This is the call of the disciples to the discipleship, among the earliest acts of Christ's ministry. It is the charter of the Christian ministry, defining that, and giving us the genius of the preacher of the gospel. He is to act directly upon the reason, the conscience and the affections of men. It is his business to bring men from wickedness to righteousness by the presentation of truth; to bring them from indifference to moral sensibility; from godlessness to a perpetual consciousness of God. There are other moral influences that exist in the world. There is a moral influence in the natural mechanical laws of the globe. All the drift of a true business—that is, a prosperous business—carries with it, incidentally, a moral influence. All industries, all enterprises, all successes, have in their train moral results, and so become moral influences. Government and all institutions of society are incidental and collateral moral influences, but it is not upon these that the work of Christ was to rest. Quite aside from these,—as separate from them as the steeple is from the body of the cathedral,—there is to be an order of men whose business it shall be to win their fellow men by the influence which they can bring upon men, man by man.