077. NO VISION, OR VOICE FROM HEAVEN

NO VISION, OR VOICE FROM HEAVEN

Yet in other cases God’s call to preach comes after he calls men into his kingdom, and the new impulse to proclaim the truth of salvation is a sort of corollary of one’s own joy in personally experiencing salvation. The call of God comes sometimes through the call of men, as when the lawyer, William R. Williams, in his own absence, was summoned by the church in New York of which he was a member to become its pastor. In the days of Chrysostom, men fled from the church’s call, and only when they were dragged out from their hiding-places concluded that the church’s call was the call of God. It matters not how the call comes, whether through the suggestion of Christian brethren, through one’s own success in personal work for Christ, or through private meditation upon one’s own opportunities and obligations.

There needs no vision, and no audible voice from heaven. God speaks more clearly and unmistakably through conscience and providence than he could by signs in the sky. But there does need to be borne in upon the soul the conviction that the love of Christ constrains it to make known that love to others, and that "woe is me, if I preach not the gospel." The whole trend of one’s past life may point in the direction of the ministry, while yet no outward sound has dis~ turbed the stillness. A man may be drawn irresistibly to Christ’s work by inner longing, as the steel is drawn by the magnet. He does not need to explain the drawing. He only needs to have it. Yet none of God’s drawings are irrational. One must be able to show that this inner impulse and conviction are not contradicted by deficient intellect or deficient culture. Moral and spiritual fitness must be held by the churches as the only sure evidence that the conviction of a call is not a delusion.

I believe with all my heart in the absolute indispensableness of a divine call to the ministry, and I would ordain no man who did not believe that God had called him. To go before one is sent is in this matter temerity and sacrilege. All the more blessed is he who hears God’s voice speaking inwardly and saying: "If thou wilt take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth." "Say not, I am a child: for to whomsover I shall send thee thou shalt go, and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid because of them: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord."

It is not enough, however, for the preacher to hear a divine call. He must also receive a gospel message. John Henry Newman said once that the difference between a poor preacher and a good one was that the former had to say something, and the latter had something to say. It is one thing to have a burden, and it is another thing to have a definite message. There is a substance to the glad news of salvation, and the first business of a man called to the ministry is to get possession of it. What is he to preach? This is a momentous question. The faith once for all delivered to the saints,—this has been handed down to us. We are bidden to commit it to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. Paul regards the truth of God as a sacred deposit, and he urges Timothy: "Keep thy deposit "; "keep the good deposit." It is a treasure of which he is a steward, and, like a good steward, he expects to give account for the least jot and tittle of that which has been committed to him.

Getting possession of this substance of the preacher’s message generally comes later in point of time than the preacher’s call to the ministry. Paul, after the Lord had called him, spent three years in Arabia, receiving instruction from Christ, before he was ready to declare his gospel. Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness under the tuition of the Spirit, before his ministry began. And this is divine wisdom. The teacher must first be taught. The man who practises medicine without having ever studied medicine will certainly have fools for patients. The man who practises law without ever having studied law will get his clients into greater trouble than they had before. And the minister of the gospel who has no time to learn what the gospel is, and who fancies that the world is waiting for his message when he has no particular message to communicate, is just as shortsighted as the unfledged lawyer or physician. That God has called him to preach makes it all the more needful that he should preach the preaching that God bids him, and to do this he must give time to the study of God’s truth.

I know well that this truth is contained in the Scriptures; and that, when no teachers can be had, a man can get the truth, or at least some of it, from the Scriptures for himself. But the guidance of human teachers may save one from many mistakes and may shorten his labors. French and German without a master results in very curious specimens of French and German. So interpretations of Scripture without study of the laws of interpretation may result in the wildest vagaries. Scripture is not a series of disjointed fragments but an organic whole. Each part is to be judged not by itself alone but in its connection with every other part. The Bible says: "There is no God "; but it does not teach atheism, for if we take the text in connection with its context we read: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." So the verse is to be interpreted by the book of which it forms a part, and the book by the Testament, and the Old Testament by the New. Texts, like railway coupons, are "not good, if detached." The average college graduate, though brought up in a Christian family and trained in a Christian college, has not yet that knowledge of the Bible nor that habit of putting its truths together which make him a trustworthy teacher. What he has learned of Scripture he has learned fragmentarily. We listen to the Christian experiences of many young men who seek to enter our seminary. Almost all of them are college graduates, and they are men of good natural intelligence. Yet I have been pained to find in many of these cases that their relation of experience makes no mention either of sin or of Christ. The two foci of the Christian ellipse they seem ignorant of. Yet it is in part a seeming ignorance. When questioned, they acknowledge the influence of great truths which at first they seemed to ignore. In their own consciousness they lay all the emphasis upon their own efforts and decisions, and have no thought of the work of the Spirit of God. It shows how unfitted they are to instruct others, how greatly they need to be taught the meaning of their own experience, how much greater knowledge they require of the word of God.