076. THERE MUST BE A DIVINE CALL

THERE MUST BE A DIVINE CALL But it is not enough that the preacher should be able to point back to the beginning of a Christian experience. He needs a continuous Christian experience as well. "Unless thou hast peace in thine own heart," says Thomas a Kempis, "thou wilt never be able to impart peace to others." But Thomas a Kempis himself did not see the way so clearly as do some of our modern teachers. I regard as the most important of our friend F. B. Meyer’s essays that one on "Appropriation of Christ" which begins his little book on "Christian Living." Not "Imitation of Christ" is the soul’s need, for that still leaves Christ outside of us. What we need is a power within, and appropriation of Christ gives this. The candlestick in Zechariah’s vision was fed from two living olive trees on either side of it, and only thus could it shine without ceasing. Christ’s sanctifying grace is as needful as his regenerating grace, and unless a man has experience of a present and continuous salvation he cannot lead others, as the Christian minister should, into the green pastures and beside the still waters which the heavenly Shepherd has prepared for them. But I hasten to mention a second of these supernatural qualifications. Besides a Christian experience he must have a divine call. Grant that a young man has good natural powers and that these powers have been trained in the schools; grant that he has a past and a present Christian experience, still he has no right to enter the ministry and to be the guide of souls unless he has received the call of God. In one sense indeed every Christian is a preacher. He is bound to "tell to sinners round what a dear Saviour he has found." But he cannot be an overseer of the flock, an official interpreter of God’s word, unless God has set him apart. No man taketh this office to himself but he that is called of God, even as was Aaron. It is a solemn thing to stand between the living and the dead, and to proclaim the truth that is a savor of life unto life or of death unto death. No man should hastily assume that God has called him to this sacred ministry. And yet God calls in many ways, and we should not be too critical as to the way in which the call of God comes to a man. Men differ greatly from one another. God’s methods of regenerating men differ accordingly. The essentials are the same. There is always a change of disposition. The love of sin and self is replaced by the love of holiness and God. Repentance and faith evince the change within. But the time, the circumstances, the awakening agency, the process of thought before and after, differ as widely as do the individual minds and hearts with which God deals. So the call of God to the ministry is communicated in a thousand ways, and no man must refuse to listen to God’s voice because it comes to him in one way rather than in another. The fact that my experience in this matter is unlike any other of which I have ever heard may be, not a reason for doubting, but rather a reason for crediting it. In my own case I am persuaded that the call of God to preach the gospel came to me long before my conversion; and I knew, for years before I gave my heart to God, that if I were ever converted I should be obliged to preach. As I have listened to the relations of Christian experience by successive classes of young men entering our seminary, I have been interested to hear many similar cases. In fact, the certainty that conversion meant preaching has caused many a man to resist and delay conversion. The refusal to preach has been the one opposition of soul to the known will of God, and until that was surrendered there was no par don or peace. Paul declares that he was separated unto the gospel of God even from his mother’s womb, though it was not until his journey to Damascus that it pleased God to reveal his Son in him. In view of all this, how important it is that the churches should be in a proper spiritual state to facilitate conversion in the cases of those youthful attendants upon their worship whom God has already impressed with a sense of their duty to preach his gospel!