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 INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT 
 OF NORTH AMERICA 
 111 FIFTH AVEN UE, N EW YORK CITY 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
What Constitutes A 
 Missionary Call 
 
 An Address 
 
 Delivered at the Student 
 Conferences 
 
 ROBERT E. SPEER, D.D. 
 
 Secretary, Presbyterian Board of 
 Foreign Missions 
 
 INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT 
 OF NORTH AMERICA 
 
 111 Fifth Avenue 
 
 New York City 
 
Reprinted by the Interchurch World 
 Movement, by Courtesy of the Student 
 Volunteer Movement For Foreign 
 Missions. 
 
 Price, 5 cents each, 50 cents 
 per dozen, $2.75 per hundred. 
 
What Constitutes A 
 Missionary Call 
 
 What constitutes a missionary call? I 
 think almost all of us are familiar with the 
 issue that is involved in this question; 
 some of us because we have faced it in 
 our own lives and have tried to work our 
 way through to an answer; and some of 
 us because we have met it in the lives 
 of other men, some of whom were honest¬ 
 ly endeavoring to find an answer to it, 
 and others of whom were making it a 
 cover for all sorts of immoral subterfuges 
 and evasions and unveracities of char¬ 
 acter. 
 
 In two regards it is a good sign that 
 men ask this question with reference to 
 the work of foreign missions and their 
 duty to it. It suggests that men think of 
 the missionary enterprise as a solemn en¬ 
 terprise, an enterprise that is related in 
 a singular way to God, and over which 
 God exercises a singular care; and in the 
 second place it indicates that they believe, 
 if they are sincere, that their lives are 
 owned by a Person who has a right to 
 direct them and whose call they must 
 await. When that has been said, how¬ 
 ever, I thirk everything has been said that 
 
4 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 can be allowed in favor of that question, 
 and I want to go on at once to say that 
 it is a question which can easily become 
 thoroughly heathen and un-Christian. 
 
 By what right do we sever our life into 
 departments, either geographically or 
 otherwise, and say with reference to cer¬ 
 tain departments of life, “Now I will not 
 enter upon that sphere of life until I have 
 a call different in degree or kind from 
 the call with which I would be satisfied 
 to enter upon any other department of 
 life?” What right has any man to be 
 willing to study law under any less posi¬ 
 tive assurance that it is the will of God 
 that he should do it than a man must 
 have who goes out into the mission field? 
 You and I have no right to set off certain 
 departments of life from other depart¬ 
 ments and to say of those, “Those de¬ 
 partments are different from others; we 
 will not think of entering upon those 
 without special divine sanction, without 
 an unusual sort of divine leading different 
 from the kind with which we would be 
 satisfied to enter upon any other branch 
 of service.” What is there in the Rio 
 Grande river to compel a man to have one 
 kind of assurance that it is the will of God 
 that he should preach on the south side 
 of it, and another kind that he should 
 preach on the north side of it? Is this 
 world so different in different parts of 
 ft that I should be willing to work in Texas 
 on grounds that I should not regard as 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 5 
 
 sufficient to allow me to work in Mexico? 
 What is there in the oceans that warrants 
 a man in demanding evidence that it is 
 the will of God that he should work on 
 one side of them that he does not demand 
 as justifying his working on the other? 
 This conception of distinction in the 
 sacredness of spheres of life is pagan. 
 Christianity contends that the whole life 
 and all service are to be consecrated and 
 that no man dare do anything but the will 
 of God and can know nothing less or more 
 than that it is God’s will that he should 
 adopt any course. And there can be no 
 more than this either required or possible 
 in the case of foreign missions. 
 
 Suppose I were a slave owned by a 
 master, and cotton was ready to be picked, 
 and the order had gone out from my mas¬ 
 ter that the cotton must be picked at all 
 hazards all over his plantation: because 
 he had not come personally to me to speak 
 to me, might I plead, “In the absence of 
 any specific call from my master, to pick 
 cotton, I will go a-fishing, or I will do 
 some business of my own?” Is it not a 
 fair analogy? You and I stand in a world 
 where the Master’s work needs to be done. 
 He has told us to go out into this world 
 and do His work. Because He has not 
 come and spoken individually to us and 
 said, “This work is your individual work,” 
 are we therefore free to go about our own 
 business ? 
 
 And if men are going to draw 
 
6 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 lines of division between different depart¬ 
 ments of service, what preposterous reas¬ 
 oning leads them to think that it requires 
 less divine sanction for a man to spend 
 his life easily among Christian people 
 than it requires for him to go out as a 
 missionary to the heathen? If men are 
 to have special calls for anything, they 
 ought to have special calls to go about 
 their own business, to have a nice time all 
 their lives, to choose the soft places, and 
 to make money, and to gratify their own 
 ambitions. How can any honest Christian 
 man demand a call not to do that sort of 
 thing, and say that unless he gets some 
 specific call of God to preach the gospel 
 to the heathen, he has a perfect right to 
 spend his life lining his pockets with 
 money? Is it not absurd to allege that a 
 special missionary call is necessary, while 
 a man may go on any pretext into any 
 work that means simply the gratification 
 of his own will or personal ambitions? 
 
 There is a dilemma involved in this 
 erroneous conception of the missionary 
 call. We believe surely that God has an 
 interest in the evangelization of the world. 
 If He has an interest in the evangeliza¬ 
 tion of the world,—I mean any particular 
 interest in it, that leads Him to desire to 
 have it done,—He must have “called” 
 enough men, on the theory that He does 
 call men in that special way, to evangelize 
 the world. Well, it has not been evangel¬ 
 ized. So either God has not called them, 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 7 
 
 or else He has called them and they have 
 not gone. You who believe that this kind 
 of a special call is necessary have to be¬ 
 lieve in consequence that there are a lot of 
 men around this country who have been 
 called in this supernatural way into the 
 mission work and have not gone, or else 
 that God has no particular interest in the 
 present evangelization of the world, or 
 else you have to abandon this notion of 
 special missionary calls. 
 
 After all, what do men mean when they 
 speak of the necessity of a special mis¬ 
 sionary call? Do they mean that a man 
 has to have some supernatural kind of 
 mechanical indication of the divine will? 
 “A call,” men say, “for example, like that 
 that came to the apostle Paul; I would 
 be satisfied with that. Or the kind of a 
 call I have heard Bishop Thoburn speak 
 of ; I would be satisfied with that.” I believe 
 they had these experiences, but I do not 
 believe it is necessary that everyone 
 should have them. David Livingstone 
 had no such call. He says himself that 
 he went simply out of a sense of duty. 
 William Goodell had no such call. He 
 consecrated himself behind an old tree 
 stump at Andover over his Bible and the 
 last command of Jesus Christ. Henry 
 Martyn, William Carey, Keith-Falconer, 
 nine-tenths of the great missionaries of 
 the world never had any such calls. Now 
 if a call like this is necessary before a man 
 may be sure that it is his duty to go out 
 
8 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 to the mission field, did these men do 
 wrong in going? Do you say that the 
 noblest men that ever served God in the 
 world flew in the face of Providence be¬ 
 cause they did not have the particular sort 
 of call you are asking for? 
 
 Or a man says he wants a dream. The 
 other night I dreamed that I went trout 
 fishing, and I met a lady, and she asked 
 me for my rod, and I loaned it to her, and 
 she cast the fly through a window of a 
 grain elevator and caught a little black 
 puppy. Now do you mean to tell me that 
 that was a divine indication of what my 
 duty was to be on the following day? 
 And yet there are scores of men who 
 would laugh at this illustration who have 
 hid behind the pitiful evasion that they 
 lack a nocturnal missionary call, who have 
 alleged if only some divine leading might 
 come to them of the kind that came to 
 Paul, they would go. Dreams do not ex¬ 
 empt men from the use of reason. God 
 does not call men in absurd and frivolous 
 ways. If God is going to have dealings 
 with you, He will have them in the broad 
 daylight. That was the time of all but 
 one of Paul's missionary visions. It is 
 not necessary for Him to go about in the 
 night when our wits are asleep to show 
 us what His will for us in this world is. 
 He is going to deal with us as men, and 
 expects us to judge as we judge between 
 our dreams as to what ones of them are 
 nonsense and what ones of them fall in 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 9 
 
 line with the rational purpose of God for 
 us revealed in the facts of the world and 
 of our own lives. 
 
 Or a man says that he does not feel 
 specially called. Well, feelings are often 
 a mere matter of health; more often they 
 are a matter of other things. They are 
 not lawless and unordered. You and I 
 do not regulate our lives by mere feelings 
 in other regards. Feelings spring from 
 the stock of information in our intellects, 
 from the attitude of our wills, from the 
 bearing of our hearts toward God and 
 toward the world. If we do not “feel 
 called” the most natural explanation is 
 not that we are not called but that our 
 feelings spring from uninformed minds, 
 from careless hearts, from unsurrendered 
 wills. This is the explanation of the ab¬ 
 sence of calls which Dean Vaughan sug¬ 
 gested : “Know, and you will feel; know, 
 and you will pray; know, and you will 
 help. You will be ashamed of the slug¬ 
 gishness, of the isolation, of the selfish¬ 
 ness which has made you think only of 
 your own people and your father’s house.” 
 Men cannot define what they mean by the 
 “missionary call” without getting into 
 difficulty, and in the case of all men who 
 are really called convincing their own 
 minds, if they are honest and fair men, 
 that they must go, while if they have been 
 selfish and insincere they will discover 
 that they have not been open to any such 
 missionary call as they allege they be- 
 
10 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 lieve to be necessary to warrant a man’s 
 going out into the foreign mission field. 
 
 I believe that a great deal of the con¬ 
 fusion that surrounds this subject—and 
 there is much of it—springs from the fail¬ 
 ure to discriminate between two clearly dif¬ 
 ferent things: one, the will of God for me ; 
 and the other, the method of the manifes¬ 
 tation of that will to me. It is a matter of 
 no consequence to me how God reveals 
 His will to me; what I want to know is 
 what that will is. It may come in some 
 mysterious way; it may come from the 
 voice of a friend; it may come through 
 the influence of some address or book. I 
 care not; the supreme thing is that God 
 has a will for every man of us, and that 
 no man of us has any right to specify one 
 way, and one way alone, in which that 
 will may be revealed to him, or to discrim¬ 
 inate against any one work in life by con¬ 
 ditioning God and requiring of Him some 
 peculiar mode of procedure in summon¬ 
 ing us to that work. 
 
 The whole thing reduces itself to this 
 simple proposition. There is a general 
 obligation resting upon Christian men to 
 see that the gospel of Jesus Christ is 
 preached to the world. You and I need 
 no special call to apply that general call 
 to our lives. We do need a special call to 
 exempt us from its application to our lives. 
 In other words, the presumption under 
 which we are living may be held to be the 
 presumption that the great will of God de- 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 11 
 
 sired beyond the peradventure of a mis¬ 
 take that the gospel of His son Jesus 
 Christ, the only Saviour, should be made 
 known to the whole world, should be 
 carried to every creature in the world. 
 You and I need no special divine revela¬ 
 tion to our own personal lives to indicate 
 that we fall under that general duty. 
 What we need is a special call to assure 
 us that we are exempt from personal 
 obedience to that presumptive and gen¬ 
 eral duty. 
 
 But there are men who say, “I deny 
 that there is any such presumption. The 
 presumption is in favor of a man’s staying 
 just where he was born.” Well, then, if 
 there is such a presumption as that, it is 
 overcome by the greater need of the 
 world. When a man stands face to face 
 with such a need as that which exists 
 here, and then contrasts it with the need 
 that exists over there, I believe he must 
 see that that need overcomes any mere 
 presumption, if such did exist, in behalf 
 of a man’s staying here. But I deny that 
 there is any such presumption. You can¬ 
 not defend the presumption that every 
 man ought to stay in the condition in 
 which he is born. If I am born in a dead¬ 
 ly, unhealthful region, is there a presump¬ 
 tion that I should stay th6re? If I am 
 born a kleptomaniac,, is there presump¬ 
 tion in favor of my continuing so all my 
 life? It is nonsense for men to allege 
 that the mere fact of having been born 
 
12 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 in such and such a condition puts them 
 under a presumption of duty to remain 
 there. The fact that you are born in a 
 Christian land creates just the contrary 
 presumption, the presumption, namely, 
 that you are to carry what exists here to 
 the lands where it does not exist. 
 
 There are men who say, “No, you are 
 unfair in that. We hold that there is no 
 presumption either way, that every man 
 ought to stand with a perfectly open and 
 impartial mind before the question of the 
 duty of his life to the world, not casting 
 the weight on either side of the scale.” 
 That would be all right if you and I were 
 living in little boats out in the middle of 
 the Pacific ocean, but it is impossible so 
 long as we are here. No presumption! 
 Why, the atmosphere in which we live 
 coerces and shapes us in spite of ourselves 
 and creates a powerful actual presump¬ 
 tion. All those tentacles that every day 
 are clinging closer and closer to us are 
 setting at prejudice the interests of the 
 other half of the world. We do not live 
 where it is possible for any of us to say, 
 “I will just move along steadily, no pre¬ 
 sumption on either side, until some spec¬ 
 ial indication of duty comes to me. I 
 believe that Keith-Falconer was express¬ 
 ing the truth when he closed those last 
 addresses of his to the students of Edin¬ 
 burgh and Glasgow with the sentence: 
 “While vast continents are shrouded in 
 almost utter darkness, and hundreds of 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 13 
 
 millions suffer the horrors of heathenism 
 and of Islam, the burden of proof rests on 
 you to show that the circumstances in 
 which God has placed you were meant by 
 God to keep you out of the foreign field.’' 
 In other words, every man of us stands 
 under a presumptive obligation to give his 
 life to the world unless we have some 
 special exemption granted personally to 
 us that excuses us from the weight of this 
 general and presumptive obligation. 
 
 I am willing to go further than that. 
 If I were standing by the bank of a 
 stream, and some little children were 
 drowning in the stream, I would not need 
 any officer of the law to come along and 
 serve on me some legal paper, in which 
 my name was definitely entered, com¬ 
 manding me under such and such penal¬ 
 ties to rescue those drowning children. 
 I should despise myself if I should stand 
 there, with the possibility of saving those 
 little lives, waiting until by some legal 
 proceeding I was personally designated 
 to rescue them. Or, if you do not like 
 that figure, I can suggest another. I 
 have some neighbors who are starving, 
 and I have bread in abundance, and I 
 stand and watch them day by day, with 
 pinched faces, ravenous, suffering agon¬ 
 ies, while I have bread in abundance and 
 to spare. I do not need anybody to come 
 with any court order specifying me as an 
 individual bound to feed those hungry 
 souls. You would not either. Why do 
 
14 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 we apply, in a matter of infinitely more 
 consequence, principles that we would 
 loathe and abhor if anybody should sug¬ 
 gest that we should apply them in the 
 practical affairs of our daily life? Listen 
 for a moment to the wail of the hungry 
 world, feel for one hour its sufferings, 
 sympathize for one moment with its woes, 
 and then regard it just as you would re¬ 
 gard human want in your neighbor, or the 
 want that you meet as you pass down the 
 street, or anywhere in life. Every one 
 of us rests under a sort of general obli¬ 
 gation to give life and time and posses¬ 
 sion to the evangelization of the souls 
 everywhere that have never heard of 
 Jesus Christ, and we are bound to go, 
 unless we can offer some sure ground of 
 exemption which we could with a clear 
 conscience present to Jesus Christ, and 
 be sure of His approval upon it. 
 
 Now what grounds of exemption are 
 just? A man says, “Well, the inability 
 to learn a language constitutes a ground 
 of exemption.” Yes, if it is real; but is 
 there any man that will allege that as 
 his disability? Most of you talk one 
 language already. I could imagine a 
 mute alleging that excuse, but, not an 
 adult man who has managed to get into 
 college. We have learned one language. 
 There are a few million babies in this 
 country learning a language now, and 
 they haven’t nearly as good a start at 
 learning a language as you and I have. 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 IS 
 
 There is a multitude of ignorant people 
 coming over here from the slums of Eu¬ 
 rope, and before very long many of them, 
 with dull and undisciplined minds, will be 
 speaking our language fluently. The 
 brain is not the only faculty used in the 
 acquisition of a new language. A man 
 who mingles among the people takes the 
 language in through his pores. And af¬ 
 ter all the great faculty is the will. If a 
 man wills to learn and goes out among 
 the people, he will learn. Any man who 
 has a jaw can learn a second language, 
 just as he learned a first, if he wills to do 
 it and sinks himself among the people to 
 whom he goes. It is a very different 
 thing learning a language on the other 
 side of the world from trying to pick it 
 up here. As Mr. Wilder used to put it, 
 learning a language here is just like pour¬ 
 ing water in the little interstices of a 
 sponge for a day or two until you get it 
 full, while learning a language over there 
 is sousing your sponge in the water and 
 letting it penetrate every pore. Every 
 man of us who has learned one language 
 is able to learn another if we want to and 
 will put our lives into it. 
 
 Some one says, “Isn’t want of health a 
 sufficient excuse?” Yes, but you are not 
 always a trustworthy judge. In our 
 Board we distrust a man’s judgment on 
 this point unless we know what his own 
 personal attitude is toward the mission¬ 
 ary enterprise. We want men to judge 
 
16 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 the physical capacities of candidates who 
 have a heart for the evangelization of the 
 world as well. I urge freely that a man 
 who has no proper physical qualifications 
 ought not to go, but I fear that few men 
 are competent to say for themselves 
 whether they are thus qualified or not. I 
 remember a story that Mr. Forman used 
 to tell of an interview he had with a 
 student in the state of Iowa, who alleged 
 as a reason for not going as a missionary 
 to India that he had had a sunstroke. 
 He proposed accordingly to spend his life 
 in Iowa. “Well, my friend,” said Mr. 
 Forman, “where did you have that sun¬ 
 stroke?” “I had it here in this state.” 
 “Now, look here,” said Mr. Forman, “I 
 have lived most of my life in India, and 
 I have never had a sunstroke, and you 
 propose to spend your life where you 
 have already had one sunstroke and 
 where for all you know you may have 
 another.” 
 
 Now Mission Boards are not looking 
 for men liable to sunstroke. They pur- 
 pose to act with good sense and because 
 they do act so, they know that often a 
 man who is not perfect physically will be 
 as well in Chili or Korea or China or 
 India as he will be here at home, and that 
 it is worth while running a little risk for 
 the sake of the good work that he will 
 be likely to do. It is exceedingly easy 
 for the man who wants to, to find 
 some subterfuge by which he can 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 17 
 
 escape from the grip of duty and the priv¬ 
 ilege of glorious sacrifice in life. 
 
 Or a man says, “Is not the want of 
 spiritual qualifications an adequate ex¬ 
 emption ?” Never. No self-created ex¬ 
 cuse can keep a man out of the mission 
 field. Every man of us may have all the 
 spiritual qualifications necessary for mis¬ 
 sionary work, and if we do not have them, 
 it is a difficulty which springs from our 
 own moral delinquency and not from any 
 of those circumstances beyond our con¬ 
 trol in which alone can lie an adequate 
 exemption. A man not spiritually fitted 
 ought not to go, but neither is he fit to 
 stay. His immediate duty is to clean up 
 and empower his life. 
 
 Or a man says, “Is not the great need 
 here at home an adequate excuse ?” 
 Where? where? What great need do you 
 mean here in the United States? Do you 
 mean the great need out in the western 
 states? I could name half a dozen on 
 the moment whose combined population 
 is less than the population of the city of 
 New York, and they are the great home 
 mission field in the west, and they have 
 a Protestant evangelistic agency at work 
 in them immensely greater than that em¬ 
 ployed in the whole city of New York. 
 Besides, are you going there? As for the 
 cities, there are in New York below Four¬ 
 teenth Street for about half a million peo¬ 
 ple more than one hundred Protestant 
 chapels and churches. And are you go- 
 
18 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 ing there? A man is something beneath 
 contempt who alleges as a reason for not 
 going to the foreign mission field the ex¬ 
 istence of a need at home to which he 
 has not the slightest intention of devot¬ 
 ing his life. He may pass for a very re¬ 
 ligious man, he may be waiting piously 
 for a call, but he is a dishonest man and 
 there is a core of insincerity in his heart. 
 No, the need here in the United States 
 constitutes no adequate exemption from 
 the missionary call. If a man has got a 
 special call to some definite work here at 
 home, I grant that that may constitute an 
 exemption. I believe there are men who 
 are exempt from the general call because 
 of the manifestly definite and special 
 divine work that is laid upon their shoul¬ 
 ders here, but no man dare allege a mere 
 general need existing here at home, least 
 of all a general need which he intends 
 subsequently to ignore, and under the 
 cover of that, slip out from the grip of 
 the missionary obligation. No man has 
 a right to settle in a little country town 
 in Ohio and practice law, on the ground 
 that there is so much greater need for 
 Christian work in the slums of New York 
 than in central Africa. No man has a 
 right to go into business in Montreal un¬ 
 der the pretext that the vast West is so 
 much more needy than China. If I re¬ 
 fuse to preach the gospel in India be¬ 
 cause it needs to be preached in Arizona, 
 or Assiniboia, what relevancy does that 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 19 
 
 argument have to my preaching the gos¬ 
 pel nowhere, but subsequently settling 
 down to an easy and selfish life in Sa¬ 
 vannah or Halifax? Or what consistency 
 is there in refusing to go to Siam because 
 the need of Christian work in the rural 
 districts in America is so great, and then 
 settling down to preach the gospel in 
 some city or large town? The fundamen¬ 
 tal necessity of life and character is verac¬ 
 ity, and such a course is the antithesis of 
 veracity. 
 
 Or a man says: “I have already start¬ 
 ed to prepare for some work here at home. 
 I am on my medical course, or my law 
 course, or my course in pedagogy. Do 
 you mean I am to throw up all I have 
 gained and go out to the mission field?” 
 I do not say so. I do say that the fact 
 that you have got so far does not consti¬ 
 tute a presumption that you are exempt. 
 All that special training may have been 
 given you for some specific purpose; no 
 knowledge is lost out on the mission field. 
 Besides, I ask you just to stop and think 
 a moment. You men have already got 
 your professions chosen and are headed 
 toward them, and many of you have only 
 considered the necessity of a call as a sprt 
 of afterthought when forced .to face for¬ 
 eign "missionsyou never 'thought of. it 
 when you were making your choice of 
 your profession, but only 'nc\y when the 
 missionary claim is pressing a little un¬ 
 easily upon your consciences. But are 
 
20 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 you sure that God wants you to be a doc¬ 
 tor or a teacher? Ought you not to have 
 as much assurance that it is God’s will 
 that you should be, as you think is needed 
 in the case of a foreign missionary? As 
 a Christian man, your life belongs to 
 Christ and your business is to do the will 
 of God. Are you convinced that it is the 
 will of God that you should go on with 
 your preparation for some secular work 
 at home? If not, have you a right to go 
 on with it? If you think you have, will 
 you not admit the legitimacy of the same 
 element of possible uncertainty in the 
 missionary call? 
 
 What profession is it that you believe 
 warrants you in giving your life to it in¬ 
 stead of to the missionary enterprise? Is 
 it law? I have no word to say against 
 the practice of law. But I remind you, as 
 Mr. Depew is reported to have stated to 
 the graduating class in the Yale Law 
 School some years ago, that there were 
 then more than 60,000 lawyers in this 
 land; and, as Justice Brewer is said 
 to have declared at a meeting of the 
 American Bar Association, in St. Louis, 
 that not much more than one-half of that 
 number could find legitimate business to 
 do. The rest had to do other things 
 or manufacture illegitimate business on 
 which to live. The number of lawyers 
 has since doubled. 
 
 Is it medicine. that you are going 
 to take up? There are more than 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 21 
 
 150,000 doctors in this country already, 
 one to about every six hundred of the 
 population. You well know that there is 
 not enough real sickness and disease 
 among that many people to maintain a 
 doctor, and that is one reason why there 
 are so many quacks and corrupt and un¬ 
 worthy men in the profession. The New 
 York Sun some years ago, reported Dr. 
 Billings as complaining, at the meeting 
 of the American Medical Association in 
 session in New Orleans, of the excess of 
 medical colleges. The country needed 
 about 2500 medical graduates annually, 
 he said, and it graduated 10,000 to 12,500. 
 
 Do you intend to teach? There are more 
 than 600,000 teachers in this land now. 
 and you very well know that every time 
 an attractive opportunity presents itself 
 there are scores of applicants. 
 
 I present to you an opening in which 
 we cannot find enough men, doctors, 
 teachers, ministers, workers of all sorts, 
 all over the mission field; a thousand mil¬ 
 lion sinning and suffering men and wom¬ 
 en, and only a little handful of men and 
 women giving the gospel to them. I do 
 not understand the moral constitution of 
 the man who can deliberately face that 
 comparison and then set up the claim that 
 he feels he is chosen to practice medicine 
 or law or teaching here in this country 
 unless he has a special call designating 
 him as one of the men to go out to the 
 immensely greater need, and such a call 
 
22 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 as he has not regarded as necessary to 
 his practice of medicine or law or to 
 teaching. 
 
 Or a man says, yet once more, “Is not 
 the love of home an exemption?” Let 
 Jesus Christ reply. “He that loveth fath¬ 
 er or mother more than me is not worthy 
 of me.” Or a man says, “Is not the love 
 of life, the desire to spend it richly here 
 an exemption?” Let Jesus Christ answer 
 again. “He that hateth not his father and 
 his mother, and his brother and his sister, 
 yea, and his own life also, he cannot be 
 my disciple.” Life an exemption! Life 
 was given us on such terms as to consti¬ 
 tute a presumption for its expenditure, 
 not to be nursed carefully in velvet, not 
 to be spent in personal enjoyment, but to 
 be poured out in the richness of great 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Every time I go down south and 
 the train stops long enough in Salis¬ 
 bury, I go out to the little graveyard 
 in the middle of the town and walk to a 
 grave in the center of the yard that I 
 found many years ago when I was 
 wandering through the cemetery be¬ 
 tween trains. I remember still the first 
 summer day when I came upon that 
 grave. Something on the stone caught 
 my eye.from a distance. I came up and 
 read upon it the inscription which stated 
 that there,lay the body of F. M. Kent, 
 Lieutenant Colonel of the First Louisiana 
 Regulars, who died in 1864, in the month 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 23 
 
 of April, and underneath were these 
 words: “He gave his life for the cause 
 that he loved.” Near by was the grave 
 of John R. Pearson, First Lieutenant of 
 the Seventh Regiment of North Carolina, 
 who was shot at Petersburg, at the age 
 of eighteen, and beneath the name and 
 simple record were the words, “I look 
 for the resurrection of the dead.” And I 
 took off my hat and stood beside the 
 graves of the eighteen-year-old lieuten¬ 
 ant and the older colonel who had given 
 their lives for the cause that they loved. 
 Did they wait, do you suppose, until Jef¬ 
 ferson Davis had served a personal sum¬ 
 mons upon them? Was that the way 
 men did in those days? Did they refuse to 
 volunteer in 1861 until they had, each man 
 of them, a personal call with his own 
 name filled in, signed by the hand of 
 Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis? 
 Men then despised the spirit that would 
 have prompted such an attitude. Shall 
 men do less than despise it now? 
 
 This whole business of asking for spec¬ 
 ial calls in the missionary work does vio¬ 
 lence to the Bible. No man thinks of 
 interpeting his Bible so in other mat¬ 
 ters. There is the command, “Go ye into 
 all the world, and preach the gospel to 
 every creature.” You say, “That means 
 other men.” There is the promise, “Come 
 unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest.” You 
 say, “That means me.” You must have a 
 
24 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 special divine indication that you fall un¬ 
 der the command; you do not ask any 
 special divine indication that you fall un¬ 
 der the blessing. By what right do we 
 draw this line of distinction between the 
 obligations of Christianity and its privi¬ 
 leges, and accept the privileges as apply¬ 
 ing to every Christian and relegate its 
 obligations to the conscience of the few? 
 
 It does violence to the working of the 
 spirit of God. He does not work over 
 men's faculties; He works through them. 
 In every other department of life He does 
 it; He will do it in this department, or 
 He will not work at all. 
 
 It does violence to the ordinary canons 
 of common sense and honest judgment. 
 We do not think of ordering other de¬ 
 partments of our life on this basis. By 
 what right do we single out this depart¬ 
 ment and apply to it these exceptional 
 canons? I think ex-President Patton of 
 Princeton was representing the situation 
 truthfully when he used the illustration: 
 that if he was employed by the owner of 
 a great vineyard to gather grapes in the 
 vineyard, and the general instructions 
 were that as many grapes as possible 
 should be gathered, and he came down 
 to the gate of the vineyard and found 
 there around the walls the vines well 
 plucked and the ground covered over with 
 pickers, and away off in the distance no 
 pickers at all and the vines loaded to the 
 ground, he would not need any special 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 25 
 
 visit and order from the owner of the 
 vineyard to instruct him as to what his 
 duty was. Do we? 
 
 There is something wonderfully mis¬ 
 leading, full of hallucination and delusion 
 in this business of missionary calls. With 
 many of us it is not a missionary call at 
 all that we are looking for; it is a shove, 
 that is all. There are a great many of 
 us who would never hear a call if it came; 
 somebody must come and coerce us be¬ 
 fore we will go into the missionary work. 
 There are men who say they would go 
 if they were called, but they would not 
 go. Back in Jesus’ day men thought they 
 would do things if they only had certain 
 evidence, but when the evidence came 
 they did not do them. We think we 
 would believe on Christ if we saw Him. 
 Most of the men who saw Him did not 
 believe on Him. It is the old rebuke of 
 Abraham over again. “Father Abraham,” 
 said the outcast, “will you not send some 
 special messenger to warn my brothers?” 
 Said Abraham, “They have Moses and 
 the prophets; if they will not hear them, 
 neither will they be persuaded, though 
 one rose from the dead.” There are 
 many men who say they would believe 
 in Christianity if they had a miracle. 
 They would not believe in Christianity 
 if they had a miracle. The men who will 
 not believe in Christianity without a mir¬ 
 acle will not believe in Christianity with 
 one. The men who will not go out to the 
 
26 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 mission field, as a rule, without this speci¬ 
 fied method of being called would not 
 recognize it if it came. It is just a mat¬ 
 ter of the whole bias and bent of a man’s 
 character, whether he is one of these re¬ 
 luctant, stagnant men, the men who stand 
 still until they are pushed, or one of these 
 aggressive, eager men, the men who move 
 until they are stopped. I like to go back 
 and read over and over the life of the 
 Apostle Paul as illustrative of the right 
 type of man. He never sat down and 
 waited for a dream to come and guide 
 him; he never waited for any external 
 mechanical directions to shape his course. 
 He was working through what we now 
 call Asia Minor, and his path was deter¬ 
 mined by indications of the Spirit, not 
 as to what he should do, but as to what 
 he should not do. The Spirit forbade 
 work in Asia. He tried Bithynia, and 
 was again blocked. So he came down to 
 Troas through walls of negative guidance 
 (Acts xvi: 6-8). Paul did not say: “I 
 will wait till I feel a call.” He pressed 
 ahead until he was obstructed. There is 
 a deal too much lethargic waiting for 
 divine guidance, when what God is want¬ 
 ing is to see some sign of life and move¬ 
 ment to guide. You can steer a moving, 
 but not a motionless ship. Doubtless a 
 man may bustle about so in his own fussy 
 plans as to be in no fit condition to hear 
 divine counsel or to seek it; but there is 
 no warrant in Paul’s method for the 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 27 
 
 course of those who dislike to move to¬ 
 ward the foreign field unless compelled 
 from without. 
 
 At the end of this hedging in and hedg¬ 
 ing off, Paul got some positive leading; 
 but even then his conclusion of duty was 
 an inference. He interpreted his dream 
 in the spirit of his life. He was a going 
 man and he was looking for beckonings. 
 It was the man not the dream that led 
 to his crossing into Europe. Some mod¬ 
 ern evader would have called it a mere 
 dream, and pronounced it utterly insuffi¬ 
 cient reason for any such serious forward 
 step. 
 
 Ramsay thinks the Macedonian whom 
 Paul saw was Luke. How otherwise 
 could Paul know it was a Macedonian 
 than by recognizing a Macedonian ac¬ 
 quaintance? There was nothing peculiar 
 in the dress of the Macedonians, and 
 Luke was probably the only Macedonian 
 he knew. “We can imagine,” says Ram¬ 
 say, “how Paul came to Troas, in doubt 
 as to what should be done. As a harbor 
 it formed the link between Asia and 
 Macedonia. Here he met the Macedonian 
 Luke; and with his view turned onwards 
 he slept, and beheld in a vision his Mace¬ 
 donian acquaintance beckoning him on¬ 
 ward to his own country.” 
 
 Possibly Paul and Luke had been sit¬ 
 ting up late that night talking about 
 Macedonia, and Luke had urged argu¬ 
 ments by which he would persuade Paul 
 
28 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 to come over there, and when Paul went 
 to sleep, he was full of Luke’s arguments, 
 and at last had his dream and there was 
 Luke again appealing to him to go over 
 to Macedonia. It was not the dream that 
 took Paul over. It was the last confirma¬ 
 tion, but Paul would have got to Mace¬ 
 donia without any such dream. The 
 dream was not the call. The facts of 
 the world and of Paul’s own life were 
 shaping his course according to the will 
 of God. He was the sort of man who 
 did not wait for external guidance, who 
 sat down until somebody came, upset him 
 and made him go; he was the type of 
 man who fixed his eyes on a great goal 
 and moved toward it. “Yea,” he says, 
 “so I have been ambitious.” What for? 
 A special call? “Yea, so I have been am¬ 
 bitious to preach the gospel, not where 
 Christ has been already named, lest I 
 should build upon another man’s foun¬ 
 dation: but, as it is written, To whom 
 he was not spoken of, they shall see; and 
 they that have not heard shall under¬ 
 stand.” (Rom, 15:20, 21.) 
 
 Well, you ask, Do I mean that you 
 should take your lives in your own hands 
 in this matter? That is precisely what I 
 am protesting against. That is exactly 
 what we have done. We have taken our 
 lives in our own hands and proposed to 
 go our own way unless God compels us 
 to go some other way. What I ask is 
 that we should give our lives over into 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 29 
 
 Christ’s hands, to go Christ’s way until 
 God shall reveal to us some special indi¬ 
 vidual path on either side of that great 
 general way which Jesus Christ has 
 marked out before His church and for 
 which He is calling everywhere for men. 
 
 But you say, “Do you mean that every 
 one is to go or to try to go?” No, I do 
 not. I am not trying to specify any 
 course of duty for any man, or any meth¬ 
 od of the revelation of duty to life. God 
 has His own way of guiding every life. 
 I believe He wants men as Christian law¬ 
 yers, doctors, teachers, business men, 
 ministers, artisans at home. And I be¬ 
 lieve that if we neglect our own house or 
 nation we are worse than infidels. What 
 I am trying to do is to cut out some of 
 those quibbles and sophistries and self- 
 deceptions by which men satisfy them¬ 
 selves in the evasion of missionary duty 
 and to correct honest misconceptions 
 which confuse and mislead men. I plead 
 that the missionary duty be given its fair 
 consideration in the investment and use 
 of life. 
 
 I want to say three last things. 
 
 In the first place God does not want 
 any conscripts. If that is what you are 
 waiting for,—to be conscripted,—I do not 
 believe that the call will come. What He 
 wants is volunteers, men who will give 
 themselves in the spirit of Isaiah, “Here 
 am I, Lord; send me.” 
 
 In the second place, for each true Chris- 
 
30 
 
 What Constitutes a 
 
 tian the post of sacrifice and of difficulty 
 is the post of presumptive duty. I do not 
 understand how a man can turn aside to 
 make a fortune here, to gratify an am¬ 
 bition here, without a special call. I do 
 understand how a man can feel that with¬ 
 out such a call it is his duty to give him¬ 
 self to the post of greatest toil and earthly 
 loss and danger. I remember one of the 
 illustrations that Mr. Charles Studd used 
 when he was here, of the appeal that was 
 made for volunteers before the Ashanti 
 expedition went some years ago to Africa. 
 They called out at Windsor the Scots 
 Guards, and the colonel commanding 
 made a frank statement of just what the 
 expedition was and what was involved, 
 and then he called for volunteers, and he 
 turned away for a moment, and when he 
 turned back the whole line was standing, 
 apparently just as it had been before. 
 He looked up and down the line for a 
 moment in indignation, and then he said, 
 “What! the Scots Guards, and no volun¬ 
 teers !” and one of the officers standing 
 by said, “Colonel, the whole line stepped 
 forward.” They were not waiting for any 
 specific personal injunction. Every man 
 jumped at the chance of sacrifice, recog¬ 
 nized in the call to hardship and danger 
 the glorious call, and would only be 
 turned back from it, as Gideon’s compan¬ 
 ies turned back, when specially exempted 
 by the elimination of God. 
 
 And, last of all, I think love will hear 
 
Missionary Call 
 
 31 
 
 calls where the loveless heart will not 
 know that they are sounding. Will you 
 look in your own heart again and make 
 sure whether or not the call has not been 
 there all the time? Have you been near 
 enough to Jesus Christ to hear Him 
 speak? Has your heart been open enough 
 to the world in sympathy and love to 
 hear the wail of its woe? If there were 
 a hundred little children crying, a mother 
 would be able to pick out the voices of 
 her own, especially if they were voices 
 of pain and suffering. There is a mighty 
 keenness in the ears of love, and I won¬ 
 der, whether, after all, that may not ex¬ 
 plain a great deal that one is perplexed 
 over in this matter of special missionary 
 calls, whether after all it is not often just 
 a matter of callous heart, of reluctant will, 
 of sealed mind. 
 
 God so loved the world that He gave. 
 It was need in the world plus love in God 
 that constituted the call to Christ. Do 
 we need more than sufficed for Him? If 
 they were our own, would we hesitate and 
 hold back? 
 
 “What if your own were starving, 
 Fainting with famine pain, 
 
 And yet you knew where golden grew 
 Rich fruit and ripened grain, 
 
 Would you turn aside while they 
 gasped and died, 
 
 And leave them to their pain?” 
 
 Let us lay aside now all double-dealing, 
 all moral subterfuge, all those shuffling 
 
32 
 
 evasions by which the devil is attempting 
 to persuade us to escape from our duty, 
 and let us get up like men and look at it 
 and do it. Students are old enough to 
 decide to do their duty. They are old 
 enough to decide to go to college, they are 
 old enough to decide for law and medicine 
 and other professions; they are old 
 enough, too, to decide this question also. 
 God forbid that we should try behind any 
 kind of pretext to hide from the solemn 
 personal consideration of our vital duty. 
 “Go ye out into the ignorant and sinful 
 world and preach the gospel to the lost.” 
 Have you any reason for not going that 
 you could give to Jesus Christ? That is 
 the real question for every man of us. 
 
 No. 216, l 25. Nov. 1919. 
 
No. 216,1, 25 Nov 1919