ix the illustration is incomplete. 167 



with kindness, they would most probably have been 

 merged and lost in the Egyptian people, and there 

 would have been no Israelite nation. 



Blindly the wicked work 

 The righteous will of Heaven. x 



But though the Divine Potter makes at His own 

 pleasure vessels of honour and vessels of dishonour, 

 there is no suggestion here, or anywhere else in 

 Saint Paul's writings, that He makes vessels for the 

 purpose of being 



destroyed, 

 Or cast as rubbish to the void. 2 



The forming of vessels for different and opposite uses 

 is, as we have seen, directly referred by Saint Paul 

 to the sovereign will of God ; but this does not 

 answer, nor even touch, the further question con- 

 cerning vessels which, so far as man can see, are 

 nothing but vessels of wrath, fitted only to de- 

 struction. On this subject Saint Paul has absolutely 

 nothing to suggest; he only speaks of the long- 

 suffering of God ; but where he speaks of vessels of 

 wrath, he avoids mentioning the Potter. Whether 

 conscious or not and I believe it is perfectly con- 

 scious this failure to carry the metaphor consistently 

 through the passage is a confession that he cannot 

 give a full account of the matter ; that the difficulty 

 cannot be fully solved. 



It is worth remark here, how the word repro- 

 1 Southey's Thalaba. 2 In Memoriam. 



