References The Epistle of James 'The Epistle of St. James,' said Père Gratry, 'may be called the Epistle of equality.' He used the expression 'that amazing Epistle of St. James'. References. I. 1. J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 370. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 1. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 65. I.1-4. Ibid. p. 260. I. 2-4. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No. 1704. I. 2-7. J. B. S. Watson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxi. p. 246. I. 2-8. J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 655. I. 2-11. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 9. * James 1:3 * It sometimes seems a little strange how, after having earnestly prayed to be delivered from temptation, and having given ourselves with shut eyes into God's hand, from that time every thought, every outward influence, every acknowledged law of life, seems to lead us on from strength to strength. Mrs. Gaskell, in Ruth (ch. XXIII.). Never expect thy flesh should truly expound the meaning of the rod. It will call love, hatred; and say, God is destroying, when He is saving. It is the suffering party, and therefore not fit to be the judge. Baxter, Saints' Rest (ch. x.). If the passion have ended, not in a marriage but in a disappointment, the nature, if it have strength to bear the pressure, will be more ennobled and purified by that than by success. Of the uses of adversity which are sweet, none are sweeter than those which grow out of disappointed love; nor is there any greater mistake in contemplating the issues of life, than to suppose that baffled endeavours and disappointed hopes bear no fruits, because they do not bear those particular fruits which were sought and sighed for. Sir Henry Taylor, Notes on Life, pp. 76, 77. Reference. I. 3. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 122. James 1:4 A great man is always willing to be little. When he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, dejected, he has a chance to learn something.... In general, every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valour of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist. Emerson, on * Compensation. James 1:4 * 'In my younger years,' said Richard Baxter, 'my trouble for sin was most about my actual failings in thought, word, or action. But now I am much more troubled for inward defects, and omission or want of the vital duties or graces of the soul. Had I all the riches of the world, how gladly would I give them for a fuller knowledge, belief, and love of God and everlasting glory! These wants are the greatest burden of my life.' References. I. 4. W. F. Shaw, Sermon Sketches for the Christian Year, p. 103. T. Sadler, Sunday Thoughts, p. 273. J. M. Neale, Readings for the Aged (4th Series), p. 111. Ibid. Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. i. p. 355. H. D. Rawnsley, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xv. p. 1104. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 35. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture James, p. 351. St. Philip and St. James James 1:5 This is one of the many beautifully-practical thoughts which so fill and characterise St. James, whose festival, together with that of St. Philip, we celebrate today. I. What is Wisdom? 'Wisdom' is not knowledge, though it involves knowledge, for the most learned persons are often the least wise. 'Wisdom' is the right use of knowledge. Or take it thus. 'Wisdom' is that union of the heart and head when right affections guide the exercise of talent Or, 'wisdom' is power to balance materials of good thought. It is the ability to direct intelligently and usefully the words we speak or the acts we do. Or, a step higher still, 'wisdom' is the reflection of the mind of God. Christ is the reflection of the mind of God. Therefore Christ is 'wisdom'. And the most Christlike is the most wise. If you wish to understand 'wisdom,' study Christ. II. The Quilt of Foolishness. The memory of most of us need go very little way back to show the necessity for this understanding of God. What a very humbling thing it is to look back and think I do not now say how sinfully but how very foolishly we have again and again spoken and acted. And is foolishness much less than sin? Is foolishness not sin? Is it not the 'idle word' for which we shall 'give account'? Was it not the 'fool' who said in his heart, 'There is no God'? and the 'fool' who said to his soul, 'Soul, thou hast much goods'? Was not it the 'foolish man' that 'built upon the sand'? And were not the 'foolish virgins' the virgins lost? If 'wisdom' were not a thing covenanted, then might a man not be responsible for being unwise. But now that God has promised to 'give wisdom' to every one who 'asks' for it, it is no longer venial to be foolish. The silly word you say, and the foolish act you do, is left guilty, and without excuse. III. Asking for Wisdom. To obtain 'wisdom,' the first thing you have to do is to recognise it to be a gift. 'Wisdom' seems to be such a natural development of mind that we cannot easily get rid of the idea that if we only think enough think long enough, and think deeply enough we shall think ourselves into wisdom. But to the 'wisdom' such as God gave Joseph in the sight of Pharaoh that 'wisdom' of which some asked, 'Whence hath this man wisdom'? the wisdom 'which is first pure' the 'wisdom' no science, no self-discipline, no effort will secure the road is prayer, only prayer, communion with the Unseen. James 1:5 'Doctor,' said the invalid again, 'will you read me just four verses in the Bible?' 'Why, yes, my boy, as many as you wish to hear.' 'No, only four.' His free hand moved for the book that lay on the bed, and presently the Doctor read: My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, Who giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. 'There,' whispered the sick man, and rested with a peaceful look in all his face. 'It doesn't mean wisdom in general, Doctor such as Solomon asked for?' 'Doesn't it?' said the other meekly. 'No, it means the wisdom necessary to let patience have her perf I was a long time getting anywhere near that!' G. W. Cable, Dr. Sevier, pp. 450, 451. When Thomas Scott determined, for conscientious reasons, to give up his ministry in the English Church, he describes ( Force of Truth, ch. II.) how he set about an inquiry into the scriptural basis of the Articles. 'And the first passage, I remember, which made me suspect that I might be wrong,' in refusing to examine them thus, 'was James 1:5 , "If any of ye lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him". On considering these words with some attention, I became conscious that, though I had thought myself wise, yet assuredly I had obtained none of my wisdom in this manner; for I had never offered one prayer to that effect during the whole course of my life.' James 1:5 The Aryan nations, before their separation, cherished a belief in a hero or god to whom they owed all their comforts in life: it was he that made the sun shine and the dawn keep her time; and it was to him they looked for the weather they wanted. The first breeds of animals useful to man, whether domestic or wild, were believed to have been obtained by him through craft or violence from the jealous powers who wished to keep them from the human race.... The habit of imagining both gods and demons to be jealous of the human race is familiar to all in the literature of various ancient nations. Rhys, Celtic Heathenism, p. 302. References. I. 5. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No. 735. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 237. J. Learmount, British Congregationalist, 4th July, 1907, p. 18. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 263. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture James, p. 360. I. 5, 6. J. Keble, Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 321. I. 6, 7. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2537. The Vacillations of Faith James 1:6-8 In the writings of the Apostle Paul, as well as in the sayings of our Lord Himself, we are reminded of the fact that the faith which achieves great things and uplifts the devout life to the highest excellence set before it, must be an established principle of the soul, and not a passing mood only. I. The faith that is evanescent is an affectation, and can no more pass as a just constituent of fruitful worship and service than any other kind of vamped-up sentiment. The complete sincerity of faith is proved by its imperturbable persistence. Faith means the deepest thought we have of God; and when that thought swings from side to side like the pendulum, one moment viewing God as true, benign, compassionate, covenant-keeping, and the next letting Him pass out of sight or viewing Him in more or less contradictory aspects, God is not thought of according to His due. II. The faith that is only momentary cannot satisfy the heart of the Eternal. The life of some winged insects is said to be measured by the hour only, and, unlike bees and ants, they have no need to lay up food supplies which will last through long wintry months. God does not belong to an order of beings whose requirements can be met by what is transient and volatile, and it is impossible to satisfy His mighty insistency by a mood of faith unstable as the morning dew. III. The blessings we seek in believing supplication are permanent in their duration, and faith is the condition of their tenure as well as of their first attainment. 'For by faith ye stand.' The double-minded man who never knows himself, who has never found out his own equation in spiritual things, who drifts before moods as gaily as the nautilus spreads its painted sails to the winds, who believes when genial influences combine to make it easy so to do, and morbidly disbelieves at the first temptation which comes to test his faith, is a failure as a suppliant and touches the lowest depths of vanity and frustration when he bends the knee in vacuous prayer. IV. If we would cherish into an established habit the faith that seeks to spring up and possess our souls, we must never wantonly expose ourselves to influences hostile to faith. And, above all, we must draw near to God in the ways appointed for building up faith. V. If our prayers are to be marked by unswerving and triumphant confidence, strong qualities must go to the making of our faith, qualities which will stand the strain of waiting and the rebuffs which meet us when we have gone forth to await the fulfilment of our desires. (1) Such an attribute is conscience, less mutable by far than other parts of man's being. God's breath is in it, and the breath of One in whom there is no variation, neither shadow cast by turning, protects this faculty from the weaknesses of its kindred faculties. (2) And in the best sense of the word reason must also enter into our faith if it is to escape the reproach of fitfulness. (3) And then when the conscience and the judgment are assured concerning the great hearer of prayer and the fitness of the things for which we ask, we must put into our prayers that power of will which is one of the most distinctive attributes of our being, and thus will the undivided and coherent man be made to pray. References. I. 6-8. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 32. James 1:7 Dr. Marcus Dods wrote at the age of twenty-nine to his friend the Rev. S. R. Macphail: 'Be persuaded that God will deliver you from sin, wait on Him, do not sink, do not scoff, do not suffer a shadow of doubt about it. I do not obey my own voice, but yet my past years say, if there is one verse of the Bible that is true it is about the waverer, "Let not that man think that he will receive anything from the Lord". Is it not, Simeon, the turning-point with us all when we can give God His place, believe in Him wholly. Early Letters, p. 323. James 1:8 In all religious processions through the city the heralds went first to bid the people cease their work and attend to the ceremony; for just as the Pythagoreans are said to forbid the worship of the gods in a cursory manner, and to insist that men shall set out from their homes with this purpose and none other in their minds, so Numa thought it wrong that the citizens should see or hear any religious ceremony in a careless, halfhearted manner, and made them cease from all worldly cares and attend with all their hearts to the most important of all duties, religion; so he cleared the streets of all the hammering and cries and noises which attend the practice of ordinary trades and handicrafts, before any holy ceremony. Plutarch, Life of Numa (XIV.). Reference. I. 9, 10. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 195. James 1:10 Would it not be wiser for people to rejoice at all that they now sorrow for, and vice versa? To put on bridal garments at funerals, and mourning at weddings? For their friends to condole with them when they attained riches and honour, as only so much care added? Hawthorne. Adversity had been so far his friend that it had taken from him all hope of the social success for which people crawl and truckle, and restored him, through failure and doubt and heartache, the manhood which his prosperity had so nearly stolen from him. W. D. Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (XXVII.). Life will be dearer and clearer in anguish, Than ever was felt in the throbs of delight. Lord Houghton. References. I. 10, 11. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 264. I. 11. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 445. The Blessedness of Enduring Temptation James 1:12 The text does not mean that we ought to be glad if temptation comes, nor that temptation is a blessed thing in itself; but that the Christian is blessed who endures it, and who comes out of it approved and strengthened. I. Let us try to discover the meaning of 'temptation' spoken of here. The English word has become so associated with the idea of incitement to evil that it does not fully express what is meant, nor even express it correctly. True, a 'trial' or 'trouble' is sometimes also a 'temptation' in that sense, as we know too well. But no trouble is ever sent by God with the intention of inciting to sin. Perhaps some paraphrase such as this may help us: 'Blessed is the man that endureth the test which comes through God sent troubles, for when he has passed through the testing time, and been approved, he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him.' Trials do for us what stormy winds do in nature, for both fulfil God's word and carry out His design. II. Now the variety of our capacities requires variety in the means used to test and develop them. Hence, in the second verse, we read of 'divers' temptations. (1) Trial often comes through prosperity and comfort. For example, those about you may be singularly gentle and yielding. Now this has been one of God's tests to you, though you have never recognised it. How far have you been considerate, trying to find out the wishes which will not be openly expressed? (2) On the other hand, if those about you are cold and irresponsive; if they never reward you with a smile or a word of thanks, do what you may for them; if your quiet acts of self-sacrifice are not so much as noticed, if your love is met by indifference, or even by unkindness, God is testing you by this. III. What, then, are some of the purposes wrapped up in God's design? His main purpose, according to this chapter, is to strengthen, to test, and to develop faith by its exercise; because faith is the root-virtue from which patience and courage spring. Blessed is the man that endureth the temptation of struggle and effort, for he shall receive the crown of life. IV. The promise referred to here was given by the Lord Jesus Himself, who, in His personal experience, knew the hardness of our conflict and the painfulness of our sufferings; and it involves the assurance that He Himself is watching over us, measuring our strength, proportioning our trials and duties to the powers of endurance, innate and inspired, so that He will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able. A. Rowland, Open Windows and other Sermons, p. 48 References. I. 12. W. Wynn, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 102. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1874. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 213. Brooke Herford, Courage and Cheer, p. 217. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 223. C. Bosanquet, Blossoms from the King's Garden, p. 111. W. L. Watkinson, The Supreme Conquest, p. 142. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 443; ibid. vol. ix. p. 4. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture James, p. 868. I. 12-18. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 22. James 1:13 This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a Divine thrusting on. Shakespeare, King Lear (Act i. Sc. 2). James 1:13 Compare the conversation between Socrates and Adeimantos in Plato's Republic (379, 13): 'Then that which is good is not the cause of all things, but only of what is as it should be, being guiltless of originating evil.' 'Exactly so.' 'If that be so, then God, inasmuch as He is good, cannot be the cause of all things, according to the common doctrine. On the contrary, He is the author of only a small part of human affairs; of the larger part He is not the author: for all evil things far outnumber all good things: and the good things we must ascribe to no other than God, while we must seek elsewhere, and not in Him, the causes of the evil things.' References. 1.13. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 323. I. 13-15. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p. 69. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 42. James 1:14 Oh the hourly dangers that we here walk in! Every sense and member is a snare; every creature, every mercy, and every duty is a snare to us. We can scarcely open our eyes, but we are in danger of envying those above us, or despising those below us; of coveting the honours and riches of some, or beholding the rags and beggary of others with pride and un-mercifulness. If we see beauty, it is a bait to lust; if deformity, to loathing and disdain. How soon do slanderous reports, vain jests, wanton speeches, creep into the heart! How constant and strong a watch does our appetite require! Have we comeliness and beauty? What fuel for pride! Are we deformed? What an occasion of repining! Have we strength of reason, and gifts of learning? Oh how prone to be puffed up, to hunt after applause, and despise our brethren. Are we unlearned? How apt we are to despise what we have not! Are we in places of authority? How strong is the temptation to abuse our trust, make our will law, and cut out all the enjoyments of others, by the rules and model of our own interest and policy! Are we inferiors? How prone to grudge at others' preeminence, and bring their actions to the bar of our judgment! Are we rich and not too much exalted? Are we poor and not discontented? Are we not lazy in our duties, or make a Christ of them? Not that God hath made all these things our snares, but through our own corruption they become so to us. Ourselves are the greatest snare to ourselves. Baxter, Saints' Rest, pp. 60, 61. 'There is a popular belief respecting evil spirits,' says Scott in a note to the fifteenth chapter of The Abbot, 'that they cannot enter an inhabited house unless invited, nay, dragged over the threshold.' 'Temptation is a cause of possible sin,' says Ritschl, 'originating in an impulse, the satisfaction of which appears on first thoughts to be in itself legitimate.... It is, therefore, a signal mistake to refer the well-known saying of James, as is generally done, to evil and desire. Christ also was exposed to temptation, simply because temptation is always bound up with an inclination which is at the outset morally legitimate or permissible. For no man of moral worth will find a temptation in a situation in which he from the first recognises Satan.' References. I. 16, 17. J. H. Jowett, The Examiner, 7th June, 1906, p. 558. ** God As the Eternal Giver ( a Sermon to Oxford Undergraduates ) James 1:17 ** I. What is the description, the character, of God, as depicted in the Bible? What should we have to take as the title of the Bible if it was a story for which we were asked to find a title? I say there is only one title we could select, and it would be: 'God as the Eternal Giver'. Open the Bible, and begin with the book of Genesis. We cannot stop to go into it, but there, in picture form, it describes the Eternal Giver giving gifts to mankind sunshine, air, the gift of life; and How good is man's life, the mere living How fit to employ All the heart, and the soul, and the senses For ever in joy. He gives further the gift of love, the love of man for woman, and woman for man, and parents for children, and children for parents. All that is described in the opening chapters. Then comes the second part, which comprises all the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. And what is that? The gift of the Eternal Son nothing short of that. And we ask you we who are in the middle of the battle to hold fast down here to the true Christian religion, and not to barter it away for any religion which merely speaks of a good man named Jesus Christ Who once lived on earth. The Christian religion as prophesied in the Old Testament, and depicted in the New, is the giving of the Eternal Son of God and nothing else. It is prophesied all through the Old Testament, and then described in the simplest and most touching language at the beginning of the New Testament. Is that all? Have we now got to the end of the giving of God? Not at all. 'It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter will not come; but if I depart I will send Him to you.' Prophesied all through the latter part of the Gospel, and described at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, is the third giving, the giving of the Eternal Spirit. With tongues of fire and a rushing mighty wind the great doors of heaven open again and down comes the third great gift of God, the Eternal Spirit, which He has given to the end of time. II. But is He that brings us to the second question is He the same God today? Have we this Eternal Giver to turn to? A moment's reflection will show you that every one of those gifts which is described as given in the Bible, He gives perpetually. III. Now come one more stage with me. It is impossible to describe to you what this third proposition means to many of us. We have still got our imagination to deal with our imagination which tells us that this is too good to be true. Is it impossible to believe that the great God is like this? Do you remember that splendid saying of David's when he looked on Saul lying there in his melancholy madness and felt a Divine desire to help him come into his heart, and he says, 'Would I suffer for him whom I love? so wouldst thou; so wilt thou?' There has never been any answer to that. A little lad at Euston was filling all those thousands of men in the station with admiration, because, without thinking of what he did, or thinking anything of it, he threw himself forward to pick up two children off the line as an express came rushing in, and though the train actually touched him, he pulled the children out of the way as a matter of course. If a lad would do that, and God would not do it, then the little lad is greater than God. But the creature cannot surpass the Creator. If there is a God at all He must be capable of self-sacrifice. The Eternal Giver described in the Bible must be loving and working today. The more you think of it, the more you are convinced that the Bible description must be true, and that this is the God that you and I are asked to serve and love and worship for ever and ever. IV. And if this is so, what is the difference it makes to our lives? (1) The first difference is this: if we really believe it we are bound to do something which we find very often the hardest thing to do. We must love God. That is the difficulty of religion. And if we love God it changes life. The weariness will vanish from religion; it will become a labour of love. (2) And secondly, how can we tread under foot His gifts, if we believe He gives us them Himself. Put on the shoes of service. (3) And thirdly, what a difference it makes to our prayers. I believe many of us even now have no idea what prayer is. Prayer is not trying to change the will of God to suit our whims. We may be quite sure that the Eternal Giver is much more anxious than you or I are for our highest interests. He always wants to give us the best. Every morning His hands are full of hope and love and wisdom for us. But by prayer we enable Him to give us what He wants to give us, and which He cannot do for a cold, apathetic, sluggish nature that does not want to improve. Therefore prayer is a most delightful cooperation with God in which two friends, as it were, work together for a common object. And intercession is like unto it. (4) And, lastly, ought there not to be, if this picture of the Eternal Giver is true, a great deal more likeness in the faces and characters of the sons of the Eternal Giver to their Father. You know how fathers and mothers love to see their likeness in their children. Well, now, I fully believe that the reason that Christianity progresses so slowly, that we are not more impressive to the world, and able to make a far quicker impression, is that the sons of the Eternal Giver are so unlike their Father. That is what Christ prayed for in His great prayer, that we were to be one, that the world might believe that the Father sent Him. The world does not believe at all fully yet in that, and that is because the sons of the Eternal Giver do not give themselves away with the generosity that is to be expected of those that believe in the Bible story. A. F. Winnington-Ingram (Bishop of London), Church Times, 28th October, 1910. James 1:17 In optics, if you make a hole in the shutter at noon, or stick a square bit of blackness on the pane, and make the rays from the hole or around the square to pass through a prism, then we have, if we let them fall on whiteness or catch them right, those colours we all know and rejoice in, that Divine spectrum. ... The white light of heaven lumen siccum opens itself out, as it were, tells its secret, and lies like a glorious border on the Edge o' Dark (as imaginative Lancashire calls the twilight, as we Scotchmen call it, the gloamin'), making the boundaries between light and darkness a border of flowers, made out by each. Is there not something to think of in 'The Father of lights,' thus beautifying the limits of His light and of His darkness, which to Him alone is light, so that here burns a sort of 'dim, religious light' a sacred glory, where we may take off our shoes and rest and worship? Dr. John Brown, * In Clear Dream and Solemn Vision. James 1:17 * God is a Being of perfect simplicity and truth, both in deed and word, and neither changes in Himself nor imposes upon others, either by apparitions, or by words, or by sending signs, whether in dreams or in waking moments. Plato's Republic (382). 'If I only knew that God was as good as that woman, 1 should be content.' 'Then you don't believe that God is good?' 'I didn't say that, my boy. But to know that God was good and kind and fair heartily, I mean, and not halfways with if's and but's my boy, there would be nothing left to be miserable about.' George Macdonald, * Robert Falconer. * Speaking of the spirit of the age, in his essay on Dr. Marshall, Dr. John Brown, in Horae Subsecivae, notes how 'this great social element, viewless, impalpable, inevitable, untameable as the wind, is like the great laws of nature of which indeed it is one for ever at its work; and like its Divine author and guide, goes about continually doing good.... This is that tide in the affairs of men a Deo, ad Deum that onward movement of the race in knowledge, in power, in work, and in happiness, which has gladdened and cheered all who believe, and who, through long ages of gloom and misery and havoc, have still believed that truth is strong, next to the Almighty.... It is a tide that has never turned; unlike the poet's, it answers the behest of no waning and waxing orb, it follows the eve of Him who is without variableness or the shadow of turning. Thou hadst not to do with an unconstant creature, but with Him 'with whom is no variableness, nor shadow of turning'. His love to thee will not be as thine was on earth to Him, seldom, and cold, up and down. Baxter, Saints' Rest (ch. I.). References. I. 17. A. C. Turberville, The Pulpit, vol. i. p. 6. R. C. Trench, Sermons New and Old, p. 16.3. R. Flint, Sermons and Addresses, p. 28. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 88. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 229. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 39. 1.18. J. H. Snowdon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 292. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints' Days, p. 224. T. Binney, Kings' Weigh-House Chapel Sermons, p. 206. J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. i. p. 124. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 183. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture James, p. 376. I. 18-21. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 22. James 1:18-22 The new moral birth is sacred as sacred as the child within the mother's womb it is a kind of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost to conceal it. And when I use the word "moral" here or anywhere above I do not, I hope, mean that dull pinch-lipped conventionality of negation which often goes under that name. The deep-lying ineradicable desires, fountains of human action, the lifelong asp rations, the lightning-like revelations of right and justice, the treasured hidden ideal, borne in flame and darkness, in joy and in sorrow, in tears and in triumph, within the heart these are, as a rule, anything but conventional. Edward Carpenter, England's Ideal, p. 73 James 1:19 Speaking of the discipline of self-restraint and the stoical repression of feelings in Japan, Dr. Nitobé, in his volume on Bushido (pp. 106 f. ), observes that in Japan 'when a man or woman feels his or her soul stirred, the first instinct is quietly to suppress the manifestation of it. In rare instances is the tongue set free by an irresistible spirit, when we have eloquence of sincerity and fervour. It is putting a premium on a breach of the third commandment to encourage speaking lightly of spiritual experiences. It is truly jarring to Japanese ears to hear the most sacred words, the most secret heart experiences, thrown out in promiscuous audiences. "Dost thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred with tender thoughts? It is time for seeds to sprout. Disturb it not with speech; but let it work alone in quietness and secrecy" writes a young Samurai in his diary. 'To give in so many articulate words one's inmost thoughts and feelings notably the religious is taken among us as an unmistakable sign that they are neither very profound nor very sincere. "Only a pomegranate is he" so runs a popular saying "who, when he gapes his mouth, displays the contents of his heart."' Compare the advice of Polonius in Hamlet (Act i. Sc. 3): Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice. Surly judges there have been who did not much admire the 'Bible of Modern Literature,' or anything you could distil from it, in contrast with the ancient Bibles; and found that in the matter of speaking, our far best excellence, when that could be obtained, was excellent silence, which means endurance and exertion, and good work with lips closed. Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets (v.). While in thy lips thy words thou dost confine, Thou art their lord; once uttered, they are mine. Archbishop Trench. 'All the ground near Sir Archibald's,' between Aberdeen and Inverness, 'is as well cultivated as most in England. About seven I preached. The kirk was pretty well filled, though upon short notice. Certainly this is a nation "swift to hear, and slow to speak," though not "slow to wrath". Wesley's Journal (7th June, 1764). Johnson. What I most envy Burke for is his being constantly the same. He is never what we call humdrum; never unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off. Boswell. Yet he can listen. Johnson. No; I cannot say he is good at that. So desirous is he to talk, that, if one is speaking at this end of the table, he'll speak to somebody at the other end. Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides (15th Aug.) References. I. 19. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p. 220. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 9. I. 19, 20. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 292. I. 19-21. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 279. I. 19-27. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 36. James 1:20 If a bad-tempered man can be admirably virtuous, he must be under extreme difficulties.... For it is of the nature of such temper to interrupt the formation of healthy mental habits, which depend on a growing harmony between perception, conviction and impulse. There may be good feelings, good deeds for a human nature may touch endless varieties and blessed inconsistencies in its windings but it is essential to what is worthy to be called high character, that it may be safely calculated on. George Eliot, Essays of Theophrastus Such (VI.). Reference. I. 20. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xii. p. 28. James 1:21 The stream of custom and our profession bring us to the Preaching of the Word, and we sit out our hour under the sound; but how few consider and prize it as the great ordinance of God for the salvation of souls, the beginner and the sustainer of the Divine life of grace within us! And certainly, until we have thus thought of it, and seek to feel it thus ourselves, although we hear it most frequently, and let slip no occasion, yea, hear it with attention and some present delight, yet still we miss the right use of it, and turn it from its true end, while we take it not as that * ingrafted word which is able to save our souls. * Leighton. References. I. 21. A. B. O. Wilberforce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 296. J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Day, p. 386. I. 21, 22. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1847. James 1:22 In the one volume of Sesame and Lilies nay, in the last forty pages of its central address to Englishwomen everything is told that I know of vital truth, everything urged that I see to be needful of vital act but no creature answers me with any faith or any deed. They read the words, and say they are pretty, and go on in their own ways. Ruskin, Fors Clavigera (LVIII.). When President Roosevelt opened the Bible to kiss it, on taking the oath at his inauguration, this text was found to be the place he chose. References. I. 22. E. A. Stuart, His Dear Son and other Sermons, vol. v. p. 17. F. W. Farrar, Sin and its Conquerors, p. 58. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 188. I. 22-24. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 49. I. 22-25. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1467. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 25; ibid. vol. iii. pp. 183, 448. I. 23. F. St John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 92. I. 23-25. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1848. James 1:24 'Few people,' says Matthew Arnold, in The French Play in London, 'who feel a passion think of learning anything from it. A man feels a passion, he passes through it, and then he goes his way and straightway forgets, as the Apostle says, what manner of man he was. Above all, this is apt to happen with us English, who have, as an eminent German professor is good enough to tell us, "so much genius, so little method". The much genius hurries us into infatuations; the little method prevents our learning the right and wholesome lesson from them.' The Law of Life in Christianity Liberty James 1:25 There is no more inspiring word in human speech than Freedom, Liberty. It expresses an instinctive craving of the human heart. It awakens a responsive echo in the human breast. Curiously enough, it has often been a taunt levelled at the Church and with a certain measure of justification that it stands in opposition to this noble and legitimate instinct of the human heart. If that is true, then a great error has been committed in direct antagonism to the spirit of the Gospel. The Gospel was announced by the Lord in terms of liberty: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me... to preach deliverance to the captive... to set at liberty them that are bruised'. The Christ appeared as the Liberator, the Emancipator. He came to break oppression, To set the captive free, To take away transgression And rule in equity. Note the third line 'to take away transgression' for it is of the essence of the Christian conception of liberty, and we must return to it. But it is important to notice generally that the Christian religion is in entire accord with this noble aspiration of the human heart. If Christianity is to understand itself aright, it must see that liberty is of the very essence of its own constitution. Freedom is the law of the Christian life. The flower of the Christian life can never blossom in its perfection till it expands in the congenial atmosphere of perfect liberty. I. It is important to notice that there are two kinds of freedom. There is an outer freedom and an inner, just as there is an outer and an inner bondage. The outer is in each case the more obvious. The slavery that holds the body captive is more quickly detected than the tyranny that enthralls the spirit. A man's limbs may be free. He may have every right of the freeborn and yet have the spirit of a slave, held captive in the tyranny of custom or dread, or degrading habit. A man, on the other hand, may be a prisoner, with a spirit indomitable, with a liberty within, which tyrants cannot quell. Men contend for their right to more than Burns sings of in his Scottish paean of freedom. They want ultimately, like the Pilgrim Fathers, 'Freedom to worship God'. This is, in its highest terms, the one right man has from nature, as Mazzini maintains, even if he have no other. He has the right of 'liberating himself from every obstacle impeding his free fulfilment of his own duties'. But that is something spiritual. It demands, in the first instance, the emancipation of the inner man. It is men with the free spirit who fight for freedom. II. Notice the significance of this for Christianity and of Christianity for this. The Gospel is what man needs if he will be free. It is the Gospel which becomes 'the religion of ethical liberation, for in its very centre lies the belief in the unfettering of the will for good by the forgiveness of sins'. Martin Luther, who never beats about the bush, gives a very straight answer to the question, Where lie the roots of liberty? In a brief treatise on 'The Liberty of a Christian Man,' a most concise and illuminating statement of the essence and spirit of Christianity, he says, in a word, that the foundation of all true freedom lies in the deliverance of the soul from the bondage of sin through faith in the finished work of Christ. Where did Luther learn this? It was the truth of Christ, which Rome had concealed from the eyes of men for centuries in order to impose on them the tyranny of her own will and serve her own base ends. Luther learned it from Paul and a greater than Paul, Paul's Master, our Lord. III. Liberty is a right of man from God's hand, a right which has been discovered for us by Christ. But, as Dr. John Ker says, 'there is great danger in contending for freedom, either civil or religious, of our making it the end instead of the means'. Anthony Trollope had a novel called What will He do with It? That is the question for every man who has gained his freedom. What will he do with it? If it is not recognised speedily that freedom is more than anything else a constant opportunity, it will degenerate into licence. If men do not realise that there is a law of liberty, they will become mere libertines, who, wearing the name of freedom, are the most degraded slaves. No, there are great calls awaiting a man, the call of truth, the call of righteousness, as soon as he gains his freedom. And as Dr. Denney says, 'A man must be perfectly free' why? 'that the whole weight of his responsibilities may come upon him. Liberty is the correlative of responsibility?' A free man must address himself to the knowing of the truth that he may form proper judgments. He must consider the will of God that he may choose and pursue worthy ideals. Self kicks at these, as though they were new fetters, an infringement of freedom of thought, a restraint on the natural impulses. It were well for a man in this temper to consider the prayer with which the late Master of Balliol, Professor Edward Caird, used every morning to open his class for the study of Moral Philosophy: 'Almighty and most merciful God, who hast created us for Thyself so that we can find rest only in Thee, grant unto us purity of heart and strength of purpose, so that no selfish passion may hinder us from knowing Thy will, and no weakness from doing it, that in Thy light we may see light, and in Thy service find perfect freedom, through the spirit of Christ'. 'For,' says St. Francis de Sales, 'the liberty of beloved children... is a thorough detachment from all things in order to follow God's recognised will.' R. J. Drummond, Faith's Certainties, p. 255. James 1:25 As the most far-sighted eye, even aided by the most powerful telescope, will not make a fixed star appear larger than it does to an ordinary and unaided sight, even so there are heights of knowledge and truth sublime which all men in possession of the ordinary human understanding may comprehend as much and as well as the profoundest philosopher and the most learned theologian. Such are the truths relating to the logos and its oneness with the self-existent Deity, and of the humanity of Christ and its union with the logos . It is idle, therefore, to refrain from preaching on these subjects, provided only such preparations have been made as no man can be a Christian without. The misfortune is that the majority are Christians in name, and by birth only. Let them but once, according to St. James, have looked down steadfastly into the law of liberty or freedom in their own souls (the will and the conscience), and they are capable of whatever God has chosen to reveal. Coleridge. In a letter to a country rector ( Life, ch. VIII.) Kingsley avows that 'the highest idea of man is to know his Father, and look his Father in the face, in full assurance of faith and love; and that out of that springs all manful energy, all self-respect, all self-restraint, all that the true Englishman has, and the Greek and Spaniard have not. And I say this is what St. James means when he speaks of "the perfect law of liberty". I say that this Protestant faith, which teaches every man to look God in the face for himself, has contributed more than anything else to develop family life, industry, freedom, in England, Scotland, and Sweden.' James 1:25 All civilisation is the yoking of man, and the vicissitudes of history arise out of the trial of various yokes, and the abuse of them by lawless and unyoked power, the rebellions against their misuse involving also rebellion against yokes as such. We have need of law and Gospel. Better Law only than no yoke, and the Gospel is no Gospel if it does not both presuppose and include Law. Dr. Hort, Hulsean Lectures, p. 203. References. I. 25. W. Morison, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 132. Archbishop Lang, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 384. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture James, p. 386. James 1:26 'The thing here supposed and referred to,' says Butler in his great Sermon on The Government of the Tongue, 'is talkativeness: a disposition to be talking, abstracted from the consideration of what is to be said; with very little or no regard to, or thought of doing, either good or harm.... And this unrestrained volubility and wantonness of speech is the occasion of numberless evils and vexations in life. It begets resentment in him who is the subject of it; sows the seed of strife and dissension amongst others; and inflames little disgusts and offences, which if let alone would wear away of themselves.' While thou so hotly disclaimest the devil, be not guilty of diabolism. Fall not into one name with that unclean spirit, nor act his nature whom thou so much abhorrest; that is, to accuse, calumniate, backbite, whisper, detract, or sinistrously interpret others. Degenerous depravities, and narrow-minded vices! not only below St. Paul's noble Christian but Aristotle's true gentleman. Trust not with some that the Epistle of St. James is apocryphal, and so read with less fear that stabbing truth, that in company with this vice 'thy religion is in vain'. Moses broke the tables without breaking of the law; but where charity is broke, the law itself is shattered, which cannot be whole without love, which is the fulfilling of it.' Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals (pt. 1. sec. 16). Canon Carus, in his memoir of Charles Simeon, quotes a reminiscence of the latter's quick temper. 'We were one day sitting at dinner at Mr. Hankinson's, when a servant behind him stirred the fire in a way so unscientific that Mr. S. turned round and hit the man a thump in the back to stay his proceedings. When he was leaving me, on horseback, after the same visit, my servant had put the wrong bridle upon his horse. He was in a hurry to be gone, and his temper broke out so violently that I ventured to give him a little humorous castigation. His cloak-bag was to follow him by coach; so I feigned a letter in my servant's name, saying how high his character stood in the kitchen, but that they could not understand how a gentleman who preached and prayed so well, should be in such passion about nothing, and wear no bridle upon his tongue.' James 1:26 'If the religious spirit,' says Mr. Morley in Compromise (pp. 178, 179), leads to a worthy and beautiful life, if it shows itself in cheerfulness, in pity, in charity and tolerance, in forgiveness, in a sense of the largeness and the mystery of things, in a lifting up of the soul in gratitude and awe to some supreme power and sovereign force, then whatever drawback may be in the way of superstitious dogma, still such a spirit is on the whole a good thing. If not, not. It would be better without the superstition: even with the superstition, it is good. But if the religious spirit is only a fine name for narrowness of understanding, for shallow intolerance, for mere social formality, for a dread of losing that poor respectability which means thinking and doing exactly as the people around us think and do, then the religious spirit is not a good thing, but a thoroughly bad and hateful thing.' References. I. 26. Bishop Butler, Human Nature and Other Sermons, p. 54. J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Bay, p. 416. Unspotted From the World James 1:27 As men and women grow older they change. Of all the changes that they undergo, those of their moral natures are often the most painful to watch. The boy changes into the man, and there is something lost which never seems to come back again. He has a hard conscience now, instead of a tender one; he is scornful about sacred things; no longer earnest and enthusiastic, but flippant and cynical; he tolerates evils he used to hate; makes excuses for passions he once thought horrible; he qualifies and limits the absolute standards of truth and purity. He has changed. His life has lost that clear ring, its white lustre. He is no longer unspotted. In regard to this we all have a dim idea that if we could have taken that life and isolated it, we could have kept its freshness and purity. We grant that there is evil in the heart, but we do not believe that the mere fermentation of that evil in itself could have come to all this. Out of the aggregate of the many influences which we call 'the world,' have come the evil forces that have changed and soiled this life. It has not been himself. He has walked through mire, and the filth has gathered on his skirts; through pestilence, and the poison has crept into his blood. Not merely the evil heart within has shown its wickedness, but the evil around us has fastened upon us. We have not merely been spotted, but 'spotted by the world'. Our own experience confirms the Bible conception of 'the world,' and so we listen. And here the Bible steps in and describes lives shaped by this cosmos, this total of created things. I. 'Lives spotted by the world.' The stained lives. Who does not know what this means? There is the outward stain the stain upon the reputation. How few reputations remain so pure as to be fit patterns for others to follow! There are the stains upon our conduct, the impure and untrue acts which visibly cloud the fair surface of our best activity. And then, worst of all, there is the stain upon the heart, of which none but the man himself knows anything. These are the stains which we accumulate. II. And now, in view of all this, we come to our religion; and we hear St. James telling us, in unsparing words, what 'pure religion and undefiled before God' is. Mark, then, how intolerant religion is. She starts with what men declare to be impossible. She refuses to bring down her standards. She insists that men must come up to her. She proclaims absolute standards. She will not say, 'Your case is a hard one, and for that reason I will waive a part of my demands; for you, religion shall mean not to do this sin or that sin'. Before every man, in the thickest of the world's contagions, she stands and cries with unwavering voice, 'Come out, be separate, keep yourself unspotted from the world'. There is something sublime in this unsparingness. It almost proves that our religion is Divine when it undertakes for man so Divine a task. And our religion is not true unless it have this power in it, unless the statesman, the merchant, the man or woman in society, do indeed find it the power of purity and strength. We must bring our faith to this test. Unless our religion does this for us, it is not the true religion that St. James talked of, and that the Lord Jesus came to reveal and to bestow. III. We go for our assurance to the first assertion of the real character of Christianity in the life of Jesus. The life of Jesus was meant to be the pattern of the lives of all who call themselves His followers. His was a real human life, and yet the very sinlessness of Jesus has made Him seem to many not to be Man, instead of being the type of what manhood was intended to be, and what all men must come to be. The very principle of the Incarnation, that without which it loses all its value, surely is this, that Christ was Himself the first Christian; that in Him was displayed the power of that grace by which all believers were to be helped and saved. And so for this reason the life of Jesus was lived in the closest contact with His fellowmen. He passed through the highest temptations to which our nature is exposed; He walked through the same muddy streets of sordid care; He penetrated the same murky atmosphere of passion that we have to go through, and thence He came out pure, and unspotted from the world; thus He is really God manifest in the flesh. As He came forth spotless, so by His power we must come out unstained at last, and 'walk with Him in white'. IV. As we study the life of Jesus we are taught that religion is, by its very nature, positive. Jesus was never guarding Himself, but always invading the lives of others with His holiness. He did not shut Himself up, as it were, in the castle of His life, guarding every loophole, but He made it an open centre of operations from which the surrounding territory was to be subdued. So we learn from Him that our truest safety, our true spotlessness from the world must come, not negatively, by the garments being drawn back from every worldly contact, but positively, by the garments being so essentially pure that they fling pollution off. V. We must ever bear in mind the purpose of the Incarnation; we must grasp the bewildering thought of a personal love for our single souls; we must find its meaning in those precious words, 'Christ died for me.' Then will the soul, full of profoundest gratitude, look round to see what it has to give to the Saviour in return, and it will find it has nothing to give save itself. It is its own no longer; it is given away to Christ. It lives His life Who redeemed it and not its own. Thus, it is by walking in this new sense of consecration to Him, it will walk unharmed; it will be kept' unspotted from the world' by Christ. More than this; it is by a Christlike dedication to the world that Christ really saves us from the world. You go to your Lord and say, 'O Lord, this world is tempting me, and I fear its stains. Shall I run away from it?' And the Voice comes, as from the opened sky, 'No, go up close to the world, and help it; feel for its wickedness; pity it; sacrifice yourself for it; so shall you be safest from its infection, and not sacrifice yourself to it'. It is possible so to be given up to Christ and our fellows, that the lust, falsehood, cruelty, injustice, and selfishness of the world shall not hurt us; it is possible to walk through the fire and not be burned. But it depends always and wholly upon whether He walks there with us. Let us not trust ourselves, for we are weakness. Trust Him, work for all who need us; so shall we go through all impurity and be gathered safe home at last into the Father's House. Bishop Phillips Brooks. James 1:27 How much it is misunderstood may be seen from the fact that, though the word itself, religion, stands for one of the most beautiful and simple things in the world, there yet hangs about it an aroma which is not wholly pleasing. What difficult service that great and humble name has seen! With what strange and evil meanings it has been charged! How dinted and battered it is with hard usage! how dimmed its radiance, how stained its purity!... To express the religion of Christ in precise words would be a mighty task; but it may be said that it was not merely a system, nor primarily a creed; it was a message to individual hearts, bewildered by the complexity of the world and the intricacy of religious observances. Christ bade men believe that their Creator was also a Father; that the only way to escape from the overwhelming difficulties presented by the world was the way of simplicity, sincerity, and love; that a man should keep out of his life all that insults and hurts the soul, and that he should hold the interests of others as dear as he holds his own. A. C. Benson, From a College Window, pp. 307 f. One of the hardest burdens laid upon the other good influences of human nature has been that of improving religion itself. John Stuart Mill. James 1:27 Shortly after being made a bishop, Jean Pierre Camus of Belley, consulted St. Francis de Sales upon the difficulty which he felt of keeping chaste amid the temptations into which his love of charity led him inevitably. St. Francis replied: 'You must distinguish between persons whose position obliges them to take charge of others, and such as lead a private life which involves no responsibility save for themselves. The first must commit chastity to the care of charity, and if it be real, it will answer to the trust, serving as a wall and rampart; but private persons do well to subject their charity to chastity, and maintain great reserve and caution in their actions. Those in responsible positions are often obliged to expose themselves to temptations inseparable from their duties, and so long as they do not tempt God by presumption, His grace will guard them.' The outward service ( θρησκεία ) of ancient religion, the rites, ceremonies, and ceremonial vestments of the old law, had morality for their substance. They were the old letter, of which morality was the spirit; the enigma, of which morality was the meaning. But morality itself is the service and ceremonial (cultus exterior, θρησκεία ) of the Christian religion. The scheme of grace and truth that became through Jesus Christ, the faith that looks down into the perfect law of liberty, has light for its garment; its very robe is righteousness.' On this the twenty-third aphorism in Aids to Reflection, Coleridge has this comment: 'Herein the Apostle places the preeminence, the peculiar and distinguishing excellence, of the Christian religion. The ritual is of the same kind, though not of the same order, with the religion itself not arbitrary and conventional, as types and hieroglyphics are in relation to the things expressed by them; but inseparable, consubstantiated (as it were) and partaking therefore of the same life, permanence, and intrinsic worth with its spirit and principle. I myself can hardly conceive a working Ethical society of which the aim would not include in essentials the Apostle's definition of the pure service of religion. We might characterise it as the aim of being in the world and yet not of it, working strenuously for the improvement of mundane affairs, and yet keeping ourselves, as the Apostle says, 'unspotted of the world' that is, in modern phrase, keeping clear of the compromises with sordid interests and vulgar ambitions which the practical standards of all classes and sections of society are too apt to admit. Sir Leslie Stephen, Practical Ethics, p. 14. James 1:27 When the time called Christmas came, while others were feasting and sporting themselves, I looked out poor widows from house to house, and gave them some money. Fox's Journal (1645). Thinkers of the most different schools and sects would probably agree that true charity demands of us money, but also something more than money: personal service, sacrifice of time and thought. Sir Leslie Stephen, Practical Ethics, p. 7. Son, if lofty be the lintels of thy house, and thy friend be sick, say not, What shall I send him? but go on foot and see him with thy eyes; for that is better for him than a thousand talents of gold and silver. From * The Story of Ahikar. * In describing the great Welshman, Lewis Morris, of the eighteenth century, George Borrow ( Wild Wales, ch. XL.) praises his 'noble generosity and sacrifice of self for the benefit of others. Weeks and months he was in the habit of devoting to the superintendence of the widow and fatherless.' At the last day He is to ask us not what sins we have avoided, but what righteousness we have done, what we have done for others, how we have helped good and hindered evil: what difference it has made to this world, and to our country and our family and friends, that we have lived. The man who has been only pious and not useful will stand with a long face on that great day, when Christ puts to him his questions. R. L. Stevenson, to the Samoan Students. James 1:27 The moment we care for anything deeply, the world that is, all the other miscellaneous interests becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping oneself 'unspotted from the world'; but lovers talk of it just as much when they talk of the 'world well lost'. G. K. Chesterton. A white bird, she told him once, looking at him gravely, a bird which he must carry in his bosom across a crowded public place his own soul was like that. Pater, Marius the Epicurean, vol. 1. To have one chance in life, in eternity, for a white name, and to lose it! James Lane Allen, The Mettle of the Pasture, p. 404. After I had spent a month in surveying the curiosities of this city [Venice], and had put on board a ship the books which I had collected in Italy, I proceeded through Verona and Milan, and along the Leman lake to Geneva. The mention of this city brings to my recollection the slandering More, and makes me again call the Deity to witness, that in all those places in which vice meets with so little discouragement, and is practised with so little shame, I never once deviated from the paths of integrity and virtue, and perpetually reflected that, though my conduct might escape the notice of men, it could not elude the inspection of God. Milton, * The Second Defence. * I firmly believe that it is in keeping our honour spotless that we best perform our duty, both to ourselves and to others of course I mean honour in its purest and highest sense. Our chief business in this world is with ourselves: 'Keep yourselves unspotted from the world'. This I know is not at this time a fashionable doctrine. J. H. Shorthouse. References. I. 27. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2313. H. Rix, Sermons, Addresses and Essays, p. 73. J. Laidlaw, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 214. B. J. Snell, The Widening Vision, p. 113. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 408. T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p. 261. W. Ogg, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 408. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 456; ibid. (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 220. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture James, p. 397. James 2:1 The sermon was chiefly occupied with proving that God is no respecter of persons; a mark of indubitable condescension in the clergyman, the rank in society which he could claim for himself duly considered. But, unfortunately, the church was so constructed, that its area contained three platforms of position, actually of differing level; the loftiest, in the chancel, on the right hand of the pulpit, occupied by the gentry; the middle, opposite the pulpit, occupied by the tulip-beds of their servants; and the third, on the left of the pulpit, occupied by the common parishioners. Unfortunately too, by the perpetuation of some old custom, whose significance was not worn out, all on the left of the pulpit were expected, as often as they stood up to sing which was three times to turn their backs to the pulpit, and so face away from the chancel where the gentry stood. George Macdonald, David Elginbrod (chap. XII.). References. II. 1. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 2. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture James, p. 406. II. 1-13. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 54. James 2:2 'I found my way to the church,' [in Pont Sainte Maxence], says Stevenson in his Inland Voyage, 'for there is always something to see about a church, whether living worshippers or dead men's tombs; you find there the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit.' James 2:3 Whoever passes up Broadway finds his attention arrested by three fine structures Trinity Church, that of the Messiah, and Grace Church.... In the old world, the history of such edifices, though not without its shadow, had many bright lines. Mysterious orders, of which we know only that they were consecrated to brotherly love and the development of mind, produced the genius which animated the architecture; but the casting of the bells and suspending them in the tower was an act in which all orders of the community took part; for when those cathedrals were consecrated, it was for the use of all. Rich and poor knelt together upon their marble pavements, and the imperial altar welcomed the obscurest artisan. This grace our churches want the grace which belongs to all religions, but is peculiarly and solemnly enforced upon the followers of Jesus. The poor to whom He came to preach can have no share in the grace of Grace Church. In St. Peter's, if only as an empty form, the soiled feet of travel-worn disciples are washed; but such feet can never intrude on the fane of the holy Trinity here in republican America, and the Messiah may be supposed still to give as excuse for delay, 'The poor ye have always with you'. We must confess this circumstance is to us quite destructive of reverence and value for these buildings. We are told that, at the late consecration, the claims of the poor were eloquently urged; and that an effort is to be made, by giving a side chapel, to atone for the luxury which shuts them out from the reflection of sunshine through those brilliant windows. It is certainly better that they should be offered the crumbs from the rich man's table than nothing at all, but it is surely not the way that Jesus would have taught to provide for the poor. Margaret Fuller. If anywhere democracy seems natural, it should be in the eyes of God; and yet, if Americans show anywhere social demarcations, it is in the province of religion. This is true, not only of different churches where the expense of membership is so unequal that in large cities rich and poor are farther apart on Sundays than on week-days, but it is true of the sects themselves. Hugo Münsterberg, The Americans, p. 500. James 2:5 Is the last and most admirable invention of the human race only an improved muck-rake? Is this the ground on which Orientals and Occidentals meet? Did God direct us so to get our living, digging where we never planted and He would, perchance, reward us with lumps of gold? Thoreau, * Life Without Principle. * Compare also, for a comment on this verse, the twenty-ninth chapter of The Vicar of Wakefield. The very discipline of poverty makes the heart and spirit and body strong for love. It is the poor who know the intensity of human affection the poor and patient who have to labour and toil for that prize to the uttermost farthing which ransoms the simplest delight. John Oliver Hobbes, in The Vineyard (ch. VI.). 'We shall never do anything without the poor,' wrote Vinet to a friend, when the Free Church of the Vaud Canton was being formed. 'Nothing is great, nothing is strong, save what begins with the poor.' James 2:6 All the darker and sterner aspect of the age which we have been viewing, its social revolt, its moral and religious awakening, the misery of the peasant, the protest of the Lollard, are painted with a terrible fidelity in the poem of William Langland.... His world is the world of the poor: he dwells on the poor man's life, on his hunger and toil, his rough revelry and his despair, with the intensity of a man who has no outlook beyond it. The narrowness, the misery, the monotony of the life he paints reflect themselves in his verse. Green, Short History of the English People, pp. 248, 249. James 2:7 I dare not call myself a Christian. I have hardly met the man in all my life who deserved that name. Max Müller. It has been suggested that every man should be called a Christian who fulfils two conditions. The first is, that he believes the universe as a whole to be something rational and righteous something which has ever our approval and admiration. The second is, that he finds himself in so much sympathy with the life and character of Jesus, that he desires to consecrate his religious feelings and convictions by associating them with the name of Jesus. Of all the attempts to define the outer limits within which the word Christian may be applied, this is perhaps the most successful. J. M. E. McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, p. 246. Reference. II. 7. J. Halsey, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 260. James 2:8 To the plain man the most important feature of justice is that it consists in his practical recognition of the truth that * another man's equal good is equally important with his own. * Dr. Sophie Bryant, Studies in Character, p. 32. The correlative to loving our neighbours as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbours. O. W. Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast Table (XI.). James 2:8 To hope or to fear for another is the sole thing which can give to humanity the fulfilled consciousness of its own being. Eugénie de Guerin. References. II. 8. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 101. II. 8, 9. R. J. Campbell, City Temple Sermons, p. 92. II. 10. H. R. Heywood, Sermons and Addresses, p. 50. R. J. Campbell, City Temple Sermons, p. 245. Brooke Herford, Courage and Cheer, p. 16. II. 12. H. Bonner, Sermons and, Lectures, p. 52. J. Keble, Sermons for the Sundays After Trinity, p. 331. Mercy and Judgment James 2:13 They are both true; they are both great facts in human history and experience. Long ago a man said: 'My song shall be of mercy and judgment'. Surely he was a great anthem maker who could bring them both into tune. He did it, and he was right. I. Do not suppose that we can escape this matter of judgment by some metaphysical argument: man! the matter is in thee, in thy soul, in thy blood; why shirk it, why flinch from the fact? How many there are who want to escape the Church and all that the Church means by getting up some little bubbling frothy argument about abstractions and a species of pseudo-metaphysics. If they would but look right into the very centre of their own hearts they may see murder. That is one aspect of judgment self-torment. We have many fine speeches about the possibility of God pardoning the sinner. Do not talk about that; first talk about the sinner pardoning himself. That is the difficulty even after Divine pardon. God has pardoned us through the cross of His dear Son, He has looked at us through the crimson medium of Calvary, and He has said mayhap, My son, thy sins which are many are all forgiven thee. Yes, but, Thou Almighty One, I cannot forgive myself; I am glad with a kind of grim gladness that I have been forgiven away in the eternities, but I cannot forgive myself; I did the wrong deed, and Thou must qualify me, so to say, to forgive myself; I would accept heaven's kind pardon, but I cannot forgive my own soul. How is that to be met? I want to feed some little child because I neglected my own, but I seem to make no progress in feeding the child, the very food seems to be lost upon it: can I not have just one full round hour with my own child that I might try to make up to it what I neglected to give? That would be a kind of pardon; I thank Thee for Thy great pardon, now come to me and give me that kind of grace which will enable me to do on my side what Thou hast done on Thine. People want to know if there is a hell. Certainly. Where is it? In you; that is where it is; in me, preacher of the Word; like all other preachers, his very soul is steeped in holy Scripture, and yet hot hell is in the man. Woe betide the soul that puzzles itself with such frivolities as, Is heaven a state or is heaven a place? No earnest mind can ask such questions; they are outside the fiery bounds of mere frivolity and curiosity. Sometimes certain sufferings can only be expressed in terms of duration. They are poor terms, in themselves they are empty little words, but if we pile them sufficiently together they enable the soul to express its most agonistic and self-tormenting emotion. Therefore we say, 'The worm that dieth not'. I know it! 'The fire that is not quenched.' I feel it! Do not take me out to some valley near Jerusalem, and say it was a figure; take me into my own soul, where there are deeper valleys than there ever were in Jerusalem; I feel the gnawing of the worm undying, and I feel the torment that cannot be stilled but by the total Trinity Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. II. 'Mercy rejoiceth against judgment.' There are some persons who do not like to hear about judgment. They will never make any progress, and they are people not to be trusted; they are as Ephraim, a cake unturned; there is no reality of wisdom in such people; 'Mercy rejoiceth against judgment'. Mercy says, I must follow all the sin and all the misery, and I must teach all these people to say, Where sin abounded grace did much more abound. I have a great message, quoth mercy, and I must be out and tell it to the sons of distress and the daughters of weeping misery. What is the message of mercy? Does it abolish the law? No, mercy says, I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it. Mercy faces judgment, mercy recognises judgment; mercy never says, Never mind the law, do not think about the law. That is not the voice of Gospel mercy. We are taken by mercy itself to Sinai, with all its rocks and rocky lines, and then taken away until we come into green slopes, even the slopes of Mount Zion. We must pass through both experiences, some in this degree, some in that. Sin is not the same thing to every soul. III. Judgment is a matter within human limits which can be measured and satisfied. If it is a legal judgment, a man can bend his back and accept his punishment, and then stand up and challenge society to remind him of his expiated guilt. But there is another judgment that is not of the nature of social crime, but that spiritual judgment of the heart itself which is conducted in the sight of the living righteous God. Mercy is not mere sentiment; it is not a gush, it is a salvation. What does it save us from? That is a minor question, though a great one. What does it save us into? That is another interrogation, wide as heaven, lasting as duration. Have we sufficiently thought of the negative aspect of the gift of Christ? What is that negative aspect? It touches me to the quick; it is purely negative, but most suggestive and helpful as an initial idea. What is it? 'That we might not perish.' We can begin with that idea, it is initial, it will do to start with; it is only negative, but of great value. 'He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish.' That is a minus quantity, though it is important, Is there not a positive quantity? There is, and it follows immediately upon the very words that have been quoted 'but have everlasting life'. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. IV. p. 243. James 2:13 Rejoice against it in the face of it, that must mean. It is a fine figure, mercy looking full in the face of judgment, and not bating a particle of its joy. Dr. John Ker's Letters, p. 84. References. II. 14-23. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture James, p. 416. II. 14-26. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 67. James 2:15-16 I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of a creature, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun Is it possible that I could have steeled my purse against him? Perhaps I had no small change. Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposition, imposture * give and ask no questions. * Charles Lamb, on * The Decay of Beggars. * References. II. 15-17. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 224; ibid. (6th Series), vol. v. p. 297. James 2:16 The fundamental error of France lies in her psychology. Fiance has always believed that to say a thing is the same as to do it, as though speech were action. Amiel. James 2:17 Nothing in mediaeval history is to me more strange and appalling than their general acceptance of these truths as mathematical certainties, as things laid alongside of their actual life, without ever touching or quickening their spiritual consciousness. I have seen something of this in a less repulsive form among the poor of our own day, belief and conscience running as in two parallel lines which never meet; also, amongst people of the last generation, a belief in revelation, and a respect for it, which is not vivifying, and yet is belief, if not faith. Dora Greenwell, Two Friends, p. 84. References. II. 17. J. Johns, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 324. II. 18. T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p. 269. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 547. II. 18-26. T. Mann, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 219. Types of Unavailing Faith James 2:19 I. The faith of devils is grounded in compulsion rather than in free moral choice. They believe in spite of themselves. Belief is thrust upon them, and for that very reason cannot influence character, or work towards moral ends. No faith can guide the life and mould the destiny unless it first enlist the will on its side. The scene in which the Pharisees and Sadducees came tempting our Lord, and desiring Him to show them a sign from heaven, still repeats itself, with slight changes. When we join ourselves to the company of the Sadducees, and seek irrefutable signs from heaven, murmuring that the methods by which Jesus presents God and immortality to us fall short of absolute proof, is it not clear that we are demanding a necessary and inevitable faith a faith from which all those moral qualities which go with the personal choice is excluded? In other words, that we desire a faith which is one and the same in its basis with the faith of devils, and have therefore no true idea of its proper function in the spiritual life? Such a faith, if enforced upon men in the present stage of their spiritual development, would not answer the purpose for which God has made this principle the key to our training and salvation. Room for the moral element must always be found in the faith, which saves into a pure and blessed life. The chief virtue of faith in God's sight is that it enlists the will into its activities. The wish to believe is the high feature in our faith which distinguishes it from the bastard faith of devils. II. Another note of futility in this faith of the devils is that it does not include the affections. This, of course, is implied in the statement that true faith must be free, for the highest love is spontaneous and unconstrained. If the faith is to effectually shape the life and character, it must command our human sympathies as well as secure the assent of the reason, and the processes are intertwined. When we go on to say this futile faith, so dramatically described by St. James, lacks every element of trust, it is but another form of declaring that love has no place in its exercise. Independence towering into arrogant impiety is the dominant trait of the diabolic character, as it is briefly hinted in the Scriptures. III. The outward test of the insufficiency of a devil's faith is that it lacks those holy and gracious works by which the saving efficacy of all belief is verified. The practical life is a self-recording mechanism by which we may read the quality of the forces which are working within us. The faith that does not melt the character and cast it into worthier moulds, has no place in the redemptive economies of our Lord and Saviour. IV. St. James reminds us that this intellectual veneer of faith cannot disguise the malady of a condemned spirit. 'The devils believe and tremble.' Unless our belief has those elements in it which bring the whole life into conformity with the Divine, we must continue strangers to the deep, satisfying peace which is the heritage of saints. James 2:19 There is an opinion which may be said simply to identify religion with orthodoxy, with the holding for true what is true. No doubt right doctrine is a very important matter, but does that make it religion? Put it to the religious consciousness, and the answer is, No. It is the belief 'with the heart' that is wanted; and where that is not, religion is not. Else even the very devils would be religious; for they, as we are told, go further even than is required of them, and add to orthodoxy the fear of God. F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, p. 300. The devils, we are told, believe and tremble. But it is hard to convince people that nothing short of this can be true Christian faith. So because they are sometimes terrified by the thought of God, they fancy they believe, though their hearts are far away from Him. Guesses at Truth (2nd Series). Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable. Joubert. Rousseau, with his offensive vanity and literary pride, had a curious respect for Christ With a good bit of the devil in him, he believed and trembled. But I believe that he believed that sentence in his vague and cloudy panegyric on Christ to be true: 'If the son of Sophroniscus was a hero, the son of Mary was a God'. The 'faith of devils' lies latent in many a mind for an emergency. As one prayed when his ship was sinking, 'O God, if there be a God, have mercy on my soul, if I have a soul'. Dr. John Duncan, Colloquia Peripatetica, p. 140. References. II. 19. Archbishop Magee, Sermons at St. Saviour's, Bath, p. 218. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 26; ibid (6th Series), vol. i. p. 143. James 2:20 An opinion, I should say, gains vividness rather from constant application to conduct than from habitual opposition. Sir Leslie Stephen, on * Toleration. * References. II. 20. J. H. Jellet, The Elder San, p. 227. II. 21-23. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. i. p. 100. James 2:22 Gordon was no 'saint' in the usual meaning which the world attaches to the name. He was utterly removed from the class of religious Church Militant who, as passing residents in some French or Italian city, are prone to hurl their hymns on the Sabbath morning at the heads of the native heretics; neither had he the smallest fellowship with another large class of persons who would divide religion into two parts the muscular and the Methodist, one half John Bull and the other John Knox. Absolutely without parallel in our modern life, Gordon stands out the foremost man of action of our time and nation, whose ruling principle was faith and good works. No gloomy faith, no exalted sense of self-confidence, no mocking of the belief of others, no separation of his sense of God from the everyday work to which his hand has to be put; but a faith which was a living, moving, genial reality with him, present always and everywhere, shining out in every act of his life. Sir Wm. Butler, Life of General Gordon, p. 80. God's Friends James 2:23 When and by whom was he so called? There are two passages in the Old Testament in which an analogous designation is applied to the patriarch, but probably the name was one in current use amongst the people, and expressed in a summary fashion the impression that had been made by the history of Abraham's life. As many of us are aware, this name, 'the Friend,' has displaced the proper name, Abraham, on the lips of all Mohammedan people to this day; and the city of Hebron, where his corpse lies, is commonly known simply as 'the Friend'. I wish to bring out two or three of the salient elements and characteristics of friendship as exercised on the human level, and to use these as a standard and test of our religion and relation to God. I. Friends trust and love one another. Mutual confidence is the mortar which binds the stones in society together, into a building. (1) Unless I trust God I cannot be a friend of God's. (2) Let us remember where the sweet reciprocation and interchange of love begins. 'We love Him because He first loved us.' It was an old fancy that, wherever a tree was struck by lightning, all its tremulous foliage turned in the direction from which the bolt had come. When the merciful flash of God's great love strikes a heart, then all its tendrils turn to the source of the life-giving light, and we love back again, in sweet reverberation to the primal and original love. II. Friends have frank, familial* intercourse with one another. (1) If we are friends and lovers of God, we shall delight in intercourse with Him. (2) If we are friends of God we shall have no secrets from Him. (3) Tell God all, if you mean to be a friend of His. (4) If we are God's lovers, He will have no secrets from us. III. Friends delight to meet each other's wishes. (1) If we are God's lovers and friends, we shall find nothing sweeter than bowing to His will and executing His commandments. (2) And God, the heavenly Friend, will do what we wish. IV. Friends give gifts to each other. (1) If we are God's lovers, God will give us Himself, in so far as we can receive Him; and all other gifts in so far as they are good and needful. (2) If we are God's friends and lovers we shall give Him, in glad surrender, our whole selves. V. Friends stand up for each other. (1) If we are God's friends and lovers He will take up our cause. (2) If we are God's friends and lovers we have to take up His cause. A. Maclaren, Triumphant Certainties, p. 172. References. II. 23. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No. 1962. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture James, p. 421. II. 24. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. i. p. 79. II. 25. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii. No. 1061. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 98. James 2:26 I would treat of faith as it is actually found in the soul; and I say it is as little an isolated grace, as a man is a picture. It has a depth, a breadth, and a thickness; it has an inward life which is something over and above itself; it has a heart and blood and pulses and nerves, though not upon the surface. All these indeed are not spoken of, when we make mention of faith; nor are they painted on the canvas; but they are implied in the word, because they exist in the thing.... St. James, after warning his brethren against 'holding the faith' of Christ 'in respect of persons,' that is, in an unloving spirit, as the context shows, proceeds to say that it is 'perfected by works,' and that 'without works' it is 'dead,' as a body without the soul. That is, as the presence of the soul changes the nature of the dust of the earth, and makes it flesh and blood, giving it a life which otherwise it could not have, so love is the modelling and harmonising principle on which justifying faith depends, and in which it exists and acts. Newman, Lectures on Justification, pp. 265, 266. References. II. 26. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 335. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (2nd Series), p. 161. III. 1-6. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 84. III. 1-13. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture James, p. 431. James 3:2 She gossiped, like all the rest of Old Chester; but by some mysterious method, Susan Carr's gossip gave the listener a gentler feeling towards his kind. When she spoke of her neighbour's faults, one knew that somehow they were simply virtues gone to seed; and what was more remarkable, her praise had no sting of insinuation in it, no suggestion that she could speak differently if she chose. Margaret Deland, Philip and His Wife, p. 44. References. III. 2. J. Keble, Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany, p. 483. III. 4. T. F. Crosse, Sermons, p. 226. S. Gregory, How to Steer a Ship, p. 1. H. Bushnell, Christ and His Salvation, p. 140. III. 4-15. T. Spurgeon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 344. James 3:5 These fires are one of the saddest features of the mountain districts. The ravages of the past are visible in almost every valley; and every year fresh areas of living green we being swept by the pitiless flames and left a melancholy wilderness. The ease with which a forest fire is started is astounding, and only rivalled by the rapidity of its progress, when once it gains a hold upon the trees, and by the extent of the destruction ere the blaze is quenched. A single lighted match thrown carelessly upon the ground, a shower of sparks from a passing locomotive, a camp-fire insufficiently extinguished, may be the origin. And from this tiny cause, 'how great a matter a little fire kindleth'. James Outram, In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies, p. 147. These fires are one of the great dangers of California. I have seen from Monterey as many as three at the same time, by day a cloud of smoke, by night a red coal of conflagration in the distance. A little thing will start them, and, if the wind be favourable, they gallop over miles of country faster than a horse. R. L. Stevenson, in * The Old Pacific Capital. * References. III. 5. O. Bronson, Sermons, p. 229. III. 5, 6. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p. 123. James 3:6 An Apostle speaks of the tongue both as a blessing and as a curse. It may be the beginning of a fire, he says, a 'universitas iniquitatis,' and, alas! such did it become in the mouth of gifted Abelard. His eloquence was wonderful; he dazzled his contemporaries, says Fulco, 'by the brilliancy of his genius, the sweetness of his eloquence; the ready flow of his language, and the subtlety of his knowledge'. People came to him from all quarters; from Rome, in spite of mountains and robbers; from England, in spite of the sea; from Flanders and Germany; from Normandy, and the remote districts of France; from Angers and Poitiers; from Navarre by the Pyrenees, and from Spain, besides the students of Paris itself; and among those who sought his instructions now or afterwards, were the great luminaries of the schools in the next generation.... It was too much for a weak head and heart, weak in spite of intellectual power; for vanity will possess the head, and worldliness the heart, of the man, however gifted, whose wisdom is not an effluence of the Eternal Light. Newman, University Sketches (ch. XVI.). James 3:6 In the eighth pit of punishment, within the Eighth Circle of the Inferno, Dante describes the doom of evil counsellors in imagery drawn from this verse. Each is swathed in a fiery tongue, which burns them with agonising fury just as their tongues on earth set on fire the world. James 3:6 Knowledge, the discipline by which it is gained, and the tasks which it forms, have a natural tendency to refine the mind, and to give it an indisposition, simply natural, yet real, nay, more than this, a disgust and abhorrence, towards excesses and enormities of evil... a simple hatred of that miserable tone of conversation which, obtaining as it does in the world, is a constant fuel of evil, heaped up round about the soul. Newman, The Idea of a University, p. 187. The chief end I purpose to myself in all my labours is to vex the world rather than to divert it. Swift (in a letter to Pope). 'All sins,' said St. Francis de Sales, 'come under the head of thought, word, and deed; and faults in word are the most common and often the most dangerous for several reasons. First, because sins of thought only injure oneself, and give no scandal or bad example to others; God alone sees and is displeased with them, and moreover a loving repentance and ready turning to Him blots them out; whereas sins of the tongue go further, the evil word once uttered can only be recalled by a humble retractation, and even thus a brother's heart may have been poisoned by it. Again, notorious acts of sin are liable to public punishment; but evil speaking, unless it is exceptionally gross and slanderous, is subject to no check. Thirdly, sins of the tongue are specially dangerous because people do so little in the way of restitution or reparation for them.' James 3:7 Our learned Dr. Hakewill, in his Apology of God's Power and Providence, quotes Pliny to report that one of the emperors had particular fish ponds, and, in them, several fish that appeared and came when they were called by their particular names. And St. James tells us, that all things in the sea have been tamed by mankind. And Pliny tells us, that Antonia, the wife of Drusus, had a lamprey at whose gills she hung jewels or ear-rings. Izaak Walton, The Complete Angler (The Fourth Day). Reference. III. 7-12. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 96. James 3:8 Our intercourse with others renders itself mainly into government of the tongue. I do not know which of these two things is the most astonishing, the unexpected importance of the place assigned to this duty in Holy Scripture, or the utter unconcern which even good men often feel about it. For the most part we have gone far along our road in devotion and done ourselves many an irreparable mischief, before we bestow half the carefulness on the government of our tongue, which it not only deserves but imperiously requires. F. W. Faber, Growth in Holiness, pp. 91, 92. A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arise from words. People soon forget the meaning, but the impression and the passion remain. Burke. 'Most people,' says Plutarch ( Life of Timoleon , XXXII.), 'seem to feel hard words more than hard deeds, and are more upset by insults than by actual injuries. What we do to an enemy in war is done from necessity, but the evil we say of him seems to arise from an excess of spite.' In a letter to his son Philip, Sir Henry Sidney warns him that 'a wound given by a word is oftentimes harder to be cured than that which is given with the sword. Be rather a hearer and bearer away of other men's talk than a beginner and procurer of speech.... Think upon every word before you utter it, and remember how nature hath ramparted up, as it were, the tongue with teeth, lips, yea, and hair without the lips, and all betokening reins or bridles for the loose use of that member.' ** The Ruin of a Masterpiece ( a Temperance Sermon ) James 3:9 ** St. James is speaking here in his searching, practical way about the use of the tongue and the sins of the tongue. He reminds us that it is possible for the same tongue to speak or sing the praises of God, and to say bitter or cruel things against men. The wrongness of saying these things about men, he says, lies in this: that man is so sacred, and has so much in his nature of affinity to God, that to curse man is to curse a being made after the similitude of God. To speak harsh and bitter and loveless things about man is thus an offence against what is great and holy in the estimation of his Maker. I. St. James reminds us that bad words against men words that can hurt and injure and assault men are bad because man is so great, because his nature is so sacred. Does not that work out all round the circle of our duty to human nature and to ourselves? This drink curse what does it invade? What does it deteriorate? What does it drag down lower than the dust? What does it ruin and wreck? Not the beasts that perish, but men that are after the similitude of God. The injury is an injury upon what its Author designed to be a masterpiece of His perfect and Divine skill. The nature of the most miserable victim of drink was made after the similitude of God. The greater the thing wrecked, the more awful, the more pathetic, the more deplorable, the more tremendous is the wreck. If a cottage falls down by the sinking of a coal-pit under it, it is a great pity; but suppose the earth should heave and Westminster Abbey go down; that would be terrific, and the greatness of the Temple alone could measure the boundless greatness of the evil of the ruin. Man was designed by the Architect of all to be the shadow and the image of His own nature, with a will which is the true centre of causation, the shadow of the will of God, with a reason which can respond to the thought of the Divine mind, with a love which makes him most akin to the Divine nature. That is a temple, and shall that temple be wrecked and ruined, infinitely debased and bemired by a vice which plants itself on the border-line between the body and the spirit, between the physical and the psychical, and lays its horrible hands upon both, wrecking the physique and making the spiritual nature worse than ruined an antagonism to its Lord? It is this greatness and significance of man that makes the greatness of his fall and the greatness of his sin and the greatness of the peril to his soul, and the greatness of the call for all who would be on the side of good against evil, right against wrong, heaven against hell. II. Have none of you appeals very near at hand? Such is the curse of drink in England that there are not many homes which have not some one or other of their kinship more or less a victim to this abominable peril and curse and temptation. I believe I must be speaking to hundreds in this congregation who, if it were the right thing to do, could say, Yes, I have a relative; I have a friend who has fallen or is falling a victim to it perhaps one with a fine intellect, a delicate imagination, and noble powers for usefulness; perhaps, on the other hand, one who began life all unsuspecting and unwarned, and now finds the temptation has coiled like a serpent round the life, stifling every hope of better things. Be it so or be it not so with any one of you, you know the public facts. You know what is meant all over this city by the countless centres of temptation that flare their light across the street, that invite the tired and the disgusted and the down-trodden within their doors, and send them out again a step lower down the slope that leads to the final wreck. And these are the men and the women who were made after the similitude of God! III. There is one last thought The greatness of man made the greatness of his fall, and the greatness of his fall called down the greatness of His Redeemer and his Redeemer's work. It was because God had made us to be so like Himself, and man made such a ruin of the work, that the Eternal Son of the Father for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven. His delights were with the sons of men; His mighty compassions overflowed upon the sons of men as they had made themselves, whom God had made to be so great. Behold the greatness of Christ, and the greatness of His claim that we should take our place upon His side. But forget not that this all-mighty Christ, the Lord, is in the field against the evil. Bishop Handley Moule, Christian World Pulpit, vol. LXXVI. p. 361. James 3:9 In Rob Roy (pt. i. ch. XIII.) Andrew Fairservice remarks: 'I have heard wives flyte in England and Scotland it's nae marvel to hear them flyte ony gate but sic ill-scrapit tongues as thae Hieland carlines' and sic grewsome wishes, that men should be slaughtered like sheep and that they may lapper their hands to the elbows in their heart's blude sic awsome language as that I never heard oot o' a human thrapple; and, unless the deil wad rise among them to gie them a lesson, I thinkna that this talent at cursing could be amended.' We are told that, at the breaking up of the Council of Trent, the legate pronounced the words 'Anathema to all heretics,' and then the whole assembly rose, and the hall re-echoed from every lip, 'Anathema! Anathema!' It was well suggested by an American bishop of our own day, that if the Angel of Peace could have appeared at that moment, and whispered in the ears of the infuriated Romanists the Scriptural warning, 'Bless and curse not,' there might have been a flush of shame on every cheek. F. W. Robertson, Essays and Addresses, p. 248. Reference. III. 9. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 140. James 3:10 I have several times seen the stiletto and the rosary come out of the same pocket. Coleridge. Ruskin, in the fiftieth number of Fora Clavigera, quotes the following from a correspondent's letter: 'Could you but hear the blasphemous and filthy language our rosy village bairns use as soon as they are out of the parson's earshot, even when leaving the Sabbath School!... I know that the children are well taught six days a week, yet there is little fruit of good behaviour among them, and an indecency of speech which is amazing in rural children. On Christmas morn a party of these children, boys and girls, singing carols, encountered my young daughter going alone to the church service. The opportunity was tempting, and as if moved by one vile spirit, they screamed at her a blast of the most obscene and profane epithets that vicious malice could devise. She knew none of them; had never harmed them in her life. She came home with her kind, tender heart all aghast 'Why do they hate me so?' she asked. Yet a short time after the same children came into the yard, and began with the full shrill powers of their young lungs: Why do I love Jesus! the refrain Because He died for me, with especial gusto.' A grandson of the late Rev. Dr. Primrose (of Wakefield, vicar), wrote me a little note from his country living this morning, and the kind fellow had the precaution to write 'No thorn' upon the envelope, so that ere I broke the seal, my mind might be relieved of any anxiety lest the letter should contain one of those lurking stabs which are so painful to the present gentle writer. Thackeray, * Roundabout Papers. * The printed word is a tongue a tongue that reaches very far; and for this reason all that is said of the tongue relates also to the printed word: 'Therewith bless we God, and therewith curse we men, made after the likeness of God?' Tolstoi (to Peter Verigin). Thomas Boston remarks that he was 'particularly surprised with "one thing at Ettrick," viz., the prevalency of the sin of profane swearing; and was amazed to find blessing and cursing proceeding out of the same mouth; praying persons, and praying in their families too, horrid swearers at times; so that by the month of November I behoved to set myself to preach directly against that sin.' References. III. 10. J. M. Neale, Readings for the Aged (3rd Series), p. 1; ibid. Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. i. p. 11. James 3:13 Erskine of Linlathen, in 1832, wrote to M. Gaussen: 'My dear Brother, although I have had much enjoyment in meeting you once more in this world, yet I have also suffered much, chiefly because I am sensible that in witnessing for God's truth to you, I often sinned against the law of love and meekness and patience'. This apology was drawn out by the writer's memory of many keen theological discussions between himself and his friend during the latter's visit to Scotland. James 3:14 'I remember Miss Bronte once telling me,' writes Mrs. Gaskell, 'that it was a saying round about Haworth, "Keep a stone in thy pocket seven year; turn it and keep it seven year longer, that it may be ever ready to thine hand when thine enemy draws near".' By religion we live in God: all these quarrels lead to nothing but life with men or with cassocks. Amiel. 'Talking of Goldsmith, Johnson said, he was very envious. I defended him,' says Boswell,' by observing that he owned it frankly upon all occasions. Johnson: "Sir, you are enforcing the charge. He had so much envy that he could not conceal it. He was so full of it that he overflowed. He talked of it, to be sure, often enough. Now, sir, what a man avows, he is not ashamed to think; though many a man thinks what he is ashamed to avow. We are all envious naturally; but by checking envy, we get the better of it!"' Reference. III. 13-18. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 107. James 3:15 'Sterne,' wrote Dr. William Robertson, of Irvine, 'Sterne is a blackguard, morally speaking; a pleasant enough sort of person in other respects. His Sentimental Journey must, with all its wickedness, have impressed me much, for although I have not read it, I am sure for a good many years its successive stages and incidents are about as familiar as those of our own tour along the Rhine. That monk, that imaginary prisoner, that dead ass, that melancholy girl, Marie, I think, that grace before meat, I am sure I shall never forget them in the world. I wish I may be able to forget them in the next, for there's a dash of the "earthly, sensual, and devilish" in them, that makes them unsuitable companions for a better world.' Reference. III. 15. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 43. James 3:16 One thing is certain in our Northern land, Allow that birth or valour, wealth or art, Give each precedence to their possessor, Envy, that follows on such eminence, As came the lyme-hound on the roebuck's track, Shall pull them down, each one. Sir David Lyndsay. Speaking of Oxford in the eighteenth century, Mr. Cotter Morison ( Gibbon, p. 6) observes: 'The strange thing is that, with all their neglect of learning and morality, the colleges were not the resort of jovial if unseemly boon companionship; they were collections of quarrelsome and spiteful litigants, who spent their time in angry law-suits. The indecent contentions between Bentley and the Fellows of Trinity were no isolated scandal.' 'In former days,' wrote Vinet during the religious squabbles at Basle, 'God seemed to be an intimate personal friend. Today, controversial theology has come to separate us from Him.' He is a wonderful man that can thread a needle when he is at cudgels in a crowd; and yet this is as easy as to find Truth in the hurry of disputation. Joseph Glanvill. The people of Alexandria, a various mixture of nations, united the vanity and inconsistency of the Greeks with the superstition and obstinacy of the Egyptians. The most trifling occasion, a transient scarcity of flesh or lentils, the neglect of an accustomed salutation, a mistake of precedency in the public baths, or even a religious dispute, were at any time sufficient to kindle a sedition among that vast multitude, whose resentment was furious and implacable. Gibbon, Decline and Fall (ch. x.). Mr. Badman's envy was so rank and strong, that if it at any time turned its head against a man, it would hardly ever be pulled in again. He would watch over that man to do him mischief, as the cat watches over the mouse to destroy it; yea, he would wait seven years, but he would have an opportunity to hurt him, and when he had it, he would make him feel the weight of his envy. Bunyan. To hate indistinctly is soothing, and suffices for some time; but in the end there must be an object Hate without object is like shooting without a mark. What makes the sport interesting is a heart to pierce. There must be a man, a woman some one to ruin. Victor Hugo. References. III. 16. W. R. Inge, All Saints' Sermons, p. 40. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 190. James 3:17 In describing the anointing (5:14) of the Regent, Mary of Guise, Mr. Andrew Lang ( History of Scotland, II. 67) remarks that 'the Apostle least loved of Knox, St James, was her warrant The same author writes: "The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy". Little, indeed, of this wisdom prevailed in either party at this period. In the Regent at her death we see this spirit, and almost in her alone. "She embraced, and with a smiling countenance kissed the nobles, one by one, and to those of inferior rank who stood by she gave her hand to kiss, as a token of her kindness and dying charity."' In a letter from Cambridge written during 1885, Dr. Mandell Creighton points out to a younger friend: 'We should all of us try to feel something of the Divine love towards man, in spite of his weaknesses. "Men my brothers" should be a thought constantly before us. I freely admit that what is called "society" is a sore trial to one's charity. The failings of the natural man are not so revolting as the meannesses of the cultivated and pretentious world. The empty head and the cold heart are unpleasant to see; yet most heads are not entirely empty, and most hearts are not entirely cold. There is often a great deal of mute misery concealed under an affectation of frivolity. One can try to understand and help all sorts of people, and no one is quite hopeless. All answer in some degree to a call to them to bring out the best that is in them.' 'What we need at present for our Church's well-being,' wrote Newman in his Prophetical Office, 'is not invention, nor originality, nor sagacity, nor even learning in our divines, at least in the first place, though all gifts of God are in a measure needed, and never can be unseasonable, when used religiously, but we need peculiarly a sound judgment, patient thought, discrimination, a comprehensive mind, an abstinence from all private fancies and caprices and personal tastes, in a word, Divine wisdom.' Newman recurs to this text in his University Sketches (ch. XV.): 'The Church does not think much of any "wisdom" that is not desursum , that is, revealed; nor unless, as the Apostle proceeds, it is "primum quidem pudica , deinde pacifica ". These may be called the three vital principles of the Christian student, faith, chastity, love; because their contraries, viz., unbelief or heresy, impurity, and enmity are just the three great sins against God, ourselves, and our neighbours, which are the death of the soul.' In his first speech to the Little Parliament of 1653, Cromwell declares: 'It's better to pray for you than to counsel you in that matter, that you may exercise the judgment of mercy and truth! It's better, I say, to pray for you than to counsel you; to ask wisdom from heaven for you; which I am confident many thousands of saints do this day and have done and will do, through the permission of God and His assistance. I say it's better to pray than advise: yet truly I think of another Scripture which is very useful, though it seems to be for a common application to every man as a Christian wherein he is counselled to ask wisdom; and he is told what that is. That's "from above," we are told; it's "pure, peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruit"; it's "without partiality and without hypocrisy". Truly my thoughts run much on this place, that to the execution of judgment (the judgment of truth, for that's the judgment) you must have wisdom "from above"; and that's "pure". That will teach you to exercise the judgment of truth; it's "without partiality". Purity, impartiality, sincerity; these are the effects of "wisdom," and these will help you to execute the judgment of truth.' James 3:17 Compare the maxim which Newman used almost as a proverb: 'Holiness rather than peace'. In Wesley's Journal for Friday, 31st January, 1766, it is noted: 'Mr. Whitefield called upon me. He breathes nothing but peace and love. Bigotry cannot stand before him, but hides its head wherever he comes.' 'I rejoice that I have avoided controversies,' wrote Darwin in his autobiography, 'and this I owe to Lyell, who many years ago, in reference to my geological works, strongly advised me never to get entangled in a controversy, as it rarely did any good and caused a miserable loss of time and temper.' 'True wisdom is not only "pacifica," it is "pudica"; chaste as well as peaceable. Alas for Abelard! a second disgrace, deeper than ambition, is his portion now.... A more subtle snare was laid for him than beset the heroic champion or the all-accomplished monarch of Israel; for sensuality came upon him under the guise of intellect, and it was the high mental endowments of Eloisa, who became his pupil, speaking in her eyes and thrilling on her tongue, which were the intoxication and the delirium of Abelard'. Newman, University Sketches (ch. XVI). James 3:17 I have known, and still know, many Dissenters, who profess to have a zeal for Christianity; and I dare say they have. But I have known very few Dissenters indeed, whose hatred to the Church of England was not a much more active principle of action with them than their love for Christianity. The Wesleyans in uncorrupted parts of the country are nearly the only exceptions. There never was an age since the days of the Apostles in which the Catholic spirit of religion was so dead, and put aside for the love of sects and parties, as at present. Coleridge, Table Talk (28th December, 1831). James 3:17 Why is the Giver of the Divine the permitter of those tremendous passions, which are not without their glory, but which wreck so many human lives? Perhaps the reason may be found in the sacredness of pity. Evil and agony are the manure from which spring some of the whitest lilies that have ever bloomed beneath that enigmatic blue which roofs the terror and the triumph of the world. And while human beings know how to pity, human beings will always believe in a merciful God. Robert Hichens, in * The Gall of the Blood. * Nothing gives me so much the idea of God on earth as intelligence and kindness. I dearly love, above all things, to meet these two things united, and to enjoy them intimately. From Eugénie de Guérin's * Journal. * Reference. III. 17. C. Gutch, Sermons, p. 66. James 3:18 'Also the good Bishop labours night and day to preserve peace,' says the Prior in the sixteenth chapter of Quentin Durward, 'as well becometh a servant of the altar; for it is written in Holy Scripture, Beati pacifici. But ' here the good Prior stopped, with a deep sigh. James 4:1 At the coiner of old maps of the world, of the fifteenth century, may be noted a large, blank space, without form and without name, whereon these three words are inscribed: Hic sunt leones . This sombre corner exists also in man. The passions prowl around and mutter, somewhere within us, and it may be said also of one dark spot in our souls: 'Here are lions'. Victor Hugo. 'Politics, domestic and foreign, are very discouraging,' wrote Sydney Smith in a letter in 1827. 'Jesuits abroad, Turks in Greece, No-Poperists in England! A panting to burn B; B fuming to roast C; C miserable that he cannot reduce D to ashes; and D consigning to eternal perdition the three first letters of the alphabet.' References. IV. 1. E. W. Attwood, Sermons for Clergy and Laity, p. 488. IV. 1-6. R. W. Dale, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 193. IV. 1-16. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 121. IV. 2, 3. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1682. IV. 3. Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 370. C. G. Finney, Penny Pulpit, No. 1559, pp. 105, 113. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 178. James 4:4 Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Thoreau, * Walden. James 4:4 * The friendship of the world ought to be a 'pearl of great price,' for its cost is very serious. John Foster, On the Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion (VII.). It is as possible for a man to worship a crocodile, and yet be a pious man, as to have his affections set upon this world, and yet be a good Christian.' William Law. References. IV. 4. H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, p. 263. James 4:6 'Sometimes of late,' wrote Carlyle to his mother, 'I have bethought me of some of your old maxims about pride and vanity. I do see this same vanity to be the root of half the evil men are subject to in life. Examples of it stare me in the face every day. The pitiful passion, under any of the thousand forms which it assumes, never fails to wither out the good and worthy part of a man's character, and leave him poor and spiteful, an enemy to his own peace and that of all about him. There never was a wiser doctrine than that of Christian humility, considered as a corrective for the coarse, unruly selfishness of man's nature.' Satan suggested today that I could never have a high place in heaven: and this proud imagination vexed me till the Lord showed me reason to be contented if I got to heaven at all. Dr. A. A. Bonar, Diary, p. 16. James 4:6 Pride and humility are the two master-powers, the two kingdoms in strife for the eternal possession of man. William Law. References. IV. 6. W. R. Inge, All Saints' Sermons, 1905-07, p. 143. Bishop Winnington Ingrain, A Mission of the Spirit, p. 178. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 101. James 4:7 Speaking in Mark Rutherford's Deliverance (ch. VI.) of the 'duty of duties to suppress revolt and to submit sometimes calmly and cheerfully to the Creator,' the writer adds: 'This surely, under a thousand disguises, has been the meaning of all the forms of worship which we have seen in the world. Pain and death are nothing new, and men have been driven into perplexed scepticism and even insurrection by them, ever since men came into being.' Perfect reverence, or willing submission, implies love mere deference to power is quite another thing, and not religion at all. W. B. Rands, Memoirs of Henry Holbeach , II. p. 66. James 4:7 As it is said that ferocious animals are disarmed by the eye of man, and will dare no violence if he but steadily look at them, so is it when right looks upon wrong. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you; offer him a bold front, and he runs away. He goes, it may be, uttering threats of rage, but yet he goes! So is it that all the great, efficient men of the world are made. Bushnell. Rich, indeed, in moral instruction was the life of Charles Lamb; and perhaps in one chief result it offers to the thoughtful observer a lesson of consolation that is awful, and of hope that ought to be immortal, viz. in the record which it furnishes, that by meekness of submission, and by earnest conflict with evil, in the spirit of cheerfulness, it is possible ultimately to disarm or to blunt the very heaviest of curses even the curse of lunacy. De Quincey, * Charles Lamb. * References. IV. 7. J. E. Wakerley, Preacher's Magazine, vol. v. p. 34. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii. No. 1276. J. Bunting, Sermons, vol. i. p. 151. IV. 7, 8. G. Bellett, Parochial, Sermons, p. 124. IV. 7-10. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1408. James 4:8 Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. Thoreau. James 4:8 So high as a tree aspires to grow, so high it will find an atmosphere suited to it. Thoreau. Reference. IV. 8. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlviii. No. 2795. James 4:9 'Our sadness,' wrote Thoreau in one of his letters,' is not sad, but our cheap joys. Let us be sad about all we see and are, for so we demand and pray for better.' James 4:11 Those who themselves need the charitable judgment of other people should above all things be lenient in their own judgments. For my part I consider the best and most finished type of man to be the person who is always ready to make allowances for others, on the ground that never a day passes without his being in fault himself, yet who keeps us clear of faults as if he never pardoned them in others.' Pliny the Younger. Reference. IV. 11. J. Weller, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 356. James 4:12 * ; James 5:16 * I wonder what proportion our secret intercession bears to our open criticism. 1 should fear it was very little; for I cannot help fancying that if we prayed more we should feel that we prayed so little, that we should not dare, for shame's sake, to talk at all. F. W. Faber, All for Jesus, p. 124. James 4:12 Listen to an hour of conversation in any Christian company. How much of it turns almost of necessity, as it would seem, on the action and characters of others! The meaning of judging others appears to be this: the judgment-seat of our Divine Lord is, as it were, already set upon the earth. But it is empty. It is waiting for Him. We meanwhile, unmannerly and unbidden, keep ascending the steps, enthroning ourselves upon the seat, and anticipating and mimicking His judgment of our brethren. F. W. Faber, Growth in Holiness, pp. 91, 92. References. IV. 12. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 5. IV. 13, 14. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. i. p. 302. IV. 13-15. C. M. Betts ( Eight Sermons ), p. 26. IV. 13-17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxviii. No. 2242. The Two Agnosticisms James 4:14 Here is an instance of real agnosticism. We find that instance in the period of time which we glibly talk of as tomorrow. No man has seen tomorrow, no man can see tomorrow, tomorrow is not within the visual line, and is not within the line of calculation unless the line be approached religiously. We have no right to speak about tomorrow as if we had any lien upon it or any right to its possession and enjoyment. We can only enter the sanctuary called tomorrow by the gate Beautiful, the gate of God's temple, the portal of the sanctuary of the Eternal. When we speak of tomorrow we should speak in an undertone; when we speak of the coming time we should whisper to ourselves lest we disturb some avenging ghost who is jealous of being spoken about without the customary and established sanctions. This is to change the whole range and tenor of conversation. We have to be religious even in making appointments. I. Let us personalise the morrow; let us no longer think of it as some mere grade or shadow of time, let us rather regard it as a personality, a presence, looking at us though we cannot look at it; and the contention of the religious thinker is that tomorrow is in its own way and degree as great a mystery as God. That is the reflection which rebukes me when I want to settle down upon the swamp which by a falsification of realities I call the rock of agnosticism. I will take you away from the metaphysical and the supposedly distant and transcendental, and. I will shut you up with your own days; you have today and yesterday and tomorrow, I will bring you into the court and ask you, Have you seen tomorrow? do you know what shall be on the morrow? are you sure there will be a tomorrow? are you sure you will live to see it? Let us no longer have the drivel talk about not being able to know God even if there is a God until we are prepared to apply our own foolish reasoning to the spirit, the spectre, called tomorrow, unseen, invisible. It may come so may God! II. If I reject God upon the grounds which have been indicated I shall also reject the next harvest that is supposed to be coming. I want to show by these simple illustrations how vast an area is covered by the not-knowing and the supposed not-knowableness of God. Has any man seen next harvest? Yesterday has not pledged tomorrow; ten million harvests have not pledged the next harvest, and even if it were bound by a written and sealed oath, so far as men are concerned nobody can say that by some operation of socalled nature the whole world may not be blown away in white ashes, so that there shall be neither husbandman nor farmer, neither sower of seed nor swinger of scythe and sickle. III. Even suppose that we do not know tomorrow, it is unwise to exclude it from our thought. Even suppose that we do not know God, and cannot know God unto perfection, we are not therefore made wise by extruding Him from the temple of our thought. The not-knowable may be the true wisdom, and we are not able to know what we do know until we properly appreciate the not-knowable. I believe that God has revealed Himself to the mind and heart of man; I do not believe that man has found out God, but I believe that God has found out man. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. I. p. 20. What Is Your Life? James 4:14 These may be said to be two ways of looking at life, each of which finds favour just now with a wide circle of people. First, the theory that life is everything and eternity nothing, and secondly, The theory that life is nothing and eternity everything. Now, those who hold the first of these, object to the time-view of life altogether. The strength of this school is in their great view of life: their weakness and error, in their little view of time. The second view is the more antiquated, perhaps the more illiterate. Life, with it, is nothing at all. Eternity is the great thing. The strength of this school is that it recognises eternity: its weakness, and its great error, that it refuses to think of life and spoils the thought of eternity for those who do. The man who is really concerned to live well must possess himself continually of the thought that he is not to live long. If we were to go over the conceptions of life which have been held by great men in succeeding ages of the world, we should find scarce anything new, scarce anything which the Bible had not used before. There lie scattered throughout this Book no fewer than eighteen of these answers, and all in metaphor, to the question, 'What is your life?' It is. A tale that is told. A pilgrimage. A swift post. A swift ship. A handbreadth. A shepherd's tent removed. A thread cut by the weaver. A dream. A sleep. A vapour. A shadow. A flower. A weaver's shuttle. Water spilt on the ground. Grass. Wind. Nothing. Generally speaking, the first thing to strike one about these images is that they are all quick things there is a suggestion of brevity and evanescence about them, and this feeling is so strong that we might fancy there was only one answer to the question, What is your life? namely, Your life is short. But if we look closer at them for a moment, shades of difference will begin to appear, and we shall find the hints of other meanings as great and striking and quite as necessary to complete the conception of 'your life'. Three of these metaphors give this answer: I. Your life is a very little thing. (1) A shadow. It is unreal, it is illusory. (2) A shepherd's tent removed. (3) A tale that is told. II. There is next another set of metaphors which bring out the more common answer that life is a short thing. It is a handbreadth: a weaver's shuttle; nothing; an eagle hasting to the prey; a swift post; a swift ship. III. The next thought is so closely allied to this that one can scarcely separate it but for convenience. It suggests the idea of transitoriness. IV. Life is an irrevocable thing. Our book has a wonderful metaphor for this 'water spilt upon the ground which cannot be gathered up again'. V. Life is an uncertain thing. Henry Drummond. The Ideal Life and other Addresses, p. 235. Human Life, Perishing and Immortal James 4:14 * ; 1 John 2:17 * These passages indicate the solemn and arresting paradox which is presented by every child of man. On the one hand, he is a fragile and transient phenomenon; on the other he may be the co-worker with his Creator, and sharer of His immortality. That paradox, thus stated, only exists, of course, for those who regard humanity from the religious point of view; but, though in less awful form, it must needs present itself to every reflective observer of human life. Religion does but offer an explanation of an enigma which itself admits of no dispute. For the contrast between the grandeur of man's designs and the permanence of his achievements, on the one hand, and his physical weakness and the pitiful shortness and insecurity of his life on the other, cannot be avoided or explained away. Very powerfully, yet with characteristic quaintness, the certainty of death was pressed on his hearers by the most eloquent of Deans of St Paul's, in a sermon which was preached in Whitehall on the first Friday in Lent, 1630. It was the last sermon which Donne preached, and men afterwards commented on the singular fitness of the subject, and the extraordinary solemnity of the preacher: 'This whole world is but an universal churchyard, but one common grave, and the life and motion, that the greatest persons have in it, is but as the shaking of buried bodies in their graves by an earthquake. That which we call life is but a week of deaths, seven days, seven periods of our life spent in dying; a dying seven times over, and there is an end. Our birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and the rest die in age; and age also dies, and determines all.' I. This note of sombre severity is now rarely heard. The modern preacher has caught so much of the secularist tendency of the time as to avoid everything which might seem to suggest some belittlement of the urgent claims of the present. Yet I must needs think there is an element of weakness in this avoidance of those solemn and elementary facts, which are, when all is said, the grand determining postulates of the religious life. For indeed, the claims of the present are not likely to be appraised rightly until they are seen in connection with a vivid and abiding consciousness of the transiency of all terrestrial things, nor is the real importance of the present perceived until it is seen in relation to a future which stretches illimitably beyond the grave. Forgotten myriads who have lived on this earth before us seem to offer their piteous and unavailing protest; and we perforce make our own their melancholy words: 'Our name shall be forgotten in time, and no man shall remember our works; and our life shall pass away as the traces of a cloud, and shall be scattered as a mist, when it is chased by the beams of the sun, and overcome by the heat thereof. For our allotted time is the passing of a shadow, and our end retreateth not.' II. Turn to the more inspiring message of St John. He, perhaps, is also living in a great city; but, unlike St James, he has been carried far from the scenes of his youth, and is ending his life among men of alien speech, and strange worship. Ephesus, as he knows it, is one of the most famous cities of the Empire. It is a flourishing seat of world-wide commerce: an important political centre; above all, one of the sacred places of paganism to which from far and near pilgrims gather for worship. Wealth abounds and the culture which wealth enables. Ephesus is glorious with buildings and statues. A magnificent and sensual superstition utters itself in the great temple of Artemis and excites the minds, while it pollutes the lives of a numerous and fanatical population. In Ephesus also, scarcely regarded amid so many larger and more arresting features, there is a Christian Church in which Apostles have preached and saints have lived and died. St. John is the last of the comrades of Christ; and, ere he in turn passes from sight, he sets his pen to paper in order to give a final message to his brethren in the Faith. He feels the strange power of the mighty moving city; he fears the attraction of its crowded various life; he sees through its pompous and confident prosperity; and he points his children in Christ to the veiled and greater life which has been brought to them through the Gospel. III. 'Follow Me.' These are words that shatter all our pessimism as we stand amid dead and dying things. So much is the mark of decay upon it. So much of what once was vigorous and vital is now felt to be decadent. There is so much to regret in what is slowly and inevitably vanishing. The backward currents drag at our feet. They suck us down towards the melancholy seas that moan out their sorrow for all that has been lost. We might so easily surrender ourselves to the sad refrain of the preacher: 'All go to one place. Nothing stays. All are of the dust. And all turn to dust. As the one dieth so dieth the other. Vanity of vanities.' If our hopes were limited by earthly horizons we could hardly fail to yield to the cold clutch of death. We should lose heart. We should go under with that which perishes. We should have the sentence of death in ourselves. But through it all a voice rings like a trumpet, 'Follow Me'. 'Follow on.' There is more to come than has ever yet been seen. There is a new task to open on us, a new race to be run, a new day to dawn, a new victory to be won. Christ holds in Himself the potency of a better and fairer earth than all that we are losing. He can bring into being a purer humanity than we have yet dreamed of. There shall be cities built free from ancient wrongs, and sweet and clean and wholesome boys and girls shall be playing in their streets without a fear. There shall be a day when they shall not hurt or slay in all God's Holy Mountain. There are golden years ahead and a new heaven and a new earth. Let the past go, there is better to come. This is no vague fancy without reason or support. For Christ is already King and Lord. Already He is on the throne and holds the keys of death and hell. Already He possesses the powers that can achieve what He promises. He is sufficient for it all. We have our grounds for trusting Him. We know His redeeming efficiency in our bodies and in our souls. He can do all things; for He can do for others what He has done for us. H. Hensley Henson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. LXXIX. p. 22. James 4:14 Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping, if it were not. God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and the future. Emerson, on * Experience. * 'It is one of the most solemn things I do,' he said to one of his children, who asked him why, in the title-page of his MS. volume of sermons, he always wrote the date only of its commencement, and left a blank for that of its completion, 'to write the beginning of that sentence and think that I may perhaps not live to finish it.' Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold, II. 269. It costs me many a pang when I reflect that I shall probably never have resolution enough to take another journey to see this best and sincerest of friends, who loves me as much as my mother did! but it is idle to look forward what is next year a bubble that may burst for her or for me before even the flying year can hurry to the end of its almanack! Horace Walpole's Letters (7th September, 1769). Compare the abrupt close of Sir Walter Scott's Journal, which breaks off suddenly at the moment of his illness in 1832, with the unfinished sentence: 'We slept reasonably, but on the next morning ' James 4:14 I cannot laud this life, it looks so dark; Σκιᾶς ὄναρ dream of a shadow, go: God bless you, I shall join you in a day. Tennyson, 'To Rev. W. H. Brookfield'. James 4:14 All that belongs to the body is a stream, and what pertains to the soul is a dream and vapour, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion. Marcus Aurelius. In looking back, it sometimes appears to me as if I had in a manner slept out my life in a dream or shadow on the side of the hill of knowledge, where I have fed on books, on thoughts, on pictures, and only heard in half-murmurs the trampling of busy feet, or the noises of the throng below. Hazlitt, on * The Fear of Death. * References. IV. 14. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx. No. 1773. J. Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. i. p. 20. W. J. Knox-Little, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 201. L. D. Bevan, Sermons to Students, p. 187. Reuen Thomas, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 211. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 112. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 237. J. N. Friend, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 220. J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (2nd Series), p. 199. H. H. Henson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxii. p. 1. James 4:15 Lord, when in any writing I have occasion to insert these passages, God willing, God lending me life, etc., I observe, Lord, that I can scarce hold my hand from encircling these words in a parenthesis, as if they were not essential to the sentence, but may as well be left out as put in. Whereas, indeed, without them all the rest is nothing; wherefore hereafter I will write these words full and fairly, without any enclosure about them. Let critics censure it for bad grammar, I am sure it is good divinity. Thomas Fuller. James 4:17 'This year,' wrote Dr. Andrew Bonar once in his Diary, 'omissions have distressed me more than anything.' Reference. IV. 17. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons (2nd Series), p. 267. James 5:1 'I had an hour's baiting from Mrs. yesterday. She got upon political preaching abused it very heartily acknowledged that religion had to do with man's political life, but said a clergyman's duty is to preach obedience to the powers that be was rather puzzled when I asked her whether it were legitimate to preach from James 5:1 , "Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl," etc. asked whether it was possible for old women and orphans to understand such subjects; to which I replied, "No; and if a clergyman refuse to touch on such subjects, which belong to real actual life, the men will leave his church; and, as is the case in the Church of England, he will only have charity orphans, who are compelled to go, and old women to preach to".' F. W. Robertson's Life (letter CXIII.). Reference. V. 1-6. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 373. James 5:3 'The wilderness had caressed him,' says Mr. Joseph Conrad of an unscrupulous West African trader, 'and lo! he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own, by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favourite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it You should have heard him say, "My intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my " everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter, that would shake the fixed stars in their courses. Everything belonged to him but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made me creepy all over.' James 5:3 There is a payment which Nature rigorously exacts of men, and also of Nations, and this I think when her wrath is sternest, in the shape of dooming you to possess money. To possess it; to have your bloated vanities fostered into monstrosity by it, your foul passions blown into explosion by it, your heart and perhaps your very stomach ruined with intoxication by it; your poor life and all its manifold activities stunned into frenzy and comatose sleep by it in one word, as the old Prophet said, your soul for ever lost by it.... Nature, when her scorn of a slave is divinest, and blazes like the blinding lightning against his slavehood, often enough flings him a bag of money, silently saying: 'That! away: thy doom is that'. Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets (v.). James 5:4 D. commenced life after a hard course of study as usher to a knavish fanatic schoolmaster at a salary of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend he never received above half in all the laborious years he served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, had sometimes compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, Dr. would take no immediate notice, but after supper, when the school was called together for evensong, he would never fail to introduce some instructive homily against riches, and the corruption of the heart occasioned through the desire of them ending with 'Lord, keep thy servant, above all things, from the heinous sin of avarice,' etc.... which, to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and simplicity, but to poor D. was a receipt in full for that quarter's demand at least. Charles Lamb, on * Oxford in the Vacation. * Often the religious are the weary; and perhaps nowhere else does a perpetual vision of Heaven so disclose itself to the weary as above lonely toiling fields. James Lane Allen in The Reign of Law, p. 86. James 5:4 There is not an imprisoned worker looking out from these Bastilles but appeals, very audibly in Heaven's High Court, against you and me, and every one who is not imprisoned, 'Why am I here?' His appeal is audible in Heaven; and will become audible enough on Earth too, if it remains unheeded here. His appeal is against you, foremost of all; you stand in the front-rank of the accused; you, by the very place you hold, have first of all to answer him and heaven. Carlyle, Past and Present (pt. 2 Chronicles 6 ). James 5:5 The days are gone by when the Seigneur ruled and profited. ' Le Seigneur ,' says the old formula, ' enferme ses manants comme sous porte et gonds, du ciel à la terre. Tout est à lui, foret chenue, oiseau dans l'air, poisson dans l'eau, bete au buisson, l'onde qui coule, la cloche dont le son au loin roule .' Such was his old state of sovereignty, a local god rather than a mere king. And now you may ask yourself where he is, and look round for vestiges of my late lord, and in all the countryside there is no trace of him but his forlorn and fallen mansion.... But on the plain where hot sweat trickles into men's eyes, and the spade goes in deep and comes up slowly, perhaps the peasant may feel a movement of joy at his heart when he thinks that these spacious chimneys are now cold, which have so often blazed and flickered upon gay folk at supper, while he and his hollow-eyed children watched through the night with empty bellies and cold feet. R. L. Stevenson, * Forest Notes. * Reference. V. 5. B. J. Snell, The Widening Vision, p. 129. James 5:6 History... is rather a record of excessive patience in the various nations of the earth than of excessive petulance. John Morley, Compromise, p. 146. 'I do not see at all,' Eugénie de Guérin writes in her Journal, 'how the spirit of revolt and the spirit of Christianity can ever form an alliance. Were there revolts against authority among the first Christians, who suffered oppressions severer than any which Christians have to suffer nowadays? The Theban legion, the Thundering legion did they draw the sword? Had they not the right to do it, if Poland has now the right? The martyrs do not seem, then, to have read God and Liberty, as M. de Lamennais reads these words. For the martyrs never raised a hand against the enemies of God and Liberty. I have been accustomed to think that the Spirit of Christianity consists in submission to God and to rulers, of whatever kind, and however they treat us; that the only weapon to be opposed to their tyranny is prayer, and then, if necessary, to suffer death unresisting and forgiving the slayer, as Jesus Christ Himself forgave.' The Divine Husbandman James 5:7 I. The husbandman waiteth. And see how out of the mouth of two witnesses this word shall be established how it shall be shown that it is His title Whose Name is above every name. 'Let my Beloved come into His garden and eat His pleasant fruits' says the spotless Bride in the Canticles: 'she supposing Him to be the gardener' it is the glorious penitent in the Gospel. So the perfection of holiness and the perfection of penitence join in telling us this one thing: that He whom we serve, though not as we would, Whom we love, though not as we shall, Whom we seek and shall some day find, that He among all His other marvellous titles, is the Husbandman of all husbandmen, the Gardener of all gardeners. II. And here we have Him waiting waiting for what? The precious fruit of the earth. It is of no material fruit of this world that He is speaking. Of flowers He is indeed telling; but they are flowers which can only flourish round the true Rose of Sharon in a lovelier climate than this. Fruit He is indeed requiring: but fruit like that which the Tree of Life bears in the midst of the Paradise of God. And yet it springs from earth; it is brought forth by ourselves vile earth and miserable sinners. Job speaks of this in somewhat a different manner, but yet to the same effect: 'Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone'. That true iron, the courage of the martyrs, and the endurance of the confessors, came from frames subject to like passions with ourselves. Brass, the material of God's Altar, fit for spiritual sacrifice, is molten, in the fire of affliction, out of the stone, the hard stone of these unfeeling hearts of ours. III. For this precious fruit that dear Lord is content to wait 'And hath long patience for it'. So He had indeed. All the patience of those thirty-three years of humility and suffering all the patience of the bitter ascent up Mount Calvary, all the patience of the cross, all the patience of those forty hours in the grave. IV. All the earth is indeed filled with the seed of precious fruit, the sleeping bodies of the servants of the Lamb. In this sense also 'the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. And for these also He who Himself lay in the same earth is waiting: knowing where every particle of that which was once His temple is laid up, watching over it in whatever transformation it undergoes seeing with that loving eye those His treasures in little quiet country churchyards, in great battle-fields, in the depths of the ocean, and foreknowing, too, the day when 'the bones which He had humbled shall rejoice,' when 'the valleys also shall stand so thick with corn that they shall laugh and sing,' when 'the little hills shall rejoice on every side'. The firstfruits of this harvest is now expecting the rest J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. I. p. 25. James 5:7 Waiting pure is perhaps the hardest thing for flesh and blood to do well. George Macdonald, Donal Grant (ch. XIII). After all, patience is very strong. Making a mistake at the outset of life is like beginning to wind a skein of silk at the wrong end. It gives us infinite trouble, and perhaps is in a tangle half through, but it often gets smooth and straight before the close. Thus, many a man has so conquered himself, for duty's sake, that the work he originally hated, and therefore did ill, he gets in time to do well, and consequently to like. In the catalogue of success and failure, could such be ever truthfully written, it would be curious to note those who had succeeded in what they had no mind to, and failed in that which they considered their especial vocation. A man's vocation is that to which he is 'called'; only sometimes he mistakes the voice calling. But the voice of duty there is no mistaking, nor its response; in the strong heart, the patient mind, the contented spirit, especially the latter, which, while striving to the utmost against what is not inevitable, when once it is proved to be inevitable, accepts it as such and struggles no more. Still, to do this requires not only human courage, but superhuman faith; the acknowledgment of a Will diviner than ours, to which we must submit, and in the mere act of submission find consolation and reparation. Mrs. Craik, Sermons Out of Church, pp. 287, 238. James 5:7 By the stream through Tolworth Common spotted persicaria is rising thickly, but even this strong-growing plant is backward and checked on the verge of the shrunken stream. The showers that have since fallen have not made up for the lack of the April rains, which in the most literal sense cause the flowers of May and June. Without those early spring rains the wild flowers cannot push their roots and develop their stalks in time for the summer sun. The sunshine and heat finds them unprepared. Richard Jefferies, Toilers of the Field, pp. 310, 811. References. V. 7, 8. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 1025. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. v. p. 1. 6. A. Sowter, Sowing and Reaping, p. 62. V. 7-9. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 138. James 5:8 Dr. Marcus Dods was only twenty-four when he wrote: 'Patience is the great Œdipus that every Sphinx opens up to. The present is not complete without the future, so for the future I wait, and in the present will try to find, not comfort and satisfaction, but work and contentment.' Early Letters, p. 96. James 5:8 Sydney Dobell, in 1855, spoke of 'the second advent of our Lord' as 'the "high argument" on which I hope to spend my life. It has been almost since poetry first stirred in me the chosen theme of my hope, preparation, and ambition, but I do not intend to begin I should think it presumption to begin till I am past forty years old.' James 5:9 National enmities have always been fiercest among borderers. Macaulay, History of England (ch. XIII.). References. V. 10. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 380. V. 10-17. Ibid. vol. ii. p. 190. James 5:11 Happy ye, whether the waiting be for short time or long time, if only it bring the struggle. One sure reward have ye, though there may be none else the struggle: the marshalling to the front of rightful forces will, effort, endurance, devotion; the putting resolutely back of forces wrongful; the hardening of all that is soft within, the softening of all that is hard; until out of the hardening and the softening results the better tempering of the soul's metal, and higher development of those two qualities which are best in man and best in his ideal of his Maker strength and kindness, power and mercy. Jas. Lane Allen, in The Reign of Law, p. 50 f. Women, in a state of exaltation from excited feelings, imagining, because duty often requires self-sacrifice, that when they are sacrificing themselves they must needs be doing their duty, will often be capable of taking a resolution, when they are not capable of undergoing the consequences with fortitude. For it is one sort of strength that is required for an act of heroism; another, and a much rarer sort, which is available for a life of endurance. Sir Henry Taylor, Notes on Life, p. 80. 'We have been too long in the secret ourselves,' says Newton in the preface to Cowper's poems, 'to account the proud, the ambitious, or the voluptuous, happy.' References. V. 11. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Beading, p. 171. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi. No. 1845. James 5:12 One thing was notable about these women, from the youngest to the eldest, and with hardly an exception. In spite of their piety, they could twang off an oath with Sir Toby Belch in person. There was nothing so high or so low, in heaven or earth or in the human body, but a woman of this neighbourhood would whip out the name of it, fair and square, by way of conversational adornment My landlady, who was pretty and young, dressed like a lady and avoided patois like a weakness, commonly addressed her child in the language of a drunken bully. And of all the swearers that I ever heard, commend me to an old lady in Gondet, a village of the Loire. I was making a sketch, and her curse was not yet ended when I had finished it and took my departure. It is true she had a right to be angry; for here was her son, a hulking fellow, visibly the worse for drink before the day was well begun. But it was strange to hear her unwearying flow of oaths and obscenities, endless like a river, and now and then rising to a passionate shrillness, in the clear and silent air of the morning. In city slums the thing might have passed unnoticed; but in a country valley and from a plain and honest countrywoman, this beastliness of speech surprised the ear. R. L. Stevenson, * A Mountain Town in France. * Describing the life of the agricultural girl, in Field-Farming Women, Richard Jefferies observes: 'Her mother shouts at her in a shrill treble perpetually; her father enforces his orders with a harsh oath and slap. The pressure of hard circumstances, the endless battle with poverty, render men and women both callous to each other's feelings and particularly strict to those over whom they possess unlimited authority. But the labourer must not be judged too harshly: there is a scale in these matters; a proportion as in everything else; an oath from him, and even a slap on the ear, is really the counterpart of the frown and emphasised words of a father in a more fortunate class of life; and the children do not feel it, or think it exceptionally cruel, as the children of a rich man would. Undoubtedly, however, it does lessen the bond between child and parent.' ' Above all things, my brethren, swear not.' If, as is generally assumed, this refers to the custom of using profane oaths in common conversation, how remote from modern ideas is the place assigned to this vice, which perhaps affects human happiness as little as any other that can be mentioned, in the scale of criminality, and how curiously characteristic is the fact that the vice to which this supremacy of enormity is attributed continued to be prevalent during the ages when theological influences were most powerful, and has in all good society faded away in simple obedience to a turn of fashion which proscribes it as ungentlemanly! Lecky, Map of Life, pp. 51, 52. Compare further the second chapter of Law's * Serious Gall. James 5:12 * While one man quarrels in a drunken brawl, the other will use his strength to overthrow tyrants and consolidate a nation. It was the glory of Garibaldi that while he achieved the latter task, he had used no deceit. Machiavellianism was to him enough to condemn a cause as a miserable one; his yea was yea, and his nay, nay, but was he then blunt and rugged? No. Holman Hunt, History of Pre-Raphaelitism, vol. II. p. 245. James 5:13 Never give way to melancholy; nothing encroaches more; I fight against it vigorously. One great remedy is, to take short views of life. Are you happy now? Are you likely to remain so till this evening? or next week? or next month? or next year? Then why destroy present happiness by distant misery, which may never come at all, and you may never live to see it? For every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making. Sydney Smith. References. V. 13. C. S. Horne, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 257. V. 14. J. R. Gregory, Preacher's Magazine, vol. x. p. 23. V. 14, 15. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 135. The Prayers of Luther At Coburg James 5:16 During the months when the Diet of Augsburg was sitting in 1530, Luther was left behind by the Elector John the Constant in the fortress of Coburg. His companion, Veit Dietrich, tells us that he spent much of his time in prayer. In a letter to Melanchthon dated 30th June, Veit Dietrich wrote: 'I cannot sufficiently admire the remarkable firmness, cheerfulness, faith and hope of the man in these most bitter times. These he nourishes steadily by more diligent meditation on God's Word. Not a day passes on which he does not devote at least three hours to prayer, and those the hours most suitable for study. Once I happened to hear him praying. Good God, what spirit, what faith there was in his words! He pleaded with such reverence as if he felt himself to be talking with God, with such hope and faith as if he were speaking with a father and a friend. 'I know,' he said, 'that Thou art our God and Father. I am sure, therefore, that Thou wilt destroy the persecutors of Thy children. If not, the danger is Thine as well as ours. The whole of this business is Thine; we have been compelled to meet it; defend us therefore.' I, standing apart, heard him praying with a clear voice in almost these very words. My soul also burned with a strange ardour as he spoke so familiarly, so solemnly, so reverently with God, and as he prayed he pleaded promises from the Psalms like one who was sure that all the things for which he asked would come to pass.' Corpus Reformatorum, vol. II. No. 755, col. 159. James 5:16 Is there not such a thing as the doing of penance out of the Church, in the manly fashion?... Boldly to say we did a wrong will clear our sky for a few shattering peals. Meredith, The Amazing Marriage (ch. XLIII.). Now for the first time she remembered without indifference the affectionate kindness Dinah had shown her, and those words of Dinah in the bedchamber that Hetty must think of her as a friend in trouble. Suppose she was to go to Dinah and ask her to help her? Dinah did not think about things as other people did: she was a mystery to Hetty, but Hetty knew she was always kind. She couldn't imagine Dinah's face turning away from her in dark reproof or scorn, Dinah's voice willingly speaking ill of her or rejoicing in her misery, as a punishment. Dinah did not seem to belong to that world of Hetty's, whose glance she dreaded like scorching fire. But even to her Hetty shrank from beseeching and confession: she could not prevail on herself to say, 'I will go to Dinah'; she only thought of that as a possible alternative, if she had not courage for death. George Eliot, Adam Bede (XXXVII.). We want some means of availing ourselves of the experience of other people. Of course we can do so to some extent by conversation with experienced persons or by reading good biographies. Yet many people have no friends from whom they can get much real moral help, and are unable to find their experiences exactly like those recorded in books.... How much help some suggestive thoughts of others might at times give to us, whether in the way of encouragement or warning! There seems a field open for spiritual experts who, like skilled physicians, might use their knowledge to recommend to one sick person a remedy that has proved effectual in a similar case. In one of Borrow's books there is a graphic sketch of a man who went half his life in misery because he believed he had committed the unpardonable sin, till it was suggested to him that many other people were probably in the like predicament. Had he opened his mind to an experienced spiritual adviser, he might have obtained relief much earlier. Miss Alice Gardner, The Conflict of Duties, p. 226. James 5:16 The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge their inevitable lapse. Huxley. James 5:16 A friend of mine told me that he had been at different times sensible of spiritual blessings bestowed on him through the prayers of particular persons at a distance. He was conscious of a special blessing, and he had a most distinct impression that that blessing came to him through the prayers of a particular person; and on asking the person afterwards, he learned that he had been praying for that very blessing on him. I like such a story exceedingly. I like to think of God... binding souls so close as to make them channels to each other of the water of life. Erskine of Linlathen (in a letter to his cousin, 11th March, 1829). James 5:16 'This, dear madam,' wrote Burns on New Year's Day, 1789, to Mrs. Dunlop, 'is a morning of wishes, and would to God that I came under the Apostle James' description: the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. In that case, madam, you should welcome in a year full of blessings.' References. V. 16. S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 140. W. J. E. Bennett, Sermons Preached at the London Mission, 1869, p. 91. H. S. Lunn, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 267. V. 16-18. W. H. Simcox, The Cessation of Prophecy, p. 65. The Argument of Instances James 5:17 This gives us the argument and the defence of a great example. Observe who it was that prayed; not a little obscure, uninfluential man, but a great prophet, whose other name was fire, who lived on high mountains and overheard the soft, rolling, thrilling anthems of heaven. There comes before us no man who has to make good his claim, who has to win our confidence by displaying before us some deeds heroic and beneficent; the man with whom we are now face to face is a man of established fame in Israel, indeed one of the very greatest sons of time. As he stands there, austere, determinate, tremendous in energy and in fiery zeal, I hear concerning him that 'Elias prayed'. I. If Elias prayed, and all these great men prayed, this throws upon us an immense responsibility. We ought to take care how we vote against these men. We should hold our mouths in resolute patience until the whole case has been gone over in the most scrutinising and penetrating manner before we say we will not pray. Can we take the responsibility of defying and despising all that we have learned from history? The prayer would not be altered if only the poorest creatures had prayed, the altar would lose nothing if it had only been surrounded by forsaken women and orphaned children and poor begging creatures that had to pick up their food from door to door, it would still be the altar; in this case, however, it is surrounded by such men as Moses and David and Solomon and Nehemiah and Hezekiah and Elias; all the lion souls of history, the great heroic men that led the civilisation of their age. Are we going to take the responsibility of rebuking our sires and ancestors, and pouring out the expectoration of our irrational contempt upon the whole current and upward movement of the religious thought of the centuries? II. 'Elias prayed.' This cheers us by the most complete encouragement. The way has been made clear to us, we may speak now that these great voices have spoken; by the utterance of such prayers it seems as if a pathway had been cut in the very air itself along which and above which and in association with which our smallest souls may move. These men came back with great answers; God seemed for the time being to put the key of power upon the girdle of each, and enable each to open the door of heaven and take just what he wanted. III. 'Elias prayed.' That would be a grand stopping-place, but there is not room enough there for all that the soul requires, so we come into the higher sanctuary, and find that 'Jesus prayed'. He is never so truly near me as when he says, Let us pray. He would not always permit us to be with Him in prayer; the greatest spiritual acts of devotion and sacrifice must be completed in solitude: and Jesus went up into a mountain to pray; and Jesus left the disciples behind Him, and went forward, and fell on His face, and prayed: the cold mountains and the midnight air witnessed the fervour of His prayer. Jesus prayed a second time; Elias prayed again; there are amended prayers, enlarged prayers, self-corrected prayers, so that we may go back in Gethsemane and say amid all the gathering glooms, Lord, let me recall that last prayer, and let me say in ampler language, language with infinitely more meaning in it, Not my will, but Thine be done. That prayer is always answered; that indeed is the Lord's prayer, the first answer the cross, the second the crown. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vii. p. 79. James 5:17 What hinders us in comparing former events in the Church with what we now see, is that we are wont to regard St. Athanasius or St. Theresa and others as crowned with glory, and acting in regard to us as gods. Now that time has cleared our vision we see that they are so. But when this great saint was persecuted he was a man called Athanasius, and St Theresa was a nun. 'Elias was a man subject to the same passions as ourselves,' says St. Peter [?], to disabuse Christians of that false notion. But we must reject the examples of the saints as disproportioned to our state. They were saints, say we, they are not like us. Pascal. References. V. 17. C. Perren, Sermon Outlines, p. 267. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 249. Prayer and Temperament James 5:17-18 This incident belongs to what we call the prescientific age. These words assume God's power as the hearer of prayer over all the forces of the firmament. I. Alas! nowadays the message of science is often used to check man's inclination to pray. It is a current axiom that natural law is unalterable. Are we face to face with a group of cast-iron necessities which allow of no mutual subordinations? We know that it is not so. One physical law is sometimes subjected to another, and all bow together to God's interpretation of the moral interests of the universe. God could not so arrange the mechanisms of lifeless matter as to make them involve the negation of man's fellowship with Himself. If prayer cannot be answered God is a force and nothing more, and moral motives are in His esteem trifling as the fine summer dust which settles upon the crank of the engine, without checking its movement. II. But the moral difficulties that threaten to thwart our prayers are more stupendous and appalling than those suggested by the study of natural law. It is these which St. James has in view in the text before us. He is looking at prayer in its relation to human character rather than as it concerns the established order of the physical universe. Our own antecedent unworthiness to be heard and answered, is the supreme problem that troubles us as we come before God. This inspired writer tells us that the problem is not intractable. It has been solved in the prevailing supplications of men who are compounded of kindred elements. In heartening ourselves by this thought let us not assume that the efficacy of prayer is independent of all moral forces. There must be a core of genuine righteousness within us if our cries are to be heeded. III. In the fulness of God's grace and compassion all drawbacks of temperament and character have been already reckoned with. It is to a throne of mercy we come, not to a throne about which the unsullied angels of light cluster, and this means creatures of passion may draw near. Prayer becomes priceless through the name in which it is presented, however poor and mean and ignoble the petitioner himself. James 5:19 It is characteristic of a good man neither to go wrong himself, nor to let his friend go wrong. References. V. 19, 20. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i. No. 46. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outlines, p. 339. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No. 1137. James 5:20 'To save a soul.' I can't somehow realise the idea that I should ever be so honoured of God. To save my own soul, and wear through the long fight without losing my own crown, and without bringing disgrace on the cause of Christ, these have seemed the limit of my hope. 1 can go on working; I can give a little; I can add my labour to the heap in the hope that among other agencies I may help rather than retard the work of Christ But to 'save a soul,' as the direct result of my own direct effort, has scarce ever entered into my contemplation. James Smetham, Letters, p. 112. -We know how the sentiments of affection and charity suggest repeated attempts to save these erring brothers, and how keenly the tenderhearted feel that, after all hope of better things is gone, the claim on their affections still remains, and they must see that the morally worthless who are near and dear to them at least, shall be maintained in some fitting way. Love dies hard, and even if it be dead in all happier and brighter senses, a brother in distress is still a brother whose pains smart again, and ought to smart in our sympathies. They cannot cease to smart thus without our moral degradation. Dr. Sophie Bryant, Studies in Character, p. 38. When the power of reclaiming the lost dies out of the Church, it ceases to be the Church. Sir John Seeley, Ecce Homo (ch. xx.). 'In any one shows me a good man,' said Mazzini, 'I say, How many souls has he saved?' If any of those who were awakened by my ministry did after that fall back (as sometimes too many did), I can truly say their loss hath been more to me than if one of my own children, begotten of my body, had been going to its grave... I have counted as if I had goodly buildings and lordships in those places where my children were born; my heart hath been so wrapped up in the glory of this excellent work, that I counted myself more blessed and honoured of God by this than if He had made me the Emperor of the Christian World; or the Lord of all the glory of the Earth without it. O these words, He that converteth a sinner from the error of his way doth save a soul from death.... These, I say, with many others of a like nature, have been great refreshment to me. Bunyan, Grace Abounding, p. 286. There are men who think men the plucking of sinners out of the mire a dirty business! Meredith. James 5:20 The man of perfect virtue, wishing to be established, seeks also to establish others. Chinese Analects (VI. 28). Reference. V. 20. J. Keble, Miscellaneous Sermons, p. 156.