SERMON V.

WORLDLY AFFECTIONS DESTRUCTIVE OF LOVE

TO GOD.

1 ST. JOHN ii. 15.

"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

Now,

ST. JOHN here tells us that the love of the world thrusts the love of God out of our hearts. this love of the world means a love either of things which are actually sinful, or of things not sinful in themselves, but hurtful and a hindrance to the love of God. The first is too plain to need a word. A love of sin must set a man at war with God; his whole inner being ranges itself in array against the Spirit of holiness. The second form of this truth is somewhat less clear, and far less thought of; and we will therefore consider it.

There are things, then, in the world, which, although not actually sinful in themselves, do nevertheless so check the love of God in us as to

stifle and destroy it. For instance, it is lawful for

us to possess wealth and worldly substance; we may serve God with it, and consecrate it at His altar; but we cannot love wealth without growing ostentatious, or soft, or careful, or narrow-hearted; "for the love of money is the root of all evil; which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. sorrows." So, again, with friends and what is called society. It is lawful for us both to have and to love friends, both to enter into and to enjoy the pure happiness of living among them; but when we begin to find loneliness irksome, when we grow fond of being much in society, we are really trying to forget ourselves, and to get rid of sadder and better thoughts. The habit of mind which is formed in us by society is so unlike that in which we speak with God in solitude, that it seems to wear out of us the susceptibility of deeper and higher energies. Much more true is this when to the love of society is added a fondness for light pleasures, or a love of power, or a craving after rank and dignities. And so, once more, lawful as it is to be thoughtful and circumspect in the ordering of our life, and in thankfully enjoying the ease and happiness which God gives us, we cannot long have our thoughts on these

11 Tim. vi. 10.

things without becoming biased with a sort of proneness to spare and to indulge ourselves.

Now, it is against such dangers as these that St. John warns us. They will, by a most subtil but inevitable effect, stifle the pure and single love of our hearts towards God; and that in many ways. For, in the first place, they actually turn away the affections of the heart from God. He so made our nature for Himself, that He alone is the lawful and true object of our supreme and governing love. Other lawful affections are not contrariant to this, but contained in it. The love to God presides over them all; orders, and harmonises, and preserves them in purity and health. But when they are loved immoderately, or chiefly, or before God, He is defrauded of so much of His own inalienable homage. They become to us as other gods, each one diverting our heart from its straight and single direction towards Him alone. It is of our affection that He speaks when He calls Himself" a jealous God." Love of worldly things, then, plainly defrauds Him of our loyalty, and checks, if it does not absolutely thrust our love to Him altogether out of our hearts.

And, in the next place, it impoverishes, so to speak, the whole character of the mind. Even the religious affections which remain undiverted are weakened and lowered in their quality. They are

like the thin fruits of an exhausted soil. The virtue and the fatness of the land have been drawn off and distributed into so many channels, that what remains is cold and poor. It is wonderful how characters of great original earnestness lose their intensity by entanglement in the lower affections of the world. They spend their energy on objects both so many in number, and so beneath the care of a regenerate spirit, that they lose all unity of heart and intention. They are even conscious to themselves that this is going on, sapping the foundations of their moral strength. Surely it is a sign of a poor mind to be greatly moved by little things; to have much fondness for the most harmless of this world's littlenesses; to love them and God, as it were, in one affection. There is an evident shallowness about such minds, a want of power to perceive the measures, and relations, and magnitude of things. Even their highest energies are slack and feeble.

Thus much, then, may be said generally. We will now consider somewhat more closely the particular consequences of this love of the world.

1. It brings a dulness over the whole of a man's soul. To stand apart from the throng of earthly things, and to let them hurry by as they will and whither they will, is the only sure way to calmness and clearness in the spiritual life. It

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is by living much alone with God, by casting off the burden of things not needful to our inner life, by narrowing our toils and our wishes to the necessities of our actual lot, that we become familiar with the world unseen. Fasting, and prayer, and a spare life, and plainness, and freedom from the cumbering offices and possessions of the world, give to the eye and ear of the soul a keen and piercing sense. And what is this but to say, that by such a discipline the powers of our regenerate life are unfolded and enlarged? But this discipline is almost impossible to the man that moves with the stream of the world: it carries him away against his will. The oppressive nearness of the things which throng upon him from without defrauds him of solitude with God. They come and thrust themselves between his soul and the realities unseen; they drop like a veil over the faint outlines of the invisible world, and hide it from his eyes. They ring too loudly in his ear, and throw too strong an attraction over his heart, to suffer him to hear and understand. And the spiritual powers that are in him grow inert and lose their virtue by the dulness of inaction. This is most clearly perceptible, not only in persons of a predominately worldly tone of mind, but in those who have been, and still are in some measure, religious; and none know it better than they. Perhaps the only feeling which