A little illustration may assist us to get a clearer idea of the matter. Suppose Christ were to walk into your class-room, how would He act? Would He pick out four or five pupils and say, "I wish you to be religious, the others I do not want, and I forbid them such aspirations?" Do you think our loving, gentle Redeemer would speak in this harsh way? And yet some good, but ill-informed Christians think this a faithful representation of God's method of action in this important matter. How, then, would Christ really address the class? He would say, "My dear children, I want as many of you as possible to follow closely in My footsteps, to become perfect. I should be glad to have all of you, who are not prevented by some insuperable obstacle, such as ill-health, lack of talent, home difficulties, or extreme giddiness of character. I hope to have a large number of volunteers." How many children in that class-room, do you think, would joyfully hold up their hands, and beg Him to take them? Now, this is truly the way God acts with the individual soul. He comes to it perhaps not once only but repeatedly, and makes the general offer, using for this purpose the living voice of His minister, or the written page, or a prompting impulse from within. And when God's desire is so manifested, all that the soul needs is to cooperate with grace, if it will. That this interpretation of the general call of Scripture to a higher life is in accord with sound doctrine, we can perceive from St. Thomas, who says that the resolution of entering the religious state, whether it comes from the general invitation of Scripture or an internal impulse, is to be approved. And in his "Catena Aurea," commenting on St. Matt. xix, he quotes St. Chrysostom, who holds that "the reason all do not take Christ's advice is because they do not wish to do so." The words "to whom it is given," according to this Greek father, show that "unless we received the help of grace, the exhortation would profit us nothing. But this help of grace is not denied to those who wish it." This is also the teaching of St. Ignatius in his "Spiritual Exercises," where he designates three occasions in which to elect a state of life: the first, when God appeals to the soul in some extraordinary way; the second, when grace moves the heart by consolation and desolation, and the third, when the soul without any special motion of grace, "that is, when not agitated by diverse spirits, makes use of its natural powers" to elect the state of life which seems best suited to the praise of God and the salvation of one's soul. Evidently a vocation decided in the last-mentioned time, implies no special call beyond the general scriptural invitation and the determination to accept it.