We have to do, then, not with an arbitrary call and an arbitrary choice, as if God called many in mockery, meaning to choose out of them only a few, and making his choice independently of any exertion of theirs.  The picture is very different; it is a gracious call to us all, to come and receive the blessing; it is a reluctant casting out the greatest part of us, because we would not try to render ourselves fit for it.

I said, that we would take the words of the text in reference to ourselves, for here, too, it is true, that many are called, but few are chosen.  It is a large number of you, which I see before me; and if we add to it all those who, within my memory, have sat in the same places before you, we shall have a number very considerable indeed.  All these have been called; they have been sent here to enjoy the same advantages with each other; and those advantages have been put within their reach.  They have entered into a great society which, on the one hand, might raise them forward, or, on the other, depress them.  There has been a sufficient field for emulation:  there have been examples and instructions for good; there have been results of credit and of real improvement made attainable to them, which might have lasted all their lives long.  To this, they have been all, in their turns, called; and out of those so called, have all, or nearly all, been chosen?  I am not speaking of those, who, I trust, would be a very small number, to whom the trial has failed utterly, who could look back on their stay here with no feelings but those of shame.  But would there not be a very large number, to whom their stay here has been a loss, compared with what it might have been; who have reaped but a very small part of those advantages to which they had been at first called?  Are there not too many who must look back on a part, at least, of their time here as wasted; on the seeds of bad habits sown, which, if conquered by after-care, yet, for a long time, were injurious to them?  Are there not too many who carry away from here, instead of good notions, to be ripened and improved, evil notions, to be weeded out and destroyed?  Are there not, in short, a great number who, after having had a great advantage put within their reach, and purchased for them by their friends, at a great expense, have made such insufficient use of their opportunities, to say nothing stronger, as to make it a question afterwards, whether it might not have been better for them had they never come here at all?

Thus far I have been speaking of what are called the advantages of this place in our common language.  That argument, which Butler has so nobly handled, in one of the greatest works in our language, the resemblance, namely, between the course of things earthly and that of things spiritual, is one which we should never fail to notice.  We can discern the type, as it were, of the highest truth of our Lord’s sayings in the experience of our common life in worldly things.