ou are to be what you are called to be. Now
there are two ways of dealing with this feeling. You may say, 'I am not
called to be an absolute saint; but I will try to reach a fairly high
standard;' or you may say, 'Yes, I am called to be an absolute saint. I
will not lower my ideal. I will comfort myself with that single word
"called." If He has called me, He will do in me and for me what He
wills.' This second way is the true way of dealing with feelings of
unworthiness and unfitness. You and I are utterly unfit. But we are
both called--called from our mother's womb--called to be saints and to be
ministers. He who called us will help us. With man the call seems
quixotic, impossible; with Him all things are possible. At times when
the call is loudest we can but reply, 'Ah! Lord, I am but a little
child.' We are intensely conscious of feebleness and, what is worse, of
treachery and meanness within; we half love what we are called upon to
denounce; we play with the sin we are to teach men to abhor. Yet the
call is sure, is definite, is perpetual, and again and again you will in
all probability find what a help it is to look back to that day in which
the call took formal shape. You have that as a definite fact to rest
upon, to reprove, to encourage, to urge to renewed effort, to force you
to be true and energetic.

One thing you must learn to do. Whatever you leave undone you must not
leave this undone. Your work will be stunted and half developed unless
you {97} attend to it. You must force yourself to be alone and to pray.
Do make a point of this. You may be eloquent and attractive in your
life, but your real effectiveness depends on your communion with the
eternal world. You will easily find excuses. Work is so pressing, and
work is necessary. Other engagements take time. You are tired. You
want to go to bed. You go to bed late and want to get up late. So
simple prayer and devotion are crowded out. And yet, T----, the
necessity is paramount, is inexorable. If you and I are ever to be of
any good, if we are to be a blessing, not a curse, to those with whom we
are connected, we must enter into ourselves, we must be alone with the
only source of unselfishness. If we are of use to others, it will
chiefly be because we are simple, pure, unselfish. If we are to be
simple, pure, unselfish, it will not be by reading books or talking or
working primarily, it will be by coming in continual contact with