• This is a sort of model story:—“Sir, I was put into a lawyer’s office, but I never could bear the confinement, and I could not feel at home in studying law. Providence clearly stopped up my road, for I lost my situation.”
• “And what did you do then? “Why, sir, I was induced to open a grocer’s shop.” “And did you prosper?” “Well, I do not think, sir, I was ever meant for trade; and the Lord seemed quite to shut up my way there, for I failed, and was in great difficulties.”
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“Since then, I have done a little in a life-assurance agency, and tried to get up a school, beside selling tea; but my path is hedged up, and something within me makes me feel that I ought to be a minister.”
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My answer generally is, “Yes, I see; you have failed in everything else, and therefore you think the Lord has especially endowed you for His service; but I fear you have forgotten that the ministry needs the very best of men, and not those who cannot do anything else.”
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A man who would succeed as a preacher would probably do right well either as a grocer, or a lawyer, or anything else. A really valuable minister would have excelled in any occupation. There is scarcely anything impossible to a man who can keep a congregation together for years, and be the means of edifying them for hundreds of consecutive Sabbaths; he must be possessed of some abilities, and be by no means a fool or a ne’er-do-well.
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Jesus Christ deserves the best men to preach His gospel, and not the empty-headed and the shiftless
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— Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 37-38
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