The Seat of the Worldly Life

“If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” — i John ii. 15.

To the mind of St. John the darkest shadow of the human soul is worldliness. Perhaps each of us has a special aversion to some special form of sin, Matthew, Mark and Luke emphasise the horror of blasphemy. Paul lays stress on the danger of unbelief. James is impressed with the evil of idle hands. But John has a special aversion to worldliness. Why? I take the reason to be that he himself had been specially bitten by that form of sin. John had started on the race of life under the impulse of personal ambition. So intense had been that ambition that it had suffused even his religion. He had asked for a front seat in the kingdom of heaven — a seat beside the Lord where he would have a monopoly of the Divine Presence. He had now come to see that this seeming piety was extreme worldliness. And why was it worldliness? Because he was too fond of the society of his brother man? Exactly the reverse — because he was not fond enough of that society. John’s error lay in forgetting the claims of his brother man — in wishing to be alone in his glory. If he had asked that the front seat might be extended so that there might be room for everybody, it would have been all right. But to desire a monopoly of God, to seek an exclusive access to the audience-chamber of the King s Son, this was a breach of brotherhood, and therefore this was worldliness. And that is the reason why John says, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” He means that there can be no sense of fatherhood where there is no sense of brotherhood. If worldliness signified anything else than unsociability, there would be no meaning in the statement. If to be unworldly means to be a hermit, why should it indicate the love of God — why should it indicate any love at all? But if to be unworldly means to be no hermit, if to be unworldly means to be social, if to be unworldly means to have a right hand of fellowship for our brother man, I can understand why it prepares for my love of God. He that loves the brother whom he hath seen is ripening for devotion to that common Father whom as yet he hath not seen.

Lord, let me not think that the world is a place I

That would lead me to underrate my difficulties. If the world were any particular place, I could easily get rid of it. If it were a theatre or a ball-room or a garden-party, I could soon take the wings of a dove and flee away and be at rest. But the world is none of these things — the world is within me. I can carry it about to any place, and the place to which I carry it immediately becomes worldly. Teach me this truth, O Lord! Teach me that, wherever I think of myself alone, that spot is the world! Teach me by the lesson of Thy disciple that I can make my thought of heaven itself a worldly thought! Remind me ever that his most mundane moment was his vision of paradise — his vision of Thy heaven as a place where he was to stand in advance of all men! Impress me with the knowledge that I am not to be driven out of the world, but that I am to drive the world out of me I Help me to expel it from my own heart! Reveal to me that to find Thy rest I need no wings of a dove, no flight from the common haunts of men! Crucify the image of my own soul, and I shall hear Thy voice saying, “Go where thou wilt.” Drive out the selfish man from the garden of my heart, and there will be no need to remove me from the tree. Create a clean spirit within me, and I shall not fear to live in unclean streets. Bathe myself in Jordan’s stream, and the wilderness of Judaea and the wedding of Cana will to me be alike unworldly; for alike in the wilderness and at the wedding I shall think of the brotherhood of man.