As long as preachers allow their sermons to be dictated by public sentiment or the worldly desires of their hearers!

(Charles Naylor)

"They are not of the world, even as I am not of it." John 17:16

"As Christ is, so are we in this world" 1 John 4:17

A Christian is one who is Christlike in character, in desire, and in deportment. No other has any right to bear Christ's name. Yet there are a multitude of people who call themselves Christians, who bear no resemblance to Christ in their lives.

One of the most pitiable things that we can behold, is one who professes to be a citizen of the kingdom of God-and yet lives like a citizen of the kingdom of Satan. The worldly professor fills his days with folly-but his cup of joy is always bitter at the last. He gathers up the "fool's gold" that glitters in earthly things. He lives after the flesh and after the world. He goes with the crowd. He misses all the blessedness of righteousness, and, worst of all, he misses Heaven at the last. "You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." James 4:4

Those who still love the pride and vanity of the world, those who are absorbed in its frivolities, those who covet its gold and its honors, those who love its applause-these are those who are of the world.

Those hypocritical professors who bear Christ's name, but will not obey Him-dishonor Him, and by their example influence others to do the same, how shall they escape the damnation of Hell? If there is one thing that God hates above all else, it is a proud and worldly heart! Such a heart can never be a reverential heart. Its religion is but hypocrisy. It is only a sham. It has no reality. It is only a cloak of respectability, while the heart is full of corruption.

The Christian life is, and ever will be, a life of separation from sin and pride and worldliness. If you are not willing to be thus separated, then you should have common honesty enough not to profess to be what you very well know that you are not. If you are going to be a Christian in name, then be one in reality.

Your character, not your profession, will be what will matter in the final judgment. "God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality-He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil-there will be wrath and anger." Romans 2:6-8

If all preachers had honesty enough and courage enough to preach the truth-then the tide of worldliness that is overwhelming such a multitude of souls and sweeping them into perdition, would be somewhat stayed. As long as preachers allow their sermons to be dictated by public sentiment or the worldly desires of their hearers-they will cater to fashions, and souls by the million will drift on into Hell. Oh, what a reaping such preachers will have at the judgment! The full measure of God's wrath will fall on those preachers who fail to be true to souls and to God, in preaching those truths the Bible clearly teaches against sin and worldliness.