However, Abraham's devotedness was fully proved and fully accepted. "For now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me." Mark, it is "_now_ I know." It had never been proved before. It was there, no doubt; and, if there, God knew it; but the valuable point here is, that God founds his knowledge of it upon the palpable evidence afforded at the altar upon Mount Moriah. Faith is always proved by action, and the fear of God by the fruits which flow from it. "Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son on the altar?" (James ii. 21.) Who could think of calling his faith in question? Take away faith, and Abraham appears on Moriah as a murderer and a madman. Take faith into account, and he appears as a devoted worshipper,--a God-fearing, justified man. But faith must be proved. "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man _say_ he hath faith, and have not works?" (James ii. 14.) Will either God or man be satisfied with a powerless and profitless profession? Surely not. God looks for reality, and honors it where he sees it; and as for man, he can understand naught save the living and intelligible utterance of a faith that shows itself in acts. We are surrounded by the profession of religion; the phraseology of faith is on every lip; but faith itself is as rare a gem as ever,--that faith which will enable a man to push out from the shore of present circumstances, and meet the waves and the winds, and not only meet them, but endure them, even though the Master should seem to be asleep on the pillow.
And here I would remark the beautiful harmony between St. James and St. Paul on the subject of justification. The intelligent and spiritual reader, who bows to the important truth of the plenary inspiration of holy scripture, knows full well that on this question it is not with Paul or James we have to do, but with the Holy Ghost, who graciously used each of those honored men as the pen to write his thoughts, just as I might take up a quill-pen or a steel-pen to write my thoughts, in which case it would be quite preposterous to speak of a discrepancy between the two pens, inasmuch as the writer is one. Hence it is just as impossible that two divinely-inspired penmen could clash, as that two heavenly bodies, while moving in their divinely-appointed orbits, could come into collision.