James 4:17

Therefore to him that knoweth to do good The law of conscience is here enforced in its utmost width. To leave undone what we know we ought to do, is sin, even though there be no outward act of what men call crime or vice. The bearing of the general axiom on the immediate context is obviously that though men assented then, as we too often assent, to the abstract truth of the shortness of life and the uncertainty of the future, they went on practically as before with far-stretching calculations. Such men need to be reminded that this inconsistency is of the very essence of sin.