that it is better and wiser to be like Christ, that it is nobler to
live for Him than for self, and that consciousness cannot but modify
to some extent the manifestations of the hostility, but it is there
all the same, and whosoever will be a Christian after Christ's
pattern will find out that it is there.

Let a man for Christ's sake avow unpopular beliefs, let him try
honestly to act out the New Testament, let him boldly seek to apply
Christian principles to the fashionable and popular sins of his class
or of his country, let him in any way be ahead of the conscience of
the majority, and what a chorus will be yelping at his heels! Dear
brethren, the law still remains, 'If any man will be a friend of the
world he is at enmity with God.'

III. Thirdly, note how you may escape the hostility.

A half-Christianised world and a more than half-secularised Church
get on well together. 'When they do agree, their agreement is
wonderful.' And it is a miserable thing to reflect that about the
average Christianity of this generation there is so very little that
does deserve the antagonism of the world. Why should the world care
to hate or trouble itself about a professing Church, large parts of
which are only a bit of the world under another name? There is no
need whatever that there should be any antagonism at all between a
godless world and hosts of professing Christians. If you want to
escape the hostility drop your flag, button your coat over the badge
that shows that you belong to Christ, and do the things that the
people round about you do, and you will have a perfectly easy and
undisturbed life.