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Contemplate the character, the man whom the world most admires, who is the idol of his cotemporaries, and the wonder of posterity. Is the spirit which he displays that of the Gospel? Can they who admire him love the follower of Christ? Take up the historian, and read his laboured panegyric on the man whom the world calls great. Enter into his description, catch the feelings, and then take up the Gospel, and read the character of Jesus Christ, of the apostle Paul, or any saint. Is not the difference of spirit between the two, palpable? is it not evident beyond doubt"?

Believers seem not inhabitants of this world; they are truly strangers in it; they seem the natives of another clime. They truly dwell alone, and are not reckoned among the nations, in their temper and disposition. Like Caleb, they have another spirit with them, emphatically a spirit of life unto righteousness.

III. The people of God are distinguished from the men of the world, in their daily conduct.

h Foster, in his last Essay, has admirably illustrated this

contrast.

This is a necessary consequence of the preceding particular. The spirit of a man, his temper, his disposition, gives the complexion to his walk and conversation. Believers, differing from the world in the former, cannot but differ in the latter. They live godly in Christ Jesus, having that mind which was also in him. They are evidently crucified to the world, and the world to them, as a leading object of their attention. They use it as not abusing it, knowing that its fashion soon passeth away. They do not strive for honours, or riches, or temporal pleasures, as their chief good; but for the favour of God. Him they serve in sincerity, with ardour and universality of obedience, whilst they renounce Mammon. They seek not personal ease or reputation, but the glory of God, and the welfare of sinners. They spend and are spent in the cause of their exalted Master, the blessed Redeemer.

They do not act according to the maxims of human wisdom, but according to the directions of the Word of God. They walk not by sight, but by faith, as seeing him that is unseen. They perform their duty, though 17

VOL. II.

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they suffer in this life losses, disgrace, and ruin by it, having" respect to the recompense of "the reward" in heaven. They depend, in every exigence, upon the mere promise of God for support, rejecting the counsel of flesh and blood. Low intrigue, vile chicanery, wilful falsehood, ignoble equivocation, they carefully avoid, as contrary to their duty, and hostile to all their feelings. Among them, so long as they retain their characteristic features, you will never find the supple courtier, the fawning flatterer, the crafty politician, the factious subject, the tyrannical master. Their ears are open the cries of distress, and their hands stretched forth to the relief of the unfortunate. They "do justly, love mercy, and walk "humbly with their God." They deny themselves in those matters of which the world boasts, take up their cross daily, never use undue means to escape it, and follow Christ through evil as well as good report. They are, in their degree, as their great High Priest was, holy, harmless, un"defiled, separate from sinners." They walk not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the

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seat of the scornful. They are nobly singular in the leading outlines of human conduct.

To this singularity they are called in their vocation. Into this singularity they are baptized with water, renouncing the world, the flesh, and the devil. The renewing of the Holy Ghost, their growth in grace, their fitness for heaven, all combine to keep them thus singular in their conduct. The moment they lose this singularity, and coalesce with the world, they cease to be God's " pe"culiar people." They no longer constitute that glorious. Church, whose essential, discriminating properties are, to "be holy "and without blemish"."

This may bear hard upon modern Christianity, but no harder than it merits. Understand me rightly. I inculcate no monkish seclusion from the world. Believers must mix with the world, and perform their social duties; but they must do both, as believers, and not as men of the world. How does the man of extensive erudition act when he falls into the company of the illiterate? as illiterate? Or the man of polish

i Eph. v, 27.

ed manners with the vulgar? as vulgar? No. Both these retain their discriminating properties, as learned and well bred. So believers must retain their peculiar attributes as believers, in their intercourse with others. Their conduct must be, in the very nature of things, different from that of the world, if they truly have the Spirit of their Redeemer. Like him, they must exhibit a moral loftiness, an heavenly sublimity, which will constrain all men to say, "These are

"not of the world."

If such a decidedly singular conduct be impossible, the Gospel, which clearly demands it, and in no one instance lowers that demand, cannot be what it pretends. But it is possible. In past ages, and in modern times, instances are sufficient to prove that it is possible. They prove that the people of God dwell alone, and are not reckoned among the nations, in their daily conduct.

IV. The people of God dwell alone, and are not reckoned among the nations, in the general lowness and despicableness of their external state.

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