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‘He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea.’
Jam_1:6
I. The sign of instability and purposeless motion.—The soul that is not settled in a firm faith is like this storm-driven wave, driven at the mercy of the wind, heaved to and fro by every tide, in continual and wasting agitation. Isaiah uses this illustration as representing the life of the sinner (Isa_57:20), but here St. James is speaking of the weakness which is the result of uncertainty. ‘He that wavereth’—he that is doubting and of two minds, hesitating, undecided, vacillating—not perhaps willingly and knowingly a hypocrite, but sunk in the duplicity of trying to serve two masters; not wicked and denying God or forsaking truth altogether, but halting between two opinions, weak in faith, not relying on God’s will. ‘Woe to fearful hearts and faint hands, and the sinner that goeth two ways” (Ecc_2:12). Unstable in all his ways, disorder, confusion, unrest are his portion in life.
II. This unrest is one of the familiar characteristics of modern life.—In all ages of transition, not knowing one’s own mind is the trap that fronts every thinker and all that seek for righteousness. Fulness of faith and devotion seem impossible amid the complexity of thought and feeling. There are so many aims, so many gospels, so many answers to the questions of life; and side by side with this genuine wish for truth, there are so many human beings who seem to live quite contented without any answers to the questions at all, even unwilling to be disturbed by the asking of them. These souls, who believe in nothing, and want to believe in nothing, satisfied with their worldly state of mind, show an attitude of perfect indifference to the reality of things in this world or the world to come. But the soul that wills to know, that wishes to win, that cannot live without arriving at some truth, without touching the hem of the vesture of God’s garment of life, this soul must find some certain shore and limit in the ebbing and flowing ocean of human existence.
III. The causes that lead to the wavering and the disturbance are suggested by the Apostle.—‘Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering.’ He who asks without a full trust in God’s eternal steadfastness will naturally find his mind full of many misgivings.
(a) Want of reliance in God. Without the conviction that the universe is being rationally and morally governed by a loving Creator, the meaning of the world is largely unrealised. Without the conviction that the individual life is under the particular, discriminate, and ever-loving eye of a watchful Father, the whole complexity and entanglement of the things of life seem ruled by a godless, hopeless chance.
(b) Selfish dissatisfaction. However pleasant outward circumstances may be, the question comes at times to all persons in all conditions and in all ages, Why am I where I am?
(c) But those only ask in unrest and confusion who rack their minds with a false opinion of their worth and the state of life into which God has called them.
Illustration
‘ “Let even a polished man,” says George Eliot in Silas Marner, “get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor himself on the chance that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend’s confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity called chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know.” ’