A Christian's habits

(John Angell James, "Christian Fellowship" 1822)

Christian parents should resist the entrance
of worldly conformity into their families.

Expensive entertainments,
mirthful parties,
vain and frivolous amusements,
showy modes of dress,
should be most cautiously avoided!

True religion will not dwell amid such scenes;
her refined and spiritual taste is soon offended,
and she retires.

A Christian's habits should be simple and spiritual.

If it is his aim to approach as nearly as possible to
the manners of the world without actually being
numbered with its votaries, his children will be
restrained with difficulty, on the godly side of the
line of demarcation, and be perpetually longing
and trying to push onward towards worldliness.

The miserable efforts, made by some professing
Christians, to be thought people of taste and
fashion, show how badly they bear the Christian
yoke, and how nearly they are resolved to cast
it away as an encumbrance. We would despise
these things wherever we see them, if they did
not demand claims upon our pity, still stronger
than those upon our scorn.

When a worldly temper has crept into the circle
of a Christian family, piety retires before it, and
the spirit of error soon enters to take possession
of the desolate home.