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our conscience, it matters not, so that we feel it to be a command.^
2. Let us think of some of the ways in which the call of God may come to us.
(1) In nature. — Are there not days when the mountains and the hills break forth before us into singing, and the trees of the field clap their hands, because God is speaking to them ? Do you not lift up your eyes to the heavens at night, and watch the stars, and seem to hear God speaking to you in the solemn silence ?
^ I can imagine at once how impatiently the cynic will sneer at what he will regard as a poetic fancy which has been worn threadbare into a deceptive platitude. It was so in the days of the Preacher. " He hath made every thing beautiful in his time : also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh." And so they cannot even learn that lesson which to us comes intuitively and at once, that Nature is but visible spirit ; that God is, and that He is a God of Love. Not to the base, not to the sensual, not to the cold cynic, not to the insolent scorner, but
Every bird that sings. And every flower that stars the elastic sod. And every breath the radiant summer brings, To the pure spirit is a Word of God.
I will quote here the language of one who is dubious about many Christian truths, and I will quote him to show why it is that, standing with uncovered head and awful reverence in the mighty Temple of the Universe, a believer holds that God loves him, and wills his happiness. "The earth," he says, "is sown with pleasures, as the heaven is studded with stars; and when a man has not been happy ia life, we do not hesitate to declare that he has missed one of the aims of his existence. The path of the years is paved and planted with enjoyments. Flowers the noblest and the loveliest — colours the most gorgeous and the most delicate — odours the sweetest and the subtlest — harmonies the most soothing and the most stirring — the sunny glories of the day — the pale Elysian graces of the moonlight — 'silent pinnacles of aged snow' in one hemisphere — the marvels of tropical luxuriance in another — the serenity of sunsets, the
* J. H. Newmaix
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sublimity of storms — everything is bestowed in boundless pro- fusion; we can conceive or desire nothing more exquisite or perfect than that which is around us every hour," That, then, is one revelation, but it is not all ; for I add that Nature, which is but the visible translucence of a Divine agency working upon material things, reveals to us also that this happiness is attainable only in the path of obedience — that this "not our- selves" (if any feel happier by the use of such pantheistic abstractions) is a not-ourselves which makes for righteousness. Winds blow this lesson to us, and waters roll it, and every leaf is inscribed with it, as those on which the Sibyl wrote out her prophecies of old.^
Thou need'st not rest : the shining spheres are Thine
That roll perpetual on their silent way. And Thou dost breathe in me a voice divine,
That tells more sure of Thine eternal sway; Thine the first starting of the early leaf,
The gathering green, the changing autumn hue; To Thee the world's long years are but as brief
As the fresh tints that Spring will soon renew. Thou needest not man's .little life of years,
Save that he gather wisdom from them all; That in Thy fear he lose all other fears,
And in Thy calling heed no other call. Then shall he be Thy child to know Thy care. And in Thy glorious Self the eternal Sabbath share.^
(2) In Providence. — The accidents and events of life are, as is obvious, one special way in which the calls of God come to us ; and they, as we all know, are, in their very nature, and as the word accident implies, sudden and unexpected. A man is going on as usual; he comes home one day, and finds a letter, or a message, or a person, bringing a sudden trial on him, which, if met religiously, will be the means of advancing him to a higher state of religious excellence, but which at present he as little comprehends as the unspeakable words heard by St. Paul in Paradise.
Perhaps it may be the loss of some dear friend or relative
through which the call comes to us; showing us the vanity
of things below, and prompting us to make God our sole stay.
We through grace do so in a way we never did before ; and in
^ F. W. Farrar. ^ Jones Very.
26o THE CALL OF SAMUEL
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 now other men than 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 may still be from the highest state of illumination, then at least we were serving the world under the show and the belief of serving God.