The Religion Of Common-Sense
My Brothers, what is the good of a man’s saying that he has faith, if he does not prove it by actions? Can such faith save him? Suppose some Brother or Sister should be in want of clothes and of daily bread, and one of you were to say to them—” Go, and peace be with you; find warmth and food for yourselves,” and yet you were not to give them the necessaries of life, what good would it be to them? In just the same way faith, if not followed by actions, is, by itself, a lifeless thing. Some one, indeed, may say—” You are a man of faith, and I am a man of action.” “Then show me your faith,” I reply, “apart from any actions, and I will show you my faith by my actions.” It is a part of your Faith, is it not, that there is one God? Good; yet even the demons have faith, and tremble at the thought. Now do you really want to understand, you foolish man, how it is that faith without actions leads to nothing? Look at our ancestor, Abraham. Was not it the result of his actions that he was pronounced righteous after he had offered his son, Isaac, on the altar? You see how, in his case, faith and actions went together; that his faith was perfected as the result of his actions; and that in this way the words of Scripture came true.—”Abraham believed God, and that was regarded by God as righteousness,” and “He was called the friend of God.” You see, then, that it is as the result of his actions that a man is pronounced righteous, and not of his faith only. Was not it the same with the prostitute, Rahab? Was not it as the result of her actions that she was pronounced righteous, after she had welcomed the messengers and hastened them away by a different road? Exactly as a body is dead without a spirit, so faith is dead without actions.
—James, a Brother of Jesus.
Charity is the salt of riches.
—The Talmud.
Who is the Honest Man?
He that doth still and strongly good pursue,
To God, his neighbor, and himself most true;
Whom neither force nor fawning can
Unpin, or wrench from giving all their due.
—George Herbert.