So too with time.  We set apart for him one day in every week, the Lord’s Day, as a token that all the week is his also.  Thus by worshipping God each Sunday in his church, we acknowledge that we are his and should lift up our hearts to him, always and everywhere.  We ought, indeed, to give thanks to him at all times and in all places; but such being the conditions of this mortal life, we have to start by doing so sometimes and in some places.

In the next life, however, towards which this life is steadily bringing us, those conditions will have ceased to exist, and the time for token offerings will be over.  Here we can choose precisely to what extent we shall belong to God – it may be greater, it may be lesser – but there it has to be all or nothing.

For there the ultimate fact is that one’s true journey’s end is to see him and share his life, and to do that means that one’s own life must be obviously and willingly and totally given to him.  And only by thus allowing God to possess oneself completely, will one also possess him, who is the source of all true joy and contentment; whereas those who prefer their own company to his and to his scorching sanctity, they will have their wish.

So the ultimate alternatives are either to give all and so gain all and be eternally happy, or to refuse all and so lose all and be eternally frustrated.  “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God”, wrote St Augustine, “and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee”. (1) And that is true of everyone, as true of those to whom God means everything as it is of those to whom he means nothing.