SEPARATION FROM THE WORLD--J. C. RYLE

“The subject is one that demands the best attention of all who profess and call themselves Christians.  In every age of the Church separation from the world has always been one of the grand evidences of a work of grace in the heart.  He that has been really born of the Spirit, and made a new creature in Christ Jesus, has always endeavoured to “come out from the world,” and live a separate life.  They who have only had the name of Christian without the reality, have always refused to ‘come out and be separate’ from the world.”

“The subject perhaps was never more important than it is, at the present day.  There is a widely-spread desire to make things pleasant in religion—to saw off the corners and edges of the cross, and to avoid, as far as possible, self-denial.  On every side we hear professing Christians declaring loudly that we must not be “narrow and exclusive,” and that there is no harm in many things which the holiest saints of old thought bad for their souls.  That we may go anywhere, and do anything, and spend our time in anything, and read anything, and keep any company, and plunge into anything, and all the while may be very good Christians—this, this is the maxim of thousands.  In a day like this I think it good to raise a warning voice, and invite attention to the teaching of God’s Word.  It is written in that Word, ‘Come out, and be separate.’”

J.C Ryle in Practical Religion, page 184; James Clarke, Cambridge, 1977 (original 1878).