James 1:27, commentary and pictures

Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is twofold, caring for the fatherless and widows in their affliction and keeping oneself unspotted from the world. It belongs to being a doer of the word and not a hearer only, looking into the perfect law of liberty and continuing in it, in contrast to forgetting the word, failing to bridle the tongue, and living in wrath, filthiness and selfishness. True religion is practical godliness and unselfish, self-denying love, not mere profession, outward form, emotion or sentiment, but Bible truth renewing the whole person and governing tongue, temper and will in daily duties. To visit means personal, active care that cannot be done by proxy, going to the helpless, poor and suffering of every class without partiality, relieving their bodily needs, comforting and instructing their souls, and helping them to help themselves. To keep unspotted means to live in the world without sharing its spirit, pride, selfishness and corruption, in moral purity and consecration, and this doing cleanses the soul, forms Christ within, glorifies God and wins souls.

Words and Context

Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is twofold: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. The fatherless and widows have special claims on Christian sympathy, and their care is a trust God places in Christians to test the love of those who profess to follow Him. God provides for bereaved families through those whose selfishness is overcome and whose generosity is awakened. This religion is not mere profession or hearing the word but doing the word, and carrying out this test brings God's blessing. Love and service to the helpless and poor show genuine love for Christ, while neglecting them marks a person as a false disciple and a stranger to Christ and His love.

The verse belongs to being a doer of the word and not a hearer only. It stands in contrast to the man who hears the Word and forgets it like a face seen in a glass, and to the man who seems religious yet does not bridle his tongue and deceives his own heart, whose religion is vain. It stands against human wrath, filthiness and selfishness, against enmity toward fellow believers and cherished iniquity, and against deceiving oneself. The one who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it as a doer of the Word will be blessed in deed. True religion is not merely hearing or professing the Word but doing what the Word teaches, reflecting God's compassion in a practical life. The chapter is to be read prayerfully to understand individual responsibility, to gain victory over self and to bring the will into conformity with God's will.

To visit means personal, active care that cannot be left to others. It means going to them, visiting the sick, the needy, the poor, the fatherless and widows in their affliction, visiting and praying with families, and showing to the world what Jesus has done. It means sanctified sympathy that guards their interests, works for them, accepts inconvenience to help them, offers Christlike counsel, and prays with them. It means helping them help themselves, including helping fatherless children find work among believers and expending means for their education. Such works testify that Christ lives in the person by faith, confessing and representing Christ, and a transformed life further appears in kindness, forbearance, generosity, honesty, industry, and freedom from covetousness and waste. This active personal work rests not on ministers only but on every follower of Christ, and souls newly come to the faith must be educated to labor together with God; failure to work as a faithful missionary is unfaithfulness to trust and disappoints the Saviour, and without it spiritual life dies. Care is to be done with Christ in mind, treating widows and children as one would want one's own family treated if left without spouse or parent, without using their vulnerability for selfish advantage.

The fatherless and widows in their affliction represent all who are helpless, poor, and suffering. The same pitiful and considerate care commanded toward them, with disinterested benevolence, is required toward the blind and all who suffer under other physical infirmities, including the lame, the deaf, the sick in body and mind, and the invalid. It includes sympathizing with those in grief, comforting widows and fatherless children in trouble, encouraging the desponding and heart-sick, befriending orphans and the friendless, and making the needs of others one's own. It includes feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming strangers, helping widows, and giving children who lack parental love and care affection, sympathy, and material assistance in family and neighborhood. Such unselfish practical fruit benefits others and glorifies God, while living only for oneself falls short of this duty. Disregarding this plain, positive responsibility violates God's word and should trouble the conscience, and God frequently brings the neglectful under the rod of affliction and places them in positions similar to those who needed their help and sympathy but did not receive it.

To keep unspotted from the world means to live in the world without sharing its spirit, evil, or corruption. It means remaining distinct, consecrated to God, separate from the world's spirit, ways, and fashions, and morally clean in purity and holiness. Believers are not to become its friends nor seek its approval, but need protection from evil while resisting its influence from within it. Keeping unspotted does not mean shutting away in self-righteous exclusiveness nor conforming to gain influence, but living in the world without joining its worldliness or what God condemns. Contact with what is unclean pollutes, so Christians must remain separate from it, with truth sanctifying the soul and its principles governing thought, words, and actions. Those who love the world and conform to it are not acknowledged as Christ's people, while the pure and holy, made bright through suffering and kept separate from the world, are His.

Nature of True Religion

Pure and undefiled religion before God is practical godliness in doing, not mere profession, hearing, correct teaching, outward form, emotion or sentiment. It is Bible truth influencing the whole person in daily practice, woven into duties and transactions, made complete through works by persevering effort. It is active, constant, everyday work for suffering humanity rather than seclusion, set times and special occasions, mortification of the body, or selfish professed piety. It throws down walls of partition between sacred and everyday life, exercising helping power for everyone in need, bringing cheerfulness and hope to the desponding, and showing earnest loving interest without asking creed or church membership. It also means keeping character heavenly and unspotted while living among men, sharing their privations, sorrows and burdens, and rejecting Pharisaical maxims, man-made observances, and morbid devotion to personal interest that make religion a yoke of bondage.

True religion is not sentimental feeling or claim to special devotion and spirituality, nor self-centered lovesickness. It draws the mind out of self toward finding ways to make others happier and better through blessing others and doing good works. It produces purity, goodness and self-denial, ennobles the mind, refines taste, sanctifies judgment, and separates a person from the world’s spirit and influence. It is not sensational religion and does not consist in encouraging an appetite for speculative doctrines and theories. Such things are to be kept out of teaching and personal experience so they do not mar the life work.

True religion is unselfish, self-denying love that cures selfishness and love of the world, proving Christlikeness through self-denial and self-sacrifice. It requires wholehearted service with no halfhearted devotion and no compromise with selfishness, loving God with all heart, soul, strength and mind and loving neighbor as self, honoring the Redeemer instead of self. It lays aside selfish interests to bring happiness to others, binding up the broken-hearted, bringing life and immortality to light before those who know not Christ, and using all capabilities for God while keeping unspotted from the world. Those who live this way follow heavenward the path of self-denial and cross-bearing in united, thoughtful lives that reveal divine power, and they are acknowledged as sons of God who will hear Well done, though the world will not notice or honor them because their character is different from the worldly standard. It changes hereditary and cultivated tendencies to wrong, banishes self-confidence and egotism, shows a person weak and sinful and unable of himself to do any good thing, and leads him to behold Jesus so that in beholding he is changed into His likeness, opening the heart to receive the heavenly Guest without whom there is no abiding peace. It puts iniquity away from the heart and earnestly seeks God’s help, since Christ’s ransom makes it possible to escape sin’s bondage and receive pardon, purity and heaven.

True religion is inward transformation by the Holy Spirit with Christ formed within, the hope of glory. It is not outward show or mere feeling but the sanctifying power of grace upon the soul, known by fruits in a meek and Christlike character, conforming the will to God’s will, having for fellow men the love Christ had, and being a light to the world. It enters the polluted soul-temple and with a scourge drives out sinful intruders, taking the throne and consecrating all by its presence, illuminating the heart with the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness and opening the windows of the soul heavenward to let in the sunshine of God’s love. With it come serenity and composure, and physical, mental and moral strength increase because the atmosphere of heaven as a living, active agency fills the soul. It is the doing of works of mercy and love necessary to health and happiness, showing divine enlightenment by true piety seen in changed deportment, supreme love for God and unselfish love for fellow men, with gospel promises bringing light that shines forth in good works. It is an earnest, practical life bound up with obedience to all God’s commandments and loving as neighbor anyone with whom contact is made, leaving no grace deficient but combining all graces to form the image of the perfect pattern, since one broken link makes the chain worthless. It belongs to clearing the King’s highway by confessing and forsaking sins so they go beforehand to judgment to be blotted out when refreshing comes from the Lord’s presence and He sends Jesus, and now is the time to do it. It is Christ working in and through human agents that makes them Christians, working to promote spirituality and heavenly affection, and the receiver quickened by the vitalizing current of the Spirit communicates the same to others; without it self-love and greed grow.

True religion governs the temper and controls the tongue, making a person kind, patient, forbearing, meek and lowly, and religion without this is not Christ’s religion and will not secure salvation. Religion is vain when a person fails to bridle the tongue, and evil speaking and accusing others contradict genuine Christian character. To visit the fatherless and widows means not neglecting the poor but being kind and courteous, having interest in their necessities, feeling tender sympathy for suffering humanity, and scattering benefits to relieve their wants, which best reaches hearts and cultivates mind and heart. To keep unspotted means keeping all powers of soul and mind unpolluted and holy unto the Lord, rather than getting and holding all for self, which tends to poverty of soul. Throwing oneself unreservedly into helping others with Christlike tenderness and sympathy softens, subdues and converts hearts, and by kindness and love breaking up fallow ground and sowing gospel seed reaps a rich harvest. Godliness must be seen in a Christlike spirit that preserves unity by not letting differences over Scripture lead to alienation, bitterness, broken fellowship, mistrust, misrepresentation or harsh condemnation, and it is contradicted by envy, evil-speaking and strife in the way Christians treat one another. It involves the will as the deciding, kingly power governing the other faculties unto obedience or disobedience.

True religion ennobles its possessor and is accompanied by cheerful trust in God, submission to His care and providences, gratitude for His gifts, and contentment of mind. It is seen in marked cheerfulness and holy happy confidence that is refreshing to the soul, making God’s love and benevolence visible in every bounty received. It is not drudgery, degradation, humiliation, or exacting self-denying tests that take away happiness, nor to be unfavorably contrasted with the false glitter of the world. It has refining and elevating power upon character, always tending to elevate and refine, requiring simplicity of natural beauty and polish of natural refinement and elevated purity rather than the artificial and false, as pure as God’s character and as elevated as His throne. It turns attention to the beauties of creation and nature as evidence of God’s love, power and wisdom, carrying the mind up through nature to the Author of all that is lovely, so that every created thing magnifies His power, exalts His wisdom, molds taste above human skill, and leads to praise in thankful words and heartfelt song. It produces a peaceful mind and overcomes timidity, fear, loneliness, narrow preference for only a few chosen friends, and restless homesick habits, which when they persist show lack of faith and of truth’s purifying influence, and it leads to childlike simplicity with single-minded desire for God’s glory.

Keeping Unspotted from World

Keeping oneself unspotted from the world is genuine inward purity and not a pretentious outward appearance covering a defiled character, for a claim to righteousness is false when character remains stained. It requires moral cleanness in thought, word, and deed, guarding both soul and body, bringing every thought and passion under reason and conscience, turning from works of darkness to live righteously and stand blameless before God the Judge of the whole earth. While living in the world no one is safe from its corruptions without continual prayer for God to preserve him, and in the last days when iniquity abounds those open to the Holy Spirit receive strength to resist the corruption of their age. The soul must be guarded from worldly influences and from conduct that stains life, including undue familiarity that endangers faith and character. Guarding is done by searching Scripture and obeying God's word fully, for when truth is planted in and cherished in the heart it shapes conduct and character, producing a purity and beauty seen by others that can influence one's family toward truth.

It means maintaining a character without spot or wrinkle in preparation to enter God's kingdom, while living and working in the world without entering relationships that lead to breaking God's commandments. It is kept by living faith, watchfulness, and separation from enticements to sin.

Keeping unspotted means refusing the world's spirit, maxims, fashions, pride, selfishness, covetousness, vanity and extravagance, and living separate, pure and holy rather than loving the world and conforming to it. Profession alone does not make a person pure, and those conformed to the world will not be acknowledged as Christ's people when He comes, while the pure and holy made bright through suffering and kept separate from the world are His. It denies useless dress and costly food and prideful, wasteful spending, redirecting money spent to gratify pride toward worthy people in need and the support of God's work. Visiting the afflicted is therefore more than kind words, sympathy and comfort; when widows and fatherless children are needy and afflicted it includes materially helping them, and young people can use health and resources to aid them and gain God's approval. God's elect must stand pure in character in the last days, with bodies holy and spirits pure and the Spirit of God controlling every action, remaining untainted by the world's corruption. The rich also keep it by honesty, integrity and just dealing in business without sacrificing to Mammon, treating widows and the worthy poor fairly in prices and wages and making allowances in their favor rather than taking every possible advantage, for quiet acts of kindness and relief are pleasing to God, bind hearts together, and are noticed and recorded by Him.

Keeping unspotted belongs to the new life entered at baptism, when the believer prays to be kept from worldly defilement and untainted by the world and to be raised to live a new life unto God. A newly baptized child rightly asks this in the water as part of fitting preparation for baptism and for partaking of the Lord's supper. Baptism pictures being raised with Christ, crucifying self, and imitating Jesus' self-denying life. God keeps believers from worldly defilement as He forgives their sins and draws them to Himself, preparing them for the everlasting kingdom of Jesus Christ.

Keeping unspotted is present preparation for standing without spot and blameless before the Judge of the whole earth, requiring diligence to be placed in the most favorable position to secure help for overcoming, improving grace already given, cooperating with God, becoming transformed, and bringing forth fruit meet for repentance. It is a warning to every person living in the great day of intercession, the day of atonement, not to join hands with the world, because all that is in the world passes away while he that does the will of God abides forever. Keeping it gives what is better than the friendship of the world, title to the noblest earthly palace, and words of earthly praise: the friendship of Jesus Christ, a title to the mansions Christ has gone to prepare, and Christ's welcome to His faithful servants to inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world. It includes guarding oneself and one's children from worldly influence, a present duty pursued through character preparation and overcoming pride, passion, and spiritual laziness while waiting for the Lord's return. Character is made white through the blood of the Lamb, and pride, passion, and spiritual slothfulness must be overcome through determined effort now. Those purified and made white through suffering who refuse conformity and live separate, pure and holy are the people Jesus will acknowledge and own as His when He comes. It means preserving the faith in its purity rather than following the world's ways, holding fast integrity amid the church's danger and decline, and those who do so remain faithful and are protected by God when He comes to avenge His people.

Keeping unspotted is shown by cherishing holy and just principles as sacred and living by them, looking to Jesus and following His example, and letting Scripture guide every decision by God's standards rather than human opinion. Genuineness is revealed by walking with God with the will submitted to His will, going where Jesus leads and suffering for His sake, seeking to save souls for whom Christ died, conquering difficulties, not seeking the easiest place or lightest burdens but being found where work is hardest and help is most needed, with responsibility proportionate to entrusted talents. Christ's true followers are fruit-bearing trees who work as He worked, going about doing good, bearing testimony that His Spirit dwells in their hearts, and living the self-denial and self-sacrifice that characterized His life who pleased not Himself, lest in the day of God empty professors be found wanting and condemned as unprofitable servants. It is done by meeting often together for prayer, first talking with God to know what spirit one is of, then examining every point, every method, every principle in light reflected from the Sun of Righteousness, refusing strange fire and taking fire from the divine altar, ever looking to Jesus to mark the spirit in which He worked, giving to others the pure principles of the Word of God, holding the Word as counsel, guide and close companion and the Scriptures as supreme authority, with one standard for every question, not what men say but what the Lord says. At home it means living a faultless, gentle, unspotted life in every place and under every circumstance, not by shunning trials and getting rid of them but by meeting them heroically and enduring them patiently. It is shown by giving sunshine in place of frowns and pleasant words in place of irritating, stinging words, by loving a wife tenderly and treating her with cheerful kindness and affection and never leaving the impression that she is a burden, by doing the duties of time, care, love and devotion in the family from which there is no excuse, and by being a real home missionary to dear ones at home whose souls are as precious as others, for an unkind, hasty, denunciatory, fault-finding, complaining spirit at home destroys confidence in missionary work abroad and breaks pure religion, which copies Jesus as the pattern and grows into Christ's likeness at home with a brave heart, unfaltering purpose, and calm and joyful confidence in God. Family responsibilities and conduct that draw children closer to Christ belong to this daily lived faith.

Care for Widows and Orphans

Visiting in affliction must be personal and cannot be done by proxy through a committee or institution. Every follower of Christ must do this work, not ministers alone, by going to visit and praying with families and showing what Jesus has done. New converts must be educated to labor together with God, for the minister's work is incomplete without it and every one passed from death unto life is bought for earnest cooperation as a faithful missionary in the vineyard. The spiritual life of the church stays alive only as members do this serving and saving work, and failure to work is unfaithfulness to trust and disappoints the Saviour. Such practical care for the sick and afflicted and patient, kindly help for those who have gone wrong is missionary work after Christ's example, in contrast to idle and malicious gossip, listlessness and inefficiency. Everyday duties become acts of devotion when done with fervent spirit, persevering energy, faith working by love, and eternity in view, taking the Bible forth to warn the world as God's helping hand and channels of His love to the perishing.

Care for orphans and the aged is a religious obligation resting on every church and family. When relatives cannot provide, church members are to take fatherless babies and homeless and motherless children into their homes, look after, educate, train and protect them from soul-endangering temptation, and help aged people where they live. Relatives are to care for their own poor relations and the church to care for its own needy members, with special regard for children of parents who died in the faith, rather than hiring men to gather the aged or orphans into a company to be fed and clothed or erecting buildings to house old men and women together. Doing this home work is what God wants and brings blessing, and it means easing a widowed mother's burdens and helping provide her children with needed care and support. Those who held that institutions still have place taught rescuing remaining orphans through orphan asylums, preferably in a small group rather than a large institution, because even unpromising, unattractive and perverse children with an inheritance of evil are purchased by Christ's blood and as precious as one's own, and without a helping hand will grow in ignorance and drift into vice and crime yet many can be rescued.

Practical care means sympathy with timely material aid: food, clothing, homes, money, fair prices and wages, tuition and boarding, work among believers, land and tools, and training that enables widows and children to support themselves and serve in new fields. The rich are to make allowances in favor of widows and the worthy poor rather than taking every advantage, and quiet acts of kindness and relief bind hearts together, are noticed and recorded by God, and are pleasing to Him. Means are to be expended to help youth and men and women obtain an education and be fitted for God's work, with lively interest in their spiritual interests and salvation, requiring hearts of flesh sensitive to others' needs, earnest prayer for understanding of the law's requirements, sight of personal deficiency, and looking to Jesus for converting power. Opening homes to share with orphans and the destitute and homeless, patiently instructing and encouraging them in duties of this life and securing the better life, imitates Jesus who inconvenienced Himself, suffered, endured and bore with sinful mortals. Such care is especially needed to bless childless homes by overcoming selfishness and teaching love, forbearance, patience and forgiveness toward the erring, and it must not selfishly take children for work they can do or for personal advantage but willingly do and suffer and bear even when they are erring and tax patience, for those who shun unpleasant responsibility will be useless in this life and amount to nothing in the next. Answering a mother's call for a daughter to come home and help care for fatherless children, and living out truth in her presence, is missionary work that may lead to conversion, and unbelief does not cancel duty to love and help.

Care includes tender spiritual work: noticing the neglected, informing the ignorant, encouraging the desponding, comforting the sorrowing and afflicted, supporting the weak, enlightening souls in darkness, and pointing sinners to Christ. Such compassion meets temporal and spiritual needs as service to Christ, who regards the needy as His own, commits them to His church, identifies Himself with them, and counts merciful deeds as done to Jesus, bringing the doer into closer relationship with Him. Visiting means sanctified sympathy that guards interests, works for them, accepts inconvenience, offers Christlike counsel, and prays with them, done with Christ in mind and with strength and wisdom from above so servants are not exhausted. The vulnerable are to be treated as one would wish one's own family treated if left without spouse or parent, befriending the friendless, giving affection and sympathy to children lacking parental love, and making others' needs one's own in kindness, benevolence, clothing the naked, welcoming strangers, and unselfish practical fruit that glorifies God. Their vulnerability must never be used for selfish advantage, for work or gain, or to stir harmful passions, and living only for self falls short of this duty.

God places widows, orphans, the blind, deaf, lame, invalids and afflicted in close relation to the church to prove character and test the love of professed followers, providing for bereaved families through those whose selfishness is overcome and generosity awakened. Angels watch their treatment, and prayers and deeds of compassion are remembered and rewarded while indifference, withholding food or kind attention, exploiting them, denying strangers their rights, or taking from them are selfish acts bringing judgment. Neglect violates His word, hides His face from prayer, and money and influence withheld from relieving suffering will be charged against those who could have helped and must be answered for to God. God often brings the neglectful under affliction to learn sympathy, and the church has solemn duty to give special care to destitute widows, orphans and invalids who have special claims on Christian sympathy as a trust from Him.

Care must be impartial, without pride, partiality, caste or exclusiveness. Help is to be given because help is needed without asking creed, church membership, country, kinship or rank, exercising everyday helping power for suffering humanity of all classes as one family united with Christ in God. God's love removes racial and social barriers, brings together without regard to wealth, learning or social rank as souls alike redeemed and dependent on Christ, and exposes human pride and caste whose self-sufficiency neglects those around and beyond one's own community. The pattern is the Samaritan and not the priest and Levite, throwing down partition between sacred and everyday life, sharing privations, sorrows and burdens while keeping character heavenly, bringing cheerfulness and hope to the desponding, seeking and saving the lost, and rejecting Pharisaical maxims, man-made observances and morbid devotion to personal interest. Means are to be used now rather than locked in wills, reaching beyond home to carry light into the wider world and bring wanderers back to the fold, instead of seclusion, set times, special occasions, mortification of the body, or selfish professed piety.

Blessing Judgment and Witness

Doing this test brings God's blessing, for practical obedience in caring for orphans and widows in distress while remaining unstained by the world is the test of pure religion and not mere profession or hearing. Following its instruction day by day is God's remedy and health-reform prescription for diseases of body and soul, leading to final victory with the overcomers. Such acts of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, and relieving orphans and widows bring a growing realization of God's blessing. Pure and undefiled religion is not sentiment but works of mercy and love necessary to health and happiness, entering the polluted soul-temple to drive out sinful intruders, take the throne, consecrate all by its presence, and illuminate the heart with the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness. It opens the windows of the soul heavenward to let in the sunshine of God's love, bringing serenity and composure while physical, mental, and moral strength increase because the atmosphere of heaven as a living, active agency fills the soul, forming Christ within, the hope of glory.

These works are service to Christ, who regards the needy as His own and commits their temporal and spiritual care to His church. Love and service to the helpless and poor show genuine love for Christ, while neglecting them marks false discipleship and estrangement from Christ and His love. God provides for bereaved families through hearts moved to overcome selfishness and give generously, and prayers and deeds of compassion for widows and orphans are remembered by Him and will be rewarded. Merciful acts of kindness, benevolence, sympathy with the grieving, helping the needy, clothing the naked, welcoming strangers, and befriending orphans are regarded as done to Jesus and bring the doer into closer relationship with Him. Such unselfish care that makes the needs of others one's own benefits others and glorifies God, whereas living only for self falls short of duty. Changed character from selfishness and covetousness to eagerness to do good, use means for the needy, visit widows and the fatherless, and remain unspotted reveals transforming faith bearing fruit in holiness, representing Christ, convicting others of truth's power, and leading them to glorify God, while neglect contradicts profession and denies the Redeemer as the early Ephesians understood.

Pure religion is extended by medical missionary and sanitarium work that relieves bodily suffering while caring for spiritual needs, bringing hope and prayer from God to the afflicted through physicians and missionaries who serve both body and soul. Meeting the needs of widows, orphans, the sick, and the dying gives opportunity to proclaim the gospel, point to Jesus whose consolation can be shared, and reach classes reachable in no other way. Properly conducted sanitarium work extends the influence of true, pure religion by caring for the sick and leading souls to Christ and winning many. Those who explain truth must be living expositions of it in individual character, showing in moral declension a marked distinction from the world, refusing self-indulgence that sides with idolaters, and giving energies to health reform and medical missionary work while learning from Christ as the greatest Teacher. Workrooms where this religion is lived impress hearts more than preaching.

The verse means the law is God's great moral looking-glass by which words, spirit, and actions must be compared with the Word, belonging to looking into the perfect law of liberty and continuing as a doer and not a forgetful hearer with blessing in the deed, in contrast to vain religion that does not bridle the tongue. It calls in the last days for work outside the common course of nominal churches to reach lost souls, which must first be done in the heart and then practiced in daily life to know the Lord's appointed work. Obedience includes honest stewardship, as in examining school accounts and not misusing money. True keeping of the commandments includes caring for the afflicted, widows, and fatherless and keeping the last six by loving neighbor as self with self-denying kindness, food, clothing, counsel, and kind words for the discouraged, which is true zeal opening hearts to divine truth, warning, and appeal, while exactness in some things with neglect of judgment, mercy, and love of God breaks the law. God places needy people among His people to test and prove them and develop the heart, seeing every act of selfishness and indifference, recording neglecters as guilty, wanting, and law-breakers, with the world's pitying benevolence often shaming indifferent professors. Every act is recorded and each will be rewarded according to works, with entrusted time, abilities, means, influence, and light to be accounted for and used for the poor rather than extravagance or hoarding, including seeking out injustice and working for justice and fairness for the Lord's poor, for neglect of the needy is neglect of Christ in His saints.

Pure and undefiled religion is rare where faith is mixed with worldly customs, as when medical students let material things eclipse the heavenly and eternal and fail to remain pure and unspotted. To keep unspotted means to enter college with Daniel's fixed principle in Babylon, keep integrity untarnished throughout, become elevated, ennobled, and sanctified rather than skeptical, exalt God's works above God, and by grace provided at infinite sacrifice overcome temptation and come forth unsullied with life, words, and deportment as the most forcible argument for Christianity compelling men to see fellowship with Jesus. It must govern institutions and all connected with them with active work cleansed of selfishness, ambition, pride, self-exaltation, and self-serving schemes, for thoughts and deeds reveal whether religion shapes the heart and only living by Jesus' principles saves. It is true godliness in practical care such as compassionate service to the sick, taking Christ's Word simply as it reads with faith working by love and purifying the soul. It means living distinctly from the world and doing Christ's work of doing good, lifting the discouraged, and enlightening those in error, turning from amusement to earnest missionary work, as illustrated by Christians who kept faith pure without lowering its standard even when persecution brought suffering and death, by Enoch living among people without sharing evil while seeking to save, by Joseph and Daniel keeping integrity in corrupt surroundings, by Christ sharing burdens among all classes, and by parents and physicians whose daily fidelity guards the young and the sick.