The sentiment of the text is not the voice of a solitary passage, but is amply sustained by other portions of the word of God. There are many similar precepts addressed to believers: "Arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest; because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction;" "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing." "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." "Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?" "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." "If the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, follow him." These commandments of our Heavenly Father, are not _hard sayings_ to the soul that has been delivered from this present evil world through faith in Jesus; for it has acquired through the work of the Spirit, a holy resignation to every intimation of the Divine will, and supreme delight in God as infinitely lovely, which causes every other source of pleasure or of happiness to become tasteless and insipid. To carnal minds, we admit, that they will sound like tyrannical edicts, because they seem to them to take away their natural liberty; shutting them up from the pursuit of that kind of enjoyment for which they pant, which they know not where to find, and in search of which they wander "through earth, its gay pleasures to trace." But to souls renewed by Divine Grace, the yoke of Christ is easy and his burden light. True Christians, the heirs of glory, are separated from the world, not only by profession, not only by external badges, but what is of higher moment, by their character and spirit. They are essentially a peculiar people; singular in their opinions and practices, and created unto good works. They are distinguished by a conversation in Heaven. They move through society as pilgrims and strangers on the earth. They keep themselves unspotted from the world, as temples of the Holy Ghost. They seek in Heaven an inheritance which is incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, as heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. And they reflect the love and holiness of Jesus, as those who bear the Saviour's image. _A wide and unalterable distinction exists, therefore_, between the servants of God and the people of the world, a distinction as perceptible as that which divides the night from the day, and the darkness from the light. "The one are born from above, the other from beneath. The one are quickened by Divine grace; the other are dead in trespasses and sins. The one are governed by the Spirit of God, and the other are under the dominion of Satan. The one consult the glory of God, and cheerfully resign all for Christ; the other make self the centre around which they move."