3. This clay failed to answer to the potter's design. " The vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter." Why was it marred ? There was no lack of skill ; no, but there was some gritty substance there, some stubborn resisting quality that would not yield to the deftness of the potter's hand. Human nature is often resistant, rather than pliable, to God's touch. Our wills conflict with His. Our way winds and bends like the flow of a river, when it should be straight as an arrow. An evil disposi- tion in our nature mars the vessel in the hands of the Potter. The child must be docile if it is to learn, and we yielding if we are to profit.
We recognize at once that there is a great difference, almost an infinite difference, between us and a lump of clay. That is passive, powerless, helpless in the hands of the potter. It has no power of will, no liberty of choice, no possibility of decision. We are not clay. We were made in the image of God. We have some likeness to God. His image is defaced, but not effaced. It is our glorious, but also our terrible, prerogative that we are endowed with the power of choice. We can oppose the Divine Potter. We may joyously submit to God, or we may wickedly 1 Thomas Boston, A General Account of My Life, 107.
86 THE MARRED VESSEL
oppose God. Weak and wicked men may say, " No," to the mighty and holy God.
Ay, note that Potter's wheel,
That metaphor ! and feel Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay, —
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round, " Since life fleets, all is change ; the Past gone, seize to-day ! "
Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall ; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops : Potter and clay endure.
He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent, Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. . . .
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 a-glow ! Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men; And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I, — to the wheel of life
With shapes and colours rife, Bound dizzily, mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:
So, take and use Thy work :
Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings pass the aim !
My times be in Thy hand !
Perfect the cup as planned ! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same ! x
1 Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra.
JEREMIAH xvm. 4 87
III.
The Final Result.
1. The potter does not fling away the marred vessel, but he breaks it and puts it on the wheel again and reshapes it. The potter's skill is not to be baffled. He wants to give his ideal reality. And he will shape and break, shape and break again, till the clay has taken the form he wishes. Jeremiah saw what that meant for the Israelites as a nation. It meant the breaking of their nation, their land left desolate, submission to the iron rule of Babylon. That was the breaking of Israel. But the prophet saw that God would still hold them, and by sterner discipline, by harder blows and hotter fires, would mould them to the use and form He wanted. That was the answer to Jeremiah's question, What can God do with this perverse nation ? Break it and reshape it.
The patience and persistence of God with man is the truth which this sets forth. God will not easily let man go. He stands over mankind and over every individual soul with boundless patience. The gifts and calling of God, says St. Paul, are without repentance, without recall or change.
" So he made it again." That is surely very wonderful when we remember that the parable applied first of all to a nation that had deliberately defied its Maker and refused His counsel ; but the prophecy was actually fulfilled in the wonderful national revival under the Maccabees, and will yet have its final fulfilment in that glorious day when Israel shall " blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit." And as with nations, so also is it with individuals. He can remake us. Our dead selves may become stepping-stones to higher things. He who trans- formed Simon into an apostle can transform our lives, if we permit it, into vessels meet for His own use.
TI It is reported of Wedgwood that he was trying to make an imitation of the Portland Vase in the form of jasper ware. In the soft clay the vases were done to perfection, but when they came out of the oven they were spoiled. This went on for six months. Then one of the workmen said to Wedgwood in despair, "Master, we have drawn the oven again and we