James i. 27
This is now at least, whatever might have been the meaning of the word
'religion' in the time of the Translators, a false version. St. James is
speaking of persons eminently zealous in those public or private acts of
worship, which we call divine service, [Greek: thraeskeia]. It should be
rendered, 'True worship', &c. The passage is a fine burst of rhetoric,
and not a mere truism; just as when we say;--"A cheerful heart is a
perpetual thanksgiving, and a state of love and resignation the truest
utterance of the Lord's Prayer." St. James opposes Christianity to the
outward signs and ceremonial observances of the Jewish and Pagan
religions. But these are the only sure signs, these are the most
significant ceremonial observances by which your Christianity is to be
made known,--'to visit the fatherless', &c. True religion does not
consist 'quoad essentiam' in these acts, but in that habitual state of
the whole moral being, which manifests itself by these acts--and which
acts are to the religion of Christ that which ablutions, sacrifices and
Temple-going were to the Mosaic religion, namely, its genuine [Greek:
thraeskeia]. That which was the religion of Moses is the ceremonial or
cult of the religion of Christ. Moses commanded all good works, even
those stated by St. James, as the means of temporal felicity; and this
was the Mosaic religion; and to these he added a multitude of symbolical
observances; and these formed the Mosaic cult, ('cultus religionis',
[Greek: thraeskeia]).
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