thought 
 of God's common Fatherhood is that which we are to carry 
 with us into the consideration of the latter part of the verse, 
 where it casts a broad and strong light on the wickedness of 
 the inconsistency described. 
 
 * With the tongue,' says the apostle, * we bless our God and 
 Father, and with the tongue we airse vieii^ To '■curse'' is 
 strictly to imprecate evil on a person — to pray for injury or 
 destruction to come upon him. Language of this kind has 
 always been sadly common in the East ; and very probably 
 even professing Christians, of whom plainly James is here 
 speaking, might at times, under the influence of depravity and 
 their surroundings, fall into the practice. Peter, in the high 
 priest's palace, 'began to curse and to swear,' the evangelists 
 tell us. On our own streets, alas, my brethren, the swearer's 
 awful prayer is lamentably familiar to our ears, — the words in 
 which, if they have any meaning, he prays for everlasting 
 destruction on himself or his neighbour; and there may be, I 
 know not, even professing Christians who use language of this 
 kind. As James employs the word here, however, it obviously 
 includes much more than this, — utterances of any sort which 
 show unkind feeling to our neighbour — our neighbour ' jnade 
 after the similitude of God.' * God said, Let us make man in Our 
 image, after Our likeness. So God created man in His own 
 image,' — with the sublime dignity of a moral nature, a mind 
 and heart that could apprehend and love truth and holiness. 
 This image has not been wholly lost. Though sadly blurred 
 by the fall, yet in reason and conscience all men still show 
 God's likeness. This fact was made prominent, you remember, 
 in one of the laws given to Noah, as summing up man's dignity 
 and value : ' Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his 
 blood be shed ; for in the image of God made He man' The 
 same argument is employed here. How utterly monstrous it 
 is to ' bless our God and Father,' and with the very tongue 
 that does this to 'curse' those who, by bearing His image, 
 prove that they are His children ! For, * as certain even of the 
 heathen poets have said, We are also His offspring.' The 
 
VER. lo.] The Tongue Inconsistent. . 265 
 
 argument becomes stronger yet, when we bear in mind that 
 Jesus was a man, and by His incarnation Ufted up all the 
 members of our race into the position of His * kinsmen after the 
 flesh.' Oh how this fact should ennoble to our feelings uni- 
 versal humanity ! All this, you observe, applies to men with- 
 out distinction. But the awfully wicked inconsistency of the 
 conduct described is most glaring of all when the curses are im- 
 precated on the heads of those who by faith are God's children 
 in the covenant, ' predestinated to be conformed to the image 
 of His Son.' No more gross inconsistency can be conceived, 
 no evidence more complete that the tongue is ' full of deadly 
 poison,' than for a man to bless God, to praise the Father with 
 glowing words of gratitude and affection, and to curse, to slander, 
 or insult His children in Christ Jesus. 
 
 In the first words of the tenth verse the statement of incon- 
 sistency is summed up in a terse and pointed way : ' Oiit of 
 the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing.^ There are 
 people professing godliness, people who every Sabbath-day 
 in the song of praise lift up their voice and bless God for His 
 boundless Fatherly love, yet during the week often give way to 
 most unhallowed anger against their fellow-men and God's chil- 
 dren, or in whose company you cannot be for a few minutes with- 
 out hearing some ill report against a neighbour, communicated 
 as venomously as the measure of apparent sympathy among the 
 auditors with the speaker permits. All of us have met persons 
 of the kind, and in every one of us there is somewhat of this 
 inconsistency — too much, far too much, for in any degree it is 
 altogether opposed to the will of God. ' My brethren^ says the 
 apostle, ' these things ought not so to be.'' It is true that ' the 
 tongue can no man tame,' yet its untamedness is not the less 
 sin. Wherever there is humble, sincere desire and effort to 
 obey the will of God, strength is given by the Almighty. 
 * Stretch forth thine hand,' said Jesus to a man who had his 
 hand withered ; ' and he stretched it forth.'' For a professed 
 child of God, then, to mingle with his more becoming utter- 
 ances the language of the children of the wicked one — this is 
 conduct which calls for the severest condemnation. Bitter 
 
266 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 words are fruit from a ' root of bitterness ' in the soul. The 
 tongue of such a professing Christian praises God for the Sun 
 of righteousness, with His glorious light and heat ; but his angry 
 denunciations of brethren show that his heart meanwhile is 
 shutting itself up in darkness and biting cold. The tongue 
 ' blesses ' Jesus as the Sower of the good seed, and the Sender 
 of genial, quickening rain ; but the ' cursing ' of those whom 
 Jesus came to save proves that the heart is wilfully remaining 
 a barren field, or a field covered with thorns and all noxious 
 weeds. ' My brethren, these things ought not so to be.' 
 
 In the two verses which follow, the apostle, as is his wont, 
 directs our attention to analogies, for some hints on the matter 
 in hand. Nature, he would have us bear in mind, is to some 
 extent a revelation of spiritual truth, but a revelation written 
 in strange characters, the key to which is given only in 
 the Bible. The same ' opening of the eyes ' which enables 
 a believer to ' behold wondrous things out of God's law,' 
 gives him power also to behold wondrous things out of 
 God's works all around. ' Now,' says James, ' if you who, 
 being members of Christ's church, thus assert that you can 
 read the hieroglyphics of nature, will but look at them 
 carefully, you will see that everywhere they declare the utter 
 monstrousness of such inconsistencies of the tongue as have 
 been mentioned, — seeing that God, whose children you call 
 yourselves, is not the author of confusion, but of order.' '■Doth 
 a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water atid bitter V 
 ' You know that it is not so. Near each other may be bitter 
 springs and sweet springs ; nay, in the salt sea one may find a 
 jet of fresh water thrown up to the surface by a strong spring ;^ 
 but no fountain sends forth at one mouth sweet water and 
 bitter.' 
 
 And not merely as a matter of fact is such inconsistency 
 not found in the physical sphere, but it is contrary to the laws 
 
 ^ In the Gulf of Spezzia, a branch of the Gulf of Genoa, there is a power- 
 ful jet of fresh water rising from the bed of the sea. On the south coast of 
 Cuba also, at a considerable distance from the shore, there are fresh-water 
 jets of such force that boats cannot approach them without some danger. 
 
VER. 12.] The Tongue I nco7isistent. 267 
 
 that God has given to nature, and therefore cannot occur. 
 From the ' doth' of the eleventh verse we now advance to the 
 '■ can^ regarding which, in the first instance, reference is made 
 to an analogy from the vegetable kingdom : ' Can the fig-tree, my 
 b7'cthren, bear olive berries ? either a vine, figs V In this illustra- 
 tion the apostle's intention is to set forth simple incongruity or 
 confusion of products, without any contrast of bad and good 
 species, such as appears in our Lord's similar question : ' Do 
 men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles.-^' ''So can no 
 fountai7i both yield salt water and fresh! With these words 
 James closes his remarks on the inconsistencies of the tongue. 
 Seeing, then, that the fact and physical law regarding springs 
 have been referred to merely by way of illustration, whilst the 
 statement before us has all the appearance of a weighty obser- 
 vation on the main subject, it seems clear that the apostle has 
 passed from an illustrative allusion to natural phenomena into a 
 metaphor. More exactly, perhaps, the two are conjoined, but the 
 metaphor is the more prominent before his mind. Under the 
 '/ountai?i ' he thinks of the heart of man, ' out of which are the 
 issues of life ' — issues of the ' salt water ' of angry speech, bitter 
 to the taste, and destructive to the flowers of joy and holiness, 
 or of the 'fresh water ' of loving, truthful, earnest utterances, 
 sweet and life-giving. With reference to this fountain, his 
 declaration is, that what holds in outward nature holds in the 
 moral sphere also : it ' cannot both yield salt water and fresh.' 
 It may seem to do so ; but where the habitual outflow is bitter, 
 the apparently ' fresh water ' of gracious speech, which comes 
 at times, is not really in its nature quickening and fertilizing ; 
 for though the praises of God are spoken, they ' come out of 
 feigned lips.' Thus the charge of inconsistency, in anything 
 beyond a superficial sense, is removed from those slanderous, 
 abusive professors of Christianity to whom the apostle has been 
 addressing himself, but only by the substitution of something 
 yet more awful. He does not say all this, you observe, but he 
 suggests it all ; and for all who are willing to think, the sugges- 
 tion is perhaps even more impressive than the explicit state- 
 ment would have been. 
 
268 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. iii. 
 
 According to another reading, supported by the oldest 
 manuscripts and approved by modern critical editors, the 
 statement takes this form: '■Nor can salt water yield fresh.'' 
 The force of this is, in substance, the same as that of the 
 other, and expressed even more pointedly. The fountain of 
 the heart obeys laws as fixed as those by which the fig-tree 
 bears figs, not olives, and the vine grapes, not figs. A heart 
 renewed by the Spirit of God is a spring of living water, ' a 
 well of water springing up into everlasting life.' Its outflow in 
 speech, as in conduct, will be pleasant and healthful. There 
 may be indeed, since depravity is not wholly subdued here, 
 Jets of bitter water, but the habitual issues are sweet. An 
 unrenewed heart is a deep well of bitterness 3 and ' salt water 
 cannot yield fresh , ' 
 
VERS. 13-16.] Earthly Wisdom. 269 
 
 XVIII. 
 EARTHLY WISDOM. 
 
 ' Who is a wise man, and endued with knowledge among you ? Let him 
 show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. 
 14 But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not 
 and lie not against the truth. 15 This wisdom descendeth not from 
 above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish ; 16 For where envying and 
 strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.' — ^James hi. 13-16. 
 
 THE connection of these words with the preceding is 
 natural and close. The apostle, you remember, was 
 led into that exposition and condemnation of sins of the 
 tongue which has thus far occupied the chapter, by his know- 
 ledge of the fact alluded to in the first verse, that in' the 
 churches to which he wrote a strong disposition to put them- 
 selves forward as teachers was manifested by many persons 
 who were not qualified for the work by knowledge and Chris- 
 tian experience. Various most serious evils resulted from this; 
 and, in particular, the meetings of congregations were occasion- 
 ally scenes of most unseemly wrangling, instead of means of 
 edifying and comforting the brethren. Many argued for vic- 
 tory instead of for truth ; angry stinging words were spoken ; 
 ill-feeling was produced, which not merely poisoned happiness 
 and prevented any spiritual advantage at the time, but led to 
 alienations and outbreaks of bitterness in ordinary social inter- 
 course. It is plain from several passages in Paul's writings, 
 that he had been much distressed by faults of this kind in 
 some of the churches to which his Epistles were sent ; and it 
 is obvious that they weighed much on the heart of James, 
 Very early in his Epistle we find his convictions and feelings 
 on this subject uttering themselves thus: 'My beloved brethren, 
 let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath : 
 
270 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. 
 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughti- 
 ness, and receive with meekness the ingrafted word, which is 
 able to save your souls' (i. 19-21). In the remarks on the 
 sins of the tongue which started from the injunction given in 
 the first verse of this chapter, ' My brethren, be not many 
 masters,' the presumptuous and turbulent discussion of reli- 
 gious questions has naturally been mainly in the apostle's 
 mind ; and, in the last few verses, particularly the monstrous 
 and grievously sinful incongruity of the warm words of devo- 
 tion toward God, and the wrathful language toward men, which 
 were often mingled in the Christian assemblies. Now these 
 painful and discreditable scenes arose from an impression on 
 the part of men who neither in head nor heart were fitted for 
 the position of Christian teachers, that they were so qualified, 
 having spirituality and large acquaintance with truth. From the 
 point which we have now reached, therefore, to the end of 
 the chapter, James directs the attention of his readers to the 
 nature and evidences of true heavenly wisdom, and the incon- 
 sistency with it of everything like bitterness and hatred. 
 
 The subject is thus introduced : ' Who is a wise /nan, and 
 endued with knowledge among you 1 Let him show out of a good 
 conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.^ In substance 
 the meaning is evidently this : ' If there be truly wise and 
 instructed men among you, they will prove their wisdom by a 
 holy life — a life distinguished by Christian meekness.' But 
 the first part of the sentence is throAvn into the form of a 
 question, the construction of the whole being similar to what 
 we find, for example, in the thirty-fourth Psalm : ' What man 
 is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see 
 good ? Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking 
 guile. Depart from evil, and do good : seek peace, and pursue 
 it' (Ps. xxxiv. 12-14). You feel that the interrogative mode 
 of stating a supposition has a peculiar force in the discussion 
 of morals, from its directness of appeal. Many of the apostle's 
 readers were conscious that they had taken up a position of 
 prominence which only persons who were 'wise and endued 
 
VER. 13.] Earthly Wisdom. , 271 
 
 with knowledge ' could rightly fill. Many of his readers in our 
 time, too, may be conscious of a similar persuasion in regard to 
 themselves, of fitness for a prominent position, though perhaps 
 modern ecclesiastical usages may have prevented its being ex- 
 hibited exactly in the same way. To each conscience goes 
 straight home the question, ' Who is a wise man and endued 
 with knowledge among you?' 
 
 ' Let hitn show,'' — that is, ' The proper course for such a one 
 is to show ; and (for this thought is plainly implied in the 
 injunction) every one that is truly wise and well instructed will 
 show.' ' Let him show,' then, what ? We expect ' his wisdom,' 
 but the apostle expresses himself differently. He says, ^ his 
 works^ — that is, * his works as a wise man^ or, substantially, 
 ' the works or fruits of his wisdom.' We have here again what 
 may be described as the central thought of this Epistle, that 
 where religion has real saving hold of a mind and heart, it cannot 
 from its nature but powerfully influence the outward life ; and 
 that the more a Christian has of true wisdom and spiritual 
 knowledge, the more manifestly will his life at all points be 
 governed by his religion. Talk of orthodoxy and Christian 
 experience, however fluent and animated and clever, does not 
 of itself prove wisdom ; the really wise man will ' show his 
 works.'' ' Out of a good conversation,^ James continues. The 
 word * conversation,^ as employed in modern English, designates 
 one element of our social life — the interchange of thought by 
 speech ; but at the time our version of the Bible was made, it 
 meant generally ' a course of life or conduct ; ' and wherever it 
 occurs in the Bible, which it does often, this is its meaning. 
 The line of thought will in most cases lead readers of any 
 intelligence instinctively to give the word something like its 
 correct force, except perhaps in 2 Pet. ii. 7, where, in the state- 
 ment that 'just Lot was vexed with the filthy conversation of 
 the wicked,' there may be a risk of its being taken improperly 
 in the narrow sense, which covers only a portion of the mean- 
 ing. ' Otit of here represents the same original particle which 
 is rendered '■by^ in 'I will show thee my faith by my works' 
 (ch. ii, 18). The meaning seems to be similar, and the 
 
272 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 same translation would be clearer here : ' Let him show by a 
 good course of life his works.' The 'works' here spoken 
 of, and the 'good (beautiful, noble) course of life,' are the 
 same, but looked at in different lights. The ' works ' are the 
 separate acts of holiness, of godly earnestness and godly 
 patience, which constitute the 'noble Hfe;' and each such act, 
 when we know it to be not isolated, but consistent with the 
 whole life, is to be regarded as a new fruit and evidence of 
 wisdom. 
 
 We have here, you observe, the truth brought before us, that 
 genuine Christian wisdom, whether it lead a man to become a 
 teacher in the church or not, will, at all events, in all cases find 
 expression through giving spiritual loveliness to the whole daily 
 life. He is the wisest Christian, whether he occupy the pulpit 
 or the pew, — he exhibits the most knowledge of God, and of 
 himself, and of Christianity, — he shows the broadest and pro- 
 foundest views of the philosophy of religion, of the chief end 
 of man, and the way to obtain happiness, — who walks most 
 closely with God, and is most perfectly changed into His 
 likeness. 
 
 The apostle, having before his mind the angry, and turbu- 
 lent, and arrogant spirit often exhibited by professing Chris- 
 tians who fancied themselves wise, and because they fancied 
 themselves wise, gives prominence to that characteristic of 
 true wisdom which is most directly opposed to this : ' Let 
 him show out of a good conversation his works with meek- 
 ness of wisdom^ or more exactly, '/« wisdom's meekness.' 
 Meekness is thus set before us as the disposition of heart in 
 which alone men can show works of real Christian wisdom, — 
 the element or atmosphere in which alone a truly good, noble, 
 beautiful course of life can be maintained. This grace of 
 ' meekness'' — freedom from the spirit of wrathfulness, revenge, 
 sullenness, under any kind of trouble, and this with relation 
 both to God and man — is closely allied to humility, and 
 patience, and love. I do not know that at any point the 
 opposition between the spirit of the world and the spirit of 
 Christ is more marked, more obviously diametrical, than with 
 
VER. 14.] Earthly Wisdom. 273 
 
 regard to this feature of character. That 'the meek'' should 
 ' inherit the earth ' — they that bear wrongs, and exemphfy the 
 love which ' seeketh not her own,' — to a world that believes in 
 high-handedness and self-assertion, and pushing the weakest to 
 the wall, a statement like this of the Lord from heaven cannot 
 but appear an utter paradox. The man of the world desires 
 to be counted anything but ' meek ' or ' poor in spirit,' and 
 would deem such a description of him equivalent to a charge 
 of unmanliness. Ah, brethren, this is because we have taken 
 in Satan's conception of manliness instead of God's. One 
 Man has been shown us by God, in whom His ideal of man 
 was embodied ; and He, ' when He was reviled, reviled not 
 again ; when He suffered, threatened not, but committed Him- 
 self to Him that judgeth righteously :' He for those who nailed 
 Him to the tree prayed, * Father, forgive them ; for they know 
 not what they do.' The world's spirit of wrath, then, must be 
 folly; whilst than a spirit of meekness like His, in the midst of 
 controversy, oppositions, trials of whatever kind, there can be no 
 surer evidence that 'Jesus is made of God to His people wisdom.' 
 In the fourteenth verse, the other side — the case as it 
 actually stood with a great number of the readers — is pre- 
 sented with much pointedness and force : ' But if ye have bitter 
 envying and strife in your hearts, glory not and lie not against 
 the truth.' James probes here to the quick for the patient's 
 good. He tears off the tissue of plausibilities (zeal for God's 
 glory, ardour on behalf of truth, and the like), in which an 
 envenomed, arrogant, bigoted spirit often enwraps itself, and 
 lays bare the moral deformity and defilement — ' bitter envying 
 and strife' We have not here the pleasant ' water of life' (the 
 image of the twelfth verse is perhaps still in the apostle's 
 mind), but ' bitter waters' of hatred. 'If such be your spirit,' 
 he says, '■glory not and lie not agaijist the truth ;' that is, 'Do 
 not boast that you are wise, wise with the wisdom of heaven : 
 for in so boasting you He, and this glorying and falsehood are 
 in direct opposition to God's truth. The gospel of Christ' 
 (for this is what is here, as so often in the New Testament, 
 meant by 'the truth') 'has for its spirit love, meekness, long- 
 
274 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch, hi. 
 
 suffering; and thus the wisdom which Christ gives through 
 that truth reveals itself in these graces: if ye, then, have in 
 your hearts envy, and self-seeking, and contentiousness, to 
 boast of these as being His wisdom is to he against Him and 
 His truth.' I need hardly observe that we are not to take 
 these words of the apostle as a declaration that controversy on 
 religious points is always a bad thing. The life of our Lord, 
 and the lives and writings of His inspired followers, all prove 
 the reverse to be true. It is often the duty of Christians, in 
 ' holding fast the form of sound words,' to ' contend earnestly 
 for the faith once delivered to the saints ; ' yet our apostle's 
 teaching in this passage will not have its full and proper effect 
 on our minds, unless it leave a very distinct impression that a 
 so-called zeal for religion may be a very irreligious zeal, that 
 controversy always involves very serious spiritual hazards, and 
 that wherever love fails and a spirit of bitterness enters in, 
 there is sin. 
 
 The statement that to give the name of Christian wisdom to 
 a condition of mind and heart such as has been described in 
 the first clause of the fourteenth verse, is ' to boast and he 
 against God's truth/ is supported and illustrated in the two 
 verses that follow. ' This wisdom^ says James, ' descefideth not 
 from above, but is eart/ily, sensual, devilish.^ The wisdom which 
 displays itself in bitterness (and alas, brethren, in the history 
 of the church of Christ, how often has fancied wisdom dis- 
 played itself in bitterness ! how much of real knowledge and 
 mental power has been wasted in such bitterness!) — this 
 wisdom is not from heaven ; but as it displays itself on earth, 
 so it is also of '■ eartJily'' origin. And, being 'earthly,' it is 
 * sensual.^ The word so translated occurs in the New Testa- 
 ment several times, but is rendered ' sensual' only here and 
 in a verse in Jude, where ' mockers, walking after their own 
 lusts,' are described as ' sensual, having not the Spirit ' (Jude 
 19). Elsewhere the rendering is 'natural,' as in the contrast 
 between the 'natural body' and the 'spiritual body' in the 
 fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and 
 in the statement in the second chapter of the same epistle, that 
 
VER. 15.] Earthly Wisdom. 275 
 
 * the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ' 
 (i Cor. XV. 44, ii. 14). According to its derivation, the original 
 word strictly means ' belonging to the soul.'' The contrast 
 with spirit and the spiritual, which is expressed in the pas- 
 sages that I have quoted from First Corinthians and from 
 Jude, and imphed in that now before us, is the key to the 
 exact meaning. Sometimes in Scripture, as commonly among 
 ourselves, man is spoken of as consisting of a body and a soul, 
 in which case ' soul ' is used in the widest sense. Sometimes, 
 however, we have three constituent elements mentioned or 
 alluded to — the body, soul, and spirit.^ According to this 
 division, the ^ soul' comprehends only those energies and 
 capacities of mind and heart which have to do with the world 
 known by our bodily senses, — man's mental and emotional 
 nature in so far merely as he is the highest of the animals — an 
 animal able to buy and sell, as the beaver can build a hut and 
 a dam; the ^spirit'' is that highest power of a rational being 
 by which it can apprehend the idea of God, and hold com- 
 munion with Him, — by which through faith it can live under 
 the influences of an unseen world. The ' spirit' should be the 
 governing principle, holding the whole nature under a firm and 
 healthful sway. But, as you know, brethren, in man, as he now 
 is by nature, the spirit is darkened, perverted, and weakened ; 
 it is dethroned through sin ; and only the enlightening and 
 strengthening energy of God's Spirit can enable our spirits to 
 take their rightful dignity and rule. Where the spirit does not 
 rule, the soul — that is, as we have seen, the mental and emo- 
 tional nature in so far as it is occupied with the world open 
 to the senses — tends to become ever more and more subject to 
 the lowest element of our constitution, the appetites of the 
 body. Hence the Apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, 
 distinguishes all men into two classes — those who are ' in the 
 flesh,' and those who are ' in the spirit ; ' the standard on which 
 
 ^ See I Thess. v. 23, Heb. iv. 12. The subject is fully discussed in 
 Delitzsch's Biblical Psychology, and more briefly in a sermon by Bishop 
 EJlicott on I Thess. v. 23, in the volume entitled The Destiny of the 
 Creature, and other Sermo?ts. 
 
276 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 the division is based being that which I have now indicated : 
 ' Ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the 
 Spirit of God dwell in yoti ' (viii. 9). 
 
 You see, then, that when James here calls the wisdom that 
 bore bitter wranglings as its fruit a wisdom ^ of the soiil^ with 
 an implied and well understood contrast to that wisdom of 
 the spirit which ought to regulate all the thoughts and feelings, 
 words and actions, of Christians, he means that it belongs 
 entirely to the lower elements of our nature, and that its 
 characteristics are simply those of the wisdom belonging to 
 the men of the world, whose aim is personal honour and 
 aggrandisement. The words which this wisdom utters may 
 be of God's glory, but their real aim is man's glory. Its 
 plans and procedure have all reference to self and to this 
 world of the senses, though the subjects it discusses may 
 belong to the invisible world, the world known to faith. 
 Rightly understood, then, brethren, you cannot but feel how 
 searching and scathing this word of the apostle is ; and it is 
 interesting to notice, that the very same tempers which are 
 here denounced as iijispi?'it2ial, merely ' of the soiil,^ are those 
 which the Apostle Paul specifies as peculiarly grieving to that 
 Divine Spirit through whose indwelling alone man's spirit has 
 rule over his lower nature. ' Grieve not the Holy Spirit of 
 God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let 
 all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil- 
 speaking, be put away from you, with all malice : and be ye 
 kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, 
 even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you' (Eph. iv. 
 30-32). From the completeness with which the distinction 
 between sojil and spirit has been lost to our modern thought, 
 it seems impossible to give the idea of the word before us ex- 
 actly in any translation. 'Sensual' and 'animal' suggest too 
 exclusively the action of the very lowest propensities of our 
 nature, though, as we have seen, the tendency of the * soul,' 
 when ungoverned by the ' spirit,' is steadily towards subjection 
 to these. Perhaps, on the whole, ' natural,' in its well under- 
 stood opposition to ' spiritual,' is the best word. 
 
VER. 1 6.] Earthly Wisdom. 277 
 
 But something more awful still has to be said of this wicked 
 wisdom. Like all wisdom among men on moral questions, 
 which is only ' earthly,' only 'natural,' it is ^devilish'' — devil- 
 like. Our first parents yielded to the temptation to sin, be- 
 cause they considered that the tree was ' to be desired to make 
 one wise ;' and this was the wisdom — a wisdom kindred to that 
 of Satan, whose lie seduced them — full of envy and falsehood, 
 moving ever in the atmosphere of selfishness and malignity. 
 Where zeal even regarding religion shows itself in unholy 
 tempers like these, the fire of this zeal is fire from the bottom- 
 less pit. The ' spirit ' of man is in action here as well as the 
 ' soul 3' but, alas, the grandeur of the capabilities of this con- 
 stituent of our being only deepens the debasement ; and the 
 spirit ' made but a little lower than the angels ' of light, links 
 itself with the lost angels of darkness. 
 
 The sixteenth verse justifies the strong statements of the 
 fifteenth : ' For where envying and strife is,' such as in the be- 
 ginning of the fourteenth verse has been supposed, 'there' — 
 always, both in the envious persons themselves and in others 
 whom their spirit influences — ' is confusion,' turbulence and dis- 
 traction of every kind — mental, moral, and social. Ah, brethren, 
 from the day when envy and self-seeking — springing up, too, 
 in immediate connection with religious worship at God's altar — 
 desolated Adam's family, what ruin has this spirit wrought in 
 families, churches, communities of every kind ! Now ' God is 
 not the author of confusion, but of peace ' — peace in the indi- 
 vidual heart, and in the societies, where the gospel rules. He 
 is the ' God of peace,' and His revelation is the ' gospel of 
 peace.' What produces ' confusion,' then, cannot be from Him. 
 Not ' confusion' only, but 'every evi/work,' may naturally spring 
 from this bitter root of envy and contentiousness. If love be 
 'the fulfilling of God's law,' as He Himself declares it to be, 
 then lovelessness in any of its forms cannot but, if persistently 
 indulged, sap, poison, destroy the whole moral nature. This 
 wisdom is certainly not ' from the Father of lights, from whom 
 Cometh down every good and every perfect gift,' and nothing 
 but good and perfect gifts. It is ' earthly, sensual, devilish.' 
 
278 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch, hi. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 HEAVENLY WISDOM. 
 
 ' But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, 
 and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without par- 
 tiality, and without hypocrisy. 18 And the fruit of righteousness is 
 sowii in peace of them that make peace.' — ^James III. 17, 18. 
 
 THE apostle passes on now to depict for us the features of 
 real wisdom, — that only satisfying wisdom for immortal 
 creatures of which ' the fear of the Lord is the beginning.' This 
 wisdom is '■from above.'' That with which the apostle has con- 
 trasted it was described as ' earthly,' having its origin in the 
 blinded minds and corrupt hearts of men themselves ; but 
 this is a ' good and perfect gift,' such as comes only from the 
 'Father of lights.' It is found only in those whom 'of His 
 own will He hath begotten by the word of truth.' It comes 
 through faith in Jesus Christ, which is * not of ourselves, but 
 the gift of God.' 
 
 James proceeds to exhibit some of its main results and evi- 
 dences in heart and life. You observe that he does not dwell 
 on its basis, or the way in which it is attained. In speaking 
 of ' the wisdom that is from above,' he assumes that his readers 
 know of such a wisdom, and believe in its heavenly origin : 
 he assumes indeed, we may say, as generally throughout the 
 Epistle, that they were familiar with the central truths of the 
 religion of Jesus which they professed, his aim everywhere 
 being to show how the vital reception of these truths will show 
 itself in man's moral nature. The question that he answers 
 in the verse before us is this : ' If a man, feeling that he lacks 
 wisdom, has asked of God, who giveth to all liberally; if a 
 man has been begotten again with the word of truth, and thus 
 has |he faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, so 
 
VER. 17.] Heavenly Wisdom. 279 
 
 that the secret of the Lord is with him, — how will this celestial 
 wisdom reveal its presence ?' The characteristics are set forth 
 under two heads, which, with logical precision, James marks 
 with the notation ^ first ' and ' then^ that is to say, ' in the first 
 place,' and 'in the second place 3' the first division having 
 reference to the influence of heavenly wisdom on a man 
 looked at simply by himself, the other to its influence on him 
 considered as a member of society.^ The division is the same, 
 only in the inverse order, as that before given by the apostle of 
 the features of 'true and undefiled religious service:' 'to visit 
 the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep him- 
 self unspotted from the world.' 
 
 Under the first head, according to the division here, the 
 influence of heavenly wisdom on a man's moral nature, looked 
 at simply by himself, James mentions only one characteristic, 
 but that a most comprehensive one : ' this wisdom,' he says 
 — that is, as of course the meaning must be in speaking of 
 the moral results of wisdom, the man who possesses it — is 
 ^pnre^ The Christianly wise man shrinks from moral defile- 
 ment of every kind. Nothing less wide of range than this is 
 involved in the word 'pure' here. One great fundamental 
 characteristic of the morality taught in the Bible is, that it 
 occupies the whole nature. ' Blessed are the pure in heart, 
 for they shall see God:' 'Blessed are the undefiled in the 
 way, who walk in the law of the Lord.' The truly wise man 
 is he who has conformity of spirit to the ' only wise God,' who 
 beUeves what God teaches, loves what God loves, lives as 
 Jesus lived — He who was the express image of the invisible 
 God. 'Purity,' as required by God, and exemplified in the 
 measure of their faith by all Christ's people, implies a supe- 
 riority of soul, which will show itself continually in word and 
 
 ^ A most discreditable misapplication of the apostle's logical terms ' first ' 
 and ' then, ' is sometimes made in the interests of bigotry and uncharitable- 
 ness. He does not say that one whom we cannot doubt to be a Christian 
 must 'first' have his doctrine in every minute point what we think 'pure,' 
 before our relations to him can be 'peaceable.' His teaching tliroughout 
 the whole passage is, in substance, the saying of the very reverse. 
 
28o Lectures on the Epistle of y antes, [ch. hi. 
 
 deed, to everything low and sensual, to everything selfish and 
 mean, — a freedom from petty views and sinister ends, and, on 
 the contrary, a relish and love of everything really great and 
 good. By such moral convictions, and feelings, and conduct, 
 a man is proved to be wise with that heavenly wisdom which 
 consists in a true, vital, energetic apprehension of his relations 
 to God, of the chief end of man, of duty and happiness. How 
 sadly unwise, then, my brethren, a very large proportion of 
 those who call and deem themselves Christians must be ; and 
 how much of folly must mingle with the wisdom even of the 
 wisest here below ! The divine ideal of the church for which 
 Jesus gave Himself up to death, is a ' bride adorned for her 
 Husband' with all the graces of holy beauty, — 'a glorious church, 
 sanctified and cleansed with the washing of water through the 
 word,' and thus freed from ' spot and wrinkle, and every such 
 thing.' How lamentably different from this divine ideal the 
 reality seems to be, if we take it to be set before us in the 
 visible church now! Are worldUness, self-indulgence, gross- 
 ness of spirit, a glaringly unchristlike life, unknown among the 
 men that have assumed the vows of God ? As a matter of fact, 
 no Christian becomes perfect here below ; but the wisdom that 
 is from above teaches all who possess it to make perfect purity, 
 absolute stainlessness of the whole nature, the goal of their 
 efforts and the subject of their earnest prayers. In all such, 
 though the law of sin in the members will still doubtless, whilst 
 they are here, war with the law of the mind, yet the power 
 of the new man over the old will grow clearly stronger and 
 stronger ; and at last victory will be completely won, and the 
 emancipated nature, wise nov/ up to its fullest capacity of 
 wisdom, will glorify the Redeemer perfectly, being holy in all 
 things, as He is holy. 
 
 Under his second class of the characteristics of heavenly 
 wisdom, those in which are exhibited its moral influence on 
 man as a member of society, the apostle mentions six. In the 
 first place, it is '■peaceable.' 'Envying and strife,' James has 
 already said, prove a so-called wisdom to be not heavenly, 
 but, in the worst acceptation of the term, ' earthly.' So also 
 
VER. 17.] Heavenly Wisdom. 281 
 
 Paul says to the Corinthians, 'Whereas there is among you 
 envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk 
 as men?' (i Cor. iii. 3.) The wisdom that is really from above 
 leads a man to delight in peace. The spirit of love will reign 
 in his heart, and, so far as his influence extends, turbulence 
 and contention will be discouraged, whether in business, in 
 ordinary social intercourse, in religious or political procedure. 
 Perpetual and uncompromising war with sin in ourselves and 
 in the world, but love to our neighbours as to ourselves, tender 
 pity for their weaknesses such as we need for our own, forgive- 
 ness for their trespasses against us such as we ask of God for 
 ours against Him, — this is wisdom. 
 
 The spirit of peace, a disposition and longing for peace, the 
 wise man always has, in so far as he is wise ; but the existence 
 of the external condition of peace necessarily depends to some 
 extent on the will of others. Our part is, as Paul puts it in 
 the Epistle to the Romans, wherever it ' is possible,' and always 
 * as much as lieth in us, to live peaceably with all men.' But 
 there are worse things, incomparably worse things, than the non- 
 existence of external peace ; and it would evince anything but 
 the possession of heavenly wisdom not to recognise this fact. 
 Had external peace been the best of all things, then Jesus 
 Avould not have come among us with His work and gospel of 
 grace ; for so certain is the resistance that sin makes to it to 
 interrupt in innumerable cases and ways external peace, that 
 He Himself, the Prince of peace, testified, ' Think not that I 
 am come to send peace on earth ; I came not to send peace, 
 but a sword.' ' There are many sacrifices which must not be 
 made by Christians, even to secure peace. We must not 
 flatter nor imitate what we think wrong in men's opinions and 
 conduct, in order to have peace with them ; we must not buy 
 peace at the cost of truth and justice ; we must not omit duty 
 for it, nor commit sin. If men will not be at peace with us 
 but on principles which infer our disloyalty to the Supreme 
 King, and are thus inconsistent with our primary and para- 
 mount obligations, then peace, however desirable, must be 
 parted with, for the plain reason, that to have God for a Friend 
 
282 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 is a greater good, an immeasurably greater good, than to have 
 all the world as our enemies is an evil.'^ 
 
 This wisdom is '■gentle'' also. The exact idea intended by 
 the original word is ' considerate and forbearing.' The Chris- 
 tianly wise man loves to make allowances for the ignorance 
 and weakness of others, knowing how much and constant need 
 he stands in of having allowances made for him both by God 
 and man. In his business dealings with others, for example, 
 — knowing that human laws, however carefully made, yet, if 
 always rigidly enforced, will often act cruelly and unjustly, — 
 he guides himself by the broad principles of equity in the 
 sight of God. In his judgment of the conduct of men, he 
 takes a kindly view wherever it is possible, never believing 
 evil of them until he cannot help it. In his judgment of 
 men's opinions, he remembers how inadequately the loose 
 language of many represents their real views, how many men 
 are much better than their professed creed, and how unfair the 
 practice so common in controversy is, of ascribing to a man as 
 held by him views which zve may think legitimately deduced 
 from his avowed principles, but which he himself may hold in 
 abhorrence. In every department of his thought and life, the 
 possessor of the wisdom that is from above is ' considerate and 
 forbearing.' Many professing Christians may tremble to think 
 of this characteristic. 
 
 Again, it is '■easy to be entreated.^ The wise man is free 
 from everything hke repulsive austerity, neither has he aught 
 of headstrong self-sufhciency and obstinacy. He is accessible 
 and open to remonstrance from persons reasonably entitled to 
 give it, regarding any opinion he has formed or anything he 
 has done or proposed, especially affecting others. We see a 
 fine example of this feature of heavenly wisdom in David, 
 when, though extremely irritated by the insolence and in- 
 gratitude of Nabal, he yielded to the pleadings of Abigail, 
 and said : ' Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which hath 
 sent thee this day to meet me ; and blessed be thy advice ; 
 
 1 Dr. John Brown's Comtneniary 011 Romans, p. 475. The language is 
 sHghtly altered. 
 
YER. 17.] Heavenly Wisdom. 283 
 
 and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming 
 to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand.' 
 The wise man never nurses anger; but even when he has just 
 ground of complaint, longs for kindly relations with his brother. 
 The offender therefore finds the offended not disposed to insist 
 on humbling him in the dust of penitential acknowledgments, 
 but ready to meet him half-way, rejoicing in the prospect of 
 concord. 
 
 Another feature of this wisdom is, that it is '///// of mercy 
 and good fruits I' The wise man pities all who are called on 
 to suffer, and this is the feature of character here indicated : 
 for, as I have had occasion to show in a previous lecture,^ 
 where mercy is spoken of in Scripture as a Christian duty, 
 it does not refer merely to the forgiveness of those who have 
 wronged us, but more widely to active compassion for those 
 who are in trouble and sorrow. He whom God has made 
 wise 'weeps with them that weep,' and 'remembers them 
 that are in bonds, as if bound with them ;' and these tears 
 and remembrances are no mere self-indulgent exercise of 
 sentiment, but conjoined with earnest and persevering effort 
 an'd self-sacrifice for the relief of the suffering. This wisdom 
 is 'full oi good fruits,' you observe; and, while naturally sug- 
 gesting a richness of holy and beautiful fruitage of every kind, 
 contrasting with the ' every evil work ' which in the previous 
 verse is ascribed to ' envying and strife ' as their legitimate 
 result, yet the close connection of the 'good fruits' with 
 * mercy ' plainly indicates a special reference to its fruits. 
 Christian wisdom exerts herself actively for the relief of sor- 
 row in private, in the sphere which God has given to each 
 individual ; and helps onward by every means within her 
 reach enterprises of combined effort for elevating our race 
 from its wretchedness, for breaking any of the shackles with 
 which sin has bound humanity. In all true beUevers, ac- 
 cording to their faith and their opportunities, John Howard 
 and Elizabeth Fry have true fellow-labourers, true brethren 
 and sisters, — nay. He has, who ' went about doing good.' 
 ^ On ii. 13. 
 
284 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 Heavenly wisdom is '///// of good fruits :' it abounds with 
 them ; and hence, whenever it is present, you cannot fail to 
 find them ; or, if you do fail, the wisdom must be miserably 
 stunted and blighted by the influence of worldliness. On the 
 healthy tree every branch is laden with the fruits of mercy. 
 By them will the reckoning be at the judgment. 'Whoso- 
 ever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup 
 of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto 
 you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.' And let not any 
 poor, and ignorant, and uninfluential Christian think that from 
 the narrowness of his sphere he cannot be '"full of mercy and 
 good fruits.' The Lord's mode of reckoning is not like man's. 
 In casting into the temple treasury the two mites that came 
 out of deep poverty and deep love, the widow was far more 
 * full of good fruits ' than the rich men who cast in many times 
 the sum with no self-sacrifice and little true love. Ever and 
 anon, on a Highland hill-side, one passes a little rocky cup 
 filled with cool crystal water from a deep unfailing spring. 
 The little cup barely affords a draught to the traveller, and 
 yet, because it fails not, what a multitude of weary wayfarers 
 does it refresh and invigorate, generation after generation ; and 
 how green and beautiful the litde rill that trickles from it keeps 
 a long stretch of the mountain-side ! So, however little the cup 
 of cold water be that you are able to give in Christ's name, it 
 will refresh many hearts in a lifetime if it be kept ever full, 
 ever ready. 
 
 The last two characteristics of heavenly wisdom which James 
 mentions are shown by the form of the words employed in the 
 original, as well as by their meaning, to be very closely allied 
 to each other. The sense of the first of the two words 
 appears to be something more comprehensive than the ' without 
 partiality ' of our version. Freedom from partiality is included 
 in it, but more also. The exact idea seems to be that of 
 freedom from the ' doubting ' or ' wavering ' of spirit of which 
 the apostle has already again and again, and with much earnest- 
 ness, pointed out the evil.-^ ' Without loavering and without 
 * See ch. i. 6-8 and ii. 4. 
 
VER. 17.] Heavenly Wisdom. 285 
 
 hypocrisy^ then — ' steady and sincere,' — these are the two closing 
 features in the description. The man who is really wise has 
 fixed principles. He is no dogmatist, but always open to 
 light; yet the grand principles which God has distinctly re- 
 vealed in His word are so firmly believed by him, that in 
 regard to all moral questions and relations these principles are 
 settled, unalterable, unassailable data for his reasonings. They 
 are pillars on which all the details of his character are built up 
 and rest. The moral life of such a man is therefore simple 
 and stable. A person who does not take the absolutely wise 
 and absolutely harmonious will of God as his rule of judgment 
 and action, must have an utterly discordant character. Selfish- 
 ness, in some one of its myriad forms, is its basis ; yet there 
 are yearnings in the soul now and again after what is noble 
 and beautiful, and good influences of many kinds act upon 
 it. Thus the man's views and aims are a congeries of incon- 
 sistencies and contradictions ; and accordingly in his conduct 
 there is no steadiness or congruity, — his procedure in cases 
 essentially similar being by what is merely casual swayed in 
 altogether opposite directions, and possibly neither of them 
 the right one. Too many Christians, through want of decision, 
 share largely in this instability, their moral judgments and con- 
 duct being to a great extent determined, at least modified or 
 coloured, by circumstances having no real connection with the 
 merits of the case in hand, instead of resting on the everlasting 
 verities. With the truly wise Christian the case is altogether 
 different. One who knows him can never be in doubt what 
 his opinion will be, or his course, in any matter where a moral 
 principle is clearly involved ; for iho. principle is what he mainly 
 regards always, and he will not allow himself to be diverted 
 from what he sees to be right by any considerations arising out 
 of non-essential circumstances. His views, feelings, and con- 
 duct are consistent. In every department of his life he displays 
 this consistency and stability ; and in . his dealings with other 
 men, in particular, there is nothing which more decidedly than 
 this constitutes him an epistle of Jesus Christ, — telling the 
 truth to all beholders regarding; the ends and energies of the 
 
286 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [en. iii. 
 
 gospel. His standard of value for men is moral excellence, 
 because he knows this to be God's standard ; and he applies 
 it according to his light, faithfully, cautiously, with tenderness 
 and charity. Wickedness he hates and condemns, whether it 
 show itself under purple and fine linen, or rags. He 'honours 
 all men,' but he 'loves the brotherhood' with a peculiarly 
 strong affection, because they are Christ's ; and as they are 
 Christ's, and honoured by Him, whether they live in a garret 
 or a palace, the wise man's love for them also is not dependent 
 on their outward position. Thus, through his being ' stable ' in 
 principle, he is ' without partiality.' 
 
 The Christianly wise man is '■■without hypocrisy'' too. Bear- 
 ing ever about with him the thought, ' Thou God seest me ' — 
 a joyful thought for one vvho in God recognises his gracious 
 Father — he strives in everything to be sincere, to shun all 
 mere stage-play, to speak and act according to his real views 
 and feelings, to have seeming and being in true accordance. 
 As a rule, the world deems some measure of hypocrisy a pru- 
 dent thing, and indeed essential to success ; but ' the wisdom 
 of this world is foolishness with God.' 
 
 All moral beauty in God's creatures is a reflection of the 
 ineffable radiance of His holiness. In every feature of the 
 heavenly wisdom which we have been contemplating, we dis- 
 cern the image of Him who is ' of purer eyes than to behold 
 evil,' who loves to be known as the ' God of peace,' whose 
 ' gentleness ' makes His servants great, who is ' good, and 
 ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy unto all them that 
 call upon Him,' and ' who cannot lie.' ' Beholding His glory,' 
 may we be ' changed into His image, from glory to glory, by the 
 Lord the Spirit !'i 
 
 The eighteenth verse corresponds in the description of the 
 true wisdom to the sixteenth verse in the description of the 
 
 ' ' The seven qualities which James attributes to the wisdom from above 
 are nothing but the seven colours of the one ray of light of heavenly truth, 
 which has been revealed and has appeared in Christ Himself. He is there- 
 fore supremely entitled to the name, " the Wisdom of God. " ' (Luke xi. 49.) 
 
 — OOSTERZEE, in loc. 
 
VER. 1 8.] Heavenly Wisdom. 287 
 
 false. As the false, exhibiting itself in ' envying and strife,' 
 thus brings in ' confusion and every form of evil,' and in this 
 way proves itself to be from beneath ; so the true wisdom, 
 showing itself in ' peace ' and peacemaking, thus brings in 
 'righteousness,' and proves itself to be from above. ' The 
 fruit of righteousness,^ then, you observe, does not mean the 
 fruit which springs from righteousness ; but ' the fruit (true 
 wisdom's fruit) which is — consists in — righteousness ;' just as 
 we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews that 'affliction in 
 those who are rightly exercised thereby bears the peaceable 
 fruit (of) righteousness.' When James says that 'the fruit 
 righteousness is soum^ the expression is one implying a lively 
 anticipation of results ; as if a man planting acorns were to 
 tell you that he was sowing an oak forest, or a farmer should 
 this spring be said to sow next winter's bread. 
 
 The field in which the seed is sown is the human mind and 
 heart, immeasurably the noblest and richest soil to be found 
 on earth. The grandest created thing certainly must be a soul 
 that can grasp the idea of a Creator, and can love that Creator 
 as a Father. ' Man,' says the illustrious Pascal, ' is a feeble 
 reed, trembling in the midst of creation ; but then he is 
 endowed with thought. It does not need the universe to arm 
 for his destruction. A breath of wind, a drop of water, will 
 suffice to kill him. But though the universe were to fall on 
 man and crush him, he would be greater in his death than the 
 universe in its victory; for he would be conscious of his defeat, 
 and it would not be conscious of its triumph ' {Fensees, xviii. 
 11). A greater than Pascal, too, says, 'What shall it profit a 
 man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' Yet 
 this glorious field has manifestly in great measure gone to 
 waste. The soul can know and love God ; it does hate God, 
 and try to forget Him. The field is not merely barren of good, 
 but overspread with all noxious weeds. In lands where the 
 power of Christianity is wholly unknown, cruelty, impurity, and 
 every form of debasement and brutality are seen in rankest 
 luxuriance ; and those awful descriptions which the Apostle 
 Paul here and there in his epistles gives us of the paganism of 
 
288 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 
 
 his day, are still true to the very letter. Even in a country 
 like our own, where the precious tillage of the great Husband- 
 man has been experienced for so many generations, where the 
 light of the Sun of righteousness and the rain of the Spirit's 
 influences come down so abundantly and genially, how few 
 fields are waving with golden grain ! how deplorably many are 
 repulsive and noxious with the poison weeds of sensuality, 
 greed, falsehood, and heartlessness ! At the first, man's heart, 
 like his surroundings, was an Eden of beauty and fertility ; now 
 certainly it is by nature a dreary waste, full of briars and thorns. 
 We gather in the field the bitter fruit of unrighteousness. 
 
 Now the fruit desired by the sowers spoken of in the verse 
 before us is ^righteousness.^ This word is evidently to be 
 taken here in the sense which it very often bears in Scripture, 
 as simply another term for 'holiness,' conformity of character 
 to the will of God, and this both as regards our immediate 
 relations to God Himself and our relations to our fellow-men. 
 The fruit desired is that which God made man to bring forth, 
 affections loose from the vanities of earth, and set supremely 
 on God Himself, and on those true, and lasting, and satisfying 
 riches and glories which are at His right hand,— lives full of 
 holy love, and energy, and patience. If this fruit is to be 
 obtained, it is evident that special heavenly influences must 
 be brought into action ; for the tendency of our fallen nature, 
 left to itself, is to depart ever further from the production of 
 good fruit. All the mere earthly influences of every kind, 
 material, intellectual, and moral, that a creature like man in a 
 state of depravity could conceive of as likely to give him ad- 
 vancement, have in turn or unitedly been brought into play 
 in the history of the world ; and the result, so far as regards 
 moral and spiritual elevation, has always been a total failure. 
 Wherever Christ is unknown, the world lies in wickedness, 
 'gross darkness covering the people;' and in Christian coun- 
 tries, unbelievers who live a blameless outward life, and have 
 elevated views on moral subjects, would be obliged to acknow- 
 ledge, if they fairly thought the question out, that these are 
 due to the indirect influence on their minds of Christianity. 
 
VER. 1 8.] Heavenly Wisdom. 289 
 
 The seed from heaven from which ' the fruit of righteous- 
 ness ' will spring, is divine truth. The weeds which by nature 
 cover the field of the human heart spring from falsehood, 
 from the belief of what is not true regarding the matters on 
 which it is of the highest importance that we should know 
 and believe what is true. The ultimate source in man, no 
 doubt, of evil affections and unholy living is a perverted will, 
 a desire to please himself rather than to obey God. But, 
 according to our strong natural tendency to believe readily 
 what we want to believe, from the desire to disobey God 
 there arise false views regarding His character and our rela- 
 tions to Him. These false views are the immediate cause of 
 sinful feeling and conduct ; for we cannot conceive of a human 
 being in his senses, if possessed of clear and correct ideas 
 respecting God and himself, defying the supreme Lord of the 
 universe. 'Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God?' asks 
 the Psalmist ; and the answer is, ' Because he hath said in his 
 heart, Thou wilt not require it,' — he does not know, or does 
 not believe, that God is a God of judgment. 'Wherefore 
 lieth he in wait to catch the poor?' 'Because he hath said 
 in his heart, God hath forgotten, He hideth His face. He will 
 never see it.' Moral evil being thus the fruit of falsehood, 
 what God gives to be the seed of righteousness is truth. Now 
 if the field of our hearts were clear from bad growths — if man 
 were merely in intellectual ignorance, without a depravation 
 of his moral nature — then the communication of truth respect- 
 ing God's relation to us as Creator and Governor would be 
 sufficient to call forth love, and trust, and devotion. But for 
 fallen creatures more is needed. Nothing but a message of 
 mercy will suffice for us — glad tidings of pardoning grace — 
 awakening love through hope and thankfulness. ' The gospel 
 of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to every one that 
 believeth;' and 'righteousness,' likeness of character to God, 
 is the grand element of salvation. No man can truly believe 
 the gospel without experiencing to some extent the 'constrain- 
 ing ' power of Christ's love, so as, impelled by the mercies of 
 God, to be no longer ' conformed to this world,' but, in the 
 
 T 
 
290 Lechtres on the Epistle of y antes, [ch. hi. 
 
 measure of his faith, ' transformed by the renewing of his 
 mind.' 
 
 As thus the seed is from above, ' the glorious gospel of the 
 blessed God,' so He Himself is the Sower. The incarnate 
 God tells us that this is His work : ' He that soweth the good 
 seed is the Son of man.' He 'began both to do and to teach' 
 when ' He dwelt among us,' and He cames on the work still. 
 But men are His agents ; and this, like all His arrangements, 
 is 'very good.' The diffusion of the gospel might have been 
 effected by God's bringing it Himself in some way immediately 
 to the knowledge of each of His chosen ones, without any 
 human intervention ; but we are sensible of a peculiarly win- 
 ning power, a peculiarly exquisite sweetness, in the way which 
 He has chosen. Paul and James and Peter call on us to come 
 and share in experiences which they themselves have already 
 had. ' Come and cast yourselves on Christ,' they cry, ' that ye 
 may find rest to your souls. We, who were labouring and 
 heavy-laden, as ye now are, have cast our burdens on the Lord, 
 and entered thereby into blessed rest — ^joy unspeakable and 
 full of glory. Come over with us to the happiness of the life 
 eternal.' The word of Christ, as preached to us through the 
 epistles of these holy men, comes thus with the wondrous 
 power of sympathy; and the appeals of ministers or other 
 pleaders with souls have a similar enforcement to the heart. 
 
 The labour of the spiritual sower is rich in blessing, and 
 this for himself no less than for the field into which he casts 
 his seed. Divine judgment gave labour as a curse (' In the 
 sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread '), but into all labour 
 divine mercy has introduced many elements of blessing. In 
 the sphere of nature, it is good for us that we have to sow 
 before we reap. It might have been the divine arrangement 
 that man's food came to him without labour. In the sunny 
 islands of the Pacific the case is almost so ; and the savages 
 exult in the spontaneous abundance, — and remain savages, ex- 
 cept new wants be brought in that call for labour. We have 
 cause to be grateful, then, that God ' gives bread to the eater,' 
 not immediately, but through 'giving seed to the sower.' In 
 
VER. 1 8,] Heavenly Wisdom. 291 
 
 the spiritual sphere also, the man who becomes 'a fellow- 
 labourer with God' feels how great a privilege this is, and 
 blesses Him who has called him to it ; for he finds that the 
 work refreshes and invigorates the life of his own soul, and 
 that as he sows the seed of truth, which he trusts may bear 
 ' the fruit righteousness ' in others, the harvest in his own heart 
 is becoming ever richer. 
 
 For the fruit of civilisation and social improvement many- 
 philanthropists are sowing in the world, who care little for 
 Christ ; for ' righteousness^ according to its grand idea, as James 
 has set it forth elsewhere, 'the righteousness of Goef (i. 20), 
 Christians alone sow, for they alone value it. And all Chris- 
 tians are sowers, in so far as they understand the nature and 
 grandeur of their calling. Our appointed work is to be the 
 ' salt of the earth ;' to ' shine as lights in the world, holding 
 forth the word of life ;' to sow seed in the hearts of men who, 
 learning to love the Saviour, may again in their turn sow. 
 
 Our apostle shows us the spirit in which the wise sower of 
 the heavenly seed labours. He does his work ^ in peace.^ 
 'The wrath^of man worketh not the righteousness of God,' 
 for it misrepresents entirely the gospel of love and good-will ; 
 and thus, instead of furthering the progress of Christ's king- 
 dom, puts obstacles in its way. Would the messenger who 
 bears a king's pardon to vanquished rebels, or an assurance of 
 forgiveness from a father to a prodigal son, be likely to win 
 confidence for his tidings in the suspicious, alienated hearts of 
 his hearers, by introducing himself with frowns and angry re- 
 proaches ? Love is the true spirit of a herald of the God of 
 love. ' He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil ; be ye 
 therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.' Of the 
 great Messenger of God it was foretold by Isaiah, ' He shall 
 not strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear His voice in the 
 streets; a bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax 
 shall He not quench; and in His name' — the name of such a 
 Saviour as this — ' shall the Gentiles trust.' It may at times 
 be needful, in love, to proclaim ' the terrors of the Lord : ' 
 Christ did it, and His apostles; but this must always mani- 
 
292 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. hi. 18. 
 
 festly be in love, and by way of exception ; and the rule for 
 those who would be successful sowers must certainly be, 
 'gracious words' from a gracious soul. 
 
 The work of the spiritual sowing James describes as ' makifig- 
 peace^ — striving by consistent example, kindly counsel, help of 
 every kind, to promote true peace and love in all upon whom 
 in any way we can bring influence to bear. Now, the only 
 trustworthy basis of peace is the gospel of Jesus Christ, ac- 
 cepted by faith ; and therefore all who aim wisely at the 
 increase of peace, strive to gain their end by leading men 
 to the knowledge of Christ, and 'to ever deeper impressions 
 of the sweetness and beauty of His truth. The Christian's 
 supreme desire and persistent effort, according to the liveli- 
 ness and intelligence of his faith, is to extend that kingdom 
 which was inaugurated with the song of the angels, * Glory to 
 God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.' 
 From the seed of the 'gospel of peace,' sown 'in peace,' the 
 ' fruit of righteousness ' will spring. 
 
CH. IV. 1-3.] Origin of Strifes. 293 
 
 XX. 
 ORIGIN OF STRIFES. 
 
 ' From whence come wars and fightings among you ? Come they not hence, 
 even of your lusts that war in your members ? 2 Ye lust, and have 
 not : ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain : ye fight and war, 
 yet ye have not, because ye ask not. 3 Ye ask, and receive not, be- 
 cause ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.' — ^James 
 IV. 1-3. 
 
 EVERY reader must feel the power of the apostle's sudden 
 transition from the beautiful picture of the Christian 
 life as it should be, ' sowing in peace the fruit of righteousness,' 
 to the sketch of the church as it actually was in many places, 
 a community full of turbulence, disgraced by ' wars and fight- 
 ings.' ^ The scene exhibited to us by the apostle's words is so 
 dark, that at first doubt naturally rises whether his reference is 
 to Christians, and not rather to unbelieving Jews. But the 
 context proves that, according to all natural interpretation, we 
 must hold professing Christians to be spoken of. What is 
 described here is but a fuller development of the wicked spirit 
 described in the tenth verse of the preceding chapter, which 
 out of the same mouth sent forth cursing as well as blessing ; 
 and there the persons guilty of this sin are expressly named 
 ' brethren.' In the paragraph which is introduced by the 
 verses now before us, too, those addressed are designated in 
 the fourth verse as spiritually ' adulterous,' and in the eighth as 
 ' double-minded,' — terms implying that these persons professed 
 to love God, and to be wedded to Him ; and in the eleventh 
 verse we have the name 'brethren,' without the slightest in- 
 dication that those so addressed are different from the persons 
 reproved and pleaded with in the earlier paragraph. 
 
 We are very apt to misconceive considerably the character of 
 
294 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 the primitive church, through a vague impression that the exqui- 
 site outflow of Christian love at Jerusalem, of which the early 
 chapters of Acts tell us, lasted all through the first ages, and had 
 its counterpart in every congregation. A study of the Epistles 
 is fitted to give us a different idea. Much holy beauty there 
 was, doubtless ; but also not a little defect and defilement. ' I 
 fear,' says Paul to the Corinthians, 'lest, when I come, I shall 
 not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found unto 
 you such as ye would not ; lest there be debates, envyings, 
 wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults ; and 
 lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, 
 and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already, and 
 have not repented of the uncleanness, and fornication, and 
 lasciviousness, which they have committed.' Christians, in 
 truth, are always in much hazard of falling back to some extent 
 into the sins which more especially beset them before conver- 
 sion ; and this particularly when they are surrounded by those 
 who indulge in these sins. To missionaries, labouring either 
 among the heathen or among those in Christian lands who are 
 'ignorant and out of the way,' this tendency in their converts 
 causes great and constant anxiety, and necessitates constant 
 watchfulness over them. For an Asiatic, for example, living 
 among those who scarcely feel at all that truth is morally pre- 
 ferable to falsehood, it is extremely difficult, even when he is 
 brought under the power of the gospel, to become thoroughly 
 truthful and straightforward, — the tendency to revert to the old 
 type frequently asserting its power. Now the Jews as a people 
 were very prone to violent language, as indeed has been the case 
 with all the races of south-western Asia in all ages ; and during 
 the half-century preceding the destruction of Jerusalem, particu- 
 larly the latter part of it, there was great political excitement 
 and turbulence among them. The atmosphere in which James's 
 readers lived, therefore, was highly charged with the spirit of 
 strife ; and thus one can easily believe that in many of the 
 Christian congregations of ' the Dispersion ' there were painful 
 dissensions between individuals, or between factions, occasion- 
 ally leading to outbreaks of passion of the grossest kind. The 
 
VER. 
 
 I.] 1^1 gin of Strifes. 295 
 
 history of the church in all times and countries can show too 
 many illustrations of the working of the same evil tendencies, 
 not unfrequently bringing about actual wars. For a century 
 and a half after the beginning of the Reformation, almost every 
 war in Europe, whether civil or international, was partly due, 
 and many were due almost solely, to differences of view re- 
 garding religion. 
 
 Our apostle's words assume the existence of ' luars and fight- 
 ings ' among his readers, and that in some instances they were 
 fierce enough to be very notorious. It is possible, indeed 
 probable, considering how quick the Western Asiatics have 
 been in every age to follow up violence of language with 
 violence of hand, that James had knowledge of cases in which 
 there had been actual physical struggles ; but, whilst including 
 these, his words are obviously meant as a startling and impres- 
 sive description of all kinds of dissension. Similarly, Paul 
 enjoins upon Timothy (2 Tim. ii. 23) to 'avoid foolish and 
 unlearned questions, knowing that they do gender strifes'' {the 
 same word which is rendered in the verse before us by ' fight- 
 ings '). By ' wars ' the apostle means plainly the general con- 
 dition of hostility, and by '■fightings^ the particular outbreaks 
 of hostile feeling. The immediate causes of the quarrels were 
 in all likelihood various. Some, perhaps, sprang from the 
 virulence of rival teachers, assailing each other with bitterness 
 like that exhibited to Paul by his Judaizing opponents ; others 
 from the keen partisanship of the followers of diff'erent teachers, 
 who might themselves be friends, as at Corinth one said, ' I 
 am of Paul,' and another, ' I am of ApoUos ;' but what is said 
 in the second and third verses appears to show that James had 
 mainly in his mind disputes connected with efforts for worldly 
 advancement. It seems not unlikely, when we remember the 
 low and carnal conceptions of the nature of the Messianic 
 kingdom which had taken possession of the Jews universally, 
 that something of this evil leaven wrought still even among 
 the converts to Christianity, and that thus, here and there, 
 among the poorer members of the churches, there was discon- 
 tent with their position, as being unsuitable for the friends of 
 
296 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. iv. 
 
 Messiah the Prince, and consequent murmuring both against 
 God and against their weaUhier brethren. In many ways, 
 indeed, in all the Christian communities, whether Jewish or 
 Gentile, jealousies might easily arise between the rich and the 
 poor, — as they do still. 
 
 'Wars and fightings,' jealousies and animosities, were not 
 confined to the primitive church. They are painfiiUy familiar 
 to us still. Men and women who on the Sabbath have sat 
 side by side at the Lord's table, and drunk of the common cup 
 of love, will scowl at and calumniate and thwart each other 
 all the week. And the feeling between congregations or de- 
 nominations, which are but diiferent companies or brigades in 
 the army of the Captain of salvation, is not unfrequently such 
 as to remind one of the host of Midian in the night of Gideon's 
 victory, when ' every man's sword was turned against his fellow, 
 throughout all the host.' 
 
 ' Whence^ then, are these unseemly strifes ? the apostle asks. 
 He would have his readers consider the radical principles of 
 their procedure. Men often slide or drift imperceptibly into 
 positions that are productive of much harm to themselves and 
 others; and it is wise, therefore, to stop and turn aside for 
 a little from the excitements and distractions of our social 
 life, and ask ourselves whence and whither are our moral 
 movements. 
 
 James answers the question himself. Had he asked the 
 quarrelling Christians, he would have been told, no doubt, that 
 their being involved in strife was due to * circumstances,' to 
 'provocations,' to 'the need of asserting their rights.' The 
 apostle tears off" the veil of plausibilities, and shows them, as 
 the real originators of the dissensions, the ' hists ' of their de- 
 praved hearts, especially greed of wealth, and greed of pro- 
 minence and influence. The apostles have had many succes- 
 sors in the church, so far as regards their discreditable striving 
 with each other, in the early stages of their Christian life, 
 which of them should be the greatest. The race of Diotrephes, 
 Avho troubled the churches of Asia, because he ' loved to have 
 the pre-eminence,' is by no means extinct. Ambition, avarice, 
 
VER. I.] Origin of Strifes. 297 
 
 and sister lusts, are the true root of all wars — of all disputes 
 that become envenomed. The world without presents the 
 temptation ; but the power of the temptation is from within, 
 from the deceitfulness and wickedness of the heart. * Let no 
 man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God ; for God 
 cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man. 
 But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own 
 lust and enticed. Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth 
 forth sin.' 
 
 These lusts are '■in the members'' — standing in various ways 
 in close connection with the animal nature. Hence Paul 
 says, ' Let not sin reign in your mortal body, that ye should 
 obey it in the lusts thereof; neither yield ye your members 
 as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin ; but yield your- 
 selves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and 
 your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.' 
 ' In the members,' too, 'the lusts war^ or 'campaign.' In all 
 men by nature there is struggle, — the perverse will striving 
 with the conscience, the ' fleshly lusts ' quelling spiritual aspi- 
 rations and yearnings, and thus in the fullest sense ' warring 
 against the soul.' The lusts 'war' among themselves also; for 
 everywhere, and in every respect, Satan proves himself the 
 author, not of peace, but of confusion : and thus we often see 
 contradictory lusts, such as covetousness and prodigality, co- 
 existing in a man, and leading to strange confusions of life. 
 In a Christian soul the lusts ' war ' with the impulses of the 
 new life. 'The old man, which is corrupt according to the 
 deceitful lusts,' contends with ' the new man, which after God 
 is created in righteousness and true holiness.' 'I delight in 
 the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law 
 in my members warring against the law of my mind.' The 
 thought, however, exhibited by James here seems to have 
 reference, not to the war which is waged in the individual 
 soul, but to a conflict of the desires or lusts of different per- 
 sons — those lusts which 'campaign' in the animal nature of 
 each. The lusts of these different persons, or companies of 
 persons, are directed towards the same object, one particular 
 
298 Lectures on the Epistle 0/ yames. [ch. iv. 
 
 position of dignity and influence, perhaps, or the acquisition 
 of wealth in one particular way ; and hence comes collision. 
 The 'campaigning' of the lusts with a view to a common 
 object naturally leads to outward opposition, just as, if two 
 kings both covet a hitherto independent territory that lies 
 between their dominions, and simultaneously lead their armies 
 into it to take possession, the matter will have to be decided 
 by a battle. 
 
 In the second verse the answer to the question, ' Whence 
 come the wars and fightings?' is given more fully, in away 
 very similar to that in which the apostle has, in the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth verses of the first chapter, described the genesis 
 of sin and of death. The general answer already given is, 
 'From your lusts;' now, in detail, ' Ye lust, and have not : ye 
 kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain; ye fight and war.'' 
 
 The first step is longing, without satisfaction : ' Ye lust, and 
 have not.'' Desire for some particular worldly enjoyment enters 
 men's hearts, — and they find that possession does not imme- 
 diately come with the desire. What, then, naturally follows, 
 unless through faith the spirit of love and true wisdom reign 
 in the soul ? ' Ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain' 
 The word rendered 'desire to have,' whilst it has "sometimes 
 the meaning of ' to wish eagerly for,' and thus is rightly trans- 
 lated, for example, by ' covet earnestly ' in ' covet earnestly 
 the best gifts' (i Cor. xii. 31), yet in other places signifies the 
 base passion of envy, as when we are told that ' charity envieth 
 not' (i Cor. xiii. 4). The course of thought in the verse 
 before us shows clearly that the word is employed here in its 
 bad sense, for otherwise there would be no advance at all from 
 the feeling spoken of in the first stage, ' Ye lust.' The sense, 
 then, is, 'Ye kill, and envy, and cannot obtain.' The 'kill' 
 startles every reader, — as no doubt it was intended to do. 
 When we bear in mind the Jewish temperament, and the 
 exciting circumstances in which, as already mentioned, the 
 nation was placed at this time, and remember how often in 
 the history of the church the hands of professed followers of 
 Christ have been stained with bloodshed, and this indeed not 
 
VER. 2.] Origin of Strifes. 299 
 
 seldom in the name of Christ's sacred cause, — it will be felt by 
 us as not at all improbable that, in some of the quarrels to 
 which the apostle refers, actual slaughter of opponents had 
 been committed in the heat of passion. On such a supposi- 
 tion, his word '■ kiir would come home to his readers with more 
 naturalness and force than otherwise. But considering the 
 nature of Christianity, and the little inducement that there was 
 in those early days for other than true believers to connect 
 themselves with the church, it is utterly inconceivable that 
 ' killing ' in the literal sense was anything but altogether 
 exceptional, or that the apostle means to charge his readers 
 generally with such a' crime. A glance at his words, indeed, 
 shows that actual murder was certainly not mainly, if at all, in 
 his mind ; for if it had been, he could never have followed up 
 such a charge with 'ye envy,' which Avould in this case be a 
 thought immeasurably less impressive, and thus constitute a 
 feeble and ineffective anti-climax. By '/'///' he means, no 
 doubt, cherishing that deep hatred of which, under the temp- 
 tation of opportunity, literal murder is the natural manifestation, 
 and which is therefore murder in heart. ' Whosoever hateth 
 his brother is a murderer^ says the Apostle John ; and the 
 same is the teaching of the Lord Himself in the Sermon on 
 the ]\Iount : ' Ye have heard that it was said by them of old 
 time. Thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in 
 danger of the judgment ; but I say unto you, that whosoever is 
 angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger of 
 the judgment.' Every attentive reader of this Epistle observes 
 the frequency with which it echoes the thoughts and the 
 language of that great Sermon, — a discourse that had evidently 
 made the deepest impression on James's mind ; and the case 
 before us is one among the many illustrations of this. The 
 use of the word 'kill,' as I have said, certainly startles, and 
 was meant to startle. The apostle desired to lead men who 
 were at ease in the indulgence of sins of the heart, and who 
 perhaps threw up their hands in horror when they heard of 
 any literal murder, to bethink themselves in what position 
 they really stood before the eye of God. We see throughout 
 
300 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. iv. 
 
 the whole Epistle his love of terse, telling language ; and in the 
 immediate context, with its ' wars and fightings,' and its ' ye 
 adulteresses,' this is very specially exemplified. Thus the ' kill 
 (in heart)' is introduced here by no means unnaturally, and 
 has its meaning lighted up to an attentive reader by its sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 From unsatisfied lust, then, sprang murderous hatred and 
 envy. The two do not form a climax, but are co-ordinate; 
 and each illustrates the other, and the general state of heart, — 
 a state of intense longing and intense bitterness. 
 
 But no intensity of feeling can ensure satisfaction ; and so 
 we find it here : ' and cannot obtain^ In His providence, God 
 in righteous anger withholds the coveted object ; or even if it 
 be received, the anticipated enjoyment is wanting. For, in 
 truth, intense feeling of the kinds here described not merely 
 cannot ensure satisfaction, but from its nature ensures on any 
 issue dissatisfaction. The lusts, like ' the daughters of the 
 horse-leech,' still cry, ' Give, give ;' for envy ' enlargeth her 
 desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied.' 
 
 We come now to the last stage in the genesis of the ' wars 
 and fightings.' The first was 'lust,' conjoined with want; the 
 second, hate and envy, still conjoined with want : from this 
 immediately, and by most manifest sequence, come ' wars and 
 fightings.' Thus the question ' whence ?' is fully answered : ' Ye 
 lust — ye hate murderously^ and envy — ye fight and war^ — this 
 is in brief the natural history of all envenomed dissension. 
 
 In the text of this passage, as found in all the oldest 
 manuscripts, there is no particle connecting the words that 
 follow with those which we have just been considering. The 
 ^ yet^ of our translators must therefore be omitted, and a new 
 sentence begun with ' Ye have not.' The beauty of the struc- 
 ture of the passage now shows itself. Having closed the series 
 of statements exhibiting the real origin and growth of strife, 
 James goes back to the sense of luant which he had spoken 
 of as an active element in all the stages, and sets forth clearly 
 the cause of the want, and the means of obtaining all needed 
 supplies. This exposition falls into a series of two members, 
 
VER. 2.] Origin of Strifes. 301 
 
 which do not, however, as in the case of the previous series, 
 form a gradation, but stand side by side as alternative ex- 
 jDlanations, appHcable to different persons, or to the same 
 person under different circumstances : ' Ye have not, because ye 
 ask 7iot : ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may 
 consume it upon your lusts.^ 
 
 When James says, ' Ye have not, because ye ask not^ we can 
 hardly fail to recognise an allusion to the teaching of Christ in 
 the Sermon on the Mount. He seems to appeal to his readers 
 to 'remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, Ask, 
 and it shall be given you ; for every one that asketh receiveth.' 
 We cannot suppose that the apostle, by his ^ ye ask noV here, 
 means to charge them with being utterly prayerless, for this 
 would be to declare all of whom he speaks to be mere empty 
 pretenders to Christianity, — not misguided Christians simply, 
 but utter hypocrites or self-deceivers. The force of his words 
 seems to be limited by the connection in which they occur to 
 an assertion that, in regard to their worldly circumstajices and 
 wants, many of his readers did not ask God ; otherwise the 
 discontent and restlessness which generated the dissensions he 
 has been speaking of would have been removed : ' for there is 
 no want to them that fear Him.' Many Christians — all Chris- 
 tians probably to some extent — shrink from prayer respecting 
 outward necessities. Our spiritual wants we carry to the throne 
 of grace ; but in the cares of this world, in the disappointment 
 of cherished hopes, the thwarting of carefully devised plans, the 
 anxieties of narrow income, we too frequently nurse our de- 
 pression, instead of laying the matter before God. Now, can 
 we trust Him with our eternal welfare, and not with the in- 
 terests of earth ? Can we depend upon Him for the everlast- 
 ing life, and not for the care of the life here ? ' Consider the 
 lilies of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, neither do they 
 spin : and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon, in all his 
 glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God 
 so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow 
 is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O 
 ye of little faith?' ' Our Father which art in heaven, give us 
 
302 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 this day our daily bread.' Look not for supernatural mani- 
 festations in answer to prayer — for manna or quails, for visible 
 angelic visitors, or obvious and direct inspirations ; but cer- 
 tainly we have every ground to believe that, in regard to the 
 outward as well as the inner life, ' the fervent prayer of a 
 righteous man availeth much,' and»will bring down showers 
 of blessing, in views cleared, external obstacles removed, and 
 wishes accomplished, so far as it shall serve for God's glory 
 and the true good of the petitioner. Whatever interests God's 
 people, interests Him. Defective apprehension of this truth 
 was the cause of the want felt by James's readers. Had they 
 prayed, they would have received what they desired, if it was 
 good for them ; and certainly the feeling of want and discon- 
 tent would have been removed, for the heart would have had 
 rest in God's Fatherly love. 
 
 But some might say, ' We have asked God, and still we are 
 in want.' To these the apostle replies that the solution of this 
 difficulty is not far to seek. Their supplications had lacked 
 one essential element of true prayer — desire to consecrate all 
 God's gifts to His glory : ' Ye ask, and receive not, beca7i.se ye 
 ask amiss ' (or ' wickedly '), ' f/iat ye may consume it npon your 
 lusts.'' It is a distinctive characteristic of the true Christian, 
 that in his thoughts and feelings he subordinates the temporal 
 to the spiritual. The ideal of the Christian life is to be able 
 to say with full truthfulness, ' For me to live is Christ,' — to 
 have always such a constant and influential sense of the truth 
 that in the manifestation of God's glory is summed up all good 
 for His creatures, as leads us in the discharge even of the com- 
 monest duties of life, in ' eating and drinking, and whatsoever 
 we do,' to ' do all to the glory of God.' A Christian prayer, 
 then, in regard to worldly things, is one that comes from a 
 heart prepared to dedicate to God what is asked from God, — 
 a prayer in which entreaty that our heavenly Father will give 
 us grace to do this with His gift, is associated with the suppli- 
 cation for the gift. Such prayer is answered. When we ' seek 
 Jirst the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these 
 things shall be added unto us.' But where a petition is sent 
 
VER. 3.] Origin of Strifes. 303 
 
 up with no thought of the kingdom of God, no longing for the 
 advancement of His glory through the increase of the holiness 
 and happiness of our fellow-men, but simply with a view to 
 self-gratification, to the ' consuming ' of what we ask for ' upon 
 our lusts;' such a petition will obtain no boon. 'If I regard 
 iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.' Or the gift 
 craved may be bestowed, but no blessing with it, — given in 
 judgment, not in mercy; as, when Israel 'lusted exceedingly in 
 the wilderness, and tempted God, He gave tJiem their request^ 
 but sent leanness into their soid^ 
 
304 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 XXI. 
 WORLDLINESS ENMITY TO GOD. 
 
 ' Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the 
 world is enmity with God ? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of 
 the world, is the enemy of God. 5 Do ye think that the Scripture 
 saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy ? 6 But 
 He giveth more grace : wherefore He saith, God resisteth the proud, 
 but giveth grace unto the humble.' — ^James iv. 4-6. 
 
 THE Statements and appeals contained in these verses 
 follow up the remarks in the verses immediately preced- 
 ing. By ' the world'' here James means obviously, according 
 to a very frequent use of the word in the language of Jesus 
 and the apostles, man and his institutions and surroundings 
 considered as penetrated and controlled by malignant moral 
 influences. God made the world ' very good,' with beauty and 
 harmony everywhere. All things around contributed to man's 
 rational happiness, ever sending up his thoughts and his affec- 
 tions in admiration and love to the great Creator ; so that he, 
 in the sublimity of reason and free-will the lord of the crea- 
 tures, led the chorus of the world's praise. But sin, alluring 
 his heart from his heavenly Father, brought in jarring and 
 discord. The devil became 'the prince of this world,' and 
 what God had made order he made chaos. The world was 
 now enveloped in a distorting and misleading atmosphere of 
 falsehood. All things presented themselves to man's mind 
 and heart in untrue dimensions and relations; and instead 
 of drawing him towards God, and leading him into ' the land 
 of uprightness,' guided him further away into the ' far country ' 
 of wickedness and death. Thus now God, and the world 
 which He created, are morally in opposition to each other. 
 Our apostle, then, makes a statement concerning Uhe friend- 
 
VER. 4.] Wo7'ldliness Enmity to God. 305 
 
 sJiip of (or " with ") the world,' as thus understood. Experience 
 shows that there is considerable possibiHty of mistake as to 
 what is meant by this 'friendship.' One form of error, for 
 example, is what may be called the monkish. Seeing that 
 we reckon those to be friendly whom we often see by choice 
 in each other's company, the monk concludes that, if not the 
 only, at least the highest, form of a life that aims to escape 
 ' friendship with the world,' is one of retirement, as far as pos- 
 sible, from intercourse with it — one that shuns all association 
 with the accursed thing. This has 'a show of wisdom;' and, 
 beyond doubt, here and there, perhaps in many places, the 
 flower of true piety has bloomed very beautifully in the garden 
 of a monastery. Yet this type of rehgious life is essentially 
 morbid. It might almost be described as baptized selfishness, 
 for it proceeds on the view that a man's religion is to be a 
 self-contained thing, having no ends or influences beyond his 
 own personal growth in spirituality : whilst the constant teach- 
 ing of Scripture is, that we are to ' let our light shine before 
 men, that they, seeing our good works, may glorify our Father 
 which is in heaven,' and that we are to 'hold forth the word 
 of life ' as well as hold it fast. This can be done, in all ordi- 
 nary circumstances, only by a life in the world, but under the 
 government of a faith which plainly soars above the world. 
 The great High Priest's supplication for His people was, ' I 
 pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but 
 that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.' The tendency 
 of monkery is to utter uselessness ; and naturally the energies 
 of the monks themselves grow dull, and all the good that may 
 be in them rusts from want of e^iercise. There have been 
 monks in the famous monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai for 
 some fourteen hundred years, and not the slightest approach to 
 missionary effort among the darkened tribes around seems ever 
 to have been put forth. Nay, the descendants of some hundreds 
 of professed Christians, who in the early ages were given to be 
 servants of the monks, have been so neglected religiously as 
 to lapse into INIohammedanism ; whilst the monks themselves 
 are described by travellers as having countenances deeply 
 
 u 
 
3o6 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 marked with melancholy, and singularly destitute of intellec- 
 tual expression. This is the legitimate working of the system, 
 for the want of a free natural life amidst their fellow-creatures 
 has a most debasing and narrowing influence. Now, brethren, 
 although we from our training and circumstances have no 
 temptation to become monks, yet we must remember that this 
 is but the extreme form of a tendency which under a diseased 
 state of feeling may obtain some dominion over us, — the ten- 
 dency to shrink from a free and energetic outward life, and to 
 brood in indolent solitude on our spiritual condition. Our 
 Master ever and anon retired to the wilderness and to lonely 
 mountain-sides, to commune with His Father, and receive 
 strength for labour; but His life was pre-eminently one spent 
 in the world, in constant and close contact with men. ' Friend- 
 ship with the world,' then, does not mean simple presence in 
 the midst of the activities of the world, and taking part in its 
 work. 
 
 Another error on this subject, by way of defect, to which in 
 our time professing Christians are much more liable than that 
 we have now been speaking of, is the belief that ' friendship 
 with the world,' or conformity to the world, is shown only in 
 attending balls, card-parties, theatres, and the like ; so that 
 among those who shun these scenes there is necessarily no- 
 thing of what the apostle here condemns. Now, no thoughtful 
 Christian, as it seems to me, can doubt for a moment that there 
 is some hazard to spiritual life, and to influence for good, in 
 even occasional visits to scenes of mere frivolous excitement and 
 amusement, and that the habitual or frequent resort to them 
 shows concentrated and deplorable worldliness, — involving, 
 as such conduct does, much waste of precious time, an outlay 
 of money wholly inconsistent with adherence to the Scripture 
 principle of stewardship for God, and much social intercourse 
 of a spiritually debasing kind. But 'friendship for the world' 
 may exist, and even rule, apart from any indulgences like these, 
 and in connection with a most quiet and decorous life ; for 
 worldliness is the spirit of a life, not its outward form, and 
 may be in full activity as the spirit, where the body of the life 
 
VER. 4.] Worldlhiess E^imity to God. 307 
 
 has been moulded by the pressure of education and circum- 
 stances into a form which one might expect to find inhabited 
 by a spirit of heavenly-mindedness. 
 
 The question then, you observe, is strictly one in regard to 
 the state of the affections. Friendship implies substantial 
 accordance of opinion and of aims. * Two cannot walk to- 
 gether ' — that is, be intimate friends — ' except they be agreed ' 
 in their views on all matters which they deem of primary im- 
 portance. Now the unregenerate world plainly considers that 
 the great object of each man's life should be to aggrandize, 
 and glorify, and enjoy himself, and that, thinking as little of 
 God and of a future life as he can, he should seek his portion 
 on the earth. The riches which it believes in and seeks are 
 those that ' perish with the using ; ' the honour, that ' which 
 comes from men, and not from God only.' With innumerable 
 varieties in detail, these are the great and unvarying general 
 articles of the world's creed, — a creed held, alas, there is every 
 reason to fear, by multitudes who would be greatly astonished, 
 and think themselves greatly wronged, if they were told that 
 they held it, and which many will never see to be theirs until 
 they read their hearts by the light shining around the Judge as 
 He seats Himself on the throne. Now, where there is sym- 
 pathy with this creed of the world, and with the world's desires, 
 there, in the measure of the sympathy, is an approach to 
 the ' friendship with the world ' of which our apostle speaks, 
 and under the power of which he intimates that many of his 
 readers — if one might judge from their ' wars and fightings ' 
 for earthly advantages — had fallen, or were in imminent danger 
 of falling. Where this sympathy is so strong that there is 
 more love for the world and its pursuits than for God and 
 His cause, there is the ' friendship ' in fulness. 
 
 This ' friendship,' he says, ' is enmity with God! Observe 
 the strength of the expression. Occasionally in the world we 
 see a man having a friendship of a kind with both of two 
 parties who are opposed to each other ; and often the friend 
 of one who is hostile to another may remain in a relation at 
 least of indifference to that other. But in the case before us 
 
3o8 Lechires on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 nothing of this sort is possible. '■ Eiimity'' is merely a short 
 form of ' enemy-ty,' the state of an enemy ; and thus we 
 have the matter clearly set before us : ' The friendship of the 
 world is the condition of an enemy to God.' There is a 
 direct opposition between the views and desires and aims of 
 the world and those of God ; and from the relation in which 
 we stand to Him, ther<; can be no neutrality of position or feel- 
 ing. If we are the friends of the world, then we are God's 
 enemies ; for through the simple fact that we are His moral 
 creatures, we are under obligation to be His loving servants, 
 and we ' cannot serve God and mammon.' ' The carnal 
 mind ' — the spirit of the world — ' is enmity against God ; for ' 
 (here we have the sum of the whole matter) ' it is not subject 
 to the law of God, neither indeed can be.' 
 
 For professing Christians to have ' friendship with the world ' 
 involves, the apostle intimates, a peculiar criminality. They 
 are ^adulterers and adulteresses,' or, according to the best au" 
 thenticated reading, simply ' adulteresses.'' A little consideration 
 of the scope of the passage shows that this name is not intended 
 to be taken literally, as charging the apostle's readers with 
 violation of the marriage-bond. To such a charge there is not 
 the slightest allusion anpvhere in the verses, and what follows 
 equally with what precedes has plainly reference to worldli- 
 ness of spirit and life. But James speaks according to that 
 very common Old Testament figure, familiar to all his Jewish 
 readers, in which God, with infinite condescension and grace, 
 represents Himself as the Husband of Israel, — who was, alas, 
 an unfaithful spouse. Similarly, the Lord Jesus spoke of the 
 Jewish church of His time as ' a wicked and adulterous genera- 
 tion.' In James's individualizing word, ^adulteresses' there 
 is something very startling and rousing. When, according to 
 the ordinary form of the image, a church is accused of being 
 ' adulterous,' each member is very apt to hide himself in the 
 crowd, and shake off the thought of personal guilt. But our 
 apostle presses the matter home to every conscience, remind- 
 ing his readers that each professing Christian soul which, 
 yielding to the lust of the eyes, or the lust of the flesh, or the 
 
VER. 4.] Worldliness Enmity to God. 309 
 
 pride of life, turns aside to love the world more than God, Is 
 unfaithful to its sacred vows, and has the sin, the debasement 
 of adultery. The use of the simple ' adulteresses ' for ' adul- 
 terous souls ' (of course of men as well as of women, the 
 feminine form being employed merely to suit the proprieties of 
 the image) is strange, but for that very reason pointed, sting- 
 ing, and memorable. Every reader feels the force and liveliness 
 with which the figure employed here depicts the enormity of 
 the sin of worldly professors of Christianity, in that they cast 
 such flagrant dishonour on Him whom they have called their 
 ' Beloved,' and to whom they have publicly united themselves 
 by the closest and tenderest bonds. The repentance of such 
 should be like the horror and loathing with which a wife, who 
 has been disloyal to a true and loving husband, regards herself, 
 if God's grace bring her back to a sound mind. 
 
 The second part of this verse contains a practical application 
 of the general principle enunciated in the first : ' JVhosoever 
 therefore will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God^ 
 This is, of course, involved in the previous general statement ; 
 yet we feel it to be a weighty addition, sending the truth home 
 to the conscience, calling on us to look it fairly in the face, 
 and study its bearing on ourselves. ' If such be the general 
 principle,' the apostle says, ' then stop, each of you, and think 
 what your religious position is.' The word ^ wiir in this sen- 
 tence has the force of ' is minded,' and by it James suggests to 
 us the duty of honestly and unflinchingly considering what is 
 the disposition of heart that underlies and reveals itself through 
 our conduct. No professing Christian, perhaps, would say 
 definitely to his own soul, ' I am minded to be a friend of the 
 wicked world;' but many allow themselves to drift into a mode 
 of life which shows that such a spirit has been gaining strength. 
 The ' will ' that thus makes itself known, James would have 
 men candidly contemplate, and bethink themselves what is its 
 import, and what will come of it. One who ' will be a friend 
 of the world,' thereby ' constitutes himself (for this is the exact 
 force of the word rendered in our version " is ") an enemy of 
 God! If we balance profit and loss, then, what do we find ? 
 
3IO Lectures on the Epistle of y antes, [ch. iv. 
 
 Without doubt, the 'friendship of this world' has attractions, 
 strong attractions ; but of necessity, because they are of ' this 
 world,' death breaks them off utterly ; and even here the heart 
 of immortal man is not fully satisfied with them. Eating the 
 world's bread, the soul still hungers ; drinking from the world's 
 fountain, the soul still thirsts ; warming herself by the world's 
 fire, the soul still shudders with cold. And to ' constitute one- 
 self an enemy of God ' is to remain in spiritual death, and grow 
 more meet daily for eternal death ; to have the Almighty King 
 of the universe as our Foe through life, our Foe at the judg- 
 ment-seat, our Foe for ever; and to choose this relation to 
 him, whilst in Christ He is pleading with us in tones of the 
 tenderest love and pity to come to Him and be His ' friends,' 
 to sit down at His table as His ' sons and daughters,' to ' cast 
 our burdens upon Him,' and ' find rest to our souls.' 
 
 The fifth verse and the first clause of the sixth are hard of 
 interpretation, and indeed are classed by some with the most 
 difficult passages of the New Testament. The causes of the 
 difficulty are these : that no such passage as James seems to 
 quote is found in Scripture ; that the words of the apparent 
 quotation may, with more or less naturalness, be very variously 
 understood ; and that, on perhaps any view of their meaning, 
 the force of the word ^ more^ in the sixth verse is not clear. 
 Various passages have been suggested as possibly referred to 
 in a general way by the apostle, such as, ' The imagination of 
 man's heart is evil from his youth,' or, * The soul of the wicked 
 desireth evilj' but there is none so similar in sentiment and 
 expression to the statement here made as to be regarded as 
 the original from which James quoted. Some commentators 
 rid themselves of the difficulty connected with the quotation, 
 by making ' God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the 
 humble,' the only passage cited, — putting all the words betpveen 
 ' the Scripture saith ' and these into a parenthesis. The quota- 
 tion is suitable enough, but the parenthesis is utterly unnatural ; 
 and this view will not bear examination. 
 
 On the supposition that the apostle merely intends a general 
 reference to a truth taught in Scripture, there are various views 
 
VER. 5.] Worldliness Enmity to God. 31 1 
 
 of the meaning. Before we look at these, however, it is proper 
 to notice that the ' dwelldh ' of our translation is a free render- 
 ing of the original word, — the exact meaning being ' settled,' 
 * came to dwell.' Our translators evidently supposed the 'spirit ' 
 spoken of to be the natin-al hiwian spirit^ the depraved state 
 of feeling that settled in man at the fall. In this case the sense 
 is, ' Do you think (or rather, rendering a particle which our 
 translators, taking it as merely indicating a question, have 
 passed over, " or do you think ") that the Scripture has no 
 meaning when it tells us — as it does everywhere, for this is in- 
 volved in all its teaching regarding our duties to our fellow- 
 men — that desires which take the direction of envy are from 
 our own depraved nature, not from God, and hence belong to 
 His enemies, not His friends?' Against this view lie the 
 strangeness of the expression, ' the spirit that settled in us,' for 
 our carnal nature, and the fact that no reaso.n is apparent why 
 such a peculiar paraphrase was chosen, instead of the simple 
 designation ' our depravity.' The idea that Satan is the ' spirit ' 
 here spoken of answers some of the requirements of the context 
 well. The line of thought would thus be : 'If ye be worldly- 
 minded, ye are enemies of God ; for envy, which belongs essen- 
 tially to worldly-mindedness, is always said in the divine word 
 to come from the great enemy of God, the devil ; but God gives 
 grace greater (more powerful) than Satan's impulses to envy.' 
 And thus we are very naturally led on to ' Resist the devil, 
 and he will flee from you.' But the same objection lies against 
 this view as against the preceding — that the mode of expres- 
 sion is not natural ; and besides — an argument which has some 
 force against the preceding view, but much more against this 
 — the antithesis would, according to the laws of the original 
 language, require an expressed ■i>yi}o]tQ.t to 'giveth grace;' whilst, 
 as a matter of fact, the subject is not expressed. Moreover, 
 whilst Scripture distinctly teaches the universal depravity of 
 man, yet that Satan ' dwells ' in all men by nature is not a 
 scriptural representation. Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, 
 says that ^ sin dwelleth in us' (Rom. vii. 20) ; and the Lord, in 
 the epistle to the angel of the church in Pergamos, speaks of 
 
312 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 that city as a place 'where. Satan's seat is,' and 'where Satan 
 dwelleth' (Rev. ii. 13). But such language as that which is 
 employed by the Evangelist John regarding Judas — ' After the 
 sop, Satan entered into him ' — appears to imply that the in- 
 dwelling of the devil belongs to those wjio have coinpktely 
 given themselves up to iniquity. 
 
 We seem shut up to the conclusion that in the passage 
 before us the apostle refers to the Divine Spirit. The glorious 
 doctrine that the Holy Ghost 'dwells' in Christ's people is 
 one of the commonplaces of our faith. 'Dwell' is the word 
 usually employed in the writings of the apostles to express 
 this most wondrous privilege,^ and was no doubt also the 
 ordinary term used in their oral teaching. In all ages of 
 the church, then, the thought most readily conveyed to the 
 minds of well-instructed Christians by the words, ' the spirit 
 that came to dwell in us,' taken by themselves, would unques- 
 tionably be ' the Spirit of God.' This view of the meaning 
 is supported by a various reading of the original text, found 
 in several of the oldest manuscripts, and accepted by most 
 of the modem critical editors, — a reading differing from the 
 received text only by a single letter, but giving for ' dwell ' a 
 transitive sense — 'made to dwell:' thus, 'the spirit that (God) 
 made to dwell in us,' or ' settled in us.' You will see, too, that 
 this view exactly suits the ' he ' of the first clause of the sixth 
 verse, because the Holy Spirit is Himself the God that ' giveth 
 grace ;' and therefore, there being no antithesis, but a refer- 
 ence to the same Divine Agent, an expressed subject is not 
 needed. This at least, then, I think, must be held as certain 
 regarding the meaning of the verse, that by the words, 'the 
 spirit that came to dwell ' (or ' that He caused to dwell ') ' in 
 us,' the apostle, addressing professing Christians, and assuming 
 that they were what they professed to be, designates the Holy 
 Ghost, who at their conversion had been given by God to dwell 
 in them. 
 
 We must now look at the question Avhat,. according to the 
 
 ^ See Rom. viii. 9, II ; I Cor. iii. 16; 2 Tim. i. 14. Compare also 2 
 Cor, vi. 16 ; \^\. iii. 17 ; John xiv. 17 ; I John iv. 12, 
 
VER. 5.] Worldliiiess Enmity to God. 313 
 
 apostle, ' the Scripture saith ' regarding the Holy Ghost in 
 Christ's people. By some this has been thought to be that 
 He ' desireth or longeth against envy.'' The original words 
 might in certain circumstances have this meaning ; but as 
 they stand here it is so unnatural, that nothing but a positive 
 impossibility of obtaining a satisfactory sense from the passage 
 in any other way would justify our taking it. An idea 
 favoured by some prominent modern expositors is that the 
 apostle, having in his mind the thoughts of the previous 
 verse — and particularly that Old Testament figure to which 
 he had there alluded by the word 'adulteresses,' according 
 to which the tie between God and His covenant people is 
 exhibited as a marriage relation — refers in the words before 
 us to the frequent Old Testament declaration that God is a 
 ''jealous'' God. The words rendered ^ to envy'' may, as our 
 translators intimate on the margin, mean ' enviously ;' and 
 adopting this, the force of the verse is given thus : ' God, whose 
 closeness of relation to us Christians is shown by His dwelling 
 in us through His Spirit, enviously — that is, jealously — desireth 
 us for His own^ This is ingenious and fascinating, and accords 
 well with at least the preceding context. But I am convinced 
 that the statement is forced out of the words of the verse, 
 rather than legitimately drawn. You will notice that the last 
 words in the rendering just given are an arbitrary supplement ; 
 and you cannot but feel how unnatural, how unlike James's 
 simple, perspicuous style, it is to say, 'the Spirit jealously 
 desireth,' if he meant ' the Spirit jealously desireth us for His 
 own.' But a yet greater objection lies against the application 
 of the phrase ' enviously.' One cannot but think, that if the 
 intention of the apostle had been to refer his readers to the Old 
 Testament teaching that God is a 'jealous' God, he would 
 have used the word employed in the Greek version -of the Old 
 Testament, which was familiar to all the Jews of ' the Disper- 
 sion ' from their earliest years. Now the word used by James 
 is never^ either in Scripture, or, so far as I am aware, anywhere 
 else, employed in a good sense. It refers to envy, and no other 
 feeling ; and, applied to any sentiment of the mind of God, 
 
314 Lechtres on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 would certainly have sounded as repulsively and untruthfully 
 to James's readers as ' envy ' would to our ears. According to 
 a somewhat interesting variation of the view of the meaning 
 which supposes James to allude to the marriage between God 
 and His covenant people, the sense is given thus : ' God 
 jealously desireth for Himself the (human) spirit that He gave 
 to dwell in us.' This occupies ground that we have already 
 traversed ; and thus it will be plain that, in addition to the 
 argument against it derived from its taking ' enviously ' as 
 equivalent to 'jealously' (an argument in itself, to my mind, 
 altogether insuperable), it underlies also the serious objection, 
 that the familiar, well-understood phrase, ' the spirit that He 
 gave to dwell in us,' receives another meaning than the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 On the whole, it seems to me that, with Calvin and many 
 other expositors, we must divide the verse into two distinct 
 questions : ' Do you think that the Scripture saith it in vain ? 
 Doth the Spirit that came to dwell in us ' (or ' that He gave 
 to dwell in us ') ' lust to envy ? ' The apostle appeals first 
 to Scripture, and then to their own consciences as educated 
 by Scripture, luith I'egard to that essential antagonism between 
 worldliness and true piety of which he has been speaking in the 
 previous verses. The unemphatic * it,' which we have to supply 
 in the first question, as often in sentences of the kind, means 
 * the truth which I have just been enforcing.' He does not 
 refer to any special passage, nor does he need to do so ; for, 
 as has been already said, the diametrical opposition between 
 worldliness and the will of God lies at the basis of the whole 
 moral teaching of revelation, — especially worldliness showing 
 itself in the forms he has described — covetousness, envy, and 
 malignity. ' Is all this teaching in the book of God,' James 
 says, '■vain, meaningless?' Then, in another forcible inter- 
 rogation, he presses the matter home to their consciences. 
 The force of the order of the words in the original may be 
 brought out by stating the question thus : ' Does desire that 
 takes the direction of envy spring from the Spirit that God 
 gave to dwell in us ?' * Enlightened as you are by God's word 
 
VER. 6.] Worldliness Enmity to God. 315 
 
 respecting His will, can you for one moment dream, when envy 
 rises in your hearts, that this is a prompting of the Divine Spirit 
 within you ? ' Thus the appeal is substantially a repetition of 
 that made in the fourteenth verse of the previous chapter, ' If 
 ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not 
 and lie not against the truth' — by asserting, that is to say, 
 that such is the fruit of the heavenly wisdom taught by the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 To all who know anything of the spirit of the religion 01 
 Jesus, these questions obviously carry their own answer; 
 and in all the apostle's readers who were in any considerable 
 measure impressed by what he had said to them, a feeling of 
 deep sadness could not but enter the heart, through a con- 
 sciousness how much they had neglected compliance with 
 the great moral principles of Scripture, — how lamentably they 
 had yielded to influences very different from those of the 
 Spirit of God, who had been 'given to dwell in them.' Ah, 
 brethren, in what age of the church has such sorrow not been 
 called for? The apostle, then, as it seems to me, bends the 
 line of his remark to respond to this feeling. He bears in 
 mind that the heralds of the cross are pre-eminently the 
 bearers of ' glad tidings,' — bound to remember, even amid 
 their sternest and justest reproofs of sin and defect on the 
 part of Christians, that in the church their great commission 
 is, * Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.' ' Nay but, brethren, 
 be not despondent' — this, I think, is the thought connecting 
 the two verses — 'He giveth greater grace ;'' or rather, perhaps, 
 to bring out the force of the peculiar arrangement of the words 
 in the original, ^ Nay, hut greater is the grace He giveth^ — 
 greater than the strength of depravity, greater than the power 
 of the spirit of darkness, from whom temptations to envy 
 and all fomis of worldliness come. ' The impulses you feel to 
 covetousiress, and envy, and anger, are efforts of the strong 
 one who in time past wrought in you, when ye were children 
 of disobedience, to regain his old dominion ; but the Spirit 
 that now dwelleth in you is stronger than he, and by His 
 grace will enable you to repel the foe.' 
 
3i6 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 And being ready to give this sustaining grace, He tells us of 
 His willingness, that we may go to Him and cast ourselves 
 upon His love in the appointed way : ' Wherefore He saith.^ 
 Now the apostle might have cited innumerable passages giving 
 the assurance of God's readiness to bless ; but he chooses one 
 that most clearly and forcibly brings forward the tenns of the 
 divine offer, and thus, in conjunction with the declaration of 
 glad tidings, continues the previous strain of solemn warning : 
 ' 6*1?^ resist eth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.'' This 
 passage is a verse in the Book of Proverbs, translated in our 
 version, 'Surely He scorneth the scorners, but He giveth grace 
 unto the lowly ' (Prov. iii. 34).- The apostle gives it according 
 to the ordinary Greek version in use among the Jews. The truth 
 exhibited in the statement is one which meets us everywhere 
 in the Bible, that while God ' waiteth to be gracious,' yearn- 
 ing to 'crown us with loving-kindness and tender mercies,' 
 yet He will have all the glory of man's deliverance ; and that 
 only those who cordially consent that it should be so can be 
 blessed and saved. So long as we lean on ourselves, counting 
 ourselves the possessors of any moral excellence, we remain 
 outside the sweep of God's salvation. When, sensible of 
 utter unworthiness and feebleness, we cast ourselves wholly 
 on Him (and this very willingness to lean on Him is ' not of 
 ourselves,' but ' the gift of God '), then He rescues us by ' the 
 saving strength of His right hand.' '■ God resistcth the proud. ^ 
 He says : ' Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received 
 your consolation ! Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall 
 hunger!' Man was made for simple, child-like dependence 
 on God : anything else is dishonouring to God, and certainly 
 opposed, therefore, to our own true happiness. Now pride, 
 whatever form it takes, is essentially a glorifying of self, and 
 necessarily therefore, so far as it goes, is an attempt to be or 
 to feel independent of God. This spirit, and those who cherish 
 it, God, consistently with His own honour and the good of His 
 universe, cannot but 'resist.' But He '■giveth grace unto the 
 humbled It is the man who says, 'Father, I have sinned in 
 Thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son,' that 
 
VER. 6.] Worldliness Enmity to God. 317 
 
 receives the Father's kiss of forgiveness and welcome, and 
 restoration to all the privileges of sonship ; it is he who knows 
 and believes that by nature he is, as regards the matters of 
 highest moment, a fool, that is ' made wise ;' he who acknow- 
 ledges himself utterly weak, that is ' strengthened with might 
 by God's Spirit ;' he who sees and feels himself to be full 
 of sin, that is 'made the righteousness of God in Christ,' 
 and ' sanctified wholly.' As the seraphic Leighton says : ' God 
 pours out His grace plentifully on humble hearts. His sweet 
 dews and showers slide off the mountains to fall on the low 
 valleys of humble hearts, and make them pleasant and fertile.'^ 
 
 ' The dew that never wets the flinty mountain 
 
 Falls in the valleys free : 
 Bright verdure fringes the small desert-fountain, 
 But barren sand the sea. ' ^ 
 
 ^ Commentary on First Peter, on v. 5, where Peter quotes the same pas- 
 sage from Proverbs that James does here. 
 
 2 The late R ev. J. D. Burns, in a little poem entitled HumUity. 
 
3 1 8 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 XXII. 
 SUBMISSION TO GOD. 
 
 ' Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee 
 from you. 8 Dravi^ nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. 
 Cleanse your hands, ye sinners ; and purify your hearts, ye double- 
 minded. 9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep : let your laughter be 
 turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. lo Humble your- 
 selves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.' — James iv. 
 7-10. 
 
 IN the first part of this paragraph the apostle's thoughts are 
 presented under figures drawn fi-om the military life. 
 This is naturally suggested by the description of worldly men 
 which has preceded, as ' enemies ' of God, and the declaration 
 that God ' resisteth ' the proud. Indeed here, as in many 
 parts of the Epistle, we see the connection of thoughts marked 
 by the use of kindred words ; for the original terms translated 
 ' resisteth' and ' submit' are from the same root, and thus we 
 have the junction of thoughts : God ' takes a position of resist- 
 ance ' to the proud ; ' take you, therefore, a position of sub- 
 mission ' to God. The first clause of the seventh verse, ' Sub- 
 mit yourselves to God^ is the theme or text of the whole para- 
 graph. In the following verses it is expanded. Then, after 
 the details, the theme is in the tenth verse in substance re- 
 peated, by way of summing up the whole, but with a gracious 
 promise conjoined. This structure reminds us of that of 
 many of the Psalms, and indeed, throughout, the passage is 
 not unlike a psalm in its parallelism and rhythmical flow of 
 expression. 
 
 The apostle passes here, as you observe, from argument to 
 injunction. His readers were professing servants of God, for 
 otherwise their conduct would not have been called spiritual 
 
VER, 
 
 7.] Submission to God. 319 
 
 ' adultery ' or * double-mindedness.' They were therefore per- 
 sons who might be assumed to have thought seriously regard- 
 ing the relations between God and themselves. James has 
 shown them that not a little in their conduct was such as 
 characterized God's enemies, since they had been living in 
 great measure as proud worldlings do — those whom God ' re- 
 sists,' against whom He places Himself in the direct opposition 
 of battle. Such an exhibition of the true state of the case was 
 surely sufficient for them. They knew how mad a dream it 
 was, that any of God's creatures could oppose their Maker 
 with success. They knew that whoever persistently defied 
 the Lord, and rushed on ' the thick bosses of Jehovah's 
 buckler,' could not but meet with destruction ; so that the 
 certain end of the war would be the complete subjection of all 
 the foes of the Almighty, either by their voluntary submission 
 or by their absolute and irretrievable overthrow. There was 
 no third possibility. No other advice, then, could be given 
 to them by a wise friend than this : ' Submit yourselves to God;'' 
 * cast away the weapons of your rebellion, and throw your- 
 selves at His feet, praying Him to pardon you, and give you 
 grace to live henceforth as loyal subjects.' 
 
 Of the readers of the Epistle some were true Christians, 
 many of whom, unhappily, had been drawn away by the seduc- 
 tions of the world ; others were self-deceivers. To both of 
 these classes this injunction is addressed ; for the Christian 
 life consists simply in the continuance and increase of a man's 
 ' subjection' to those principles and influences, the surrender 
 of his heart to which made him a Christian. It is ' through 
 faith,' the principle which introduced us into the Christian life, 
 that we are ' kept by the power of God unto salvation ;' and 
 the fundamental precept for God's children is simply to ' grow 
 in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ.' To all classes of the readers, then — alike to those 
 who have hitherto remained utterly stiff-necked and rebellious, 
 and to God's own people, whose consciences tell them how 
 many uprisings there are in their hearts of arrogance and 
 self-will — James says : ' True wisdom has but one course for 
 
2,20 Lectures on the Epistle of James . [ch, iv. 
 
 you — to submit yourselves willingly and unreservedly to God. 
 Renounce self-will, and in everything take God's will as yours.' 
 The precept means all this ; and anything less on the part of 
 God's moral creatures is inconsistent with the highest, truest 
 life — opposed at once to duty and to happiness. 
 
 The submission spoken of is, in the first place, to God's g7-ace. 
 For sinful creatures the primary step in submission — the root 
 from which all the rest is to spring — must be the ' submitting our- 
 selves,' as Paul has it, ' to the righteousness of God,' — accept- 
 ing with meekness of heart His way of justification through 
 the work of Christ. To acknowledge, and by Bible-study and 
 self-study to grow into an ever more profound and lively con- 
 viction, that our own personal desert, even at our best estate, 
 is God's anger, and that in no spiritual robe except the wed- 
 ding garment of the great King's own bestowal can man stand 
 with acceptance before Him, — to ' glory in the cross of Christ,' 
 and for its excellency to ' count all things else but loss,' — this 
 is the basis of ' submission to God.' And on it rises submis- 
 sion to God's law. Where the first step has been taken, this 
 certainly follows ; and the more complete and intelligent our 
 submission to divine grace, the more thorough always will be 
 our submission to the divine law. Gratitude and love to Him 
 who by His atoning death has delivered us from its curse, will 
 bring us, through the influences of the Spirit, ever more fully 
 under the sway of its principles. Until God quickens us, we 
 deem His law a law of bondage ; but when we are quickened, 
 we see it to be ' the perfect law of liberty,' in obedience to which, 
 and in no other way, all our energies find full, free, satisfying 
 exercise. The believer, in the measure in which he is a be- 
 liever, ' esteems all God's precepts concerning all things to be 
 right.' He desires and strives, through divine help, so to have 
 God's will as his, as to be, and do, and bear aright all that God 
 appoints. Ah, that bearing aright, how hard a part of the 
 work it is ! Yet no element of ' submitting ourselves to God ' 
 is more needful, none more precious in its results, than sub- 
 mission to His will in providence, — not with sullenness be- 
 cause we must, as to the deed of an irresistible foe, but true 
 
VER. 7.] Submission to God. 321 
 
 submission of the heart, as of a child to the act of a Father whose 
 wisdom and love he trusts perfectly. It is evident that with 
 failure here, the class of sins which James has been specially 
 rebuking stood in close connection. Many of his readers were 
 discontented with God's providential actings in regard to their 
 situation in life, their wealth and rank ; and hence came envy- 
 ing and grudging at the good of their neighbours, i;iialignity, 
 strife, and wretchedness. Wondrously sweet is it, my brethren, 
 to rest in the divine love. ' Cast thy burden on the Lord, and 
 He shall sustain thee.' ' Blessed is the man that trusteth in 
 Him.' ' Submit yourselves unto the Lord,' then, brethren — 
 to His grace and to His law, whether in regard to being, or 
 doing, or bearing. This is the apostle's injunction here — the 
 theme which he expands in the precepts that follow. 
 
 These fall to some extent into pairs. In the first pair we have 
 a very lively antithesis : ' Resist the devil, and he will flee from 
 you ; draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to yoii^ It 
 would have been well, for the exhibition of the structure and 
 connection, had the division into verses been different ; the 
 theme or text, ' Submit yourselves, therefore, to God,' standing 
 by itself, and then the pair in a verse together. Submission to 
 God, the apostle here points out, involves two lines of effort 
 for the soul, — opposition to the evil spirit, the usurper, and 
 self- surrender to the great good Spirit, the rightful King. 
 And appended to the injunction of each of these duties, you 
 observe, there stands a promise, — according to that exquisite 
 tenderness which belongs to all true gospel pleading, even in 
 circumstances where of necessity stern severity is most pro- 
 minent. The apostle gives us the comforting assurance that 
 the needful spiritual efforts may be made with all hopefulness ; 
 for Satan when resisted will flee, God when approached will 
 meet the approach. 
 
 In the mention of Satan here, James incidentally fills up the 
 teaching which he gave in the fourteenth and fifteenth verses 
 of the first chapter regarding the natural history of sin. ' Every 
 man is tempted,' he told us, ' when he is drawn away of his own 
 lust and enticed. Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth 
 
 X 
 
322 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 forth sin ; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.' 
 But, besides, a spirit of great power and cunning, and bound- 
 less hatred to God and goodness, is continually busy in endea- 
 vours to bring us into sin, and to baffle our efforts to serve 
 God. Many think very little of Satan's diligence in temptation, 
 but his zeal and power are none the less real ; and perhaps 
 one of the strangest of all the strange revelations of the judg- 
 ment-day will be that made to wicked men, how completely 
 they were the tools of a spirit wickeder and subtler than them- 
 selves, of whom they seldom thought, — whose very existence, it 
 may be, they derided the belief in as a mere childish bugbear. 
 In the ' friendship with this world,' which James has already 
 laid to the charge of his readers, they had been under the 
 influences of this world's prince ; and this, as our Lord tells 
 us, is Satan. Now, those who desire to 'submit themselves 
 to God' must energetically '■resist the devil;'' for he makes 
 the fiercest struggles to keep his subjects, and even after 
 they have escaped, to drag them back into the kingdom 
 of darkness. This cruel, cunning, powerful foe must be 
 ' resisted ' in the divine strength, obtained by the power 
 of faith. ' The weapons of our warfare are mighty through 
 God,' not otherwise. He has provided for us all needed 
 weapons for off"ence, and armour for defence. Let us then 
 * put on the whole armour of God, that we may be able to 
 stand against the wiles of the devil ; for we wrestle not against 
 flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, 
 against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against 
 spiritual wickedness in high places. Let us stand, therefore, 
 having our loins girt about with truth, and having on the 
 breastplate of righteousness, and our feet shod with the pre- 
 paration of the gospel of peace ; above all, taking the shield 
 of faith, wherewith we shall be able to quench all the fiery 
 darts of the wicked one ; and let us take the helmet of salva- 
 tion, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.' 
 Thus arrayed, let us be watchful, knowing that at any 
 moment, from any quarter, with the most varied weapons, 
 and in the most varied guises, our fell adversary may be 
 
VER. 7.] Submission to God. 323 
 
 upon us. Let us watch the avenues where we know our 
 position to be weak. Let us watch the sides, too, where we 
 think ourselves to be strong. Not without profound signifi- 
 cance and tender grace was it ' written aforetime for our learn- 
 ing,' that Abraham, pre-eminently a man of faith, told a lie 
 through faithless cowardice ; that Moses, habitually the meekest 
 of men, sinned through angry impatience with his brethren ; 
 that Peter, the bold and loving, denied his Master. One can 
 imagine a sentry on a post of danger to be faithful, and yet 
 to betray the position by unduly narrowing the area to which 
 he directs his attention. 'Look at him. Every look, every 
 motion, betokens concentration of his thoughts and feelings 
 on the danger which impends. Perhaps he is motionless, but 
 it is only that his eye may be more stedfastly fixed upon the 
 point from which the enemy's approach is apprehended. You 
 can see at a glance that he is ready for even the faintest inti- 
 mation of a moving object on that horizon. But while he 
 stands like a statue, behind him are forms becoming every 
 moment more and more defined. He hears them not, because 
 their step is noiseless ; he sees them not, because his eye and 
 all his faculties are employed in an opposite direction. While 
 he strains every sense to catch the first intimations of approach- 
 ing danger, it is creeping stealthily behind him ; and when at 
 last his ear distinguishes the tramp of armed men, it is too 
 late, for a hostile hand is already on his shoulder, and, if his 
 life is spared, it is only to be overpowered and disarmed.'^ 
 
 And when the enemy does appear, brethren, let there be no 
 dallying with him. If we ' give place to the devil,' granting 
 him room to stand with us and negotiate, we are in the utmost 
 peril. On many subjects, second thoughts are best; but in 
 matters of moral duty, the first thoughts of a person whose 
 conscience is reasonably enlightened, are almost always true 
 thoughts. If second thoughts be waited for, they often bring 
 in worldly considerations, and tend towards a compromise. 
 When Satan finds that the first clear instinctive ' Nay ' of the 
 conscience is the utterance of a strong will, which holds to its 
 ' Professor Addison Alexander's Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 268. 
 
324 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 words, he knows well that his efforts are vain with that soul ; 
 for it is God's Spirit that has made the will strong. If promptly, 
 prayerfully, watchfully, we 'resist the devil,' he ^ will flee from 
 tis^ Though this world is still practically so under Satan as 
 its god and prince, as that he ' blinds the minds of them which 
 believe not,' and ' leads them captive at his will,' yet in truth 
 Jesus has vanquished him, 'spoiling' him, and 'triumphing 
 over him ;' and wherever gospel truth is received and welcomed 
 in any soul, there ' the prince of this world is cast out,' and 
 thus that soul is 'delivered from the power of darkness.' Every 
 struggle against, Satan's vengeful assaults to recover his posi- 
 tion, if earnestly maintained in the strength of Christ, will cer- 
 tainly be successful, — ' for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken 
 it.' Satan is too shrewd to go on persistently wasting his 
 energies, when he sees distinctly that, through strong faith, 
 almightiness is enlisted against him. The grand old dreamer 
 says that the fight between Christian and Apollyon in the 
 Valley of Humiliation ' was the dreadfullest fight that ever he 
 saw j' but that, in the end, after Christian had made at him 
 again and again with the sword of the Spirit, ' Apollyon spread 
 forth his dragon's wings and sped him away, that Christian saw 
 him no more.' He may come back and repeat his ^.ssaults 
 many times, in hope of finding unguarded moments, seasons 
 of faithlessness and consequent feebleness. To the Lord Him- 
 self he applied temptation after temptation in the wilderness ; 
 and even at the close of that effort departed from Him only 
 ' for a season,' to return with bitter fury in Gethsemane. But 
 every assault well repelled confirms the believer's spiritual 
 strength ; and the assurance holds good universally, ' Resist 
 the devil, and he will flee from you.' 
 
 The apostle continues : ' Draw nigh to God, and He will 
 draw nigh to yoic^ If we consider the military figure to be 
 still retained, then, taking this injunction in connection with 
 the previous, which we have examined, the picture perhaps is 
 that of two hosts facing each other on the eve of battle — the 
 host of God and the host of Satan, with each king present 
 among his troops. Some who have hitherto been in the ranks 
 
VER. 8.] Submission to God. 325 
 
 of Satan, now convinced that he is a vile and cruel usurper, 
 and that the battle must end in the destruction of all who 
 adhere to him, forsake their station and move toward the side 
 of God. Their old king and his myrmidons observe their 
 movement, and strive to prevent them \ but they ' resist ' 
 stoutly, and steadily ' draw nigh to ' Him whom they now re- 
 cognise as their only true and rightful Lord. Of this ' dratving 
 jiigh to God^ the most prominent element is prayer, the special 
 manifestation of longings for Him ; but the expression exhibits 
 generally a movement of the whole soul — all the thoughts and 
 affections, and consequently also their issues in the outward 
 life — towards Him. The prodigal in the ' far country,' musing 
 on his folly and wickedness, says, ' I will arise and go to my 
 Father;' and he does arise and go to his Father. 
 
 But how will he be received ? Will his Father's righteous 
 anger find utterance, and nought else ? The gospel has been 
 given to us to answer this question, and it tells us that the King 
 will ' draiu nigh to us ' — will ' draw nigh to them that draw nigh 
 to Him.' The Father saw His returning prodigal ' when he was 
 yet a great way off, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on 
 his neck, and kissed him.' Nay, the very willingness of the 
 prodigal to return to his Father's house — the willingness of 
 those who have been in Satan's ranks to draw nigh to God, 
 their true. King — springs from His willingness to draw nigh to 
 them ; for it is He that puts the longing for Himself into our 
 souls, through His Spirit. It is 'in the day of Messiah's 
 power ' that ' His people are willing.' ' No man can come 
 unto Me,' said Jesus, ' except the Father who hath sent Me 
 draw him.' * Of His own will begat He us with the word of 
 truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures :' 
 that is the genesis of all true religion. Let no fears, then, 
 dear friends, keep us back from God. Our God is ' very 
 pitiful and of tender mercy.' ' He that spared not His own 
 Son, but delivered Him up for us all,' may surely claim our 
 fullest confidence, when He tells us that 'He waiteth to be 
 gracious.' 
 
 ' But observe,' the apostle continues, ' that if this approach 
 
326 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. iv. 
 
 to God is to give Him glory or bring you profit, it must be not 
 formal merely, but real ; not partial only, but of the whole 
 nature. Prayer for God's forgiveness and the help of His 
 Spirit is proved to be sincere by earnest effort after conformity 
 of character to His will, and this as regards both heart and 
 outward life. Cleanse your hajids, ye sinners ; and petrify your 
 hearts, ye dotible-nmided.^ It is important to notice that what 
 is here enjoined is not set forth as something antecedent to 
 'drawing nigh to God,' but involved in it as an essential 
 element. Fleshly wisdom says, '■ Reform, and then you may 
 approach to God with some reasonable hope of acceptance.' 
 The teaching of the gospel is, that the spiritual life which is 
 needed for any true moral activity is to be obtained only in 
 nearness to God through Jesus Christ, and that the duty of 
 every hearer of the gospel, whatever the measure of his defile- 
 ment be, when the glad tidings come to him, is to believe that 
 ' now is the accepted time.' But it was ' our iniquities ' that 
 ' separated between us and God ; ' and therefore all real draw- 
 ing near to Him involves hatred of those iniquities, and earnest 
 endeavour to shun 'them. 
 
 In the Old Testament usage, which here, as very often, our 
 apostle follows in his mode of employing words and phrases, 
 the term ' sinner ' has mainly reference to manifest wickedness ; 
 and the ' hands ' are very frequently, and most naturally, taken 
 to represent all the instrumentalities by which the soul acts 
 upon the outer world. Accordingly, pointing by the name 
 ^sinners'' to the many outward violations of the law of God 
 of which his readers had been guilty, James calls upon them 
 to ^cleanse their hands ^ Very similarly, Paul, in writing to 
 Timothy, says, * I will that men pray everywhere, lifting up 
 holy hands' (i Tim. ii. 8). The visible moral deformities, 
 however, revealed a lamentable perversity of heart. The 
 ' sinners ' were * double-minded.^ Their souls were perhaps not 
 altogether destitute of love to God, and trust in Him, but were 
 certainly also occupied to a lamentable degree by love to the 
 world, and confidence in it. It became them, therefore, ;f 
 they indeed desired to have their ' Maker as their Husband,' 
 
VER. 9.] Submission to God. 327 
 
 and to ' draw near to Him,' to recognise the folly and guilt 
 of being 'adulterous,' as in the fourth verse the apostle has 
 declared them to be, and to ^purify (or "make chaste") 
 their hearts' The truth exhibited by James in his double 
 precept here, that approaches to God are sincere and success- 
 ful only when they include true and earnest longings and 
 endeavours after purity and beauty of spirit and of life, is one 
 of vast practical moment, and which accordingly meets us 
 everywhere in the Bible. ' Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
 they shall see God.' ' I will wash mine hands in innocency ; 
 so will I compass Thine altar, O Lord.' ' If I regard iniquity 
 in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.' 'Who shall ascend 
 into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy 
 place ? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.' 
 
 The apostle proceeds now to remind his readers, that the 
 very first evidence of true desire to 'draw nigh to God' is 
 deep penitential sorrow for sin ; and the needfulness of this 
 sorrow, and also of energetic thought regarding it, in order to 
 resist our natural tendency to frivolity, is shown in the copious- 
 ness of the language. Word is piled upon word — expressions 
 of 'lamentation and mourning and woe,' — that the most incon- 
 siderate reader may have brought distinctly and impressively 
 before him, how necessary is the night of repentant weeping, if 
 there is to come a morning of spiritual joy. The Christian life, 
 brethren, is a life of happiness, of rest, of ' peace that passeth all 
 understanding,' and 'joy that is unspeakable and full of glory.' 
 Believers know indeed the seriousness of life, and thus their 
 happiness is tinged with gravity ; but for that very reason it is 
 deep, and broad, and lasting. In a world like this, where death 
 is the one great certainty, any joy that is not tempered with 
 seriousness must be like the crackling of a fire of thorns, where 
 speedily again all is cold and dark. But after seasons ot 
 backsliding and spiritual torpor, this characteristic seriousness 
 of the Christian must deepen into sorrow, the intensely bitter 
 sorrow of self-upbraiding for unthankfulness and disloyalty to 
 our gracious King and Father. And, considering the energy 
 with which the ' law of sin in the members ' wages its war with 
 
328 Lecttires on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 ' the law of the mind,' the professing Christian whose history- 
 has given him no experience of this sorrow has reason to fear 
 that his immunity is due rather to bhndness and hardness of 
 heart than to uninterrupted growth in grace. ''Be afflicted, 
 then,' says James to the professing servants of God who had 
 been beguiled by the seductions of the world (' Have a feeling 
 of distress,' instead of the thoughtlessness and baseless mirth 
 which arise out of the ' friendship of the world '), ' and mourn, 
 and weep; let your laughter ' (the ' laughter of the fool,' who, 
 in the m.idst of great everlasting realities, looks only at 
 shadows) ' he turned to nioummg, and your joy to heaviness^ 
 'Dejection' — the sorrowful casting down of those eyes which 
 aforetime sent greedy and arrogant glances out to the vanities 
 of the world, — this is the exact representative of the original 
 term here rendered * heaviness.^ The type of the penitent is 
 the publican who, ' standing afar off, would not lift up so much 
 as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God 
 be merciful to me, a sinner.' 
 
 In the tenth verse James closes the paragraph by summing 
 up the teaching of the whole : ' Humble yourselves in the sight 
 of the Lo7'd' This is substantially a repetition of the theme 
 or fundamental injunction that began the paragraph: 'Submit 
 yourselves to God.' Since ' God resisteth the proud, but 
 giveth grace unto the humble,' the obvious demand of true 
 wisdom is that all who have permitted the proud self-reliance 
 which shows itself in ' friendship with this world ' to gain power 
 over them, should at once ^humble themselves^ And this ^ in 
 the sight of the Lord.'' The sense of His presence whose 
 ' eyes are as a flame of fire,' will secure what, in a work so 
 repulsive to the carnal mind, nothing else will — genuine 
 sincerity. It is in the measure of the distinctness with which 
 through faith we see God, too, that the soul perceives the 
 grounds of humility, recognising in the light of the divine 
 character its own defilement and deformity. ' I have heard 
 of Thee by the hearing of the ear ; but now mine eye seeth 
 Thee : wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.' 
 
 With the grace and tenderness characteristic of the divine 
 
VER. 10.] Submissio7i to God. 329 
 
 word, even in its stern passages, the injunction ' Humble 
 yourselves ' has appended to it a gracious promise ; so that 
 the paragraph which has been so searching and scathing lays 
 firm hold of the heart at its close with 'bands of love.' 
 ' Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord,' as in the light 
 of His ineffable excellence you see your ignorance, and sin, 
 and weakness, — ' and He shall lift yoii np ' to true though as 
 yet imperfect knowledge, and holiness, and strength here, — 
 and yonder to the ' open vision ' of the ' Altogether Lovely,' to 
 absolute spiritual beauty, to strength that will enable you to 
 ' serve Him day and night in His temple ' and to bear the 
 * exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' 
 
330 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 XXIII. 
 EVIL SPEAKING AND JUDGING. 
 
 ' Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his 
 brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth 
 the lav/ : but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but 
 a judge. 12 There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to de- 
 stroy : who art thou that judgest another?' — ^James iv. ii, 12. 
 
 THE substance of the paragraph immediately preceding 
 these words was, that however little worldly persons 
 may think it, yet, when we look closely into the matter, we 
 find the spirit of worldliness to be an arrogant assumption 
 of being independent of God, and that the only radical cure 
 for it — the only course to be pursued by those who have been 
 aroused to a conviction of its influence over them — is to 
 ' submit themselves to God,' to ' humble themselves ' sincerely 
 and fully before Him. James proceeds now to give one or 
 two illustrations of forms that worldliness often takes, and had 
 in fact taken among many of his first readers, — showing how 
 in these a want of reverence for God is involved, and that 
 consequently true submission to Him will exhibit itself in a 
 careful avoidance of such conduct. 
 
 We have first a command to abstain from detraction and 
 calumny : ' Speak not evil one of another, brethren^ You will 
 remember that the apostle has spoken already on sins of the 
 tongue at considerable length, in the third chapter. His ex- 
 hortation here, however, is not a mere repetition of anything 
 said there, but has a distinctive character. In the observa- 
 tions made in the third chapter, he had main if not exclusive 
 reference, as is plain on a careful study, to the various vices 
 of speech that spring out of bigotry and contention in religious 
 
VER, I I.J Evil speaking and fudging. 331 
 
 and ecclesiastical matters ; the first injunction of the chapter, 
 ' My brethren, be not many masters' (' teachers'), being a kind 
 of key-word to the whole. Here, on the other hand, as we 
 see, his precept forms part of an address on worldliness, and 
 thus bears primarily on the ordinary intercourse of life — com- 
 mon talk on common matters. Even professedly Christian 
 society in the apostle's days, it seems, needed the exhortation 
 to avoid evil-speaking ; and we have no reason to doubt that 
 in every age of the church this fault has been a prevalent one : 
 certainly our own age is not free from it. 
 
 The motives by which people are led to it are various. 
 Definite malig?iiiy and vindidiveness sometimes, no doubt. On 
 the ground of some real or fancied wrong done him, a man 
 hates another; and the simplest, readiest, and most efficient 
 way of taking revenge is to circulate a story to the other's 
 discredit. In other cases etivy is the impelling influence. 
 A man prospers and enjoys repute among his fellows more 
 than we do ; and what the ' evil eye ' has seen, really or in 
 imagination, the venomous tongue tells, that this fair repute 
 may be tarnished. There are persons in the world — probably 
 most of us have met individuals of the kind — of so mean and 
 wretched a spirit, that any success of others is felt by them as 
 if it were a wrong to themselves ; and thus their discourse is 
 ever full of slander and detraction. With envy, sometimes 
 di7-ect self-seeking is connected. Suspicions against a man are 
 thrown out, or a false or exaggerated story is put into circula- 
 tion, in the hope that certain advantages in the way of busi- 
 ness, for example, may thus be taken away from the object of 
 the calumny, and come to his detractor. Cases of surrender 
 to the influence of such motives as these, however, are rare, 
 one may reasonably hope, among professing Christians, and 
 even among the higher class of mere men of the world. But 
 one motive operating often in all classes of society is vanity — 
 the desire for a little prominence in company — which scandal 
 is found to give most easily. It is an unhappy fact, patent 
 enough to all who think on the subject, that the average tone 
 of conversation among us is low. Through a want of spiri- 
 
2,2,2 Lectures on the Epistle of y antes, [ch. iv. 
 
 tuality or of general intelligence, or of both, neither religious 
 subjects nor really important secular subjects find much wel- 
 come in general social talk. They are either not introduced 
 at all, or, if they are, the conversation soon languishes. But 
 everything that tells against the personal character of an absent 
 acquaintance, or that tends to exhibit him in a ridiculous light, 
 is generally received with much favour, and felt to impart a 
 pleasant piquancy to a conversation perhaps otherwise dull. 
 Thus it happens, that for a man who loves a temporary pro- 
 minence, and is not scrupulous in regard to his means, no way 
 of gaining it is better suited than evil-speaking ; the more par- 
 ticularly as there is no kind of subject on which it is so easy 
 to seem smart as in the discussion of personal character, where, 
 falling on the ears of listeners somewhat sympathetic, severe 
 remarks and exaggerated sketches pass for clever, which on 
 any other subject would be seen to be simply stupid. There 
 can be no doubt, therefore, that vanity is a very common cause 
 of evil-speaking. However destitute a person may be of re- 
 spectable intellectual resources for shining in society, he can 
 at least calumniate or deride his neighbour. But probably, 
 after all, most of the ordinary calumnious gossip of society is 
 to be ascribed to the mere desire to talk, even when all inno- 
 cent materials for talk are wanting. People are brought to- 
 gether who seem to have no objects of common interest, or 
 what they have are soon exhausted ; still the fire of conversa- 
 tion must be maintained, and, as other fuel does not present 
 itself, personal character is thrown in. This, beyond ques- 
 tion, is the trvie origin of much calumnious discourse, — which 
 yet in such a case is not the less really a sin, that there 
 is no conscious malevolence ; for there ought to be moral 
 energy to act on the principle that silence, or innocent dul- 
 ness, is immeasurably better and nobler than the propagation 
 of what may injure, and cannot by possibility do good. 
 
 The sin of evil-speaking exhibits itself mainly in these forms : 
 the propagation of what is known to be a calumnious lie ; the 
 exaggeration or distortion of truth; the hasty passing on of 
 what may or may not be truth, but certainly has not been in- 
 
VER. 1 1.] Evil speaking and ytidging. 333 
 
 quired into ; and the needless telling of what is known to be 
 truth. The first of these is simply diabolical. To Satan — who, 
 ' when he speaketh a lie, speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, 
 and the father of it ' — no work is more congenial than wilful 
 calumny. In Eden he dared to whisper into the ear of Eve 
 insinuations of insincerity even against God ; and he has dili- 
 gently tried (ah, how successfully !) to persuade her children 
 that their Divine King has the spirit of ' an austere man, taking 
 up that He laid not down, and reaping that He did not sow.' 
 His hatred to man, too, has no manifestation more distinctly 
 indicating his bitterness and his alienation from all good, than 
 when he acts as 'the accuser of the brethren.' No character- 
 istic of our spiritual adversary is more prominent than his love 
 of calumny ; and, indeed, his very name ' devil ' means ' the 
 calumniator.' In no way, then, can a man more distinctly 
 prove himself a ' child of the devil,' who bears his father's 
 image, than by inventing and propagating slanderous lies. It 
 is difficult to suppose that any person who, by the utmost 
 energy of self-deception, can fancy himself a Christian, could 
 be guilty of this form of evil-speaking. But the other forms 
 of the sin are certainly not unknown in the church of Christ : 
 it is to be feared, indeed, that, in various degrees of heinous- 
 ness, they are far from uncommon. And the debasing influ- 
 ence of this sin cannot be overstated. You all know (for you 
 have all met men of the kind) the ineffable meanness of the 
 habitual detractor. His whole moral nature is enervated, and 
 everything like manliness and healthy tone taken away. In 
 immediate connection with praise he insinuates his depreciatory 
 hints, as poison may be given in perfume. All of us know the 
 ' but ' for which his commendations are meant to prepare the 
 way. He loves vague generalities too, uttered in such a con- 
 nection that suggestions of evil will certainly be taken as point- 
 ing in a particular direction ; whilst yet refutation can hardly 
 be given, nor the charge of personal calumny brought home. 
 
 Into exaggeration and distortion of truth all of us are ex- 
 tremely apt to be drawn, often unconsciously. There are very 
 few things more difficult than to tell the exact truth on any matter 
 
334 Lectures on the Epistle of Jajnes. [ch. iv. 
 
 of complexity and delicacy. Misconception, and prejudice, 
 and excited feeling, frequently colour and distort to our minds 
 what has been told to us or observed by us ; and therefore 
 thoughtfulness, and self-control, and knowledge of the force of 
 words are all required, in a high degree, in order to the accu- 
 rate relation of anything that has to do with personal charac- 
 ter. Any one of us would probably be astonished, and often 
 deeply pained, if a story bearing on character which he had 
 himself told, honestly, and, as he supposed, accurately, were 
 heard by him again, after it had been told two or three times, 
 — each propagator contributing his quota of unconscious dis- 
 tortion. Consideration of this hazard of unintentional mis- 
 representation might well deter men of a truthful spirit from 
 speaking on matters in which such misrepresentation would do 
 harm. But even supposing that we knew with absolute cer- 
 tainty some evil regarding a brother, and were sure that we 
 could tell it without swerving a hair's-breadth from the narrow 
 path of truthful representation, yet another question would 
 enter : Is there need for telling it ? The spirit of Christianity 
 very plainly interposes a prohibition, unless there is need ; and 
 what constitutes need must be decided by the Christian judg- 
 ment for itself, in regard to each case as it arises. The prin- 
 ciples taught by the gospel of love on this whole subject may 
 perhaps be reduced to these : that we should never believe evil 
 of another, until we cannot help it ; that we should never say 
 anything against another, unless we are sure that duty obliges 
 us ; and that if we feel sure that duty obliges us so to speak, 
 then we should tell of the evil in a spirit of love and of sorrow. 
 The apostle's exhortation here has primary reference to the 
 conduct of Christians to each other ; and the argument enforc- 
 ing it, which is involved in the word of address, ' brethren^ he 
 exhibits fully and impressively by the repetition of the designa- 
 tion : * He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his 
 brother, speaketh evil of the law.' By the use of this word he 
 calls on them to bethink themselves how grossly inconsistent 
 it is to say in their prayers, ' Our Father which art in heaven,' 
 and yet calumniate a member of the brotherhood, — to profess 
 
VER. II.] Evil Speaking and yttdging. 335 
 
 love to ' Him Avhich begat,' and show hatred to ' him that is 
 begotten of Him.' 
 
 The expressed prohibition in the eleventh verse is of evil- 
 speaking ; but in the argument which follows there is obviously 
 implied also a prohibition of 'judging:' 'He that speaketh 
 evil of his brother, z.x\di Judgetk his brother, speaketh evil of the 
 law, and judgeth the law.' The apostle assumes that in those to 
 whom he writes— rational beings, who profess to feel themselves 
 responsible to God for their views, and feelings, and conduct — 
 a 'judgment' by the mind must be the basis on which any ex- 
 pressed opinion regarding character rests. As a matter of fact, 
 would it not be flattery often to talk of a 'judgment' of any 
 kind preceding the utterance of calumny ? Is not detraction 
 in many cases the merest parrot-prattle, dishonouring to us as 
 reasonable creatures, as well as hurtful to our brethren and 
 dishonouring to the law of God? The reference to 'judging' 
 is introduced partly to lead into the course of argument the 
 apostle has in view, but partly also to suggest that 'judgment ' 
 is wrong in itself, whether it induce evil-speaking or not. This 
 latter object is more distinctly shown when, in accordance with 
 the reading of the original text which is found in the oldest 
 manuscripts, and has been received by the modern critical 
 editors, we substitute 'or' for 'and' in the beginning of the 
 second clause of the eleventh verse : ' He that speaketh evil of 
 his brother, or judgeth his brother.' The force of the state- 
 ment that it is wrong to ' judge another ' is plainly limited, — 
 the context showing, and the good sense of every reader at 
 once perceiving, that here, as often in Scripture, by the simple 
 'judgment' is meant unfavourable judgment. In the apostle's 
 precept, moreover, as in that of Jesus in the Sermon on the 
 Mount, which is clearly in his mind, ' Judge not, that ye be 
 not judged,' there is no prohibition of our coming to con- 
 clusions regarding the character of men from their avowed 
 principles and visible conduct. 'That would have been the 
 enjoining of a kind of physical impossibility. You might as 
 well forbid me to have an unfavourable opinion of a fox and 
 wolf, as characters to be detested and avoided, as of some men 
 
33^ Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 whom I know personally, and many of whom I have sure in- 
 formation.'^ Indeed, to 'judge' according to avowed prin- 
 ciples and visible conduct is a diity : ' Beware of false prophets, 
 which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are 
 ravening wolves : ye shall knoiv them by their fruits.^ But to 
 ' judge ' of motives and character, without tangible and most 
 convincing evidence, this is a sin. It is sinful to do it, even 
 if the judgment be kept to ourselves. The effect on our own 
 souls is evil — narrowing, chilling, withering ; and evil is 
 wrought, too, against him whom we judge (at least if he and 
 we stand at all in close relations), because he is denied the 
 benefit of a love and fellowship which, it may be, God brought 
 us near to him specially that we might have the opportunity of 
 giving for his help, whereas we 'pass by on the other side.' 
 
 In support of his prohibition of evil-speaking and judging, 
 James had many lines of argument open to him. In that 
 which has been chosen, he sets forth two grounds for his coun- 
 sel. The first is, that the conduct which he forbids involves a 
 condemnation of God's law : ' He that speaketh evil of his 
 brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and 
 judgeth thelaw.^ By some commentators it has been thought 
 that James is here speaking with reference mainly to a parti- 
 cular class of uncharitable judgments and utterances, — namely, 
 such as were founded on differences of opinion regarding the 
 obligation of Christians to retain the ceremonial observances 
 of Judaism ; and that the argument here employed has this 
 meaning : ' Because those who blame their brethren for giving 
 up the old ritualism, thereby condemn the distinctive law of the 
 new economy, which does not require it.' This view lies under 
 these fatal objections, that it gives an altogether exceptional 
 application to the term ' law,' and that there is nothing in the 
 context, or in the whole Epistle, to suggest in the slightest 
 degree that limitation of the precept here supposed. ^ James's 
 
 ^ Dr. William Anderson, of Glasgow, in his admirable discourse entitled 
 'Uncharitable Judgments Judged,' printed in the second series of his Ser- 
 mons, 
 
 ^ The view of the meaning here controverted is given, with some varieties 
 
VER. 1 1.] Evil SpeaJdng and yndging. 337 
 
 use of the word ' law ' elsewhere gives us every reason to 
 believe that here he means by it the grand code of moral 
 obligation written on man's heart at the beginning, taught in 
 all Scripture, — the oracles of the Old Covenant as well as 
 those of the New, but most fully exhibited in the teaching and 
 example of the Lord Jesus. The apostle lifts up the thoughts 
 of his readers to the relation in which their conduct stands to 
 this great law. ' Judging a brother, when Christ has expressly 
 said to you, Judge not, is practically judging and condemning 
 His precept, and the great code to which it belongs — declar- 
 ing the divine law to be undeserving of your obedience.' Very 
 similarly one might say, ' To insult your neighbour is to insult 
 God's law, and therefore to insult God ;' and other series of 
 the same kind will readily suggest themselves. It is obviously 
 true, not of uncharitable judgment merely, but of every sin, 
 that the man who commits it practically judges and condemns 
 God's law; but, as obviously, the remark comes in with a point 
 and power in the present connection that would be lacking 
 elsewhere. In regard to such offences as evil-speaking and 
 harsh judgments, moreover, it is peculiarly needful to bring in 
 the truth that they fall fully under the sweep of divine law. 
 The men of the world, and in many cases Christians also, 
 through the influence of worldly society, are apt to think of 
 such conduct as belonging to a kind of moral neutral ground ; 
 so that, whilst certainly not right, it is yet not decidedly wrong. 
 
 of detail, by Grotius, Benson, Rosenmiiller, Hottinger, and others. Dean 
 Alford explains 'judgeth the law' thus— 'viz., by setting himself up over 
 that law, — as pronouncing upon its observance or non-observance by 
 another ; ' his meaning being further exhibited by a note on the next clause : 
 ' Seeing that he who judges, judges not only the man before him, but the 
 law also ; for he pronounces not only on the fact, but on that fact being or 
 not being a breach of the law.' That is to say, a man who 'judges w/^^r/ 
 the law IS,' 'judges the law.' But is this the natural meaning of 'judging 
 the law ?' Must not these words mean rather, ' judging 7a/iai the laiu shauld 
 be, ' ' judging whether the law is a right law or a wrong ? ' Every right- 
 minded man is continually for himself judging what the law is, and yet surely 
 is very far from 'judging the law' in the sense in which James employs the 
 expression. 
 
 Y 
 
338 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 Now, as was shown in the beginning of the lecture, James's 
 purpose in this section of the Epistle is to exhibit the spirit of 
 worldliness as being essentially arrogance towards God, insub- 
 missiveness to the Divine King ; and in accordance with this 
 purpose, he tells his readers here that the practice of detraction, 
 which they considered a mere trifle or peccadillo, was really a 
 breach of the King's law, and thus a ' judging ' and a defiance 
 of it and of Him. 
 
 The apostle's second argument in support of the prohibition 
 he has given, is that the conduct forbidden involves the assump- 
 tion of a position which belongs to God alone: ' But if thou Judge 
 the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is One 
 Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy : who art thou that 
 judgest another V More exactly rendered, and with the trans- 
 lation introduced of words contained in the oldest manuscripts, 
 the last part of the sentence runs thus : ' One is the Lawgiver 
 and Judge, He who is able to save and to destroy ; but thou — 
 who art thou that judgest thy neighbour?' According to the 
 course of thought, the contrast in the first part appears not to 
 be between ' a doer of the law ' and ' a judge (of the law),' but 
 between ' a doer of the law' (that is, a subject, one under law, 
 whose office in regard to it is simply to do what it enjoins) 
 and *a judge,' taken in the most general sense, — one belonging 
 to an entirely different category from ' doers,' — one whose office 
 is not to obey laws, but to judge men and laws ; for the con- 
 nection shows that ' a judge ' pure and simple is thought of, 
 controlled by no authority, above even the law. The words 
 of the twelfth verse must be felt by every reader to come in 
 with singular power, — to be most solemn, and striking, and 
 silencing. ''One is the Lawgiver and Judge:'' One, not many 
 neighbours, with varying standards of right: One, to whom 
 should converge the thoughts, the reverence, the obedience 
 of all, seeing that with Him we all 'have to do:' One who, 
 being ' Lawgiver ' as well as '■Judged knows His own law per- 
 fectly, and can therefore administer it with perfect wisdom 
 and justice ; and whose decisions carry power with them at 
 every point and for ever, seeing that * He is able to save and to 
 
VER. 12.] Evil Speaking aitd ytcdging. 339 
 
 destroy.^ Then comes the withering contrast, '■But t/iou' — a 
 creature with no wisdom, no hoHness, no power, — '■ thoii^ igno- 
 rant in great measure ahke of the law and of men's hearts and 
 circumstances, thyself every day a transgressor of the law, and 
 unable, even when most favourably placed, to make thy deci- 
 sions effective beyond a narrow sphere and a little time — ' who 
 art thou that judgcst thy neighboicr V 
 
340 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. iv. 
 
 XXIV. 
 VAIN CONFIDENCE REGARDING THE FUTURE. 
 
 ' Go to now, ye that say, To-day, or to-morrow, we will go into such a 
 city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain ; 14 
 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is 
 your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and 
 then vanisheth away. 15 For that ye ought to say. If the Lord will, 
 we shall live, and do this, or that. 16 But now ye rejoice in your 
 boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. 17 Therefore to him that 
 knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.' — ^James I v. 
 13-17- 
 
 IN this paragraph the apostle brings forward another ex- 
 ample illustrating the truth which is the central thought 
 of this chapter, that the root of all worldliness is pride, arro- 
 gance of heart towards God, and that consequently the only 
 effectual remedy for it — the plain, and instant duty of every 
 Christian who has in any degree allowed a worldly spirit 
 to gain power over him — is to 'submit himself to God,' to 
 * humble himself in the sight of the Lord.' The form of world- 
 liness of which he here speaks is presumptuous confidence in 
 the future, calculating on time to come without reference to 
 God's providence ; as if the future and all that it brings with it 
 were in our hands. 
 
 The expression rendered ' Go to notv,' which occurs in the 
 New Testament only here and in the first verse of the next 
 chapter, is a phrase of a rousing character, calling attention to 
 some exhortation to follow, like the shaking of a sleeper to 
 wake him that he may hear tidings of moment. In the pre- 
 sent instance the exhortation is not expressed, but implied, 
 particularly in the last three verses of the paragraph. As in 
 
VER. 1 4.] Vain Confidence regarding the Future. 341 
 
 the first chapter of Isaiah God's appeal of love is introduced 
 by ' Come and let us reason together,' so here, sorhewhat simi- 
 larly, the apostle says in substance, 'Look now, and bethink 
 yourselves regarding your religious position; bring up your 
 conduct before the tribunal of reason and conscience, and 
 there as in God's sight pronounce judgment, while still repent- 
 ance and hope are open to you.' The persons here addressed 
 are merchants of a kind who have in all ages been found in 
 great numbers in the East. In Dothan, the sons of Jacob 
 ' hfted up their eyes and looked, and behold a company 
 of Ishmaelites came from Gilead, with their camels, bearing 
 spicery, and balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to 
 Egypt.' So still the business of a most respectable and in- 
 telligent class of merchants is to convey the products of one 
 region to some distant city, where they remain until they have 
 sold their goods, and bought others suitable for another distant 
 market ; and thus the operation is repeated, until perhaps after 
 a considerable number of years the trader is enabled to re- 
 turn prosperously to his home.^ Such evidently are the traders 
 here. The reading ' to-day and to-morrow,' which has better 
 manuscript authority than that given in the authorized version, 
 sets forth with peculiar liveliness the completeness of the vain 
 confidence described — the definiteness of the arrangements 
 which these merchants make for the future, without any thought 
 of God. ' We will journey to-day and to-morrow to such a city ' 
 (to Antioch, or Damascus, or Alexandria), ^ and will sj>end 
 there one year ^ (the ^ one^ hinting at further plans), '■ and will 
 trade^ and get gain^ An observant reader will see a peculiar 
 force in the ' ands,^ accumulating one presumptuous expecta- 
 tion on another. 
 
 ' Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow^ ' You 
 form plans with confident security for a long time to come. 
 What certainty have you that your trafficking in that city will 
 be gainful ? What certainty have you that you will remain 
 alive in that city a year ; or that, if you do, you will be in 
 
 * See T/ie Pictorial Bible, or Roberts's Oriental Illustrations of the 
 Scriptures, on this verse. 
 
342 Lectures 07t the Epistle of yames. [ch. iv. 
 
 health to buy and sell? What certainty have you that you 
 will ever reach that city? You say, To-day and to-morrow 
 we will go ; but the wise king said long ago, " Boast not 
 thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may 
 bring forth." You may go from your homes healthy and 
 hopeful, with your servants and your train of camels ; and ere 
 another day dawn, robbery or hurricane, sickness or accident, 
 any one of innumerable circumstances, may have blighted 
 your prospects utterly. Nay, you yourselves may have gone 
 away for ever from all buying and selling and getting gain, to 
 meet God ; for what is your life — of what character or quality? 
 Altogether untrustworthy in duration, you know \v€i\.,for it is a 
 vapour ' (or, still more pointedly and strikingly, according to 
 what is very probably the original reading, 'ye are a vapour') 
 * t/iat appearethfor a little time, and then va?iisheth away. From 
 the moist ground the vapour rises at the first touch of the 
 m.oming sun, and glides gracefully up the mountain-side, soften- 
 ing the rugged outlines of the cliffs with a robe of beauty. But 
 the very beams that called it forth, scatter it when they gain 
 strength. At noon you look for it, but it is gone, and the 
 place that knew it knows it no more. Such is your life ; and 
 yet on this transitory mist you, in foolish self-dependence, build 
 great towers of hope, as if it were enduring as the everlasting 
 hills. Have you never heard what the Saviour said of a man 
 whose ground brought forth plentifully, and who promised his 
 soul much goods for many years : " Thou fool, this night thy 
 soul shall be required of thee ? " ' 
 
 Treating the fourteenth verse as parenthetical, the apostle 
 makes the fifteenth in form a continuation of the sentence 
 begun in the thirteenth, thus : * Go to now, ye that say, 
 To-day and to-morrow we will go to such a city, and continue 
 there one year, and buy and sell, and get gain ; for that ye 
 ought to say (more exactly, "instead of saying"). If the Lord 
 will, we shall live, a?id do this, or that^ This is not to be 
 regarded as a command that, whenever we have occasion to 
 speak of purposes or expectations, we should utter these words, 
 or words of similar import. Beyond doubt, the constant use 
 
VER. i6.] Vain Co7ifidence regarding the Future. 343 
 
 of such language with respect to trifling affairs would, in 
 creatures such as we are, and situated as we are, have a 
 tei^dency to rub off reverence for God and His holy name ; 
 and thus the practice might very easily degenerate into an 
 act of mere superstitious reliance on a form, when the feeling 
 that had been the life of the form was gone. Taking the 
 commentary of apostolic usage, we find that the same who says 
 to the Corinthians, ' I will come to you shortly, if the Lord 
 will' (i Cor. iv. 19) ; and again, 'I trust to tarry a while with 
 you, if the Lord permit ' (i Cor. xvi. 7), says also to them in 
 another place simply, ' I will come unto you when I shall pass 
 through Macedonia, for I do pass through Macedonia' (i Cor. 
 xvi. 5) ; and to the Romans, 'When I have performed this, I 
 will come by you into Spain' (Rom. xv. 28). The meaning 
 of our apostle's injunction is plainly this, that at all times, 
 in reference to everything, when looking forward, we should 
 remember reverentially, and thankfully, and lovingly, God's 
 providential government of the world, and our absolute de- 
 pendence on His will for continued life and health, and for 
 the accomplishment of any purpose or expectation ; and that 
 it will be well both for ourselves and for others, if we often, on 
 such occasions as the Christian judgment (or rather, perhaps, 
 the delicate Christian instinct) suggests, express this con- 
 viction of dependence by some such phrase as ' If the Lord 
 will.' 
 
 ''But now ye rejoice in your boastings : all such rejoicing is 
 evil.'' ' But, as things really are, instead of thus humbly and 
 gratefully acknowledging your dependence on God, in your 
 vainglorious dreams you exult and boast, speaking high 
 swelling words of confidence regarding the future and your 
 doings in it, your buying and seUing and getting gain. All 
 such arrogant exultation is evil.' There is an exultation, a 
 rejoicing, a glorying, which is good. 'My soul shall make 
 her boast in the Lord,' David sings, leading the universal choir 
 of believing hearts; and Paul 'gloried,' as every true believer 
 glories with him, ' in the cross of Christ.' But all such glory- 
 ing as we have here, boasting in self and not in God, through 
 
344 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes, [ch. iv. 
 
 proud presumption of secure life, and health, and success, — 
 this is evil: it dishonours God, it saps everything of spirituality 
 that there may be in us, and it exerts a baneful influence 
 around. 
 
 Now, brethren, what James wrote to the merchants among 
 the Jewish Christians of his day, is nowise less applicable in 
 our time. The forms of human life vary; the texture takes 
 different shapes and hues in different ages and countries ; but 
 the spirit is substantially the same, the hazards for the soul 
 the same, the refuge for the soul the same. In an age like 
 ours, when natural science is every day so greatly increasing 
 the means of money-making, when trade has so many ramifi- 
 cations, and, connected with it, so much that is exciting, there 
 is very great peril of a man's losing the thought of God, and, 
 amid the whirr of commercial machinery, failing to hear the 
 ' still small voice ' which reminds us that ' life, and breath, and 
 all things' are at His disposal. For our time, therefore, the 
 apostle's words have, if possible, even greater force than they 
 had for his own. And the teaching is not for merchants only. 
 All kinds of anticipations of the future in which worldly desires 
 of any sort come into play, involve the same danger. ' The 
 mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through 
 the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming ? why tarry 
 the wheels of his chariots ? Her wise ladies answered her, 
 yea, she returned answer to herself. Have they not sped? 
 have they not divided the prey? to Sisera a prey of divers 
 colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of divers 
 colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of 
 them that take the spoil?' Nothing but worldly hope, worldly 
 confidence — no thought of God or His providence ; but mean- 
 while the enemy of the Lord has perished. 
 
 'All such rejoicing' — all arrogant forecasting in any sphere 
 and on any subject — ' is evil.' But to the energetic prosecution 
 of all the activities of life, to sagacious forecast and vigorous 
 exertion founded thereon, all maintained in a spirit of reveren- 
 tial remembrance of God, the words of James are in no measure 
 hostile. The Bible is eminently stimulative to industry. Its 
 
VER. i6.] Vain Confidenceregarding the Future. 345 
 
 principle is, that 'if any man will not work, neither should he 
 eat ;' and every intelligent and faithful holder of Bible truth 
 is ' diligent in his business.' Now in many departments this 
 cannot be done without looking forward, perhaps far forward — 
 without deciding to ' go to such a city, and continue there ' a 
 week, or a month, or a year, ' and buy and sell ;' and on all such 
 resolutions of honest, God-fearing men, formed and carried out 
 in the humble spirit of those who always say in their hearts, if 
 not with their lips, ' If the Lord will,' He does not frown. The 
 thought of divine providence, of his heavenly Father's watchful 
 care, cheers the Christian in all his work ; and the remembrance 
 that our life is but ' a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, 
 and then vanisheth away' — the taking in of death into his cal- 
 culations — does not unnerve, but stimulates. ' Whatsoever his 
 hand findeth to do, he does it with his might;' bearing in mind 
 that ' there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, 
 in the grave, whither he goeth.' 
 
 But, brethren, is not the fact on which the apostle's appeal 
 is founded a very strange one, — that the great truths of our 
 ignorance of the future, and of the brevity and uncertainty of 
 life, exert so little influence on the views and conduct of vast 
 multitudes ? For reasons of infinite wisdom, having reference 
 both to our good and to His own glory — some of which we can 
 perceive even now — God has hidden our earthly future from us. 
 Prophecy sheds light on the great principles and outlines of 
 God's administration, — but in regard to the future history even 
 of the church we know almost nothing in detail ; and regard- 
 ing our own personal earthly future, absolutely nothing. We 
 may conjecture, but we have no knowledge; and few things 
 are more calculated to bring with liveliness before us the con- 
 trast between our littleness and God's greatness, than the con- 
 sideration that ' we know not what a day may bring forth.' We 
 speculate, and reason, and guess ; we grapple with the future, 
 tearing at the veil, sometimes, as if we defied omnipotence to 
 keep it there ; and yet we know nothing, whilst ' He knoweth 
 the end from the beginning.' Eternity is to Him one great 
 present, which in all its length and breadth, with all its events 
 
34^ Lectures on the Epistle of Raines, [ch. iv. 
 
 and all their relations to each other, He surveys at a glance, 
 without movement or effort. 
 
 We are ignorant of what will befall us even if we continue to 
 live, — and we may die. Ere another day dawn, ' the silver cord 
 may be loosed, and the golden bowl broken, and the pitcher 
 broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern.' 
 We know this, — that we certainly shall die one day, and that 
 that may be to-day. No man or woman in the world doubts 
 it ; nothing is a more utter commonplace than that our life is 
 ' as a shadow,' ' as a flower of the grass,' ' as a vapour ;' and 
 yet what vast numbers act as if they were to live for ever, as if 
 all men were mortal except themselves ! The very familiarity 
 of the truth, the fact that we know it so well and hold it so 
 certain, deadens it to us. As Coleridge finely says, ' Truths 
 of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often con- 
 sidered as so true that they lose all the power of truth, and lie 
 bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the 
 most despised and exploded errors.' ^ 
 
 The words of the seventeenth verse, looked at by them- 
 selves, exhibit a general principle regarding sin, — that know- 
 ledge and responsibility go together. If, in reference to any 
 point of morals, neither conscience, however candidly interro- 
 gated, nor revelation, however honestly and carefully studied, 
 yielded any light, sin could not have place at all ; and the 
 clearer the light on God's law, the deeper is the sinfulness of 
 those who break it, whether by committing what God forbids 
 or neglecting what He enjoins. In their connection, how- 
 ever, which is clearly with the immediately preceding para- 
 graph, — not, as has been supposed by some, with all the 
 previous part of the Epistle, — the words seem intended spe- 
 cially to press home to the consciences of the readers the 
 responsibility resting on them all, from the fact that the truths 
 of which the apostle has been speaking are so familiar to all. 
 ' It is the tritest of all commonplaces,' he says, ' that life is a 
 vapour, and that for its continuance, and everything that rests 
 on its continuance, we depend absolutely on the will of God. 
 ' Aids to Reflection : Introductory Aphorism i. 
 
VER. 17.] Vain Conjidenceregarding the Future. 347 
 
 Knowing this so well, then, bear in mind your responsibility; 
 repent of your proud and foolish speeches, and of the spirit 
 which gave them utterance ; humble yourselves in the sight of 
 the Lord, and resolve in His strength henceforward to cherish 
 ever a child-like sense of dependence on Him. To him that 
 knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.^ 
 
348 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. v. 
 
 XXV. 
 WOES OF THE WICKED RICH. 
 
 ' Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come 
 upon you. 2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth- 
 eaten. 3 Your gold and silver is cankered ; and the rust of them shall 
 be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye 
 have heaped treasure together for the last days. 4 Behold, the hire of 
 the labourers which have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept 
 back by fraud, crieth : and the cries of them which have reaped are 
 entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. 5 Ye have lived in plea- 
 sure on the earth, and been wanton ; ye have nourished your hearts, 
 as in a day of slaughter. 6 Ye have condemned and killed the just ; 
 and he doth not resist you.' — ^James v. 1-6. 
 
 THROUGHOUT the previous chapter the apostle has 
 been occupied with the subject of worldliness, and 
 the enervating and debasing influence on the character of 
 professing Christians of sympathy in any degree with the 
 longings and efforts of persons who seek their portion on 
 the earth. Dwelling on the fact that the root of worldliness 
 is pride, arrogant self-assertion against God, he has illustrated 
 this by an examination of two of the innumerable forms in 
 which the worldly spirit shows itself — depreciation of others 
 for self-advancement, and confidence in the duration of life 
 and of prosperity. Having closed his remarks on these ex- 
 amples, the apostle at this point, in very natural accordance 
 with that elevated strain of solemn appeal which has pervaded 
 the fourth chapter, turns aside for a moment to address those 
 avowed enemies of Christianity, the wealthy unbelieving Jews, 
 through free intercourse with whom it was that many of the 
 professed followers of Jesus had been led far astray. That 
 by the words ' Ye rich men^ in the first verse, are intended 
 not wealthy Christians (probably a very small class), but 
 
VER. I .] TVoes of the Wicked Rich. 349 
 
 wealthy unbelievers, the same ' rich men ' who were spoken 
 of in the sixth and seventh verses of the second chapter as 
 oppressors of the Christians and blasphemers of the ' worthy 
 name ' of Jesus, is plain from the tone of the whole passage. 
 And that the unbelievers who were in the apostle's mind were 
 mainly, if not exclusively, Jews, may reasonably be inferred 
 from the nationality and circumstances of those Christians to 
 whom the letter was addressed. Confirmation of this view 
 is afforded by the use in the fourth verse of the distinctively 
 Israelitish name for God, * The Lord of sabaoth ;' and also by 
 the nature of the doom denounced, which seems to point in 
 the first instance to the calamities that came upon the Jews 
 throughout the world at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 To the wealthy unbelieving Jews, then, James proclaims their 
 sin and their coming miseries, in words that sound exactly like 
 an utterance of one of the old prophets. The paragraph con- 
 tains the ' burden ' of Israel's wicked rich, and we seem to 
 hear again almost literally Amos's outpouring of holy indigna- 
 tion : ' Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to 
 make the poor of the land to fail, — saying. When will the new 
 moon be gone, that we may sell corn ? and the Sabbath, that 
 we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the 
 shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? that we 
 may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes \ 
 yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? The Lord hath sworn 
 by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of 
 their works. Shall not the land tremble for this, and every 
 one mourn that dwelleth therein ? And it shall rise up wholly 
 a,s a flood ; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the 
 flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith 
 the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, 
 and I will darken the earth in the clear day ; and I will turn 
 your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamenta- 
 tion ; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and bald- 
 ness upon every head ; and I will make it as the mourning 
 of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day' (Amos 
 viii. 4-10). 
 
350 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 The apostle's language in the verses before us was well 
 fitted to arouse and alarm those Christians who, forgetting 
 that ' friendship with the world is enmity with God,' had been 
 drawn away to some extent into sympathy with the views and 
 likings of these worldlings, and into imitation of their prac- 
 tices. It seems highly probable, however, that we are not 
 to regard the paragraph as a mere rhetorical apostrophe, ad- 
 dressed only in form to the enemies of the church, whilst in- 
 tended really to influence none but Christian readers. There 
 was much in the writings of our Lord's apostles to interest 
 all thoughtful persons, whether believers in Him or not — par- 
 ticularly to interest Jews, whose philosophy and literature were 
 solely religious ; and no Epistle was more likely to attract the 
 attention of the unconverted Jews than one addressed specially 
 to the Christians of their nation by James, a man whose cha- 
 racter, as we know, commanded the utmost respect from all 
 classes in Jerusalem. We may well suppose, therefore, that 
 wherever copies of this letter went, its contents became known 
 in one way or another to many beyond the church. It would 
 almost seem, indeed, from the generality of James's address at 
 the beginning of the letter, ' To the twelve tribes which are in 
 the Dispersion,' that a wider circle of readers than the Chris- 
 tian converts was not altogether absent from his thoughts. 
 His ' heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel ' was, like 
 Paul's, ' that they might be saved ;' and the paragraph before 
 us is an arrow, shot indeed at a venture, but with the devout 
 hope that somewhere a joint might be found in the harness of 
 the hitherto stiff'-necked and rebellious among his people, by 
 which it might enter, and wound, and bring the soul to ' the 
 Lord that healeth us.' 
 
 The apostle begins by calling on the wicked rich men to 
 ' weep and howl for their miseries that were coining on.^ The 
 command has obviously, according to a familiar usage of the 
 Hebrew prophets, the force of 'you well may.' 'You may 
 well wail with the bitterest lamentation in anticipation of your 
 coming woes, for the utmost intensity of anguish will be justi- 
 fied by their awfulness.' 
 
VER. I.] Woes of the Wicked Rich. 351 
 
 Throughout the whole paragraph the strain is one of simple 
 denunciation of doom. But we know that the great mission 
 of God's servants and of His word is one of grace, — that 
 ' whatever things were written aforetime were written ' to this 
 intent mainly, that men * through comfort of the Scriptures 
 might have Jwpe.^ This is true of the utterances of righteous 
 indignation in Scripture, as well as of its tender pleadings. 
 The Saviour's 'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
 crites,' was as really a word of love as His ' Come unto me, 
 all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest.' The most definite denunciations have all an undertone 
 of yearning appeal to repent, and of gracious promise if only 
 men will repent and turn to the Lord. Jonah by divine com- 
 mand proclaimed, 'Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be over- 
 thrown ; ' and yet, as the sequel of the narrative tells us, when 
 ' God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, 
 God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do 
 unto them, and He did it not.' So the apostle's utterance of 
 doom to the wicked rich, in the paragraph before us, was a call 
 of grace, if only they would hear and be wise. 
 
 It seems likely, as has been already said, that James's pre- 
 diction of '^ miseries that should come tipon'' these men points 
 in the first instance to the destruction of Jerusalem, which 
 occurred forty years after our Lord's ascension ; and therefore, 
 from any date to which the writing of this epistle can reason- 
 ably be referred, could not be very far off", at most from twenty 
 to twenty-five years. The solemn emphasis with which our 
 Lord dwells on that terrible event, as a manifestation of God's 
 wrath for Israel's iniquities, renders it in every way probable, 
 when we consider the nature of this paragraph, that the woes 
 of that time are here included. ' There shall be great tribula- 
 tion,' our Lord foretold, ' such as was not since the beginning 
 of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be ; ' and the 
 narrative of the overthrow written by Josephus the contem- 
 porary historian reads, on this as on all the particulars of the 
 Lord's predictions on this subject, almost like a designed 
 commentary to describe their minute fulfilment. About the 
 
352 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 same time as the overrunning of Palestine, and the siege and 
 destruction of its capital, by the Roman legions, there were 
 throughout the whole world, wherever Jews were found, out- 
 breaks of hostility and cruelty against them on the part of 
 those among whom they lived ; and thus ' the twelve tribes 
 that were in the Dispersion' suffered 'miseries' similar to 
 those which befell their brethren in the Holy City. Both at 
 Jerusalem and elsewhere, too (as in all cases of the kind, the 
 highest trees having always to endure the fiercest violence of 
 the tempest), the cruelties fell with special frequency and 
 severity on the richer and more influential classes of society. 
 As the wealthy Jews had taken the lead in sin, so through 
 God's providence they were made to take the lead in suffering. 
 
 But the destruction of Jerusalem and all the miseries con- 
 nected with it were, like every other visitation of God for 
 judgment during the course of human history, representative 
 of the great judgment at the close. In the Lord's prophecy 
 regarding the overthrow of the city, given in the twenty- 
 fourth chapter of Matthew, this representative character of 
 the catastrophe, as shadowing forth one immeasurably more 
 awful yet to come on all the finally impenitent of the human 
 race, is distinctly exhibited to the mind of every thoughtful 
 reader. To that great day our apostle also would plainly carry 
 forward the thoughts of his readers, — a day when there shall 
 come ' indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon 
 every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also 
 of the Gentile.' 
 
 The statements that follow regarding the ' riches,' ' garments,' 
 and 'gold and silver,' maybe understood in two ways, as a 
 figurative description of the imminence and nature of the doom, 
 or as a literal description of the eviderjce of the si?i for which God 
 was about to inflict the doom. According to the former view, 
 the meaning may be thus paraphrased : ' That wealth in which 
 you have such pride, and on which you build such lofty and 
 far-reaching hopes, is about to be taken from you utterly ; and 
 if you would open your eyes to look at it in the light shed by 
 the predictions of the Lord Jesus and by His doings in provi- 
 
VER. 2.] Woes of the Wicked Rich. 353 
 
 dence, you would read upon it on all sides God's writing of 
 doom — your wealth corrupted, your piles of rich raiment moth- 
 eaten, your gold and silver rusted through.' On the latter 
 view, the sense is : ' Your store-rooms, your coffers, your ward- 
 robes, reveal your wickedness. With the poor always around 
 you, whom God has sent to you to receive a share of what He, 
 the Proprietor of all, has given to your stewardship, you have 
 yet wealth of every kind mouldering from want of use. God's 
 children — your own brethren — are shivering at your gate, whilst 
 you have piles of raiment that the moths have been permitted 
 to possess. God's poor are houseless and hungry, whilst your 
 gold and silver, which He gave you to occupy, that, like the 
 steward in the parable, you might " make unto yourselves 
 friends," but, unlike him, prove yourselves thereby faithful to 
 your Lord, — this gold and silver lies wholly unused, and covered 
 with rust, in your treasure-chests.' Either of these meanings 
 comes naturally out of the words employed by the apostle, and 
 is pertinent to his object. Considering this, and remembering 
 how often Scripture illustrates the natural connection between 
 sin and death, by showing that sin generates its own punish- 
 ment, — the eye wilfully closed becoming judicially blinded, the 
 heart wilfully obdurate becoming judicially hardened, — it seems 
 reasonable to suppose that both thoughts, the thought of sin 
 and the thought of doom, were in James's mind. This view 
 best answers all exegetical requirements: for whilst, on the one 
 hand, the idea of punishment seems to be the prominent one 
 in the first part of the passage, seeing that otherwise we should 
 not have anywhere that statement of the 'miseries' coming 
 upon these wicked rich men, which the words of the first verse 
 lead us to look for ; on the other hand, the most satisfactory 
 sense of the statement, ' The rust of them shall eat your flesh 
 as it were fire,' is afforded by the supposition that here rust as 
 an evidence of niggardliness was in the apostle's thoughts. 
 
 By ^riches'' some interpreters hold 'hoarded stores of grain,' or 
 other produce of the ground, to be specially intended, because 
 thus the verb ' are corrupted,' or ' rotten,' has its exact primary 
 significance. The word so rendered, however, is occasionally 
 
 z 
 
354 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. v, 
 
 used somewhat loosely, like our own ' corrupt ;' and it is 
 perhaps better to regard the ' corruption of the riches ' as a 
 general expression, of which the statements that follow regard- 
 ing the garments and the precious metals are examples. The 
 mention of '■garments'' in this connection strikes a European 
 reader as a little strange, particularly if, as seems probable, the 
 idea of doom be here the prominent one. But in the East — in 
 all ages, we have reason to think — it has been not uncommon 
 for wealthy men to invest a considerable portion of their riches 
 in ' changes of raiment.' Given as presents, these are esteemed 
 conspicuous marks of honour and affection ;^ and among the 
 great men who frequent courts, the highest distinction is 
 deemed to belong to those who are able to show themselves 
 in a succession of different sumptuous robes. The all but 
 immobility of the fashion of attire in the East," moreover, makes 
 a store of garments useful for a very long time, possibly for 
 generations. 
 
 It is well known that gold and silver are not liable to ' rust ' 
 in the strict sense of the word. Some interpreters have there- 
 fore supposed that James employs this term loosely, as includ- 
 ing the tarnishing to which the precious metals are exposed. 
 But in the declaration, ' The rust of them shall eat your flesh 
 as it were fire,' there is manifest reference to corrosion by rust 
 proper. The true explanation of the little difficulty, no doubt, 
 is that the general idea in the writer's mind was that of de- 
 struction of property in the modes caused by want of use, — of 
 which that naturally suggesting itself when metals are specially 
 mentioned is rust. This, accordingly, he names, though not 
 strictly applicable to gold and silver. ' The stern and vivid 
 depiction of prophetic denunciation does not take such trifles 
 into account.'^ 
 
 Regarding the * rust ' the apostle goes on to declare to 
 the wicked rich, that it * should be a tuitmss agaiiist them, and 
 should eat their flesh as it were fire. ^ The rust is manifestly 
 
 ' Illustrations in the history of Joseph and Naaman will occur to every 
 reader. 
 2 Alford. 
 
VER. 3-] Woes of the Wicked Rich. 355 
 
 looked at as a ' crying ' evidence of sinful hoarding. Of 
 palaces built with the fruits of oppression Habakkuk says : 
 ' The stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the 
 timber shall answer it' (ii. 11). Similarly here: 'When the 
 Lord comes to judgment, the rust on that hoarded wealth, 
 which should have been feeding the hungry and clothing the 
 naked, will bear loud testimony before Him to your narrow- 
 ness and obduracy of heart, and bring down His stern con- 
 demnation ; and, your consciences waking up into terrible 
 activity, remorse for your ungodliness and inhumanity will 
 torture you, — the rust, so to speak, passing over from your 
 wealth to prey on your flesh, and causing you anguish like that 
 produced by fire.' Thus, as Manton says, the rust ' is not only 
 witness, but executioner.^ The paraphrase just given exhibits 
 the meaning of the words according to our authorized version. 
 In this clause, at least, our translators evidently held the 
 apostle to be looking on the rust as an evidence of sin. But 
 we have seen reason to consider its primary reference, when 
 first mentioned, to be rather to doom ; and this may be spoken 
 of here also. The original words rendered ' shall be a witness 
 against you^ may mean, and perhaps more naturally do mean, 
 ' shall be a witness to you.' With this rendering, the sense of the 
 clause might be : 'The destruction which impends on your pro- 
 perty will testify to you of that which will come upon yourselves, 
 and through the conviction thus produced will torture you.' 
 But ^to eat the flesh as fire'' is an expression which seems most 
 naturally to suggest the work of a remorseful conscience, — the 
 very word ' remorse ' indicating, according to its etymology, a 
 gnawing or corrosiofi like that of rust. The thought of evidence 
 of sin and that oidoom being both in the apostle's mind, through- 
 out the passage, the former, I apprehend, here assumes promi- 
 nence. 
 
 In the closing statement of the third verse, ' Ye have heaped 
 treasure together for (more accurately "in") the last days^ we 
 see still both thoughts present. 'In an age when prophecy 
 and providence indicate so clearly to all who are willing to 
 discern the signs of the times, that a great crisis is at hand, — 
 
356 Lechires on the Epistle of y antes, [ch. v. 
 
 an age when everything that can appeal to your religious feel- 
 ing, your patriotism, your highest self-interest, is calling on 
 you with peculiar distinctness to hold earthly property as of but 
 minor moment, to set your affections on the things that are 
 above, and to strive to lead back your misguided nation to the 
 God whom they have forsaken, — /;/ these last days you have 
 been greedily heaping up treasure for yourselves.' James's 
 words, if we turn them to purposes of exhortation, are thus 
 parallel to Paul's — spoken, like these, with reference to the 
 impending destruction of Jerusalem, and also more generally 
 to the fact that since the advent of Christ we are in the last 
 age of the world, and have a far clearer revelation of the 
 solemnity and momentousness of death and of the Lord's 
 second advent for judgment than those who lived under the 
 earlier economies : ' This I say, brethren, the time is short : it 
 remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they 
 had none : and they that weep, as though they wept not ; and 
 they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not ; and they that 
 buy, as though they possessed not ; and they that use this 
 world, as not abusing it : for the fashion of this world passeth 
 away' (i Cor. vii. 29-31). But again, doom also is before the 
 apostle's mind. ' Ye have heaped up treasures, and in your 
 arrogance and wilful ignorance ye are saying, To-morrow shall 
 be as this day, and m.uch more abundant ; but in truth ye 
 are in the last days, and the desolating flood of divine judg- 
 ment is about to sweep away everything in which ye have 
 trusted and delighted. The men of Sodom did eat, they drank, 
 they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the 
 same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brim- 
 stone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus, said 
 the Lord Jesus, shall it be in the day when the Son of man is 
 revealed.' 
 
 You will observe that in the verses we have been examining 
 we have one of those manifest reminiscences and echoes of 
 the Sermon on the Mount, which abound in this Epistle. The 
 apostle has evidently before his mind the Lord's exhortation : 
 * Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth 
 
VER. 4-] Woes of the Wicked Rich. 357 
 
 and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and 
 steal ; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where 
 neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not 
 break through nor steal : for where your treasure is, there will 
 your heart be also' (Matt. vi. 19-21). 
 
 Thus far we have had a denunciation of judgment, with an 
 indication given also, in the form of the utterance, of the nature 
 of one great sin of those wicked rich men whom the apostle is 
 addressing, — hoarding money in the midst of the hungry and 
 the naked, and this at a time when God was with special dis- 
 tinctness calling on them to hold worldly possessions loosely. 
 James proceeds now to a formal arraignment, setting forth 
 further charges of sin in detail, and calling attention to these 
 by his introductory ^Behold!' He accuses them first of injus- 
 tice, specially in the way of defrauding their servants : ' The 
 hire of the labourers ivho have reaped dozvn your fields, luhich is 
 of you kept back by fraud, crieth : and the cries of them which 
 have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.^ 
 As ' the voice of Abel's blood cried unto God from the ground,' 
 — as ' the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah was grea^,' — so, from 
 the coffers of these wicked men, the money which should have 
 been given to their servants as wages, but had been fraudulently 
 withheld, was ever making a loud appeal to heaven. They 
 starved the poor to enrich themselves. Their stately mansions, 
 their sumptuous fare, their gay clothing and gold rings, were 
 maintained at the cost of servants' unremunerated toil. Is this 
 voice of which the apostle speaks silent in our day ? Ah, 
 brethren, if we remember how wide of range the reference of 
 James's charge is, — that in the eyes of God substantially the 
 same sin here spoken of is committed by those who, though 
 there be no breach of positive contract, yet take advantage of 
 the necessities of the poor in an overcrowded country, by 
 making them work for wages that bear no reasonable propor- 
 tion to the profits of the employer ; who distress poor trades- 
 people by long and needless delay in payment of money due ; 
 or who in other similar ways diminish the income of those that 
 at the best can but barely keep the wolf of starvation from the 
 
358 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 door; — is there not reason to fear that not merely from much 
 of the wealth of our nation a loud ' cry ' is going up to God, 
 but even from the riches of many members of the church of 
 Christ, who taught us to ' give unto our servants that which is 
 just and equal, knowing that we also have a Master in heaven,' 
 and to ' bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil His law ?'^ Our 
 apostle speaks particularly of the defrauding of farm labourers 
 ' which reaped^ evidently because the employers whom he had 
 immediately before his mind were in many cases wealthy land- 
 owners ; and not improbably also because hard-heartedness is 
 peculiarly glaring when, amid the joys of 'harvest-home,' men 
 can defraud their reapers, and, while their barns are full of corn, 
 can let the children of their servants pine for want of bread. 
 
 Not merely do the wages fraudulently withheld ' cry ' to 
 heaven, but the cries of the reapers themselves also ^ are 
 entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth ' (that is, ' of hosts,' 
 the Hebrew word being employed here by James, as some- 
 
 ^ It would be ungrateful to God not to acknowledge that during the last 
 thirty years there has been in our country^ in some important departments 
 of labour at least, a great improvement in the condition of the employed. 
 Even so recently as 1843, the miners in our coal-pits were treated in great 
 measure as slaves, and feeble women had to toil like beasts of burden ; 
 and in the factories little children from five years of age were kept at work 
 for thirteen hours a day, so that all energy and hope were crushed out of 
 them, and disease and depravity took firm hold. 
 
 ' How long, they say, how long, O cruel nation. 
 
 Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart, — 
 Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation. 
 
 And tread onward to your throne amid the mart ? 
 Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, 
 
 And your purple shows your path ! 
 But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper 
 Than the strong man in his wrath. ' 
 
 Mrs. Browning's Oy of ike Children. 
 
 Now, through the influence of wisdom and Christian principle on our legis- 
 lation, these things are only memories. At the time of the cotton famine 
 a few years ago, the liberality of the nation for the relief of the distress in 
 Lancashire, the self-sacrificing generosity of many of the employers, and 
 the admirable patience and self-control of the operatives, all showed that a 
 much more healthful spirit had arisen than once prevailed. 
 
VER . 5 • ] Woes of the Wicked Rich. 359 
 
 times in the Greek version of the Old Testament, which was 
 famihar to his readers). ' One hears the wail of the poor 
 whom ye oppress,' says James to the rich men, 'though ye 
 are deaf, — One whose "hosts " can overthrow in a moment all 
 your puny power, and overwhelm you with utter destruction.' 
 
 The next charge is that of lavish self-uididgcnce : ' Ye have 
 lived iji pleasure on the earth, and been wanto?i ; ye have nourished 
 your heaj'ts as i?t a day of slaughter ' The apostle seems to be 
 carried forward in thought by the energy of his spirit to the 
 great day of final account, and as from the midst of its dread 
 solemnities comes forth his stern accusation of the wicked rich 
 standing near. This point of view is suggested by the form 
 of the verbs in the original ; and you cannot fail to see that, 
 supposing the utterance to be as from beside the ' great white 
 throne,' a peculiar force and pertinence are given to the ex- 
 pression '<?« the earth :^ for though the judgment will be held in 
 this world, yet ' the earth,' as the scene of the old forms of 
 human life, will appear to men to be far away. 
 
 The rich men have been spoken of in the first verses of the 
 paragraph as simply hoarding their money. Here we have 
 them described as expending it profusely. But these two 
 charges are not inconsistent with each other; and in the 
 lives of very many of those who count it the chief end of man 
 to glorify and enjoy himself both sins manifestly co-exist. A 
 man of large income lays up money by closing his eyes to the 
 claims of benevolence, — whilst at the same time on his own 
 self-gratification he spends without stint. Such saving and 
 such spending are both alike utterly opposed to the principles 
 of stewardship for God. The man has forgotten entirely that 
 the ' silver and the gold are God's,' and this no less when men 
 have them in their keeping than when they are yet in the mine. 
 * Ye lived in pleasure on the earthy says James, ' and earth alone 
 was in your thoughts ; not heaven, where God was listening to 
 the cry of those whom ye oppressed ; not hell, where many a 
 man who when on the earth had like you been clothed in 
 purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day, and 
 like you had disregarded the appeal of God's poor, was in 
 
360 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 torment. Ye lived in pleasure, and were tvajiton, squandering 
 in wild revelry what had been wrung from the poor by tyranny 
 and fraud.' 
 
 It has been thought by some interpreters, that in the last 
 words of the fifth verse there is a reference to the abundance 
 and festivity found in the house of a Jew on a day when he 
 had presented a sacrifice to God, — a large part of the animal 
 offered being, according to the law, returned by the priest, and 
 a feast held. There are several allusions in Scripture to such 
 feasts, somewhat similar to that supposed to be made here. 
 But all the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament omit the 
 particle of comparison '■as;'' and on the removal of it from the 
 text, this reference becomes untenable. There can be little 
 doubt that the apostle, having before his mind the impending 
 ' day of the Lord's vengeance,' and the rich men's mad revelries 
 and utter brute-like disregard of the future, likens them here to 
 oxen, who graze as quietly and find in their rich pastures as 
 much satisfaction on the very day that they are to be killed as 
 on any other day. 'As if ye were natural brute beasts, made 
 to be taken and destroyed (2 Pet. ii. 12), ye notcrished your 
 hearts — pampered all your likings — on the eve of your destruc- 
 tion, when many indications of providence might have told 
 you that you had come to your very slaughter-day.^ 
 
 The last accusation which James brings against these men 
 is that of high-handed cruelty : ' Ye have condemned and killed 
 the just, and he doth not resist you.'' By many ' the Just (or 
 " righteous ") man ' here is regarded as practically equivalent 
 to 'just men,' an individual being taken to represent the class 
 who were the objects of the rich men's persecution.^ This is 
 a mode of expression not uncommon in Scripture, particularly 
 in the Old Testament; but in a passage like this, which is in 
 
 ^ On this view of the meaning, an interesting parallel to the apostle's 
 words is found in the Apocrypha (Wisdom of Solomon ii. 10-20). The 
 exact accordance of the verse with the circumstances of James's own death, 
 too, as related by Hegesippus, is very striking. ' The scribes and Phari- 
 sees, ' says the historian, ' threw down the Just from the pinnacle of the 
 temple, and said, Let us stone James the Just, and they began to stone 
 
VER. 6.] Woes of the Wicked Rich. 361 
 
 form a definite historical statement, it seems hardly natural to 
 give the words a general meaning. It is difficult, too, on this 
 view, to account for the sudden transition in the last clause 
 from the historical form, ' Ye co?idemned, ye killed the just 
 one,' to the present, ' he doth not resist you.' Besides, it can 
 hardly be doubted that in the apostolic age 'The Just One' 
 was a common designation of the Lord Jesus, especially in 
 the discourse of Jewish Christians to each other (such as we 
 have in this Epistle), — so that the first thought in the minds 
 of James's readers, regarding the words which he here uses, 
 would almost certainly be that he referred to the Saviour. To 
 the people of Jerusalem, assembled in Solomon's Porch, Peter 
 said, 'Ye denied the Holy One and the Just' {Acts iii. 14). 
 Stephen said to the Sanhedrim, ' Your fathers have slain them 
 which showed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom 
 ye have been now the betrayers and murderers' (Acts vii. 52). 
 To Paul, Ananias spoke thus : ' The God of our fathers hath 
 chosen thee, that thou shouldest know His will, and see that 
 (strictly, as here, "the") Just One' (Acts xxii. 14). It seems 
 to me, therefore, decidedly more probable that by ' the just 
 one,' in the verse before us, James means the Lord Jesus. 
 
 Perhaps comparatively few of those who were the arrogant 
 and cruel persecutors of Christ's church, at the time when 
 this Epistle was written, had personally taken part in the 
 judicial murder of the Lord — so perfectly described, you ob- 
 serve,, by the apostle's words, 'Ye condemned — ye killed.' But 
 it is the rich Jewish unbelievers as a class that he addresses, and 
 it was mainly to their class that that maddest, wickedest deed in 
 the history of the world was due. In the Gospels we see proof 
 everywhere that it was the chief priests and rulers that had a 
 bitter, murderous hatred to Jesus ; and even when the common 
 people took an active part in the proceedings connected with 
 
 him ; for he had not been killed by the fall, but, turning round, knelt and 
 said, I beseech Thee, Lord God and Father, forgive them, for they know 
 not what they do. But whilst they were thus stoning him, one of the 
 fullers took the club with which he used to press the clothes, and struck 
 the head of the Just. Thus he suffered martyrdom.' 
 
362 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 the judicial murder — as, for example, in calling for Barabbas — 
 it was because ' the chief priests and elders persuaded ' them 
 to do this (Matt, xxvii. 20). To this prominence of the 
 wealthy and influential men of the nation in the sin Peter 
 adverts in his address to the people in Solomon's Porch, 
 'And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, 
 as did also your rulers' (Acts iii. 17) ; and Paul, in writing to 
 the Corinthians, ' We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery ; 
 which (wisdom) none of the princes of this world knew : for 
 had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord 
 of glory' (i Cor. ii. 7, 8). And the rich men spoken of by 
 James here, who persecuted Christians, exhibited exactly the 
 same spirit, and therefore in the eyes of God were guilty of 
 the same sin, as those who had murdered the Lord ; for it is 
 Christ in His people that the world hates. ' Saul, Saul, why 
 persecutest thou Ale ? ' The wickedness of the class of wealthy 
 unbelieving Jews, then — as indeed the wickedness of the human 
 race, but of these immediately and most manifestly — had cul- 
 minated in the crucifixion of the Lord ; and, according to the 
 teaching of several of His parables, expressly for this, as the 
 decisive act of renunciation of loyalty to God, came the utter 
 overthrow of the city and commonwealth. Because ' the 
 husbandmen said, This is the Heir, come let us kill Him, 
 and cast Him out of the vineyard, and slew Him, — the Lord 
 of the vineyard miserably destroyed those wicked men.' 
 
 From the historical form of expression, as of an utterance 
 on the judgment day, * Ye condemned — ye killed — the Just 
 One,' James suddenly returns to the present, 'He doth not 
 resist you^ There is in these words a conjunction of tender 
 and earnest appeal with solemn warning, to which the sudden- 
 ness of the transition gives extraordinary force, and which fit- 
 tingly closes this striking paragraph. 'He doth not resist you — 
 did not then, for He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and 
 as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His 
 mouth, — does not now, while ye are serving yourselves heirs to 
 the iniquity of your fathers, by condemning and killing His 
 people. Still He bears with you, — He who wields all power 
 
VER. 6.] Woes of the Wicked Rich. 363 
 
 in heaven and in earth : will He not win you by this marvellous 
 long-suffering ? But oh, bethink you, if your murderous opposi- 
 tion to Him continue, what certainly must the end be ? The 
 quiet is not, cannot be, for ever. How terrible will be His 
 vengeance for your accumulated guilt ! He doth ?iot resist yo7i, 
 — and in the very silence there is that which should fill His 
 foes with terror. It is the dead calm before the earthquake.' 
 
;64 Lechires on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 XXVI. 
 PATIENCE THROUGH THE BLESSED HOPE. 
 
 ' Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, 
 the husbandman waiteth for the precious fmit of the earth, and hath 
 long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. 8 Be 
 ye also patient ; stablish your hearts : for the coming of the Lord 
 draweth nigh. ' — ^James v. 7, 8. 
 
 FROM his solemn warning, by way of apostrophe, to the 
 bigoted and cruel oppressors of the church, the apostle 
 comes back at this point to resume the ordinary course of his 
 Epistle, — the word ' breth7-en ' intimating that his address is 
 again directly to Christians. He exhorts them to bear their 
 sufferings with patience. The connection of thought, Avhile 
 in a general way with the whole announcement in the preced- 
 ing paragraph, seems to be more particularly with the ideas 
 suggested by the solemn ' doth not resist you,' the last words 
 of the paragraph. Those same objects of expectation which 
 were calculated to fill the persecutors with dread were fitted 
 to animate and sustain believers ; for the Lord when He comes, 
 whether personally at the great consummation of this world's 
 history, or in those striking acts of providence which the wise 
 recognise as His visitations — lively proofs of His presence, 
 precursors of His final advent, — comes not to punish and crush 
 His foes only, but to bless His people. 
 
 The Jewish Christians to whom James wrote were in sore 
 trouble, many of them, as we have seen, through the oppression 
 of the enemies of the truth, particularly their own unbelieving 
 countrymen. The Saviour had given them warning that it would 
 be so, — that if the world hated and persecuted Him, it would also 
 hate and persecute those that honoured His name and strove 
 
VER. 7.] Patience through the Blessed Hope. 365 
 
 to walk in His ways. Still, no doubt, times of almost faith- 
 less wonderment would come, and flashes of sinful impatience 
 dart across their souls ; and even in their hours of devoutest 
 and most child-like feeling the cry would go up, ' How long, 
 O Lord, how long ?' In all ages when the world's hostility 
 to vital religion was permitted by God in His providence to 
 show itself in virulent and lengthened persecution, — when 
 prisons were crowded with God's saints, when lips that had 
 taught and comforted many were silenced by death on a scaf- 
 fold, when smoke went curling up towards heaven from fires 
 that were torturing and destroying the excellent of the earth — 
 and yet the heaven was silent, and no bolt of divine vengeance 
 came forth to consume the enemies of the Lord in a moment, 
 — this must have proved a most severe trial of that quietness 
 and restfulness of heart in God to which believers are called. 
 
 Few things, if any, in the life of faith are more difficult 
 than to accept cordially the divine forbearance with arrogant 
 and oppressive sin — the subUme long-suffering which permits 
 great moral problems to be worked out fully by the experience 
 of generations through centuries and millenniums, for God's 
 glory, and the good of His angelic and human children ever- 
 lastingly. We can see but a very little way into the principles 
 of the divine administration, my brethren, — ' He makes dark- 
 ness His secret place — His pavilion round about Him are 
 dark waters and thick clouds of the skies j' but we know that 
 'justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne,' and 
 ' mercy and truth go before His face.' It is the way of God 
 to move slowly. Though immediately on the commission of 
 the first sin a promise of grace was given, yet thousands of 
 years had to elapse before the right time came, the fulness 
 of time, when the Son of God was manifested in flesh for our 
 redemption. When He did come, thirty years of His life 
 passed over before His claims to be from God were made 
 known beyond the very narrowest circle. And since His ascen- 
 sion to glory, since ' all power was given to Him in heaven and 
 in earth, to quicken whom He would,' well-nigh two thousand 
 years have gone, and still by far the larger part of our world 
 
366 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. v. 
 
 is in heathen, Mohammedan, or Antichristian darkness ; whilst 
 even in lands of gospel light genuine piety seems to rule but a 
 small proportion of the people. It accords with all this that 
 God should be long silent while His people are oppressed. 
 Look at the view given us of this from the side of heaven : 
 'And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar 
 the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for 
 the testimony which they held : and they cried with a loud 
 voice, saying. How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not 
 ' judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ? 
 And white robes were given unto every one of them ; and it 
 was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, 
 until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should 
 be killed as they were, should be fulfilled' (Rev. vi. 9-1 1). 
 How wonderful is this divine calm above — ' It was said unto 
 them that they should rest ' — in contrast with the turmoil, and 
 weary waiting, and anxious appeals below ! 
 
 The apostle exhorts his readers to '' be patienV under the 
 oppression of their enemies — to seek oneness of will with God, 
 and wait His time with child-like hearts. This is true Chris- 
 tian patience. It has no Stoical affectation of indifference to 
 suffering, — it acknowledges that trouble in itself is 'not joyous, 
 but grievous ;' but it recognises God's hand even in afflictions 
 that immediately come from the selfishness and malignity of 
 evil men ; in God's hand it sees that of a Father who will 
 never chasten longer or more severely than is really needful ; 
 and thus it waits His time for deliverance. That time cer- 
 tainly will come. Commonly His providence enriches His 
 people with many comforts here — periods, long periods often, 
 of health, and peace, and prosperity ; for ' godliness hath the 
 promise of this life ' as well as of the future. But however 
 many or however gloomy the days be during which He 
 afflicts us, and the years in which we see evil, yet assuredly 
 one day He will make us glad. ' Weeping may endure for a 
 night,' and the night may seem very long and very dark ; 'but 
 joy Cometh in the morning' — the morning of an endless day. 
 
 To that blessed morning, as dawning on the whole church 
 
VER. 7.] Patience thj'oiigli the Blessed Hope. 367 
 
 of God, now for the first time without any sorrowing member 
 — to the day of the Lord's personal coming, to clothe His 
 people in the garments of everlasting glory and beauty — is 
 undoubtedly the grand if not the exclusive reference of the 
 apostle's words here, in speaking of the limit beyond which 
 patience, waiting in any form or measure, will not be needed, 
 — ' tcnto the coining of the Loi'd^ The paragraph before this, 
 describing the miseries about to come on the rich oppressors 
 of the church, probably points forward in the first instance, as 
 we have seen, to the calamities connected with the destruction 
 of Jerusalem, but plainly also points beyond these to the 
 'tribulation and anguish' of Christ's enemies at the judgment 
 day. Now the expression used in the passage before us, 
 ' the coming of the Lord,' is beyond question employed some- 
 times in the New Testament of the destruction of the wicked 
 capital and apostate commonwealth of Israel, as similar lan- 
 guage is employed in the Old Testament of similar providen- 
 tial judgments. To it, therefore, James may be supposed to 
 have still some reference in the exhortati'on before us ; if at all, 
 however, only very slightly, as it appears to me. The whole tone 
 of the passage suggests a completeness and grandeur of deliver- 
 ance, — and this not from the oppression of evil men merely, 
 but from all the troubles of every kind that necessitate patience, 
 — such as plainly to indicate that the Saviour's personal advent 
 was fully before the writer's mind, His advent to raise the dead 
 and judge the world, to visit His enemies with ' everlasting de- 
 struction from His presence and from the glory of His power/ 
 and to introduce His friends into the fulness of salvation. 
 
 This grand event, the consummation of the divine probation- 
 ary dealings with this world, is always exhibited in Scripture as 
 for every wise soul the supremely influential fact of the future, 
 and the object of the most ardent longings of the Christian heart. 
 The great spur to energetic service of God is the thought that 
 'when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then we also shall 
 appear with Him in glory.' The great support in trouble is 
 the consideration, that ' when His glory shall be revealed, we 
 shall be glad also with exceeding joy.' Conversion is ' turning 
 
368 . Lectures on the Epistle of J antes, [ch. v, 
 
 to God, to serve Him, and to wait for His Son from heaven ; ' 
 and thus it seems a natural description of Christians, that 
 they are persons who ' love the appearing of the Lord.' This 
 loving expectation of the second coming stands in vital 
 connection with a loving apprehension of the objects ot 
 the first coming. Enjoying now precious first-fruits from the 
 advent to sow, we anticipate the glorious fulness of harvest 
 at the advent to reap. We 'look' with brightness of spirit 
 *for that blessed hope, even His glorious appearing,' be- 
 cause we are filled with thankfulness and love by the remem- 
 brance that ' He gave Himself for us, to redeem us from all 
 iniquity.' Believing as a historical fact, most clearly demon- 
 strated, that ' Christ was once ofi"ered to bear the sins of 
 many,' we see here ample evidence leading us to accept the 
 sweet assurance, that ' to them that look for Him shall He 
 appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation.' Thus 
 we ' show forth the Lord's death till He come ;' and ' the 
 contemplations and affections of the believer, travelling be- 
 tween His abasement and His exaltation, find in Jesus under 
 both aspects together a complete salvation.'^ 
 
 Now, by any one who considers the subject, it can hardly 
 be doubted that the second coming of the Lord holds a far 
 less prominent position in the thoughts of most Christians of 
 our day than it did in those of the apostles, and, as is evident 
 from the tone of their writings, they desired that it should do 
 in those of their readers. Is this because we have a less lively 
 love to the Saviour, and longing to be with Him, — because 
 knowing about Jesus does not so fully bring us to know Jesus 
 as our divine Friend and Brother ? Whatever the reason, the 
 fact, I think, is certain. The death of the individual has to a 
 great extent taken in the mind of the modern church, as exhi- 
 bited in the discourses of the pulpit and in religious literature, 
 the place which in the church of the first days was occupied 
 by the Lord's personal advent. Now, however much it may 
 seem to us that this is practically the same thing, and however 
 
 ' Dr. David Brown, of Aberdeen, in his singularly able and satisfying 
 ■work on The Second Advent. 
 
VER. 7.] Patience through the Blessed Hope. 369 
 
 influential the thought of death will assuredly be on all who 
 look it fairly in the face, yet is it not reasonable to suppose 
 that our religious life must suffer as really, though not to the 
 same degree, by altering the relative prominence given to the 
 articles of our faith in Scripture as by believing positive error ? 
 No truth can exert on the mind and heart exactly the same 
 influence as another. Now it seems plain that the Divine 
 Spirit would have Christians to keep before their souls the day 
 with which for them no ideas can be connected but those of 
 blessedness, — the day when the Redeemer shall appear in glory, 
 and all His redeemed ones, gathered together, shall be per- 
 fectly, publicly, and simultaneously glorified with Him. The 
 substitution for this, then, the putting in its appointed place of 
 prominence in each believer's mind, of the time of his own 
 death, — a time, considered simply in itself, not attractive, but 
 repulsive, round which, even for those who fully know that the 
 sting has been taken away, some gloom will hang, and which 
 introduces into a blessedness, ineffable indeed, yet but prepara- 
 tory to that which remains to be revealed, — this substitution 
 cannot but have in various ways an injurious effect. Its in- 
 fluence can hardly but strengthen the tendency, of which it 
 seems to be itself in some measure an expression, to gather 
 in the soul's thoughts and yearnings round herself, instead of 
 sending them out fully, joyously, lovingly, to the Saviour. It 
 can hardly be questioned, I think, that the doctrines of pre- 
 millennialism (seriously erroneous doctrines, as it appears to 
 me) have obtained the wide acceptance that they have in 
 our day mainly through a natural and extreme reaction in 
 the minds of Christians of an ardent and affectionate tem- 
 perament from the tone of thinking and feeling which has 
 put the Lord's glorious appearing so far out of view; and 
 the best thing one can desire, in regard to the controversy 
 which the pre-millennialists have stirred up, is that it may lead 
 to the giving to that grand event its primitive and proper place 
 in the contemplations and hopes of the church generally. 
 
 Having exhorted the sufifering Christians to ' be patient till 
 the coming of the Lord,' the apostle, according to his wont, eluci- 
 
 2 A 
 
370 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. v. 
 
 dates and enforces his advice by an illustration : ' Behold, the 
 husbandman waitethfor the precious fruit of the earth, and hath 
 long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be 
 ye also patient ; stablish your hearts^ The grain is '■precious'' to 
 the farmer, an object of very high value, because not merely 
 his own worldly prosperity, but the comfort and very life of 
 others, depend on the ingathering by himself and his fellow- 
 farmers of an abundant harvest ; and yet he waits for it with 
 ' long patience' Eager as he is to have his harvest, still he 
 waits for it quietly, knowing from experience that, according to 
 the arrangements of God, months must intervene between the 
 sowing and the reaping, and that nothing he can do can materi- 
 ally accelerate the processes of nature. Sprouting and growing, 
 blade, and ear, and full corn in the ear, must be waited for, and 
 all the various agencies by which God brings the plant from 
 stage to stage. Early rains to aid the seed in bursting and 
 sprouting, late rains to fill the ear,i week after week of varied 
 weather influence, — he has long patience for them, '■until he' 
 (or rather, perhaps, his corn) ^receive' them all. 'As he is 
 patient for his harvest, the precious fruit of the earth ; so, 
 brethren ' (thus the apostle applies his illustration), ' he ye 
 patient for the infinitely more precious fruit that ye look for 
 from the spiritual field in which ye have sown. He that soweth 
 to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting — ineffable 
 and unending beauty and joy for the whole nature ; but let us 
 be patient : it is in due season that we shall reap, if we faint not. 
 In the sphere of the Spirit, as in that of outward nature, a time 
 must intervene, according to the divine appointment, between 
 the sowing and the harvest : let us wait, then, all the needful 
 stages. And to this end stablish your hearts' Ah, brethren, 
 what need there is for this ! While the experienced farmer 
 waits long, the child grows impatient because the seed he put 
 into his little garden bed yesterday is not yielding him fruit, 
 or at least putting forth leaves, to-day ; and in the spiritual 
 sphere we are all apt to be like children, not in trustfulness, but 
 
 ^ For full information regarding the rains in Palestine, see Robinson's 
 Biblical Researches, vol. 1. pp. 429, 430 (second edition). 
 
VER. 8.] Patience through the Blessed Hope. 371 
 
 in ignorance and weakness. ' Stablish your hearts,' tlien, — have 
 them firm, strong, manly. And for nothing does the heart so 
 much need to be stabHshed, well sustained, as for patience. 
 Less strength of soul will suffice to work vigorously than is 
 needed to accept quietly an intimation from God that we must 
 not work, but only endure. Less manliness will carry a soldier 
 valiantly through the battle than is needed to bear the pain 
 and weariness of months in the hospital afterwards. But we 
 shall be enabled to stablish our hearts by planting our feet 
 on that which is enduring, and laying firm hold on that which 
 is enduring. The promises of God are all unchanging, as being 
 His utterances ' with whom is no variableness j' they ' are all 
 yea and amen in Christ Jesus.' ' Heaven and earth shall pass 
 away,' but of these divine declarations 'not one jot or tittle.' 
 By a lively faith, with a child-like, prayerful heart, let us appro- 
 priate these promises, realizing their truthfulness and their 
 sweetness : thus, thus only, thus certainly, we shall be strong 
 to bear no less than strong to labour. 
 
 ' Bear, then ' (the apostle says to his readers tried by the diffi- 
 culties of the world), ' bear patiently and manfully ; for your 
 patience will not be vain : the coming of the Loi'd draweth 
 nigh^ It would be a great thing to say, ' Your harvest is cer- 
 tain.^ The farmer, even after his 'long patience,' may find 
 that the fields yield him ' no meat,' because ' God's judgments 
 are in the earth, that the inhabitants of the world may learn 
 righteousness.' But no heavens as brass, nor earth as iron, no 
 locust nor cankerworm, can come between him who ' soweth 
 to the Spirit ' and a glorious harvest of blessedness and holy 
 beauty, — for ' the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.' ' For if 
 when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death 
 of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved 
 by His Hfe.' ' And in that day shall He send His angels, and 
 gather together His elect from the four winds, from the utter- 
 most part of the earth unto the uttermost part of heaven,' and 
 ' a crown of righteousness shall the Lord the righteous Judge 
 give to all them that love His appearing.' 
 
 The harvest, however, is not merely certain, but mar : 
 
372 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. v. 
 
 ' the coming of the Lord draweth nigh' ' The Lord is at 
 hand,' says Paul to the PhiUppians. At first sight, declara- 
 tions like these from the inspired apostles startle us, through 
 their apparent inconsistency with what we know to have 
 subsequently happened. " Eighteen centuries have gone b3\ 
 The world has continued ' buying and selling, planting and 
 building, marrying and giving in marriage.' The ' sign of 
 the Son of man' has not yet 'appeared in the sky. And 
 scoffers say, ' Where is the promise of his coming ? for since 
 the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the 
 beginning of the creation.' How, then, could the Saviour's 
 second advent be predicted in those old days as then near ? 
 Because thus the eye of God sees it ; and faith, in the measure 
 of its vigour, enables us to see things in the light of God, giving 
 us oneness of view with Him. The Apostle Peter, you will 
 remember, ansAvers the question in this way, telling us that 
 when ' some men count the Lord slack conterning His pro- 
 mise,' they leave this element out of their computation, that 
 with Him ' a thousand years are as one day.' God's ' soons ' 
 and ' quicklies ' are not to be estimated by our impatient 
 reckonings. ' Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto 
 God ' comes sounding to us over the distance of three thou- 
 sand years, and how very partially is it yet fulfilled ! ' Be- 
 hold, I come quickly,' said Jesus eighteen hundred years ago, 
 and still the heavens retain Him. 'Near' and 'distant' are 
 relative terms. For the little child, whose limbs soon grow 
 weary, the friend's house is fai" away, which for his father 
 is but a step from home. So to the child, reckoning by 
 his life, an event seems long past, far away in a hoary an- 
 tiquity, which' to the man on whom have come the snows 
 of many winters, and who reckons by ///s life, seems to have 
 occurred but yesterday. Now, when our apostle says, ' The 
 coming of the Lord draweth nigh,' he speaks as one who 
 has been taught to reckon according to the years of the 
 lifetime of the Most High — unbeginning, unending. On the 
 same principle, Paul estimates the Christian's affliction — afflic- 
 tion spread perhaps over threescore years and ten — as 'but 
 
VER. 8.] Patience through the Blessed Hope. 373 
 
 for a moment,' because the standard by which he computed 
 was the ' eternal ' duration of the ' weight of glory ' that was 
 to follow. 
 
 That such is the correct explanation of these ' nighs,' 
 ' soons,' and ' quicklies,' is shown by the fact that our 
 Lord and His apostles in other places tell us of various 
 things, of a kind requiring what men call a long time, that 
 are to happen before His coming ; and Paul, in particular, 
 finding that the Thessalonians had misconceived the principle 
 of the reckoning, expressly cautions them against this error 
 as a dangerous one. ' Now we beseech you, brethren, by 
 the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering 
 together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or 
 be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as 
 from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man 
 deceive you by any means ' (2 Thess. ii. 1-3). Yet the 
 church should always feel her Lord's coming to be near ; and 
 when her faith is lively and her love glowing, she does. As 
 under the clear Eastern sky a range of lofty mountains, which j 
 is yet many days' journey distant, seems almost at hand; so! 
 in the pellucid atmosphere of faith, the great towering event ■ 
 of the future, dwarfing all else, seems close above us. In 
 seasons of elevated spirituality we feel the advent to be near. 
 Chronologically, many years, as men reckon, may yet be to 
 elapse, but faith sees Him coming ' like to a roe or a young 
 hart leaping on the mountains of spices ;' and when the grand 
 event has happened, brethren, and we look back upon it from 
 the eternity of blessedness and glory, we shall see ever more 
 clearly — for we shall understand the reckoning ever more 
 perfectly — how exactly the Lord fulfilled His promise, ' Behold, 
 I come quickly!' 
 
 Well might the suffering Christians of James's day ' be patient' 
 and ' stablish their hearts ;' well may we in every trouble and 
 alarm be patient and stablish our hearts, — ' for the coming of 
 the Lord draweth nigh.' 
 
374 Lectures on the Epistle of y antes, [ch. v. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 MURMURING AGAINST BRETHREN. 
 
 ' Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned : behold, 
 the Judge standeth before the door. lo Take, my brethren, the pro- 
 phets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of 
 suffering affliction, and of patience. 1 1 Behold, we count them happy 
 which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen 
 the end of the Lord ; that the Lord is veiy pitiful, and of tender 
 mercy.' — ^James v. 9-1 i. 
 
 THESE verses continue the teaching on the subject of 
 patience which was begun in the seventh verse. Here, 
 in the ninth, the apostle, skilled through divine teaching in 
 the ways of the human heart, cautions his readers against im- 
 patience 7iiith each ot/ier. They were liable, he tells them, to 
 murmur not merely against their enemies, and against the long- 
 suffering of God, but against their fellow-believers. ' Grudge not 
 one against another, brethreti.^ The word '■grudge'' was used in 
 the older English in a somewhat more general sense than now, 
 being quite equivalent to ' murmur ' or ' grumble.' The exact 
 meaning of the original term here translated ' grudge ' is ' groan' 
 or ' sigh heavily,' — the reference in this place manifestly being to 
 the groaning or sighing not of simple sorrow, but of vexation and 
 ill-humour. The apostle's warning goes deep, you see. Even 
 though there be no word or act of ill-will to brethren — though 
 the feeling remain buried in the heart, or have only the inarti- 
 culate utterance of a sigh — yet exercises of the soul of this kind 
 are grievously hurtful to the soul itself They corrode and en- 
 feeble ; they sully the tender bloom of the beauty of holiness. 
 
 The injunction, like so many of the apostle's, is thrown into a 
 very general form, and should be accepted by us and pondered 
 as of universal validity. Yet there can be no doubt, looking 
 
VE R. 9 . ] Munnuring against Brethren . 375 
 
 at the context, that the apostle has special reference to the 
 peculiar spiritual perils of this kind belonging to a time of . 
 trojible, such as that in which his first readers found them- 
 selves. Suffering of any sort, particularly if severe and long 
 continued, is apt to develope an irritability which, unless there 
 be a very lively faith and constant vigilance, will lead to 
 fretfulness. Even where the soul is so governed by Christian 
 principle, that there is no murmuring against God, or against 
 the human authors of the trouble, if it be immediately from 
 men, — yet the irritability may show itself toward friends around, 
 and under the provocation of very trifling sources of annoy- 
 ance. When confronted with a. great trouble, the new man in 
 Christ girds up his loins to resist temptation, and stand in 
 the evil day ; but in the reaction from this strain, ungirded, he 
 falls by the stroke of what is in itself comparatively a very 
 small temptation. All who have had much experience m, sick- 
 rooms, either as patients or as nurses, know something of this. 
 Murmuring against one another, then, is a sin to which the 
 members of a persecuted church are peculiarly exposed : cir- 
 cumstances fitted to fret will occur in their intercourse every 
 day, — and against this danger the apostle faithfully warns his 
 suffering brethren. 
 
 His affectionate word of address, ' Brethren,^ has a special 
 force here. It is not unworthy of notice, by the way, that 
 we find him employing this term with unusual frequency in 
 this part of his letter — four times within six verses — as if 
 he were influenced by the feeling that one of the principal 
 supports of patience is to be found in remembering, and 
 heartily entering into, the close relationship of believers in 
 Christ to each other. And in the passage before us, the 
 ' brethren ' is obviously fitted to show in a very lively way the 
 incongruity of grudging against each other with their Christian 
 profession. Christians are in a peculiar sense the family of 
 God. From the far country of darkness and death, into which 
 we had wandered, His grace has brought us home ; and now 
 not merely through the fact of our being His moral creatures, 
 but by the new spiritual birth, we are ' sons and daughters of 
 
^^6 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 the Lord Almighty.' Now, as we ' love Him that begat,' so 
 we cannot but love with brotherly affection ' them also that 
 are begotten of Him,' discerning in them somewhat of those 
 excellences which, as they appear in infinite perfection in 
 the character of our common Father, have won for Him our 
 supreme love. This ' brotherly kindness ' is often set forth, as 
 you remember, by our Lord and His apostles as one great 
 evidence of genuine piety. ' By this shall all men know that 
 ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.' 'We 
 know that we have passed from death unto life, because we 
 love the brethren : he that loveth not his brother, abideth in 
 death.' You see, then, what a power, what a wealth of argu- 
 ment for every true Christian heart, there is in the form of 
 the apostle's warning here : '■Brethren, grudge not one against 
 another.' 
 
 But he proceeds to enforce the warning, bringing in a very 
 solemn thought : ' lest ye be condeinned.^ According to what has 
 been found to be the reading of all the oldest manuscripts, and 
 has been adopted consequently by all modern critical editors of 
 the Greek Testament, the form of the thought is slightly different, 
 though its substance is the same — 'that ye be not judged.' 
 We have here, you observe, one of the many unmistakeable 
 references in this Epistle to the Sermon on the Mount ; and, 
 following out the reference {Matt. vii. i), we discern an inti- 
 mation implied, that the essence of the sin against which the 
 apostle's present exhortation is directed is violating the Saviour's 
 precept, ^ Judge not.'' It is evident from this and other places in 
 the Epistle, that abstinence from 'judging' was counted by the 
 apostle, under the guidance of the Spirit, one of the grand 
 subdivisions of the fundamental law of human society, ' Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,' — a subdivision under 
 which he instinctively classed many forms of dut}^ That 
 violating the command 'Judge not' is the essence of the sin 
 of which he is here speaking, will be plain on a little con- 
 sideration. Try to bring up before your minds the position 
 of, these oppressed Jewish Christians. Suppose one of them 
 summoned by some bigoted enemy of the cross among his 
 
VER. 9-] MiLvmuring against Brethren. 377 
 
 countrymen before a tribunal, on some paltry pretext, but 
 really, as the accused and all around well know, because he 
 loves and honours Jesus. If it be in one of the cities where 
 the Jews are allowed by the Romans to settle disputes on 
 minor matters in courts of their own, the result can hardly 
 be doubtful, the judges themselves having an intense hatred 
 of the religion and followers of the I^azarene. Or if the cause 
 be tried before a heathen judge, here also the probabilities are 
 in favour of condemnation. A judge as sensible and honest 
 as Gallic, who refused to decide a question of words and names 
 and subtleties of a religion strange to him, and drave Paul's 
 accusers from the judgment-seat, was rare in the Roman world; 
 and many times, no doubt, the law was strained by corrupt 
 magistrates for selfish ends, in the interest of wealthy enemies 
 of Christ. The accused Christian then suffers in his person 
 or his goods, or both. While the suffering is still fresh, his 
 thoughts happen to turn to a brother believer, one in every way 
 as prominent a member of the church as himself, and, in all 
 respects that he knows, as likely as himself to bring down upon 
 his head the vengeance of the unbelievers. Yet day passes 
 after day, month after month, and no evil comes nigh him ; he 
 pursues his avocations and enjoys his religious privileges in 
 peace. Or he too is accused, and tried, — but allowed to go 
 free. If the sufferer be off his guard spiritually, 'grudging' 
 enters and gains strength in his soul, withering its joys and 
 energies. To some extent, in all likelihood — unconsciously 
 ^Derhaps to himself, but really — the murmuring is against divine 
 providence, as if God were partial in His allotments. And as 
 against the Christian neighbour, on what does the 'grudging' 
 rest? Plainly on uncharitable judgments, unkind and, it may 
 be, utterly baseless suspicions, — that his Christianity, after all, 
 is not so pronounced and bright as it should be ; that he is but 
 a trimmer, who for his own ends contrives to keep on good 
 terms with the enemies of Christ, as well as with His friends ; 
 that possibly he may have condescended to bribe his judge ; or 
 the like. You observe how decidedly here 'judging' is the 
 essence of the sin; and in any other case of 'grudging' that 
 
^yS Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. v. 
 
 might be supposed, an investigation would trace it to the same 
 root. Thus you see how it is that the apostle gives his present 
 warning the turn he does. 
 
 ' That ye he not judged' Nothing is more plainly taught 
 in Scripture, my brethren, — and no truth is it more needful 
 for Christians to have vividly before their minds, — than that 
 likeness of character to God is one element, the grand element, 
 in the salvation given through Christ. The believer is, by 
 God's grace, through his faith translated ' out of darkness into 
 marvellous light,' in which he sees the divine character to be 
 infinitely lovely, and by the transforming power of love be- 
 comes himself a ' partaker of God's hoUness.' Now ' God is 
 love;' and thus the spirit of genuine Christianity is a spirit 
 of love. Whatever gifts and excellences a man may have, if 
 this be wanting, he is thereby proved not to be a Christian. 
 ' Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and 
 have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling 
 cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and under- 
 stand all mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I have all 
 faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I 
 am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the 
 poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not 
 love, it profiteth me nothing.' That a man should really with 
 the heart know God as a pardoning God, as the royal Creditor 
 who with a kingly heart forgave him freely ' all that debt,' and 
 yet be himself unloving, unforgiving to his fellow-servants, — this 
 is always set forth in Scripture as in the nature of things utterly 
 impossible, altogether monstrous. Here, then, you see, lies 
 the gist of the apostle's argument. ' Murmuring against your 
 neighbour implies uncharitable judgment of him ; uncharitable , 
 judgment is directly opposed to the spirit of true Christianity ; 
 and consequently the man who habitually indulges in such 
 judgment has the very greatest reason to fear that he is not 
 a Christian, — that he has not been brought out into the sphere 
 of pardon, but is still in that oi judgment, judgment to con- 
 demnation. Grudge not, then, one against another, brethren, 
 that ye be not judged.' 
 
VER. 9-J Miirmuring against Brethren. 379 
 
 'And bethink you/ thus he continues, 'that the time of judg- 
 ment is not far off: behold^ the Judge standeth before the door.'' 
 The apostle has already, in the eighth verse, cheered the hearts 
 of the believers, and encouraged them to restfulness of spirit, 
 by the assurance that ' the coming of the Lord draweth nigh ;' 
 and now he brings in this great fact again under a lively figure, 
 to point and enforce his solemn warning. The statement bears 
 on both parts of the previous exhortation. 'Ye judge your 
 brethren,' he says ; ' ah, dear friends, this is very foolish work, 
 and very needless, even if it were lawful : for we cannot judge 
 aright, — and One is very near us, even at our doors, who has a 
 commission to judge, and all needed wisdom for the work. 
 Even if there be real grounds of dissatisfaction among you, 
 then, you may safely leave them all to His decision ;' and re- 
 member that on the uncharitable judges among you His judg- 
 ment will come down in sternest condemnation.' 
 
 The whole paragraph from the seventh verse to the eleventh 
 is, as we have seen, an exhortation to patience : its sum is, 
 ' Let patience have her work perfect, broken neither by dis- 
 content with God's dealings, nor by petulance with your fellow- 
 men.' Of this, you observe, the ' grudge not ' which we have 
 been considering is a natural subdivision ; and now, having 
 spoken of that particular spiritual peril briefly, but with sin- 
 gular pointedness and force, the apostle goes on to support 
 his general appeal, by a reference to a class of examples very 
 familiar to the Jewish Christians, and justly carrying great 
 weight with them, — those of the Old Testament prophets. 
 They were men of high dignity in the service of God, His 
 commissioned ambassadors, ' ivho spake in His name^ as the 
 apostle specially mentions. ' If God permitted trouble to be- 
 fall thevi, it need be no matter of surprise to you that affliction 
 has come upon you. Whether you can understand the reason 
 
 1 A very exact parallel is found in Phil. iv. 5 : ' Let your moderation ' 
 ('your considerate and forbearing spirit,' 'your being possessed of the 
 gentleness of heavenly -wisdom :' compare James iii. 17 in the original) 'be 
 known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.' The argument is precisely 
 the same. 
 
380 Lectiti'cs on the Epistle of yames. [ch. v, 
 
 for the divine procedure or not, it is plain that suffering is a 
 part of the appointed experience of His people. And besides 
 being instructed by looking at the simple fact that the prophets 
 had trouble, it becomes you also to regard as well worthy of 
 imitation the conduct which those eminent servants of God 
 pursued under their trouble.' Both of these points are expressly 
 presented by the apostle. 
 
 ^ Take the prophets^ he says, '■as an example of afflictions'^ 
 A very natural thought to young believers is, that it is 
 strange that afflictions should continue with us after conver- 
 sion. ' Is not affliction an element of death, and have we 
 not passed from death unto life ? Being united to Christ, do 
 we not occupy a higher position than Adam before his fall ? 
 And Adam unfallen had no affliction.' Thinking of such diffi- 
 culties as these, our apostle does not here, however, enter into 
 the philosophy of the question. He has said somewhat on that 
 head in the very beginning of his letter. Here he contents him- 
 self with pointing to the undoubted fact that God's most illus- 
 trious servants had suffered. ' No strange thing has happened to 
 you,' he says, ' for the same afflictions have been accomplished 
 in your brethren which have been in the world.' Moses had to 
 struggle for many years with a stiff-necked and rebelUous people ; 
 David was hunted by Saul ' like a partridge on the mountains,' 
 and for years, like his Son and Lord, ' had not wherd to lay his 
 head,' and in advanced life he had again to become a fugitive, 
 through the rebellion of the son he loved most dearly; Elijah's 
 life was sought by the wicked rulers of Israel with vengeful 
 fury ; Jeremiah's life was one of continued persecution ; and 
 similar, more or less, were the experiences of all the holy 
 men of old. ' Which of the prophets,' Stephen asks the San- 
 hedrim, ' have not your fathers persecuted ?' To suffer in the 
 same cause with men like these should surely be deemed an 
 honour and a source of thankfulness. ' Take them also, then,' 
 says the apostle, '■as an example of patience ;'' 'look not merely 
 at their sufferings, but at their spirit under it.' ' INIoses was 
 
 ^ The word ' suffering, ' which our translators have inserted here, is quite 
 unneeded, and indeed obscures the meaning. 
 
VER. II.] Murmtiring against Brethren. 381 
 
 very meek,' the Scripture tells us, ' above all the men that were 
 upon the face of the earth.' David in time of trouble says, ' I 
 was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it;' 
 ' I know, O Lord, that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou 
 in faithfulness hast afflicted me.' Jeremiah says, 'Wherefore 
 should a living man complain, a man for the punishment of 
 his sins ? Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to 
 th^ Lord.' This is the spirit in which trouble ought to be 
 borne, — this is the exercise of soul through which it will 'bear 
 peaceable fruits of righteousness.' ' Take then, my brethren, 
 the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord for 
 an example of affliction and of patience.' 
 
 By his '■behohV the apostle calls special attention to his next 
 remark, as presenting something of particular weight, crowning 
 his arguments for patience. ' We count them happy ' — call them 
 blessed — ' which endure.^ AVe have here another reference to 
 the Sermon on the Mount. Coming, as these words do, imme- 
 diately after the allusion to the example of the prophets, we 
 cannot doubt that the writer had before his mind the passage 
 which closes the beatitudes : ' Blessed are they which are per- 
 secuted for righteousness' sake ; for theirs is the kingdom of 
 heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and perse- 
 cute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely 
 for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad : for great is 
 your reward in heaven ; for so persecuted they the prophets 
 which were before you.' 'Now,' says James, ' it is one of the 
 great principles taught by the Lord, and of which as Christians 
 we have professed our acceptance, that they who endure are 
 blessed. Prove, then, by your conduct that you understand 
 this truth, and really believe it. Being called in God's provi- 
 dence to suffer, see that you endure.' For '■endure'' here, as 
 you see, is not, as we sometimes employ the word, ' to be in 
 affliction ' merely, but ' to bear affliction patiently,' the word 
 in the original being indeed the verbal form of the noun in 
 the next clause rendered ' patience.' 
 
 ' Them which endure we count happy ' or ' blessed^ for various 
 reasons. They are ' blessed ' through the growth in spiritual 
 
382 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 beauty and strength which patient endurance gives them. ' I 
 am the true Vine, and My Father is the Husbandman. Every 
 branch in Me that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring 
 forth more fruit ;' and ' endurance ' is the acceptance of the work 
 of the pruning-knife. The waters of the fountain-head, the heart, 
 being purified through penitence and faith, the heahng cruse of 
 salt, — a pellucid stream of holiness must ultimately flow by every 
 channel throughout the whole man ; and by affliction ' endured ' 
 God graciously quickens the work, deepening the channels and 
 increasing their dechne. ' They that endure ' are ' blessed,' too, 
 in the joy that they have through increasing knowledge of God. 
 ' Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and 
 experience hope.' And through that ' hope ' they are ' blessed ' 
 in the knowledge that a glorious reward awaits them. ' The 
 light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh out a 
 far more exceeding, even an eternal weight of glory.' ' It is 
 a faithful saying. If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign 
 with Him.' 
 
 The general thought, ' Trouble patiently endured has a 
 happy issue,' leads now to the mention of an illustration from 
 Bible history in which this is very strikingly exemplified : ' Ye 
 have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the 
 Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender nwcy.^ 
 
 'The end of the Lord^ is a somewhat singular expression. 
 By some interpreters it has been supposed to mean ' the 
 closing scene of the life of the Lord Jesus ;' the arguments 
 put forward in support of this view being, — that this sense comes 
 naturally out of the words ; that it would be strange if, when 
 examples of patience are cited by an apostle, the grand ex- 
 ample given by Jesus, when He ' endured the contradiction of 
 sinners against Himself in the judgment-hall and on the cross, 
 were omitted ; and that by the use of the words ' heard ' and 
 ' seen,' in the two clauses respectively, a reference seems to be 
 intimated in the former case to an instance long past, known 
 only by history, in the latter to one which some of the readers 
 had themselves witnessed. This is ingenious; but the more 
 closely we look at the passage, the more we shall be convinced 
 
VER, II.] M^irmiiring against Br ethreji. 383 
 
 that the view is wholly unnatural. The seeming equality on 
 which the cases of Job and the Saviour would thus be put, 
 is entirely alien from Scripture usage. The last clause of the 
 verse, too, would have no very manifest pertinence or force 
 in its connection. Further (and this alone might decide the 
 question), we should, on this view of the meaning, merely 
 have additional examples of patience, not advancing the argu- 
 ment, — examples unnaturally separated from those already 
 given by the first clause of the verse, and in no way specially 
 illustrating it. The arguments in support of this interpreta- 
 tion are easily answered. If the view of the meaning of the 
 sixth verse which we have seen reason to adopt be the true 
 one, then the patience of the Lord Jesus has been referred 
 to with peculiar impressiveness. At all events, it is certainly 
 not our part to say dogmatically that a particular line of illus- 
 tration ought to be taken in any part of Holy Scripture ; and 
 meek, conscientious study will always deepen our conviction, 
 that what has been given is the best that could be given — the 
 utterance of infinite wisdom and kindness. As for the use of 
 'heard' and 'seen,' these words fall in at least as naturally 
 with a reference of the whole to Job : ' Ye have heard — in the 
 readings in the synagogue and in religious addresses and con- 
 versations — of the patience of Job ; and, in considering his 
 history, have seen the close that God gave to his career.' 
 This, no doubt, is the meaning : ' the Lord's conclusion^ 
 granted to the life in which patience was so signally shown, — 
 ' the end given by the Lord;'' just as, for example, * perils 
 of robbers,' as Paul uses the expression in Second Corinthians, 
 are ' perils caused by robbers,' not ' perils encountered by 
 them.' 
 
 This is the only place in the New Testament where Job is 
 referred to ; and by it, as well as by the allusions in Ezekiel to 
 that patriarch in conjunction with Noah and Daniel, the Divine 
 Spirit teaches us that the book which tells us of him is, in its 
 basis at least, a history, and not, as many have been disposed 
 to think, a fictitious poem. 
 
 ' Ye have seen the end of the Lord.'' 'The Lord,' as the 
 
384 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 sacred record tells us, 'turned the captivity of Job, and 
 blessed his latter end more than his beginning.' Here is 
 illustrated the justice of our reckoning when ' we count them 
 happy which endure.' The happy issue (or rather its mani- 
 fest beginning) may not come perhaps, as it did in Job's case, 
 in this world ; but certainly to all affliction endured with Chris- 
 tian patience there will come a happy issue. The ' end ' 
 which the Lord gave to Job exemplified the truth ' that the 
 Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy ^^ that ' He doth not 
 afflict Avillingly, nor grieve the children of men.' As we 
 muse on his history, we feel the assurance brought home to 
 our hearts, which James has giyen us before, that ' Blessed is 
 the man that endureth temptation ; for when he is tried, he 
 shall receive the crown of life which the Lord hath promised 
 to them that love Him,' However 'great' the 'tribulation' 
 be which God allots us in His providence, yet all they that 
 ' have washed their robes and made them white in the blood 
 of the Lamb come out of it.'' Then 'are they before the 
 throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple : 
 and He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. 
 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; neither 
 shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb 
 which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall 
 lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe 
 away all tears from their eyes.' 
 
 1 The connection of this clause with the preceding may be, and not im- 
 probably is, a little different from that exhibited by the authorized version ; 
 the introductory particle being taken in the esnse of ' for ' or ' because,' 
 instead of ' that.' See the Notes on the Greek Text. 
 
VER. 12.] Swearing. 385 
 
 XXVIII. 
 SWEARING. 
 
 ' But above all things, my brethren, swear not ; neither by heaven, neither 
 by the earth, neither by any other oath : but let your yea be yea ; and 
 your nay, nay ; lest ye fall into condemnation.' — ^James V, 12. 
 
 THE apostle has now said nearly all that it was in his 
 heart to say to his brethren in the letter ; but there 
 still remain a few things to which he desires to draw their 
 attention, and these he gathers up in conclusion. In the 
 exhortations that follow, then, we are not to look for that 
 closeness of connection in thought which we have found to 
 exist generally throughout the earlier part of the Epistle. In 
 our own familiar letters, you know, when we are coming near 
 the close, we consider whether there be any other things which 
 we should wish to say to our friend ; and if there be, we state 
 them often in a very isolated way. Something of the same 
 kind is found in almost all the apostolic letters, and is one of 
 the many evidences of that genuine human element in the 
 Word of God, appealing to brotherly sympathy, which has 
 somewhat to do with the winning power exercised by the 
 sacred record over all candid hearts. These exhortations of 
 James, however, do not seem to stand altogether unconnected ; 
 and the thought binding the precept in the twelfth verse to 
 what immediately precedes is evidently this, that impatience 
 under trouble often leads to the use of wild, wicked language, 
 dishonouring to God and hurtful to the soul. 
 
 '■But above all things^ my brethre?i, swear not; neither by 
 heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath.'' Here 
 again we have an unmistakeable reference to the Sermon on the 
 Mount ; and, indeed, James's words are simply a repetition, in 
 
 2 B 
 
386 Lectures on the Epistle of ymnes. [ch. v. 
 
 a somewhat condensed form, of the injunction there given by 
 Jesus : ' But I say unto you, Swear not at all : neither by heaven ; 
 for it is God's throne : nor by the earth ; for it is His footstool : 
 neither by Jerusalem ; for it is the city of the great King. 
 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not 
 make one hair white or black. But let your communication 
 be. Yea, yea ; Nay, nay : for whatsoever is more than these 
 Cometh of evil ' (Matt. v. 34-37). The terms of the injunction 
 in both places are universal, 'Swear not,' 'Swear not at all.' 
 Whether the universality be absolute or relative, however — 
 whether swearing under any circumstances be prohibited, or 
 merely all oaths of a particular kind — must be decided by an 
 examination of the context, and the general teaching of Scrip- 
 ture. 'Thou shalt not kill,' is a precept universal in terms; 
 yet ordinary good sense sees it to be perfectly compatible with 
 that other, ' Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his 
 blood be shed.' The act of a magistrate in inflicting capital 
 punishment on a murderer, is felt not to come within the 
 sweep of the universality ; which therefore is relative, not 
 absolute. The command regarding swearing is held, as you 
 know, by the members of the Society of Friends, and some 
 other small bodies of Christians, to be of absolute universality ; 
 so that they consider it wrong to take an oath in a court of 
 justice, and are by our laws permitted to substitute a simple 
 affirmation. By the church generally, it has been held that 
 the prohibition does not extend to all oaths. The grounds of 
 this view are very strong ; and as the matter is one of consJ4er- 
 able practical importance, I shall endeavour to set them b^re 
 you somewhat fully. 
 
 It seems plain that an oath has nothing in its own nature 
 immoral. It is an appeal to Him who knows the heart 
 regarding the truth of testimony or the sincerity of pro- 
 mises. Now nothing is clearer than that it is our duty to 
 have a sense of the presence of the Omniscient always with 
 us as a governing power; and it can scarcely be wrong in 
 itself for a person who, while making a declaration, is deeply 
 influenced by the thought, ' Thou God seest me,' to say so. 
 
VER. 12.] Swearing. 387 
 
 ' Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,' 
 is a precept of universal and perpetual obligation ; but if, as 
 has] been generally held, the commandment has a special, 
 though by no means exclusive, reference to oaths, the very 
 mode of expression suggests that circumstances may occur in 
 which, for the confirmation of testimony, we may and should 
 ' take ' that glorious name on our lips, if only we do this 
 thoughtfully and solemnly. A reverential oath honours, not 
 dishonours, God ; though an oath on the lips of a man whose 
 heart is heedless of God, whose state of soul is in no accord- 
 ance with his words of solemn appeal, is a glaring insult to the 
 divine majesty. It is true that, in the intercourse of perfect 
 beings, there would be no oaths, because so entire would be 
 their mutual confidence, that oaths would be altogether need- 
 less ; and in a sense, therefore, though not exactly the sense 
 in which the expression is used in the passage, 'whatsoever is 
 more than Yea, yea. Nay, nay,' in every case ' cometh of evil,' 
 for it would not have existed had there been no moral evil in 
 the world. But, as a matter of fact, we are in a world of con- 
 tention and broken confidence ; and if in any case ' an oath 
 for confirmation ' is to be ' an end of all strife,' then we can 
 hardly suppose its use at times inconsistent with the religion 
 which aims at putting ' an end to all strife' by diffusing ' peace 
 on earth.' 
 
 We find accordingly, that, under the Old Economy, to swear 
 in certain circumstances by the name of the Lord was a matter 
 of express and repeated divine command. ' Thou shalt fear 
 the Lord thy God, and serve Him, and shalt swear by His 
 name' (Deut. vi. 13). Again: 'Thou shalt fear the Lord thy 
 God; Him shalt thou serve, and to Him shalt thou cleave, 
 and swear by His name' (Deut. x. 20). And in the judicial 
 law particular cases were specified in which the decision be- 
 tween contending parties was to be by means of an oath. 
 For example : ' If a man deliver unto his neighbour an ass, or 
 an ox, or a sheep, or any beast to keep ; and it die, or be hurt, 
 or driven away, no man seeing it : then shall an oath of the 
 Lord be between them both, that he hath not put his hand 
 
2,SS Lectures on the Epistle of ya7nes. [ch. v. 
 
 unto his neighbour's goods ; and the owner of it shall accept 
 thereof, and he shall not make it good' (Ex. xxii. lo, ii). 
 Apart from judicial procedure, we have mention made in Scrip- 
 ture of oaths sworn by eminent servants of God at times when 
 they were plainly under the influence of the loftiest inspiration. 
 For example r 'And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inha- 
 bitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel 
 liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain 
 these years, but according to my word' (i Kings xvii. i). 
 
 Supposing it, however, to be proved beyond controversy, 
 that sincere and solemn oath-taking was permitted under the 
 Old Dispensation, it may be held that this, like polygamy and 
 slavery, was not approved by God, but only tolerated 'for 
 the hardness of the people's hearts.' Isaiah has a passage 
 strikingly contradictory of this view, where, speaking of the 
 church of the latter days — the days of Messiah — he mentions 
 it among the characteristic features of that time, that ' he who 
 blesseth himself in the earth, shall bless himself in the God of 
 truth ; and he that sweareth in the earth, shall swear by the 
 God of truth ; because the former troubles are forgotten, and 
 because they are hid from mine eyes' (Isa. Ixv. i6). Looking 
 into the New Testament for illustration of the will of God on 
 this matter, we find that our perfect example, the Lord Jesus, 
 took an oath before a magistrate. ' The high priest answered 
 and said unto Him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou 
 tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus 
 saith unto him, Thou hast said ' (Matt. xxvi. 63, 64). Accord- 
 ing to Jewish law, this was a declaration on oath, as fully 
 as if the Lord had Himself employed words corresponding to 
 those used by the high priest. ^ Express appeals to God for 
 confirmation of testimony we have in such words of the Apostle 
 Paul as these : ' Moreover, I call God for a record upon 
 my soul, that to spare you I came not as yet unto Corinth ' 
 
 1 For evidence from rabbinical books that this was a mode of taking an 
 oath deemed binding, see the Rev. Thomas Robinson's The Evangelists 
 and the Mishna, p. 152; or Tholuck's Commentary on the Sermon on the 
 Mount, p. 254, note (Clark's Foreign Theological Library). 
 
VER. 12.] Swearing. 389 
 
 (2 Cor. i. 23) ; ' The God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I he not ' 
 (2 Cor. xi. 31); 'Now the things which I write unto you, 
 behold, before God, I lie not' (Gal. i. 20). Now it is true 
 that Paul was not a perfect man, and none could be readier 
 than he to confess daily sin ; but it is one of ' the things most 
 surely beUeved among us,' that in writing those letters which 
 are contained in the New Testament he wrote 'as he was 
 moved by the Holy Ghost,' and that thus all his words have 
 divine sanction. In the Apocalypse an angel is represented as 
 confirming his declaration by an oath : ' And the angel which 
 I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand 
 to heaven, and sware by Him that liveth for ever and ever, who 
 created heaven and the things that therein are, and the earth 
 and the things that therein are, and the sea and the things 
 which are therein, that there should be time no longer ' (Rev. 
 X. 5, 6). Nay, God Himself is many times described in His 
 Word as condescending to strengthen the feeble faith of men 
 by thus confirming His declarations. Instances are so nume- 
 rous in which He is said to have sworn by Himself (* As I live, 
 saith the Lord '), that I need not quote any particular cases. 
 We have no case of this indeed in the New Testament ; but 
 however God may have permitted among His ancient people 
 conduct which for us, under gospel light, is sinful, His own 
 actings at all times must be held to exemplify absolute 
 holiness. 
 
 My argument, then, on this part of the subject is complete. 
 The Israelites had a divine command to swear in certain 
 circumstances ; oaths were taken by illustrious servants of God 
 under both economies, at times when they were undoubtedly 
 under the influence of inspiration ; and even by God Himself, 
 alike in the lowliness of humanity, assumed for our redemp- 
 tion, and in His glory. It is clear, then, that the injunction 
 of the Apostle James in the verse under consideration, and 
 that of the Saviour in the Sermon on the Mount, of which 
 this is a repetition, have relation not absolutely to all oaths, 
 but only to all of a particular kind. 
 
390 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 An expression in the Sermon on the Mount enables us to 
 put the demonstration in a very concise form. ' Let your 
 communication be Yea, yea, Nay, nay ; for whatsoever is more 
 than these cometh of evil.' These last words are plainly 
 not restricted to time or dispensation : they teach that there 
 is something essentially immoral in the excess — the ' more 
 than these' — of which our Lord speaks. Now God, the abso- 
 lutely Holy One, has many times given more than a simple 
 ' Yea, yea. Nay, nay,' confirming His declarations of judgment 
 or of mercy by an oath, ' that by two immutable things, in 
 which it was impossible for God to lie,' sinners on the one 
 hand might be roused to repentance, and on the other, those 
 ' might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to 
 lay hold upon the hope set before us.' It is manifest, then, 
 that the ' more than these ' has relation to a class of oaths 
 only, not to all.^ 
 
 An examination of the details in the form of the injunction, 
 as given either in the Sermon on the Mount or in James, fully 
 supports this conclusion. ' Swear not at all,' says the Lord, — 
 ' neither by heaven, for if is God's throne ; nor by the earth, 
 for it is His footstool ; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city 
 of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, 
 because thou canst not make one hair white or black.' 
 Similarly His apostle : ' Swear not, neither by heaven, neither 
 by the earth.' Among the ways in which the Pharisees had 
 made void God's law by their traditions, was their introduction 
 into the system of oaths of such subtleties as we have learned 
 in modern times to call Jesuitical. The form of swearing 
 enjoined by the law was hi the name of God: ' As the Lord 
 liveth.' Now, maintaining the awful solemnity and binding 
 obligation of this oath, and of one or two others — such as, 
 * By the gold of the temple ' — to which for some reason they 
 attached a peculiar sacredness, the Pharisees taught also that 
 most forms of oath were comparatively light, might be used 
 
 ^ The argument is exhibited pretty nearly as above by Dr. Wardlaw, to 
 whose exposition of this verse (as also to Dr. Adam's) I have been much 
 indebted. 
 
VER. 12.] Swearing. 391 
 
 freely in ordinary conversation, and need not be regarded 
 as in any way specially obligatory. To this monstrous teach- 
 ing, glaringly foolish as well as wicked, our Lord adverts at 
 length in His great discourse on the iniquity of the scribes 
 and Pharisees, spoken three days before His crucifixion : ' Woe 
 unto you, ye blind guides ! which say. Whosoever shall swear 
 by the temple, it is nothing ; but whosoever shall swear by the 
 gold of the temple, he is a debtor. Ye fools and blind ! for 
 whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the 
 gold ? And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing ; 
 but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. 
 Ye fools and blind ! for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar 
 that sanctifieth the gift ? Whoso therefore shall swear by the 
 altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. And whoso 
 sweareth by the temple, sweareth by it, and by Him that 
 dwelleth therein. And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth 
 by the throne of God, and by Him that sitteth thereon ' (Matt, 
 xxiii. 16-22). Now you observe that the forms of oath adduced 
 both by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and by James, in 
 illustration of the reference of their injunctions, are all of the 
 secondary kind — oaths 'by heaven,' ' by the earth,' and the like ; 
 the Lord showing, in what He says of them, that if these forms 
 had any meaning or force at all, this was derived from the 
 thing named being conceived as in some close relation to God, 
 and that consequently their light use involved irreverence to 
 the divine majesty. The oath by the name of God, the ap- 
 pointed formula, is not alluded to either by the Lord or His 
 apostle ; and this omission of the great fundamental oath (the 
 oath which must always have been foremost in the mind of a 
 Jew, when there was any discourse on the subject of oaths 
 generally) must be held, it appears to me, as intended to 
 show that under the Christian dispensation also that grand 
 oath may be taken, under the circumstances in which it was 
 lawful under Judaism, whilst all others are absolutely for- 
 bidden. Jamd^s's words, '■by any other oath,'' might be sup- 
 posed to include the great oath, 'As the Lord liveth.' But 
 comparing, by way of commentary, the more detailed illustra- 
 
392 Lectures on the Epistle of Raines, [ch. v. 
 
 tions in the Sermon on the Mount, of which, as we have seen, 
 the verse in James is obviously merely a condensed repetition ; 
 and considering that, if the grand fundamental formula had 
 been in the apostle's thoughts as included in his prohibition, 
 it would certainly have been expressly mentioned, and not 
 thrown in incidentally under a mere et cetera, — we cannot doubt 
 that by ' any other oath ' he means ' any other oath of the same 
 kind' — such, namely, as were freely used in careless, trivial talk. 
 
 The sum of the matter, then, seems to be this, that, consist- 
 ently with the law of Christ, an oath may be taken in a court 
 of justice, or in great religious crises, such as those in which 
 Elijah and Paul employed it, — times when men feel themselves 
 with special vividness to be in the presence of the unseen 
 divine Judge. Such crises, calling for express appeals to God 
 by way of oath, must be determined by the individual Christian 
 judgment ; but they can occur but rarely, I should suppose, in 
 any life, and in the quiet lives of most believers will never 
 occur at all. The oath, too, is always to be a direct, express 
 appeal to God, not any circuitous form ; and the heart must be 
 full of reverence and godly fear, accordant with the solemnity 
 of the words.^ 
 
 The earnestness of our apostle's exhortation to avoid swear- 
 ing under all other circumstances, to avoid all oaths of passion 
 or thoughtlessness, is shown by his introductory words, ' Above 
 all things,^ — the force of which, in their connection, is plainly, 
 ' Guard yourselves with pre-eminent care against this sin.' The 
 grounds of this 'above all things' are various. Thus, for 
 example, the facility with which the sin is committed, and its 
 consequent frightful commonness. From one point of view it 
 seems strange that this vice should be common ; for surely of 
 all kinds of sin it is the most utterly gratuitous — the most abso- 
 lutely unremunerative, even in regard to the wretched sort of 
 remuneration that sin ever gives. Covetousness, pride, false- 
 hood, and even the lowest sensual vices, do or may bring some 
 temporary advantage, enjoyment, or excitement; but profanity 
 
 ^ Thei'e are some good observations on the subject of oaths in Harless's 
 Christian Ethics, pp. 333-336 (Clark's Foreign Theological Library). 
 
VER. 12.] Swearing. 393 
 
 brings no gain. Indeed, even before fellow-men it brings no- 
 thing but loss ; for, besides exciting the disapproval and dis- 
 gust of all good men, the person who habitually supports his 
 assertions by an oath seems thereby to obtrude an acknow- 
 ledgment that he considers his bare word unlikely, and indeed 
 unworthy, to be believed. And when a person thus puts his 
 own moral worth low, men will naturally take him at his own 
 valuation. Yet, as a matter of fact, this sin has always been a 
 common one. Many instances of swearing recorded in the 
 Old Testament show that even the great oath by the Lord was 
 often used with much irreverence ; and the statements of our 
 Lord, and of James in the text, show that in later days, though 
 the Pharisees had taught the people to abstain from taking 
 the 'name' of the Lord in vain literally, yet other oaths were 
 constantly heard. A writer who has spent many years as a 
 missionary in Syria says : ' This people are fearfully profane. 
 Everybody curses and swears when in a passion. No people 
 that I have ever known can compare with these Orientals for 
 profaneness in the use of the names and attributes of God. 
 The evil habit seems inveterate and universal. When Peter, 
 therefore, began to curse and to swear on that dismal night of 
 temptation, we are not to suppose that it was something foreign 
 to his former habits. He merely relapsed, under high excite- 
 ment, into what, as a sailor and a fisherman, he had been 
 accustomed to all his life. The people now use the very same 
 sort of oaths that are mentioned and condemned by our Lord. 
 They swear by the head, by their life, by heaven, and by the 
 temple, or, what is in its place, the church. The forms of 
 cursing and swearing, however, are almost infinite, and fall on 
 ihe pained ear all day long.'^ 
 
 Among ourselves, too, as you know, this vice is lamentably 
 common. One can hardly go a little way along a street with- 
 out hearing some blasphemy, and, alas, very often from the 
 lips of the young. It might well be doubted, brethren, whether 
 there can be a more striking evidence of the existence and 
 
 1 Dr. Thomson's The Land and the Book, pp. 190, 191 (Nelson's 
 edition). 
 
394 Lectures on the- Epistle of yames. [ch. v. 
 
 energy of human depravity, than the fact that our boys and 
 girls so often count it a proof of their becoming men and 
 women, and ' putting away childish things,' to blaspheme their 
 Maker. And not oaths only, in the strict sense of the word, 
 but also the most profane and unclean ribaldry, and the most 
 horrible curses, pollute the air. Imprecations are flippantly 
 tossed about, which would utterly shock the person who utters 
 them, if even for a moment he thought of their meaning ; and 
 the names of the most solemn realities in the universe are 
 thrown carelessly from the lips, as if they were but figments of 
 a foolish imagination. Now all the sins of the tongue, swear- 
 ing among them, need to be guarded against with particular 
 care, from the facility with which they are committed ; and the 
 prevalence of any vice, and especially a sin of the tongue, in 
 the community we live among, increases the temptation, and 
 renders vigilance doubly needful. ' Above all tilings^ then, 
 ' swear not.' 
 
 Another ground for the apostle's special earnestness in the 
 present exhortation is, that this sin is peculiarly dishonouring 
 to God, and deadening to the moral nature of him who prac- 
 tises it. Reverence for God is the basis of all that is truly 
 beautiful and noble in God's moral creatures. The first peti- 
 tion of every wise man's prayer is, ' Hallowed be Thy name,' 
 for in this is summed up all good. Now profane swearing is a 
 direct defiance of God, or, at the least, involves vast irreverence ; 
 and the habit hardens the soul against that sentiment which 
 alone can lift us into true happiness and spiritual beauty. 
 The swearer systematically prepares his heart to be the high- 
 way of all wicked thoughts and affections. 
 
 Surely, then, in every aspect, this exhortation is one which 
 it becomes a servant of God to deliver with all earnestness : 
 ' Above all things, my brethren, swear not.' 
 
 ' But let your yea be yeaj and your nay, nay.'' Taken by them- 
 selves, these words might signify, ' Let your statements be 
 always true, your yes always meaning yes, and your no, no ;' 
 and this thought, I think, is included in or suggested by their 
 force here. But in their present connection, and as illustrated 
 
VER. 12.] Swearing. 395 
 
 by the parallel expression in the Sermon on the Mount, they 
 plainly mean primarily, ' Let your assertions be free from all 
 foolish and wicked expletives ; let your Yes be simple Yes, and 
 your No simple No.' A consistently truthful, candid character, 
 such as the principles of the gospel will produce in a man, in 
 the measure in which they are understood and believed, will 
 give his simplest words weight. You observe that this injunc- 
 tion excludes from the Christian's vocabulary everything of the 
 nature of minced oaths, as well as those more pronounced. 
 Such expressions are foolish, and in utterly bad taste, and with 
 any sensible hearer weaken rather than strengthen credit ; and 
 the use of them tends to enervate the soul, diminishing reve- 
 rence for God and for naked truth. 
 
 ' Lest ye fall into condemnation ' — that condemnation which 
 the Lord has expressly threatened : ' Thou shalt not take the 
 name of the Lord thy God in vain ; for the Lord will not hold 
 him guiltless that taketh LLis name in vain.'' This is a sin which 
 with special directness and glaringness insults God ; and there- 
 fore certainly, ' however the breakers of this commandment 
 may escape punishment from men, yet the Lord our God will 
 not suffer them to escape His righteous judgment' This is a 
 truth surely eminently fitted to lead all who ponder it to ' swear 
 not at all.' 
 
39^ Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 XXIX. 
 PRAYER AND PRAISE. 
 
 ' Is any among you afflicted ? Let him pray. Is any merry ? Let him sing 
 psalms. 14 Is any sick among you ? Let him call for the elders of 
 the church ; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the 
 name of the Lord : 15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, 
 and the Lord shall raise him up ; and if he have committed sins, they 
 shall be forgiven him.' — ^James v. 13-15. 
 
 THE thirteenth verse appears to me to be closely attached 
 to the twelfth ; the apostle proceeding here to set forth 
 with much terseness and liveliness the kind of language which 
 becomes saints, in contrast with the swearing which he has 
 forbidden. ' For every tone of feeling,' he says, ' that can ever 
 rightly occupy the heart, in any condition in which Providence 
 may place us, true religion has fitting modes of expression, 
 honouring to God and helpful to ourselves and our brethren.' 
 Circumstances of trouble, and the sorrowful heart of the sufferer, 
 naturally come first before his mind, seeing that impatience 
 under trouble, and its unhallowed utterances, have been the 
 subject of his rebuke. ''Is any among you afflicted 1 Let him 
 pray.^ The lively question, ' Is any among you afflicted ?' and 
 afterwards, * Is any merry?' ' Is any sick among you ?' — instead 
 of the simple, quiet, ' If any among you be afflicted, merry, 
 sick,' — accords with that direct, stirring style of address which 
 characterizes the whole Epistle. Similarly, you remember, we 
 had in the third chapter (ver. 13), 'Who is a wise man and 
 endued with knowledge amongst you ? let him show out of a 
 good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.' ' Is 
 any among you afflicted,^ then — distressed, from whatever cause ? 
 How should the Christian life in him show itself? ^y prayer, 
 certainly. The unbeliever, looking only at secondary causes 
 
VER. 13-] Prayer and Pi'aise. 397 
 
 and the 'course of nature,' as if affliction did ' come forth from 
 the earth, and trouble spring out of the ground,' aims at a kind 
 of torpid, pagan indifference; or if he thinks of .God as the 
 Author of his troubles, he ' kicks against the pricks,' ' like a 
 bullock unaccustomed to the yoke,' or ' as a wild bull in a net ' 
 he frets and rages, struggles and pulls, thereby only entangling 
 himself the more, and making his position worse by discontent ' 
 and passion. But the Christian, recognising his affliction as 
 Fatherly chastisement, inflicted by the God who is love, and 
 who, because He is love, chastens His children, that they may 
 be made more child-like, will always feel, if his faith be intelli- 
 gent and vigorous, that nothing is so becoming and needful 
 under trial as earnest wrestling with his heavenly Father in 
 prayer. He will ask for comfort through a sense of the divine 
 presence and goodness : ' Hide not Thy face from Thy ser- 
 vant, for I am in trouble ; from the end of the earth will I cry 
 unto Thee when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the Rock 
 that is higher than I.' He will ask for wisdom to grow in grace 
 through the discipline : ' Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou 
 art my God ; Thy spirit is good, lead me into the land of 
 uprightness.' And he will pray for deliverance from the cause 
 of his distress, as far and as speedily as God sees meet : ' O 
 Lord, I pray Thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolish- 
 ness ; save me from all them that persecute me : heal me, for 
 my bones are vexed.' Such is the exercise of soul that beseems 
 an afflicted saint. 
 
 But religion, while very precious and sustaining in times of 
 suffering, is not less really needful, and has as perfect adapta- 
 tion, for seasons of prosperity and gladness. For the night 
 when weeping endures it has its words of prayer, for the morn- 
 ing when joy comes it has its songs of praise. ''Is any merry ? 
 let him sing psalms.'' By ^ merry'' is meant here, not, as often 
 in modern English, 'full of boisterous gaiety,' but, generally, 
 ' cheerful,' ' in good spirits.' Its meaning is well shown by the 
 only other place in the New Testament in which the original 
 word here used occurs, where Paul, before the shipwreck at 
 Malta, exhorts his companions to ' be of good cheer,' because 
 
398 Lectures on the Epistle of yames. [ch. v. 
 
 God had told him that their Hves would not be lost. For 
 him who 'is of good cheer,' then, the apostle's injunction is 
 to '' sing praise.^ This seems to be the exact force of the 
 original term, which our translators have somewhat unduly 
 limited by using the word ' psalms.' I have no doubt that, the 
 more a Christian knows of God, and of himself, and of the 
 Book of Psalms, the more he will delight in those wonderful 
 compositions, and feel their transcendent poetic beauty, and 
 wealth of religious experience ; but the apostle's words here 
 are quite general, leaving room for any kind of sacred song. 
 
 The present is one of many passages both in the Old Testa- 
 ment and the New that set forth the dignity and usefulness of 
 the service of praise. ' Praise is comely.' Hearty congrega- 
 tional singing (particularly congregational singing in which, 
 conjoined with the fulness of tone that proves general hearti- 
 ness, there are also the grave sweet melody and pleasant 
 blending of parts that evince diligent, conscientious study 
 by persons desirous to lay their best on God's altar), — this is 
 a favourable sign of the spiritual condition of the people. In 
 the ages when ceremonialism began to stifle vital religion, and 
 true Christian catholicity became corrupted and narrowed into 
 the apostasy of Roman Catholicism, there was no more strik- 
 ing symptom of the change from life to death than the de- 
 parture of congregational praise. Sacred song was at once an 
 utterance and a stimulus of independent thought and feeling, 
 such as the usurping priesthood dared not leave to the people : 
 so the chanting by hired choristers of hymns in a dead lan- 
 guage, and often in honour of saints and angels, took the 
 place of that hearty congregational praise of God which even 
 a heathen writer of the first age speaks of as one of the pro- 
 minent features of Christian service. But when at the Refor- 
 mation, through the mercy of God, the Sun of Righteousness 
 at last melted the frost of centuries, and the silver streams of 
 the water of life, so long sealed up and silent, began once more 
 to gush joyously over the world, then along their banks arose 
 again the strains of Zion. Wherever spiritual life is found, it 
 expresses itself, as all manifest revivals of religion distinctly 
 
VER. I3-] Pray €7^ and Praise. 399 
 
 attest, in hearty praise. The ' Hving in Jerusalem ' say, ' The 
 dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into 
 silence ; but ive will bless the Lord from this time forth and 
 for evermore.' The words of the apostle in the verse before 
 us suggest that not merely in the sanctuary, but at home, in 
 the family circle or in solitude, the singing of God's praise is 
 pleasant and helpful for the soul. When God in His provi- 
 dence is bidding us 'be of good cheer' — when the truth is 
 with liveliness borne in upon our hearts, that ' He crowneth 
 us with loving-kindness and tender mercies' — the tones of 
 sacred song are to the new man in Christ the most natural 
 of all utterances. They are felt to be honouring to God, 
 and sweet and stimulating to the heart. Individual and family 
 happiness, individual and family piety, would, beyond question, 
 be strengthened and beautified, if there were a more general 
 following out of the apostle's rule, ' Is any man merry ? let him 
 sing praise.' 
 
 I need hardly observe that, though the apostle in this verse 
 recommends to believers those religious exercises which are 
 specially suitable in the contrasted conditions respectively, — 
 prayer in trouble, and praise in prosperity, — yet in neither 
 case does he put aside the other exercise as unsuitable. 
 Often, as you know, praise passes into prayer, and prayer 
 is pervaded by the spirit of praise ; and indeed the spiritual 
 man, in all circumstances in which he may be placed, should 
 feel himself impelled both to prayer and praise. When he 
 is ' of good cheer,' then, whilst praising the bounteous Giver 
 of his enjoyments, he remembers at the same time how prone 
 prosperity is to make a man 'turn again to folly;' and, 'lack- 
 ing wisdom,' he ' asks of God, who giveth to all men liberally, 
 and upbraideth not.' And in trouble, while praying earnestly, 
 he finds that the ' patience ' which God gives ' worketh ex- 
 perience ' of the divine mercy and faithfulness, ' and experience 
 hope,' and hope impels to praise. Ay, and through the praise 
 the hope wall often grow stronger and brighter ; for now, as well 
 as in Saul's days, the 'evil spirit ' of despondency and fear will 
 flee before the tones of David's harp. At midnight, in the 
 
400 Lectures on the Epistle of yaines. [ch. v. 
 
 inner prison at Philippi, their feet -fast in the stocks, and their 
 backs raw with the stripes, ' Paul and Silas prayed, and sang 
 praises unto God.' 
 
 The truth is, that prayer and praise are fundamentally one, 
 the outgoing of the soul in love and trust to God. They are 
 flowers growing on one stem. And thus we come to the 
 general principle which underlies James's teaching here, — 
 that a Christian, throughout his whole life, whatever its turn- 
 ings be, however varied its conditions, should in, and in regard 
 to, them all acknowledge God, with humility, and thankful- 
 ness, and love, communing with Him in holy fellowship. 
 Such is beyond all question the ideal of the Christian life, — 
 '■praying without ceasing,' 'blessing the Lord at all times, 
 His praise continually in our mouths.' This implies oneness 
 of will with God, the child-like acceptance of His will as ours : 
 thus, in prosperity thanking Him as the Giver, and devoting 
 what He gives to His glory ; in adversity, meekly bearing 
 what He sends, and striving to gain the spiritual advantage 
 that He intends for us in sending it. * I have learned,' says 
 Paul, 'in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content;' 
 • and certainly, as a good woman said, who on a bed of weari- 
 ness and pain, and in the depths of poverty, was praising God, 
 it ' takes learning ' to do this. She spoke of the side she had 
 experience of — ' knowing how to suffer need ;' but the other 
 side, to bear prosperity without vain confidence, ' knowing 
 how to abound,' perhaps takes even more learning. But ' all 
 things are possible to him that believeth.' 
 
 The teaching of the apostle in this verse, however, has a 
 bearing not merely on our exercise of soul in the reception 
 of what God's providence allots us, but on our own choice of 
 occupations and sources of enjoyment. A Christian, he tells 
 us, is so to live, that in the midst of everything, and in con- 
 nection with everything, he is engaged in, he can sincerely and 
 reasonably praise God, and ask God's blessing. In all honest 
 labour, and in all innocent enjoyment, this may be done. Any 
 occupation or source of excitement and pleasure in regard to 
 which it would be felt to be unnatural to ask God's blessing or 
 
VER. 14-] Prayer and Praise. 401 
 
 give God thanks, — with which it would be felt to be a gross 
 incongruity to mingle prayer and praise, and thus formally 
 sanctify it, — or (for this practically is the same thing) which has 
 a manifest tendency to dissipate devotional feeling, — is not an 
 occupation or enjoyment for a Christian. This may to some 
 appear * an hard saying ; ' and certainly the principle thus laid 
 down is one fitted to cause serious ' searchings of heart ' in all 
 of us, and which, if faithfully carried out, would most materially 
 alter the mode of life of many professing Christians. But it 
 seems to me beyond question, that no one will candidly ponder 
 and develope before his mind the teaching of the apostle 
 in the verse under consideration (which is simply a forcible 
 and condensed statement of teaching to be found every- 
 where in the Bible by the man who chooses to see it), without 
 coming to the conclusion that such is the principle laid down 
 by God. A Christian is a consecrated person — a member of 
 'a peculiar people,' who are 'redeemed' by the blood of 
 Christ 'from all iniquity,' and to be 'zealous of good works' 
 and ' shine as lights in the world : ' their whole life is a conse- 
 crated life ; and thus all the occupations and enjoyments of 
 such consecrated men and women, all the scenes in which 
 they choose to mingle, should certainly be such as either 
 actually are, or at least without obvious incongruity and 
 absurdity might be, consecrated, 'sanctified by the word of 
 God and prayer' (i Tim. iv. 5). 
 
 In the fourteenth and fifteenth verses the apostle reverts to 
 the subject of affliction ; and having in the first clause of the 
 thirteenth enjoined prayer on those who are in trouble, he here, 
 with reference to a special form of affliction, bodily illness, 
 illustrates the efficiency of prayer ; bringing here, however, into 
 particular prominence the value of intercessory prayer for the 
 sufferer, and giving directions on this head. 
 
 ' Is a?iy sick among yoJi ? let hi?n call for the elders of the 
 church.' There can be no doubt, judging from the ordinary 
 use of the word in the New Testament, that by ^elders'' are 
 meant here not generally the older people in the congregation, 
 but specially the office-bearers so named; and the apostle's 
 
 2 c 
 
402 Lectures on the Epistle of y antes, [ch. v. 
 
 injunction is one of many passages on which, taken together 
 so as to cast light on each other, we Presbyterians base our 
 system of church polity. The words before us certainly suggest 
 that in the primitive church each congregation had its spiritual 
 interests watched over by a body of elders, somewhat such as 
 with us constitute a kirk-session. The apostle intimates, more- 
 over, that one duty of the elders — one which, unquestionably, 
 all who had the welfare of their brethren warmly at heart would 
 deem very important — was to visit the members of the church 
 in time of illness, to minister comfort, and counsel, and help. 
 Such being a duty of the elders, it was correspondingly the 
 , duty of a member when he was ill to send for the elders. It 
 would be well in various ways, brethren, — it would prevent 
 many weary and unsatisfied longings on the part of the sick, 
 many serious and hurtful misconceptions on the part of their 
 relatives, many painful regrets on the part of Christian office- 
 bearers, — if this injunction of Scripture were uniformly acted 
 on. Ministers and elders cannot know of cases of illness 
 unless they are told ; and the rule is surely very simple, and 
 straightforward, and reasonable : ' Is any sick among you ? let 
 him call for the elders of the church.' The apostle's mode of 
 X expression appears to imply that notice of illness was to be 
 - sent to the body of elders, and that in those early days of the 
 church they visited their sick (for we may presume that James 
 here merely suggests for general adoption what was already, 
 under apostolic advice, a practice in many congregations) 
 either as a body, or at least by a deputation of more than one 
 member : ' Let him call for the elders, and let the7n pray over 
 him.' It seems naturally suggested by the clause, at all events, 
 that this was a part of Christian work in which all the elders 
 were expected to share, not merely those of them who ' laboured 
 in the word and doctrine ' — the ministers, as we now call them ; 
 and certainly there are few modes, if any, in which elders can 
 more efficiently aid the minister, or benefit the congregation, 
 than by assiduous and affectionate visiting of the sick. 
 
 Summoned to the bedside of a sufferer, then, the elders are 
 to ^J?ray over hitn^ to wrestle with God for their afflicted 
 
VER. I4-] ' Prayer and Praise. 403 
 
 brother. And with this is, in the apostle's injunction, asso- 
 ciated another duty, that of ' anointmg him with oil in the name 
 of the Lord^ Oil has always been extensively used and highly 
 valued in the medical practice of the East ; and many com- 
 mentators have thought that the reference here is simply to 
 • such a medical application, accompanied with prayer for the 
 ^ divine blessing on these ordinary means of cure. Besides other 
 objections which might be urged against this view, this fact 
 alone seems to me sufficient to set it aside, — that the apostle, 
 from the unhmited form of his question, 'Is any sick among 
 you?' must be supposed to speak of any case of illness. Now 
 we cannot imagine that oil would be deemed a fitting medical 
 application in every kind of disease. The anointing of which 
 I James speaks had, no doubt, a symbolical, sacred character. 
 The anointing with which the Jewish Christians to whom he 
 wrote were familiar, in many parts of the ceremonial of the 
 t Old Economy, was well understood to be emblematic of divine 
 A influence. Him in whose name they trusted they called by 
 pre-eminence the Messiah or Christ, 'the Anointed One,' as 
 having the influences of the Spirit ' poured ' on Him without 
 measure ; and thus in the anointing of the sick they would re- 
 cognise a symbol of the gracious Spirit through whom answers 
 to prayer come. * If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus 
 from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the 
 dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that 
 dwelleth in you ' (Rom. viii. 11^); and of this great final quick- 
 ening by the Spirit, the supernatural cures in answer to prayer 
 were prelusive. A statement made by the Evangelist Mark 
 illustrates that before us, when, in speaking of the mission on 
 which the Lord during His ministry sent the apostles, he says 
 that ' they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many 
 <■ that were sick, and healed them' (Mark vi. 13). The refer- 
 ence there is most manifestly to miraculous cures, and the use 
 of oil was plainly not medicinal, any more than the applica- 
 tions of spittle, or clay moistened with spittle, mentioned in 
 ^ This verse is pertinent to my argument, whether the true reading be 
 the genitive or the accusative after ttu,. 
 
404 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes. [ch. v. 
 
 the accounts of our Lord's miraculous works : it was emble- 
 matic. The case before us appears precisely similar. The 
 
 \ sacred character of the anointing spoken of by James is shown 
 very clearly — and at the same time the ground of the hope of 
 
 I help — by the addition, ' in the name of the Lord.'' Our apostle 
 often, indeed generally, uses the name '•Lord'' as representing 
 the 'Jehovah' of the Old Testament (for example, in verses 10 
 and 11), and it might be so taken here ; but the analogy of the 
 mode of expression recorded as having been employed by 
 apostles in working miracles leads us rather to take it in the 
 common New Testament sense, 'The Lord Jesus.' Thus 
 Peter, you remember, said to the lame man at the Beautiful 
 Gate of the temple, ' In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, 
 rise up and walk' (Acts iii. 6). 
 
 The fifteenth verse describes the results that will follow from 
 the procedure enjoined in the fourteenth : ' And the prayer of 
 faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.^ The 
 latter clause being manifestly parallel to and explanatory of 
 the former, it is clear that ' save ' here designates bodily 
 healing. This is a common use of the word in the New 
 Testament. Thus, when Jairus, petitioning the Saviour on 
 behalf of his little sick daughter, says, ' I pray Thee, come 
 • and lay Thy hands on her, that she may be healed' (Mark 
 I v. 23), the term there rendered ' healed ' is the same as 
 that employed here. One cannot sufficiently admire the 
 fulness, and bless God for it, with which in this passage 
 (a passage where otherwise priestly assumption and cere- 
 monialism might have found plausible entrenchment) the 
 true source of help is exhibited, and any shadow of support 
 for trust in mere ritual prevented. It is on the 'prayer,^ you 
 
 » --observe, that emphasis is laid as a means of bringing down 
 blessing, the anointing passing quite into the background. It 
 is the ' prayer of faith,' moreover, a prayer that springs from 
 belief in God's promises, hearty confidence in His power and 
 love — not a mere form of words, possessed of some magical 
 virtue, however carelessly they be pattered over. And when 
 the prayer of faith has been off"ered, the work of help is done 
 
VER. 15-] Prayer and Praise. 405 
 
 wholly by Him ' that heareth prayer,' and to Him alone is 
 glory due : ' The Lord shall raise him up.' 
 
 A difficulty occurs to every mind, connected with the uni- 
 versal unconditional terms of the promise given here that the 
 result of the prayer of faith, under the circumstances described, 
 will be bodily healing. It is plain that the words had primary 
 and peculiar relation to an age of miraculous powers ; but we 
 have no reason to believe that even the apostles healed or 
 could heal all the sick in whom they were interested. We 
 know, indeed, that it was not so. ' Trophimus,' Paul tells 
 Timothy, he ' left at Miletum sick ' (2 Tim. iv. 20). The 
 same difficulty presents itself in the promise of Christ regard- 
 ing the ' signs ' that were to ' follow them that believe ' — ' They 
 shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover ' (Mark 
 xvi. 18) ; and in the yet wider promise, 'What things soever 
 ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye 
 shall have them' (Mark xi. 24). The explanation of the 
 difficulty is no doubt to be found in the fact that in all such 
 promises the condition is implied, ' in so far as accords with 
 
 #- God's will' The Christian heart feels this, and therefore the 
 condition need not always be expressed. Putting the same 
 thing in a slightly different form, indeed, we may truly say that 
 the ' prayer of faith ' is always answered, either by the bestowal 
 of the specific object asked for, or by the gift of something 
 better. We have every reason to believe, therefore, that in 
 the first age many sick persons were, in answer to prayer, 
 
 \, restored to health, often in the way of obvious miracle. We 
 have equal reason to believe that the same occurs now, as 
 really by the gracious action of the Divine Hearer of prayer, 
 
 • though without that startling suddenness and absence of ordi- 
 
 . nary means which constituted a healing miraculous. All who 
 have been ' taught of God' will have no doubt, moreover, that 
 in every age of the church, whenever true prayer has been 
 offered by the sick, either alone or in conjunction with ' the 
 elders of the church ' or other brethren, ' healing,' ' quickening,' 
 has certainly been granted in answer, though it might not be 
 for the body. 
 
4o6 Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. v. 
 
 The apostle continues : * And if he have committed si?is, they 
 shall be forgiveft him.'' No truth is more plainly taught in 
 Scripture, than that our race, universally, is by nature de- 
 praved : ' If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, 
 and the truth is not in us.' The reference here, then, where 
 the ' committing of sins ' is put as a mere supposition, must 
 be not to sin generally, but to special sins, through which the 
 disease has been brought on. Bible doctrine in regard to 
 affliction is, that whilst, had there been no sin in the world, 
 there would have been no suffering — for suffering is an element 
 in the curse ; yet God does not, in this world, so apportion 
 suffering as that the greatest sufferer can be pronounced the 
 greatest sinner. This latter truth, opposed to a very natural 
 idea, which was particularly prevalent among the Jews, is 
 taught with much fulness and clearness in the book of Job, 
 and by our Lord in connection with the case of the Galileans, 
 ' whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices,' and again 
 with that of the man born blind. But it is also true, plainly 
 taught in Scripture, and manifest every day in the world, that 
 in many instances particular forms of sin draw after them par- 
 ticular forms of suffering. The drunkard and the licentious 
 man or woman, for example, often suffer in the body for their 
 iniquities. To something of this kind, in all likelihood, our 
 Lord alludes in His words to the man who had been healed at 
 Bethesda : ' Behold, thou art made whole ; sin no more, lest a 
 worse thing come unto thee.' Now, in all persons suffering 
 consciously for special sins, — when the Spirit of the Lord deals 
 savingly with them, longing for a sense of the pardon of those 
 sins will mingle with and overtop the longing for mere bodily 
 healing. It was so, we may suppose, with the paralytic who was 
 let down through the roof before Jesus, and to whom, reading 
 his longings, the gracious Saviour said, * Son, thy sins are for- 
 given thee,' before He said, ' Arise, and take up thy bed, and 
 go thy way into thine house.' It is the unvaried teaching of 
 the Bible on this subject, that sins are forgiven only when 
 they are repented of : ' Repent and be converted, that your 
 sins may be blotted out' (Acts iii. 19). In the statement of 
 
VER. 15-] Prayer and Praise. 407 
 
 James under consideration, then, it is implied that in the 
 sufferer of whom he speaks he presupposes genuine penitence 
 of spirit, ' a broken and contrite heart.' True Christian long- 
 ings, and no empty superstition, are supposed to have led 
 him to ' call for the elders of the church,' and the ' prayer of 
 faith ' has, all through, been going up from his own soul. 
 In answer comes a sense of pardon — pardon of which, in the 
 first age, miraculous healing granted by God would often be 
 evidence. 
 
 One of the five sacraments which Roman Catholicism has 
 added to the two ordained in the New Testament is ' extreme 
 unction' — the application by a priest to the body of a person 
 believed to be near death, of oil that has received the blessing 
 of a bishop. The sick person is anointed in the form of the 
 cross, on the eyes, ears, mouth, and some other organs, — a 
 formula of prayer being recited each time for pardon of the 
 sins that had been committed through the instrumentality of 
 the sight, hearing, and the rest. This rite is held to be an 
 
 ♦ efficient means of grace to the departing soul, remitting sins 
 not previously remitted. The only passage appealed to as 
 scriptural authority for this sacrament is the statement contained 
 in the fourteenth and fifteenth verses now before us ; the 
 Council of Trent declaring that, whilst 'promulgated' here, it 
 had been ' instituted ' by Christ. It is difficult to conceive of 
 anything more impudent than the attempt to maintain this 
 support of priestly power by the authority of this passage, — 
 
 . the basing of a rite which is appointed to be administered 
 only to those who are believed to be dying, and with a refer- 
 
 , ence to their death, on a practice which was intended, as the 
 words of the apostle plainly show, to obtain the restoration of 
 
 ' the sufferer to health. With arguments like this in support of 
 its peculiar tenets, it is certainly not to be wondered at that 
 Popery discourages biblical study among its votaries. 
 
 The injunction — or perhaps rather, accurately stated, the 
 recommendation — of the apostle regarding anointing, had an 
 obvious suitableness for the Christian communities gathered 
 from among the Jews, to whom the symbolic meaning of the 
 
4o8 Lectures on the Epistle of y antes, [ch. v. 
 
 practice was so familiar and expressive. No hint of any such 
 precept or advice is given in any of the apostoUc letters to 
 churches of Gentile Christians ; and, all things considered, we 
 have not the slightest reason to suppose that James's recom- 
 mendation on this head was meant to be of universal or 
 permanent force in the church.^ 
 
 ^ By some the precept or recommendation is held to be of permanent 
 force ; and occasionally the newspapers show us fruits of the belief. The 
 following is an extract from The Times of July 7, 1870 : — 
 
 "The Peculiar People." — On Tuesday night an adjourned inquiiy was 
 held at the Sir Robert Peel Tavern, Plumstead, before Mr. C. J. Carttar, 
 coroner for West Kent, relative to the death of George Walker, a labourer, 
 aged forty-eight, who expired on Saturday the 25th ult. The deceased 
 belonged to the sect known as "The Peculiar People," who hold the doc- 
 trine that faith in God alone will heal the sick. Thomas Hines, labourer, 
 of 2 Hall Place, Plumstead, said he was one of the elders of the sect, and 
 he knew the deceased, who was a member of it. On the Sunday previous 
 to his death he visited the deceased, who complained of a pain in his left 
 side. Witness prayed with the deceased, and anointed his left side with oil 
 in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who immediately delivered him, and 
 the pain ceased. On the following Monday he again visited the deceased, 
 prayed with him, and anointed his head. On the Friday night before his 
 death, a prayer-meeting, attended by the elders, was held at the house 
 where the deceased lodged, at 141 Sandy-hill Road. One of the sisters 
 asked deceased if he would have a doctor, and he replied, "No ;" he had 
 every faith in the Lord. The oil used was olive oil. The elders received 
 no pay; it was quite sufficient honour to be a servant of the Lord. The 
 number of the Peculiar People at Woolwich was about eighty. George 
 Hurry, another elder, residing at Richmond Road, Plumstead, gave similar 
 evidence as to the laying on of hands and anointing. Mr. J. B. Riley, a 
 surgeon, who made \S\G.post mortem examination, proved that death resulted 
 from a long-standing disease of the lungs. Medical aid at an earlier period 
 would have been of service. The jury returned a verdict that "Death 
 resulted from consumption, coupled with an expression of regret that 
 medical assistance was not called to the deceased by those attending upon 
 him ; and the jury considered that very serious blame attached to them for 
 their want of common humanity. " 
 
VER. i6.] Confession and Prayer. 409 
 
 XXX. 
 CONFESSION AND PRAYER. 
 
 ' Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may 
 be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth 
 much. 17 Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he 
 prayed earnestly that it might not rain ; and it rained not on the earth 
 by the space of three years and six months : i8 And he prayed 
 again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her 
 fruit.'— James v. 16-18. 
 
 THE advice given in the previous verses naturally leads 
 to the recommendation before us, — one calculated in 
 a very high degree to promote the prosperity and happiness 
 of the church. The connecting thought is this : ' I have 
 said that Christians when they are sick should summon to 
 their bedsides the elders of the church, and that their united 
 believing prayer will bring down God's blessing in restored 
 health and spiritual comfort. Not merely the official repre- 
 sentatives of the church, however, but all the children of God, 
 can help their brethren mightily. Wherefore, Confess your 
 faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be 
 healed' Our view of the breadth of the reference of the 
 apostle's precept must depend, at least to a certain extent, on 
 the meaning we attach to the clause, ' that ye may be healed;' and 
 at this, therefore, we must look for a moment first. Our first 
 thought naturally is, that the discourse is still of the sick, — 
 and we cannot doubt that these are included ; yet, considering 
 that we have clearly passed into a new section, and that the 
 brethren are addressed in the most general way, and called on 
 to confess to each other, and pray for each other, without any 
 specification of the sick, it seems to me that we must hold the 
 application of '•healed' to be wider than merely deliverance 
 
41 o Lectures on the Epistle of James. [ch. v. 
 
 from bodily disease. The connection between sin and bodily 
 disease has been already alluded to in the close of the previous 
 paragraph ; the conception of sin as a spiritual disease, and of 
 Him who proclaimed Himself to Israel at Marah under the 
 name, ' The Lord that healeth thee,' as the Physician of souls, 
 was familiar to James's readers from Old Testament imagery ; 
 and the particular word here employed in the original is often 
 used of spiritual healing. The apostle speaks here, then, I 
 apprehend, of deliverance both spiritual and bodily — the cure 
 of the malady of sin, and of bodily disease where this fruit 
 and image of sin was present. Thus understood, the present 
 section leads most naturally to the last statement in the 
 Epistle, regarding the blessedness of him who ' converteth a 
 sinner from the error of his ways.' 
 
 ' Confess your faults one to aftother.^ Confession of sin to 
 God is of the essence of true repentance ; for a man who will 
 not look up and acknowledge his iniquity manifestly does not 
 clearly see or deeply feel its evil. Only through unreserved- 
 ness of heart towards God can we enjoy peace with Him. ' If 
 we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us our 
 sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' ' When I 
 kept silence,' says David, * my bones waxed old through my 
 roaring all the day long : for day and night Thy hand was heavy 
 upon me ; my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. 
 I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I 
 not hid : I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord ; 
 and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.' The injunction 
 before us, however, relates to confession to man. Now there is 
 nothing in the general teaching of Scripture, or in the present 
 precept when interpreted reasonably, to assign to this duty any- 
 thing like the same extent of reference as belongs to confession 
 to God. To Him we are called upon to lay bare our souls 
 absolutely — to make penitential acknowledgment of all the sins 
 of which we are conscious, and then, sensible that none can 
 fully ' understand his errors,' to pray, ' Cleanse Thou me from 
 secret faults.' But there are many sins which it is not merely 
 not needful, but would be positively wrong, to reveal to our 
 
VER. i6.] Confession arid Prayer. 411 
 
 fellow-men. To take but one instance : sins of thought may 
 but for a very short time, and in a very vague form, have been 
 permitted to occupy the mind ; and the effort to bring them out 
 before our own minds with the clearness and definiteness need- 
 ful for our stating them to another, would, in multitudes of cases, 
 do us moral harm, without advantage of any kind. Again, it 
 might often happen that much moral injury might be done to 
 the person who received our confession, by the acknowledg- 
 ments we made, and this however carefully we might choose 
 our confidant. Indeed, circumstances of various kinds, and 
 connected with offences of all sorts, may often render it in the 
 very highest degree undesirable, or actually sinful, to make 
 them known to our fellow-men. 
 
 In considering, then, what classes of ^faults ' James has here 
 before his mind, injuries to me?i first occur to us. To make a 
 frank acknowledgment of having done wrong, when 'a brother 
 hath aught against us,' is one of the plainest duties of the 
 Christian code of morals. Our Lord tells us that a soul un- 
 willing to do this is in a condition in which worship cannot 
 be acceptable to God ; and therefore, even if the gift be already 
 before the altar, the man is to ' go his way, first be reconciled 
 to his brother, and then come and offer his gift.' Cases may 
 easily be conceived, too, in which, though an injured person is 
 unconscious of the injury, and ample material reparation may 
 be possible without the accompaniment of confession, yet this 
 also is at the least very desirable. For example, suppose that 
 of two Christian merchants who have business transactions 
 with each other, the one gains an advantage over the other 
 in a way which that other does not know, and can never know, 
 — a way perhaps strictly legal, but which afterthought con- 
 vinces him who pursued it to be inconsistent with the highest 
 morality. He might easily in most cases, without saying any- 
 thing on the subject, make up to his friend in some subsequent 
 transaction all the loss. And sometimes anything more may 
 not be needed. Yet I can well believe that a confession would 
 often bring more completeness of comfort to the offender, and 
 not a little spiritual benefit to both parties. If the injury that 
 
412 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 has been done to a brother has been of a kind to affect his 
 reputation, — for instance, if it has consisted in the circulation, 
 whether through carelessness or from some definitely bad 
 motive, of a calumnious report, — it is evident that confession 
 should in such a case not merely be made to the wronged 
 person himself, but published as widely, if possible, as the 
 calumny. This may be very humbling to the offender, but 
 the discipline is salutary, and without such wide confession 
 honourable reparation for the wrong is not made. 
 
 But it seems reasonable to take the apostle's recommenda- 
 tion before us as having a wider reference than simply to 
 cases of the kind I have mentioned. There are few greater 
 burdens than the burden of a guilty secret, and the heart that 
 has such feels as if the spiritual weight would be lightened 
 through confession, — the hearer helping to bear it, after a 
 sort. This longing for confession is strikingly illustrated by a 
 tradition which Hood has wrought into a poem of singular 
 power, — that Eugene Aram, a murderer of the last century 
 in England, a man of high cultivation, and a teacher by pro- 
 fession, sometimes told his scholars the story of his crime, 
 with all circumstantial details, but under the guise of a dream. 
 Apart, however, from extreme cases like this, there are, no doubt 
 — it may be in the very quietest walks of Christian life — many 
 people of a tender, sensitive temperament, who, yearning for 
 sympathy and guidance, long to speak to a Christian friend of 
 some of their weaknesses and sins. It is true that the only 
 perfect and satisfying sympathy, and the only wholly trust- 
 worthy guidance, are those of the Divine Man who ' was made 
 in all things like unto His brethren, that He might be merci- 
 ful ' — ' tempted like as we are,' that He might be * touched with 
 the feeling of our infirmities ;' yet at times, particularly times of 
 bodily prostration, in hearts of the class that I have mentioned 
 there comes a weary craving for a visible confidant and adviser. 
 For such a feeling, being not in itself sinful, provision has 
 been made by Christianity, through the brotherly relation of 
 believers to each other. ' Confess your faults one to another, 
 and ' (here comes the corresponding injunction to the Chris- 
 
VER. i6.] Confession and Prayer. 413 
 
 tian friends of penitents) 'pray one for another;' or, as Paul 
 . has it, ' Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law 
 of Christ.' Where such unburdening of the conscience is 
 resorted to, not in the spirit of religious gossip, but seriously 
 and devoutly, as a help graciously granted by the Saviour to 
 our weakness, not a little comfort and real spiritual benefit 
 may often be obtained through it. From the nature of the 
 case, however, this can only be when confession to brethren 
 is held as a somewhat exceptional procedure, to be adopted 
 occasionally under special pressure of feeling. Whenever it 
 becomes in any way methodized into a system, for periodical 
 observance, then the desire for it, as it seems to me, is cer- 
 tainly a symptom of spiritual disease, — a disease which the 
 supposed remedy will only aggravate. It is manifestly of the 
 highest importance, too, if the present recommendation of 
 our apostle is to be carried out with any real benefit to the 
 penitent, that the burdened heart should select its confidant 
 with very great care. A friend truly pious and affectionate, 
 experienced and discreet, may be of much service ; no other 
 can reasonably be expected to be. 
 
 This injunction of the Apostle James is the passage of Scrip- 
 ture principally pleaded in support of the Roman Catholic 
 system of private confession of sin to a priest, — which that 
 Church enjoins to be performed periodically, and teaches to 
 be necessary for salvation, and to secure salvation certainly 
 through the absolution given by the priest after full confession. 
 This abominable system is, beyond doubt, and has been all 
 down the generations since it was introduced, more prolific of 
 impurity and hardness of heart, and indeed moral evil of every 
 kind, than anything else in the ecclesiastical arrangements of 
 any religious sect, — probably, one might almost say, than any 
 agency of any kind existing in the world. The Reformers, who 
 knew well the nature and effects of auricular confession, used 
 to call the confessional 'the slaughter-house of consciences.' ^ 
 But it is the strongest of all the props of priestly domination over 
 
 ^ See a note by Dr Cunningham in his edition of Stillingfleet's Doctrines 
 and Practices of the Church of Rome, p. 142. 
 
4i4 . Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 souls, and therefore among the very last things that Romanism 
 would be willing to renounce. I need hardly point out to you 
 that this vile system has no shadow of support in the passage 
 before us. Here again, as in examining the preceding para- 
 graph, one cannot sufficiently admire and praise the divine 
 wisdom and love which have so fenced in the inspired words 
 from the possibility of being even plausibly misinterpreted by 
 any one who looks at them with ordinary intelligence and can- 
 dour. You observe that, by a clearly marked transition, the 
 apostle has passed from his reference to the office-bearers of 
 the church, to the brethren generally, — including the office- 
 bearers, no doubt, on occasion, as hearers of such confession 
 as he has alluded to, but certainly not speaking of them alone. 
 Again, the confession enjoined is mutual ; so that, even if it 
 were incumbent on me to confess to a priest, it would be 
 equally incumbent on him to confess to me. And of any view 
 to the obtaining of authoritative absolution, in the confession 
 here spoken of, there is not the remotest hint. Thus priestly 
 assumption has no standing-ground on this text. 
 
 The apostle proceeds : ' and pray one for another^ This 
 recommendation, in its position here, points out especially, as 
 I have already said, the duty of such believers as have con- 
 fession of faults made to them by brethren. They can counsel 
 them, and comfort them ; but the chief help they can render 
 is to pray for them. The breadth in the mode of expression, 
 however, naturally leads us to find in James's words, besides 
 the immediate reference, also a general precept to cultivate 
 prayer for our fellow-Christians. Intercessory prayer is one 
 of the sweetest and most profitable of all our religious duties 
 and privileges. Springing from love, it exercises, widens, 
 and strengthens love. It brings down blessing on others, 
 and it quickens the spirituality of the intercessor. ' I ex- 
 hort,' says Paul to Timothy, * that, first of all, supplications, 
 prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all 
 men.'' The believer recognises the brotherhood of universal 
 humanity, and by prayer ' for all men ' exerts a positive bene- 
 ficent influence on behalf of all ; whilst any other mode of 
 
VER. i6.J Confession and Prayer. 415 
 
 exhibiting the spirit of brotherhood has its range necessarily 
 confined to a very narrow circle. But whilst honouring and 
 praying for all men, he feels himself bound by a peculiarly 
 close and tender tie to his brethren in Christ. For them his 
 love is not of benevolence merely, but of complacency, sym- 
 pathy, delight. Accordingly he is urged by the impulses of 
 the new life to ' watch unto prayer with all perseverance and 
 supplication for all saints.'' These words of the Apostle Paul 
 stand in immediate and most suggestive connection with 
 the magnificent passage, so familiar to us all, regarding the 
 Christian's warfare and armour. As a Christian soldier, a 
 Vicars or a Havelock, in entering on an ordinary earthly 
 battle, would pray not for himself alone, but for all his fellow- 
 soldiers, feeling that they form one army, and that the success 
 of one is the success of all ; so in the grand spiritual warfare 
 every believer is constrained to pray for every other. The 
 high priest of the Old Economy had in his breastplate, resting 
 on his heart, when he went in before the Lord to pray, the 
 names of the twelve tribes of Israel, — a fact which beautifully 
 symbolized the tender love and constant care with which our 
 great divine High Priest continually intercedes for His people, 
 none of them forgotten, none of them even for a moment put 
 aside. We, too, who in Him are ' priests unto God,' should — 
 and in the measure of the liveliness and intelligence of our 
 faith we do — cast each of us by intercessory prayer his little 
 grain of incense into the divine High Priest's censer. The fact 
 is not without deep significance, my brethren, that in our re- 
 petition of the prayer which Jesus taught His disciples, we 
 never say ' I ' or 'mine,' but always with our own wants join 
 those of all everj^where, who through the common Saviour 
 trust in ' Our Father who is in heaven.' Illustrations of the 
 power of intercessory prayer abound in the Word of God. One 
 instance, striking in itself, and closely illustrative of the case 
 particularly alluded to by our apostle, that of prayer for fellow- 
 believers who have fallen into sin, is exhibited to us in God's 
 statement to Job's friends : ' My servant Job shall pray for 
 you, for him will I accept; lest I deal with you after your 
 
4 r6 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 folly, in that ye have not spoken of Me the thing which is 
 right, like My servant Job.' 
 
 The apostle's recommendation to his readers to ' pray one 
 for another,' he proceeds to enforce by a statement of the great 
 power of prayer, illustrated by an example. Prayer, he says, 
 ' availcth imich^ — a truth most precious to the believing heart. 
 There are some points connected with it which we cannot 
 understand, as there are connected with everything in the 
 relations between the Infinite One and His moral creatures ; 
 but nothing is more plainly revealed in Scripture, than that 
 prayer is a most efficient means of obtaining blessing. The 
 praying soul is through the very exercise refreshed, purified, 
 and elevated, feeling itself in the presence-chamber of the 
 Divine King and Father ; and besides this reflex influence of 
 the spiritual act, God answers prayer in the strictest and most 
 definite sense. ' Ask, and it shall be given you,' is the com- 
 mand, with the promise. It is evidently of this direct power 
 that the apostle is mainly thinking here, the injunction to in- 
 tercede with God for blessings on brethren having led him to 
 make the statement; and it is the direct power which the 
 example he adduces sets with liveliness before us. 
 
 The prayer which he declares to ' avail much ' is that of ' a 
 righteous inaii^ by which, comparing his own teaching in this 
 Epistle with the ordinary use of the expression in Scripture, 
 ^ we know him to mean a man genuinely pious — one who has a 
 faith which reveals its vitality by originating and sustaining a 
 godly life. Such a man, being a child of God, has freedom of 
 access to his Father, and will not be ' sent empty away.' * The 
 Lord will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him.' ' The 
 prayer of the upright is His delight.' But ' if I regard iniquity 
 in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.' For successful 
 prayer, oneness of will with God is needful. If two harps be 
 strung to the same key, but not otherwise, then let one be 
 struck, and the other will give a responsive sound. Now ' God 
 is love,' and the substance of ' righteousness ' is love, for ' love 
 is the fulfilling of the law.' 
 
 But James mentions another condition of success. Not 
 
VERS. 1 7, 1 8.] Confession and Prayer. 4 1 7 
 
 merely must the prayer be that of 'a righteous man,' but it 
 must be ^ effectual ferverit.^ This part of the sentence is a 
 somewhat remarkable exception to the usual admirable felicity 
 of the renderings of our translators : for these two words are 
 employed to represent one of the original ; and not merely is 
 there this cumbrousness, but one of the terms chosen plainly 
 introduces tautology into the statement, seeing that ' an effectual 
 prayer availeth much * is not greatly different from ' an effec- 
 tual prayer is effectual.' The double rendering arose evidently 
 from uncertainty regarding the exact force of the original term, — 
 an uncertainty which probably still most candid students share 
 with our venerable translators. On the whole, it seems to me 
 that ^ fervent^ or ' having energy,^ is the idea intended by the / 
 apostle ; and by his specifying this, we are reminded of the 
 melancholy truth that even ' righteous men,' the true children 
 of God, are prone to fall into spiritual torpor, so that their 
 very exercises of devotion lack energy of heart. Alas, what 
 Christian does not remember times when his praying seemed 
 to be little more than mechanical, — when, though perhaps the 
 words were glowing, the soul was cold? There can be no 
 power in such prayer. To ' avail much,' the ' righteous man's ' 
 cry to God must be not from the lip merely, but clearly and 
 fully from the heart — and from the heart with its longings 
 gathered up and concentrated on the object of supplication. 
 This is a ' prayer having energy.' The symbol for all time of 
 effectual supplication is Jacob's ' wrestling ' with the Angel ; 
 and God's people approve themselves to be indeed the spiri- 
 tual ' Israel,' ' princes who have power with God, and prevail,' 
 only when, like Jacob, they cling to God, saying, ' I will not 
 let Thee go, except Thou bless me.' 
 
 The example of the power of prayer which James introduces 
 is from the history of the illustrious prophet Elijah. At the 
 outset he obviates an objection that might naturally be raised 
 to the applicability of the case. He feels that the grandeur of 
 Elijah's character, the stupendousness of his miracles, the glory 
 of the mode of his departure from earth, and the peculiar 
 dignity with which Jewish superstition invested him as specially 
 
 2 D 
 
4i8 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 the guardian of Israel, might almost place him, in the feelings 
 of the Jewish Christians, in a class of beings distinct from the 
 human race, so that from th^e power of his prayers no conclu- 
 sion regarding ours could fairly be drawn. This possible and 
 probable difficulty the apostle removes at once by his intro- 
 ductory remark, that ' Elias was a man subject to like passions 
 as we are^ — a man, not an angel — and a man of a nature like 
 other men, with all the weaknesses that belong to humanity as 
 we now find it in the world. Similarly Peter said to Cornelius, 
 when he fell down at his feet and worshipped him, ' Stand up, 
 I myself also am a man ;' and Paul and Barnabas said to the 
 people of Lystra, who were about to sacrifice to them, ' Sirs, 
 why do ye these things? We also are ijiejt of like passions with 
 -you^ — exactly the expression here used by James of Elijah. 
 An interesting evidence that by our apostle the Lord Jesus was 
 held to possess an ineffable dignity of nature, is afforded by 
 comparing this description of Elijah, a man certainly in every 
 point of view one of the very noblest of our race, with the 
 name applied to the Saviour in the first verse of the second 
 chapter, ' our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.' 
 
 In the history of this 'righteous man' Elijah the power of 
 ■* fervent prayer ' was signally shown : ' He prayed earnestly ' 
 {observe the prominence given to the ' fervent ' character of 
 the entreaty) ' that it might not raiu, and it rained not on the 
 earth ' (rather, probably, ' on the land ' of Canaan, — a frequent 
 use of the original term in Scripture) ^ by the space of three years 
 and six months; and he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, 
 and the earth brought forth her friiit.^ The immediate echo- 
 like answer that comes to such prayer as Elijah's is vividly ex- 
 hibited by the language employed, ' He prayed earnestly that 
 it might not rain, and it rained not^ — recalling to us at once 
 the sublime ' Let there be light, and there was light,' and thus 
 suggesting the almightiness of the prayer that lays hold of the 
 almightiness of God. The potency of the prayer is further 
 indicated by the mention of the great length of time during 
 which the drought that had been asked for continued, and, in 
 the account of the effects of the second petition, by the de- 
 
VERS. 1 7, 1 8.] Confession and Prayer. 4 1 9 
 
 tailed statement that all the elements and powers of nature 
 yielded loyally to the imperial power of prayer : * The heaven 
 gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit,' 
 
 The statement made in this passage, and also in our Lord's 
 address to the people of Nazareth, as recorded by Luke (iv. 
 25), regarding the duration of the drought, appears on first 
 sight to be at variance with that given in the Old Testament 
 narrative, where we are told that ' the word of the Lord came 
 unto Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, show thyself unto 
 Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth' (i Kings xviii. i). 
 A satisfactory solution of the difficulty, however, is afforded 
 by the supposition, which is in every way probable, that in the 
 specification of time in the passage in First Kings the reckon- 
 ing is made not from the beginning of the drought, but from " 
 the period when the prophet left the brook Cherith and went 
 to live with the widow at Zarephath. 
 
 The fact that Elijah prayed to God to withhold rain is not 
 mentioned in the Old Testament, but was no doubt preserved 
 by Jewish tradition, which is here accepted and authenticated 
 by the inspired apostle ; just as, for example, the names of the 
 magicians of Pharaoh — the fact that at Mount Sinai, amid the 
 awful splendours of the manifestation of God, Moses said, ' I 
 exceedingly fear and quake ' — and the prophecy of Enoch re- 
 garding the Lord's coming to judgment, — are known to us only 
 through the New Testament. •"• In the narrative of the inci- 
 dents preceding the return of rain there is no express mention 
 of the offering up of prayer by the prophet ; but every reader 
 feels that, when ' he cast himself down upon the earth, and 
 put his face between his knees,' he was pleading with God 
 with intense fervour, and that here indeed lies the very life 
 of that portion of the history. 
 
 Before Elijah left Zarephath, he had been told by God, in 
 words quoted a little above, that rain was about to be given to 
 the thirsty earth ; and accordingly his petition on Carmel must 
 have been that Jioia Jehovah would fulfil His promise. Sub- 
 stantially, this is the sum of all prayer. The longing, ' Thy 
 ' See 2 Tim. iii. 8j Heb. xii, 21 ; Jude 14. 
 
42 o Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 will be done,' is of the essence of all acceptable supplication ; 
 and hence no petition can be offered by any intelligent be- 
 liever absolutely, without reservations, except such as is matter 
 of definite promise. When a wrestling soul would ' bring forth 
 its strong reasons' before the 'King of Jacob,' it turns in- 
 stinctively to His own declarations of grace. Prayer answers 
 promise, as fulfilment answers prayer. 'Surely I come quickly;' 
 'Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus.' In regard to the first of 
 Elijah's prayers which James mentions, that for the withholding 
 of rain, it is reasonable to suppose, from the peculiar nature 
 of the petition, that it had been made known to the prophet 
 by revelation that a judgment of this kind would be tributary 
 to the glory of the God of Israel, through the spiritual profiting 
 of His people. Thus he was fully authorized to present his 
 prayer. One may safely say, that without such special revela- 
 tion of the divine will there can scarcely occur circumstances 
 in which it would be right or wise — in which it would not be 
 signally unwise and wrong — to offer such a petition. To all 
 who, without the peculiar commission and direction of Elias, 
 are disposed, in fancied zeal for the Lord God of hosts, to 
 invoke drought, or to ' command fire to come down from " 
 heaven and consume the adversaries, even as Elias did,' Jesus 
 says, 'Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of Such a 
 disposition has a much closer connection with arrogance and 
 bigotry, with the ' wrath of man,' which ' worketh not the right- 
 eousness of God,' than with ' the wisdom that is from above, 
 peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and good fruits.' 
 
 Both of the apostle's references to the history of Elijah 
 obviously illustrate very strikingly his declaration, that 'the 
 fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.' The second 
 of them has a special suitableness and force in the connection 
 in which it is introduced. He has been enjoining on his 
 readers to ' pray one for another, that they might be healed,' 
 particularly of spiritual torpor and disease. How cheering, 
 then, the thought that, if the energy of Elijah's prayer brought 
 rain to refresh the parched earth and revive a people ready to 
 perish, not less certainly the prayer of faith can bring down 
 
VERS. 1 7, 1 8.] Confession and Prayer. 42 1 
 
 not merely on the petitioning heart, but on many souls besides, 
 the genial showers of the Spirit's gracious influences ! — for God 
 has promised, saying, ' I will be as the dew unto Israel : he 
 shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. I 
 will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the 
 dry ground : I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and My 
 blessing upon thine offspring ; and they shall spring up as 
 among the grass, as willows by the water-courses.' 
 
42 2 Lectures on the Epistle of J antes, [ch. v. 
 
 XXXI. 
 ERROR AND CONVERSION. 
 
 • Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him ; 
 20 Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the 
 error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multi- 
 tude of sins.' — ^James v. 19, 20. 
 
 THE connection of these words with what precedes is not 
 far to seek. The apostle has recommended to the 
 brethren mutual confession of sin, and that they should ask 
 for each other in prayer forgiveness of sin and spiritual 
 strength. Sin, and desire for the deliverance of others as 
 well as ourselves from sin, being thus the subjects occupying 
 his mind, he very naturally passes on next to impress on his 
 readers how great a thing it is to be the instrument in God's 
 hand of bringing back a sinner to his heavenly Father ; and 
 with this he fittingly closes his letter. His own aim, through- 
 out all that he has written, has most obviously and directly 
 been to stimulate Christians to higher attainments in godli- 
 ness, and to arouse to sincere repentance those who only had 
 *a name to live;' and nothing can be more meet than that 
 he should conclude with an appeal to all God's children whom 
 his words might reach, to do similar work in their various 
 spheres, and by the various means that God might put in their 
 power. 
 
 The form of this concluding exhortation is a little peculiar, 
 — the peculiarity, as you will see on a moment's consideration, 
 being advantageous to its effect. In the first part, contained 
 in the nineteenth verse, James continues that style of direct 
 address to his readers which has prevailed throughout the 
 Epistle, thus securing that his statement or appeal will have 
 for their consciences and hearts the special force always be- 
 
VERS. 19, 20.] Error a7id Conversion. 423 
 
 longing to what is distinctly intended for ourselves. Then 
 the second part is in form altogether general. The erring 
 professing Christian, the ' any of you ' of the nineteenth verse, 
 is in the twentieth classed under the far wider term ' sinner ; ' 
 and the expressing of the subject, ' he which converteth,' makes 
 this part a sentence quite complete in itself. Thus we have 
 a truth of the greatest importance condensed into a shape 
 striking and easily remembered : * He which converteth a 
 sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, 
 and shall hide a multitude of sins.' There are in the New 
 Testament many of these summaries of truth, so drawn out 
 as to be complete in themselves, and thus carrying with them 
 their full significance, or at least a very ample significance, 
 even when quoted apart from the context in which they 
 occur : and in these we see an evidence of the watchful care 
 of God, providing for all the wants of His children. Even we 
 in these latter days, though we have Bibles in abundance, 
 find very great advantage in these condensed statements — 
 in such ' little gospels,' for example, as, ' God so loved the 
 world, that He gave His only begotten Son^ that whosoever 
 believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting hfe.' 
 It is plain, then, that they must have been vastly more re- 
 quired in the first ages of the church,, when copies of even 
 a single Gospel or Epistle could be possessed by only a few 
 persons, and, in the case of the great majority of believers, the 
 bread of life for daily sustenance must have been simply the 
 truth borne in memory from public reading and exposition. 
 In circumstances like these, it must manifestly have been of 
 immeasurable benefit to have such portable statements of 
 truth as that before us. Those given in Scripture, and 
 others provided for the necessities of the time by the in- 
 spired teachers, constituted in all likelihood the class known 
 by the special name of ' faithful sayings,' of which Paul in 
 the Pastoral Epistles quotes several, obviously as precious 
 commonplaces of the church's faith, ' familiar in their mouths 
 as household words.' 
 
 One other remark on the form of the passage it seems 
 
424 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 desirable to make. I have spoken of it as an appeal or 
 exhortation. Strictly speaking, it is an exhibition of the 
 grounds of satisfaction and thankfulness possessed by the 
 Christian who has reclaimed an erring brother : ' If any of 
 you do err from the truth, and one convert him, let him (him 
 who has thus gained his brother) know.' But this is, in effect, 
 plainly an incitement to all Christians, by the setting forth of 
 the most powerful motives, to labour for the conversion of 
 sinners. 
 
 When we proceed to consider the passage in detail, the first 
 thing that strikes us is the importance that the apostle obvi- 
 ously ascribes to apprehending and cleaving to ' the truth.^ 
 You observe that '■to err (or wander) /;'(?;;? the truth'' is employed 
 by him clearly as having much the same force as ' to wander 
 away from Christianity, as an agency for producing moral 
 elevation and true happiness ; ' and * the error (or wandering — 
 from the truth, obviously, in the connection) of a man's way'' is 
 that which constitutes him ' a shmer.' The sense of the pas- 
 sage shows clearly enough (and, if confirmation be needed, it 
 is afforded by the apostle's use of the expression elsewhere in 
 the Epistle^) that by ' the truth' he means not 'truthfulness' 
 merely, but either ' the body of revealed truth,' or ' the kind of 
 character, in all its length and breadth, which religious truth, 
 received in the love of it, naturally forms.' The expression is 
 used frequently, as you will remember, in the writings of the 
 other apostles also in one or other of these senses ; and indeed 
 it was evidently the ordinary, or at least a very familiar, phrase 
 in the primitive church to designate * the gospel,' either looked 
 at simply by itself, or as influencing men's hearts and moulding 
 their lives. 
 
 In our day, the opponents of evangelical religion very often 
 take up the ground that it is a matter of indifference what our 
 views of truth are, — of no consequence what we believe, or 
 whether we believe anything, provided our life is honourable. 
 This principle pervades very much of the teaching regarding 
 religion in our popular literature. It is often avowed, for 
 ' See iii. 14. 
 
VER. I9-] Error and Conversion. 425 
 
 example, in defence of the freedom given in the Church of 
 England for the teaching of almost all varieties of doctrine. 
 * A national religious association,' the defenders of the present 
 state of things say, ' should comprise holders of all shades of 
 belief; for its purpose is not to inculcate particular doctrinal 
 tenets, but simply to secure throughout the country the pre- 
 sence of educated gentlemen, all teaching the people to live 
 sober and respectable lives, to be upright and industrious, kind 
 to their neighbours, and obedient to their rulers.' Among 
 another and spiritually higher class than those who entertain 
 such defective views of the nature and purposes of the church 
 of Christ, positions of this kind are very popular, — that religion 
 is but little a matter of the understanding, but almost solely of 
 the heart ; that doctrines have been the seeds of all the con- 
 troversies and heartburnings that have disfigured the history of 
 the church, whereas charity is the essence of Christianity, for 
 ' God is love ; ' that Jesus said, ' I am the truth,' and those 
 therefore who have Him in their hearts have the truth. All 
 of you who have any acquaintance with the literature of what 
 calls itself the ' Broad School ' of religious thinkers are familiar 
 with writing of this kind. Now such words contain much that 
 is important, much that is true ; and just here, in the truth 
 and preciousness of many of the statements, when understood 
 in their proper relation to Bible teaching generally, lies their 
 great power to mislead when distorted from that relation. 
 When put forward to depreciate the importance of knowing 
 and cherishing doctrinal truth, propositions of the kind I have 
 quoted rest on a false assumption, — this, namely, that apart 
 from the perception and belief of truth by the mind, the heart 
 can become pure, and loving, and holy before God. Now, 
 according to the plain teaching of such passages of Scripture 
 as that before us — according to the whole tenor of Scripture 
 indeed, as well as the declarations of experience — the know- 
 ledge and belief of certain grand truths are absolutely needful 
 to produce holy affections. The man who has Jesus in his 
 heart has ' the truth ;' but Jesus enters the seat of the affec- 
 tions through the mind — through the intelligent behef of such 
 
426 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [cii. v. 
 
 truth regarding Him as dispels the atmosphere of falsehood 
 which by nature filled the whole soul. ' If ye continue in My 
 word,' said Jesus, ' then are ye My disciples indeed ; and ye 
 shall know the truth, and the truth shall make youfree.^ It is 
 plainly implied that nothing else can. 
 
 Round truth controversy gathers, and controversy is very 
 often painful. But it by no means follows that true Christian 
 happiness or true Christian love can rest better on the basis 
 of a mere vague and dreamy sentiment than on truth believed, 
 — or indeed can rest on any such basis at all. Jesus, the 
 incarnate Love, the Prince of peace, spent very much of His 
 public life in controversy. His apostles, too, lived much in 
 controversy. John, to whom of all the followers of the Lord 
 we should, from what we know of his character, look first 
 for the manifestation of a true and beautiful charity, says in 
 one of his letters, ' Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not 
 in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God;' and proceeds to 
 charge thus the friends to whom he writes regarding the 
 heretical teachers who abounded at the time : ' If there come 
 any unto you, and bring not this doctrine' (the ' doctrine of 
 Christ,' just mentioned), 'receive him not into your house, 
 neither bid him God speed ; for he that . biddeth him God 
 speed is partaker of his evil deeds.' Controversy in which 
 sentiments like these are propounded with intense earnestness 
 by one of so loving a character, certainly proceeds on the 
 supposition that some truths are of essential moment, vitally 
 important for the peace and joy of the soul, for the existence 
 and growth of godliness and spiritual beauty. As I have 
 been led to refer to John's" eminently clear and instructive 
 testimony on this question, let him speak to us further as to 
 what are these cardinal truths. Such as these : ' If we say that 
 we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in 
 us :' 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
 God, and the Word was God:'' 'And the Word was made 
 flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth :' ' And He 
 is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also 
 
VER. 19-] Error and Conversion. 427 
 
 for the sins of the whole world :' ' If we confess our sins, God 
 is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
 from all unrighteousness,' seeing that 'we have an Advocate 
 with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous:' 'And he that 
 keepeth God's commandments dwelleth in Him, and He in 
 him; and hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the 
 Spirit which He hath given us.' Such truths as these, in their 
 connection and ramifications, as fully exhibited in Scripture, 
 constitute the ' doctrine of Christ,' which it is of transcendent 
 importance that a man know, and believe, and abide in, seeing 
 that he who abides therein ' hath both the Father and the Son ' 
 (2 John 9). 
 
 From its nature, this truth, when believed, exercises supreme 
 influence over the affections of the heart and in the regulation 
 of the life, producing love to God and devotion to His will. 
 But obviously it can do this only when believed. Till then, 
 however fully known, it cannot hold sway ; for it is not truth 
 to me — it remains a thing external to me — until I believe it. 
 And in proportion to the intelligence and the realizing liveli- 
 ness of our faith, will be the measure of power exerted over us 
 by the truth believed. * Error,' then, in one who has professed 
 himself a Christian (and to this class James specially refers in 
 the passage before us : 'If any of you do err from the truth '), 
 may show itself in two ways. There may be definite disbelief, 
 definite acceptance of falsehood, such as that of Hymenaeus 
 and Philetus in Paul's days, who, as the apostle tells Timothy, 
 
 * concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection 
 is past already, and overthrow the faith of some' (2 Tim. ii. 18). 
 Through the prevalent intellectual restlessness of our time, 
 illustrations abound of this kind of error, in the most varied 
 directions. The young Christian, in particular, is in much 
 peril of being led seriously astray ; and it becomes us all very 
 earnestly, by candid and diligent study of the word of God, to 
 
 * build ourselves up on our most holy faith, — praying in the Holy 
 Ghost.' But again, even whilst the creed continues sound, at 
 least even where a man has no consciousness of intellectual 
 
428 Lectures on the Epistle of ya7nes. [ch. v. 
 
 deviation, there may be real and most serious * wandering ' 
 from 'the truth,' through worldhness and torpor of spirit, 
 rendering the creed practically a dead thing. The Apostle 
 John, you remember, tells us that his great delight was to 
 hear that his spiritual children ' walked in truth ' (3 John 4, 
 and 2 John 4), — having it, that is, as an atmosphere, in which 
 they lived and moved, and by which they were every moment 
 sustained. In so far as this is not the case with us, in so far 
 as in feeling or practice we are not pervaded and governed by 
 * the truth,' and thus approve ourselves ' children of light,' we 
 are in ' error,' wanderers from ' the truth,' as really as if we 
 definitely disbelieved it. There is something of this in all 
 Christians ; the best of us ' come short of the glory of God ;' 
 and alas, my brethren, there are lamentably many bearing the 
 Christian name, and believing themselves to hold Christian 
 truth, whose lives seem rather those of ' children of darkness.' 
 In all — whether calling themselves Christians or not — who do 
 not sincerely love God, the whole course of life is necessarily 
 one of * error.' ' Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, 
 and dwelt in the land of Wandering^ and all other enemies of 
 God do likewise. They stray in devious paths after shadows, 
 'seeking rest and finding none,' until, unless divine grace 
 check them in their folly, 'their feet stumble on the dark 
 mountains.' Let us then cleave to 'the truth,' dear brethren, 
 in faith and in practice. We rejoice to believe in the certain 
 perseverance of the saints in a state of grace, but we know 
 that this is a perseverance in child-like submission to the 
 enlightening and sanctifying power of the truth. Let us 
 therefore ' watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation,' re- 
 membering that no doom is so terrible as that of the apostate 
 professor of religion, ' who hath trodden under foot the Son 
 of God, and done despite unto the Spirit of grace.' 
 
 Our apostle directs the attention of his readers to the blessed 
 results of ^ converti7ig a sm?ier from the error of his way!' It 
 is evident that he has before his mind error of the most serious 
 kind, whether of creed or conduct, or both. To ^convert a 
 
VER. 20.] Error and Conversion. 429 
 
 sinner'' is God's work, for no arm but that of the Ahnighty 
 can arrest him, and turn him from his ' error ' to ' the truth.' 
 But He graciously employs human agency in the work, 
 to exhibit and enforce the truth to mind and heart. The 
 Spirit of God alone is the power that quickens the vines ; but 
 the Divine Husbandman employs His children in the culture, 
 saying to every one of them, 'Son, go work to-day in My 
 vineyard.' He permits us (and this is surely the highest con- 
 ceivable honour for His moral creatures) to be 'labourers 
 together with Him ; ' and to all earnest workers He gives no 
 stinted praise, speaking often of the work that was done only 
 in and through Himself as their work. To Paul, Jesus said, 
 that He sent him to the Gentiles 'to open their eyes, and 
 to turn them ("convert" them — the same word as here) from 
 darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God' 
 (Acts xxvi. 18). Similarly of John the Baptist, before his 
 birth, it was predicted by the angel to Zacharias : ' He shall be 
 filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb, and 
 many of the children of Israel shall he turn (convert) to the 
 Lord their God' (Luke i. 15, 16). 
 
 'Let believers, then,' says our apostle, ' for their incitement 
 to earnestness and perseverance in the work of God, consider 
 this, that whosoever is instrumental in converting a sinner from 
 the error of his ways, shall save a soul from deaths By nature, 
 as you know, brethren, we are all spiritually dead. God made 
 man 'a living soul;' and in Eden all the elements of his being 
 sounded forth, in grand, rich, unbroken harmony, an anthem to 
 the praise of his Father in heaven. He served God perfectly, 
 and in the service had perfect joy. That was life. But 
 
 ' Disproportioned sin 
 Jarred against nature's chime, and with harsh din 
 Broke the fair music that all creatures made 
 To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed 
 In perfect diapason, whilst they stood 
 In first obedience, and their state of good.' ^ 
 
 ^ Milton's Lines at a Solann Mustek, 
 
430 Lectures on the Epistle of James, [ch. v. 
 
 For moral creatures such discord is death; and thus we are all 
 now, by nature, ' dead in trespasses and sins.' From this death 
 conversion delivers at once : for the Saviour's declaration was, 
 ' Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me hath 
 everlasting life ' (John vi. 47). The apostle, however, seems 
 to have mainly before his mind that intensity of debasement 
 and misery in the world to come, to which by fair natural 
 development this spiritual death of earth leads,— that unutter- 
 ably awful condition which the Lord, ' the Faithful Witness,' 
 describes as ' outer darkness, where shall be weeping and 
 gnashing of teeth, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is 
 not quenched,' and which His servant John calls ' the second 
 death.' A person who rescues a fellow-creature from imminent 
 danger of physical death, has justly very high satisfaction in 
 the remembrance ; yet this is but deliverance, for the body — 
 but the prolongation for, at the furthest, a few years, of a life 
 in which there will be much weariness, and care, and sorrow. 
 How rich must be the blessedness, then, of him who, by 
 ' converting a sinner,' ' saves his soul from death,' — rescuing, 
 and that for ever, not the body merely, but the 'glory' of 
 man, as the Psalmist has it, the rational spirit on which God 
 imprinted His own likeness, from the horrors of the place 
 of woe ! 
 
 ' And shall hide a multitude of sins^ These words are em- 
 ployed, with a different application, by the Apostle Peter (i 
 Pet. iv. 8); and we may reasonably suppose, therefore, that 
 the phrase — founded, as Peter's use of it in particular plainly 
 enough indicates, on Prov. x. 12, 'Love covereth all sins' — 
 was a familiar one among religious Jews. The language, as 
 employed in any of the places, may, when taken apart from 
 its connection, be referred to with some plausibility, and as 
 a matter of fact very often is referred to, as intimating what 
 the arrogance of the carnal mind would delight to find in the 
 Bible — that salvation is through man's works, and not of God's 
 free grace. The ' sins ' are, on this view, regarded as those of 
 the person in whom the ' love ' or ' charity ' reigns ; or, in the 
 
VER. 20.] Error and Conve7^sioit. 431 
 
 present passage, who shows his love by * converting ' a brother. 
 But a Httle consideration will show that in none of the places 
 is this the writer's reference. In the passages in Proverbs and 
 the Epistle of Peter there cannot be a moment's doubt, when 
 the context is looked at, that it is the sins of those for whom 
 the love is entertained which are covered ; and in James also 
 the natural and obvious interpretation of the clause is to take 
 it as bringing out more explicitly the force of the preceding, 
 ' shall save a soul from death,' — an interpretation which, when 
 we look at it in the light afforded by the certain reference of 
 the phrase in the other places, cannot but be deemed by a 
 candid student to be itself certain. Here, as well as every- 
 where else, careful and honest scrutiny of our apostle's words 
 shows him to be in perfect harmony with the general teaching 
 of Scripture. 
 
 ' Blessed,' says David, ' is he whose transgression is forgiven, 
 whose shi is covered.^ This is the ' rover ing^ or ' hiding,^ spoken 
 of by James. Manifestly, therefore, it is God's act ; and in 
 James's statement, that the Christian who ' converts a sinner ' 
 'shall hide' that sinner's sins, the 'hide' is employed, in ac- 
 cordance with the apostle's general liveliness of expression, for 
 ' bringing about the hiding.' By leading the sinner to repent- 
 ance he brings him within the sphere of God's covenant mercy, 
 which ' hides his sins,' so that God looks upon them no more. 
 In the ancient 'Holy of Holies'* gospel grace was typified by 
 the fact that the tables of the law, placed in the ark, were 
 ' covered ' by the blood-besprinkled mercy-seat, above which 
 shone the Shekinah, the special symbol of the divine presence. 
 So, in looking upon all who, through the work of His Spirit, 
 have believed in Jesus, God sees not their wickedness calling 
 for punishment, but the Saviour's perfect righteousness, which 
 ' hides ' their sins. 
 
 And in every case these sins are ' a jnuliiiude.'' However 
 morally correct the outward conduct of the unregenerate man 
 may be, however noble in some respects his aspirations, yet 
 love to God does not hold sway in his heart, and thus he is 
 
432 Lectures on the Epistle of Javtes. [ch. v. 
 
 constantly disobedient to the 'first and great commandment.' 
 The regenerate man, too, though the love of God is supreme 
 in his heart, yet is guilty of many shortcomings and slips in 
 his Father's service : ' In many things we offend all.' And the 
 more fully that He ' who commanded the light to shine out ot 
 darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the 
 knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,' 
 ever the more clearly, in that ' marvellous light,' do we see the 
 intensity of the darkness from which God's grace has brought 
 us out, and the ' multitude' and abominableness of the sins 
 committed under it, and also the greatness of the darkness 
 which we still permit to remain in the corners and crannies of 
 our souls and lives. ' Job answered the Lord, and said, I have 
 heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye 
 seeth Thee ; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and 
 ashes.' 
 
 But however many or however heinous our sins may be, the 
 mercy of God in Christ can ' cover' them all, and will do this 
 for every one who believes the gospel. ' The blood of Jesus 
 Christ, God's Son, cleanseth from all sin.' Beyond all question, 
 then, ' he which converteth a sinner from the error of his way, 
 shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of 
 sins.' 
 
 You cannot but feel how efficient a stimulus there is in these 
 words to earnest, persevering, prayerful effort for the spiritual 
 good of those around us. If we saw our neighbour carefully 
 cultivating a tree in his garden which he took for a good apple 
 tree, but we knew to bear fruit that was deadly poison, — or if we 
 saw, and he did not, that his house was on fire, and, if active 
 measures were not immediately taken, would be burned down, 
 — we should certainly think it the dictate of common humanity 
 to warn him. Believing, then, that sin's fruit is bitter here, 
 and will be unutterably and unendingly bitter hereafter ; be- 
 lieving that sinners are every day fanning a fire which, if they 
 continue impenitent, must devour for ever, and ' burn unto the 
 lowest hell,' — can we, standing by, remain calm and silent ? Is 
 
VER. 20.] Error and Conversion. 433 
 
 it Christian to say, or act as if we said, ' Am I my brother's 
 keeper?' Certainly, my brethren, in so far as we have the 
 ' Spirit of Christ,' we shall, as God gives us opportunity, show to 
 the ' dead in trespasses and sins' Him who is ' the Resurrection 
 and the Life,' feeling it to be of all delights the most exquisite 
 ' to save a soul from death.' ' They that be wise shall shine as 
 the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to 
 righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.' Wherefore ' Let 
 him that heareth say, Come.' 
 
 THE END. 
 
 MURRAY AND GIBB, EDINBURGH, 
 
 PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE. 
 
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