his higher purification. If he be actively engaged in the business world, he will feel the need of being continually on his guard, lest he be contaminated by the influence of bad examples around him, or seduced by the evil counsels of unprincipled men of the world with whom he comes into contact, or provoked by the wrong done to himself to retaliate by doing wrong to others. But the tempter he fears above all the rest, is that in his own bosom. Knowing that all men, at this day, are born with a greater or less degree of self-love and love of the world in their hearts, he feels the need of being on the watch against this hereditary tendency; and conscious of his own weakness, he never permits himself to go forth to the business of the day, without looking up in prayer to Him who alone is good and true, and who alone can stem the tide of temptation that presses from without and from within, and give strength to get the victory.
Thus does the spiritual man strive to be ever on the watch against that gross form of the love of the world, which acts by cunning, artifice, dishonesty.
But there is a more subtle danger yet to be guarded against. Observe the other part of the definition of love of the world, before quoted from the Doctrine of the New Church, namely, that, besides seeking to appropriate the wealth of others by artifice, it consists "in placing the heart in riches, and in suffering the world to draw it away from spiritual love, and consequently from heaven." He who allows the things of the world, and the desire for riches, to occupy his thoughts exclusively or chiefly, and to be set before
