The law of death in sin applies to other sins besides the so-called sexual sins which write their history so plainly in the body and the mind and bring a heritage of woe through all the family history. There is here no sowing of wild oats to raise a crop of wheat. The fearful fidelity of modern scientific knowledge throws a lurid light on this passage in James. The sinner makes his bed and lies down in it and drags down with him the helpless ones who are thrown in his care. As I am writing I receive a copy of _Light_, a magazine published by the World’s Purity Federation. The issue for November, 1914, contains an article by a woman who has lived “twenty-five years in the underworld.” Her story reads like a commentary on the words of James. She claims to have had the best of that sordid life, but she concludes: “No matter what humiliation a girl has to endure, it is better to endure it than to get into this life. There is nothing in it for any of them. The very best of us get it hard before we die. And, at the best, it is Hell.” The issue of death is seen not merely in the diseases of the body but “also in the deterioration of mind and character which accompanies every kind of sin” (Mayor, _in loco_). Death and hell then claim their own. God, the Source of Good (1:16 f.) The contrast is sharp. “Be not deceived”; do not wander so in your minds as to think that temptation and sin and death come from God. He is not the source of evil. Rabbi Chaninah says: “No evil thing cometh down from above.” Note Jesus in John 8:23 on “above” and “below.” James is tenderly affectionate in his appeal on this point—“my beloved brethren.” On the contrary, only good comes from God. God is good, and he alone is absolutely good (Mark 10:18).[59] In the Greek the next sentence runs like a hexameter line if one short syllable is considered long by stress of the meter.[60] We need not tarry over a fanciful straining after poetical lines in prose. Oesterley agrees with Ewald in seeing here a quotation from a Hellenistic poem. It is far more likely just accidental rhythm common enough in good prose. The scholars differ also as to how to translate the sentence. Moffatt has it: “All we are given is good, and all our endowments are faultless.”