How much directly 'spiritual' work have you with the boys? Could you, if you desired, get more?
I will pray over the matter. Do be slow before you decide to leave. I believe you ought to stay, although it may be more difficult to maintain your own spiritual life and ideals in a school than in a parish. You may be doing more good than you know. It is easier to find men to do parish work than to do school work of the highest kind.
There is a sermon of Lightfoot's in which he urges clergymen at the University not to go away, because it is hard to maintain their spiritual ideals at Cambridge, and because they seem to have so little direct spiritual influence. May not this apply to your work also?
To one about to be ordained.
Cambridge: May 1901.
It seems so clear to us that you have a call, that I find it hard to realise that you yourself are uncertain. But the very fact that you have been 'counting the cost,' and that you have no ecstatic joy at the prospect before you, encourages me. I am glad you realise the difficulties beforehand. What you don't fully see is the strength upon which you will be able to draw. I often think of those lines of Tennyson:—
O living Will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow through our deeds and make them pure.[1]
That Will can transform our will, and the very weakness of our natural will is then a help. The strength is seen and felt to come from an invisible source: 'Thy will, not my will.'
The terrible need of men to fight against the forces of evil impresses me. The call is so loud on every side. And if men like you cannot hear it, I am driven almost to despair.… I often think of my father's words on his deathbed: 'If I had a thousand lives I would give them all—all to the ministry.'
The thought that gave me comfort at my own ordination was a text suggested to me by my brother: 'He had in His right hand seven stars.' In His right hand—we are safe there. I felt such a worm as I had never felt before. 'But fear not, thou worm Jacob.' … Don't look for happiness or peace at this time, but for the presence and power (whether felt or unfelt) of that God whom we both love and try to love better. Do not persuade yourself that you do not love God. You do, more than you have any idea of. The part of your 'Ego' which you would least wish to lose is not even your love for men—but for God. If you had your choice now, and had to decide what part of your being you would retain for eternity, it would be the latter. Beloved, if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart.… 'He who loves makes his own the grandeur that he loves.'