James 1

1. JAMES, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are 2 scattered abroad, greeting. My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers tempta- 3 tions; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have 4 her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. If any of you lack 5 wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it 6 shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is 7 like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that 8 he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A doubleminded man is unstable in all his ways. 9 Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted: but the rich, in that he is made 10 low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen 11 with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace 12 of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways. 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.

WE shall not find a phrase that better describes the real end and purpose of our discipline in this world than the one James has given us: “The trying of your faith.” It is for the trying of your faith that your will is suffered to be free, that limits are set to your strength, that your desires outrun your ability, that your aspiration transcends your performance, that your energy so often has to droop its tired wings and sink back baffled, that the flesh lusteth against the spirit and your passions chafe against your principles. It is for the trying of your faith that unexpected joys rise up and flock about you, that mornings of consolation break after nights of sorrow, that the alarm of pain sounds through your chambers at midnight, that inward admonitions point you forward to a day when all costlier garments shall be exchanged for a shroud and strange hands shall lower your dust into a grave. It is for the trying of your faith that your little island of knowledge is embosomed in an ocean of mystery; that the Bible is not all plain to the understanding, nor God’s voice audible when we are perplexed, nor the way-marks of duty always visible; that the brightest lamps are often quenched first; that moral purity is not out- wardly rewarded, and righteous plans seem to fail. And, what is perhaps unlikelier to be believed than all, it is for the trying of your faith that markets fluctuate and crops grow or fail. It is for this God places us in the world, schools us in it, takes us out of it. For are we not immortal? And is not the principle of our immortality faith in the Father of our spirits, in his Son who manifests him and is the way to him, in his spiritual truth, in the kingdom of heaven? F. D. H.

FROM the Pauline writings we pass to the col- lection of the Catholic Epistles. For all internal reasons they are better read in the place which they occupy in our Bibles than that in which the older manuscripts generally assign them, preceding the Epistles of Paul; for they are in effect the confirmation and the supplement of his doctrine. The personal characteristics of these writers are unlike those of Paul; the aspects of the truth are different, but the substance and the features are the same. Each writer, by the strongly dis- tinguished lines of his own individuality, makes still more conspicuous the unity of the common faith. The Epistle of James alone makes at first sight an opposite impression, and instead of har- monizing with the full development of evangelical doctrine, may appear to belong to an earlier, or rather a retrograde stage. But the careful and candid student sees that the language employed dis- tinctly presupposes the evangelical doctrine, and by supplementing other expositions of it does in fact acknowledge and confirm them. T. D. B.

I assume that James, the writer of our Epistle, was the famous brother of the Lord; not the apos- tle, the son of Alpheus. That Paul appears to call the brother of our Lord an apostle (Gal. 1: 19) is no argument against such an assumption; for there were others so denominated besides the twelve; and it is very doubtful whether the phraseology of that verse need imply that James was called an apostle at all. In Acts 1: 13 we find the Lord’s brethren expressly mentioned as forming part of that band who, with the apostles and the mother of our Lord, were as- sembled in the “upper room” after the ascension. An appearance of our risen Lord to “James” is mentioned by Paul (1 Cor. 15: 7). A.

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 ac- cords with what Matt. 1: 25 and Luke 2: 7 naturally imply, and that it accounts perfectly for the closeness of their association with Mary, as described in the various statements made regarding 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 probably not much under forty. But the statements made regarding them in the gospels appear naturally to imply that they were still unmarried and residing with Mary. Now, considering how early the Jews usually married, and that at least two of these “brothers” did actually marry (see 1 Cor. 9: 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 and Luke 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. Johnstone. (See Vol. I., p. 231.)

James the Just we know already as a strict legalist, who after Peter’s removal to other lands, A. D. 44 (Acts 12: 17), presided over the Church of Jerusalem and of all Palestinian Christianity down almost to the great catastrophe, and stood as mediator between Jews and Christians. In conformity with this character, education, and office, he conceives objective Christianity as law, thus standing on the ground of the Mosaic system, while at the same time he rises above it in representing Christianity as the “perfect law of liberty.” He views the law in its deep moral import, and as such an organic unit that whoever transgresses a single precept violates the whole, and incurs the full penalty. The law requires actual observance and fulfillment, a conduct conformed to its precepts. Hence James’s hostility to all lifeless, intellectual, and nominal Christianity, and his earnest stress on works, the fruits of faith, the palpable proof of justification. And as he sees in the law an indivisible unit, so he requires the Christian life to be one effusion, one complete and faultless work. Finally, as with him the sum and substance of the law is love, so the fulfilling of the law consists in undivided love to God and our neighbor, with which the love of the world and of self is absolutely incompatible. Consequently James places the essence of the Christian religion in a holy, irreproachable walk of love, and of a love, too, based ultimately on a new birth (1: 17, 18, 21) and on faith in Christ, the Lord of glory (2: 1, 22). These are the leading thoughts of the Epistle of James. He is the apostle of the law as leading to Christ, regulating the Christian life, and promoting moral earnestness. P. S.

His was preëminently the standing-point of Jewish piety as it manifests itself in the forms of the Old Testament. 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 fulfillment. 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. N.—Had not a Peter, and, above all, a Paul, arisen as supplementary to James, Christianity would perhaps never have become entirely emancipated from the thrall of Judaism, and asserted its own independence. Still there was a necessity for the ministry of James. If any could win over the ancient covenant people, it was he. It pleased God to set so high an example of Old Testament piety in its purest form among the Jews, to make conversion to the gospel, even at the eleventh hour, as easy as possible for them. But when they would not listen to the voice of this last messenger of peace, then was the measure of the divine patience exhausted, and the fearful and long-threatened judgment broke forth. And thus was the mission of James fulfilled. He was not to outlive the destruction of the holy city and the temple. According to Hegesippus, he was martyred in the year before that event, A. D. 69.

The genial Herder has characterized the Epistle in these striking words: “What a noble man speaks in this Epistle! Deep, unbroken patience in suffering! Greatness in poverty! Joy in sorrow! Simplicity, sincerity, firm, direct confidence in prayer! To nothing is he more opposed than to unbelief, to pusillanimous, destructive subtlety, to double-mindedness. But what a way he has of drawing nigh to God! He speaks of power, the miraculous power of prayer, as of the most certain, unfailing thing, heartily, from experience, with particular instances and proofs—verily, a man full of the Holy Ghost, a praying man, a disciple of Jesus! How well he knows wisdom, and the origin of true and false wisdom in the minds of men! He puts restraint on the tongue, even in its most specious workings, the tongue, which murders by lusts and passions! Disciple of heavenly wisdom! How he wants action! Not words, not (dead intellectual) faith, but free action, perfect, noble action according to the royal law of the Spirit, the free—the purified Pharisee, or Essene—the Christian!” P. S.

1. His humility appears in this, that, though in the flesh he was the kinsman of the Lord Jesus, yet he uses the word “servant,” “servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” There may be this especial reason for so writing, namely, to show his countrymen, the Jews, to whom this Epistle is addressed, that in serving Christ he served the God of his fathers. James was happier too, no doubt, in being Christ’s servant than in being his kinsman. T. M.—His use of the expression, “the twelve tribes,” shows that he regarded those who were called Jews and Israelites in his time, whether dwelling in Palestine or scattered through the East, not as the mere descendants of Judah and Benjamin, but as the representatives of all the tribes of Israel, the tribal distinction of territory having been lost for many generations. The Epistle to the Hebrews was written to the Christian Jews in Palestine; this to Christian Israelites scattered over other lands; the first Epistle of Peter to those of the Jewish dispersion who dwelt in Asia Minor. These books form a trilogy; and, though written without any concert, were probably composed about the same time, A. D. 60 or 61. D. F.

Which 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 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, or those who were in it, had the name of “The Dispersion.” James’s Epistle, then, is addressed to the Jews of the Dispersion, the Jews living out of Palestine. The whole tenor of the letter shows that it was written to the Christians among these Jews. 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 themselves. Johnstone.

2. The use of the word “temptations” shows us that the afflictions of God’s people are but trials; they are not judgments, but corrections or trials; they are part of God’s discipline to mortify sin, or his means to discover grace, so as to prove our faith, love, patience, sincerity, or constancy. Evils are better borne when we fall into them rather than draw them upon ourselves. We lose the comfort of sufferings when there is guilt in them. T. M.—To venture upon the occasion of sin, and then to pray, Lead us not into temptation, is the same as to thrust thy finger into the fire, and then pray that it may not be burned. Brooks.—But still temptations are not scattered all about us without a purpose. And if it is true on the one side that we have no right to run into temptations, so is it true on the other hand that temptations are the necessary discipline of our lives. F. T.

3. The trying of faith.** Of all graces, God delights that the reality of “faith” should be discovered. We work by love, but live by faith. It is faith that makes the soul “stand” to its proof and to its trial here. If, then, we have faith, we must look for trials. Graces are not crowned until they are exercised. Faith must be tried before it is found to praise and honor. Worketh patience. To the wicked every condition is a snare, but to the godly every state brings its blessing; their prosperity “works” thankfulness, their adversity “patience.” Afflictions serve to examine and prove our faith, and by the blessing of God to bring forth fruit with patience. Patience is the quiet fruit of righteousness. T. M.—There may be still some doubt while a man is underset with outward helps, as riches, friends, esteem, whether he leans upon those or upon God. But when all these outward props are plucked away, then it will be manifest whether something else upholds him or not; for if there be nothing else, he falls; but if his mind stands firm as before, it is evident he laid not his weight upon these things he had then about him, but was built upon a foundation, though not seen, which is able alone to stay him. L.

The settled conclusion God obviously wishes us to reach and rest in, and one that he passes us through all this mixed encounter of pain and peace to establish in us, is this: that in every passage of our life there are two parties engaged—God and ourselves. Most of us have to learn it by a long and gradual trying of our faith. A nominal belief in such a truth is common enough. But veritably to realize that God is personally present and interested in the little gettings-on of our virtue, is a rarer attainment, and needs a peculiar training. To achieve that result, the divine methods are wonderful. He buffets and caresses. He gives and takes away. He sends now a providence signal and exceptional, and then the regularity of nature. He answers some prayers according to their request, and others by withholding the boon, but still thereby increasing submission. He twines together motives the most complicated. He keeps generous men poor, and lets the selfish and sensual gain the world. All this for the trying of our faith. F. D. H.—The little trials of an ordinary career—the trials which involve nothing loftier or more sublime than the rubs and collisions of every-day life—the trials, in short, which range themselves under the heads of tongue and temper—make a larger demand upon our patience, and are perhaps a greater drain upon our fortitude and endurance, than even those in which God makes our flesh quiver with the tearing of the pincers of affliction. E. M. G.

4. Never be discouraged because good things get on so slowly here, and never fail to do daily that good which lies next to your hand. Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord. God can afford to wait; why can not we, since we have him to fall back upon? Let patience have her perfect work, and bring forth her celestial fruits. McD.—True grace aims at nothing short of complete holiness; but for this there must be the exercise of patience, faith, prayer, hope—all the fruits of grace! Yes, while we are in the world, we are to go on to a more and more perfect discovery of patience, and follow them who through “faith and patience inherit the promises.”

5. If any lack wisdom.** Although all do not lack in the same manner or in the same degree, yet who of all men does not in some measure lack wisdom? God’s wisdom suffers the creature to lack, because dependence begets observance. If we were not forced to hang upon heaven and to live upon the continued supplies of God, we should not care for him. Promises usually invite those that are in want, because they are most likely to regard them. T. M.—“To lead his followers into all truth” is a most important characteristic of the divine Spirit, which we ought to ask from God, because often wisdom and religion have been parted from each other, and religious zeal and common sense have regarded each other with suspicion. But, in fact, they are most nearly allied. Common sense, discretion, judgment, are high Christian graces. They are God’s gifts, to enable us to do the work which is set before us. To be able to see the truth, and to discern the false from the true, and to wish to know the truth, this is a gift which is needed by the highest philosopher; but it is needed also by the humblest man or youth that has to make his way in life, and to serve his God and his country faithfully and truly. A. P. S.

Ask of God. God will have us see the author of every mercy by the way of obtaining it. It is a comfort and a privilege to receive mercies in a way of duty. Prayer coming between our desires and the bounty of God is a mean to beget a due respect between him and us. We usually wear with thanks what we win by prayer, and these comforts are best improved which we receive upon our knees. Well, then, wisdom, and every good gift, is an alms—you have it for asking; mercies at that rate do not cost dear. Who would not be one of God’s suppliants? T. M.—Even among those who do pray regularly, the prayer for wisdom does not, I suspect, form a part of their petitions. Many of us seem to have a confused notion that sense, reason, good judgment, or by whatever name we call our intellectual faculties, are quite distinct from spiritual blessings, and are things too worldly to be named in our prayers. Yet what was Solomon’s choice but “an understanding heart to judge the people”? that is, a sound and powerful mind capable of discerning the truth and the right in the line of his daily duty. Solomon’s choice should be our prayer; in James’s words, we should ask of God to give us wisdom. T. A.

6. Ask in faith.** Prayer must be regulated by faith, and faith must not wander out of the limits of the word of God. If you have a promise, you may be confident that your requests will be heard, though in God’s time. All things are to be asked in faith; some things absolutely, as spiritual blessings. Other things conditionally. Let the prayer be according to the word, and the success (in God’s season) will be according to the prayer.

The doubter is compared here to “a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed”; tossed to and fro—agitated. Until faith gives some certainty, this is our state—tossed and driven; and what rest and peace is there for a soul, tossed, agitated, shaken, and driven about? Faith, God’s gift (and a gift which he loves us to feel our need of and to ask for)—faith in God’s power and love begets a calm. T. M.—The feeling of unbelief, wherever cherished, must, on the principles of the gospel, be fatal to all power. Trust, firm trust, straightforward, childlike trust, is the everlasting condition of all coöperation with God. He will not use, He will not bless, He will not inhabit the heart that, at the moment when it offers him a request, says, “I doubt thee.” Arthur.

And upbraideth not. God does not reproach his people with the frequency of their addresses to him for mercy, and is never weary of doing them good. Man is wont to excuse himself by what he has already done; the stock of men wastes by giving, and therefore they grow weary. We are afraid to press a friend too much, lest by frequent use kindness be worn out. But the oftener we come to God the welcomer; his gates are always open, and he is still ready to receive us. We need not be afraid to urge God to the next act of love and kindness. “Who delivered us,” and “doth deliver,” “in whom we trust that he will yet deliver.” One mercy is but a step to another. His grace runs in an eternal tenor of love and sweetness. Let us ever be making trial of his untiring goodness. T. M.

8. The Greek word signifies one who has two souls—one for heaven, the other for earth; the man who desires to secure both worlds, but will give up neither. It was a usual term among the Jews, to express the man who attempted to worship God, and yet retained the love of the creature. G. T.—Where minds are double, ways will be unstable. A floating belief is soon discovered in the inconstancy and unevenness of the professor’s walk; none are so constant in the profession of any truth as those that are convinced and assured of the grounds of it. When we are but half convinced, then we are usually unstable. None walk so evenly with God as those that are assured of the love of God. Faith is the mother of obedience, and sureness of trust makes way for holiness of life. T. M.—In the commencing contest of Christianity with the whole world of evil, such an equivocal, undecided, half-and-half man, if he made any pretensions to be for the cause of Christ, must have appeared a sadly ill-constructed creature. Of all things on earth, he would not do for a Christian. For that character and service a very different man indeed was wanted. Nor will this double-minded man now be of any value to himself, to men, or to God. J. F.

9. As God will not favor the rich merely because they are rich, so he will not save the poor merely because they are poor. There is grace to save “through faith” for both rich and poor; and it is this grace that makes the poor rich in faith and the rich poor in spirit! “Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted.” “Exalted” not in self-worth nor in self-merits, not in rejoicings or boastings contrary to grace, but that, as a brother in Christ, he is brought through faith into covenant with God, and raised to the attainment of all those privileges and dignities which belong to God’s believing people.

10. The apostle gives encouragement to the poor and advice to the rich. “Let the poor rejoice” when he is spiritually exalted, and “the rich” when he is spiritually humbled. Thankful for the gifts of Providence we ought to be—oh, how thankful! but we must not make them objects of trust. Trust, being the highest respect the creature can show, must not be intercepted, but ascend to God. God would have the rich man know and notice and remember that, though he may have an undoubted security of his estate, he has none of his life; both property and life pass away, and that with as easy a turn of Providence as the flower of the field fadeth. T. M.

12. Whenever Luther was asked what made the best divine, he answered temptation; and what makes the best divine makes the best Christian. Hill.—Temptation is not sin; and not until the will consents to it, not until it is willfully entertained and cherished, does temptation become sin. Nay, we may go further. Temptation is not always even a sign of a sinful nature. It is quite possible that its appeal may be made to feelings which in themselves are perfectly pure and innocent. Our Lord’s temptation is a proof of this. E. M. G.—Every temptation resisted weakens the force of all other temptations of every sort. Every time that a Christian acts for the sake of Christ, that motive is made stronger in his soul. Every act of obedience smoothes the road for all that shall come after. To get the habit of being faithful wrought into our life, and becoming part of our second and truer self, that is a defense all but impregnable for us when the stress of the great trials comes, or when God calls us to lofty and hard duties. A. M.

The crown of life. The Lord has promised this crown “to them that love him.” So, then, the enduring which is acceptable to God arises from love. The crown which God has promised he does not promise for them that suffer, but for them that love. It will be theirs who endure and who love. If, therefore, we would have power to endure temptations, we must pray that the love of God in Christ Jesus may rule our hearts. T. M.—To overcome temptation, not in outer act merely, but with heart and soul, that is what wins the crown of life; the crown emphatically of life, for he who has passed through temptations victorious, he it is who emphatically lives. He has in him the richness of his own experience. He is not using words without meaning, or words with a vague, indistinct idea, when he speaks of the battle of the Christian or of the help of his Redeemer. His principles are not mere sentiments, but living powers, whose strength has been tried and proved. His doctrines are not mere forms of speech; they correspond with needs of his soul, which he has probed to the bottom in the hour of difficulty. The Bible is not to him a beautiful and awful book, full of wonderful promises which sound like words in a foreign tongue, full of awful threatenings which seem too fearful to be literally true, but a record of realities into which he has himself entered. God is not to him the ruler of the universe in which he himself is a little unconsidered fragment, but his own Father, who has told him, and still tells him, what he is to do, and who will not and can not forget him, even if himself be all forgotten. Christ is not to him the Redeemer of mankind, but the Friend whose love surpasses all other love, whose sympathy embraces all other sympathy, whose help can not fail, whose indwelling Spirit is ever bringing into his heart, up from the eternal fountains, the waters of eternal life. This is the crown which buds here and blossoms hereafter, and fills all the soul on which it falls with the power of its beauty; and this crown is given to him who, when temptations come, gives himself mind and soul, and will and heart, to fulfill the love of Christ. F. T.

13. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted 14 with evil, neither tempteth he any man: but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away 15 of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and 16 sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every 17 good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, 18 with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us 19 with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. 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. Wherefore lay apart all 21 filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, 22 which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like 23 unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his 24 way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the 25 perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of 26 the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridletth 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.

JUDGED of by merely outward tokens, Christianity would seem to be in the ascendant. Imperial edicts no longer assail her thickening ranks, the proudest philosophers have gone down before her doctrines, and the boundaries of heathendom are steadily retreating wherever she plants her invading foot. But these outward tokens are deceptive. They indicate the acceptance of Christianity as an opinion, a polity, a culture, while they fail to witness for the acceptance of it as an inward, spiritual, renovating force. The gospel-preacher, stand where he will, is sure of a respectful, perhaps an applauding, audience; but the chiefest burden of his message is not regarded, and the chiefest longing of his heart is not realized. The cross of Christ is no offense to the understanding of his hearers, but their proud wills are not bowed before it. He faces a masked battery of most orthodox but most resolute impenitence. If now we may venture to hope for a better issue, it must be on the basis of a better experience, on the basis of a better appreciation of the real genius of a true discipleship. We must have the gospel pattern of piety held up before us. Our religion must be more to us than a mere opinion, more than a mere excitement of feeling; it must be a resolute and manly service. Our whole life, from its inmost feelings to its outmost ongoings, must be subdued to Christ. Personal sanctity, which dreads a blot upon itself, as it dreads the anger of God; love for the Church of Christ, which many waters of strife can not quench, nor floods drown; with labors, wise, earnest, self-denying and abundant, for the souls of perishing men—all these must we lay as a cheerful tribute at the feet of the King of kings. R. D. H.

13-22. The philosophy of sin is given in verses 13-16 in terms that answer exactly to our own experience. God is not the author of sin; God does not subject us to temptation that, through sinning, we may illustrate his grace. Trials as tests of our choice of good or evil, of our faith in himself, of our love and devotion, God does appoint for our moral discipline and culture; but temptations that look toward sin, and lead to sin, are the prompting of our own desires when these are loosed from the control of reason and conscience. The sin does not lie in the fact of temptation, nor in the susceptibility to temptation; but when we suffer our susceptibilities to natural good to be wrought upon to such a degree that they entice us to forget reason, conscience, duty to God; when these over-stimulated desires come to a head in the decision of the will to gratify them—then do they bring forth sin. The counteractive to such temptation is a just conception of our highest good as in God, and from him; a patient, prayerful, unwavering trust in him, and the keeping his word in our hearts as our law and guide. J. P. T.

13. Outward temptations, of which he has hitherto made mention, come immediately from the hand of God. In this sense God tempted Abraham and daily tempts us; that is, he makes trial of the qualities of our hearts by furnishing us with an opportunity of disclosing them. But to draw forth to view the secrets of the heart, and to stir up in it perverse and wicked passions, are very different things. Here he treats of internal temptations, or of those inordinate appetites which incite us to transgression, and with great justice denies God to be the author of these. Nothing is more common among mankind than to transfer to others the blame of the evils which they themselves have done; and especially they think themselves then most free from blame if they can turn it upon God. This artifice, handed down to us from the first man, we are too careful to imitate. For this reason James calls upon each of us to confess his own guilt, and not to lay the charge upon God, as if he tempted us to sin. Calv.

We charge God with our evils and sins when we blame his providence. In this way God’s choicest mercies and blessings may be turned into snares. We charge God also with our evils and sins when we ascribe sin to the defect or faint operation of the divine grace. This is done when men say they could do no otherwise, because they had no more grace given them of God! We charge God also with our sins and evils when we have a wrong understanding of his decrees, as if on account of his decrees (secret to us) we were under a necessity to commit sin. Men will say, “Who can help it? God will have it so.” Whatever God’s decrees may be, this is certain and not secret, that he neither infuses evil nor enforces evil. God uses many a persuasion to draw us to holiness, but not a single hint to encourage us in sin. Men tempt each other, but God tempts no man to sin. T. M.—There are manifold doors in the divine purpose which God may open or shut as he pleases; but there is one always shut—that God should tempt any man to evil; and there is one for ever open—that he wills not the death of the sinner, but that he should turn and live. Whatever difficulties may be in these questions of freedom and decree, we can never permit the speck of one to touch the divine purity and mercy. Ker.

14. Whatever may have excited them, or whoever may have shared in them, our sins have taken their rise in ourselves. They are as much our own as though there were not one unclean spirit to betray, one evil example to mislead, or one temptation to allure. C. B.—Of all the fatal effects of sin, none looks so dreadfully, none strikes so just a horror into considering minds, as that every sinful action a man does naturally disposes him to another; and that it is hardly possible for him to do anything so ill but that it proves a preparative and introduction to the doing of something worse. As temptation brings a man to sin, so sin also brings him to temptation. R. S.

15. “Lust having conceived, it bringeth forth sin.” Sin hath its conception, and that is delight; and then its formation, and that is design; and then its birth, and that is action; and then its growth, and that is custom; and then its end, and that is damnation. Brooks.—“Sin when it is grown gendereth death.” J. B. L.—Consider what havoc has been made in the body—that curious and wonderful workmanship of the Almighty. How the unbridled appetites have sown the seeds of disease therein; and how pain, languor, and decay assail the constitution as soon as we begin to live, and cease not their attacks till they triumph over the citadel of life! Consult the history of the world, and what a lazar-house and a Golgotha has it been! Consider its effects upon the immortal mind. Witness its lofty powers bowed down in ignominious servitude to base corporeal appetites, and furious and debasing passions! See how the understanding is darkened, the will perverted, and the heart alienated from all that is holy! See reason and conscience dethroned, and selfishness reigning over them, in gloomy and undisputed tyranny! See how the affections turn away with loathing from God, and what a wall of separation has sprung up between man and his Maker; how deeply and universally he has revolted from his rightful sovereign! These are the genuine fruits of sin. This, this is death! R. D. H.

16. Do not err. It means do not wander. Do not wander from the truth. To err here may mean errors of judgment and errors of practice. The mind receives and cherishes error, and then evil practice follows. Paul speaks of first being “given up to a vain mind,” and then to “vile affections.” To avoid error we must seek truth. T. M.—It may be added that the best mode of opposing error is seldom directly to advert to it, but calmly and attractively to exhibit the opposite right and truth; for truth wins its own way. It affects, it warms, it invigorates, it controls, by its own proper and peculiar energy. It needs not elaborate proof or subtle argumentation. Let it be proposed in fullness and simplicity, with clearness and with affection, and the task is done. We shall thus gain the stronghold of every honest understanding; we shall thus win the citadel of every heart that can be won. Bp. Jebb.

17. Not only is God not the author of sin, but he is the author of all good, especially the author of all the spiritual gifts or graces bestowed upon us. “Every good gift, and every perfect gift, is from above.” All good things flow from the upper spring.

There are lower channels or conveyances, such as the written word, sacraments, prayer, meditation. And then for ordinary blessings, there is your prudence, and industry, and care; but your freshest springs are in God, and in all things we may, and we must be thankful, but look up. God delights in this honor of being acknowledged, as he is, the sole author of all our good. T. M.

The greatest excellencies in us do as much depend on God as the light does upon the sun. Here is wisdom, but it is from above. Here is some weak love working toward Christ, but it is from above. Here is joy, and comfort, and peace, but these are all the flowers of paradise; they never grow in nature’s garden. Brooks.—God is most free of his best blessings. He affords salvation in common to all his people. He gives honor and riches but to few of them: he gives Christ and heaven to them all. God sometimes denies a crumb even to him on whom he bestows a kingdom. There are many things that a child of God can not promise to himself, but heaven he may reckon upon. Jenkyn.

18-25. “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures”; or, literally, “He who willed hath begotten us by the word of truth.” God, putting his will into, or with, “the word of truth,” his own true word, had “begotten” the early Christians, and made them “first fruits of his creatures.” If this be not the work of our new birth, of our being begotten to the new and spiritual life by the sole instrumentality of the word of truth, then it is impossible to find that work described or asserted in the Bible as the result of any agency or of any instrumentality. With a similar meaning, James goes on to exhort those whom he addressed to “receive with meekness the ingrafted word, which was able to save their souls” (v. 21). The figure here is changed, but not the significance. The word ingrafted, the truth implanted by the Holy Spirit, is the instrument of the new birth. Further along the figure is again changed, though the same significance remains; with this difference, perhaps, that what is said of the word as “a glass,” the mirror of a “perfect law,” and of him who “looketh into” it, as “like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass,” has a broader application; reaching not only to him who, for the first time, looks into the mirror of the word with a spiritual perception, belief, and love of the truth, but also to him who, having entered on the way of life, “continueth therein,” consulting often the same divine mirror, which first, through the Spirit, brought him to a knowledge of the Saviour; and even extending to him who, having the mirror of truth, looks into it, but, upon “beholding himself, goeth his way, and straightway forgeteth what manner of man he was” (vs. 22-25). The whole passage shows us the true place and position of the word of God, his divine truth, both in its relations to him who uses it as his sole instrument in our regeneration, and in its aspect upon us, in whom it is made to effect his blessed work. J. S. S.—By this he convinces of sin; by this he reveals Christ as a suitable and all-sufficient Saviour; and having thus caused the souls whom he has touched to discover their own need, and Christ’s fullness, he enables them by the gift of precious faith, called “the faith of God’s elect,” to embrace God’s record of his Son; to appropriate him and his work as an atonement for their sins, a righteousness for their persons, a sufficient title to the inheritance of eternal life; and henceforth he abides in them as “the Spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, Abba, Father.” In this illumination by the Spirit, this revelation of Christ, and creation of faith in him, through the word, lies the very essence of regeneration. Believers are therefore described as born again, instrumentally, by the word. Goode.

19. This is the chief New Testament passage which affirms the principle on which conversation is to be regulated. “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak.” Self-restraint in talking and readiness to receive information is to be the regulating principle. The spirit of the Old Testament precept on this subject is the same with that of the New; its letter is even more solemn. It runs thus: “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin; but he that refraineth his lips is wise.” It is true that the primary reference is in all probability to those words by which religious instruction is to be conveyed. But we must not exclude a subordinate but very important reference to the whole range of conversation. Swift to hear. An effort should be made to extract from those with whom the occasions of life bring us into contact that portion of useful knowledge which out of the common stock they have appropriated to themselves. “Slow to speak” is involved in and would naturally follow from what went before. For if a man be simply desirous to receive instruction, he will not be over ready, although he will not be backward, to communicate it. Let us strive that, as far as may be, each word we drop may have some point in it—some worth and weight and solidity. E. M. G.

20. Wrathful men are most unfit to act grace or to receive grace: to act grace by drawing nigh to God in worship; for as God is the God of peace, he will be served and worshiped with a peaceful mind! So, also, wrathful men are unfit to receive grace; angry men give place to Satan, but grieve the Spirit, and therefore are more fit to receive sin than grace! God, in the second psalm, is described sitting in the heavens; this posture, while it indicates dignity, for all the hosts of heaven stand or kneel before him, so it also denotes a composed and quiet dignity; and as truly as he sitteth in the heavens, so he dwells in the lowly, quiet, humble, tranquil heart! T. M.

21. The ingrafted word. He compares the word to a plant of excellent virtue, the very tree of life, the word that is able to save your souls. But the only soil wherein it will grow is a heart full of meekness, a heart that is purged of those luxuriant weeds that grow so rank in it by nature; they must be plucked up and thrown out to make place for this word. How few consider and prize it as the great ordinance of God for the salvation of souls, the beginner and the sustainer of the divine life of grace within us! And certainly until we have these thoughts of it, and seek to feel it thus ourselves, although we hear it most frequently, and hear it with attention and some present delight, yet still we miss the right use of it and turn it from its true end, while we take it not as that ingrafted word which is able to save our souls. L.

22. “Be ye doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves,” not deceiving God. He sees with what interest you listen, what you think of, what you retain, how much progress you make by means of what he supplies, how earnestly you pray, how you supplicate God on the score of what you have not, how you thank him on the score of what you have. He who will require an account knows all. Do not then deceive yourselves on the ground of your having come eagerly to hear the word, if you do not perform what you inadequately hear. To hear and to do is to build upon a rock. Aug.

23-25. Mere professors have but a slight and glancing knowledge of the word: like a man beholding his face in a glass while passing it, or like the glare of a sunbeam upon a wave, it is seen and gone in a moment. But in meditation, in reflection, there is this benefit, that a steady constant light is the result. The expression “looketh into” refers to the bending posture of the cherubim that were over the ark of the covenant: and the anxious search which the angels use to find out the mysteries of salvation: “Which things the angels desire to look into.” The word means not a transient glance, but a bending of the body with a piercing inquiry of eye; it means diligence of search and investigation. T. M.

25. This moral law, or “law of love,” or “law of liberty,” to man in innocence and to man redeemed (being a law of wrath and terror only to man fallen), is that same law which was written on Adam’s heart in paradise; the same which brings in the whole world guilty before its precepts; the same which our Lord, in his first sermon on the mount, enforces, and restores to its purity; the same which the apostles hold forth as the invariable rule by which believers, under the influence of faith and love, are to walk. Hill.

“Whoso looketh into shall be blessed.” Spiritual emotion is begotten of spiritual knowledge. We can feel deeply no fact we do not apprehend, no truth we do not appreciate: the fact may flash upon us with the suddenness of lightning, or open to our mind’s eyes only under patient study; the truth may strike us with the force of intuition, or dawn upon us by gradual revelation; but fact and truth must be known before they can be felt. A mind filled with God is the necessary preparation for a heart filled with God. Vain for us even to ask him for a deeper soul-life while we give him and his truth no fair share of our reflection; that is asking him to fan into a flame the embers which we have cumbered with earth, and will not uncover to the breath of a kindling spirit. Pierson.

A pure creed is indeed an inestimable blessing. No greater privilege is given to men than to be able to advance in the knowledge of divine things, to learn by slow and patient thought how truth is set against truth, and all the various lines of revelation in the words and works of God converge to one great unity. He who has carefully reflected on what he professes to believe, and pierced to the spirit of his faith, has gained a vantage ground for action. But knowledge is only a vantage ground and not a victory. If we neglect to turn to use the superiority which it gives us, our defeat will only be the more disgraceful because we were so richly furnished for the battle. Religious truth can not be of the intellect only. It must, if it be held vitally, show itself in life. B. F. W.—Orthodoxy may unconsciously be substituted for obedience; there may be a keen, lively interest in the intellectual aspect of Christian doctrine, yet while the deeper essence of divine truth remains uncared for, the subtle, unchastened pleasure may glow into an intellectual sin. The safeguard is mainly moral and spiritual; to realize the facts of the gospel, not only in their outward coloring but in their inward vitality, as forming the process of miraculous love whereby God interposed for a ruined world; to keep before the mind’s eye, as Dorner expresses it, “the grand total image of the living Person of the Godman,” and in that Presence to enter more livingly into the heights and depths of his religion, its awful majesty and its subduing sweetness; to feel, as the greatest doctors have felt, that it is greater than all their words, yet that its highest truths are full of help for daily life, and of comfort for daily trouble, and practically to remember that supernatural truth can not be thoroughly possessed by means of efforts simply natural. And such a relation between a man’s doctrinal belief and his devotions will act healthily on both. He will learn what doctrine has to do for him; how practical it is in its effects, what responsibilities it imposes, what splendors it can exhibit, what happiness it can ensure. Bright.—Revealed religion is by its very nature dogmatic to the very core. It has stood the highest of all tests. The heart of man, which it has stirred to its inmost depths, which it has revealed to itself, which it has called out of itself, into which it has infused unearthly powers, powers of humility, powers of endurance, powers of love, is an eternal witness to its truth. It is indeed this—the witness of the present Spirit—which is the highest of all Christian evidences. It is this that breathes life into the dead bones of doctrine, and bids them stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army. It is by this Spirit, by showing in our own lives, if God give us grace, that the doctrines of the Bible, the doctrines of the Church, have a vitality within them imparted by God himself; that they are powerful to purify the heart, to elevate the hopes, to sustain under afflic-

tion, to reassure under doubt, to give peace within, to give strength without—it is by this life that we shall most effectually serve the cause of Christ. Shirley.