The Potter and the Clay

by Arthur F. Winnington Ingram

Make then your second resolution, that, having girded yourself, you will never fail to offer to God this sweet incense of prayer and praise, and do it perfectly openly. Don't be ashamed of it being known you do it.

In "Studies in a Devotional Life," Canon Peter Green tells us how he shared a room in a little hotel in South Africa with two men, who looked like brigands. Not liking to say his prayers openly in their presence, he slipped outside, and said them on the veldt, only to find on his return the "bearded ruffians," who proved to be Cornish miners, kneeling in prayer themselves. This so impressed the writer that, when on one of the South African expresses he had to sleep in the same place as three postmen, he overcame his shyness, and said his prayers openly. Next morning, one of the postmen, an old choir-boy who had forgotten to say his prayers for a long time, confessed that the clergyman's action had shamed him, and he would begin again that day. So the simple influence of one example ran down the line.

3. Your third duty, and I get to love it more myself every year, is not only to pray for yourselves, but to plead for others. On my prayer-desk, there are two or three hundred intercessions for mothers, whose sons are at the Front, and for the boys themselves. What a beautiful task it is to intercede for them in turn, so many a day! We are promised that our prayer shall be heard, your prayer just as much as mine. Begin with intercession for fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, people you are next to at your work, your parish, or the church you go to, and so on, extending right out to the boys at the Front. Pray to God for victory; don't be ashamed to pray for victory in a glorious, a righteous cause like this. Pray that all this may be overruled for the spread of God's kingdom in the world. And always pray for the lonely missionaries, so often disheartened, so tired, so far away. And mind you, if you have not begun doing all this, you are going to begin. When I went down to a parish which had not been very efficiently worked, I collected a number of girls into a club, and got them to come for their first service. I had just become Rector of Bethnal Green, and the committee of the club wrote: "Dear Rector,—We think it our duty to inform you that in our opinion our club service was a success, and we beg you to have such a service for us every month until further notice."

Well now, those girls were starting their religious life; but when I go down now I find what I started as a little, tiny thing grown and grown and grown; those people whom I spoke to first are now grown women. It all goes on if you once make a good start. Therefore do take up, if you have never taken up before, this process of interceding. I am organising all the children in London this year in intercession for the war, and when we pour in a million children's prayers, is it not going to be a power which is going to bring down the blessing of Heaven on our cause?

4. Then we come to the fourth task of the priest.

The fourth work of a priest is to consecrate or dedicate himself every day. I do ask you to realise, as every day comes, what possibility there is in a day. There was a young Bishop who was consecrated the other day; I think he was the youngest Bishop consecrated. I knew him very well, and I had just one minute to write a note, and I wrote this, and he told me afterwards it had been more help to him than anything that had been sent to him. Therefore I pass it on to you: "Take one day at a time," I said, "and trust the Holy Spirit to see you through." Now I believe that that is the real secret of spiritual life. Take one day at a time. Don't worry. Don't be thinking of all kinds of difficulties in future. Take one day at a time, and trust the Holy Spirit to see you through. Dedicate every day and consecrate every day. Think over those whom you are going to meet during the day. Be prepared beforehand for the special temptations and difficulties of that particular day; remember that no day will ever come again, and that every day has to be lived out as a young priest of God. If every girl in Nottingham dedicated or consecrated herself every day like that—taking one day at a time, and trusting the Holy Spirit to see her through—why, there would be a power of strength in this city which would astonish the world.

5. Then we come on to the fifth great priestly task of service. I was talking to a little boy of nine. His mother had turned his beautiful home into a hospital for wounded soldiers. She herself was girded, dressed as a nurse, and the little fellow was in bed, rather seedy that day, and I sat down on his bed at his mother's request to have a chat with him. He said: "I love, Bishop, having the soldiers here; we cannot go back to our old life after the war." There is nothing so good as a life lived out in service, every day helping other people, and, if we are going to carry nothing else away, we are going to carry away this, that there is nothing so valuable as service. Even the lad's mother, a rich woman, who had served for ten months as a nurse, said: "Had I only known, Bishop, what to do before, I should have done it. This ten months has been the most delightful service to me I have ever had in my life." How can you girls, working girls many of you, serve in your daily life? All the work you do for the nation in the great factories of Nottingham, done honestly and straightforwardly, as young priests, with no bad language or bad stories allowed amongst you, is all recognised, and all blessed as part of your priestly service. But you can do more than that. I find again and again that in London the best Sunday School teachers, the best girl guides, the best members of the League of Honour there, are hard-working girls. Their service has gone beyond their professional work, and they also use their leisure time at home. They are the best girls at home their mothers ever had. I remember a father saying to me: "Mr. Ingram, I'm not much of a churchgoer myself"—he did not come at all, as a matter of fact—"but I will say this, that my boy as does go is the best boy I have got." What we want them to say about the girl who goes to church or chapel is: "She is the best girl we have got at home, the most willing, the most satisfactory, and the most loving."

There, then, you have the five priestly functions to discharge, and you have got to discharge them "for their sakes," as well as for your own.

For whose sake?