James 1:4 The Perfect Work of Patience. I. We can all attain to a certain amount of proficiency at most things we attempt; but there are few who have patience to go on to perfection. In the lives of almost every one there has been at some time an attempt at welldoing. It may have been as the morni... [ Continue Reading ]
James 1:12 Temptation Treated as Opportunity. I. The Bible teaches us, and as Christians we believe, that there is a regular course of temptations for us in this life; that there are a number of objects and wishes constantly presenting themselves to us in the natural course of things here that we s... [ Continue Reading ]
James 1:17 The Uniformity of Nature. I. The uniformity of nature rebukes man's faint-heartedness. When we are crushed with many a bereavement, ought it to be a matter of complaint to us that nature, which has, perhaps, caused our transient anguish, should appear to treat us with total disregard? I... [ Continue Reading ]
James 1:18 The First-fruits of God's Creatures. I. "Of His own will," or because He willed it, is given as the reason why God bestowed on us a new life. We are to receive this assurance with the effort to profit by it, and to derive practical good from it, not with vain speculation as to the natur... [ Continue Reading ]
James 1:19 The Judicial Temper. This is one of the wisest and most difficult sayings in Holy Scripture. It commends itself to our good sense, and yet it is one of the hardest to be observed, for in one line we are bidden to be both swift and slow. Some Christian precepts can be obeyed deliberately... [ Continue Reading ]
James 1:22 The Danger of mistaking Knowledge for Obedience. I. Knowledge without obedience ends in nothing. It is, as St. James says, like a man who looks at his own face in a glass. For a time he has the clearest perception of his own countenance; every line and feature, even the lightest expressi... [ Continue Reading ]
James 1:25 The Perfect Law and its Doers. I. The Perfect Law. Let me remind you how, in every revelation of Divine truth contained in the Gospel, there is a direct moral and practical bearing. No word of the New Testament is given us in order that we may know truth, but all in order that we may do... [ Continue Reading ]
James 1:26 The Bridling of the Tongue. Consider the large class of sins to which an unbridled tongue renders us liable. I. One of the commonest employments of the human tongue is that of lying, and liars are among those to whom is specially reserved the blackness of darkness for ever; in fact, it... [ Continue Reading ]
James 1:27 The Christian Service of God. I. The general meaning and intention of this passage is obvious. No doubt some of these early converts from Judaism, to whom the Epistle of St. James is addressed, found it very hard, trained as they had been in mere outward formalism, with no deep sense of... [ Continue Reading ]