88 THE MARRED VESSEL
haven't got a single good vase." The master's reply was, " Well, you have had your wages, haven't you ? Go on" They did go on, and shortly after they succeeded, and the celebrated vase was produced. So God persists till His purpose is achieved.1
2. " He made it again another vessel." The potter could not make what he might have wished ; but he did his best with his materials. So God is ever trying to do His best for us. If we refuse the best, He gives the next best. If we will not be gold, we may be silver; and if not silver, there are still the day and the wood. How often He has to make us again ! He made Jacob again, when He met him at the Jabbok ford, finding him a supplanter and a cheat, but after a long wrestle leaving him a prince with God. He made Simon again, on the resurrection morning, when He found him somewhere near the open grave, the son of a dove — for so his old name Bar-Jonah signifies — and left him Peter, the man of the rock, the Apostle of Pentecost. He made Mark again, between his impulsive leaving of Paul and Barnabas, as though frightened by the first touch of sea- sickness, and the times when Peter spoke of him as his son, and Paul from the Mamertine prison described him as being profitable.
The marred life will never again be what it might have been and what it ought to have been. It is said with deepest reverence that even God Himself cannot fully restore a marred life. It is sometimes supposed that God's grace is peculiarly manifested when a great sinner is saved, when a man is lifted from the gutter and placed among God's redeemed children. God's grace is vastly more honoured when boys and girls are converted to Christ in their sweet childhood, before they have gone down into the awful depths of sin. It is ten thousand pities that the potter's vessel was ever marred ; it is ten thousand pities that men should ever know the degradation of sin by a personal experience. How much sweeter, cleaner, purer, and diviner their lives, had they never served sin and Satan. But it is better that a life should be saved though marred than that it should be utterly lost. God will not throw your marred life away if you bring it to Him to be mended. You may have failed
1 F. B. Cowl.
JEREMIAH xviii. 4 89
to realize your noblest possibilities and your highest ideals ; you may have added failure to failure in your struggles toward noble attainment; nevertheless, you may bring your marred life as it is to God to be restored. He is waiting to be gracious; He desires to give you another chance.
T| Broken Earthenware is the title of Mr. Harold Begbie's book in which he gives some account of the saving work of the Salvation Army in a particular district of West London, and by " Broken Earthenware " he means the broken human lives which have been mended and sanctified, and made meet for the Master's use by the work of our friends of the Salvation Army. The book is full of interest to the philosopher and the psychologist, because it furnishes abundant evidences of that possibility of conversion in human life and character which modern psychology is ready to allow. But it is of still more interest to the Christian, the Christian who believes that the whole purpose of religion is to save the lost and to make the bad good. In that comparison of Christianity with other religions of the world, which is now conducted with such thoroughness that it ranks as a science, the most striking thing, perhaps, that is brought out is that Christianity is alone among the religions of the world in even entertaining the thought, and much more in accomplishing the fact, of making bad men good.1
^ Last summer, at one of the great Chautauqua Assemblies, I had the opportunity of hearing Mr. Bilhorn, the famous evangelist singer. One of his most effective solos is Butterworth's little poem, entitled, " The Bird with a Broken Wing." The bird with a broken wing was found in a woodland meadow ; it received tender care and made progress toward complete restoration. But the wound was still there, and its sad effects never could be forgotten, nor could they be obliterated. Thus Mr. Bilhorn sang:
I healed its wound, and each morning
It sang its sweet old strain; But the bird with the broken pinion Never soared as high again.
Then the song told of a broken life and its second chance :
I found a young life, broken
By sin's seductive art; And, touched with a childlike pity,
I took him to my heart.
1 E. F. Horton.
9o THE MARRED VESSEL
He lived with a noble purpose, And struggled not in vain;
But the life that sin had stricken Never soared as high again.
But the bird with a broken pinion Kept another from the snare ;
And the life that sin hath stricken Baised another from despair.
But the soul that comes to Jesus
Is saved from every sin, And the heart that fully trusts Him
Shall a crown of glory win.