Perhaps you may think that this was a natural rather than a spiritual frame of mind. On earth their portion had all along been one of sorrow and suffering, and evil reproach; and prophecy bade them look on for aggravations of what they already endured, and for many additional and greater troubles. What wonder, then, that they struggled to escape from the present, that they shrunk from the future, that they prayed that CHRIST would speedily come to them, or that He would speedily take them to Himself! What wonder that St. Paul, for instance, amid his toils, and perils, and sufferings, and revilings, and failures, and disappointments, with the prospect of nothing on earth but sorer persecution and greater trials, should desire to be absent from the body, and to be present with the LORD! What wonder that St. John, so cruelly entreated by foes, so disregarded by should-be friends, when in the isle of his banishment the voice of his LORD told of His speedy coming, should promptly and ardently respond to Him, “Even so, come, LORD JESUS.” Having nothing, and expecting nothing that flesh could desire; enduring much, anticipating more that was undesirable, grievous, hateful, what wonder, you would ask, that they yearned in their hearts to be delivered from such bondage, and to be transferred to the abode of peace and glory: that they offered frequently and fervently those Advent prayers, “Thy kingdom come,” “LORD JESUS receive my Spirit,” “Even so, come, LORD JESUS”! Even had they expected no hereafter, had they supposed that the coming Judge would annihilate them, or that the grave would bury them in eternal forgetfulness, it would still have been natural for them to have courted and prayed for the cessation of toil and the end of suffering. So some persons are wont to reason. It is natural, they say, for those to whom this world is a blank or a sea of troubles, to set their hopes on another world. It is natural for those whose life here is all weariness, to be desirous to give up that life, even though they shall have no life hereafter. But is it really natural? Does affliction naturally make us look heavenwards? Does a troubled life naturally reconcile us to the thought of speedy death, yea, and cause us to desire it, to pray for it? On the contrary, do we not often find persons unspiritualised by affliction? Do not many maintain that their worldly troubles are the hindrance of religious thought and practice? Is not death by very instinct shrunk from by well-nigh all, and most by those whose circumstances seem to recommend it as naturally the greatest good?