p481 MY DEAR BROTHER, - I do not occupy myself with putting in articles into the different journals: I fear there are too many, and though, I doubt not, often useful, I doubt a little if they have the freshness of the first, when truth was first blooming out, or the maturity which a good many years might seem calculated to produce. But on the point you write about [2 Cor. 6:14] I cannot hesitate a moment in stating what I feel.

Neither the warnings nor the motives confine themselves to worship, nor even have they any particular application that I can see. Chapter 6:1 is as large as can be. The principles of verses 14-17 are as general and absolute as possible. Christ has no accord with Belial anywhere, nor the temple of God with idols. God does not walk in our midst only in worship. I am not to touch unclean things everywhere, not in worship merely: I am not to touch it anywhere, because we form the temple of the living God. Being yoked is not worship: it is everything that brings us to community of thought and moral judgment. It is a question of receiving - being owned as - sons and daughters, not of worship. I do not see a trace of any application to worship in the passage, but of everything which puts two to pull together where moral principles are concerned. "Perfecting holiness in the fear of God" is the conclusion.

What is above all to be dreaded as to the saints now, is relaxation of their principles in a worldly way. Evident immorality would be at once judged, as anything gross perhaps in worldliness, but it is this tendency to loosen the absoluteness and universality of Christ as a motive which tends to eat out the spiritual life. You are quite at liberty to use this as a testimony which I would make as strong as I possibly could against any such unholy and condemned yoke. The passage applies to marriage, to partnerships, because it applies to everything where people have to walk together on some common principle, and the Christian is to bring in Christ as his one and only motive for everything. An unbeliever cannot do this, for he has not the motive, and it is impossible they can act together. The Old Testament* applies so far as that general principles of what God delights in, what pleases Him, are brought to light in it.
{*'Has the word in Deut. 7:2-3; Lev. 19:19; Deut. 29:11; Ezra 10. any bearing on the subject?'}

1879.

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