PURE AND UNDEFILED RELIGIOX DESCRIBED. Jam. i. 27. Pure religion, and vndefiled, before God avd the , Father, is this; To jjisit f he fatherless arid widows in their afflictiov, and to keep himself unspotted from the irorld.
ERRORS of the most fatal kind were early found in the Christian Church. So speedily had vital god- liness decayed, that even in the Apostles' days a mere form and profession of religion w^as deemed sufficient. Under the idea of exalting faith, the vahie of good works was depreciated, and the ne- cessity of performing them denied. Against such errors the apostle James lifted up his voice like a trumpet: he bore testimony against them in the most energetic manner: he declared that " faith without works was dead"*:" that to be " hearers of the word and not doers of it, was the way to deceive our own souls **:" that the *' religion" which did not pro- duce self-government, "was vain *":" and that that religion, which alone God would acknowledge as " pure and undefiled," would lead to the most self-denying exercises of love, and to a freedom from all those corruptions with which the world abounded : " Pure religion, &c. &c."
Let us consider, I. His description of true religion —
We must remember that the Apostle is here speak- ing of religion sole/// in ^practical view. He is not speaking of principles. Not that he disregards them: on the contrary, instead of setting aside the doctrines of justification by faith, as some would represent, he insists on the necessity of faith as strongly as St. Paul himself; only he distinguishes between that which is living and operative, and that which is un- influential and dead ; and affirms, that it is the living and operative faith only, which will save the soul.
Nor is the whole even of practical religion in the contemplation of the Apostle in this passage. He
does
' Jam. ii. 20. " ver. 22. '^ ver, 26.