know that I have ever seen an entirely satisfactory
statement of what constitutes a call to the ministry. Probably it is one
of those things of the Spirit which cannot be mathematically defined.
The variety of the calls in Scripture warns us against laying down any
scheme to which the experience of every one must conform. It is the same
as with the commencement of the spiritual life, where also the work of
the Spirit of God overflows our definitions. While some can remember and
describe the whole process through which they have passed, others who
exhibit as undeniably the marks of the Divine handiwork can give
comparatively little account of how it took place. The test of the
reality of the change is not its power of being made into a good story.
In the one case, however, as in the other, a conscientious man will give
all diligence to make his calling and election sure. Excellent chapters
on the subject will be found in Spurgeon's _Lectures to My Students_ and
Blaikie's _For the Work of the Ministry_.

[13] "You have to be busy men, with many distractions, with time not
your own: and yet, if you are to be anything, there is one thing you
must secure. You must have time to enter into your own heart and be
quiet, you must learn to collect yourselves, to be alone with
yourselves, alone with your own thoughts, alone with eternal realities
which are behind the rush and confusion of moral things, alone with God.
You must learn to shut your door on all your energy, on all your
interests, on your hopes and fears and cares, and in the silence of your
chamber to 'possess your souls.' You must learn to look below the
surface; to sow the seed which you will never reap; to hear loud voices
against you or seductive ones, and to find in your own heart the
assurance and the spell which makes them vain. Whatever you do, part not
with the inner sacred life of the soul whereby we live _within_ to
'things not seen,' to Christ, and truth and immortality. Your work, your
activity, belong to earth; no real human interest, nothing that stirs or
attracts or that troubles men in this scene of life, ought to be too
great or too little for you. But your thoughts belong to heaven; and it
is to that height that they must rise, it is _there_ that in solitude
and silence they must be rekindled, and enlarged, and calmed, if even
activity and public spirit are not to degenerate into a fatal
forgetfulness of the true purpose of your calling--a forgetfulne