he whole mystery lay in this, that
he had lived in the town for forty years a blameless life, and was
known by everybody to be a godly and prayerful man. He was good enough
to honour me with his friendship; and his example wrote deeply upon
my mind these two convictions--that it may sometimes be of immense
advantage to spend a whole lifetime in a single pastorate, and that
the prime qualification for the ministry is goodness.[15]

FOOTNOTES:

[7] "One great part of the history of the Bible is the history of
Calls."--DEAN CHURCH.

[8] I am sorry to observe that even Mr. G.A. Smith, whose Commentary on
Isaiah is distinguished not only by thorough scholarship but by what is
far rarer in works of the kind--a profusion of just and inspiring
ideas--at this point, following bad examples, says that there are ideas
imported into the account of Isaiah's call which belonged to a later
period of his life. Not only is this wrong psychologically, because it
minimises the divinatory power of the human spirit in the great moments
of experience; but surely it is utterly wrong artistically, because, if
the ideas are historically out of place, Isaiah himself ought to have
felt that, by placing them there, he was breaking the spell of
verisimilitude, on which the effect of such a picture depends.

[9] This is the literal translation, "The fulness of the whole world is
His glory."

[10] The lips of Jeremiah were also touched in his call by the hand of
God. But the meaning appears to have been different. He had complained
that he could not speak--that he was tongue-tied. The touch of the
Divine hand may have meant that the restraining cord was loosed, and a
free passage made for the utterance of what he had to say. The words
which accompanied the touch suggest, however, a slightly different
idea--"Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth." The difficulty of
Jeremiah was not exactly that of Moses, who, when he complained that he
could not speak, meant that, never having acquired the art of expressing
himself, he could not utter what he had to say, even though he was full
of matter. This was the natural difficulty of an elderly man; for the
art of expression has to be acquired in youth. But the difficulty of a
young man like Jeremiah is not so much to express what he has to say as
to get something worth saying. This was what Jeremiah complained of; and
the touching of his lips meant that God was putting His own words into
his mouth. It w