However, Abraham's devotedness was fully proved and fully accepted. "For now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me." Mark, it is "_now_ I know." It had never been proved before. It was there, no doubt; and, if there, God knew it; but the valuable point here is, that God founds his knowledge of it upon the palpable evidence afforded at the altar upon Mount Moriah. Faith is always proved by action, and the fear of God by the fruits which flow from it. "Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son on the altar?" (James ii. 21.) Who could think of calling his faith in question? Take away faith, and Abraham appears on Moriah as a murderer and a madman. Take faith into account, and he appears as a devoted worshipper,--a God-fearing, justified man. But faith must be proved. "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man _say_ he hath faith, and have not works?" (James ii. 14.) Will either God or man be satisfied with a powerless and profitless profession? Surely not. God looks for reality, and honors it where he sees it; and as for man, he can understand naught save the living and intelligible utterance of a faith that shows itself in acts. We are surrounded by the profession of religion; the phraseology of faith is on every lip; but faith itself is as rare a gem as ever,--that faith which will enable a man to push out from the shore of present circumstances, and meet the waves and the winds, and not only meet them, but endure them, even though the Master should seem to be asleep on the pillow.
And here I would remark the beautiful harmony between St. James and St. Paul on the subject of justification. The intelligent and spiritual reader, who bows to the important truth of the plenary inspiration of holy scripture, knows full well that on this question it is not with Paul or James we have to do, but with the Holy Ghost, who graciously used each of those honored men as the pen to write his thoughts, just as I might take up a quill-pen or a steel-pen to write my thoughts, in which case it would be quite preposterous to speak of a discrepancy between the two pens, inasmuch as the writer is one. Hence it is just as impossible that two divinely-inspired penmen could clash, as that two heavenly bodies, while moving in their divinely-appointed orbits, could come into collision.
But, in reality, as might be expected, there is the fullest and most perfect harmony between those two apostles; indeed, on the subject of justification, the one is the counterpart or exponent of the other. St Paul gives us the inward principle, St. James the outward development of that principle; the former presents the hidden life, the latter the manifested life; the former looks at man in relation to God, the latter looks at him in his relation to man. Now we want both: the inward would not do without the outward; and the outward would be valueless and powerless without the inward. "Abraham was justified" when "he believed God;" and "Abraham was justified" when "he offered Isaac his son." In the former case we have his secret standing; in the latter, his public acknowledgment by heaven and earth. It is well to understand this distinction. There was no voice from heaven when "Abraham believed God," though in God's view he was there, then, and thus "counted righteous;" but "when he had offered his son upon the altar," God could say, "now I know;" and all the world had a powerful and unanswerable proof of the fact that Abraham was a justified man. Thus will it ever be. Where there is the inward principle, there will be the outward acting; but all the value of the latter springs from its connection with the former. Disconnect, for one moment, Abraham's acting, as set forth by St. James, from Abraham's faith, as set forth by St. Paul, and what justifying virtue did it possess? None whatever. All its value, all its efficacy, all its virtue, springs from the fact that it was the outward manifestation of that faith, by virtue of which he had been already counted righteous before God. Thus much as to the admirable harmony between St. Paul and St. James: or rather as to the unity of the voice of the Holy Ghost, whether that voice be uttered by St. Paul or St. James.