We wonder why a certain church-member is so lax in his devotions and loose in his practices. The reason is that, while his trunk and his branches are over on the church side of the wall, his roots run under the wall and dwell in the bad soil on the other side.
Christians should live in the world, but not be filled with it. A ship lives in the water; but if the water gets into the ship, she goes to the bottom. So Christians may live in the world; but if the world gets into them, they sink.
The only true method of action in this world is to be in it, but not of it.
A Christian making money fast is just a man in a cloud of dust, it will fill his eyes if he be not careful.
Christianity does not condemn traffic, commerce, material activities of any kind. Its highest development is possible with the busiest life. To be a first-rate business man does not involve being a fourth-rate Christian.
Buying, possessing, accumulating—this is not worldliness. But doing this in the love of it, with no love of God paramount—doing it so that thoughts of eternity and God are an intrusion—doing it so that one's spirit is secularized in the process; this is worldliness.
They best pass over the world who trip over it quickly; for it is but a bog. If we stop, we sink.
