The New Life

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Conformity to the World.
the answer :
'
' All that is in the world, the lust of the
flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of
life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." The
craving for pleasure or the desire to enjoy the world;
the craving for property, or the desire to possess the
the world ;
the craving for glory, or the desire to be
honored in the world : these are the three chief
forms of the spirit of the world.
And these three are one in root and essence. The
spirit of this world is, that man makes himself his
own end : he makes himself the central point of the
world : all creation, so far as he has power over it,
must serve him ;
he seeks his life in the visible.
This is the spirit of the world : to seek one's self and
the visible.^ And the Spirit of Jesus ; to live not for
one's self and not for the visible, but for God and
the things that
are invisible.^
It is a very terrible and serious thought that one
can carry on a busy fashionable life, free from manifest
sin or unrighteousness, and yet remain in the
friendship of the world, and thereby in enmity
against God.*
Where the care for the earthly, fbr what we eat
and what we should drink, for what we possess or
may still get into possession, for what we can have
brought forth in the earth and made to increase, is
the chief element in our life, there we are conformed
to this world. It is a terrible and a very serious
thought that one can maintain to all appearance a
J I John ii. 15, 16. ' John V. 44.
3 2 Cor. iv. 18, V. 7, 15. * Jas. iv. 4.
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