Life's Second Chance

“Winter makes ready for the spring By months of struggle and suffering; And the victory won from the mortal strife Strengthens the fibre and pulse of life. How if the earth in its chill despair Felt that the fight were too hard to bear, Where were the bloom and the vintage then? Where were the harvest for hungering men?”

SUSAN COOLIDGE.

IF we had but one chance in life it would fare badly with most of us. We do scarcely anything perfectly the first time we try to do it. Nearly always do we fail. Not many lives are lived beautifully, without a break or a lapse, from childhood to age. If, therefore, the opportunity of choosing good came to us only once, and was then forever withdrawn, few of us would make anything of our life. We are in the habit of saying that opportunities never come twice to us. One writes, —

“Never comes the chance that passed:
That one moment was its last.
Though thy life upon it hung,
Though thy death beneath it swung,
If thy future all the way
Now in darkness goes astray,
When the instant born of fate
Passes through the golden gate,
When the hour, but not the man,
Comes and goes from Nature’s plan, — Nevermore its countenance
Beams upon thy slow advance;
Nevermore that time shall be
Burden-bearer unto thee.
Weep and search o’er land and main,
Lost chance never comes again.”

This is all true, but it is not the whole truth. No single opportunity comes twice, but other opportunities come. Though we have failed once, that is not the end. The past is irrevocable; but while there is even the smallest margin of life remaining, there is yet another chance.

Jeremiah tells us of visiting a potter’s house, and watching the potter as he wrought on the wheels. His work was marred in his hands in some way. But instead of throwing it away, he made it into another vessel. The second vessel was not so beautiful as the one the potter first intended to make, but it was useful. The clay had a second chance.

The prophet’s parable had its first meaning for his own people, but its lesson is for all time. For one thing, it tells us that God has a plan for every life. The potter has a pattern after which he intends to fashion his vessel. For every human life there is a divine pattern, something which God means it to become. This first thought of God for our lives is the very best thing possible for them.

We learn, again, from this ancient acted parable that our lives may be marred in the living, so that they shall never attain God’s beautiful thought for them. There is a difference, however, between a lump of clay and a human life. The marring of the clay may be the potter’s fault, or it may be the result of an accident; at least, it cannot be the fault of the clay itself. If a misshapen jar or bowl comes into your hands, you would not “What a careless piece of clay it was that made itself into this irregular form!” Rather you would say, “What a careless potter it was that so spoiled this vessel, when he had the soft clay in his hands!” But when a life is marred, and fails of the beauty and nobleness which it was designed to have, you can not blame God. You cannot say, “I was clay on the wheel, and the great Potter gave the wrong touch, and spoiled the loveliness that ought to have been wrought in my life.” You are not clay, but a human soul. You have a will, and God does not shape you as the potter moulds his plastic clay. He works through your own will, and you can resist him, and can defeat his purpose for your life, and spoil the noble design into which he would fashion you. The blotches in this fair world are all the sad work of human hands, never of God’s hands.

But this is not all of the lesson. The potter took the clay again when the vessel he meant to make was marred, and with it made another vessel. The second could not be so fine nor so large as the first would have been but for the marring. Yet it was better that there should be an inferior vessel made than that the clay should be thrown away. It is thus that God deals with human souls. He does not cast off the life that has failed of its first and best possibilities. Even in the ruins of a soul there are divine elements, and so long as a little fragment remains God wants to give it still another chance.

It is said that one day Carlyle suddenly stopped at a street crossing, and, stooping down, picked up something out of the mud, even at the risk of being knocked down and run over by passing vehicles. With his bare hands he gently rubbed the mud off this thing which he had picked up, holding it as carefully and touching it as gently as if it had been something of great value. He took it to the pavement and laid it down on a clean spot on the curb stone. “That,” said the old man, in a tone of sweetness he rarely used, “is only a crust of bread. Yet I was taught by my mother never to waste anything, and, above all, bread, more precious than gold. I am sure that the little sparrows, or a hungry dog, will get nourishment from this bit of bread.”

This is a suggestion of the way God looks upon a human life which bears his im;u;e. The merest fragment of life he regards as sacred. So long as there is the least tracs of divine possibility in a human soul, he is ready to make something out of it, to take it out of the mire and give it another chance. If, therefore, one has lost the opportunity to realize God’s first thought for his life, there still remains another chance. “The vessel that he made was marred in the hands of the potter; so he made it again, — another vessel.”

In Florence, one of the treasures of art admired by thousands of visitors is Michael Angelo’s representation in marble of the young David The shepherd boy stands with firm foothold, the stone grasped tightly in his right hand, ready to be sped on its holy errand.

When the statue was unveiled, three hundred and fifty years ago, it caused an unparalleled sensation among all lovers of art. It is, in deed, a marvellous piece of sculpture.

But the strangely winning thing in the story of that statue is, that it was the stone’s second chance. A sculptor began work on a noble piece of marble, but, lacking skill, he only hacked and marred the block. It was then abandoned as spoiled and worthless, and cast aside. For years it lay in a back yard, soiled and blackened, half hidden among the rubbish. At last Angelo saw it, and at once perceived its possibilities. Under his skilful hand the stone was cut into the fair and marvellous beauty which appears in the statue of David. Yet it is said that the completed work is not quite perfect; that because of the first cutting of the stone the final result is marred.

This is another form of the parable of the potter. From a spoiled and castaway block was hewn this splendid work of art.. Though a life has been spoiled by unskilful hands, so that it seems as if all were lost, there is one, the great Sculptor, who can take the marred, disfigured block, now lying soiled amid the world’s rubbish, and from it carve yet a marvel of beauty, — if not all that it might once have been, at least a very beautiful character.

There is a little poem that tells of a bird with a broken wing which one found in a woodland meadow: —

I healed its wound, and each morning

It sang its old sweet strain;
But the bird with the broken pinion
Never soared as high again.

I found a young life broken

By sin’s seductive art;
And, touched with a childlike pity,

I took him to my heart.

He lived with a noble purpose,

And struggled not in vain;
But the life that sin had stricken

Never soared as high again.

Yet the bird with the broken pinion

Kept another from the snare;
And the life that sin had stricken

Raised another from despair.”

This little poem teaches two lessons. One is, that the second chance is not so good as the first. The bird with the broken wing never soared as high again as it had soared before. The young life which sin had broken, but which grace had healed, never was quite so beautiful again as before it was stricken, never soared so high in its flight as it would have done if sin had not hurt it.

There is an impression among some people that a man is a better man after having tasted sin, after knowing evil by experience, then repenting, being forgiven, and restored. This is a mistaken impression. Innocence is far better than penitence. Penitence is infinitely better than despair; but a life is never so beautiful after sin’s fires have swept over it as it would have been if it had been kept untarnished, and had realized God’s first thought for it. The bird with the broken pinion never soared so high again. There are some things we never get over. The wounds may be healed, but the scars remain. There are some losses we can never get back. Esau wept bitterly over the losing of his birthright, but wept in vain; he never could get again what he had profanely bartered off for a trifle. Lost innocence never can be restored.

The other lesson which the poem teaches is the same we have found already in the parable of the potter. The bird with the broken pinion was not useless; it kept another bird from the snare. Through its own hurt it had gotten a power of helpfulness which it never could have had without its experience of wounding and marring. The same is true of human lives which have failed and have fallen into

sin.

“The life that sin had stricken,

Raised another from despair.”

There is no doubt that there is a work pos sible to those who have been hurt in sin’s battle and have been lifted up again which they never could have done without the sad experience through which they have passed. John B. Gough never could have pleaded with such burning eloquence for temperance, as he did for so many years, if he had never himself known from experience the terrible bitterness of the curse of strong drink. His own life was marred by the dissipation which marked his earlier years, and which dragged him down into debasement; and he could never win the nobleness and beauty which would have been possible to him if he had never so failed and sinned against himself. But he took his second chance when the first was lost forever, and grew into great strength of character and into abounding usefulness. It is even doubtful if he would ever have made so much of his life, had it not been for the losing of its first chance, and the imperilling of all, which wrought afterward in him as such mighty motives, impelling him to such heroic life and such noble service for his fellow-men.

The lesson is plain. It is for all of us. It is not for one great experience alone, but has its perpetual application; for we are continually missing the things which are the first and the very best in life’s opportunities. It is sad that we do this, and we should rigidly train ourselves to make the most we can of every chance in life that comes to us. But when we have failed, we should not spend a moment in regret; for regret is vain and useless, and only helps to eat away the strength that remains. We should turn instantly and with resistless energy to the saving of what is left. There is always another chance, even down to the life’s latest moment in this world.