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more than worldly advantages; and what if here, too, we add one more
example to confirm our Lord's words, that "many are called, but few
chosen?" Now here, as I said, it is very true that God's choice is as
yet not a matter of sight or of certainty to us; we cannot yet say of
ourselves, or of any other set of living men, that "few are chosen." But
though the full truth is not yet revealed, still, as there is a type of
it in our worldly experience, so there is also a higher type, an
earnest, of it in our spiritual experience: there is a sense, and that a
very true and a very important one, in which we can say already, say
now, actually, in the life that now is; say, even in the early stage of
it, that some are, and some are not, "chosen."

We have all been called, in a Christian sense, inasmuch as we have been
all introduced into Christ's church by Baptism; and a very large
proportion of us have been called again, many of us not very long since,
at our Confirmation. We have been thus called to enter into Christ's
kingdom: we have been called to lead a life of holiness and happiness
from this time forth even for ever. Nothing can be stronger than the
language in which the Scripture speaks of the nature of our high
calling: "All things," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, "all things are
yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life, or
death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours; and ye are
Christ's, and Christ is God's." Now, if this be the prize to which we
are called, who are they who are also chosen to it? In the first and
most complete sense, no doubt, those who have entered into their rest;
who are in no more danger, however slight; with whom the struggle is
altogether past, and the victory securely won. These are entered within
the veil, whither we can as yet penetrate only in hope. But hope, in
its highest degree, differs little from assurance; and even, as we
descend lower and lower, still, where hope is clearly predominant, there
is, if not assurance, yet a great encouragement; and the Scripture,
which delights to carry encouragement to the highest pitch to those who
are following God, allows of our saying of even these that they are
God's chosen. It gives them, as it were, the title beforehand, to make
them feel how doubly miserable it must be not only not to obtain it, but
to forfeit it after it had been already ours. So then, there are senses
in which we may say that some a