Evocation

“ For the word vocation has ethical and religious implications of a very important kind. "Man's vocation is to do his duty in that sphere of life to which it has pleased God to call him." In all the tale of history the most conspicuous examples of loyalty to vocation have been afforded by men who were deeply impressed by the conviction that they were called of God. ”

“ I think that it may be so of any who are "pressed in the spirit" to serve, to witness to any truth: that is their vocation and every other is an avocation, a calling away from the real business of life. ”

“ Even with the help of a permanent business or profession, however, the most interesting men I know are those who have an avocation as well as a vocation. I mean a taste or work quite apart from the business of life. This revives, inspires, and cultivates them perpetually. It matters little what it is, if only it is real and personal, is large enough to last, and possesses the power of growth. ”

“ I thoroughly believe that the only way to succeed with any vocation is to make it a part of your very self and weave it into your every thought and prayer.
You must love before you can comfort and help. ”

“ The call of the world’s need for some special work and your own consciousness of power to render that service will bring you a genuine sense of vocation as you gird yourself for it. There are many intimations as to the place one should take and hold, which may have all the compelling force of a vision from on high. ”

“ And if I discover for the Scholar a vocation most honourable, most lofty, and distinguished above that of all other classes of men, how is it possible for me to lay it before you without exceeding the limits of modest expression, without seeming to undervalue other vocations, without being apparently blinded by self-conceit? ”

“ But these are really no vocations in the embrace them no essentially different obligations, as in the states of matrimony, the priesthood, and the religious life; they are simply trades, occupations, professions, distinct positions in life. Now as regards the three states or vocations, properly so called, God, whose wise providence guides and orders all things, bestows upon each individual human being, an immortal soul with all the special aptitudes and capabilities which are required to lead him to the goal which he is destined to reach. ”

“ My son, thou hast taken upon thee the profession which is of all the most ancient and acceptable to the divinity. Thou hast sworn to be faithful, brave, and secret; to pursue to destruction every human being whom chance, or thy ingenuity, may throw into thy power, with the exception of those who are forbidden by the laws of our profession, which are now to thee sacred. ”

“ If some among you have kindly believed that I feel the dignity of this my peculiar vocation, that in all my thought and teaching I shall make it my highest aim to contribute to the culture and elevation of humanity in you, and in all with whom you may ever have a common point of contact, that I hold all philosophy and all knowledge which does not tend towards this object, as vain and worthless ”

“ From that moment he had a vocation which employed and stimulated all the energies of his mind, gave a value to every vacant interval of time, an interest and significance to every random thought and casual accession of knowledge—an object to live for as wide as humanity, as immortal as the human race—an idea to live in vast and lofty enough to fill the soul for ever with religious and heroic aspirations. ”

“ I may be permitted to say to you at present without proof, what is doubtless already known to many among you, and what is obscurely, but not the less strongly, felt by others, that all philosophy, all human thought and teaching, all your studies, especially all that I shall address to you, can tend to nothing else than to the answering of these questions, and particularly of the last and highest of them, What is the absolute vocation of Man? ”

“ Let this love of his vocation and of Knowledge be the sole guide of his life, visible to all men;—let him be moved by nothing else, regarding no personal interest either of himself or of others. Here, as elsewhere, I shall say nothing of the common and vulgar desires which may not enter within the circle of him who has approached and handled the sacred things of Knowledge. ”

“ My race, my family, my native place, and the peculiar circle in which I was brought up, by diverting me from all material pursuits, and by rendering me unfit for anything except the treatment of things of the mind, had made of me an idealist, shut out from everything else. The application of my intellect might have been a different one, but the principle would have remained the same. The true sign of a vocation is the impossibility of getting away from it: that is to say, of succeeding in anything except that for which one was created. ”

“ But as an immortal, with this broken wreck of mortality before me, with this scene as the ‘end-all’ of human glory, I feel that no career is truly great but that of him who, whether he be illustrious or obscure, lives to the future in the present, and linking himself to the spiritual world, draws from God the life, the rule, the motive, and the reward of all his labor. ”

“ But what an idea does it suggest to us of the mighty will, the indomitable spirit, the decided and unchangeable vocation, that, in spite of so many impediments, his genius fulfilled its destiny, and attained at last to the supremacy at which it aimed from the first! ”

“ Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or, as is more thy nature, be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world. ”

“ If time permitted I could take up every occupation, every avocation, every profession and every calling, and show you that no matter which way we turn—no matter what we do—we are always and everywhere weighing the Soul. ”

“ You may be driving sheep, and you shall wander to the city—bucolic and open-mouthed; shall wander under the intrepid guidance of the spirit into the studio of the master, and after a time he shall say, ‘I have nothing more to teach you.’ And now you have become the master, who did so recently dream of great things while driving sheep. You shall lay down the saw and the plane to take upon yourself the regeneration of the world. ”

“ Divinity should never be considered as a profession—it is a divine mission! Physic—physic, my boy! the healing art! that's the profession for you! And I am very glad to hear you declare for it, too, for now the way is perfectly clear! ”

“ EVERY one understands the importance of the question of vocation. Souls that are not removed from the influence exercised by religious indifference and the prejudices of the world, acknowledge that, on the choice of a state, depends the happiness or misfortune of life. ”

“ In the natural order of things, all men being equal, the vocation common to all is the state of manhood; and whoever is well trained for that, cannot fulfil badly any vocation which depends upon it. Whether my pupil be destined for the army, the church, or the bar, matters little to me. Before he can think of adopting the vocation of his parents, nature calls upon him to be a man. How to live is the business I wish to teach him. ”

“ But we know that he who would enter the Path of Power must use all the initiative, all the volition, possible in any human being, to attain the balance, to master the personality, to place himself wholly and unreservedly in the power, under the control, of the Higher thing that is "within and yet without him"' The Voice of his Soul, that speaks also through the lips of his Teacher; whether that Teacher be embodied visibly before men or not. ”

“ Out of the depth and breadth of his personal character, bounded only by the unity of experience, he must ever react against the narrowness and the factional ritual, and taking this ritual—or special professional technique—to be valid mediately rather than immediately, in spirit rather than merely in letter, must ever seek to translate his factional experience, its skill and its insight, to all parts of human life. ”

“ Marcel breathed again:
—The vocation of children, he said softly, is often in contradiction to the wishes of parents, and that is precisely the sign of the real vocation ... to shatter obstacles. Where is the great artist, the great man, the hero, the saint, the martyr, who has not had to struggle with his own family?
—I am not speaking of a vocation, sir, but of prejudices, of fatal habits, of disheartening nonsense, which children, and especially young girls, imbibe in certain surroundings. ”

“ This hard discipline has been the school and task-work by which their soul has been fitted for their invisible labors in a future life; and when they pass the gates of the grave, their course of benevolent acting first begins, and they find themselves delighted possessors of what through many years they have sighed for—the power of doing good. ”

“ Another deterring impulse is the sense of a divine vocation. Our calling and circumstances are ordained for us by God, and we must not quit the field till the day is done. It is He who has chosen our lot in life and summoned us to the sphere we fill. ”

“ This very common solecism is without excuse.
Attain for Accomplish. "By diligence we attain our purpose." A purpose is accomplished; success is attained.
Authoress. A needless word—as needless as "poetess."
Avocation for Vocation. A vocation is, literally, a calling; that is, a trade or profession. An avocation is something that calls one away from it. If I say that farming is some one's avocation I mean that he practises it, not regularly, but at odd times. ”

“ There are vocations for all who have the courage, the ambition, the willingness to work, the persistence to keep ever-lastingly at it. Finding one's true vocation in life means, not finding an easy way to success, but finding an opportunity to work and work hard at something interesting, something you can do well, and something in which your highest and best talents will find an opportunity for their fullest expression. ”

“ We must recognise our particular form, the instrument that each of us—each of us who carries anything—carries in his being. Mastering this instrument, learning to play it in perfection—that's what I call duty, what I call conduct, what I call success. ”

“ And the final vow that I would have these graduates take is the vow of idealism,—the pledge of fidelity and devotion to certain fundamental principles of life which it is the business of education carefully to cherish and nourish and transmit untarnished to each succeeding generation. ”

“ Some repugnance you will feel at the practice of the profession at first, but it is soon overcome, for the rewards held out are too glorious, to allow us to dwell for a moment on the means we use to attain them. Besides, it is Fate,—the decree of the blessed Alla! and who can withstand it? If he leads us into the undertaking, he gives us firm and brave hearts, a determination which no opposition can overcome, and a perseverance which never yet failed to accomplish its object. ”

“ Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation. Yet we see many who have mistaken their calling, from the blacksmith up (or down) to the clergyman. You will see, for instance, that extraordinary linguist the "learned blacksmith," who ought to have been a teacher of languages; and you may have seen lawyers, doctors and clergymen who were better fitted by nature for the anvil or the lapstone. ”

“ Another and more serious question for the clergyman is that of the vocation in life of those who are weak mentally. By vocation is meant not only religious calling, but the occupation in life generally. ”

“ The agencies of nurture, by which a soul is helped on its upward pathway, are atmosphere, example, ideals, and direct training. Of these the least important is the last, although the value of that is self-evident. By the intellectual and spiritual air that we breathe, by the sight of heroic and consecrated service, by the possibilities of noble achievement the best that is in a man or a boy is usually drawn out. ”

“ Some wish to fill posts of honor and trust in their country's service; some would win respect and honor in some of the learned professions; some would seek esteem and competency in the schools of art; some would lay the foundations of a noble life in mechanism; some in agriculture; some in commerce. The avocations are many, but the spirit, the aim, the ambition is one. ”

“ The candidate, then, in the second degree of Masonry, represents a man starting forth on the journey of life, with the great task before him of self-improvement. For the faithful performance of this task, a reward is promised, which reward consists in the development of all his intellectual faculties, the moral and spiritual elevation of his character, and the acquisition of truth and knowledge. ”

“ Here again, innumerable small efforts of attention will accumulate into mastery, and a mastery worth winning. For a concrete example, take the gradual conquest of each day, the effort to live that day for the Soul. To him that is faithful unto death, the Master gives the crown of life.
11. The gradual conquest of the mind's tendency to flit from one object to another, and the power of one-pointedness, make the development of Contemplation. ”

“ A poet of our day quaintly but not irreverently writes of the future life, “When the Master of all Good Workmen shall set us to work anew.” There we shall work for the joy of it; there we shall know things in their reality; there we shall enjoy the perfect appreciation of the Master, and know the blessedness of labor performed in His service. ”