I go to China, to Africa, to India?" There is
only one Person who can rightly settle that question for you and that
Person is the Holy Spirit. You cannot settle the question for yourself,
much less can any other man settle it rightly for you. Not every Christian
man is called to go to China; not every Christian man is called to go to
Africa; not every Christian man is called to go to the foreign field at
all. God alone knows whether He wishes you in any of these places, but He
is willing to show you. In a day such as we live in, when there is such a
need of the right men and the right women on the foreign field, every
young and healthy and intellectually competent Christian man and woman
should definitely offer themselves to God for the foreign field and ask
Him if He wants them to go. But they ought not to go until He, by His Holy
Spirit, makes it plain.

The great need in all lines of Christian work to-day is men and women whom
the Holy Ghost calls and sends forth. We have plenty of men and women whom
men have called and sent forth. We have plenty of men and women who have
called themselves, for there are many to-day who object strenuously to
being sent forth by men, by any organization of any kind, but, in fact,
are what is immeasurably worse, sent forth by themselves and not by God.

_How does the Holy Spirit call?_ The passage before us does not tell us
how the Holy Spirit spoke to the group of prophets and teachers in
Antioch, telling them to separate Barnabas and Saul to the work to which
He had called them. It is presumably purposely silent on this point.
Possibly it is silent on this point lest we should think that the Holy
Spirit must always call in precisely the same way. There is nothing
whatever to indicate that He spoke by an audible voice, much less is there
anything to indicate that He made His will known in any of the fantastic
ways in which some in these days profess to discern His leading--as for
example, by twitchings of the body, by shuddering, by opening of the Bible
at random and putting his finger on a passage that may be construed into
some entirely different meaning than that which the inspired author
intended by it. The important point is, He made His will clearly known,
and He is willing to make His will clearly known to us to-day. Sometimes
He makes it known in one way and sometimes in another, but He will make it
known.

But _how shall we receive the Holy Spirit's call_? First of all, by