James 1:25

But whoso looketh... — Translate, But he who looked into the perfect law of liberty and continued therein. The past tense is still kept to enforce the figure of the preceding verse. The earnest student of the Scriptures stoops down in humility of body and mind to learn what the will of their Author may be. He reads, as it were, upon his knees; and if he finds therein a law, it is one of liberty and not slavery, life and not death — although, as Dean Alford observes here, “not in contrast with a former law of bondage, but as viewed on the side of its being the law of the new life and birth, with all its spontaneous and free development of obedience.”

Not a forgetful hearer... — Literally, not a hearer of forgetfulness, but a doer of work. Thus rendered, the words of the sentence balance each other, and comment is needless.

This man shall be blessed in his deed. — Or, as in the margin, doing. A return perhaps in thought to the Beatitudes, and the close of that Sermon on the Mount, of which they were the opening words. The blessedness of this humbly active Christian is like that of the wise man there spoken of “which built his house upon a rock” (Matthew 7:24).