1 J. A. Froude, Short Studies, ii. 8.
JEREMIAH xvm. 4 81
charms and blessedness, yet it first distinctly reveals itself and its authority when it resists and condemns our personal desires and aims. Now it is this aspect of the Ideal as opposing us, commanding us, obliging us, which is the characteristic feature of our ethical consciousness ; and it is this experience which is a continual warning to us against falling into the paralysing fallacy of supposing that our lives are nothing more than transient modes or phases of God's eternal life. Here it is we learn our true individuality, and learn also, what Kant so clearly saw, the quite infinite value of a " Good Will." x
3. The pattern which it is possible for any man to reach may be, indeed must be, different for each. There was one ideal possible for Egypt, another for Assyria, and another for Babylon, with their respective privileges and opportunities, and quite another for Israel, with its pre-eminent advantages. These other nations were not required to be everything that the Jewish people ought to have become. God is not unrighteous to demand equal attainments from unequal gifts. He gives to one five talents, to another two, and to another one ; but He does not look at last for ten from each of them. And what is true thus of nations is true also of individuals. God has one ideal for those who, like ourselves, are favoured to the full with gospel blessings, and another for such as have not our advantages. But there is a possible result that shall be worthy of His approval for each ; and that each may attain to it has been His original and primary design in their creation. The ideal is not the same for all, but it is in each appropriate to and in correspondence with the environment in which he is placed.
^| The one secret of life and development is not to desire and plan, but to fall in with the forces at work — to do every moment's duty aright — that being the part in the process allotted to us ; and let come — not what will, for there is no such thing — but what the eternal Thought wills for each of us, has intended for each of us from the first. If men would but believe that they are in process of creation, and consent to be made — let the maker handle them as the potter his clay, yielding themselves in respondent motion and submissive hopeful action with the turning of the wheel, they would ere long find themselves able to welcome* every pressure of that hand upon them, even when it was felt in pain,
1 The Life and Letters of James Martineau, ii. 473. JER.-MAL.— 6
82 THE MARRED VESSEL
and sometimes not only to believe but to recognize the Divine end in view, the bringing of a son into glory.1
4. There are two things to be remembered with respect to this moulding of our individual life by God. One is, that God always moulds our life with a view to righteousness. That is the one undeviating Divine aim. God is righteous. " Can there be unrighteousness with God ? God forbid ! " Then every touch of the Divine finger must be a touch on behalf of righteousness. Every imprint on the clay must stamp the eternal righteousness on it, and must make for righteousness. Another thing to be remembered is, that because God moulds for the sake of righteous- ness, He moulds first and chiefly intelligent creatures, with mind and thought and moral purpose and will of their own. So we are led on from step to step ; and here is where the great perplexity, the great wonder, comes in, though, after all, a good deal of perplexity is created by our thinking that our minds ought to be large enough to comprehend the infinite nature of God. We cannot get our way except with puppets that will not move unless we touch them. But God will get His way in a grander fashion, not with puppets, but with men, with creatures that can resist His will, with creatures that have something of the God stamped on their own lives, with creatures that shall stand as gods in the glory of the eternal Presence.
^| In a letter to Mr. Watts Eussell, regarding the scheme for the transfer of the oratory of St. Philip Neri from Birmingham to Cheshire, Faber writes, " God's will is the one thing ; it seems to magnify its own sweetness the longer and the more lovingly we adore it; one is fit to burst out into raptures of venturesome congratulation of God that His will is so all-strong, and we so base and vile ; and to wonder that He has not crushed us in the path of some great providence instead of making such as we are a part and parcel of His overwhelming, onward-bearing will."2
Thou, Thou art the Potter, and we are the Clay, And morning and even, and day after day, Thou turnest Thy wheel, and our substance is wrought, Into form of Thy will, into shape of Thy thought.
1 George MacDcmald.
2 The Life and Letters of Frederick William Faber, 265.
JEREMIAH xviii. 4 83
Should Clay to the Potter make answer and say,