Separation from the World.
By Thomas Guthrie
SALVATION is all of grace. Yet these things are required: "Let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from all iniquity." "Whosoever would be my disciple, let him take up his cross, deny himself daily, and follow me." "Ye cannot," says our Lord, "serve God and Mammon." Shrink not from the pain these sacrifices must cost. It is not so great as many fancy. The joy of the Lord is his people's strength. Love has so swallowed up all sense of pain, and sorrow been so lost in ravishment, that men of old took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and martyrs went to the burning stake with beaming countenances, and sang high death-songs amid the roaring flames. Let us by faith rise above the world, and it will shrink into littleness and insignificance, compared with Christ. Some time ago two aeronauts, hanging in mid-air, looked down to the earth from their balloon, and wondered to see how small great things had grown—ample fields were contracted into little patches; the lake was no larger than a looking-glass; the broad river, with ships floating on its bosom, seemed like a silver thread; the widespread city was reduced to the dimensions of a village; the long, rapid, flying train appeared but a black caterpillar slowly creeping over the surface of the ground. And such changes the world undergoes to the eyes of him who, rising to hold communion with God, and anticipating the joys of Heaven, lives above it and looks beyond it. This makes it easy, and even joyful to part with all for Christ—"this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."—T. Guthrie, D. D.