II. THE CALL OF THE CHURCH.--This is the expressed conviction of the church, after sufficient acquaintance with the candidate, that he is called to preach the Gospel--a conviction resulting from evidences of his qualifications, such as the following: 1. _Sound conversion._ This qualification is vital and central. A defect here is fatal--fatal to the minister himself as almost certain to result in his living and dying unconverted, and fatal to the people as placing their souls under the guidance of a spiritually-blind, godless pastor. Few positions have in them so many elements of danger as that of an unconverted pastor, since, though officially laboring for the conversion of others, his very office places him beyond the scope of all the ordinary means employed by the churches to lead men to Christ and furnishes the strongest incentives to yield to self-deception. No man should enter it of whose conversion the church with which he is connected has doubt; regard alike for the soul of the candidate and for the souls of men demands that in respect to this primary qualification the case should be absolutely clear so far as man may judge. 2. _A superior order of piety._ He is to be "an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity" (1 Tim. iv. 12). He must needs be, in some respects, a model, and must therefore be in advance of the people in experience and life. No brilliancy of intellectual or literary or rhetorical qualification can atone for the absence of a devotional spirit and a pure life in a Christian pastor. 3. _Soundness in the faith._ He is both to "hold fast the form of sound words" (2 Tim. i. 13) and to "speak the things which become sound doctrine" (Tit. ii. 1). A man who is unsettled in his convictions of religious truth, or who palters to the love of novelty by a perpetual straining for that which is strange and startling in doctrine has no rightful place in the pulpit, however popular his address or large his following. The ultimate result of his work is almost always disastrous to the cause of truth. 4. _Adequate mental capacity and training, and scriptural knowledge._ He is to show himself "approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Tim. ii. 15). As the chief work of a minister is public instruction, it is plain he must possess the mental force and knowledge requisite to make his ministry instructive. Moral and spiritual qualifications cannot be made a substitute for intellectual, for the preacher's work is to unfold and enforce truth in the pulpit as well as to illustrate it in holy living. Piety, therefore, essential as it is, if not accompanied with mental gifts and discipline, is not evidence of a ministerial call. Some good men have made a life-mistake by taking on them the responsibilities of public instructors when deficient either in natural abilities or in the