Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send?
--
Messengers wanted
I. THE PERSON WANTED, as described in the questions, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?” The person wanted is viewed from two points. The person wanted has a Divine side: “Whom shall I send?” Then he has a human aspect: “Who will go for Us?” But the two meet together--the human and Divine unite in the last words, “for Us.” Here is a man, nothing more than a man of human instincts, but clad through Divine grace with superhuman, even with Divine authority. Let us look, then, at this two-sided person.
1. He is Divinely chosen.
2. Cheerfully willing.
3. Sent by the Three-One. When we tell others the story of the Cross we speak for God the Father. Nor must we forget our tender Redeemer. Moreover, that blessed Spirit, under whose dispensatorial power we live at the present hour, He has no voice to speak to the sons of men audibly except by His people; and though He works invisibly and mysteriously in the saints, yet He chooses loving hearts, and compassionate lips, and tearful eyes to be the means of benediction.
II. THE PERSON OFFERING HIMSELF. “Here am I; send me.” The person offering himself is described in the chapter at very great length--he must be an Isaiah. Being an Isaiah, he must--
1. Have felt his own unworthiness. Notice how it was that Isaiah was made to feel his unworthiness.
(1) By a sense of the presence of God.
(2) Isaiah saw the glory of Christ.
(3) It will strike you, too, that the particular aspect in which this humiliation may come to us will probably be, a sense of the Divine holiness, and the holiness of those who see His face.
2. We must possess a sense of mercy.
3. The man who will be acceptable must offer himself cheerfully. “Here am I.” How few of us have in very deed given ourselves to Christ it is with most professors, “Here is my half-guinea, here is my annual contribution”; but how few of us have said, “Here am I.”
4. The person who thus volunteered for sacred service gave himself unreservedly. He did not say, “Here am I; use me where I am,” but “send me.” Where to? No condition as to place is so much as hinted at.
5. He gives obediently, for he pauses to ask directions. It is not, “Here am I; away I will go,” but “Here am I; send me.” Some people get into their head a notion that they must do something uncommon and extraordinary, and though it may be most irrational, it is for that very reason that the scheme commends itself to their want of judgment. Because it is absurd, they think it to be Divine; if earthly wisdom does not justify it, then certainly heavenly wisdom must be called in to endorse it. Now, I conceive that you will find that whenever a thing is wise in God’s sight it is really wise, and that a thing which is absurd is not more likely to be adopted by God than by man; for though the Lord does use plans which are called foolish, they are only foolish to fools, but not actually foolish.
III. THE WORK WHICH SUCH PERSONS WILL BE CALLED TO UNDERTAKE. Isaiah’s history is a picture of what many and many a true Christian labourer may expect. Isaiah was sent to preach very unpleasant truth, but like a true hero he was very bold in preaching it. “Isaiah is very bold,” says the apostle. Now, if you are called of God either to preach or teach, or whatever it is, remember the things you have to preach or teach will not be agreeable to your hearers. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Militia-Christians
Some people are militia Christians--they serve the King with a limitation, and must not be sent out of England; but others are soldier-Christians, who give themselves wholly up to their Lord and Captain; they will go wherever He chooses to send them. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Copyhold-Christians
Some professors appear to belong to God by copyhold. They grant a limited kind of Divine right to their energies and substance; but there are many clauses which limit the holding. I hope that you are God’s portion upon an absolute freehold. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
God’s call for servants
Several questions arise as we read these words. Why is God asking for service instead of discharging the work Himself? He can speak in tones which would make the proudest quail; He can unfold a majesty before which the whole nation should be subdued. Or again, if He needs service, why does He wait for volunteers? Why does He not compel servants to enter upon this mission, as He imposed on Moses the task of leading the people of Israel out of the land of bondage?
I. THE DIVINE CALL:--“Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?”
1. Why should God thus ask human service? We cannot doubt for a moment how independent our glorious God might be of all mere human resources.
(1) The great purposes which God seeks to accomplish can best be achieved through human instrumentality. God craves from men, not the unconscious response which the mown grass makes to the showers, or dewdrops to the sunlight. He desires intelligent, trustful, loving union with Himself, and it may be that such ends as these are better obtained through human instrumentality than by an overpowering exhibition of the Divine majesty and glory. As the light comes to us through the atmosphere, which lessens its dazzling power, so that we are illuminated instead of being blinded with excess of light, so God gives to us His commands and messages through human tongues and language, lest we should be overpowered.
(2) God means to educate His servants by using them for His purposes. When He says, “Whom shall I send,” it is not that He is destitute of angelic hosts who would thankfully accept the commission. He knows how our human hearts will be educated by the very ministry we render.
2. Notice what is involved in such a call as this. When God says, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us,” He pledges Himself to endue with authority, and to endow with all needful gifts, the man who answers the call.
II. THE RESPONSE OF THE PROPHET. “Here am I; send me.”
1. What could have led the prophet to offer himself for a Divine mission? How had he the courage to step forward and volunteer? Did he not shrink from the vast issues involved in the work? Did he not understand the dangers into which he would plunge? Did he not know how hard it would be to reach men’s hearts around him with the solemn message? He knew it all, but he stepped forward in the simplicity of a perfect faith, and said, “Here am I; send me.” You will perceive in the foregoing verse an account of his preparation for receiving this call. He was prepared by a sense of pardoning love. In the fulness of a loving, grateful heart, he stepped forward and accepted the mission.
2. Notice the willingness with which the prophet offered himself. He steps forward as one who feels it an honour, and is ready for any sacrifice which the honour may entail. This is the light in which we may wisely look on Christian service.
III. THE DIVINE ACCEPTANCE OF THE PROPHET’S OFFER. God said, “Go.” You have just that very simple succession of events. God asking for service, the prophet offering himself, and God accepting his services. If God has given you aptitude in dealing with the experiences of men, go into the homes of the poor and destitute, ministering consolation to their sorrows. If God has given you warm sympathies with the young, go into the ranks of the Sunday school, draw young hearts around you, and win them to Christ. If God has given you influence with men, go to the drunkard and the fallen and seek to reclaim them from the depths of degradation in which they are sunk. If God has given you the tongue of the wise to speak a word in season, which shall be as apples of gold in pictures of silver, go and use the power in private talk with the men you meet in daily life. (C. B. Symes, B. A.)
The commission of a sinful but cleansed man
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Why does the Lord ask that question with such anxiety when He has all those shining seraphs standing at His side, and each one of them with six wings? Why was Isaiah, the son of Amoz, a man of unclean lips, and a man woeful and undone, so accepted, and so sent? Seraphs, not sinners, should surely be the preachers of such holiness as that of the God of Israel, and the heralds of such a Saviour--that is what we would have expected. But God’s thoughts in these things are not as our thoughts. This has always been God’s way in choosing and in ordaining and in sending both prophets, and psalmists, and priests, and preachers for His Church on earth. Only once did God choose a completely sinless preacher. Always, but that once, God has chosen sinful men; and, not seldom, the most sinful of men He could get to speak to their fellow men about sin and salvation. Gabriel might come with his six wings and his salutation to announce to Mary that the fulness of time had come and that the Word was to be made flesh, but it was John, the son of Zacharias, who was not that light, who was sent to preach repentance to the vipers of his day, and to urge them to flee from the wrath to come. And just as for the awakening and the warning of sinners, so for the edification and the comfort of saints. “For every high priest is taken from among men, who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity.” Isaiah, accordingly, of all men on the earth at that moment, and of all angels in heaven, was the man chosen of God to preach repentance to Jerusalem, and to prophesy to her the coming of her Messiah. And he preached on all these matters as no angel in all heaven could have preached, he preached as only a leper could preach to his brother lepers, and as only one undone man could preach to other undone men. Just hear him in his first sermon. “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib. Ah! sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers. Why should ye be stricken any more? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores.” All God’s seraphs taken together could not preach like that. It takes a great sinner to preach as well as to hear like that. You must have a man of men to see, and to feel, and to say things like that. And then, on the other hand, no seraph of them all, with all his wings, had seen down so deep, and had come up so close to the holiness of God as Isaiah had seen and had come close. The seraphs cry Holy, holy, holy, to one another, but they do not know what they are saying. The seraphs are innocent children. And He whom they so innocently praise charges His seraphs with folly. But, “Woe is me! for I am undone!” The Lord likes to hear that. This young preacher, then, having seen both sin and holiness as no seraph ever saw these terrible things, proceeds in his sermon in this way: “Wash you, make you clean; cease to do evil, learn to do well; judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow: though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Every syllable of all that is out of Isaiah’s own experience. Preaching like that never yet came out of the schools of the prophets, any more than it ever came out of the mouth of an angel. Isaiah had done it all to himself, and had had it all done unto him of God. (A. Whyte, D. D.)
The challenge of service
I. THE CHALLENGE. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” The Lord’s ordinary manner of appointing His messengers is to select them Himself, and without consulting them send them to do their work. He commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh with every consideration for Jonah’s fitness, and no consideration for Jonah’s tastes. The work is always more important than the man, for the man has a brief life, and the work is immortal. It ought not, therefore, to be expected that the Lord should regard anything in choosing a servant for duty but that servant’s qualifications for the duty. But there are exceptions to this rule of selection for work. When the task is a peculiarly hazardous one; when the performance of it demands the highest attributes of the intellect, the rarest qualities of the heart, and an extraordinary stimulus of inspiration, it is better that these gifts should go to the work under the impulse of a self-moving passion rather than under the enforcement of command. The General of an army wisely relaxes the routine discipline of duty when in the fortunes of the campaign the troops have to face the desperate service of some forlorn hope. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” is the proclamation from the Commander’s tent, and a storming party of volunteers is told off, to mount the breach and take the van of danger.
1. In the year that King Uzziah died it seemed as if the last hope of the people of God had expired with him.
2. The nature of the work may be inferred from the condition of the people. They were an old and not a young nation: they were wicked and not ignorant: the two fountains of power, the Church and the State, were corrupt at their sources, authority of every kind was on the side of licentiousness; and since, with all this, the outward forms of order and of piety were preserved, the people grew up to be as remarkable for their hypocrisy as for their immorality. It has always been supposed that, whether in the case of a nation, or an individual, suffering is a powerful moralist; and that a mind which is proof against the humbling and cleansing effects of pain is reprobate and beyond redemption. The people of Israel and Judah had been punished by every species of chastisement; invasion, captivity, pestilence, famine, and sword, nothing that a people loves or a man cherishes had been left untouched; from the sole of the nation’s foot to the crown of her head, the lash of retribution had been laid on so heavily that nothing was to be seen but “wounds and bruises and putrifying sores.” Yet they continued to revolt more and more. This was the state of things for which the Lord demanded a voluntary workman. Who will be a bearer of evil tidings? who will reprove kings for My sake? Who will expose and denounce wickedness in high places? Who will proclaim the insincerity of the priests, their robbery of the flock, and the fiction of their ceremonial? Who will go to the market places and declare the dishonesty of their traffic? Who will beard the army and charge the soldiers with cowardice and treason? Who will be hated of all men, and be the victim of the conspiracies of the crafty, of the insults of the street rabble, and of the desertion of false and incompetent friends? Who will endure to fail; to be simply a witness; to speak without convincing; to sow without a harvest?
3. The voice of the Lord cries loudly in the midst of the Churches of today, inviting voluntary service for difficult work; missionary work abroad and missionary work at home.
II. THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE CHALLENGE, “Here am I; send me.” Looking at this acceptance by itself, it seems an extraordinary sacrifice on the part of Isaiah. He was a youth, probably not more than eighteen or nineteen, when he answered the Lord’s challenge; he was a member of the first circle of the Jewish aristocracy, and, according to some authorities, a prince of the royal blood. He was nurtured in the soft and sumptuous luxuriance of palaces. There had been in his training everything to satisfy sense and to kindle ambition. Having great natural parts and a fine genius, and commanding both means and leisure, the career of a great State ruler, or a Church dignitary, or the easy splendour of an intellectual voluptuary, any or all of these distinctions were within reach of the gifted kinsman of Uzziah. Youth as he was, his social position and quick observation enabled him to appreciate the service demanded in the challenge. He knew the people to whom the message would be sent; he conjectured what the character of that message would be; and what kind of service awaited the man who should deliver it; that it would be hard, unthankful, and dangerous; and yet this youth, born to be a fine gentleman, accepted a task which might well have made the strongest and most experienced natures shrink, “Here am I; send me!” Let us seek the explanation of this simplicity, devotion, and courage in that which went before the acceptance of the challenge. (E. Jenkins, LL. D.)
Visions of God
I. THE VISION OF GOD TO THE SOUL. The vision of God to the soul implies these two facts, namely, that God can communicate, speak, and make Himself manifest and known to the soul, and that the soul has capacity to receive what God makes known, or communicates to it. This capacity has been impaired, more or less, in all human beings.
II. THE VISION OF GOD HAS EFFECTS UPON THE SOUL. It has a creative power that calls several new forces into action.
1. The sense of sin.
2. The sense of forgiveness.
3. The sense of duty.
4. Power to perform duty. (W. Thomas.)
The Divine call for missionaries
I. Let us gaze upon THE VISION OF GLORY which Isaiah saw. It was necessary for him to see it in order that he might be brought into the condition of heart out of which should come the full consecration expressed in--“Here am I; send me.” Observe what he saw.
1. The supreme glory of God. See the patience of His infinite majesty,--He sits in calm glory upon His eternal throne. Nor is it a mean throne either, nor one of little dignity; it is “high and lifted up.” It is not merely above all other thrones by way of greater power, but over them all by way of supreme dominion over them.
2. The court of the great King. He beheld the glorious attendants who perpetually perform homage, nearest to His throne.
3. The perpetual song, for these sacred beings continually cried, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.” While you praise His holiness do not forget His power, but adore Him as “Jehovah of hosts.” And then dwell, that you may feel a missionary spirit, on that last part of the song, “The whole earth is filled with His glory,” for so it really is in one sense. “Jehovah of hosts is the fulness of the whole earth.” Turn this ascription, for it may be so read, into a wish: “Let the whole earth be filled with His glory.” Read it, if you please, as a prophecy: “The whole earth shall be filled with His glory,” and then go you forward, O ye servants of the Most High, with this resolve, that in His hands you will be the means of fulfilling the prophecy by spreading abroad the knowledge of His name among the sons of men.
II. Let us now turn our thoughts to THE VISION OF ORDINATION. This man Isaiah was to go forth in Jehovah’s name, but in order to preparation for so high an embassage he must undergo a process peculiar but necessary.
III. When a man is prepared for sacred work he is not long before he receives a commission. We come, then, to think of THE DIVINE CALL. Notice the particular kind of man for whom this voice is seeking. It is a man who must be sent, a man under impulse, a man under authority--“Whom shall I send?” But it is a man who is quite willing to go, a volunteer, one who in his inmost heart rejoices to obey--“Who will go for Us? “What a strange mingling this is!” Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel,” and yet “taking the oversight of the flock of God not by constraint but willingly.”
IV. Now comes the last point, THE EARNEST RESPONSE. “Here am I; send me.”
1. I think I see in that response a consciousness of his being in a certain position which no one else occupied, which rendered it incumbent upon him to say, “Here am I.”
2. Then, he makes a full surrender of himself. Isaiah gave himself up to the Lord none the less completely because his errand was so full of sadness. He was not to win men, but to seal their doom by putting before them truth which they would be sure to reject.
3. Then comes Isaiah’s prayer for authority and anointing. If we read this passage rightly we shall not always throw the emphasis upon the last word,
“me,” but read it also thus, “Here am I, send me.” He is willing to go, but he does not want to go without being sent. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Here am I; send me
Whole-hearted service
“Here am I; send me.” These few simple words express the crisis, the turning point in the life of Isaiah. If he had never uttered these words you would never have heard of him. But the uttering of these words in profound sincerity from the bottom of his heart made him one of the greatest of the prophets of God. The very first condition of whole-hearted service is the conviction that the cause which we serve will ultimately prevail. The day is coming when the Christian religion will prevail everywhere, when the will of God will be done on earth as literally and really as angels do it in heaven. Even now things are not as they seem. Even now the glory of God fills the whole earth. So young Isaiah realised in days much darker and more ominous than these. (H. P. Hughes, M. A.)
The birth of the true missionary
In the fellowship of the cleansing, the fellowship of the Cross, the missionary is born. (R. J. Campbell, M. A.)
Seeing and saying
Men must see before they can say. (R. J. Campbell, M. A.)
Ecstasy and self-immolation
Bless God for any ecstasy that leads to self-immolation. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Seers and servants
We must become seers before we can become servants. (S. Cox, D. D.)
Experience to be used for the benefit of others
Isaiah saw the King that he might serve the King. He was convinced of sin that he might convince his fellows, he was purged from his iniquity that he might proclaim the love, the sacrifice, which takes away the iniquity of us all. (S. Cox, D. D.)
The whole life should be devoted to God
Though at times he had to rebuke princes and to pronounce the doom of nations, yet it was his whole life that he dedicated to God, with all its petty details of daily conduct. It was part of his work to live with the prophetess he took to wife according to a Divine law; to name and train his children so that little Immanuel and little Maher-shalal-hash-baz should be “for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts.” And, in like manner, God sends us to our own people, to our kinsfolk and acquaintance. (S. Cox, D. D.)
“To let the love out”
If there were no humanity to save, none but our own, yours and mine, the fellowship of the cleansing would still be ours, but we would be seeking for something to do to express to the Christ our sense of what that fellowship had brought. Two sisters brought this fact home to me. One was weak, suffering, dying, though the other did not know it at the time. The one who was watching by the bedside said, “It seems dreadful to be so helpless, to feel I can do so little to assuage the suffering of the dear one. I can do nothing whatever. If I only could do something that hurts, hurts me, I think I should feel better, to let my love out.” I know what she meant quite well--to let the love out. The love that we bear the dear Redeemer compels us to see the Divine in mankind. There is a sweet and holy sympathy born of that urgent desire to let the love out which was born in the fellowship of the cleansing. (R. J. Campbell, M. A.)
Every church member should be a missionary
In looking over a certificate of membership which I had received from a church in New York, concerning one of its members who was a sailor, I was pleased to observe that at the back of the certificate there were directions given to the member; and the first one was this, “You are to remember that as a member of this church going upon a voyage, you are sent by us as missionary. You are to understand that you and every other member of the church are bound to spread abroad the Saviour’s name.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
“Ready to obey”
Of a man chosen by the church council of a Uganda mission, to act as father to the boys and see that they kept out of mischief, a missionary writes: “An ordination candidate, whose name is Jacob the elephant, an extremely nice, sensible man, was suggested, and I was much struck by his reply when asked if he would undertake the post. He at once said, ‘Is it for me to choose my work? You tell me what to do, and I am ready to obey.’” (Christian Endeavour.)
The missionary spirit
General Booth once wanted fourteen recruits for India. He had his whole company about him, and he said: “This is very dangerous work, and it requires great self-sacrifice. I might detail you for the work, but I will not detail any one of you. I will tell you what I will do: if any of you want to volunteer for it, you will have the privilege to do so after one hour. Go away now and pray about it.” They went away and prayed about it, and at the end of the hour General Booth said, “Are any of you willing to undertake this work?” And fourteen stalwart men stepped forward and said, We are ready to sad tomorrow morning. (A. H. Bradford, D. D.)
A true missionary
Speaking at Exeter Hall, in 1886, James Chalmers said, in reference to his New Guinea experiences: “Recall the twenty-one years; give me back all its experiences, give me its shipwrecks, its standings in the face of death; give it me surrounded by savages with spears and clubs; give it me back again with spears flying about me and the club knocking me to the ground; give it me back, and I will still be your missionary.” (Sunday School Chronicle.)
“Send me:”
David Brainerd prayed for such a complete absorption in the Divine will that he might become utterly indifferent to every outward circumstance of discomfort and trial, if only he could make known the love of Christ. He says in his journal:--“Here am I, Lord, send me; send me to the ends of the earth; send me to the rough and savage pagans of the wilderness; send me from all that is called comfort in the earth; send me even to death itself, if it be but in Thy service and to promote Thy kingdom.” (Sunday School Chronicle.)
Save one
A man once rose in one of Mr. Moody’s meetings, and gave his experience. “I have been for five years on the Mount of Transfiguration.” “How many souls did you lead to Christ last year?” was the sharp question that came from Mr. Moody, in an instant. “Well, I don’t know,” was the astonished reply. “Have you led any?” persisted Mr. Moody. “I don’t know that I have,” answered the man. “Well,”--said Mr. Moody, “we don’t want that kind of mountain-top experience. When a man gets so high that he can’t reach down and save poor sinners, there is something wrong.” (Sunday School Chronicle.)
Every Christian should be an evangelist
Dr. Howard Crosby used to say, “When will New York city be evangelised? I’ll tell you--when every Christian becomes an evangelist.” (Christian Endeavour.)
God’s call: the anti-slavery and other crusades
Those who do the best work in the world’s redemption, and yet may never preach a sermon, have had a “call” to accomplish it. The “call” may have been felt only as an overwhelming and disinterested desire to accomplish some noble end, but it has been as truly there as if seraphim had announced it. Such great movements as the anti-slavery crusade are full of instances. Of Thomas Clarkson it is recorded that when about twenty-four years of age, after having composed and read a Latin prize essay at Cambridge University, he travelled to London to assist in founding a society for the suppression of the slave trade. Overwhelmed with the awfulness of the traffic he had been denouncing, he alighted from his horse, and sitting by the roadside prayed that God would raise up some devoted champion of the oppressed African. Suddenly the thought flashed into his mind that he should offer himself to this cause. How he, under this overmastering feeling, ultimately surrendered the clerical life for which he was preparing, how he laboured till the slave trade was excised from the body politic, and how he was followed in a true “apostolic succession” by William Wilberforce, in the further attack upon domestic slavery, is recorded in the pages of history. Wilberforce, too, passed through times of deep self-conflict till the necessary new habits of mind and life were formed. He, in turn, gave place to such men as Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton and Joseph Sturge, who also were “called” and “ordained” by the Spirit of God to the Christlike work of securing liberty to the captive. Prison reformers and uplifters of the criminal, like John Howard, Elizabeth Fry, and Sarah Martin, passed through periods of probation, when there seemed to be in their minds “a prophetic stir of coming duties outside the usual sphere” of their daily lives. (F. Sessions.)
Richard Knill’s call
I was studying for the ministry, with a view to labour in England; it happened that there was a missionary meeting in the neighbourhood, and one of the ministers said to me, Come to me over, and bring “the students with you, it will do them good,”--and as one inducement he said, “There is an eminent Scotch minister in town, Dr. Waugh, who is to preach.” We went--and, I have no doubt, we went praying to receive a blessing. Dr. Waugh took for his text that beautiful verse in Isaiah, “It shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come who were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem.” In the first part of his subject he spoke of the perishing condition of the man who was ignorant of the Gospel, and he said, “It is a fact, there are four hundred millions of our fellow creatures in this deplorable condition, without God, and without hope.” After he had dwelt on this, he spoke of the infinite wisdom and goodness of God, which had provided a remedy for perishing sinners. After speaking on this for some time he stopped, and looking around on the congregation, he said, “This trump cannot blow of itself, we must have men to blow it,--pardoned sinners--redeemed men--those who have tasted the love of Christ, and who feel for their fellow creatures--those who know what a precious Saviour Christ is, from sweet experience. We want such men--the heathen are perishing, and will perish, unless God’s remedy is sent to them--that remedy is in your possession.” He then paused again, and looking around, as if wanting to fix his eyes on some object, he said in a moving manner, “Is there one disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ who has love enough for his Divine Master in his heart to say, Here am I; send me?” Oh, when he said that, I felt it thrill through my soul, and I silently said to Him who searcheth my heart, “Lord, I will go.” It was a memorable day to me, I can never forget it. The sermon was soon ended; the congregation was broken up; my friends went to dine; I was invited to dine with my fellow students; I had no appetite for food, my heart was full--and I said to a friend, Can you procure me a garret, where I can spend the remainder of the day in fasting and prayer? He procured it for me; and in that garret I spent some of the happiest and most solemn moments of my life; and seeing the agony of Him whose blood was shed a sacrifice for my sins, I said, “Lord, I will go.” (R. Knill.)
Ready for service
When the Moravian Brethren in Germany were carrying on their great mission work in heathen lands, Zinzendorf, their distinguished leader, sent one day for one of the ministers, and said to him, “Will you go to Greenland tomorrow as a missionary?” The minister, after a moment’s hesitation, said, “Yes, if the shoemaker can finish the boots which I have ordered of him by tomorrow, I will go.” (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
God’s call: Cobden and Bright
Cobden and Bright believed--to quote the language of the former - that “a moral and even religious spirit might be infused into the question of the repeal of the Corn Laws.” The story of Mr. Bright’s dedication to this most beneficent idea is admirably reproduced in Vince’s life of the great Tribune. There came to his soul’s vision no forthshadowing of God’s glory in any manmade temple, but the story is thus told by himself: “I was at Leamington when Mr. Cobden called upon me. I was then in the depths of grief,--I might almost say of despair,--for the light and sunshine of my house had been extinguished. All that was left on earth of my young wife, except the memory of a sainted life and of a too brief happiness, was lying still and cold in the chamber above us. Mr. Cobden called upon me as a friend, and addressed me, as you may suppose, with words of condolence. After a time he looked up and said, ‘There are thousands of homes in England at this moment where wives, mothers, and children are dying of hunger. Now,’ he said, ‘when the first paroxysm of your grief is passed, I would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest till the Corn Law is repealed.’ I accepted his invitation. I knew that the description he had given me of the homes of thousands was not an exaggerated description. I felt in my conscience that there was a work that someone must do. From that time we never ceased to labour hard on behalf of the resolution we had made.” In this case a Lancashire manufacturer brought the “call,” but surely the angels of sorrow and sympathy assisted in the “consecration,” and the Holy One of Israel worked with His servant. (F. Sessions.)
