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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] Trench.

2. Praise becomes practically impossible. Sometimes we say, "We
really must praise GOD more." But we cannot _make_ ourselves praise,
any more than we can move a boat by swinging up and down in it.
We must pull against something to make it move. What we want is
an adequate idea of the splendour of GOD. When we come in sight
of Mont Blanc or Niagara, or when we hear of some gallant deed on
the battlefield, we say "How splendid!" quite naturally. We shall
praise quite naturally when we catch sight--if only for a moment--of
the true character of GOD, or believe He has done something great.

3. Religion, which means something which _binds_ us to GOD, becomes
an uninspiring series of detailed scruples about ourselves.
Self-examination is most necessary; but it was well said by an
experienced guide of souls that, "for every time we look at
ourselves, we ought to look nine times at GOD."

Do some of you feel as I speak that your religion does not help you;
that, while you have not given up your prayers, or coming to church,
it is rather a burden than a help, or at any rate not such a help as
it might be? It is because you have lost sight of the splendour of
GOD.

4. Or, again, are you suffering from depression? You hardly know
why, but everything seems to go wrong; you seem oppressed with what
old writers called "accidie." Your will has lost its spring; the
note of your life has lost its hope and its joyousness. You drag
through life rather than "rise up with wings like an eagle" or
"run," or even "walk." This is all because you have lost faith or
never had faith in the splendour of GOD.

5. Or, on the contrary, you are busy from morning till night,
and you are too busy for prayer or church; you are immersed in a
thousand schemes for making money for yourself or for your family or
for the good of mankind. And yet, with all your business abilities,
you don't inspire people; you are conscious of a want yourself, and
other people are more conscious of it. It is simply that you are
without the one thing which matters; you are the planet trying to
shine without its sun; you are ignoring the splendour of GOD.

I. For consider how splendid GOD is! These writers of the psalms
had many limitations. They had a very inadequate belief in the life
after the grave; they knew nothing about the Incarnation; they had
no Christmas Day, Easter Day, Ascension Day, or Whit Sunday, to
inspire them. But they are bursting with glorious song, because of
their sense of the splendour of GOD. "Before the mountains were
brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, Thou art
GOD from everlasting, and world without end."

1. He is splendid, first, in His wonderful _Power_. I should not
think of arguing with you as to the existence of GOD; although, to
any thinking mind, the marvellous intricacy of the whole creation,
from the largest sun to the smallest insect, demands a Thinking
Mind; the thunder of the four hundred million consciences of mankind
demands a Righteous Person. And a Creator who is at once wise and
good is a GOD. No! it is not only His existence which should mean so
much to us, but His astonishing power.

I remember when I was at Niagara being taken down to the great
power-station, and through that power-station the power of Niagara
Falls lighted, among other things, the whole of the great province
of Ontario so that the solitary worker in some small town was
working with the light from a great power-station which he had never
seen, and in which he only, perhaps, partly believed.

But think of the Power-Station which works the whole universe; which
gives the light to twenty million suns which have been counted and
GOD knows how many which have never been seen, and yet which gives
strength to the boy far from home as he leaps across the parapet
into the battle. Well may another psalmist cry: "O GOD, wonderful
art Thou in Thy holy places: Thou shalt give strength and power unto
Thy people. Blessed be GOD."

And, surely, even if there were no other characteristic of the
splendour of GOD, this ought to encourage us more than it does. To
believe that in prayer you are in touch with unfathomable strength;
that if you co-operate with GOD you have at your disposal His
unrivalled and incomparable power--this ought to put heart into the
most timid. We understand what Archbishop Trench meant when he said:

      "We kneel how weak; we rise how full of power!"

2. But the power of GOD is really only the beginning of it. The
next characteristic of the splendour of GOD is in His _Generosity_.
"Thou openest Thine Hand, and fillest all things living with
plenteousness," says the psalmist. You could scarcely get a more
beautiful description of the open-handedness of GOD, and the ease
with which GOD showers His gifts upon the world.

(_a_) When you come to think of it, there is no explanation of man's
possession of life, except the open-handedness of GOD. He simply
_gave_ him life, and there is nothing more to be said about it.
It is at present still a scientific truth that "Life only comes
from life." Life has never been yet spontaneously generated. When
men thought they had succeeded in creating life, it was discovered
that some previous germ of life had been left in the hermetically
sealed vessel. But even if, in the years to come, some sort of life
was produced from apparently dead matter, would it really have any
bearing on the age-long belief that this free, joyous life of man
and animal has come from GOD? When you ask why He gave life, there
is only one answer: That so many more living, sentient beings might
sun themselves in the sunshine of His own happiness, He opened His
Hand and life came out.

(_b_) But He was not content with giving life. He gave all the
colour of life; He painted the most glorious world out of the
riches of His marvellous imagination; every variety of flower;
every plumage of bird; every species of tree--often brought to the
best by the slow process of evolution. He gave it all; He flung it
out in all the exuberance of delight in what was "very good." He
gave colour to our own life. He gave us our warm friendships; our
keen intellectual interest in problems; the love of mother, wife,
husband, father, child. He flung it all out, like a joyous giver;
"He filled all things living with plenteousness."

(_c_) But not content with this life, He had another ready when this
was over. He knew the boys wanted life, and that this life would not
be enough to satisfy them, especially if they died early; so He had
another ready for them. And here, again, another psalmist dashes in
with his word of praise: "He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest him
a long life, even for ever."

This is our glorious hope to-day. It is only when we have grasped
the splendour of the generosity of GOD that we can really appraise
the meanness of man.

Nearly all the ills of our life on earth--the poverty, the class
hatred, the wars--come from an unfair grasping at an unfair share of
the gifts of the generous GOD.

    "They ask no thrones; they only ask to share
     The common liberty of earth and air,"

some poet sang of the gipsies.

GOD gave plenty of land, and plenty of water, and plenty of air,
and if the New Testament motto had been followed, "Having food and
raiment, with these we shall have enough," the generosity of GOD
would have been mirrored in the generosity of man.

3. But even this marvellous power and generosity would not excite
the passionate love of mankind, but for His _Humility_. Power may
only awe; the merely generous Lord or Lady Bountiful, kind as they
often are, are sometimes felt to do it in a spirit of patronage and
self-pleasing; they like to be thought bountiful and kind, and have
their reward in the grateful looks and even obsequious demeanour of
the recipients of their bounty. But it is Christmas which really
stirs the blood. That this powerful, generous Being should manifest
His power and shower down His gifts was wonderful; but that He
should give Himself--this was sublime! This is what stirred heaven
to its depths--"Glory to GOD in the highest!"

The crowning splendour of GOD was His Humility. He was great when He
said, "Let there be light, and there was light." He was mighty when
He opened His Hand and filled all things living with plenteousness.
But He was greatest of all when He lay as a babe in the manger. Well
may the adoring Christian look up at Christmas and salute this third
revelation of the splendour of GOD:

    "Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown
     When Thou camest to earth for me....
         Oh, come to my heart, LORD JESUS:
         There is room in my heart for Thee!"

II. What, then, ought this belief in the splendid power, generosity,
and humility of GOD to produce in us?

1. It must produce Praise. It must make us say: "Praise GOD in His
holiness; praise Him in the firmament of His power."

You have caught sight of Mont Blanc and you have seen Niagara, and
you say quite naturally, "How splendid!"

2. It produces Hope. War, slaughter, misery, can't be the end, if
such a GOD exists. It may be inevitable from man's lust, ambition,
and greed; but it can't be the end--if GOD'S people work with GOD:
there must be a kingdom coming at last in which dwelleth, not
ambition, tyranny, or cruelty, but "righteousness, peace, and joy in
the HOLY GHOST."

3. It produces Peace. Once believe in the splendour of GOD, and
you get "the peace of GOD, which passeth all understanding." "Thou
wilt keep him," says the prophet, "in perfect peace, whose mind is
stayed on Thee." The world is not out of GOD'S Hand, as some people
would persuade us, nor any individual in the world. "The very hairs
of your head are all numbered," and "ye are of more value than many
sparrows."

4. And it produces answering Sacrifice and Courage. What we want
to-day is "the warrior's mind," which gives and does not heed the
cost, which fights and does not heed the wounds; and we can only be
nerved for this by the splendid self-sacrifice of GOD Himself.

If man is GOD'S child, then it must be a case of "Like Father, like
son," and the splendour of GOD must be answered by the nobility of
man. To know such a GOD is to live, to serve such a GOD is to reign;
with such a faith, death loses its sting, and the grave its terrors.
For to die is to pass into the presence of One who has shown Himself
powerful and generous and humble. And the response of the grateful
soul, with ten times the conviction of the psalmist, when he thinks
of what happened on Christmas Day, will be the same words uttered so
many thousand years ago:

"O GOD, wonderful art Thou in Thy holy places.... He will give
strength and power unto His people. Blessed be GOD."




III

GOD THE KING OF THE WORLD[4]

  [4] Preached in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, in connection
  with the Annual Conference of the National Union of Women Workers.

     "GOD is my King of old; the help that is done upon earth He
     doeth it Himself."--Ps. lxxiv. 12.


GOD is either non-existent or His existence is the greatest fact in
the universe. Either the secularist is right, and there is nothing
but the strong hand and the keen brain of man and woman to better
the condition of world, or, if there be a Person who created the
great blazing suns that we call stars, whose imagination is so vast
that He controls the movements of history, and yet whose knowledge
is so detailed that the welfare of the smallest child in a great
city is of infinite interest to Him, then the existence of that
Person is the greatest fact in all the world. No question is so
urgent as what He thinks about a problem; nothing is so vitally
important as to know what His mind is, for instance, as to the issue
of a great war. No one is quite so foolish as the man or woman who
either plans his or her own life, or who propounds schemes for
the improvement of the world, without taking the greatest Fact in
all the world into account, or keeping in touch with what must be
on this hypothesis the ultimate Source and Fount of all power and
the Mainspring of all energy. If there be such a Person at all,
the wires might as well expect to convey a message apart from the
electric current as for the human instrument to avail without GOD.

Now, I think it is quite likely that among so many busy people,
whose brains are all full of practical schemes, there may be some
whose minds may have but little hold on GOD, and may be troubled by
doubts, such as I remember my own mind was in the days of my youth.
After all, one mind is very much like another; and in speaking to
women I have long learnt to speak as if I was speaking to men, and
in this I never found myself very much astray. If I tell you, then,
how the reality of GOD gradually dawned upon one mind, it is only in
the hope that through what may be similar clouds of vagueness and
doubt the light may shine upon another.

1. I think undoubtedly that _Nature_ was, and always will be to
most minds, the first help. It does seem more and more impossible
that the ordered universe can have been produced by chance. To use
an illustration I have often used, especially on Sunday afternoons
at the open-air meetings in the parks of East London, if a box of
letters cannot throw themselves into a play of Shakespeare because
there is clearly the mark of mind in the play, how little credible
is it that the atoms of the universe have thrown themselves into
the universe as we see it to-day! We feel inclined to add to the
trenchant questions in the Book of Job the further question: Who
