t by means of calls which they are to obey, and which
if they do not obey, they lose place, and fall behind in their heavenly
course. He leads them forward from strength to strength, and from
glory to glory, up the steps of the ladder whose top reacheth to
heaven. We pass from one state of knowledge to another; we are
introduced into a higher region from a lower, by listening to Christ's
call and obeying it.

Perhaps it may be the loss of some dear friend or relative through
which the call comes to us; which shows us the vanity of things below,
and prompts us to make God our sole stay. We through grace do so in a
way we never did before; and in the course of years, when we look back
on our life, we find that that sad event has brought us into a new
state of faith and judgment, and that we are as though other men from
what we were. We thought, before it took place, that we were serving
God, and so we were in a measure; but we find that, whatever our
present infirmities may be, and however far we be still from the
highest state of illumination, then at least we were serving the world
under the show and the belief of serving God.

Or again, perhaps something occurs to force us to take a part for God
or against Him. The world requires of us some sacrifice which we see
we ought not to grant to it. Some tempting offer is made us; or some
reproach or discredit threatened us; or we have to determine and avow
what is truth and what is error. We are enabled to act as God would
have us act; and we do so in much fear and perplexity. We do not see
our way clearly; we do not see what is to follow from what we have
done, and how it bears upon our general conduct and opinions: yet
perhaps it has the most important bearings. That little deed, suddenly
exacted of us, almost suddenly resolved on and executed, may be as
though a gate into the second or third heaven--an entrance into a
higher state of holiness, and into a truer view of things than we have
hitherto taken.

Or again, we get acquainted with some one whom God employs to bring
before us a number of truths which were closed on us before; and we but
half understand them, and but half approve of them; and yet God seems
to speak in them, and Scripture to confirm them. This is a case which
not unfrequently occurs, and it involves a call "to follow on to know
the Lord[13]."

Or again, we may be in the practice of reading Scripture carefully, and
trying to serve God, and