XIV.

THE VICTORY OVER THE WORLD.

"And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.' 1 JOHN v. 4.

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HIS text implies and suggests two great lessons one of these is that the Christian has to overcome the world, that there is some sense in which the world is

an enemy, an obstacle, to the Christian, an obstacle which must be got over, an enemy which must be overcome; and the other lesson is that Faith is the way and the means by which the Christian can and must overcome the world. And when we look to the first clause of the verse, we find a further truth suggested, to wit, that this overcoming the world is a thing of vital and essential concern, that it is indeed a test of a professing Christian's profession,— that, if any professing Christian has not overcome the world, but is manifestly in subjection and bondage to it, this shows that he is not truly a Christian. For "whatsoever," or perhaps it ought to read, "whosoever is born of God overcometh the world; and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."

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We do not live long before we come to understand that it has pleased God so to order things in this life that no worthy end can be attained without an effort, -without encountering and overcoming opposition. Anything that costs nothing is generally worth nothing. It is difficult to do anything that is good; and the Christian life is in keeping with all things around it. The school-boy soon knows that it is difficult to be diligent and industrious, it is hard work to learn his lessons thoroughly and well, but it is quite easy to sit idle and do nothing. The farmer knows that he must work early and late to get his field to produce a good crop, while he has only to neglect his field and do nothing to have it covered with abundance of weeds. The man who wishes to do good, physical or spiritual, to his fellow-men, finds that that cannot be done by sitting still in his easychair and dreaming; he must go forth, and go through work, often rough work, sometimes painful and discouraging work. It is energetic, muscular philanthropy that purifies the cottage air, and tidies the cottage-door, and trains the neglected children. And it is just in religion as it is in everything else. It is difficult to be a true, earnest Christian. It is easy to be a careless, worldly person. Wide is the gate, and

broad is the way, that leads to destruction; while we must strive and Christ's word means more than strive: it means that we must make a strong and agonizing effort to enter in at the strait gate;

and the path of duty, the path to heaven, is an up-hill path. And the text points out one great obstacle, a host of obstacles in itself, in the Christian's heavenward way. The world is in the way. And if we would live the Christian life, if we would reach the Christian's home, there is no other course,

must "overcome the world!

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We are far from saying that the world is the only thing the Christian has to overcome in his progress towards a better world. There is the great Adversary and Enemy of all good; there is the weak and earthward heart within; but I believe I am expressing the experience of most men who are seeking to lead Christian lives in these days on which we have fallen, when I say that the world is practically the great obstacle to be overcome, - that worldliness is the great besetting sin which most of us have to resist. The cares of the world are in truth the great things that choke the good seed so that it becomes unfruitful. The great thing which most of us have to lament, and confess, and strive against, is, being so occupied and engrossed by our affairs in this world as quite to neglect our preparation for the world beyond the grave. Few Christians, in ordinary society and ordinary life, are tempted to gross and crying sins; most of us deserve no credit for being free from such, for we have really never been strongly tempted to them. The great thing is just that we are worldly; that we live too much as if this life were all; that

our minds are quite filled with worldly business, worldly pleasure, worldly cares, anxieties, sorrows, losses; that we are more anxious about our worldly circumstances than about our interest in Christ, more careful of our bodily health than of our spiritual, more set, in short, (we all know what it means,) upon the seen and temporal than upon the unseen and eternal. Now, my friends, not only is worldliness a sin, but it is a sin that chokes all good; it chokes and kills all the fruits of the Spirit, and it makes the soul as unfit for heaven as the grossest crime could. It is our besetting sin; it is our most perilous malady; it concerns us, with momentous concern, to understand it and strive against it. And so let us, praying for Divine direction, look at some of the ways in which the world is an enemy, an obstacle, a hindrance in our Christian course; and let us see how faith is needful to overcome it.

And, first, this world is an obstacle, needing to be overcome, it exerts, that is, an influence which we must every day be resisting and praying against,

just in this: that it looks so solid and so real, that in comparison with it the eternal world and its interests look to most men as though they had but a shadowy and unsubstantial existence. And it is a terrible obstacle this, in our Christian life. No doubt it is for a

wise and good reason that the Almighty suffers it to be so; but oh, how hard it is to feel, day by day, that things which we cannot see or touch are the most real

things in nature; how hard it is to feel that pardon of sin and peace with God are more truly the " necessa-. ries of life" than the daily bread and the nightly shelter, that a saving interest in Christ's great Atonement is really the "one thing needful!" Oh! it would be well with us if we could only feel as sensibly that we need salvation as that we need food and raiment! Oh! it would be well for us if we could only realize it as strongly, that there is a country beyond the grave, as that there is a country beyond the Atlantic! How many great religious truths- truths which lie at the foundation of all religion we believe in a sadly half-hearted way, because this solid world looks like a constant silent contradiction of them! The supreme importance of the life to come is the doctrine on which all religion rests; but though we often hear and repeat the words, that "all on earth is shadow, all beyond is substance," and although sometimes, perhaps in the house of prayer, we may feel our souls lifted up to an elevation from which we discern the fact with a startling reality never known on ordinary days of life,- still, when the parting hymn is sung, and the benediction pronounced, and we pass out through the church-door, and see before us the great hills, and the ancient trees, and feel beneath our feet the solid earth, and hear the voices of people round us, how fast this world of sense grows and greatens upon us again, while the unseen world and all its concerns seem to recede into distance, to