There is truth in this, but there is also falsehood. Christians, _real_ Christians, will always be distinct from the world, and the distinction will be very clearly defined. But Christians should not make it their _object_ to be distinct from the world. They should aim to be Christians, and let the distinction follow in its natural order and degree. Singularity, in itself, is no virtue. It is just as likely to be a vice. A man is not necessarily better because he is unlike the rest of the world. Difference from the world, therefore, is not an _end_ of Christian discipline, but a result and concomitant of it. This distinction is of the utmost importance. If distinctiveness is regarded as an _object_ of Christian effort, its value is sacrificed. Its tendency is to formality; to the substitution of a variety of _outward_ standards of duty for a single _inward_ regulative principle. To pride and self-righteousness on the ground of singularity. Such have been its developments, for instance, in certain religious sects who insisted on plainness of dress as a duty. Undoubtedly the spirit which originally prompted the requisition was good, Christlike. It was the desire to take from the useless adornment of the person and bestow upon objects of Christian effort and charity. It was the desire to remove temptations to vanity and idle display. But in too many cases these things were forgotten. Christians received the precept in the letter and not in the spirit. They came to insist on plainness of dress as a mark of a true Christian, and forgot that materials of plain or sad colors might be as costly and rich as gayer ones. They came to pride themselves on their plainness as a distinction from the rest of the world. They said bitter and unchristian things against the man who should carry a gold watch or the woman who should wear a feather or a ribbon. They perverted scripture to uphold this ridiculous whim, and brought scorn upon themselves and reproach upon the cause of Christ, because they turned their eyes from the inward, regulative power of the gospel to one of its natural developments, and looked at that until it grew out of all proportion. How then are we rightly to apply this command? The apostle, in giving us an answer, takes up the question at the very point at which most inquirers do, viz.: at the matter of _sacrifice_. For this is the way in which it presents itself to most minds. In order not to be conformed to the world, I must sacrifice much that is of the world. What, now, may I retain, and what must I relinquish?