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 followers of Christ, or as the children of this world. Hesitate not, I affectionately beseech you, to pursue the former course. Be decided characters in the most important concerns of life. Strive to walk according to this plain comprehensive charge of the Apostle John: “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: for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” Seek, however, that this may be exhibited more by the power of him that worketh in us to will and to do according to his own good pleasure, than by a hasty zeal for his honour, or by a mere orthodoxy of profession before men. Lukewarmness in religion, unsound views of Christian truth, must grieve the true believer in Christ; but if called upon to avow his belief, he should always endeavour, in meekness to instruct those who oppose themselves, and to let his light so shine before men, that they seeing his good works, may glorify our Father who is in heaven.

Let your whole conversation, therefore (by which we may understand our daily intercourse among men), be as becometh the Gospel. The true love of God and of Christ leads from the love of the world, of its false policy and