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[Illustration: titlepage]




  The Potter and the
  Clay

  By the

  Right Rev.
  Arthur F. Winnington Ingram, D.D.

  Lord Bishop of London

  The Young Churchman Co.

  484 Milwaukee Street
  Milwaukee,       Wis.




Contents


                                  I.

  CHAPTER                                               PAGE

     I. THE POTTER'S VESSEL                                3
    II. THE SPLENDOUR OF GOD                              15
   III. GOD THE KING OF THE WORLD                         27
    IV. MISSIONARY WORK THE ONLY FINAL CURE FOR WAR       40
     V. GOD THE CHAMPION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS                 57
    VI. THE KNOCKING AT THE DOOR                          75
   VII. IMMORTALITY                                       91
  VIII. THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM                           108


                        II.--TO THE CLERGY

     I. MESSENGERS                                       123
    II.  PHYSICIANS                                      145
   III. FISHERS OF MEN                                   160


                           III.--TO GIRLS

      WHAT A GIRL CAN DO IN A DAY OF GOD                 179


                            IV.--TO BOYS

      THE EFFECT OF THE HOLY GHOST ON HUMAN CHARACTER    199


                                  V.

      THE WAR AND RELIGION                               213




PREFACE


Another year, and we are still at War! But we must not mind, for we
must see this thing through to the end. As Mr. Oliver said in his
letter on "What we are fighting for," published this week: "We are
fighting for Restitution, Reparation, and Security, and the greatest
of these is Security." He means security that this horror shall not
happen again, and that these crimes shall not again be committed;
and he adds: "To get this security _we must destroy the power of the
system which did these things_."

Now it is clear that this power is not yet destroyed, and to make
peace while it lasts is to betray our dead, and to leave it to the
children still in the cradle to do the work over again, if, indeed,
it will be possible for them to do it if we in our generation fail.

This book, then, is an answer to the question asked me very often
during the past two years, and very pointedly from the trenches this
very Christmas Day: "How can you reconcile your belief in a good
GOD, who is also powerful, with the continuance of this desolating
War? How can we still believe the Christian message of Peace on
earth with War all around?"

It is with the hope that this book may comfort some mourning hearts,
and bring some light to doubting minds, that I send forth "The
Potter and the Clay."

                                               A. F. LONDON.

  _Feast of the Epiphany_, 1917.



                             I




I

THE POTTER'S VESSEL[1]

  [1] Preached at St. Giles's, Cripplegate. The argument in this
  sermon, stated shortly during dinner-hour in a City church, is
  developed at length in the lecture which comes last in this book.

     "Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will
     cause thee to hear My words. Then I went down to the potter's
     house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the
     vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the
     potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to
     the potter to make it."--JER. xviii. 2-4.

I suppose there is no metaphor in Holy Scripture that has been so
much misunderstood and led to more mischief than this metaphor of
the potter and the clay. Do not you know how, if any of us dared to
vindicate the ways of GOD to men, again and again we were referred
to the words of St. Paul: "Who art thou that repliest against GOD?
Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it: Why hast Thou
made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same
lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?"
And so the offended human conscience was silenced but not
satisfied. There is no doubt that the monstrous misrepresentation
of Christianity which we call Calvinism arose chiefly from this
metaphor; and few things have done more harm to the religion of the
world than Calvinism. Those who believe that GOD is an arbitrary
tyrant who simply works as a potter is supposed to work on clay,
irrespective of character or any plea for mercy--how can such a
person love GOD, or care for GOD, or wish to go to church or even
pray? You cannot do it!

Thus there sprang up in some men's minds just such a picture of GOD
as is described by that wonderful genius, Browning. Some of you
may have read the poem called "Caliban on Setebos," in which the
half-savage Caliban pictures to himself what sort of a person GOD
is. He had never been instructed, he knew nothing; but he imagined
that GOD would act towards mankind as he acted towards the animals
and the living creatures on his island; and this is a quotation from
that poem:

    "Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him.
     Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.
     Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs
     That march now from the mountain to the sea;
     Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
     Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
     Say the first straggler that boasts purple spots
     Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off?
     Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm,
     And two worms he whose nippers end in red;
     As it likes me each time, so I do: so He."

In other words, his picture of GOD was that of an arbitrary tyrant
who rejoiced in his power, who did what he liked, who enjoyed
tormenting, who would have looked down in glee upon the pictures
that have so touched us in the paper of a woman, as she taught a
Bible-class, killed by a Zeppelin bomb; and most touching of all of
the little child who, with the stump of his arm, ran in and said:
"They've killed daddy and done this to me." These things stir our
deepest feelings; but such a GOD as Caliban pictured his Setebos to
be would have rejoiced at them and laughed to see them.

No wonder that this picture of GOD which has grown up in some
minds produces absolute despair. People say, "If GOD is like that,
what is the good of my doing anything? GOD will do what He likes,
irrespective of what I do." Or, again, it produces a spirit of
fatalism: "I'm made like that! It's not my fault." Like Aaron when
reproached about the golden calf--"I cast the gold they gave me into
the fire, and there came out this calf." And all this produces in
the mind of mankind a kind of rebellion--nay, a hatred of GOD ("I
hate GOD," said a man once to me)--which makes it quite impossible
for any religion or trust or desire to pray to exist in the human
soul. It is well worth while, then, to run this metaphor of the
potter and the clay back to its source.

Here in Jeremiah is the original passage about the potter and the
clay. Now if you read for yourself this passage in the eighteenth
chapter of Jeremiah, you will find an absolutely different picture
given. If you go with Jeremiah to the potter's house you find a
humble, patient man at work dealing with refractory clay, patiently
trying to make the best he can out of it, and when he is defeated in
producing one object he makes another. If he cannot make a porcelain
vase he will make a bowl; if he cannot produce a beautiful work of
art he makes a flower-pot.

The potter has three things to notice about him. First of all, there
is his patience. Then there is the fact that he is checked in his
design by the clay at every moment. He has no arbitrary power; he
is checked because he has to deal with a certain substance. And the
last beautiful thing about the potter is his resourcefulness; he has
always got the alternative of a second best. Though something has
wrecked his first plan he has got another. This is the picture of
GOD, these are the characteristics of GOD which we are to carry away
from the potter and the clay.

1. Now just see, if this is so, what a tremendous light this throws
upon the war. There are many to-day who do not think things out
deeply, who look on this war as the breakdown of Christianity
altogether. They say: All we have been taught, why, look how vain
it is! Here are seven Christian nations at war and dragging in the
rest of the world. All you have taught us about GOD, all you say
about Christianity, is shown to be futile. We see the breakdown of
Christianity indeed.

But wait a moment. Look at the potter and the clay, and see if you
do not get some light from this. Here is the Potter, our great GOD;
the great Potter knows what is in His mind; He has in His mind a
world of universal peace. He is planning a porcelain vase in which
the world is at peace. He meant men to be all of one mind. He made
people of one blood to be of one mind in CHRIST JESUS. That is
clearly His plan, His design, and we do well to pray for--

    "... the promised time
     When war shall be no more,
       And lust, oppression, crime,
     Shall flee Thy face before."

That is His plan, that is His design, and some day He
will see it accomplished. "He shall see of the travail of His soul
and shall be satisfied."

Meanwhile, because He acts like a potter, He is defeated again and
again by the character of the clay, for He will not run counter
to the free will of the individual or of a nation. If a great
and powerful nation deliberately turns back from Christianity to
Paganism, if that nation deliberately declares regret that it took
up Christianity in the fourth century, if it has adopted the gospel
that Might is Right, if the people turn to Odin as their ideal
instead of to CHRIST, they defeat the plan of the great Potter; and
so He cannot have the porcelain vase of universal peace. You have no
right to blame GOD; it is the work of the Devil. GOD is hindered at
every moment by the Devil and all his works; you cannot therefore
blame our great and glorious GOD for the defeat of His design. The
great Potter is not to be blamed because of the refractoriness of
the clay.

But here comes the splendid resourcefulness of the great Potter.
Although He cannot get out His first design of the porcelain vase of
universal peace, He is not defeated. He has got a second-best; He
will have a beautiful bowl of universal service--a people offering
themselves out of sheer patriotism for the service of their
country. And that is what He has produced to-day. Who would have
thought that five millions of men would have volunteered to fight
for their country? Who would have thought that every woman would
feel herself disgraced if not doing something for her country as
nurse, physician, or in a canteen? Why, the spirit of service abroad
to-day among men and women is something we have not seen in our
country for a hundred years. The great Potter, then, has produced
something from the clay; He has produced the beautiful bowl of
service. Let us thank Him for that!

2. But it is not only upon the war that the picture of the potter
and the clay throws such light; it also shows what we have to
do with our country. There are some people who imagine it is
inconsistent to say two things at the same time. People blame me for
declaring two things in the same breath. One is that we never have
had such a righteous cause; that we are fighting for the freedom of
our country, for the freedom of the world; that we are fighting for
international honour, for the future brotherhood of nations; we are
fighting for the "nailed hand against the mailed fist." But, on the
other hand, are we to speak as if we had no faults of our own? Are
we to take the tone of Pharisees and say, "We thank GOD we are not
as other men, even as these Germans"? We have to admit that we have
grave national sins ourselves, and if we want to shorten the war we
have to put these national sins away. That is why we are going to
have a national mission this autumn, and we are preparing for it now.

The Church is going to preach this great national mission,
and--please GOD--our Non-conformist brethren will fall in on their
own lines and do the same. We have great national sins, and we have
to put those away if we would shorten the war. What a disgrace it is
still to have a National Drink Bill of 180 millions! What a disgrace
it is that we have not yet more thoroughly mastered immorality
in London! What shame it is that still there is so much love of
comfort, and that there are people making all they can out of the
war!

We have to get rid of all this; we must have the spirit of sacrifice
from one end of the nation to the other. We have to ask the great
Potter to remake the country, to give the Empire a new spirit.
Why was it that, when I had myself pressed a Bill to diminish the
licensing hours on Sunday from six to three--a harmless reform,
you would have thought--to give the barmen and barmaids a chance
of Sunday rest, that was shelved in the long run? Why was it that
we could not raise the age for the protection of girls even to
eighteen? There is much to be purged out of our country, and there
could be no greater calamity than for this war to end and England
still to be left with her national sins.

Therefore the great Potter must remake us. He may have to break
some nations to pieces like a potter's vessel. It is possible for
a nation to be so stiffened in national sins that there may be
nothing for it but to break it in pieces. We pray GOD that we may
not be so far gone as that, that we may still be plastic clay in the
hands of the Potter. That is our prayer, that is our ideal, to be a
new England, a new British Empire, and that GOD may use us as His
instrument in freeing the world.

3. But--and let this be my last word--we ourselves _individually_
must be re-created. Have you ever thought, brother or sister,
that the great Potter had a design for you? That, when He planned
you, He planned a devoted man who would be a powerful influence
in the world; that He planned you, my sister, to be an example of
attractive goodness. How many people have you brought to CHRIST? How
powerful a witness do you give in this city? Suppose that you, who
were meant individually to be powerful instruments in GOD'S hand,
vessels He could use, have become middle-aged cynics, or sneer at
the religion you profess to believe in, there is only one thing
to be done. You must get back to the design the great Potter had
for you. We have all some reason to admit that we have been marred
in the hands of the Potter, and to ask the Potter to make us into
another vessel as it may seem good to the Potter to make us. In this
there are only two conditions--to look up and to trust heaven's
wheel and not earth's wheel.

          "Look not thou down, but up!
           To uses of a cup,
    The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
           The new wine's foaming flow,
           The master's lips aglow!
    Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?"[2]

  [2] Browning. "Rabbi Ben Ezra."

We have to realise this, that we can be remade, that GOD'S power
can do anything; but that we may go on for ever as we are unless we
really put ourselves in the hands of GOD. What, then, I ask every
one of you, is to take the clay of your nature with the prayer,
"Just as I am, without one plea," and place it in the great Potter's
hands, that He may re-create you into the man or woman GOD meant you
to be. Nothing can more effectually shorten the days for our boys in
the trenches.




II

THE SPLENDOUR OF GOD

     "O GOD, wonderful art Thou in Thy holy places: Thou wilt give
     strength and power unto Thy people. Blessed be GOD."--Ps.
     lxviii. 35.


At the great Convention of all the clergy of London in Advent, 1915,
we saw reasons for thinking that what the world had been losing
sight of was the _majesty_ of GOD; the lowered sense of sin, the
neglect of worship, the uppishness of man, the pessimism of the day,
and the querulous impatience under discomfort, are all signs of the
loss of the sense of the majesty of GOD.

But I want now to go farther than this; I want to prove that the
only way to revive praise, hope, peace, sacrifice, and courage, is
to revive a belief, not only in the majesty, but in the splendour of
GOD. It was said not long ago that even good Christians believed
all the Creed except the first clause of it.

But if we leave out the first clause, "I believe in GOD," see what
happens.

1. Prayer becomes unreal. It is only a delight when it is felt to be
communion with a very noble and splendid person.

    "LORD, what a change within us one short hour
     Spent in Thy presence can prevail to make!"[3]

is only true if that short and glorious hour is spent with an
inspiring and glorious personality. When, like Moses, our faces
should shine as we come down from the mount.

  [3] T