> Bolton KiBg, Mazttini, 240. * W. Bumio.
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^ All the good impressions I ever received came through reading. When I was about nine, some one gave me a copy of Baxter's Call, which I read through with great interest and earnestness ; then Alleine's Alarm. Then I got hold of a copy of Doddridge's Rise and Progress, and not only read it through, but prayed all its prayers upon my knees. Then, when I was about ten, Squire Brooke came to the village, and a number of lads, myself amongst them, went like a flock of sheep into the vestry. The others were soon made happy, but I went mourning for some days. One night during a noisy prayer-meeting a big lad told me it was my duty to stand up and say I was saved, I did as I was told, but it was not true. I went to " class," prayed in prayer- meetings, but it was weary bondage until, in my seventeenth year, I ran away from it all. I think it was on that account more than any other that I buried myself out of the sight and hearing of every one who knew me with the intention that it should be for life. When I was in my twenty-first year I dreamt that I had to die in a fortnight. The news did not give me any fear, but I said, " What a fool I have been ! Here is the end of my life, and I have not even begun to serve the purpose for which God gave it me." Six weeks afterwards I suddenly remembered this dream with all I thought and felt, the result being that on the spot I resolved to be a Christian.^
0 blessed Paul elect to grace.
Arise and wash away thy sin, Anoint thy head and wash thy face,
Thy gracious course begin. To start thee on thy outrunning race Christ shows the splendour of His Face: What will that Face of splendour be When at the goal He welcomes thee ? *
II.
A Call.
"And called me through his grace."
In the Acts of the Apostles the external details of the call of St. Paul are described ; here he gives us only the internal experi-
^ John Brash : Memorials and CorrespondcTice, 23. " Christina G. Rossetti, Verses, 83.
GAL. I. 15, 16 337
ence. He alone could give this, and this was the really important thing. The flashing light, the arrested journey, the audible voice, the blindness, were all accessories. The one important thing was the inward voice that brought conviction to the heart of the man. Every Apostle needed a call from Christ to constitute him such. But every Christian has some Divine call. We have not the miracle to convey the call, and we do not want it. By the mani- fest claims that present themselves to us, by the discovery of our own powers and opportunities of service, by the promptings of our conscience, Christ calls us to our life's work. To see a work for Christ needing to be done, and to be able to do it, is a providential call to undertake it.
1. The call is an act of God's grace — " called me through his grace." God Himself — without the intervention of Apostles, without human intervention of any kind — had spoken to him the strong and gracious word which had broken his heart to penitence, and which had drawn him to Christ. There had been no move- ment towards Christ on his own part. He was on his way to Damascus, vehement, passionate in his hatred of the new sect, resolved to suppress it ; it was God's " grace" — what else ? — that " called " him to receive the Christian redemption and to preach the Christian Gospel. At that point, indeed, his own free response to the grace of God came in ; till now, all that God had done to prepare him for his Apostleship was done without any free con- currence of his in God's great purpose ; he had known nothing of it. Now, however, he might have thwarted and defeated the Divine love ; but, as he says elsewhere, he " was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision."
2. The call is ever a secret between the soul and God. We have to find out for ourselves how our spiritual life is to develop and form itself: there is no programme we can draw up and publish as binding upon all who would fulfil the requirements of Christian service ; nor is it demanded that the sacred summons, when we have heard and obeyed it, should affect us all in precisely the same manner, or work in all of us exactly similar results. When we yield ourselves to holy inspirations, it does not mean that our characters are, as it were, run into a comman mould or
2 COR. & GAL. — 2 2
338 THE INNER REVELATION
stamped with a common pattern. God may call you, and you may answer to the call and lift up your eyes to behold Him ; but perhaps you may have a vision of Him totally diflferent from the vision given to me ; and according to our visions, according to the aspect in which each one of us has seen Him, will He control and affect our lives. One may grasp God by intellect, reaching up to Him through reasoning processes and exercises of thought. Another may be conscious of God coming near to him through the avenues of sensibility and feeling, be touched by the wonder of His majesty, overawed by the immeasurableness of His power. Yet another may be held to God by the influences of love, and may be constantly filled with the experiences of His tenderness and grace, and find the sweetness of a personal relationship with God the dominant factor in his spiritual consciousness. And so we get various types of the spiritual life, according to the various aspects in which various hearts behold God.