"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." — Jas. 1: 11.

Let me call your attention first of all to the two I kinds of gifts mentioned in the text. The word speaks of "good" gifts and of "perfect" gifts, and in the original they are quite distinct. The Greek word translated "good gift" has the significance of a natural benefit or blessing; but the word rendered " perfect gift " is taken from a root that signifies atonement, crucifixion, suffering. We might read it thus: every natural, providential blessing, and every sacrificial blessing is from above.

Now notice that James calls the natural, providential gifts " good," but the sacrificial blessings he calls "perfect." Those gifts which flow to us through nature and providence are " good," but those which come through the atoning work of Jesus Christ are pronounced "perfect." If you will study, you will find that Scripture never applies the term perfection except along certain lines. It does not speak of perfection in your outward life or conduct, but your life and conduct may be good; it does not speak of perfect conversation, but your conversation may be good. And so we find the same fact in what pertains to nature. Our food and raiment and natural surroundings, our situations and trials, whatever God has thrown around the body or the soul, that is a good gift. But the other blessings, which come to your spirit through the atonement of Jesus Christ, such as regeneration, such as adoption, such as love, such as sanctification, — these gifts are emphatically pronounced to be perfect. In these there is not only a goodness, but a perfection. It is well worth your while to notice how accurately the Bible describes things.

The world is a fallen world, and in dealing with this world God is dealing with wicked men all around you, as well as with you. I don't know that anybody ever heard of a perfect season. Maybe nobody has perfect health. We do not have perfect food nor perfect clothing. But the weather is good, and the food is good. In all these outward things God is dealing not only with you, but with a wicked, sin-cursed world. When God sends meat and bread and butter, remember God is dealing with a sinful world. You have never seen what God can and will do with a perfect world. If God could get a chance to bless a world without any sin in it, then there would be perfect circumstances and perfect conditions around it. But when you come to the soul, there is where the atonement strikes us. When you come to salvation from sin, then God is dealing with the individual man, and in your soul God can implant and impart perfection. Notice here that everything God does in religion is perfectly done. God never gave an imperfect pardon in six thousand years. People ask how we are to get another perfection if we are perfectly pardoned. A perfect pardon is one thing, but perfect cleansing is another thing. When a man gets one thing perfectly, it does not follow that he has all other things perfectly. A pardon is just as perfect as God can make it, but that pardon don't touch innate depravity. When all transgressions are pardoned, there is something in your nature yet, — that old man who has been in you from your birth. Depravity cannot be pardoned. If your child plays in the mud and ruins its clothes, you can forgive him; but if he is born with scrofula, how are you going to forgive that out of him? You cannot pardon what he never did. Depravity needs cleansing. So there is a perfect repentance and a perfect justification and a perfect witness of the Spirit and a perfect cleansing and perfect love in the soul and perfect filling with the Holy Ghost. The outward blessings are necessarily mixed with evil, because they reach us through a sinful world; but the inward blessings come directly through the Holy Ghost and are perfect.

Having shown you the two branches of this text, the good without and the perfect within, let us see how they both proceed from a common stem. The text says that both are from God, — both are supernatural, both are from above and beyond us. The providences of God outside and the Holy Ghost inside are so manifested that there is a perfect agreement between God's operations within and without. God saves us by His grace, but it is equally true that He saves us by His providence. God arranges all for you, — where you were born and how you were brought up and all your surroundings and what kind of sermons you have heard preached and what warnings you have received. Here he sends you a terrible chastisement and there He adds His great mercy and blessings. Here He takes away a friend and there He sends one to you. So God clothes you and strips you. So He has thrown around you the network of His providences, all adapted to lead you to see your own nothingness, to lead you to get rid of self, to lead you to read the Bible, and to be filled with His love. And what God is thus doing in His outward providences the Holy Ghost is doing within your soul.

Yonder is a poor boy at work on a farm. He goes whistling along, intent only on his work and pleasure. But all at once, in a little prayer meeting, he is convicted of sin; and the next day he goes out alone into the field, and there behind a stack of fodder he repents, and finds peace with God. His outward circumstances, his poverty and his necessity for constant work look hard; but you can see that if he had fine clothes and fine possessions he would go straight to hell. And God has taken away that boy's friends, and let him work hard, in order to make him cry down in that fodder field. Now he wants to preach, but he has no money; until at last he finds a friend who gives him money to buy books, and he works his way. When other young men in the college are asleep he is sawing wood, and praying as he saws his wood. All this poverty looks hard without, but it makes him deep within. These severe outward providences are God's mud-machines to deepen the main channel. God wants to deepen men's souls, so that the cargoes of truth can float all through their natures.

If you read the New Testament records of men's lives you will see this outward and inward work. The very thing that we say will cripple and hurt us is often the thing that God is using to help the Holy Ghost in His work within. Could you write out your life in the light of God, you would find it marvelous. You would see that there has not been a minute since you were born that the finger of God's love didn't touch you in His providences. When you see as Jesus saw, you will find that even the hairs of your head are numbered.

Now James says these good outward gifts and these perfect inward blessings all proceed from the mind and will of God, and both of them contain the love of God. Both of them flow down from "the Father of lights." That implies that God is a sun, shining in the heavens. Our natural sun is the father of the moon and the other satellites. Now James, by this astronomical figure, compares God to the sun; and as our sun throws light on Jupiter and Venus and Saturn, so God shines on angels and saints and men, who, like the planets, reflect this light on minor and poorer subjects. But all they have comes from the central light and heat.

But there is a finer meaning. James says that God is like the sun, with this exception: He has "no variableness." These words in the Greek literally mean that God has "no parallax." And the following words, "Neither shadow of turning," mean literally, "No shadow caused by a crossing of the tropic line." God is a sun that never crosses the tropic line. Our sun has a parallax, and twice in each year crosses the tropic line;. but God never does that. The best idea I can get of a "parallax" is that it is an angle. It is by the parallax that astronomers get the measure of the heavenly bodies. The astronomer will take an angle from one place, and then from another place, and then he is able by means of this simple measure of an angle, to give you the location of a star, and tell you how far off it is and how large it is. All this can be told by the simple measure of the parallax, or angle. Now James says that God is a sun, only you cannot get an angle on Him. You cannot measure how large He is or how far He is away. You can't compute the diameter or volume of that sun. You cannot grapple with infinity; and that is why you and I are compelled to serve God by faith, and not by brains. If God had a parallax, then you might worship Him with telescopes and by. your brains; but He has none at all, and He must be simply believed.

Hence, we can see how impossible it is for science to grasp the ideas of God. Why, a little baby in knowledge can get nearer to God than a philosopher. The reason is, that the philosopher wants to get an angle, and measure and calculate and reason; but the little child does not bother about any law of parallax, but just goes to God heart foremost and gets saved.

And as you cannot measure God's providence, so you cannot measure His Word. You cannot measure spiritual and eternal things, because they have no parallax. Spiritual things, like their author, are far beyond the reach of the human understanding. I would rather be a simpleton with a heart full of love than to be a philospher with an ice-house in my breast. I would rather be a saint in the poorhouse than a mere philosopher on a throne. I thank God that you can't measure Him. Oh, brother! don't try to measure God! He has no angle, for with Him there is no parallax.

The next point is that God has "no shadow of turning"; that is, no turning shade. Go down into the southern countries until you cross the tropic, and you will find places where at certain seasons your shadow falls toward the north; there will come a day when you will have no shadow, and after that it will fall either toward the north or south. Now James says that our God does not act that way. Our God does not cross any lines. Our God does not say: yea, yea, and nay, nay. He does not get on this side and then get on that side. Our God remains forever right overhead. The natural sun swings between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, but our God does not swing nor cross any lines.

Now the beauty of this is, that if the sun were always overhead we could never get a parallax on it. You must get off to one side, and then to the other side, to some extent, in order to get a parallax at all, and if the sun were forever above our heads this could not be done. Now the reason why we cannot measure God is because He is always directly above us. Again, when the sun is overhead there are no shadows. In the natural world people have shadows, but in the spiritual world there should be no shadows. The light is all around you; with the sun overhead you do not make any shadow unless you begin to stoop over. No man ever makes a shadow spiritually till he gets crooked. James uses this metaphor to emphasize this point. Man is the only creature on earth that walks erect. That means everything. Talk about the monkeys! why, the best of them go on all fours. The snake, the nearest to being an imp of the devil, is entirely prone; and from that up the animals make different angles, and all cast a shadow. But God made man to walk erect. That means that spiritually you and I are to walk straight up and down with Jesus.

Now there must be something awfully crooked in a man's heart when he don't want to get right with God. Cut him open and you will find a snake or a toad or something crooked in that man. A great many Christian people are carrying crooked things in their hearts; but there is hope for a man who wants to get free. The man who does not want to get free has got a bad heart down at the bottom. When a man deliberately chooses to stay crooked, that man will go to hell unless he repents. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." If I choose iniquity, if I really choose it hell will be my portion forever. If you say, "I have impure things in my heart and I want to give them up," there is hope; but if the contrary, then you had just as well give up to your doom.

All this shows that if you get the sun on your back you will have a shadow. But by the grace of God you can be so upright and so downright and so outright, that when Jesus comes as a sun in your meridian sky, you will have no shadow. You can live where there is no sin, no condemnation, and where you can know you are right with God. And, brother, when you get a heart filled with perfect love, true and loyal to your God, that 's a clean heart, and there will be "no shadow of turning."

Oh, how God loves to come and sit on our heads! The Holy Ghost came upon the head of Jesus, and the tongue of fire rested upon the apostles at Pentecost. I want to see us all made upright and downright, and all straight in heart, and life, and faith. I have simply given you the exegesis of this text. Your Heavenly Father sends you every good gift of your outer life, and every perfect gift of your inward experience. And then that Heavenly Father is like a sun, which, while you walk with God, will cast no shadow on your path; or if it does, it will be beneath your feet, where you cannot see it. What of infirmity you may still have, God will place beneath your feet, so that it will not hinder you in your progress to the skies.

Brethren, don't you want to get straight? Do you love everybody? Is there anything to-night about you that is not settled? Move down from the frigid zone, move down from the temperate zone, until you get away from all Arctic influences, and find yourself right under the great sun of God's will, and get right under your Heavenly. Father. You will find the shadows all disappear, and you will walk in the light as He is in the light; and the blood of Jesus will keep you clean while you walk, with God directly overhead, the earth directly under foot.