JAMES I. 21. “Receive with meekness the engrafted word,
which is able to save your souls.”

ST. JAMES is, by eminence, the apostle of practical Christi-
anity. The keynote of his Epistle is, that the religion
of Jesus is less a thing to talk about than a thing to act
upon, that Christianity is nothing if it is not a life-con-
trolling, life-moulding power.
I. Observe how this “word” is here qualified. It is
called “the engrafted word.” It is a metaphor drawn from
the vegetable world. The sacred metaphors of Scripture
teach by pointing out real correspondences between one
department of God’s works and another.
1. This metaphor implies that it is no part of the intel-
lectual outfit of the human mind. The Divine word came
to the human mind from without, as a graft to be inserted.
2. It shows its assimilative power. There must be, in
the vegetable world, a family likeness to start with, an
organic affinity between the stock and the graft. There
is a great deal in common between the word of Jesus and
the existing aspirations and beliefs of the human soul.
Beneath every heathen superstition fragments of truth which
have close fellowship with the one true faith lie buried.
3. In this metaphor we see its power of laying the
nature into which it is inserted under contribution. The
engrafted word does not say to human nature that nothing
can be done with it, and that it is fit only for destruction.
It makes the most of it; it perfects and consecrates human
nature by the gifts of grace.
II. The master benefit that it confers. “Able to save
your souls.” The apostle does not say “it will save them,”
that it is a talisman which will operate irrespectively of
your wills: no, you can check, you can refuse it. But it is
able to save.
III. We are to receive the word of Christ in a particular
moral temper and attitude—” with meekness.” It is not
meant to add fuel to your controversies, it is meant to
govern your lives.
IV. The duty incumbent upon every Christian parent of
teaching his child the faith of Christ. Beyond a certain
age the stock takes a graft only with difficulty. When all
else has been parted with in later life, the early lessons of
piety will rise before the soul as from the very grave and
thrill it with a new and awful power.
Henry Parry Liddon, D.C.L.