Worldliness

Horatius Bonar speaks forth a rebuke to a worldly complacent Church: “Go on in your worldliness; fling yourselves headlong into the torrent of earth's vanities; but know that the end of these things is death! "Do not love the world or the things that belong to the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him." (1 John 2:15) "You adulterers! Don't you realize that friendship with this world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again, that if your aim is to enjoy this world, you can't be a friend of God." (James 4:4). The point is settled. The Christian cannot take part with the world in its follies, and gaieties, and sins! What! A Christian and yet a worldling! singing its idle songs, hurrying through its mazy dance, partaking in its mirth and revelry! Impossible! We have ceased to be citizens of earth's polluted cities; we are citizens of heaven! We have a home--but not in the palaces or haunts of the world. We have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens! ‘But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ!’” Thomas Brooks said: “The honors, splendor, and all the glory of this world, are but sweet poisons. which will much endanger us, if they do not eternally destroy us.” Yet how many Churchmen without any anguish indulge in the worlds ways. How many Churches offer the people these “poisons” mixed with divine truth. What a deadly mixture! Church depart from the world, may we be able to say with the Apostle Paul: “the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world!” May it be so.

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