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1. Perhaps there is no word more commonly in our mouth than "the world;" and yet hardly any to which we attach less clear and certain meaning, Indeed, the sense intended by it varies according to the character of the person that uses it. Some people denounce the world as unmixed evil; some say it is for the most part good, or at least innocent: some profess to see its deceitful workings everywhere; some will see them nowhere: some make their religion to consist in a separation from the world; some think the field of their religious duty is in the world: in a word, there is little or no agreement or certainly but in this, that there is such a power and reality as the world, and that it is of great moment to us to know what it is.

2. In its original sense, the world is altogether good. By the work and will of God it is all sinless and pure. It is only in its second intention that the world has an evil sense; but that sense is its prevailing and true one — "the weed" is the creation of God as it is possessed by sin and death. So subtle and far spreading is the original sin of man, that no living soul is without a taint. The original sin was not a measured quantity, so to speak, of evil, which, like a hereditary disease, might exhaust itself in the course of two or three descents. Every several generation renewed it afresh; every several man reproduced it, and sustained the tradition of evil by example, habit, and license; it was perpetuated in races, nations, families; by custom, usage, law. And what is this great tradition of human thought and will, action and imagination, with all its illusions, misjudgments, indulgences, and abuses of God's creatures, but the world? We mean by it something external to our minds, and yet not identical with the creation of God; something which has thrust itself between it and us; something parasitical, which has fastened upon all God's works, and has wound itself into its inmost action, and into its very being.

I. It is true to DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD, as between things antagonistic and irreconcilable: for the Son of God, by His incarnation and atonement, and by the calling and mission of His apostles, has founded and built up in the earth a visible kingdom, which has no other Head but Him alone. "That visible kingdom is so taken out of the world, that a man must either be in it or out of it; and must, therefore, be either in the Church or in the world. In the visible kingdom of Christ are all the graces and promises of life; in the world are the powers and traditions of death.

II. But it is no less true to say, that THE WORLD, WHICH IN THE BEGINNING WAS VISIBLY WITHOUT THE CHURCH, IS NOW INVISIBLY WITHIN IT. So long as the world was heathen, it warred against the Church in bitter and relentless persecutions. The two great traditions — the one of God, the other of the world, the powers of the regeneration and of the fall — kept their own integrity by contradiction and perpetual conflict. The Church stood alone — a kingdom ordained of God, having her own princes and thrones, her own judges and tribunals, her own laws and equity, her own public customs and private economy of life. It was when the conversion of individuals drew after it, at last, the whole civil state; when the secular powers, with all their courts, pomps, institutions, laws, judicatures, and the entire political order of the world, came into the precincts of the Church; then it was that the great tradition of human thought, passion, belief, prejudice, and custom, mingled itself with the unwritten usages of the Church. In the beginning the Church had a sorer and a more fiery trial: but who can say that the peril of souls is not greater now? In those days it was no hard matter to discern between the world and the Church. But now our very difficulty is, to know what is that world which we have renounced; to detect its snares, and to overcome its allurements...I will say, that the state of public morals, the habits of personal and social life, popular amusements, and the policy of governments, so far as they are not under the direct guidance of religion, are examples of the presence and power of that which is properly and truly called "the world." And nobody need fear to add, that the tone and moral effect of all these, except when they are especially guided by religion to a Christian use and purpose, is almost always, in a greater or less degree, at variance with God. This, then, is the world which in our baptism we renounced. It was no remote or imaginary notion, but a present and active reality: that very same principle of original evil which, in all ages, under all shapes, in all places, has issued in lust, pride, covetousness, vainglory. We are not called to separate ourselves from any outward system, but to be inwardly as estranged from the evil that cleaves to the system around us, as if we were not of it.

(Archdeacon Manning.)

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KJV: If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

WEB: If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.