refusal to join in any single unchristian practice. In our own times the case is entirely altered, by the circumstance that Christianity is no longer under persecution, but is become the professed religion of the people amongst whom we live. And it might seem at first sight as if the apostle's precept had no longer any application to his readers, when the world with whom they hold commerce has adopted the faith in Christ. But it is known too well to require proof that profession and practice are two very different things; and that as they who were members of the Jewish covenant were not all like Nathaniel "Israelites indeed;" so neither are all they who are called by the name of Christ true members of his spiritual church". Many practices prevail in this Christian coun

See on this subject Sermon V.

try altogether irreconcileable with the Gospel of Christ; many which much tend to impede its influence on the heart, and yet more which at least can in no degree be said to be in harmony with its precepts. The apostolic injunction therefore may be in some sense applied to our own times, and, in common with many other passages in the Epistles which originally belonged to temporary circumstances, may be found to furnish a principle of action suited to our own

cases.

Now the precept in the text consists of two parts. It tells us what we are not to be, and what we are to be. And the second part of it rightly interpreted will be found to furnish considerable assistance in the endeavour to explain the first with a view to the circumstances of the present times. It indicates that the change required in a Christian is

chiefly spiritual, and thus leads us to believe that his non-conformity to the world is to be of the same character.

I. What then, it may first be asked, is meant by the world, as the expression applies to the present times? Is there in this country any distinction clearly marked, as at Rome there was one existing between the converts to Christianity and the believers in Jupiter? Could any human being now survey the people, and count up how many are the servants of God, and how many bow the knee to Baal? I should suppose no one can possibly imagine this to be practicable, and I infer that "the world" as we are to understand the term does not signify any distinct number of individual men and women, to whom we can point with the same definite certainty as an

See Sermon IV.

early Roman convert might have done to the worshippers of Jupiter, and say,

66

Those are the people, they the world, to whom I am not to be conformed."

If then we cannot define the world by any distinct number of individuals, it remains that we must interpret the word to mean those persons, not discernible by man, who hold and promote certain opinions and practices prevalent in the careless part of a professing Christian community, condemned by the precepts of the Gospel, opposed to its spirit, and fraught with danger to all who entertain and cherish them.

II. The question still returns in another shape, What are those opinions? and what those practices? and how are we to be "not conformed" unto them? I cannot offer a better general answer than by bidding you to read the Gospel, to read it with prayer that you may learn

its spirit, and that you may be enabled to walk in a course of Christian life. The practices and opinions to be avoided are those which constituted the cause of Christ's coming into the world; they are the offences for which he suffered, the sins for which he died on the cross. They are an evil heart of unbelief, a corrupt estimation of worldly pleasure, a subjection of the body to the service of Satan, an exaltation of the mind into his false eminence of spiritual pride. They are habits of thinking and acting as if this world were man's chief existence as if heaven and hell were not as sure as earth, and eternity as certain as to-day-as if the soul were not in danger, and Christ had never come to save it—as if it were not weak, and the Holy Spirit were not ready to assist it as if the great new commandment