In His Relationship to the 'World
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of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." (Galatians 2 :20.) This was the spiritual experience of St. Francis of Assisi. One of his closest brothers has pictured St. Francis' death for us, in The Mirror of Perfection: In the year of our Lord 1227, on the fourth of the nones of October, he passed away to the Lord Jesus Christ, whom
he loved with his whole heart, with his whole mind, his whole soul, his whole strength, his most ardent desire, and fullest affection, following Him most perfectly, running after Him most swiftly, and at the last reaching Him most gloriously.
This was the spiritual experience which prompted Augustine Baker to declare: "I renounce all care and solicitude for tomorrow concerning anything belonging to this life." Such a personal spiritual experience was the reality behind Isaac Watts' moving lines: "All the vain things that charm me most I sacrifice them to His blood." This is what Emerson meant when he wrote concerning the world: "I can get along without it." And the Christian minister must mean it too! THE WORLD-TO-COME In order to make the picture complete, as we close this chapter on the minister and his relationship to the world, we must also see him in his relationship tc the world-to-come. One world is not enough for any person created in the image of God; and certainly one world can never be the full measure of any man called into the Gospel ministry. For after all, in a very rea] way, the call to the ministry came to a man from the Eternal World, as God spoke distinctively to him.