We come back, then, to this truth, that the only way to secure our salvation is to be not slothful in that business, but fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. Salvation is a serious work. We are not sufficiently aware of this. We seem somehow to have got in the belief that the way of life is not strait, and the gate not narrow. Certainly we feel very differently about our salvation from what our fathers in the Catholic Church felt. How many have gone out into the desert and denied themselves rest and food, and scourged themselves to blood! How many have devoted themselves to perpetual silence! How many have willingly given up wealth and friends and kindred! How many, even their own lives! Will you tell me they were but seeking a _more perfect_ life? they were but following the counsels of perfection, which a man is free to embrace or decline? I tell you they were seeking their _salvation_. They were afraid of the judgment to come, and were trying to prepare for it. "Whatever I do," says St. Jerome, "I always hear the dreadful sound of the last trumpet: 'Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment.'" Now, can salvation be a work so serious to them and so trivial for us? Grant that yon are not bound to do precisely what they did, are you at liberty to do nothing? {328} If you are not bound to a perpetual fast, are you at liberty to darken your mind and inflame your passions by immoderate drinking? If yon are not required to walk with downcast eyes and to observe perpetual silence, are you free to gaze on every dangerous object, and to speak words of profanity, falsehood, impurity, or slander? If you are not required to flee from your homes, are you not required to forsake the occasions of sin? If you are not called to forego all innocent pleasures, are you exempt from every sort of self-denial? If no rule obliges you to spend the night in prayer, are you not obliged to pray often? Yes, it was the desire to place their salvation in security that led our fathers into the desert. Surely, we have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, who remain behind in a world which they left as too dangerous, and have to contend with passions which they felt wellnigh too strong for them. We must be what they were. "_The time is short: it remaineth that they who have wives be as those who have not; and they who weep as they who weep not; and they who rejoice as they who rejoice not; and they who buy as they who possess not; and they who use this world as if they used it not; for the figure of this world passeth away_." [Footnote 74] [Footnote 74: I. Cor. vii. 29, 30.]