it alone, or even to say polite things to it. Why should the world
take the trouble of persecuting the kind of Christianity that so
many of us display? What is the difference between our Christianity
and their worldliness? The world is quite willing to come to church
on Sundays, and to call itself a Christian world, if only it may
live as it likes. And many professing Christians have precisely the
same idea. They attend to the externals of Christianity, and call
themselves Christians, but they bargain for its having very little
power over their lives. Why, then, should two sets of people who
have the same ideas and practices dislike each other? No reason at
all! But let Christian men live up to their profession, and above
all let them become aggressive, and try to attack the world's evil,
as they are bound to do; let them fight drunkenness, let them go
against the lust of great cities, let them preach peace in the face
of a nation howling for war, let them apply the golden rules of
Christianity to commerce and social relationships and the like, and
you will very soon hear a pretty shout that will tell you that the
disciple who is a disciple has to share the fate of the Master,
notwithstanding nineteen centuries of Christian teaching.

If you do not know what it is to find yourselves out of harmony with
the world, I am afraid it is because you have less of the Master's
spirit than you have of the world's. The world loves its own. If you
are not 'of the world, the world will hate you.' If it does not, it
must be because, in spite of your name, you belong to it.

But if we are like Him in our relation to the world, because we are
like Him in character, our very share in 'His reproach,' and our
sense of being 'aliens' here, bear the promise that we shall be like
Him in all worlds. His fortune is ours. 'The disciple shall be as