You must not love one of -'
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You must not love one of
these glittering baubles
"Do not love the world or anything in
the world." 1 John 2:15
This is a very wide sentence. It stretches forth
a hand of vast grasp. It places us, as it were,
upon a high mountain, and it says to us,
"Look around you—there is not one of these
things which you must love."
It takes us, again, to the streets of a crowded
city—it shows us shop windows filled with objects
of beauty and ornament—it points us to all the
wealth and grandeur of the rich and noble, and
everything that the human heart admires and
loves. And having thus set before us, it says,
"None of these things are for you. You must not
love one of these glittering baubles—you must
not touch one of them, or scarcely look at them,
lest, as with Achan, the golden wedge and the
Babylonish garment should tempt you to take
them and hide them in your tent."
The precept takes us through the world as a
mother takes a child through a bazaar—with
playthings and ornaments on every side—and
says, "You must not touch one of these things."
In some such similar way the precept would, as
it were, take us through the world—and when we
had looked at all its playthings and its ornaments,
it would sound in our ears—"Don't touch any one
of them; they are not yours—not for you to enjoy,
not for you even to covet!"
Can anything less than this be intended by those
words which should be ever sounding in the ears
of the children of God—"Do not love the world or
anything in the world"?
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