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not cast into despair whilst you view your duty and yet your infirmity, your danger and yet your frailty and corruption; but learn that the grace and power of the Holy Spirit are precisely calculated to assist and strengthen you. This divine and almighty Sanctifier can deliver you from the world, can implant in you the seeds of a new nature, can show you the sinfulness of a sensual life, and convince you of the possibility of living the life of a Christian. Thus the

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very doctrine of the influence of the Holy Spirit, which you once misunderstood and perhaps despised, shall become your consolation and your joy. Implore then the illumination and strength of this blessed Spirit of God, that you may be enabled to come out from the world and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing, that God may receive become the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.

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Let prayer be followed up by A DETERMINED EFFORT IN THE PATH OF DUTY. Prayer without practice is hypocrisy. Boldly act then on the dictates of conscience. Give up what you know to be wrong. Besides the general course of the world in the less gross sense of the expression, you are, in all probability, living in various other habits which you know to be contrary to the will of God. Renounce them. Whatever reproach may attach to you, venture to

obey God rather than man. By acting up to the light you have, you may expect more. Break through all opposition; for your soul and eternity are at stake. All intercourse with the profligate part of those around you avoid, and avoid it at once. That measure of necessary association with irreligious persons which is connected with your real duties to society or to your family, jealously watch over. Court retirement; cultivate a spirit of devotion; keep holy the Lord's day; conceal not your new views and determinations. Honour God by your repentance; edify your neighbour by your example.

In doing this, be WISE AND HUMBLE as well as resolute. Do not affect singularities. Do not mistake self-will for decision. Do not indulge your own bad tempers, and then talk of persecution. Do not spoil what is substantially good by indelicacy or unnecessary abruptness. Be wise and prudent. Show the true spirit. of separation from the world, not by being scrupulous in things really indifferent, but by love to Christ, by delight in holiness, by the fear of God, and by the ardent pursuit of higher objects. Unite with these, condescension, cheerfulness, courteousness, charity. Be more exact than ever in the discharge of those duties which fall under the notice of worldly persons. Especially if you are in younger life,

honour and obey your parents and superiors in all things, not absolutely and clearly sinful. Thus will your victory over the world be real and permanent,

Lastly, DEVOTE YOURSELVES UNRESERVEDLY TO THE SERVICE OF CHRIST. You can only escape the tyranny of the world, by entering the service of a better Lord. In proportion as you transfer your thoughts and affections to your Saviour, will your distaste for a merely earthly life be strengthened. You will have no time nor inclination for vanity and folly. The cross of Christ seen by faith, will enable you to crucify the world. It will bring you pardon and victory. It will engage you in another cause, occupy you with other objects, and introduce you into other society. It will detect all the glare and imposition of earthly things. The mysterious death of the incarnate Saviour will fix your heart, produce hatred of sin, reconcile you to reproach, deliver you from the fear of man, and make obedience delightful.

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II. TO CAUTION THE TRUE CHRISTIAN AGAINST THE INFLUENCE OF THE WORLD. Though delivered from it as to its open vices and follies, though separated from its public scenes and temptation, and professedly engaged in warfare with it, yet you are still in constant danger. This

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you may learn from the examples of a worldly temper which I before adduced from Scripture in the case of persons who were the true servants of God, as Lot, and Eli, and Jehoshaphat, and Martha. Especially is the danger great in a day of extended religious profession like the present. There is now a world even in the Church of God. A man may lose his religion, and become altogether carnal in the midst of religious concerns and occupations. There are borderers, as it were, living on the confines of the two kingdoms. These form a world of their own, where measured degrees of vanity, dress, company, trifling, ostentation, ambition, are tacitly countenanced; where plain honest spirituality of heart and life is in disgrace; and where the abstinence from public places of amusement and a few other grosser practices of irreligion, serves to quicken the appetite for every possible indulgence which is still within reach. From the spirit and practice and maxims and standard of these persons, the zealous Christian will stand aloof, that he may commune with his Saviour, that he may devote his time to the duties and charities of his station, that he may study his Bible, that he may walk with God, and adorn his Gospel in all things. It will be his inquiry, not how near he may approach to the world, but how far he ought to recede from it. Far from living in

trembling anxiety as to the judgment of the world, or asking the half-hearted and timid professor, to what point he will allow him to proceed without affixing on him some name of contempt; he will pant after a complete resema blance to Christ his Lord, and will pray that, in the full sense of the expression, he may not be of the world, even as his Master was not of the world.

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