some present visible system
which is likely to attract us, and is not to be trusted, because it
cannot last. Let us first consider it in this point of view.

There is, as a matter of necessity, a great variety of stations and
fortunes among mankind; hardly two persons are in the same outward
circumstances, and possessed of the same mental resources. Men differ
from each other, and are bound together into one body or system by the
very points in which they differ; they depend on each other; such is
the will of God. This system is the world, to which it is plain belong
our various modes of supporting ourselves and families by exertion of
mind and body, our intercourse with others, our duty towards others,
the social virtues,--industry, honesty, prudence, justice, benevolence,
and the like. These spring all from our present lot in life, and tend
to our present happiness. This life holds out prizes to merit and
exertion. Men rise above their fellows, they gain fame and honours,
wealth and power, which we therefore call worldly goods. The affairs
of nations, the dealings of people with people, the interchange of
productions between country and country, are of this world. We are
educated in boyhood for this world; we play our part on a stage more or
less conspicuous, as the case may be; we die, we are no more, we are
forgotten, as far as the present state of things is concerned; all this
is of the world.

By the world, then, is meant this course of things which we see carried
on by means of human agency, with all its duties and pursuits. It is
not necessarily a sinful system; rather it is framed, as I have said,
by God Himself, and therefore cannot be otherwise than good. And yet
even thus considering it, we are bid not to love the world: even in
this sense the world is an enemy of our souls; and for this reason,
because the love of it is dangerous to beings circumstanced as we
are,--things in themselves good being not good to us sinners. And this
state of things which we see, fair and excellent in itself, is very
likely (for the very reason that it is seen, and because the spiritual
and future world is not seen) to seduce our wayward hearts from our
true and eternal good. As the traveller on serious business may be
tempted to linger, while he gazes on the beauty of the prospect which
opens on his way, so this well-ordered and divinely-governed world,
with all its blessings of sense and knowledge, may lead us to