The Potter and the ClayWinnington Ingram, Arthur F. (Arthur Foley)
Religion
The Potter and the Clay
Winnington Ingram, Arthur F. (Arthur Foley)
Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 20th century; World War, 1914-1918 -- Sermons
From end to end of the world the revelation was coming, and, as one
of those who has borne this white man's burden, Lord Selborne, in
his preface to the pamphlet, endorses what it says. There is only
one set of rules which will hold the new nation, and only one set of
wine-skins which will hold the new wine; and that is the rules of
GOD'S Commandments as interpreted and extended in the New Testament,
the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount; and the only wine-skins
which will hold the new wine are those produced by the Gospel of
the Incarnate, Risen, and Ascended CHRIST, with the miracles which
He worked believed, and the Sacraments which He gave accepted and
used. "Let the new wine be put into new wine-skins, and both are
preserved."
All this was before the war. But since the war began, just as you
see against the dark thunderclouds the brilliancy of the sunshine,
which even lights up those clouds and turns them into a glory and a
radiance themselves, so all that was chivalrous and noble in Europe
has suddenly leaped to light. Christianity has been rediscovered.
Censors have been converted by reading soldiers' letters. Many a
man who professed himself an atheist has now seen what Christianity
really means. "Even an atheist must have believed if he had seen
my father die," wrote a young officer of a father who was buried
yesterday. "Could you sing me a hymn?" asked a young officer, dying
in the last battle, of the chaplain, who in the very thick of the
shells and the bullets was at his work. And, with his arm round him,
the chaplain sang with him "JESU, Lover of my soul," until he died.
In this great Day of GOD, things are beginning to appear as they
are, and not as they are represented. "Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." That simple and
sincere Christian, the Czar of Russia, went to the heart of things
at the beginning of the war, when he gave that as the motto of the
war to his troops; and every boy since then, who, as depicted in the
picture entitled "The Great Sacrifice," has laid down his life, with
his dead hand resting on the foot of the crucifix, has sealed with
his life the great saying of Sir Henry Newbolt:
"Life is not life to him that dares not die,
And death not death to him that dares to live."
It comes round, then, to this: the Advent picture is not a mockery;
it is not a mirage in the desert; it is a true picture let down from
heaven to cheer us to-day with a prophecy of what some day shall be.
Let that picture at once encourage us while it shames us.
As we watch it, away with all those foolish old sayings about "not
believing in Foreign Missions," "sending money out of the country,"
"converting Whitechapel and Bethnal Green before we attempt China or
Japan"; for the knowledge of the LORD--before war can be no more--is
to cover the whole earth as the waters cover the sea.
But, on the other hand, let it encourage us:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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