inciples and actual
practices, it is really a sinful world. Accordingly, when we are bid
in Scripture to shun the world, it is meant that we must be cautious,
lest we love what is good in it too well, and lest we love the bad at
all.--However, there is a mistaken notion sometimes entertained, that
the world is some particular set of persons, and that to shun the world
is to shun them; as if we could point out, as it were, with the finger,
what is the world, and thus could easily rid ourselves of one of our
three great enemies. Men, who are beset with this notion, are often
great lovers of the world notwithstanding, while they think themselves
at a distance from it altogether. They love its pleasures, and they
yield to its principles, yet they speak strongly against men of the
world, and avoid them. They act the part of superstitious people, who
are afraid of seeing evil spirits in what are considered haunted
places, while these spirits are busy at their hearts instead, and they
do not suspect it.

3. Here then is a question, which it will be well to consider, viz. how
far the world is a separate body from the Church of God. The two are
certainly contrasted in the text, as elsewhere in Scripture. "We know
that we are of God, and _the whole world_ lieth in wickedness." Now
the true account of this is, that the Church so far from being
literally, and in fact, separate from the wicked world, is within it.
The Church is a body, gathered together in the world, and in a process
of separation from it. The world's power, alas! is over the Church,
because the Church has gone forth into the world to save the world.
All Christians are in the world, and of the world, so far as sin still
has dominion over them; and not even the best of us is clean every whit
from sin. Though then, in our idea of the two, and in their
principles, and in their future prospects, the Church is one thing, and
the world is another, yet in present matter of fact, the Church is of
the world, not separate from it; for the grace of God has but partial
possession even of religious men, and the best that can be said of us
is, that we have two sides, a light side and a dark, and that the dark
happens to be the outermost. Thus we form part of the world to each
other, though we be not of the world. Even supposing there were a
society of men influenced individually by Christian motives, still this
society, viewed as a whole, would be a worldly one, I mean