James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, sends greeting to the twelve tribes that are scattered abroad.

My brothers, when you are beset by various temptations, count it all joy,

are you not drawing distinctions among yourselves, and have you not become judges with evil thoughts?

Are they not blaspheming that glorious Name by which you are called?

If you are keeping the royal law, which says, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thou dost thyself, you are doing well.

If you have the spirit of caste you are committing sin, and are convicted by the Law as transgressors.

So speak and act like men who are to be judged by the law of liberty.

Look at the ships too, though they are so large, even when driven by fierce winds they are turned by a very small rudder, wherever the impulse of the helmsman wills.

For while every kind of beast and bird, and of reptiles and sea-creatures are tamable, and actually have been tamed by mankind,

With it we continually bless our Lord and Father, and with it we are accustomed to curse men made in the image of God.

And the fruit of righteousness is being sown in peace by those who are working peace.

Where do the conflicts and quarrels that go on among you come from? Do they not come from your passions which are always making war among your bodily members?

You continually crave and do not obtain; you are killing and coveting and cannot acquire; you are fighting and at war. You do not have, because you do not ask.

You continue to ask and do not receive, because you are asking with a wrong purpose, in order to spend it upon your pleasures.

Do not be talking against each other, brothers. He who is talking against a brother and condemning his brothers is talking against the Law and condemning the Law. But if you are condemning the Law, you are not a doer of the Law, but a judge.

But One is your Lawgiver and Judge??e who is able to save and to destroy. But you, who are you, to be condemning your neighbor?

when all the time you do not know what will happen on the morrow. For what is your life? You are but a mist, appearing for a brief time, and then vanishing.

But now you are glorying in these insolent boastings of yours; all such glorying is evil.

Go to now, you rich men! Weep aloud, howl for the miseries which are about to come upon you!

Your gold and silver are rusted. and their rust will be for a testimony against you, and it will eat your flesh. For you have been storing up fire in these last days!

Look! the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you have been keeping back by fraud, are crying aloud! And the cries of the reapers have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth!