These are chosen; and they to whom this description does in no degree apply, they are not chosen.  They are not chosen in any sense, they are called only.  And, now, what is the proportion between the one and the other; are there as many chosen as there have been many called?  Or do Christ’s words apply in our case no less than in others; that though they who are called are many, yet they who are chosen are few?

This I dare not answer; there is a good as well as an evil which is unseen to the world at large, unseen even by all but those who watch us most nearly and most narrowly.  All we can say is, that there are too many, who we must fear are not chosen; there are too few, of whom we can feel sure that they are.  Yet hope is a wiser feeling than its opposite; it were as wrong as it would be miserable to abandon it.  How gladly would we hope the best things of all those whom we saw this morning at Christ’s holy table!  How gladly would we believe of all such, that they were more than called merely; that they had listened to the call:  that they had obeyed it; that they had already gained some Christian victories; that they were, in some sense, not called only, but chosen.  But this we may say; that hope which we so long to entertain, that hope too happy to be at once indulged in, you may authorize us to feel it; you may convert it into confidence.  Do you ask how?  By going on steadily in good, by advancing from good to better, by not letting impressions fade with time.  Now, with many of you, your confirmation is little more than three months distant; when we next meet at Christ’s table, it will have passed by nearly half-a-year.  It may be, that, in that added interval, it will have lost much of its force; that, from various causes, evil may have abounded in you more than good; that then shame, or a willing surrender of yourselves to carelessness, will keep away from Christ’s Communion, many who have this day joined in it.  But, if this were not to be so; if those, whom we have seen with joy this day communicating with us in the pledges of Christian fellowship, should continue to do so steadily; if, in the meantime, traits shall appear in you in other things that our hope was well founded; if the hatred of evil and the love of good were to be clearly manifest in you; if by signs not to be mistaken by those who watch earnestly for them, we might be assured that your part was taken, that you were striving with us in that service of our common Master, in which we would fain live and die; if evil was clearly lessened among us—­not laughed at, but discouraged and put down; if instead of those turning away, who have now been with us at Christ’s table, others, who have now turned away, should then be added to the number; then we should say, not doubtingly, that you were chosen:  that you had tasted of the good things of Christ; that the good work of God was clearly begun in you.  We might not, indeed, be without care, either for you or for ourselves: