lly can claim or
can fill their thoughts, then they are apt to undervalue this life
altogether, and to forget its real importance. They are apt to wish to
spend the time of their sojourning here in a positive separation from
active and social duties: yet it should be recollected that the
employments of this world, though not themselves heavenly, are, after
all, the way to heaven--though not the fruit, are the seed of
immortality--and are valuable, though not in themselves, yet for that
to which they lead: but it is difficult to realize this. It is
difficult to realize both truths at once, and to connect both truths
together; steadily to contemplate the life to come, yet to act in this.
Those who meditate, are likely to neglect those active duties which
are, in fact, incumbent on them, and to dwell upon the thought of God's
glory, till they forget to act to His glory. This state of mind is
chided in figure in the words of the holy Angels to the Apostles, when
they say, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven[1]?"

In various ways does the thought of the next world lead men to neglect
their duty in this, and whenever it does so we may be sure that there
is something wrong and unchristian, not in their thinking of the next
world, but in their manner of thinking of it. For though the
contemplation of God's glory may in certain times and persons allowably
interfere with the active employments of life, as in the case of the
Apostles when our Saviour ascended, and though such contemplation is
even freely allowed or commanded us at certain times of each day; yet
that is not a real and true meditation on Christ, but some counterfeit,
which makes us dream away our time, or become habitually indolent, or
which withdraws us from our existing duties, or unsettles us.

Yet the thought of the world unseen is apt to do so in various ways,
and the worst way of all is when we have taken up a notion that it
_ought_ to do so. And indeed this is a temptation to which persons who
desire to be religious are exposed in one shape or another in every
age, and in this age as well as in times past. Men come to fancy that
to lose taste and patience for the businesses of this life is
renouncing the world and becoming spiritually-minded. We will say a
person has been thoughtless and irreligious; perhaps openly so; or at
least careless about religion, and though innocent of any flagrant sin,
yet a follower of his own will and fa