James 1:1-27

God's Gifts

James 1:0

James is always thought to be a very stern man. We think of him as never smiling, never bending in familiar and companionable intercourse, but always standing upon a crag of granite, and telling men what they ought to do; and telling men their duty in a voice that indicates no disposition to be trifled with. We have done wrong by some of these men. They are not so stern when we come to know them. It would be impossible for a preacher of Christ to be stern in any sense that drives men away in fear and distrust and shame. We shall find on reading the whole Epistle of James that there are some tender words in it. Even James recognises the possibility of some people being "merry." I do not know that his exhortation would be acceptable to all kinds of merriment. When a man says, "Is any among you merry? let him sing psalms," he may seem to the frivolous to fall very much below the occasion. Psalms are all Hebrew grand, rolling, majestic utterances, befitting the expression of reverence, adoration, and a kind of fearsome loyalty, before an infinite throne of ivory jewelled with finest gold. Yet there are hymns for those who cannot sing psalms; lilting, tuneful, happy, bird-like hymns, fit to be sung from the branches of blossoming trees in the springtime. Take up such music as will best express your tender and happy emotion. James is only anxious that mirth should have its expression, as certainly as sickness should have its medicine. If James had lived in our day he would have indicated certain pleasant and beautiful home hymns instead of saying "psalms." Not that he would have ignored the psalms; he would have said, Some voices were not made for psalm-singing; they have not compass enough, they are not gifted with that subtle, peculiar emphasis which can take up the sublimity of the psalm and express it. So some of us have to go to little hymns; they suit our youthfulness, they stoop down to our weakness, and we may by their gentle and adapted ministry rise from one elevation to another, until we are able to take our share in the utterance of that thunder which rolls so songfully around the eternal throne.

James comes before us, not as a stern man, but as a slave. What a pity we do not put the word "slave" instead of "servant" in the text. "Slave" is the English equivalent of the word which James himself used. "Servant" is an ambiguous profession; yea, it is now in many relations a profession. When a man calls his work a "profession" you may be quite sure he has fallen from grace. Why do we not call it work? Why do we not recognise it as honest industry? When a preacher talks about his "profession" leave him. James was a slave, and therefore at full liberty. Only a slave in the right sense of the term can be a free man "If ye know the truth, the truth shall make you free." We must be slaves if we love. Love does not stand upright in any posture of conventional or mechanical dignity; love says, What can I do for you? can I run an errand on your account? can I pluck you some flowers? can I sing you a song? can I hand you what you require? make use of me. Love is never so happy as when stooping to do some work which will indicate the reality and completeness of its own intensity and devotion. There are some persons who love us so much that they never write to us. There are others who are so deeply in love with us that we never hear a word from them in any way. That is a mysterious kind of love; that is a sort of absorbed contemplative, self-involved consecration of heart that ends in nothing. We want love to be another name for service, helpfulness, sympathy, co-partnery in prayer, a marvellous companionship of the soul. James never did anything without first saying, Lord, may I do it? When the Lord gave him commandment to do it, none could work with a steadier hand than James. He had his own way of saying things; crisp, epigrammatic, always ad rem , so that his style cannot be confounded with the style of any other man. There are certain persons in all climates and ages who have a wonderful faculty for hitting the nail everywhere but on the head. James had the other faculty. It was a smith's arm, and a smith's hammer, and when it came down, the nail knew it. It is not enough to have industry, the industry must be rightly directed. There are persons so continually busy that they never actually do anything; they are always going to do it, they are in some unnamed and unnamable mood of the verb To do, and in conjugating that energetic verb they never come to issue or conclusion; they are in a perpetual swelter, yet they never gather any harvest. In order that our work may be rightly directed we must say to the Master early in the morning, Lord, I am thine, what wouldst thou have me to do? I do not want to do anything except under thy command; I shall not be content with thy permission; I would have an order from the throne: If thou dost say, Go! none shall hinder me, for I know thou wilt not bid me go, unless thou hast first decided to come along with me. He who is thus the slave of law is the free man of the Father. Never believe in any liberty that has no bounds. Liberty that is not bounded is blasphemy, is licence, is madness.

This humble, devoted slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ sends a letter to the twelve tribes, which were scattered abroad. Who thinks of writing to wanderers? Who thinks of telegraphing to people who have no address? That would seem to be a ludicrous act, and yet there are persons who have risked messages by committing them to the sea. The ship has struck, there is no hope for her; men have sat down and written messages on slips of paper, put them into bottles, corked the bottles, and thrown them upon the wide sea, if haply they may some day be cast upon the sands far away, and may thus come to express not intelligence only, but affection and devotion to aching hearts. We should often speak to people who are not present with us at the moment. Our words may be reported, they may be quoted, and when they are quoted some persons may listen to them with sacred amazement, and without saying much may feel in their hearts that such gospels were meant from the very first to be theirs, for encouragement, for welcome, for assurance of the possibility of pardoned, and therefore renewed, and therefore immortal, life.

The twelve tribes scattered abroad were not accosted as prodigals or wanderers, though there was probably hardly a good man amongst them. James would get at his people by calling them "My brethren." People will listen to the voice of a brotherhood: there is a masonry in the Church, by which sign true hearts know one another; without unbecoming or undue familiarity they hold the key of each other's heart, and can enter into the sacred places, the very sanctuary of the soul. Men who are a long way from the Church may be our brethren still. Your son did not cease to be your son because he ran away from your house. The prodigal need not be excluded from your prayers because he has excluded himself from your hearth and home. When you speak of him let it be under some gentle designation; he may hear of it, and the very fact that you called him child, son, loved one, may shape itself into a gospel, and may indicate the point and certainty of his return.

What were the brethren of James to do? To "count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations." We cannot do that, it is impossible; no man can go into the wilderness for the purpose of being glad. It is not in the human heart when it comes into stony and inhospitable places to say, This is what I want. But that is not what the Apostle bade you do, you have broken off his exhortation at a semicolon; he gives you a reason for your counting it all joy when you fall into divers temptations, namely, "Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience." We are not to be glad on account of the pain: we are to be glad because the pain works out a mystery, the sweet, quiet, gentle name of which is patience the quality that suffers without a ruffle; the condition of soul that accepts the providences of God, whatever they be, thankfully and hopefully. Until we have attained patience we have not touched the crown of orthodoxy. There are many orthodox people who are not patient. There are some people who judge of their own orthodoxy by their own patience; they get so angry with other people that they forget to pray. They think that anger will serve the cause of God, whereas it is plainly written on the portals of heaven that, "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." We want more patience, more hopefulness, more of the spirit which says, The man has gone away from our hold and companionship for a time, but he will come back again. We want the spirit which says, Some mistakes have been made, but mistakes are often the first letters in the lessons of life: experience is a dear school, but experience turns out fine scholars. We should never speak impatiently about any earnest man, wherever he may have wandered and whatever he may have done. Earnestness burning, religious, pious earnestness is the guarantee of its own integrity, and of the happy issue to which all sincerity is brought by the Spirit of the living God. We cannot be men until we have had cruel trials and mockings and scourgings, yea sometimes even bonds and imprisonments: but every man must be tried by fire, or he cannot trust himself. The fire has a work to do that nothing else can ever effect. How are we off in this matter of fire? Here is an artist who brings to me some beautiful piece of work upon porcelain or other ware, and I begin to lift a finger, and the artist exclaims, "Do not touch it, if you please." Why not? "Because it has not yet been fired." What has the fire got to do with this beautiful painting? The fire has got to fasten it, to so work upon it that the ware can be touched, or handled, or used, and yet the figure sustains no loss of outline or beauty. It is even so with young Christians. Some of you have just been, as it were, fashioned and outlined by the Divine artist, but you have not yet undergone the firing process process of trial and therefore some people come to you and want to touch you; and some would touch you with the finger of scorn, and others would touch you with the finger of curiosity, and others would touch you simply for the sake of touching you, and finding exactly how deeply the work is done; and the voice of God says, Hands off! these are but young Christians, they have not yet been fired; after they have been in the oven of experience and in the furnace of affliction, I will hand them out of the mould for the world's using. There are some persons who think that the moment you become a Christian you may become an experienced Christian, and therefore they will try you and mock you and put you to severe straits, not knowing that every soul requires to be tested by fire and to be completed by trial. We must not expect from the young that which is appropriate only to the old. Do not go out in April to pluck the apples: wait until September. Do not shake the tree and scorn it because in April it is only white with blossom: wait till the harvest month, and the tree will bid you welcome to its juicy, luscious fruitage. Every man in his own order; every soul in its own time. God hath appointed these things, and according to the administration of this discipline will be the completeness of our character.

"But let patience have her perfect work." Patience is beautiful. But even patience wants perfecting. There is a partial patience. If endurance be represented by ten points, there are some people who are good for seven of them, but at the eighth they break down. Having tried them with three points, and three more, and then with the seventh, you say, Surely now these people may be allowed to pass as completely patient, and yet when you try them with the eighth difficulty or test they completely break down, and all the other seven points go for nothing. James says, "let patience have her perfect work." That is what we say about the seasons; we say, let spring have her perfect work: let summer have her perfect work: let harvest have her perfect work. We know what perfect work is in nature: who would cut down the wheat when it is all green? The green is of a lovely hue, and every stalk seems well formed: why not thrust in the sickle? Yet nature says, Let the seasons have their perfect work: cut the corn when it is yellow, crisp, golden, when it seems in a gentle breeze to nod its head to the sickle, and say, You may cut me now. So many of us fail about half-way. So many fail, too, at the point last but one. Let us construct a bridge over, say, the river Thames; let us say that the Thames is at the point in view 300 feet wide: here is the bridge, and we have to put it up. And the bridge is 295 feet long: now what are you to do? Nothing; 295 feet of a bridge can never be stretched into 300 feet of a river. Yet it is good as far as it goes. Yes. And how many men there are who are content to be good as far as they go? If one boy were owing another twenty shillings and gave him fifteen, would the creditors say, You are good as far as you go; thank you: all is now settled? I think not. The boy who wanted the twenty shillings would say, You have given me but fifteen, I want five more. Who would go over a bridge 295 feet long when the river is 300 feet wide? Can you jump the remaining 5 feet? Would you like to drive a horse and carriage over a bridge of that kind? You would be all right for 295 feet; never were feet better measured, never was work better done: this you acknowledge, but you say you would be drowned at the point where the bridge ends. Why not apply this figure and this doctrine to human character, and say, Let patience have her perfect work; let the patience be the whole length of the affliction and let the man's strength be such that he can compass with entireness the whole task which he has to do.

But suppose any man should be conscious of defect, what then? There is a provision made for that consciousness:

"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." (James 1:5-8 .)

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

Wisdom is a large gift, quiet, solemn, majestic, rich in resource, enduring in patience. Yet the sharp man is often applauded, when the slow-plodding mind is left behind, because it cannot move with sufficient velocity. It is marvellous how one quality of mind is often mistaken for another, and how the man of information is often put in the chair, and the man of inspiration is left somewhere at the backdoor. Information is nothing but a momentary convenience: inspiration sees central principles, philosophic beginnings and genesis of things, and is always right because the accident comes, goes, changes colour and attitude, and disappears, but he who grasps the centre and reality of things has a permanent sovereignty; he will not always be standing at the backdoor; the poor, little, clever, well-informed chairman will be dropped out of his chair, and probably nobody will care to go back and bring him up again. Inspiration, or wisdom, or the divine faculty of the soul, holds its own for ever, and grows with the growing ages. Distinguish therefore between qualities that seem to be alike. I have heard a nightingale sing and a cock crow at the same moment, and I thought I perceived a difference in their voices. Even for that degree of perception a man ought to be thankful. There are persons who do not know the one voice from the other; so they say to the nightingale, We can hear you, you need not sing so loudly; we can hear you. It is not enough to hear a voice, you must feel it. Hear it! a jackal has a quicker ear than a man has. But to hear is nothing; to feel the subtle spiritual thrill, that is the proper effect of music. So it is with voices that would teach you, with voices that would cheer you. No doubt out of the Christian pulpit there are voices strident, clamorous, urgent, emphatic voices; but there is no voice you ought to listen to that would not be in place in the sanctuary. Any voice that could not be appropriately uttered within the shadow of the Cross of Christ is the voice of falsehood and deceit. Listen to the angels of the sanctuary, to the ministry of truth as it is exercised within the circle of the Cross, and believe me there is no wisdom that does not begin in the fear of God. We all want wisdom, let us "ask in faith, nothing wavering." You would not give anything yourselves to a man that wavered. First he wants that which is on the right hand, then he wants that which is on the left, and he cannot make up his mind what it is that he really does want. You would be impatient with a suppliant of that kind, and you would dismiss him, and properly so. What should be said by high heaven if we do not know what we want? First say, "Lord, teach us how to pray," and if the prayer be God's the answer will be his and may be relied upon. We know not what to ask, but we can be taught. We ought to be taught even how to express our souls in the language of supplication and fervent desire: this also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working. Here stands the lesson that ought to guide the young mind and the old evermore that wisdom may be had for asking. But we have to take care how we ask, in whose name we ask, for what reason we ask, that prayer may be purged of selfishness, and desire kindled by the very sacrifice of the Son of God.

Prayer

Almighty God, we come now, as evermore, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, our infinite Saviour, that we may pray thee to keep with us in all the way of life, and make known unto us thy will in every time of darkness and fear. Thou hast guided us by thine eye; thou hast led us by a way that we knew not; thou hast conducted us in safety through the wilderness; and sometimes we think we have seen the green land beyond, and have caught an odour now and then as of the gardens of paradise, and these have cheered us with strange and most healthful encouragement. We know that thou art taking us to a great country; all that we see round about us means greatness, grandeur, completeness, heaven; when we have seen the seed, we have seen the tree; when we have beheld the first little budding leaf, we have seen, in prophecy, all the summer of God. We know and are confident of all this, and it makes the night short, and the day bright, and trials quite easy; it turns labour into rest, and pain into a kind of joy; continue thy ministry in our hearts, that we may know the process of heavenly discipline, and be perfected in all the graces of the holy truth. Amen.