higher than he who merely lives for applause, and he again may be a trifle higher than the mere seeker after gold—­but after all, looking closely at the matter, you will find that, in respect of the objects of their idolatry, they agree in this, that all belong to the present.  Therefore, says the Apostle, all that is in the world—­“the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world,” and are only various forms of one great tyranny.  And then when such a man is at the brink of death, the words said to the man in our Lord’s parable must be said to him.  “Thou fool, the houses thou hast built, the enjoyments thou hast prepared; and all those things which have formed thy life for years—­when thy soul is taken from them, what shall they profit thee?”

 3.  The spirit of society.

The World has various meanings in Scripture; it does not always mean the Visible, as opposed to the Invisible; nor the Present, as opposed to the Future:  it sometimes stands for the secular spirit of the day—­the Voice of Society.

Our Saviour says, “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own.”  The apostle says, “Be not conformed to this world;” and to the Gentiles he writes, “In time past ye walked according to the course of this world, the spirit which now worketh in the children of disobedience.”  In these verses, a tone, a temper, a spirit is spoken of.  There are two things—­the Church and the World—­two spirits pervading different bodies of men, brought before us in these verses—­those called the Spirit-born, and those called the World, which is to be overcome by the Spirit-born, as in the text, “Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.”

Let us understand what is meant by the Church of God.  When we speak of the Church we generally mean a society to aid men in their progress God-wards; but the Church of God is by no means co-extensive in any age with that organized institution which we call the Church; sometimes it is nearly co-extensive—­that is, nearly all on earth who are born of God are found within its pale, nearly all who are of the world are extraneous to it—­but sometimes the born of God have been found distinct from the Institution called the Church, opposed to it—­persecuted by it.  The Institution of the Church is a blessed ordinance of God, organized on earth for the purpose of representing the Eternal Church and of extending its limits, but still ever subordinate to it.

The Eternal Church is “the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven;” the selected spirits of the most High, who are struggling with the evil of their day; sometimes alone, like Elijah, and like him, longing that their work was done; sometimes conscious of their union with each other.  God is for ever raising up a succession of these—­His brave, His true, His good.  Apostolical succession,