Quotable

When the church stoops so low as to acknowledge the wisdom of this world, who will observe any distinct testimony for God? All sinks down to one common level, and the enemy will have his own way. In this way the voice of truth is hushed and God is forgotten. The attempt to accommodate truth to those who are of the world can only end in complete failure. Let truth stand upon its own heavenly height; let saints stand fully and firmly with it; let them invite sinners up to it; but let them not descend to the low and groveling pursuits and habits of the world, and thus rob truth of all of its edge and power. It is far better to allow the contrast between God’s truth and the world’s ways to be fully seen, than to identify with them, when they really do not agree. We may think to commend truth to the minds of worldly people by an effort to conform to their ways; but, so far from commending it, we in reality expose it to secret contempt and scorn. The man who conforms to the world will be the enemy of Christ, and the enemy of Christ’s people. Let us shake off the world’s influence, and purge ourselves from its ways.

We have no idea how insidiously it [the world’s influence] creeps in upon us. The enemy at first weans from really simple and Christian habits, and by degrees we drop into the current of the world’s thoughts. What is needed is the single-minded devotion of people to whom the Lord is everything and the world is nothing. May we, with holy jealousy and tenderness of conscience, watch against every approach of evil.

—C. H. Mackintosh
, Cited in Uplook, October 2000, pp. 18-19