I am, sure we have all felt deeply that word of our brother's touching our selfishness; that, if our selfishness were out of the way, our path through this scene would be a very different one, I have read this passage from an Epistle which insists in a marked' way on the curbing of the will, and the submitting ourselves to God as the only way by which we are enabled to " Count it an joy when we fall into divers temptations.". It looks at the world from God's stand point, brings us into it from God and for God, and fits us for it by curbing our will. God, above, the source of every good and perfect gift; man's heart, the source of corruption, Matt. 15:1919For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: (Matthew 15:19). It is very humbling to see how little we know practically of this one verse (James 1;2.).
If we come into the world feeling what sin has done, if we come into it from God, we can give an arm to the fatherless, and in the same way comfort the widow who has been deprived through sin and death of her stay. But, to do this, our selfishness must be got rid of; then only can we be here for God and with Him.
There are two classes of temptation spoken of: one, the believer is to count it all joy when he falls into it; in the other he is tempted by 'his own lusts and drawn away. In prayer one desires that one's conscience should be so clear before God that we can look to Him with certainty to be for us in that only in which He can be for, and not in that which He must resist; leave God, if I may say so, free to come in and help us. When James speaks of asking and having not, he says; " Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts." In prayer, have we the sense that, what we are asking of Him is entirely for Himself?-is bona fide for God? We are enabled to count it all joy to fall into the trials that we meet in ails -going through the wilderness.
It is not the trying of our temper, it is not the trying of our patience; it is the trying of our faith. And A is the one who is going on right with God who meets these trials of faith which bring out the need' of curbing the will. Do not try to get out of them. Do not try to escape them. I want God to come in; I want to " let patience have her perfect work." If we are seeking to carry out what has been pressed upon us, instead of trying to run away from the thing that is trying and troubling us, we are able to be in it for God, at leisure from ourselves.
How often you and I have broken our hearts over our selfishness and its effects upon others; but there is a place where we get even a worse estimate of it than any that we can form from our own failures, and that is in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. We see there what it cost Him; We see there how much was needed, to deliver us from its present power and from the eternal consequences of going on in it.
Then we read of a man looking in the glass, and going away and straightway forgetting what manner of man he is; but, in contrast with this, is the continuing in the perfect law of liberty. James insists on the liberty, but for what? To have my own will? No, but, liberty to have no will but God's. That is James' liberty; all else is bondage. How much our hearts know of this bondage, how little of this liberty and truly humbling it is, and we are without excuse; for we know that Satan gets the advantage over us only through the working of this will of ours; while it is curbed, and we wait on God, the malice of the enemy is powerless to hurt, and our walk is the practical expression of what 1 John 5:1818We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not. (1 John 5:18). says abstractly of us: " He that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not." But the ways of God in bringing us into this liberty, and the provisions of His grace for our walk in it, are not the subject of this Epistle.
The simple test for our hearts as to what they are set upon is: Am I desiring and seek, ing to obtain this because the Lord has put His finger on it for me? It is one thing to set my heart on an object and then to ask the Lord to get it for me; quite another to seek His help in obtaining that • which has been presented to me in communion with Him.
He forms, energizes, and satisfies the desires of the true heart: "" Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." We feel how such truth cuts us, but it is blessed that it should. The grace that deals thus with us invites our submission, having won our confidence. In the Lord's desires for me, there is nothing lacking -nothing left for me to supply. What is not found there, and may be found in my -heal* is not good, and His grace has often to allow us to learn this by the leanness in soul which accompanies its possession. Thus walking " we escape the corruption that is in the world through lust," and the "divers temptations'' become occasions of blessing, and grace gets spoil from them for God.
But how sweet to consider Him of whom the volume of the book testified that He came to do His Father's will-yea, delighted in it. In Him the Father was well pleased: He did always those things that pleased Him, In Him the prince of this world had nothing, but found in Him a dependent and confiding man, who lived by every word of God, whose perfect will could say in Gethsemane,. Not my will but thine be done." " Preserve me, O God, for in Thee do I put my trust," marked each step. He could bind and destroy the strong man, and now has left us to triumph in His triumphs; and, though we see not yet all things put under Him, we read in that crown God's answer to the path of the dependent and obedient One, and seek' grace to be imitators of God as dear children, and to walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us, an- offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.
(J. B.)