The answer was precise and affirmative. He that is defiled communicates defilement: “So the priests answered and said, ‘It shall be unclean.’ Then answered Haggai, and said, ‘So is this people’” (Hag. 2:13–14). As with the unclean condition of a man, so the nation of Israel defiled whatever they took up. All works and offerings were unclean. There must be personal cleanness before one can act or offer aright.

Who can fail to see that this is most applicable to the present day? The common notion is that you can cleanse the world by going into it and by associating with it; instead of this you cannot fail to be defiled yourself. The direction to the Christian now is to purge himself from every vessel of dishonor, and to follow after righteousness and peace with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. There is no more salutary word for the Christian in the present confusion of Christendom. Negatively we are bound to separate from what is dishonoring to the Lord. Positively we are bound to follow after what is good, with those who have His glory and will at heart. Isolation is wrong; but to separate from what is evil in the Lord’s sight is an imperative duty for the Christian, and to unite with those that call on Him with a pure heart.

The notion of this day, that you can benefit or set to rights what is evil by associating with it, is not only a fallacy that must end in disappointment—if not in dragging you where you think not—but in itself the principle really is nothing less than a giving up of God. It is a practical abandonment of His holiness and of our obligation to walk as Christ walked, under the plea of doing good. What can be more ruinous?