Chapter 1

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

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  My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.  

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  Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.  

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  But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.  

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

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  But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.  

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  For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing from the Lord.  

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  A man unsettled in his opinions is unstable in all his ways.  

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  Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted:  

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  But 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 hath no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and its flower falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.  

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  Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.  

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  Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:  

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  But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.  

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  Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.  

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  Do not err, my beloved brethren.  

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  Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.  

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  Of his own will he hath begotten us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures.  

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  Wherefore, my beloved brethren, 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 lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the ingrafted word, which is able to save your souls.  

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

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

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  For he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and immediately forgetteth what manner of man he was.  

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  But he who looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth in it, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.  

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  If any man among you seemeth to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.  

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  Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.  

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