The Epistle of St. James.

77. The Epistle of St. James is entirely practical, and exceedingly fine; you cannot study it too much. It seems particularly designed to guard Christians against misunderstanding some things in St. Paul's writings, which have been fatally perverted to the encouragement of a dependence on faith alone, without good works. But, the more rational commentators will tell you, that by the works of the law, which the Apostle asserts to be incapable of justifying us, he means not the works of moral righteousness, but the ceremonial works of the Mosaic law; on which the Jews laid the greatest stress as necessary to salvation. But, St. James tells us, "that if any man among us seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, that man's religion is vain;"—and that "pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." Faith in Christ, if it produce not these effects, he declareth is dead, or of no power.