Let us, however, ascend to a still higher point of view.  Have we not all, under every imaginable circumstance, a work mighty and difficult enough to develope our strongest energies, to engage our deepest interests?  Have we not all to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling?"[6] Professing to believe, as we do, that the discipline of every day is ordered by Infinite Love and Infinite Wisdom, so as best to assist us in this awfully important task, can we justly complain of any mental void, of any inadequacy of occupation, in any of the situations of life?

The only work that can fully satisfy an immortal spirit’s cravings for excitement is the work appointed for each of us.  It is one, too, that has no intervals of repose, far less of languor or ennui; the labour it demands ought never to cease, the intense and engrossing interest it excites can never vary or lessen in importance.  The alternative is a more awful one than human mind can yet conceive:  those who have not fulfilled their appointed work, those who have not, through the merits of Christ, obtained the “holiness without which no man shall see the Lord,"[7] “must depart into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels."[8]

With a hell to avoid, and a heaven to obtain, do you murmur for want of interest, of occupation!

In the words of the old story, “Look below on the earth, and then above in heaven:”  remember that your only business here is to get there; then, instead of repining, you will be thankful that no great temporal work is given you to do which might, as too often happens, distract your attention and your labours from the attainment of life eternal.  Having been once convinced of the awful and engrossing importance of this “one thing” we have to “do,"[9] you will see more easily how many minor duties may be appointed you to fulfil, on a path that before seemed a useless as well as an uninteresting one.  For you would have now learned to estimate the small details of daily life, not according to their insignificance, not as they may influence your worldly fate, but as they may have a tendency to mould your spirit into closer conformity to the image of the Son.[10] You will now no longer inquire whether you have any work to do which you might yourself consider suitable to your capabilities and energies; but whether there is within your reach any, the smallest, humblest work of love, contemned or unobserved before, when you were more proud and less vigilant.

Look, then, with prayer and watchfulness into all the details of your daily life, and you will assuredly find much formerly-unnoticed “stuff,” out of which “your ideal” may be wrought.