In a day of such widely extended profession as the present, it is specially important that Christians should be deeply impressed with the necessity of realizing _personally the call of God_, without which there can be no permanency or steadiness in the Christian course. It is a comparatively easy thing to make a profession at a time when profession prevails; but it is never easy to walk by faith--it is never easy to give up present things, in the hope of "good things to come." Nothing but that mighty principle which the apostle denominates "_the substance_ of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. xi. 1), can ever enable a man to persevere in a course which in a world where all is wrong--all out of order, must be thorny and difficult. We must feel "_persuaded_" of something yet to come--something worth waiting for--something that will reward all the toil of a pilgrim's protracted course, ere we rise up out of the circumstances of nature and the world, to "run with patience the race that is set before us." (Heb. xii. 1.) All this is fully exemplified in Abraham, and the exemplification receives additional force from the contrast exhibited in the character of Lot and others who are introduced in the course of the narrative. In the seventh of Acts, we have the following words which bear directly upon the subject before us. "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and said unto him, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and come into the land that _I shall show thee_." (Vers. 1, 2.) Here then we are presented with the first dawning of that light which attracted Abraham out of the darkness of "Ur, of the Chaldees," and which shining in upon his wearisome path, from time to time, gave fresh vigor to his soul, as he journeyed in quest of "that city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." "The God of glory" caused Abraham to see, in the light of His character, the true condition of things in Ur, and further, to believe, as some one has observed, _a report concerning future glory and inheritance_, and he therefore hesitates not, but instantly girds himself up for the journey.