I.
Tee World that Challenges the Believer.
1. What is the world ? The term rendered " world " means properly " arrangement " ; and is then applied to the universe of created things in its orderly and systematic conformation, as opposed to the confusion of the original chaos. In all this, how- ever, the idea is rather that of God's handiwork than of God's antagonist : in this sense, the world is not God's enemy, but God's witness. The term passed, however, in the hands of the inspired writers, into a designation of things visible and temporal, the state of things that now is, and the persons who have their treasure, their home, and their all, in it, as opposed to things spiritual and eternal, the state of things that shall be, and the persons who belong, even in this life, as to theu' home and higher being, to that Heaven in which God dwells. The world thus became a brief title for all that is not God nor of God, all that is
I JOHN V. 4 391
earthly, sensual, and evil, all that tempts to sin, and all thoae who live without God, apart from God, or in enmity against God.
^ In the Apostle's time, the world meant, no doubt, the whole mass of human society, with the exception of the handfuls here and there of those who had embraced the Christian faith. The line of separation between the Christian and the non-Christian elements of society could be readily and sharply drawn. But it is not so now. The Church has leavened the world ; the world has leavened the Church. The non-Christian element of society is no longer a distinct and definable aggregation of men. The world exists, but it is, so to speak, no longer visible and separable. Its existence is as real, but its form is vaguer. It is the sum of the many forces, principles, and tendencies which oppose and counteract the progress of the spirit and the spiritual. It exists not only among us, but in us. It is all that part of each one of us which gives a more or less active resistance to growth in goodness, in ^knowledge, and in sympathy ; the sum of the influences of fashion, and prejudice, and selfishness : " the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." ^
^ The world of the nineteenth century is very different indeed from that of the first. There is no Nero or Domitian now on the world's throne ; there is no Coliseum with its hungry lions, and with its hungrier, crueller crowd of brutes in human form, to gloat over the sufferings of their innocent victims. The fight of faith is in another region, perhaps a harder one for us, for it was not of a lesser but of a greater conflict that the Apostle spoke when he said, " We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against princi- palities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places," The wrestling of the nineteenth century has been of that high and difficult kind ; the great foe has been Materialism, uttering itself in sceptical thought on the one hand, and in selfish luxury on the other. The world which is faith's antagonist has laid aside in our day its bludgeons, and all its apparatus of torture and intimida- tion, and has taken up instead flute, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of music to soothe conscience and to allure along the flowery paths of inglorious ease to sunless gulfs of ignominious death. And it is unutterably sad to think what multitudes allow their faith to lose all its fibre, and permit the aspirations and enthusiasm of youth to die down into the dullest commonplace, till they find satisfaction enough for their immortal spirits in coining their hearts, and dropping their blood for drachmas. Not
^ Memorials of Edicin Hatch, 4.
392 VICTORY OVER THE WORLD
the ferocious dragon of the Kevelation, but the insidious Mammon installed in our time as the prince of the power of the air, and his wiles are as much to be dreaded as the ferocity of the beast.^
■[f This is the world of which Carlyle said, " Understand it, despise it, loathe it ; but cheerfully hold on thy way through it with thine eye on the highest loadstars." This is the world of which Horace Walpole wrote, " It is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel." This is the world of which Words- worth wrote :
The world is too much with us ; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
2. This world is a gigantic power, not easily resisted. It is not a thing of yesterday : it is a tradition of many ages, of many civilizations, which, after flowing on in the great current of human history, has come down, charged with the force of an accumulated prestige, even to us. To this great tradition of regulated ungodli- ness each generation adds something ; something of force, some- thing of refinement, something of social or intellectual power. The world is Protean in its capacity for taking new forms. Some- times it is a gross idol-worship ; sometimes it is a military empire ; sometimes it is a cynical school of philosophers ; sometimes it is the indifference of a Uasd society, which agrees in nothing but in proscribing earnestness. The Church conquered it in the form of the pagan empire. But the world had indeed had its revenge when it could point to such Popes as were Julius ii., or Alexander vi., or Leo x. ; to such courts as were those of Louis xiv. or Charles II. ; for it had throned itself at the hpart of the victorious Church. So now between the world and Christendom there is no hard and fast line of demarcation. The world is within the fold, within the sanctuary, within the heart, as well as without. It sweeps round each soul like a torrent of hot air, and makes itself felt at every pore of the moral system. Not that the world is merely a point of view, a mood of thought, a temper or frame of mind, having no actual, or, as we should say, no objective existence. It has an independent existence. Just as the Kingdom of God exists whether we belong to it or no, and yet, if we do belong to it, is, as our Lord has told us, within us as an atmosphere of moral power and light; so the world, the kingdom of another being,