James 4:14

Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow Literally, the thing, or the event of to-morrow, the phrase, being parallel to "the things of the morrow" in Matthew 6:34. St James partly reproduces that teaching, partly that of Proverbs 27:1.

what is your life? Literally, of what nature your life is. The comparison that follows was one familiar to all the wise of heart who had meditated on the littleness of man's life. It meets us in Job 7:7; Psalms 102:3. A yet more striking parallel is found in Wis 5:9-14, with which St James may well have been familiar. The word for "vanishing away" occurs, it may be noted, in Wis 3:16. It is not without interest to note at once the agreement and the difference between St James" counsel and that of the popular Epicureanism.

"Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quærere; et

Quem Fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro Appone."

Horace, Od. i. 9.

"Strive not the morrow's chance to know,

And count whate'er the Fates bestow,

As given thee for thy gain."

It was not strange that those who thought only of this littleness, should deem that their only wisdom lay in making the most of that little in and by itself, and take "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" (1 Corinthians 15:32) as their law of life. St James had been taught to connect man's life with a Will higher than his own, and so to take the measure of its greatness as well as of its littleness.