world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in
THE WARNING
AFFLICTION is full of warnings. It has many voices and these of the most various kinds. It speaks counsel, it speaks rebuke, it speaks affection. But it speaks warning too. Let us hear some of its words of warning.
1. It says, "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." There is no enforcement of this warning so solemn as that which affliction gives. It exposes the world's hollowness and says, "love not." It shows us what a withering gourd its beauty is and says, "love not." It points out to us its hastening doom and says, "love not." It declares the utter impossibility of loving both the world and the Father, "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?" There can be no companionship between God and the world. They cannot dwell together under the same roof or in the same heart.
2. It says, "Take heed and beware of covetousness." Riches cannot help, neither earthly comfort avail us in the hour of grief. They cannot dry up tears, nor reunite broken bonds. They cannot heal the living, nor bring back the dead. They profit not in the day of darkness. Their vanity and emptiness cannot then be hidden. "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee, then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided." It is then we find that we need a "treasure in the heaven that faileth not." "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich."
3. It says, "abstain from all appearance of evil." "Hate even the garments spotted by the flesh." It is not the flesh merely that we are to hate, but even its garments. Nor is it the garments dyed and defiled with the flesh, but even "spotted" with it. It is not merely abstain from evil, but from all appearance of evil. Suffering teaches us to shrink from sin—even from the remotest and most indirect