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BROKEN EARTHENWARE
by Harold Begbie

William James, author of Varieties of Religious Experience Writes in the preface of that book:

The theme of Begbie's book are the gutters and slums of London. It is a post industrial revolution revulsion. The despair caused by no money, no jobs, no medicine, no heat, no soul, no spirit, darkness, alcoholism, destitution, cold, hunger, and lack of the basic necessities of life...the gutter of London and the environs. Out of this the Salvation Army was born. Men had became sub-human....not wanting to be....but that's what happened when there got to be no hope.........no hope took the British way of life to a disgrace.....and the two-class system. Men were broken by men.... and greed....thus, BrokenEarthenware....(man). From the Salvation Army, which played a small, but important, part in the birth of the Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous .... is where Begbie writings came to have a value in the early days of A.A.

Publ. Hodder & Stoughton, no copyright date given, 11th edition stated on title page, special edition , 285 pages, HB book no DJ, blue boards,

A HIGHLY SOUGHT AFTER AND DIFFICULT BOOK TO FIND.

Some of our older readers may recall a book which made quite a stir in the religious world, especially the Arminian sections of it, some forty years ago. It was entitled Twice-born Men, and was written in a somewhat racy and sensational style by a well-known journalist, Harold Begbie. It purported to describe some startling conversions of notorious profligates and criminals under the evangelistic efforts of the Salvation Army and City Missions. Whether or no the reader is acquainted with that particular book, he has probably read similar accounts of reformations of character. He may, as this writer, have personally heard the testimonies of some unusual cases. We recall listening unto one in New York city some twenty-five years ago: a man past middle age who had spent twenty Christmas days in prison, who had been delivered from a life of crime, attributing his deliverance to the amazing grace of God and the efficacy of the redeeming blood of Christ, and who, to use one of his Scriptural quotations, had been given beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

Bramwell Booth talking with a Harold Begbie at the 1914 World Congress.

bought an old book in a used book store a few years ago called Twice Born Men. I pick up this book every now and then when I want to be reminded of the possibilities of the Gospel. Because here Harold Begbie tells the story of ten men, mostly from the slums of London, who came to Jesus through the Salvation Army and were changed amazingly.

One of the most interesting stories Begbie tells is of The Puncher. As a lad he idolized the prize-fighters who entertained the beaten down people in the London slums by beating up all challengers. Brutality has great appeal to broken people which may be a comment about the popularity of professional wrestling today. His animal spirits got him into trouble at school. He was uncontrollable. As a lad he stole a bottle of rum and made himself hopelessly drunk, falling into a canal. He started to develop the aroma of alcohol. Kicked out of school he found work hauling freshly killed beef sides in a meat market. He developed the aroma of alcohol, blood, and sweat. He had neither the means nor inclination to bathe. He smelled of drink and sweat and blood. He married a quiet woman and made her life a horror. His wife gave birth to a son. Time moved on.

The puncher’s son was drawn from the misery of his home into the Salvation Army. The Puncher loved his son, but he couldn’t stand his way of life, his clean smell, his Gospel. He was in the grip of a way of life whose smell was very different. But one day his son sought him out when he had bottomed out. His son pleaded with him to go to a Salvation Army meeting. Instead he borrowed enough money to get stone drunk, and was thrown in jail.

The next day, a Sunday, Begbie writes: he was in his cell, tortured with thirst, mad with the rage of a caged beast, cursing God for his long Sunday of solitude when he heard the sound of the Salvation Army’s brass band coming though his cell window. He was released that afternoon. Still drunk he went to the hall where the Salvation Army conducted their services. To make a long story short, he responded to the altar call, melting into tears of remorse and hope. His life began to be changed.

While I was listening to Joe, thinking of what he's become, all of a sudden it took me that I'd find God and get Him to make me like Joe. It took me like that. I just felt, all of a sudden, determined to find God. Determined! he repeated, with energy astonishing in this broken and hopeless creature of alcoholism. 'And,' he went on, 'while I was kneeling, while I was praying, I felt the spirit come upon me. I said, 'Oh, God, make me like Joe! and while I prayed, I felt the Spirit come upon me. I knew I could become like Joe. I know I'm saved.'

Twice-Born Men, A Clinic in Regeneration; A Footnote in Narrative to Professor William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, written by Harold Begbie, published by Fleming Revell in 1909. True accounts of regenerated men who recover from alcoholism. From the preface: ...now that I sit down actually to write what I have learned, now that I set out to play showman, dramatist, or author or author to the little group of human beings with whom I have been companioned for the past few weeks, there is in my mind one uppermost feeling, one central and dominating sensation of the emotions, and this is the feeling of astonishment that all the terrible tragedy, all the infinite pathos, all the amazing psychology, all the agony and bitter suffering, all the depth and profundity of spiritual experience with which I have to deal, all of it, was discovered in a single quarter of London. Here in this little book, which tells the story of a few humble and quite commonplace human beings, is such astonishing psychology as must surely bewilder the metaphysician, the social reformer, the criminologist, the theologian, and the philosopher; and it is unearthed, brought to the surface of observation, this incredible psychology, from a single quarter of the city, from a few shabby streets huddled together on the western edge of the metropolis, forming a locality of their own, calling themselves by a particular name, and living almost as entirely aloof from the rest of London as Cranford from Drumble. (from the preface)