full-freighted, and your investments never fail, and your bank account is the envy of the town. Never a supplication goes up from your lips when they whom you love are sick; but skilled physicians, and rare and costly medicines are at your command, and all the healing climates of the earth are as if at your door, and you put your trust in nothing higher than these; but your sick recover, and your home is bright with congratulations in which there mingles no thought of thankfulness to God; and meanwhile sickness comes to my house, the home of daily prayer, where silent thankfulness for every daily mercy burns like the perpetual flame before an altar;-and over the dear form so racked with anguish or wasted with slow decay, I pour out my soul to God, an hourly sacrifice, and pray, and hope, and wait,—and wait in vain. On goes the course of the disease, inexorable as if under a mechanic law; and at last the beloved one is torn from my heart, and I lay the dear, marred body in the earth, and sit down alone and desolate in the silent house, and the unbelievers ask each other, under their breath," Where is now his God?" and "What profit shall we have, if we pray unto Him?”

Do not such things happen? Yes, thank God, they do! Thank God, who does not so bind Himself to the letter of our petition but that we can trust Him not to answer our crying to our own ruin-can trust Him to withhold as well as to give; else no man would dare to pray. Thank God who can be better than His word, and do for us exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, making all things work together for our good, and changing sorrow into an "eternal weight of glory;"-who to the soul that waiteth for Him, with long persistent patience that is born of steadfast faith, at last reveals the meaning of His strange way, making light to spring forth out of darkness, until, how perplexed soever each may be concerning all the rest, each for himself sees and understands and glorifies the loving-kindness of the Lord towards him, so that from among the multitude of His redeemed ones, now so often perplexed, bewildered, long waiting for the light that long delays, there shall be at last no voice wanting in the chorus that shall "stand upon the sea of glass having the harps of God," singing "the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, 'Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints!'"

VIII. THE MINISTER'S VOCATION AND AVOCATION.

BY THE REV. J. BRAINERD Thrall,

THE question, now continually arising, as to what employments and amusements, not distinctively ministerial, the minister may properly engage in, is greatly simplified when the broad, clear light of our unmistakable calling is turned full upon it, and steadily held there. But when avocation is placed before vocation, or considered apart from it, this question becomes endlessly involved. Light cannot be judged by darkness, but darkness by light. We are not to view our calling in the light of the world, but the world in the light of our calling. And therefore the subject of this paper, though apparently large, is reduced to its smallest practicable dimensions.

Let us explain this point of departure more fully. The minister's calling is really the minister's consciousness, and ought to be the minister's conscience. Cut off the light of that consciousness, and the light of conscience is extinguished. All becomes alike permissible or alike questionable. Turn on the light, and the rightness and wrongness of all employments and amusements stand plainly revealed. This noonday brightness of consciousness and conscience, of reason and experience, of doctrine and life, is perfectly exhibited only in Jesus Christ. Governing principles may not be very hard to discover, but the questions of casuistry that arise in every-day ministerial life are not usually decided by mere governing principles. They are oftener determined by that inner sense of right and wrong, propriety and impropriety, expediency and inexpediency, which we may call the ministerial character. The minister whose heart and life are outside the limits of his vocation may do many things with undisturbed conscience, however correct his theory, which will seem wrong to him when he becomes again a whole-hearted minister. The minister who believes in his mission, and is wholly consecrated to it, will seldom make a serious practical mistake. But theory underlies practice, and it is important that, in theory as well as practice, this segment of bright and healing light, which shines out into human life, and which we

call The Clergyman, should be neither too broad nor too narrow. And it should be well defined. Any penumbra, any marginal dimness, caused by the interference of other considerations, such as the condition of society or the way's of the world, is, because dim, also doubtful, and therefore dangerous. The wise minister will avoid it until forced into it; and to be forced into it means simply the broadening of the ministerial consciousness so as to include it, when, though still marginal, it ceases to be dim and dangerous. The true minister widens his calling only by compulsions from within, not by enticements from without. He goes where the light that is within him says, Go; not where the darkness without him says, Come.

Our first business is, then, to fix the boundaries of this light which we have called the minister's consciousness, and then turn on the blaze to its full brightness. A mistake as to the limits of his calling is a fatal mistake. He must feel that he is called, and called to something definite and peculiar. This, which is true of every man, is true of the minister above every other man. His calling should bound in his life. Whatever is seen to be beautiful and proper in the light of that calling may be safely regarded as a part thereof. If it be of the nature of avocation, it is like a flower, a tree, a stream or a hill, diversifying the straight and narrow road which he has chosen to travel. He may harmlessly, if not helpfully, stop to pluck the flower and enjoy its fragrance; he may pause at the wayside brook to refresh himself or to bathe his hot and weary feet; he may cast himself for an hour beneath the grateful shade and rest his limbs; he may linger for a season on heights that command a wider and lovelier prospect, and drink in the inspiring greatness of God's creation and man's wide thoughts. But in the same light that reveals these joys and beauties many a stray bush, rose-covered to the eyes of other men, is seen to hide thorns; many a babbling brook is seen to flow with polluted water; many an inviting resting-place is perceived to be a dangerous allurement to sleep, deaf to the Voice that says, "Work, while it is called to-day;" many a wide-spread and varied landscape appears as it appeared to the Master's eye, "Kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them."

We will not dwell in detail upon the minister's vocation. We will try to define its limits rather than enumerate its contents. A few bold broad strokes will serve the purpose.

The minister is a man,-nothing else than a man. To be a man in the highest sense is his calling. He is called to all

the functions of manhood, but most of all to the highest. Everything below the level of character and spiritual nature must be held subservient not only in theory, but in practice. He is freely supported, that he may have great freedom and opportunity-denied to most men to illustrate manhood in its highest sense. Without purse or scrip, as it were, devoid of a worldly, business-like care for the morrow, he is sent to show to busy, anxious, tempted men the ideal of a high manhood. Whatever he can do to elevate men belongs generically to his calling; whatever he can do to elevate the characters, restore the souls, or upbuild the faith of men, belongs specifically to his calling. He is not a doctor, a lawyer, or a teacher, but a priest, ministering under the "great High Priest, who hath passed into the heavens." In a sense men must be able to say of him, “Never man spake like this man." In a sense he must be able to say, "I came forth from the Father." In a sense his preaching must bear this witness, He that is of the truth heareth my voice." His daily life, his very character, must shine with something of the radiance of transfiguration. It must glow with ideality. He must submit to be judged by higher moral standards than other men, and when he is summoned before the bar of public opinion, the world's Pilates should be compelled to wash their hands and declare, "I find no fault in him."

He must also be a man in a diviner sense than other men He cannot find his best comfort and support in this world. He must know of a high tower and a great rock. He must

dwell in the "secret place of the Most High," and, learning there a higher than social science and nobler than humanitarian methods, he must go forth, like the Spirit of God, to redeem men's lives from destruction.

Still more specifically, he is the anointed priest of an economy. It is his peculiar work to preach Christ and upbuild His church.

This is a high view of the minister's vocation; but if it be ideally high, it is also ideally broad. It admits all the latitude any true man can ask for. There is no real and solid breadth except that which furnishes a basis on which to build up altitude. There is no true liberty except in connection with limitation. This truth, which the Greeks revealed in art, and the Romans in law, Christ reveals through His ministry in the gospel. No real privilege but is blood-bought. This is amply illustrated in our self-denying profession. No other man in modern society is granted the same privileges that the good minister is permitted to enjoy. A clergyman

whose silver wedding recently drew together a large and representative company, bringing with them rich gifts of love and silver, bore his people witness that, during his pastorate of nearly two-score years, they had allowed him the "joy of liberty." Many others could bear similar testimony. People will give a true minister what they will give no other man. They will give him vacations which they would give no other man. They will enlarge his borders and accord him liberties which they will accord no other man.

Christ, the self-denying and the ideal, ate with publicans and sinners, broke the law of the Sabbath with impunity, and taught a doctrine which undermined and overthrew the whole Jewish economy. The minister of to-day who climbs to the height of his calling is permitted to attain unto its breadth. The man of blameless life and zeal for human good may subvert old doctrines without reproach, and walk where baser men cannot go unscathed. A man is like a pyramid; his base is not limited except by his height. He may be unimpeachable in orthodoxy and punctilious in deportment, but, if this be all, he cannot blind the eyes of his people to the fact that he is cold in his sympathies, hackneyed and uninspiring in his sermons, and destitute of a true ideality. They will measure him by his height, and if he be not a lofty minister, they will allow him to limit himself to a very narrow range of privileges. His parish would find fault, should he venture beyond his self-appointed limits. And this is as it should be.

It is the high minister who can afford to be broad, nay, who must be broad. His is the breadth of a man,—a thinking man, an aspiring man, a Christian man. It is the "liberty of the gospel." It was by rising toward a man's full height that Paul and Luther widened out to well-nigh a man's full breadth. Such liberty is no Antinomianism, wearing the clanking chains of license. It is a liberty that comes by law, a law as exact and inexorable as that which built

the pyramids. Breadth is a relative matter. It becomes noticeable and offensive only when it is out of symmetry. We find it hard to think of Christ as so very broad, because He was also so very high. Let a minister rise high enough, and he need not fear that he will not be allowed to expand. Let him rise high enough, and he need have no anxious fear lest he grow too broad. Let him rise high enough, and the inexorable law of mental and moral symmetry will do the rest.

But, wherever there is law, there may be also lawlessness. A minister may broaden out until he lacks symmetry. This