The Lord lived here, died here, rose here; He ate and drank in this world, but He never was of the world; and so it is and should be with the Christian. Our Lord did not form such a part and parcel of this world as that His appearance in it or departure from it ruffled the stream for a moment. He would not have been missed in the world; and the moment that a Christian becomes an integral part of the motive power which carries on the wheels of the world, all is out of course, as far as his allegiance to Christ goes.
A Christian ought to be the means of constant blessing in this world. But how, and of what character? Bearing the testimony of Christ, of his Savior; but as He never sought His own things—was always doing good, yet doing it as the will of His Father- always acting upon motives that were not of the world, but from above—never uniting with men's plans for the purpose of bettering man, but realizing that the world was God's enemy, and yet that God's love was sending Him into it to do them good. Such was Christ, and so should it be with the Christian.
A Christian's business is to be the epistle of Christ. So the one clue and test for what comes before a person, is this: will my doing this or that be acting as an epistle of Christ? But in order to know what is consistent with an epistle of Christ, I must search His ways in the words of the Holy Ghost. There is always light in Scripture to show what is His mind for the present moment.