What, then? Shall he abandon it all in terror? Shall he hate the world and flee from it? Shall he become a hermit, refusing to receive good, and to do good in his generation? Shall he give up his earthly calling, foregoing the temporal advantages which are held out to him; not exercising the powers which are entrusted to him; supposing that the GOD who put him into this world, and qualified him to fill a place in it, and stimulated him by pressing necessities, or by indwelling desires to seek profit or pleasure, nevertheless meant him to have nothing to do with the world; that because presently he is to die, now he ought not to live; but to drag a sad, inactive, solitary, impatient existence. Surely not! His place now is in the world, his work is in the world; he refuses GOD service in not exercising his worldly calling; he gives up the means of probation, and the opportunities of development and improvement in the highest powers and best graces, and disqualifies himself for heaven, if he fulfils not his destiny on earth. Let him abide in his calling; let him discharge its obligations; let him pursue its advantages, and cull its pleasures, and perform all its bidding; but throughout all, let him remember, and act upon the remembrance that he is not a mere worldling; and to keep him from being absorbed in the world, or grovelling in its pursuits, to quicken him in concern for higher responsibilities and privileges, to impress upon him that all that is of the world is temporary and fleeting, that the world is passing away from him, and he from it, let him reflect frequently and seriously, “What is my life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away;” and so let him temper the lower life (and raise himself above it), by piously resolving that its present occupations, its plans and hopes shall all be subject to the condition, “If the LORD will I should live, and do this or that.”