may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.’ Is it not clear then that those persons who were beloved of God, and called to be saints, were still to be reaching forth after higher attainments? There was so much evil in them that they still required to be warned against conformity to the world, and so far were they from their high standard, that they required nothing less than a transformation or metamorphosis (it is the same word as in the text), in order to bring them into a personal experience ‘of the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.’ Be sure then there is no resting-place in Christian holiness for the saints of God. The Lord may have done great things for us, whereof we are glad. He may have given us such an insight into His grace that we now love that which we once cared nothing for, and hate that which we once loved: He may have led us to say from the bottom of our hearts, ‘I delight to do Thy will, O my God.’ But our motto must still be, ‘Forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things that are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.’ The more we love Christ, the more must we be deeply humbled that we love Him so little; and the more we look at the blessed prospect of a real and perfect sinlessness, the more must we be ready to say, as St. Paul did, ‘Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.’