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You have heard, let me suppose, an eloquent sermon on alms-giving, or on loving one's neighbour as one's self. You have been so moved that you resolve to commence a new habit of life. Well, you begin to give to the poor, and you soon find that it is very hard so to give as not to encourage indolence, vice, dishonesty, very hard to do a little good without doing a great deal of harm. You are brought to a stand, and compelled to reflect. But if the word you heard really laid hold upon you, if you are persuaded that it is the will of God that you should give to the poor and needy, you do not straightway leave off giving to them. You consider how you may give without injuring them, without encouraging either them or their neighbours in habits of laziness and dependence. Again and again you make mistakes. Again and again you have to reconsider your course, and probably to the end of your days you discover no way of giving that is quite satisfactory to you. But while you are thus doing the word, is it possible for you to forget it? It is constantly in your thoughts. You are for ever studying how you may best act on it. So far from forgetting the word, you are always learning more clearly what it means, and how it may be applied beneficially and with discretion. Or suppose you have heard the other sermon on loving one's neighbour, and set yourself to do that word of God. In the home, we may hope, you have no great trouble in doing it, though even there it is not always easy. But when you go to business, and try, in that, to act on the Divine commandment, do you find no difficulty there? Now that is not easy. In many cases it is not easy even to see how the Christian law applies, much less to obey it. If, for instance, you are rich enough, or generous enough, to give your work-people higher wages than other masters give or can afford to give, you may at once show a great love for one class of your neighbours, and a great want of love for another class. Thus, in many different ways, the very moment you honestly try to love your neighbours all round as you love yourself, you find yourself involved in many perplexities, through which you have carefully to pick your way. You have to consider how the Christian law bears on the complex and manifold relations of social life, how you may do the word wisely and to good effect. But can you forget the commandment while you are thus assiduously seeking both to keep it and how to keep it? It is impossible. The more steadfastly you are the doer of it, the more constantly is it in your mind, the mine clearly do you know what it means and how it may be obeyed.

(S. Cox, D. D.)

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

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