When God sends into the world a great and original genius, like Columbus, Sir Isaac Newton, Dante, Shakespeare, Mozart, Michael Angelo, Franklin, Washington, Byron, Napoleon, it is very plain that they are sent, provided with certain qualities, to do a certain work. It is evident that God meant Columbus to discover America, and Dante to write a poem. If Columbus had tried to write the “Inferno,” and Dante had devoted himself to inventing a steam-engine, if Franklin had written sonnets and pastorals, and Isaac Newton had gone into trade, if Washington had composed symphonies, and Beethoven had travelled to discover the source of the Nile, they would not have made their calling and election sure. But such men (with an occasional exception, like that of Napoleon and Byron) were all faithful to their own inspiration, and each chose to abide in the calling in which he was called; and so each did the work God gave him to do in the world. Napoleon and Byron did their work only partially, for they allowed their egotism to blind them, so as to lose sight of their mission after a while. God sent Napoleon to bind together and organize the institutions of a new time—to organize liberty. He did it for a season, and then sought, egotistically, only to build up himself and his dynasty; then his work came to a sudden end. For it is vanity and egotism which make us fail. We wish for some calling finer or nobler than the calling God gives us; so we come to nothing. In these great and shining examples we are taught how God elects men, how he elects all men, and how he elects all to work. These are not the exceptional cases, as we are apt to suppose, but they are the illustrations of a universal rule.