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]).