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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
wrapped the atmosphere round the earth and made life possible, and
stopped the friction? Was the beauty of the earth the surprise, or
the gift to His children of a Being with a beautiful mind? Can the
ordered course of the silent stars be produced by any amount of
juggling with chance out of the atoms of the world? In other words,
Nature drives us not only to GOD, but to a very strong GOD and a
very present GOD. If the great astronomer Herschel is right, and
every atom has the appearance of a created thing and every law of
Nature requires, as he says, the continual application of force, we
are "up against"--to use a cant phrase of the day--we are up against
the most powerful Person the world has ever known. To swing the
smallest planet on its orbit is beyond the power of the greatest
superman ever present to the brain of a megalomaniac. But to swing
twenty millions of blazing suns, and to swing them every day and
every night, and to swing them, as far as we know, for millions of
years, requires a Person of surpassing strength and most present
power, for it is clear that of this wonderful thing which is done
upon earth every day and every night "He doeth it Himself."
2. But if the philosopher Kant was right in saying that the first
thing which filled him with awe was the starry heavens without, he
went on to say that the second was the moral law within. And if the
minds of you women are like my own, the path of the discovery of
GOD lies next through the _conscience_. What is it, this indistinct
knocking, this voice, which though it can be stilled can never
be silenced? If it is only a product of mingled self-interest
and heredity, as some would uphold, why does it persistently
urge us, sometimes in almost bitter tones, against our immediate
self-interest?
Why must the boy leave his brilliant prospects and put himself under
the bullets and shells in the trenches? Why must the mother let him
go? It is only a shallow thinker, I believe, who can remain long
under the impression that the "categorical imperative," as Kant
called it, or, as we might say, this insistent, imperious voice,
can be produced by any process of evolution at all. It speaks like
the voice of a person; it argues like a person; it refuses to be
silenced like a person. And the argument is more than justified
that, if there is a Person who made the world and still carries
it on, it is more than probably the same Person who is speaking to
us in conscience. The fact that by His warnings and encouragements
He clearly cares so much for righteousness is a standing witness
that the Person who swings the stars is more than a strong and
clever devil, which the author of the material universe alone might
conceivably be, but a Person with a passion for goodness. Otherwise,
as Dr. Chalmers said, He would not have placed in the breast of
every one of His children, of every one of His created beings, a
reclaiming witness against Himself.
We have come, then, a good way out of sceptical vagueness when we
have arrived at a Person of appalling power, and yet of equally
appalling righteousness, who is thundering His will through every
conscience in the world, as though standing in the midst of the
universe and striking at the same time four hundred million gongs;
not leaving it for someone else to do, but doing it Himself.
But, alas! we are still far from loving Him, for indeed He is still
far from being lovable. Love is the only thing which we cannot
command at will and which we cannot give at will; and the world
would be in a sorry plight so far as loving GOD is concerned, if
nothing more had been done by GOD than this.
3. After all, there are many things which might make us inclined
to hate this immensely strong and righteous Person. With all His
strength and with all His righteousness, there is a terrible amount
of suffering in the world. The old question that some of your
children may have asked you who are mothers has far more in it
than appears upon the surface: "Oh, mother, why does not GOD kill
the devil?" The world is filled with injustice and cruelty, and
especially so to-day. Ypres Cathedral and the Cloth Hall, as I have
seen with my own eyes, are in ruins. So are thousands of homes in
Belgium, France, and Poland, and yet not one single thing was done
by the innocent inhabitants to deserve this fate. Who is going to
give life again to the hundreds shot in cold blood in Louvain and
Aerschott and elsewhere, and seen shot by one of the clergy of the
diocese of London; or honour again to the outraged women and girls;
or restore the dead children--born and unborn--to the mothers who
lost their children in the last Zeppelin raid? Where is the GOD of
the fatherless and of the widow? It is all very well to say, "It is
GOD in His holy habitation." But why does He sit up there in His
holy habitation while such things are being done upon earth? Is He
reclining, as Tennyson pictured the ancient gods,
"On the hills, like gods together,
Careless of mankind"?
he may stay there; but if he does, who is going to love him? whom
do we love in england to-day? is our popular hero the man who, while
he remains safe in the shelter of his home, suggests that someone
else should go and do something to save the country? for myself, if
i thought god was like that, i should not love him. browning, with
that piercing insight which has helped so many, puts the matter in a
sentence. is it possible, he asks in that great argument contained
in the poem "saul,"
"Here the parts shift,
Here the creature surpasses the Creator?"
"Would I suffer for him that I love?" cries David, as he looks with
love and pity on stricken Saul. "Would I suffer for him that I love?
So wouldest Thou, so wilt Thou." And it is an argument that no petty
quibbles can affect. For instance, if the boys in the trenches every
day and every night so give their lives for their friends; if the
mother every day so loves the world that she gives her only begotten
son, and GOD either cannot or will not, then man is greater than
GOD; then the creature surpasses the Creator; the parts in the great
drama have changed indeed.
And that brings us straight up to the New Testament, expecting the
very story--yes, asking for the very chapters--to carry on the great
witness of Nature and of conscience. And there we find the story
just as we should expect, only more so. To use Archbishop Temple's
phrase, the character depicted in the New Testament educates our
conscience instead of merely satisfying it. It is a more glorious
exhibition of the character of GOD than we had any right to ask, and
all carried out personally by Himself. The help that was brought
to earth, He brought it Himself. And just as, on a gloomy day,
when bright sunshine bursts through clouds, it changes everything,
so this revelation changes everything. It does not do away with
difficulties; it lights them up. It does not do away with suffering,
but lights it up. It is quite another thing to suffer or to see
suffering if GOD suffered. "Then I can feel the bullet tear out my
eyes and still believe," as a young officer to whom this happened
still believes. It does not do away with the crime of the men who
have wantonly produced this unnecessary war, and who have trampled
underfoot every law of chivalry and humanity in carrying it out.
But it does give great inspiration to those who die for what has
been called the nailed hand against the mailed fist. "As CHRIST died
for the salvation of the world, my two boys have died according to
their lights for the same cause. May I not think"--asked a Colonel
who lost both his sons in one week--"that CHRIST counts them as His
comrades in arms?"
And what that thought did for him it will do for others. It does
not do away with the inequalities of human life, but like a trumpet
note it summons every man and woman to come and rally round Him who
sprang into the midst of them and gave His life, and who, while
employing human minds and hearts for His work, means that the help
that is done upon earth He doeth it Himself.
What, then, has all this to say to a conference of women workers? It
suggests a warning, and flashes an inspiration to you. It suggests
a warning. It is possible that the keenest, ablest women, like the
keenest, ablest men, may make a mistake which might more clearly be
seen to be ludicrous if it were not so common, that they imagine
they can accomplish great things without GOD. History is strewn
with the failures of those who have made this tragic and hopeless
mistake. Many humble and noble souls who in infinite distress have
found faith impossible have been really in touch with this wonderful
and righteous and loving Person without knowing it, and have left
behind them on earth the work which GOD did through them, and who
acknowledge now in a clearer atmosphere that the work that they had
done He did it Himself. But the merely busy men and women, the man
or woman who deliberately believes like Nebuchadnezzar: "Is not this
great Babylon that I have built by the might of my power, and for
the honour of my majesty?" have been the failure, the laughing-stock
of the world; they have been out of touch with the Source of all
power, and wisdom, and grace, and the world, when they have passed,
will be the same as it was before.
But if it suggests a warning, what inspiration, dear sisters, it
flashes before you! not so much to do something you have never
done before, but possibly to do it in a different spirit; for the
first time in your life, perhaps, to be consciously fellow-workers
with GOD, to come again and again to GOD, and to fill yourselves
with great heartfuls of His power and love, to unite yourself in
sacramental union to Him who came to seek for the lost, to lift up
all work into a new atmosphere, and to find a joy in it which the
world can neither give nor take away.
That is the glorious prospect which opens out before us all. GOD
has no favourites; He is the same for all, and invites all to join
in the great comradeship which changes life. It is the chance of
our life to accept His offer. "The help that is done upon earth He
doeth it Himself;" and as you find the reality of that help at your
disposal more and more, day by day and year by year, you will look
up as trench after trench is taken in a power obviously not yours,
to gladly acknowledge: "Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but to Thy
name give the praise."
IV
MISSIONARY WORK THE ONLY FINAL CURE FOR WAR[5]
[5] Preached in Westminster Abbey on Advent Sunday.
"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain: for
the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the LORD, as the
waters cover the sea."--Isa. xi. 9.
It is with a pathetic wistfulness we hear described by the prophet
this Advent picture of the reign of peace, in which the wolf is
to dwell with the lamb, and the leopard to lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and the
sucking child to play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child
to put his hand on the cockatrice' den, and in which the special
feature of the holy mountain was to be that they should not hurt
nor destroy. For we look round after nineteen hundred years of the
religion which was to bring this "peace on earth and good will
among men," and we see an outpouring of more blood and an outbreak
of viler passions than has been seen in this world for a thousand
years.
One can little wonder that the cynics scoff, and those who refuse
or fail to look below the surface speak openly of the breakdown of
Christianity, and that some of the most earnest and loving of GOD'S
children are deeply moved and disturbed. Is this beautiful picture a
Will-of-the-wisp? they ask. Is it a mirage in the desert? or are the
longing eyes of GOD'S children some day to see it realized?
I. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain." And
first we see Belgium stabbed in the back and ravaged, then Poland,
and then Serbia, and then the Armenian nation wiped out--five
hundred thousand at a moderate estimate being actually killed;
and then as a necessary consequence, to save the freedom of the
world, to save Liberty's own self, to save the honour of women and
the innocence of children, everything that is noblest in Europe,
everyone that loves freedom and honour, everyone that puts
principle above ease, and life itself beyond mere living, are banded
in a great crusade--we cannot deny it--to kill Germans: to kill
them, not for the sake of killing, but to save the world; to kill
the good as well as the bad, to kill the young men as well as the
old, to kill those who have shown kindness to our wounded as well as
those fiends who crucified the Canadian sergeant, who superintended
the Armenian massacres, who sank the _Lusitania_, and who turned the
machine-guns on the civilians of Aerschott and Louvain--and to kill
them lest the civilisation of the world should itself be killed.
And no doubt for many to-day this belief in Christianity is
trembling in the balance; the world seems to have returned to the
primitive chaos of paganism from which it came.
"There's nothing left to-day
But steel and fire and stone."[6]
[6] Kipling.
But this awful nightmare only besets those who fail to look below
the surface. Two small publications will help those who are in
this frame of mind; one is an excellent lecture by the Dean of
Westminster (Dr. Ryle), entitled "The Attitude of the Church towards
War," and the other a brilliant little book by the well-known
American writer, Owen Wister, called "The Pentecost of Calamity."
In the first it is clearly shown that, although Christianity and War
are ideally opposed to one another, and although when the world is
wholly Christian there can be no war, yet the writers of the Bible
and the Fathers of the Church have always held that, until that
ideal time arrives, a Christian man might have to go to war.
In the New Testament itself, as the Dean points out, we must balance
"They who take the sword shall perish by the sword" with the words
from the lips of the same Divine Teacher, "He that hath no sword,
let him sell his garment and buy one."
Later on, Christians are found in the Roman Army in increasing
numbers, and St. Ambrose's and St. Augustine's words quoted by the
Dean may be taken as typical of the teaching of the early Church.
"The courage which protects one's country in war against the raids
of barbarians is completely righteous," says St. Ambrose ("De
Offic.," i. 61). And St. Augustine says ("Ep.," 227): "Provided
they are really good men, those who are fighting are unquestionably
engaged in the pursuit of peace, even though the quest be prosecuted
through bloodshed."
And in Mr. Wister's brilliant essay, after a delightful picture of
Germany as it appeared to be on the surface in June, 1914, with
its efficiency, its comfort, its culture, and after especially
describing a delightful children's festival in Frankfurt to
celebrate the bicentenary of Glück, he then portrays the awful
horror which seized him and all the educated Americans who had
learnt to love their holiday in Germany, when the wild beast
suddenly appeared from among the flowers, and, to use his own words,
made his spring at the throat of an unsuspecting, unprepared world.
"Suppose a soul arrived on earth from another world, wholly ignorant
of events, and were given its choice, after a survey of the
nations, which it should be born in and belong to. In May, June, and
July, 1914, my choice," he says, "would have been, not France, not
England, not America, but Germany.
"It was on the seventh day of June, 1914, that Frankfurt assembled
her school-children in the opera-house to further their taste and
understanding of Germany's supreme national art.
"But exactly eleven months later, on May 7, 1915, a German torpedo
sank the _Lusitania_, and (this was the awful revelation) the cities
of the Rhine celebrated this also for their school-children."
He then gives the Prussian creed, sentence by sentence, compiled
from the utterances of Prussians, the Kaiser and his Generals,
professors, and editors, of which I can only quote these sentences:
"War in itself is a good thing. GOD will see to it that war always
recurs. The efforts directed towards the abolition of war must not
only be termed foolish, but absolutely immoral. The peace of Europe
is only a secondary matter for us. The sight of suffering does one
good; the infliction of suffering does one more good. This war must
be conducted as ruthlessly as possible."
Now, I do not quote this (and you will find four pages of similar
sayings) to stir up unchristian hatred of the German race, many
of whom as individuals would repudiate such sayings as their own
personal belief, but I do it to defend Christianity. I only heard
just before coming here, in the home of one of the many mourning
families I visit, that a son who had died in Germany testified in
his last letter to the great kindness with which he had been treated
in hospital.
Such teaching as this is not Christianity; this is the spirit of
Antichrist. You, poor brother and sister, who are allowing your
faith to be shattered by the war--you are not looking deep enough.
Only one nation wanted war, as the pathetic want of preparation of
every other nation proves to demonstration; only one nation has set
at naught the Christian principles which have slowly been gaining
ground in the conduct of war; and only one spirit has produced the
war, and that a spirit avowedly and in so many words passionately
opposed to the Spirit of the New Testament.
And, therefore, it is the grossest injustice to lay the blame on
religion for what has been produced by its avowed opposite, and to
talk about the breakdown of Christianity for what is due to the
revival of avowed paganism.
II. But I can imagine my distressed brethren saying: "The answer is
good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Why, after
nearly two thousand years, has Christianity not progressed farther?
Why is not the world more completely Christian? Why was the wild
beast left among the flowers? Nay, why is the wild beast still so
active in our midst? Why did the Drink Bill of our country go up
eight millions in the first six months of 1915? Why have the scenes
in the streets of darkened London been worse than they have been for
twenty years? You do not meet me fully," he says, "when you prove
that it was not Christianity which produced this war; what _I_ want
to know is why it was not strong enough to stop it."