The Call of Samuel.
And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel said, Speak : for thy servant heareth.— i Sam. iii. lo.
1. For Samuel a great change was necessary and imminent. Up to this moment he had lived largely in the energy and motive- power of his mother's intense religious life. It was needful that he should exchange the traditional for the experimental. His faith must rest, not on the assertions of another's testimony, but on the fact that for himself he had seen, and tasted, and handled the Word of life. Not at second-hand, but at first, the Word of the Lord must come to him, and be passed on to all Israel.
2. It was the call of Samuel to his life's work. Circum- stances, as we say, but circumstances of which a mother's prayer was part, determined the sphere in which that work was to be done. "The child ministered unto the Lord before Eli." Then came the Divine voice calling him by name; calling him, out of the many possibilities of an office which he shared with such men as Eli's sons, to his own special and high prophetic destiny. The true nature of that call, misunderstood by him at first, was interpreted by the experienced insight of the aged Eli. "Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child." In obedience he accepted the call — " Speak : for thy servant heareth." And by that acceptance his character is sealed evermore. " Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan even to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord." <^e are not all called to be prophets, but we are called, in our varying ways, to minister to the Lord ; and we may learn from
this typical history how to recognize and answer our call."',
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252 THE CALL OF SAMUEL
The subject is the Call of a Man to the Work of his Life. I. The Persons who are Called. II. The Time of the Call.
III. Its Manner.
IV. Its Purpose.
V. The Kesponsibility.
L
The Peesons who are Called.
( 1. The call of Samuel is an extreme and vivid instance of a truth of which the Bible is full — the truth that we are all called of Go^ to our several places and occasions of action or of passion, of working or of waiting in the world; in a word, that we all have a vocation. We hardly need the Bible to tell us this, for it is one of the simplest truths of natural religion. The evidences of providential purpose in the world have been criticized in every age, and never more so than in our own. But they have proved too strong to be upset by criticism, and still remain, as they have ever been, among our most necessary forms of thought. And as man is the crown and climax of the visible creation, we naturally expect the purpose which is so abundantly visible elsewhere, to obtain also in the life of man. He too must have a purpose ; and to be created for a purpose is, in the case of a free being, to be called to its fulfilment. Thus the vocation of man is a corollary from the design in the world, and may fairly, therefore, be called a part of our natural religion. The New Testament takes up and intensifies this thought, addressing Christians as " the called of Jesus Christ," " called to be saints," " called according to God's purpose," " called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord," " called out of the darkness," " called to liberty," " called to eternal life," " called to inherit a blessing," "called to glory and virtue," and bidding us "walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called."
What is the course of the life Of mortal men on the earth? — Most men eddy about Here and there — eat and drink, Chatter and love and hate. Gather and squander, are raised
I SAMUEL III. lo 253
Aloft, are hurled in the dust, Striving blindly, achieving Nothing; and then they die — Perish, and no one asks Who or what they have been, More than he asks what waves, In the moonlit solitudes mild Of the midmost Ocean, have swelled, Foam'd for a moment, and gone.
That is no untrue picture of the spectacle of life: and yet these men, whose career the poet likens to " an eddy of purpose- less dust," have none the less been called one by one to glory and to virtue, and shall be called again from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof, that God may judge His people.^
^ No one can understand any work aright unless he is called to it. Vocation is of two kinds : either it is Divine, comes from above, or from those who have a right to command, and then it is a vocation of faith ; or it is a vocation of love, and comes from our equals.^
— I hear from all-wards, all-wise understand. The great bird Purpose bears me 'twixt her wings, And I am one with all the kinsmen things That e'er my Father fathered. Oh, to me All questions solve in this tranquillity.^