How may a young man know...(Part 3)

…whether he is called or not? (Part 3)


Men who since conversion have betrayed great feebleness of mind and are readily led to embrace strange doctrines or to fall into evil company and gross sin, I never can find it in my heart to encourage to enter the ministry, let their professions be what they may. Let them, if truly penitent, keep in the rear ranks. Unstable as water they will not excel.


So, too, those who cannot endure harness, but are of the kid-gloved order, I refer elsewhere. We want soldiers, not fops, earnest laborers, not genteel loiterers. Men who have done nothing up to their time of application to the college are told to earn their spurs before they are publicly dubbed as knights. Fervent lovers of souls do not wait till they are trained; they serve their Lord at once.