Cast by that far white gleam, And I tremble at the murmur
Of one mote in the mighty beam, As the everlasting squadrons
Their fated influence shed. While the vast meridians sparkle
With the glory of their tread. That constellated glory
The primal morning saw. And I know God moves to His purpose,
And still there is life in His law.^
(4) In Scripture. — The Lord speaks to us chiefly through His Word. What converse God has with His people when they are quietly reading their Bibles ! In the quiet of our room, as we have been reading a chapter, have we not felt as if God spoke those words straight to our heart there and then? Has not Christ Himself said to us, while we have been reading His Word, " Let not your heart be troubled : ye believe in God, believe also
1 n. P. Spollord.
I SAMUEL III. lo 263
in me " ? The text does not seem to be like an old letter in a book; rather is it like a fresh speech newly spoken from the may.th of the Lord to us.
\^ It is well to notice that the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the Word of the Lord. Let us not seek for revelations through dreams or visions, but by the Word of God. Nothing is more harmful than to contract the habit of listening for voices, and sleeping to dream. All manner of vagaries come in by that door. It is best to take in hand and read the Scriptures reverently, carefully, thoughtfully, crying, " Speak, Lord ; for thy servant heareth." And in response there will come one clear, defined, and repeated message, asseverated and accentuated with growing distinctness from every part of the inspired volume, "This is the way — walk in it; this is My will — do it ; this is My word — speak it." Let uS/ hear what God the Lord shall speak.V .^. ,-.:-u«.>- -i-V ' ' ' ''"'/f^
(5) In the Spirit. — God has a way sometimes of speaking to the heart by His Spirit — not usually apart from His Word — • but yet there are certain feelings and emotions, tendernesses and tremblings, joys and delights, which we cannot quite link with any special portion of Scripture laid home to the heart, but which seem to steal upon us unawares by the direct operation of the Spirit of God upon the heart.
^ I think we are not half as mindful as we ought to be of the secret working of the Holy Spirit upon the mind. This is a very different thing from being guided by the Spirit of God in all the actions of Ufe so as to obey the will of the Lord, sometimes in cases where we might not have known it to be His will, or might have omitted it. Whenever you feel moved to do anything that is good, do it. Do it even without being moved, because it is your duty, for "to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." But, above all, when there comes a gracious influence on the conscience, a gentle reminder to the heart, quickly and speedily do as the Spirit prompts, taking note within your heart that the Lord has laid this particular burden upon you, and you must not cast it from you.2
^ When Hort decided to enter the ministry he wrote to his parents giving his reasons for the 'decision. The letter pro- ceeds in this way : " I have hitherto studiously confined myself 1 F. J3. Meyer. ' « C. H. Spurgcon.
264 THE CALL OF SAMUEL
to considerations and arguments. But if these were my only inducements I could not think myself justified in entering on so awful a responsibility ; how, then, could I answer the question, " Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon you this office and ministration ? " Here, then deliberately, yet with reverence I say, that I trust and believe that I am moved by the Holy Ghost. Nothing less should satisfy me. I believe that the strong and permanent inclination that I feel is of God. I know how miserably and imperfectly I serve Him. I fall into sin, more especially into coldness, indifference, and forgetfulness of Him through the day, yet in the midst of this repeatedly it seems as if He clutched hard at me, and I would not come ; and I cannot believe but that He is thus drawing me perseveringly towards His service." ^
We need not hear an articulate voice, such as bade Augustine "take and read." Yet kindred experiences even to this are commoner by far than most men dream. Augustine's intellectual friends might easily have explained that voice away ; but it was the crisis of his history, and through that history it has echoed, and still echoes, with incalculable power in the world to-day. Doubtless, too, it might have been called an irrational and foolish impulse which led St. Francis to stake his all upon the chance occurrence of a passage in the Gospel at a particular moment of his life ; still, it was an impulse fraught with untold blessing for subsequent ages of men. In a word, these things are not accidents. They are ways in which God, the Holy Ghost, chooses the weak things of the world to confound the wise ; flashing on the mind in an instant, through some chance thought, or sight, or sound, the conviction of His nearness, and the message of His will.