Life is a school. _Nothing less._ Therefore we must beware of squandering the time given us to prepare for our final state. We are here for our training, not for our enjoyment, and must go in for the experiences and the work our education demands. We have to drill ourselves in regard to our pleasures and our pains. Pleasure must not be suffered to monopolize our interest. It is but the half holiday thrown into school life to make its pressure bearable. Pain must not cast us down utterly, but detach us from our surroundings here, and foster in us the homesickness of the saints. And we have to work, work seriously at the formation of mind and heart--the task allotted us in this world. Both have to be conformed to the likeness of Him Who is the pattern of all the elect. Both have to be brought into harmony with the surroundings in which they will find themselves directly. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”[157] “Our conversation must be in heaven.”[158] Meantime we have with us, not only as Master, but as Father and Elder Brother, Him Who has passed through the experience of human life; Who, “because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, hath also Himself in like manner been partaker of the same,”[159] “like to us in all things excepting sin”;[160] Whose word of comfort as we take to Him our weary tasks is a reminder at once of their necessity and of their recompense: “Work your work before the time, and He will give you your reward in His time.”[161] My God, I thank You for the immortal spirit You have given me. I thank You for its vast capacity, which I recognise in a craving that nothing here can sate. Its very neediness appeals to Your beneficence, “abyss calleth upon abyss.”[162] Keep up the keenness of its desire, the hunger and thirst which You have declared blessed, till the time comes for satisfying it fully. Let me not seek to assuage it by anything transitory. Let me “so pass through the things of time as not to forfeit those of eternity”.[163] Let me be schooled by the tasks and trials, the little joys and sorrows and passing brightnesses of this life for the great future, the true life that lies beyond. May my happiness no less than my duty be found in preparing now for what I am to do and to be hereafter. And when my school days are over and my lessons here are learned--dear Father, take me Home! [154] 1 John iii. [155] 1 Cor. ii. [156] Luke vi. [157] Philip. ii. [158] _Cf._ _Ibid._ iii. [159] Heb. ii. [160] _Ibid._ iv. [161] Ecclus. li. [162] Psa. xli. [163] Collect for 3rd Sunday after Pentecost. THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED. TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text. In the footnotes, 1 Par. and 2 Par. refer to the first and second Books of Paralipomenon, which are also known as the Books of Chronicles. Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the ends of their chapters.