James 2:19

Thou believest that there is one God The instance of the faith in which men were trusting is important as shewing the class of Solifidians (to use a term which controversy has made memorable) which St James had in view. They were not those who were believing in the Son of God, trusting in the love, the blood, in the language of a later age, the merits, of Christ, but men who, whether nominally Christians or Jews, were still clinging to their profession of the Creed of Israel as the ground of all their hopes. It is scarcely probable that a writer intending to correct consequences drawn from St Paul's teaching as to faith would have been content with such a far-off illustration.

thou doest well The words have the character of a half-ironical concession. Comp. note on James 2:8. It is well as far as it goes, but the demons can claim the same praise.

the devils also believe and tremble Better " shudder." The general bearing of the words is plain enough, but there is a special meaning which is commonly passed over. The "devils" are the " demons " or "unclean spirits" of the Gospels, thought of, not as in their prison-house of darkness (Jude James 2:6), but as "possessing" and tormenting men. As such, they too acknowledged the Unity and Sovereignty of God, but that belief, being without love, led only to the "shudder" of terror, when the Divine Name was uttered in the formulæ of exorcism. (Comp. Matthew 8:29; Mark 9:20; Mark 9:26.) Here then was an instance in which belief in a dogma, as distinct from trust in a person, brought with it no consciousness of peace or pardon, and what was true of the "demons" might be true also of men.