A _vocation_ is His call to that condition of life. When we call a servant to command him to do something, the calling him is one thing, his obeying and employing himself as directed quite another; and this, even if he do the work precisely as he is told, and no more. Now, there are two sorts of vocation. The first is the call to faith or grace; the second, the call to a particular avocation in life. To follow the first vocation, viz., to Faith, is necessary for salvation, since he who refuses to listen to this call and to obey its voice risks the loss of his immortal soul. A pagan or heretic called by God to embrace Christianity or to submit to the Catholic Church, and to the end neglecting this call, must needs be lost, for out of the true Church there is no salvation. Again, if a member of the true Church who is spiritually dead in mortal sin, refuse to listen to the call, or vocation, of preventing grace which bids him return to God by confession, or by contrition of heart, he is in a state of damnation. Not so, however, with the second kind of call or vocation. As this is only to some particular condition of life in the world or the cloister, although we must not neglect it, but must listen with respect to what it may please God to say to our heart, yet essentially it is not of vital importance to the welfare of our soul that we should follow such a call, since, at the most, it is but an inward counsel, which may be acted upon or not according to our choice. And now remember that the counsels given in Holy Scripture are not precepts.[1] Our Blessed Father has often said that it would be not only an error, but a heresy, to maintain that there is any kind of legitimate calling or avocation in which it is impossible to save one's soul. On the contrary, in each, grace is offered, by means of which we may safely walk before God in holiness and justice all the days of our life. To deny this would be to cut off from the hope of salvation, not thousands only, but millions of men and women, those, namely, who are engaged all their lives long in occupations which they have undertaken, not only without a vocation from God, but sometimes even against their own inclination. This is the teaching of this Blessed Father in his Philothea, where he says, "It is an error, nay, a heresy, to wish to exclude the highest holiness of life from the soldier's barrack, the mechanic's workshop, the courts of princes, or the household of married people." He used to say that it is not sufficient merely to love our calling, but that our most earnest endeavours as true and faithful Christians should be to strive to attain perfection in that same calling. He remarked, too, that we do wrong to waste time in arguing as to what that perfection consists in. The glory of God should be the one aim of every devout soul.