THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH THE

WORLD.

(Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral on Sunday afternoon, the 13th April, being the first Sunday after Easter, 1890.)

I JOHN. V. 4.

“This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.”

AT Eastertide ideas of triumph are in the air. The victory of our Lord over death gives the keynote; and many other victories of a less splendid character group themselves round this central triumph. Some of them preceded it, as notably the deliverance of Israel from the Egyptian bondage: Sing ye to the Lord," sang Miriam, "for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He cast into the sea," Some of them followed it, as when the Apostles, hitherto so lacking in clear conviction and in settled resolution, found themselves at Pentecost endued with power from on high, and took the first steps in their mighty task, the conversion of all nations to the faith of Christ. And thus it is in keeping with the suggestions of the season, that the appointed Epistle for to-day brings before us a particular victory, which it is most important that every Christian should,. in some way or other, at some time or other, or, most probably, again and again, win-namely, victory over the world. 'This," exclaims St. John, "this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."

There is one particular reason for winning this victory which will have weight with all of us who have been baptized into the Church of Christ.

We, at any rate, my baptized brethren, we have promised to win it. Before we were baptized we engaged, through those who represented us at the font, to renounce the world, no less than the flesh and the devil; and this renunciation must surely have meant a moral victory. "Dost thou," said the minister, to each of those who represented us at the font,

"Dost thou, in the name of this child, renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not follow nor be led by them?" And the answer was: "I renounce them all." Clearly it was a very serious engagement, made as a condition of our being baptized into Christ, and we are, therefore, concerned to ask what it is that we have thus undertaken to renounce and conquer-in other words, what exactly we mean by "the world."

And here, first of all, it is obvious that, both in the Bible and in our common language, the word "world" is used in more senses than one. It is used sometimes of the universe or the planet in which we live. Thus the Psalmist speaks of God's existing everlastingly "or ever the earth and the world were made," and of God's having made the round world so fast that it cannot be moved. And Jeremiah says that God "established the world by His wisdom." And St. Paul preaches to the Athenians of God that "made the world and all things therein." And St. John says, in a hyperbolical way, that if all our Lord's acts were to be fully recorded, he supposes that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written." And St. Peter, speaking of the Flood, says that the world that then was, " being overflowed with water, perished."

Thus the world of nature in which God has placed us as our home during this stage of our existence is clearly not an object of renunciation or conquest. It has no moral colouring attached to it. Its main service to us, after affording us a resting place and satisfying our wants, is to disclose, when we carefully examine it, something of the nature and the attributes of the great and wonderful Being Who made it. And again, "the world" is sometimes used in Holy Scripture of the aggregate, or at any rate of a large number of human beings, viewed simply as human beings, and without any sort of reflection on their moral condition, or on their bent of character. In this sense we are told that " a decree went out from Cæsar Augustus that all the world"—that is all the inhabitants of the Roman empire-" should be taxed." And the Apostles are described by the Jews of Thessalonica as men "who have turned the world upside down." And, in a more restricted sense, the Pharisees observed after the

raising of Lazarus "that the world "-meaning thereby the population of Jerusalem and of the immediate neighbourhood

-"had gone after Jesus Christ"; while, in a much wider sense than that even of the Roman Empire, God is said to have "so loved the world"-meaning the family of manas to have given "His only-begotten Son" for it. And in this sense we sometimes speak quite rightly of "the judgment of the world"-meaning that of all men, or of the wisest of men-as having about it a security and a weight which cannot be ignored. And clearly this is not the world which is conquered or renounced by a good Christian. He is, on the contrary, under special obligations to do what he can to serve his fellow-men by promoting their temporal and

eternal interests.

There is, however, a third use of the word in Scripture which is more common than either of the two preceding uses, and which are especially observable in the writings of St. John. In this sense the world means human life, and the temper, the views, the conduct, which mark it so far as it is estranged from God. And thus our Lord says to His followers: "If the world hate you ye know that it hated Me before it hated you"; and to the Jews, "The world cannot hate you, but Me it hateth"; and again to His disciples: "If ye were of the world, the world would love its own, but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."

In this sense He promises the Spirit of Truth, "Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him." In this sense He 66 says: My peace I give to you; not as the world giveth give I unto you," and predicts: "Ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice"; and declares to the Father: "I pray not for the world, but for them whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be Thine;" and bids His disciples: "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." And St. John's First Epistle, which reproduces in another form that element of our Lord's teaching which the writer was especially careful to report in his Gospel, is full of warnings and instructions respecting the world in the sense of human life alienated from God. "The world," he writes, "knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. The false teachers of his day, he says, 66 are of the world, therefore speak they of the world." "Love not the

world," he exclaims, "neither the things that are in the world, for if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him"; and "the world passeth away and the lust thereof." And so in the text: "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."

Nor is this way of employing the word "world" by any means confined to the writings of St. John. St. Paul writes to the Galatians "of this present evil world"; to the Corinthians of "the God of this world, who hath blinded the minds of them that believe not"; to the Ephesians, "of the rulers of the darkness of this world; to the Romans a warning against being "conformed "to this world"; to Timothy about Demas who had forsaken him, "having loved this present world." And St. Peter speaks bluntly of "the corruption that is in the world through lust "; and of Christians, as having" escaped the pollutions of the world." And St. James says that a man's keeping himself " unspotted from the world" is a note of true religion; and he writes of a "friendship with the world" which means enmity with God.

Now from these passages we gather that the world in the sense thus condemned by Holy Scripture is marked by two distinguishing characteristics. In the first place it is the temper of mind which exaggerates the claims of the present and of the visible, and which, to say the least, throws into the background the claims of the future and the unseen. It makes the most of the seen; it plays off the seen against the unseen. "What we see," it whispers to us, "what we see is here, it is within our grasp; the unseen is distant, it is a matter of speculation." And as God is out of sight, the world keeps Him, so far as it can, out of mind, too, if only by its importunate insistence upon the claims of what we see; and as the future is no less out of sight than God, the world keeps it, too, out of mind by reiterating the praise of what is present. By the future I mean of course that more remote and solemn future which follows upon death; the nearer future undoubtedly the world will do its best to command and make the most of. And secondly, the temper of the world means the appropriation, or rather the monopoly, of desire by present and visible objects.

Whether it be the lower or higher forms of desire, the world-temper provides for each its special satisfaction, and

encourages it to look for that satisfaction as the supreme good. Sometimes the satisfaction is addressed to ambition, sometimes to the passion for amusement, sometimes to the promptings of curiosity, sometimes to personal vanity, sometimes to mere acquisitiveness, sometimes to the sensual instincts. But in all these cases it has the result that, by providing a false object for desire, it shuts out the true object, namely, God. Desire, as you know, my brethren, was meant to keep the human soul, just as the law of attraction keeps the planets, moving regularly round its true centre, God. And when some other object comes near enough to drag a soul from this, which is its true moral orbit, the result is moral ruin. As St. John says, “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father"—that is its condemnation—" but is of the world."

And here, perhaps, somebody is saying to himself: "Well, what is the harm if the world does influence us as you tell us? Why should we not be preoccupied with that which we see? Why should we not gratify our desires with the created objects that do gratify them, and while and as we may?" My brethren, these questions would be very sensible if we could be sure, only sure, that man's existence ended at death. The real point is this: What sort of being is man? Is he only an animal whose spiritual nature is an illusive and phosphorescent accompaniment of his bodily functions, or is he an immortal spirit associated with a bodily frame on the existence of which his real and his deepest life is in no degree dependent? If the former, then no doubt the language which we read in the New Testament about the world is irrational fanaticism; but if the latter, then surely this language is but the common-sense of our human existence.

If man lives after death, lives for an eternity to which this life is no more than a petty antechamber, if man is made for God, can be satisfied lastingly only in God, and will find in God a happiness which transcends all speech, all thought, then surely any powerful influence which distracts man's eye from the true aim of his being, any series of objects which take possession of that little stock of desire that is meant for the eternal, does man himself a most serious injury. And this alienation of man from God is exactly what the world in all generations brings about, and this is the reason why the