But the best feature of the Christian, as exhibited in St. Paul, remains for us to gaze on. After all, it is not the holiest ambition to aspire to heaven; it is not the highest vocation to enrich and perfect self. GOD has made us capable of heavenly bliss. He offers it to us. He would have us seek it; He blesses and will reward the seeking. But still He did not make and redeem us, He does not sanctify us only or chiefly for this. The Christian’s vocation is the service of GOD. The end of his being is the glory of GOD. And so our chief thoughts, and aspirations, and endeavours, are not to be deliverance from troubles, perfection in joy, getting out of the present into the future, exchanging earth for heaven; but, being and doing what GOD approves, wherever, in whatever circumstances, GOD appoints. “Wherefore we labour, that whether present or absent we may be accepted of Him;” that whether it pleases GOD to come to us while we are in the body, or to call us to Him out of the body, He may find us prepared for what in either case awaits us; “for we must all appear before the judgment-seat of CHRIST, that every one may receive according to the things done in the body.” The Christian may shrink from the first thought of death, and wish not to be unclothed. He ought to aspire to heaven, and that he may reach it, be well content, willing rather, to be absent from the body. But above all he must labour in whatever state he is, therein so to be serving GOD, as to have His present acceptance and always to be prepared for His coming judgment. We want to feel this and to act upon it. To put self with even its most innocent instincts and best interests and noblest aspirations somewhat aside, that GOD may be more nearly all in all; to be less filled with groaning and coveting on our own account and more occupied in serving and glorifying CHRIST. It is well not to love this world, to have realised its vanity and misery, to have broken the links that would bind us to it, to refuse to find our perfect joy in aught that belongs to it. It is well to yearn for deliverance from all that vexes and hinders and hurts; to desire ardently—even to pray earnestly and continually for—presence with the LORD, and all that that presence implies, in Paradise, in Heaven. But when by GOD’S grace we have come to this state, we are not perfect, we have not _begun_ to be perfect. No! we have only qualified ourselves in mind and heart for the commencement of that which is demanded of us in life, the single, contented, glad, immediate, and constant service of GOD in the state and circumstances in which He has placed us.