Worldliness

If it is his aim to approach as nearly as possible to
the manners of the world without actually being
numbered with its votaries, his children will be 
restrained with difficulty, on the godly side of the 
line of demarcation, and be perpetually longing 
and trying to push onward towards worldliness. 

The miserable efforts, made by some professing 
Christians, to be thought people of taste and 
fashion, show how badly they bear the Christian 
yoke, and how nearly they are resolved to cast 
it away as an encumbrance. We would despise 
these things wherever we see them, if they did 
not demand claims upon our pity, still stronger 
than those upon our scorn. 

When a worldly temper has crept into the circle
of a Christian family, piety retires before it, and 
the spirit of error soon enters to take possession 
of the desolate home.