Chapter 1

  James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion, greeting.  

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  Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations;  

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  Knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience.  

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  And let patience have [its] perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.  

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  But if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.  

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  But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed.  

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  For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord;  

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  a doubleminded man, unstable in all his ways.  

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  But let the brother of low degree glory in his high estate:  

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  and the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.  

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  For the sun ariseth with the scorching wind, and withereth the grass: and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his goings.  

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  Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he hath been approved, he shall receive the crown of life, which [the Lord] promised to them that love him.  

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  Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man:  

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  but each man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.  

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  Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death.  

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  Be not deceived, my beloved brethren.  

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  Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.  

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  Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.  

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  Ye know [this], my beloved brethren. But let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:  

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  for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.  

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  Wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.  

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  But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves.  

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  For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror:  

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  for he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.  

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  But he that looketh into the perfect law, the [law] of liberty, and [so] continueth, being not a hearer that forgetteth but a doer that worketh, this man shall be blessed in his doing.  

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  If any man thinketh himself to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue but deceiveth his heart, this man's religion is vain.  

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  Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep oneself unspotted from the world.  

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