George MacDonald. An Antology (edited by C.S.Lewis)
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...broken only by the tightening of aninfinitely closer bond. Verily God must be terrible to those that are far
from Him: for they fear He will do, yea, He is doing with them what they do
not, cannot desire, and can ill endure.
[ 143 ] "Peace in Our Time"
While they are such as they are, there is much in Him that cannot but
affright them: they ought, they do well, to fear, Him. ... To remove that
fear from their hearts, save by letting them know His love with its
purifying fire, a love which for ages, it may be, they cannot know, would be
to give them up utterly to the power of evil. Persuade men that fear is a
vile thing, that it is an insult to God, that He will none of it-while they
are yet in love with their own will, and slaves to every movement of
passionate impulse, and what will the consequence be? That they will insult
God as a discarded idol, a superstition, a falsehood, as a thing under whose
evil influence they have too long groaned, a thing to be cast out and spit
upon. After that how much will they learn of Him?
[ 144 ] Divine Fire
The fire of God, which is His essential being, His love, His creative
power, is a fire unlike its earthly symbol in this, that it is only at a
distance it burns-that the further from Him, it burns the worse.
[ 145 ] The Safe Place
If then any child of the Father finds that he is afraid before Him,
that the thought of God is a discomfort to him, or even a terror, let him
make haste-let him not linger to put on any garment, but rush at once in his
nakedness, a true child, for shelter from his own evil and God's terror,
into the salvation of the Father's arms.
[ 146 ] God and Death
All that is not God is death.
[ 147 ] Terror
Endless must be our terror, until we come heart to heart with the
fire-core of the universe, the first and the last of the living One.
[ 148 ] False Want
Men who would rather receive salvation from God than God their
salvation.
[ 149 ] A Man's Right
Lest it should be possible that any unchildlike soul might, in
arrogance and ignorance, think to stand upon his rights against God, and
demand of Him this or that after the will of the flesh, I will lay before
such a possible one some of the things to which he has a right. ... He has a
claim to be compelled to repent; to be hedged in on every side: to have one
after another of the strong, sharp-toothed sheep dogs of the Great Shepherd
sent after him, to thwart him in any desire, foil him in any plan, frustrate
him of any hope, until he come to see at length that nothing will ease his
pain, nothing make life a thing worth having, but the presence of the living
God within him.
[ 150 ] Nature
In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation
between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far
deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of
things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far
deeper things than they. ... It is through their show, not through their
analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the
childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them. To know a
primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it-just as to know
Christ is an infinitely higher thing than to know all theology, all that is
said about His person, or babbled about His work. The body of man does not
exist for the sake of its hidden secrets; its hidden secrets exist for the
sake of its outside-for the face and the form in which dwells revelation:
its outside is the deepest of it. So Nature as well exists primarily for her
face, her look, her appeals to the heart and the imagination, her simple
service to human need, and not for the secrets to be discovered in her and
turned to man's further use.
[ 151 ] The Same
By an infinite decomposition we should know nothing more of what a
thing really is, for, the moment we decompose it, it ceases to be, and all
its meaning is vanished. Infinitely more than astronomy even, which destroys
nothing, can do for us, is done by the mere aspect and changes of the vault
over our heads. Think for a moment what would be our idea of greatness, of
God, of infinitude, of aspiration, if, instead of a blue, far withdrawn,
light-spangled firmament, we were born and reared under a flat white
ceiling! I would not be supposed to depreciate the labors of science, but I
say its discoveries are unspeakably less precious than the merest gifts of
Nature, those which, from morning to night, we take unthinking from her
hands. One day, I trust, we shall be able to enter into their secrets from
within them-by natural contact. . . .
[ 152 ] Doubt
To deny the existence of God may . . . involve less unbelief than the
smallest yielding to doubt of His goodness. I say yielding; for a man may be
haunted with doubts, and only grow thereby in faith. Doubts are the
messengers of the Living One to the honest. They are the first knock at our
door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood. . . . Doubt
must precede every deeper assurance; for uncertainties are what we first see
when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed.
[ 153 ] Job
Seeing God, Job forgets all he wanted to say, all he thought he would
say if he could but see Him.
[ 154 ] The Close of the Book of Job
Job had his desire: he saw the face of God-and abhorred himself in dust
and ashes. He sought justification; he found self-abhorrence. . . . Two
things are clearly contained in, and manifest from, this poem:- that not
every man deserves for his sins to be punished everlastingly from the
presence of the Lord; and that the best of men, when he sees the face of
God, will know himself vile. God is just, and will never deal with the
sinner as if he were capable of sinning the pure sin; yet if the best man be
not delivered from himself, that self will sink him into Tophet.
[ 155 ] The Way
Christ is the way out, and the way in: the way from slavery, conscious
or unconscious, into liberty; the way from the unhomeliness of things to the
home we desire but do not know; the way from the stormy skirts of the
Father's garments to the peace of His bosom.
[ 156 ] Self-Control
I will allow that the mere effort of will. . . may add to the man's
power over his lower nature; but in that very nature it is God who must rule
and not the man, how very well he may mean. From a man's rule of himself in
smallest opposition, however devout, to the law of his being, arises the
huge danger of nourishing, by the pride of self-conquest, a far worse than
even the unchained animal self-the demoniac self. True victory over self is
the victory of God in the man, not of the man alone. It is not subjugation
that is enough, but subjugation by God. In whatever man does without God, he
must fail miserably-or succeed more miserably. No portion of a man can rule
another, for God, not the man, created it, and the part is greater than the
whole. . . . The diseased satisfaction which some minds feel in laying
burdens on themselves, is a pampering, little as they may suspect it, of the
most dangerous appetite of that self which they think they are mortifying.
[ 157 ] Self-Denial
The self is given to us that we may sacrifice it: it is ours, that we,
like Christ, may have somewhat to offer- not that we should torment it, but
that we should deny it; not that we should cross it, but that we should
abandon it utterly: then it can no more be vexed. "What can this mean?-we
are not to thwart, but to abandon?" ... It means this:-we must refuse,
abandon, deny self altogether as a ruling, or determining, or originating
element in us. It is to be no longer the regent of our action. We are no
more to think "What should I like to do?" but "What would the Living One
have me do?"
[ 158 ] Killing the Nerve
No grasping or seeking, no hungering of the individual, shall give
motion to the will: no desire to be conscious of worthiness shall order the
life; no ambition whatever shall be a motive of action; no wish to surpass
another be allowed a moment's respite from death.
[ 159 ] Self
Self, I have not to consult you but Him whose idea is the soul of you,
and of which as yet you are all unworthy. I have to do, not with you, but
with the Source of you, by whom it is that (at) any moment you exist-the
Causing of you, not the caused you. You may be my consciousness but you are
not my being. ... For God is more to me than my consciousness of myself. He
is my life; you are only so much of it as my poor half-made being can
grasp-as much of it as I can now know at once. Because I have fooled and
spoiled you, treated you as if you were indeed my own self, you have
dwindled yourself and have lessened me, till I am ashamed of myself. If I
were to mind what you say, I should soon be sick of you; even now I am ever
and anon disgusted with your paltry mean face, which I meet at every turn.
No! Let me have the company of the Perfect One, not of you! Of my elder
brother, the Living One! I will not make a friend of the mere shadow of my
own being! Good-bye, Self! I deny you, and will do my best every day to
leave you behind.
[ 160 ] My Yoke Is Easy
The will of the Father is the yoke He would have us take, and bear also
with Him. It is of this yoke that he says It is easy, of this burden, // is
light. He is not saying "The yoke I lay upon you is easy, the burden light";
what He says is, "The yoke I carry is easy, the burden on My shoulders is
light." With the garden of Gethsemane before Him, with the hour and the
power of darkness waiting for Him, He declares His yoke is easy, His burden
light.
[ 161 ] We Must Be Jealous
We must be jealous for God against ourselves and look well to the
cunning and deceitful self-ever cunning and deceitful until it is informed
of God-until it is thoroughly and utterly denied. . . . Until then its very
denials, its very turnings from things dear to it for the sake of Christ,
will tend to foster its self-regard, and generate in it a yet deeper
self-worship.
[ 162 ] Facing Both Ways
Is there not many a Christian who, having begun to deny himself, yet
spends much strength in the vain and evil endeavor to accommodate matters
between Christ and the dear Self-seeking to save that which so he must
certainly lose-in how different a way from that in which the Master would
have him lose it!
[ 163 ] The Careless Soul
The careless soul receives the Father's gifts as if it were a way
things had of dropping into his hand ... yet is he ever complaining, as if
someone were accountable for the checks which meet him at every turn. For
the good that comes to him, he gives no thanks-who is there to thank? At the
disappointments that befall him he grumbles-there must be someone to blame!
[ 164 ] There Is No Merit in It
In the main we love because we cannot help it. There is no merit in it:
how should there be any love? But neither is it selfish. There are many who
confound righteousness with merit, and think there is nothing righteous
where there is nothing meritorious. "If it makes you happy to love," they
say, "where is your merit? It is only selfishness." There is no merit, I
reply, yet the love that is born in us is our salvation from selfishness. It
is of the very essence of righteousness. ... That certain joys should be
joys, is the very denial of selfishness. The man would be a demoniacally
selfish man, whom Love itself did not make joyful.
[ 165 ] Faith
Do you ask, "What is faith in Him?" I answer, The leaving of your way,
your objects, your self, and the taking of His and Him; the leaving of your
trust in men, in money, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and
doing as He tells you. I can find no words strong enough to serve for the
weight of this obedience.
[ 166 ] The Misguided
Instead of so knowing Christ that they have Him in them saving them,
they lie wasting themselves in soul-sickening self-examination as to whether
they are believers, whether they are really trusting in the atonement,
whether they are truly sorry for their sins-the way to madness of the brain,
and despair of the heart.
[ 167 ] The Way
Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself
whether you have this day done one thing because He said, Do it, or once
abstained because He said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you
believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells
you.
[ 168 ] The First and Second Persons
I worship the Son as the human God, the divine, the only, Man, deriving
His being and power from the Father, equal with Him as a son is the equal at
once and the subject of his father.
[ 169 ] Warning
We must not wonder things away into nonentity.
[ 170 ] Creation
The word creation applied to the loftiest success of human genius,
seems to me a mockery of humanity, itself in process of creation.
[ 171 ] The Unknowable
As to what the life of God is to Himself, we can only know that we
cannot know it-even that not being absolute ignorance, for no one can see
that, from its very nature, he cannot understand a thing without therein
approaching that thing in a most genuine manner.
[ 172 ] Warning
Let us understand very plainly, that a being whose essence was only
power would be such a negation of the divine that no righteous worship could
be offered him.
[ 173 ] The Two First Persons
The response to self-existent love is self-abnegating love. The refusal
of Himself is that in Jesus which corresponds to the creation in God. . . .
When he died on the cross, He did that, in the wild weather of His outlying
provinces, in the torture of the body of His revelation, which He had done
at home in glory and gladness.
[ 174 ] The Imitation of Christ
There is no life for any man other than the same kind that Jesus has;
His disciples must live by the same absolute devotion of his will to the
Father's: then is his life one with the life of the Father.
[ 175 ] Pain and Joy
The working out of this our salvation must be pain, and the handling of
it down to them that are below must ever be in pain; but the eternal form of
the will of God in and for us, is intensity of bliss.
[ 176 ] "By Him All Things Consist"
The bond of the universe ... is the devotion of the Son to the Father.
It is the life of the universe. It is not the fact that God created all
things, that makes the universe a whole; but that He through Whom He created
them loves Him perfectly, is eternally content in His Father, is satisfied
to be because His Father is with Him. It is not the fact that God is all in
all that unites the universe: it is the love of the Son to the Father. For
of no onehood comes unity; there can be no oneness where there is only one.
For the very beginnings of unity there must be two. Without Christ therefore
there could be no universe.
[ 177 ] "In Him Was Life"
We too must have life in ourselves. We too must, like the Life Himself,
live. We can live in no way but that in which Jesus lived, in which life was
made in Him. The way is, to give up our life. . . . Till then we are not
alive; life is not made in us. The whole strife and labor and agony of the
Son with every man is to get him to die as He died. All preaching that aims
not at this is a building with wood, and hay, and stubble.
[ 178 ] Why We Have Not Christ's "Ipsissima Verba"
God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very
words; and that not merely perhaps, because of the tendency in His children
to word-worship, false logic, and corruption of the truth, but because He
would not have them oppressed by words, seeing that words, being human,
therefore but partially capable, could not absolutely contain or express
what the Lord meant, and that even He must depend for being understood upon
the spirit of His disciple. Seeing it could not give life, the letter should
not be throned with power to kill.
[ 179 ] Warning
"How am I to know that a thing is true?" By doing what you know to be
true, and calling nothing true until you see it to be true; by shutting your
mouth until the truth opens it. Are you meant to be silent? Then woe to you
if you speak.
[ 180 ] On Bad Religious Art
If the Lord were to appear this day in England as once in Palestine, He
would not come in the halo of the painters or with that wintry shine of
effeminate beauty, of sweet weakness, in which it is their helpless custom
to represent Him.
[ 181 ] Row to Read the Epistles
The uncertainty lies always in the intellectual region, never in the
practical. What Paul cares about is plain enough to the true heart, however
far from plain to the man whose desire to understand goes ahead of his
obedience.
[ 182 ] The Entrance of Christ
When we receive His image into our spiritual mirror, He enters with it.
Our thought is not cut off from His. Our open receiving thought is His door
to come in. When our hearts turn to Him, that is opening the door to Him,
that is holding up our mirror to Him; then He comes in, not by our thought
only, not in our idea only, but He comes Himself and of His own will-comes
in as we could not take Him, but as He can come.
[ 183 ] The Same
Thus the Lord ... becomes the soul of our souls, becomes spiritually
what He always was creatively; and as our spirit informs, gives shape to,
our bodies, in like manner His soul informs, gives shape to, our souls. The
deeper soul that willed and wills our souls rises up, the infinite Life,
into the Self we call 7 and me, but which lives immediately from Him and is
His very own property and nature-unspeakably more His than ours . . . until
at length the glory of our existence flashes upon us, we face full to the
sun that enlightens what it sent forth, and know ourselves alive with an
infinite life, even the Life of the Father; know that our existence is not
the moonlight of a mere consciousness of being but the sun-glory of a life
justified by having become one with its origin, thinking and feeling with
the primal Sun of life, from whom it was dropped away that it might know and
bethink itself and return to circle forever in exultant harmony around Him.
[ 184 ] The Uses of Nature
What notion should we have of the unchanging and unchangeable, without
the solidity of matter? . . . How should we imagine what we may of God
without the firmament over our heads, a visible sphere, yet a formless
infinitude? What idea could we have of God without the sky?
[ 185 ] Natural Science
Human science is but the backward undoing of the tapestry-web of God's
science, works with its back to Him, and is always leaving Him-His intent,
that is, His perfected work-behind it, always going farther and farther away
from the point where His work culminates in revelation.
[ 186 ] The Value of Analysis
Analysis is well, as death is well.
[ 187 ] Nature
The truth of the flower is, not the facts about it, be they correct as
ideal science itself, but the shining, glowing, gladdening, patient thing
throned on its stalk -the compeller of smile and tear. ... The idea of God
is the flower: His idea is not the botany of the flower. Its botany is but a
thing of ways and means-of canvas and color and brush in relation to the
picture in the painter's brain.
[ 188 ] Water
Is oxygen-and-hydrogen the divine idea of water? God put the two
together only that man might separate and find them out? He allows His child
to pull his toys to pieces: but were they made that he might pull them to
pieces? He were a child not to be envied for whom his inglorious father
would make toys to such an end! A school examiner might see therein the best
use of a toy, but not a father! Find for us what in the constitution of the
two gases makes them fit and capable to be thus honored in forming the
lovely thing, and you will give us a revelation about more than water,
namely about the God who made oxygen and hydrogen. There is no water in
oxygen, no water in hydrogen; it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination
of the living God, rushing from under the great white throne of the glacier.
The very thought of it makes one gasp with an elemental joy no metaphysician
can analyze. The water itself, that dances and sings, and slakes the
wonderful thirst- symbol and picture of that draught for which the woman of
Samaria made her prayer to Jesus-this lovely thing itself, whose very
witness is a delight to every inch of the human body in its embrace-this
live thing which, if I might, I would have running through my room, yea,
babbling along my table-this water is its own self its own truth, and is
therein a truth of God. Let him who would know the truth of the Maker,
become sorely athirst, and drink of the brook by the way-then lift up his
heart-not at that moment to the Maker of oxygen and hydrogen, but to the
Inventor and Mediator of thirst and water, that man might foresee a little
of what his soul might find in God.
[ 189 ] Truth of Things
The truth of a thing, then, is the blossom of it, the thing it is made
for, the topmost stone set on with rejoicing; truth in a man's imagination
is the power to recognize this truth of a thing.
[ 190 ] Caution
But far higher will the doing of the least, the most insignificant,
duty raise him.
[ 191 ] Duties
These relations are facts of man's nature. ... He is so constituted as
to understand them at first more than he can love them, with the resulting
advantage of having thereby the opportunity of choosing them purely because
they are true: so doing he chooses to love them, and is enabled to love them
in the doing, which alone can truly reveal them to him and make the loving
of them possible. Then they cease to show themselves in the form of duties
and appear as they more truly are, absolute truths, essential realities,
eternal delights. The man is a true man who chooses duty: he is a perfect
man who at length never thinks of duty, who forgets the name of it.
[ 192 ] Why Free Will Was Permitted
One who went to the truth by mere impulse would be a holy animal, not a
true man. Relations, truths, duties, are shown to the man away beyond him,
that he may choose them and be a child of God, choosing righteousness like
Him. Hence the whole sad victorious human tale and the glory to be revealed.
[ 193 ] Eternal Death
Not fulfilling these relations, the man is undoing the right of his own
existence, destroying his raison d'etre, making of himself a monster, a live
reason why he should not live.
[ 194 ] The Redemption of Our Nature
When (a man) is aware of an opposition in him, which is not harmony:
that, while he hates it, there is yet present with him, and seeming to be
himself, what sometimes he calls the old Adam, sometimes the flesh,
sometimes his lower nature, sometimes his evil self; and sometimes
recognizes as simply that part of his being where God is not; then indeed is
the man in the region of truth, and beginning to come true in himself. Nor
will it be long ere he discover that there is no part in him with which he
would be at strife, so God were there, so that it were true, what it ought
to be-in right relation to the whole; for, by whatever name called, the old
Adam, or antecedent horse, or dog, or tiger, it would then fulfill its part
holily, intruding upon nothing, subject utterly to the rule of the higher;
horse, or dog, or tiger, it would be good horse, good dog, good tiger.
[ 195 ] No Mystery
Man bows down before a power that can account for him, a power to whom
he is no mystery as he is to himself.
[ 196 ] The Live Truth
When a man is, with his whole nature, loving and willing the truth, he
is then a live truth. But this he has not originated in himself. He has seen
it and striven for it, but not originated it. The more originating, living,
visible truth, embracing all truths in all relations, is Jesus Christ. He is
true: He is the live Truth.
[ 197 ] Likeness to Christ
His likeness to Christ is the truth of a man, even as the perfect
meaning of a flower is the truth of a flower.... As Christ is the blossom of
humanity, so the blossom of every man is the Christ perfected in him.
[ 198 ] Grace and Freedom
He gives us the will wherewith to will, and the power to use it, and
the help needed to supplement the power: . . . but we ourselves must will
the truth and for that the Lord is waiting. . . . The work is His, but we
must take our willing share. When the blossom breaks forth in us, the more
it is ours the more it is His.
[ 199 ] Glorious Liberty
When a man is true, if he were in hell he could not be miserable. He is
right with himself because right with Him whence he came. To be right with
God is to be right with the universe: one with the power, the love, the will
of the mighty Father, the cherisher of joy, the Lord of laughter, whose are
all glories, all hopes, who loves everything and hates nothing but
selfishness.
[ 200 ] No Middle Way
There is, in truth, no mid way between absolute harmony with the Father
and the condition of slaves-submissive or rebellious. If the latter, their
very rebellion is by the strength of the Father in them.
[ 201 ] On Having One's Own Way
The liberty of the God who would have his creatures free, is in contest
with the slavery of the creature who would cut his own stem from his root
that he might call it his own and love it; who rejoices in his own
consciousness, instead of the life of that consciousness; who poises himself
on the tottering wall of his own being, instead of the rock on which that
being is built. Such a one regards his own dominion over himself- the rule
of the greater by the less-as a freedom infinitely larger than the range of
the universe of God's being. If he says, "At least I have it in my own
way!", I answer, you do not know what is your way and what is not. You know
nothing of whence your impulses, your desires, your tendencies, your likings
come. They may spring now from some chance, as of nerves diseased; now from
some roar of a wandering bodiless devil; now from some infant hate in your
heart; now from the greed of lawlessness of some ancestor you would be
ashamed of if you knew him; or, it may be, now from some far-piercing chord
of a heavenly orchestra: the moment comes up into your consciousness, you
call it your own way, and glory in it.
[ 2O2 ] The Death of Christ
Christ died to save us, not from suffering, but from ourselves; not
from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust. He died that
we might live-but live as He lives, by dying as He died who died to Himself.
[ 203 ] Hell
The one principle of hell is-"I am my own!"
[ 204 ] The Lie
To all these principles of hell, or of this world-they are the same
thing, and it matters nothing whether they are asserted or defended so long
as they are acted upon -the Lord, the King, gives the direct lie.
[ 205 ] The Author's Fear
If I mistake, He will forgive me. I do not fear Him: I fear only lest,
able to see and write these things, I should fail of witnessing and myself
be, after all, a castaway- no king but a talker; no disciple of Jesus, ready
to go with Him to the death, but an arguer about the truth.
[ 206 ] Sincerity
We are not bound to say all we think but we are bound not even to look
what we do not think.
[ 207 ] First Things First
Oh the folly of any mind that would explain God before obeying Him!
That would map out the character of God instead of crying, Lord, what
wouldst thou have me to do?
[ 208 ] Inexorable Love
A man might flatter, or bribe, or coax a tyrant; but there is no refuge
from the love of God; that love will, for very love, insist upon the
uttermost farthing.-"That is not the sort of love I care about!"-No; how
should you? I well believe it.
[ 209 ] Salvation
The notion that the salvation of Jesus is a salvation from the
consequences of our sins is a false, mean, low notion. . . . Jesus did not
die to save us from punishment; He was called Jesus because He should save
His people from their sins.
[ 210 ] Charity and Orthodoxy
Every man who tries to obey the Master is my brother, whether he counts
me such or not, and I revere him; but dare I give quarter to what I see to
be a lie because my brother believes it? The lie is not of God, whoever may
hold it.
[ 211 ] Evasion
To put off obeying Him till we find a credible theory concerning Him is
to set aside the potion we know it our duty to drink, for the study of the
various schools of therapy.
[ 212 ] Inexorable Love
Such is the mercy of God that He will hold His children in the
consuming fire of His distance until they pay the uttermost farthing, until
they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and
rush home to the Father and the Son and the many brethren-rush inside the
center of the life-giving fire whose outer circles burn.
[ 213 ] The Holy Ghost
To him who obeys, and thus opens the door of his heart to receive the
eternal gift, God gives the Spirit of His Son, the Spirit of Himself, to be
in him, and lead him to the understanding of all truth. . . . The true
disciple shall thus always know what he ought to do, though not necessarily
what another ought to do.
[ 214 ] The Sense of Sin
Sense of sin is not inspiration, though it may lie not far from the
temple door. It is indeed an opener of the eyes, but upon home defilement,
not upon heavenly truth.
[ 215 ] Mean Theologies
They regard the Father of their spirits as their governor! They yield
the idea of ... "the glad Creator," and put in its stead a miserable,
puritanical, martinet of a God, caring not for righteousness but for His
rights: not for the eternal purities, but the goody proprieties. The
prophets of such a God take all the glow, all the hope, all the color, all
the worth, out of life on earth, and offer you instead what they call
eternal bliss-a pale, tearless hell. . . . But if you are straitened in your
own mammon-worshipping soul, how shall you believe in a God any greater than
can stand up in that prison chamber?
[ 216 ] On Believing 111 of God
Neither let thy cowardly conscience receive any word as light because
another call it light, while it looks to thee dark. Say either the thing is
not what it seems, or God never said or did it. But of all evils, to
misinterpret what God does, and then say the thing, as interpreted, must be
right because God does it, is of the devil. Do not try to believe anything
that affects thee as darkness. Even if thou mistake and refuse something
true thereby, thou wilt do less wrong to Christ by such a refusal than thou
wouldst by accepting as His what thou canst see only as darkness . .. but
let thy words be few, lest thou say with thy tongue what thous wilt
afterward repent with thy heart.
[ 217 ] Condemnation
No man is condemned for anything he has done: he is condemned for
continuing to do wrong. He is condemned for not coming out of the darkness,
for not coming to the light.
[ 218 ] Excuses
As soon as a man begins to make excuse, the time has come when he might
be doing that from which he excuses himself.
[ 219 ] Impossibilities
"I thank thee, Lord, for forgiving me, but I prefer staying in the
darkness: forgive me that too."-"No; that cannot be. The one thing that
cannot be forgiven is the sin of choosing to be evil, of refusing
deliverance. It is impossible to forgive that. It would be to take part in
it."
[ 22O ] Disobedience
How many are there not who seem capable of anything for the sake of the
Church or Christianity, except the one thing its Lord cares about-that they
should do what He tells them. He would deliver them from themselves into the
liberty of the sons of God, make them His brothers: they leave Him to vaunt
their Church.
[ 221 ] The Same
To say a man might disobey and be none the worse would be to say that
no might be yes and light sometimes darkness.
[ 222 ] The God of Remembrance
I do not mean that God would have even His closest presence make us
forget or cease to desire that of our friend. God forbid! The Love of God is
the perfecting of every love. He is not the God of oblivion but of eternal
remembrance. There is no past with Him.
[ 223 ] Bereavement
"Ah, you little know my loss!"-"Indeed it is great! It seems to include
God! If you knew what He knows about death you would clap your listless
hands. But why should I seek in vain to comfort you? You must be made
miserable that you may wake from your sleep to know that you need God. If
you do not find Him, endless life with the living (being) whom you bemoan
would become and remain to you unendurable. The knowledge of your own heart
will teach you this:-not the knowledge you have, but the knowledge that is
on its way to you through suffering. Then you will feel that existence
itself is the prime of evils without the righteousness that is of God by
faith."
[ 224 ] Abraham's Faith
The Apostle says that a certain thing was imputed to Abraham for
righteousness: or, as the revised version has it, "reckoned unto him": what
was it that was thus imputed to Abraham? The righteousness of another? God
forbid! It was his own faith. The faith of Abraham is reckoned to him for
righteousness.
[ 225 ] The Same
Paul says faith in God was counted righteousness before Moses was born.
You may answer, Abraham was unjust in many things, and by no means a
righteous man. True: he was not a righteous man in any complete sense. His
righteousness would never have satisfied Paul; neither, you may be sure, did
it satisfy Abraham. But his faith was nevertheless righteousness.
[ 226 ] Perception of Duties
You may say this is not one's first feeling of duty. True: but the
first in reality is seldom the first perceived. The first duty is too high
and too deep to come first into consciousness. If anyone were born perfect
... the highest duty would come first into the consciousness. As we are
born, it is the doing of, or at least the honest trying to do many another
duty, that will at length lead a man to see that his duty to God is the
first and deepest and highest of all, including and requiring the
performance of all other duties whatever.
[ 227 ] Righteousness of Faith
To the man who has no faith in God, faith in God cannot look like
righteousness; neither can he know that it is creative of all other
righteousness toward equal and inferior lives.
[ 228 ] The Same
It is not like some single separate act of righteousness: it is the
action of the whole man, turning to good from evil-turning his back on all
that is opposed to righteousness, and starting on a road on which he cannot
stop, in which he must go on growing more and more righteous, discovering
more and more what righteousness is, and more and more what is unrighteous
in himself.
[ 229 ] Reckoned unto Us for Righteousness
With what life and possibility is in him, he must keep turning to
righteousness and abjuring iniquity, ever aiming at the righteousness of
God. Such an obedient faith is most justly and fairly, being all that God
Himself can require of the man, called by God righteousness in the man. It
would not be enough for the righteousness of God, or Jesus, or any perfected
saint, because they are capable of perfect righteousness.
[ 230 ] St. Paul's Faith
His faith was an act recognizing God as his law, and that is not a
partial act, but an all-embracing and all-determining action. A single
righteous deed toward one's fellow could hardly be imputed to a man as
righteousness. A man who is not trying after righteousness may yet do many a
righteous act: they will not be forgotten to him, neither will they be
imputed to him as righteousness.
[ 231 ] The Full-Grown Christian
He does not take his joy from himself. He feels joy in himself, but it
comes to him from others, not from himself-from God first, and from
somebody, anybody, everybody next.. .. He could do without knowing himself,
but he could not know himself and spare one of the brothers or sisters God
has given him. . . . His consciousness of himself is the reflex from those
about him, not the result of his own turning in of his regard upon himself.
It is not the contemplation of what God had made him, it is the being what
God has made him, and the contemplation of what God himself is, and what He
has made his fellows, that gives him his joy.
[ 232 ] Revealed to Babes
The wise and prudent must make a system and arrange things to his mind
before he can say, / believe. The child sees, believes, obeys-and knows he
must be perfect as his Father in heaven is perfect. If an angel, seeming to
come from heaven, told him that God had let him off, that He did not require
so much of him, but would be content with less ... the child would at once
recognize, woven with the angel's starry brilliancy, the flicker of the
flames of hell.
[ 233 ] Answer
"But how can God bring this about in me?"-Let Him do it and perhaps you
will know.
[ 234 ] Useless Knowledge
To teach your intellect what has to be learned by your whole being,
what cannot be understood without the whole being, what it would do you no
good to understand save you understood it in your whole being-if this be the
province of any man, it is not mine. Let the dead bury their dead, and the
dead teach their dead.
[ 235 ] The Art of Being Created
Let patience have her perfect work. Statue under the chisel of the
sculptor, stand steady to the blows of his mallet. Clay on the wheel, let
the fingers of the divine potter model you at their will. Obey the Father's
lightest word: hear the Brother who knows you and died for you.
[ 236 ] When We Do Not Find Him
Thy hand be on the latch to open the door at His first knock. Shouldst
thou open the door and not see Him, do not say He did not knock, but
understand that He is there, and wants thee to go out to Him. It may be He
has something for thee to do for Him. Go and do it, and perhaps thou wilt
return with a new prayer, to find a new window in thy soul.
[ 237 ] Prayer
Never wait for fitter time or place to talk to Him. To wait till thou
go to church or to thy closet is to make Him wait. He will listen as thou
walkest.
[ 238 ] On One's Critics
Do not heed much if men mock you and speak lies of you, or in goodwill
defend you unworthily. Heed not much if even the righteous turn their backs
upon you. Only take heed that you turn not from them.
[ 239 ] Free Will
He gave man the power to thwart His will, that, by means of that same
power, he might come at last to do His will in a higher kind and way than
would otherwise have been possible to him.
[ 240 ] On Idle Tongues
Let a man do right, not trouble himself about worthless opinion; the
less he heeds tongues, the less difficult will he find it to love men.
[ 241 ] Do We Love Light?
Do you so love the truth and the right that you welcome, or at least
submit willingly to, the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown
to yourself-an exposure that may redound to the glory of the truth by making
you ashamed and humble? . . . Are you willing to be made glad that you were
wrong when you thought others were wrong?
[ 242 ] Shame
We may trust God with our past as heartily as with our future. It will
not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide things, so long as we are ready
to bow our heads in hearty shame where it is fit we should be ashamed. For
to be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. Shame is a thing to shame only
those who want to appear, not those who want to be. Shame is to shame those
who want to pass their examination, not those who would get into the heart
of things. ... To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath
of truth.
[ 243 ] The Wakening
What a horror will it not be to a vile man .. . when his eyes are
opened to see himself as the pure see him, as God sees him! Imagine such a
man waking all at once, not only to see the eyes of the universe fixed upon
him with loathing astonishment, but to see himself at the same moment as
those eyes see him.
[ 244 ] The Wakening of the Rich
What riches and fancied religion, with the self-sufficiency they
generate between them, can make man or woman capable of, is appalling. ...
To many of the religious rich in that day, the great damning revelation will
be their behavior to the poor to whom they thought themselves very kind.
[ 245 ] Self-Deception
A man may loathe a thing in the abstract for years, and find at last
that all the time he has been, in his own person, guilty of it. To carry a
thing under our cloak caressingly, hides from us its identity with something
that stands before us on the public pillory. Many a man might read this and
assent to it, who cages in his own bosom a carrion bird that he never knows
for what it is, because there are points of difference in its plumage from
that of the bird he calls by an ugly name.
[ 246 ] Warning
"Oh God," we think, "How terrible if it were I!" Just so terrible is it
that it should be Judas. And have I not done things with the same germ in
them, a germ which, brought to its evil perfection, would have shown itself
the cankerworm, treachery? Except I love my neighbor as myself, I may one
day betray him! Let us therefore be compassionate and humble, and hope for
every man.
[ 247 ] The Slow Descent
A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he
may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a
good Christian.
[ 248 ] Justice and Revenge
While a satisfied justice is an unavoidable eternal event, a satisfied
revenge is an eternal impossibility.
[ 249 ] Recognition Hereafter
Our friends will know us then; for their joy, will it be, or their
sorrow? Will their hearts sink within them when they look on the real
likeness of us? Or will they rejoice to find that we were not so much to be
blamed as they thought?
[ 250 ] From Dante
To have a share in any earthly inheritance is to diminish the share of
the other inheritors. In the inheritance of the saints, that which each has
goes to increase the possession of the test.
[ 251 ] What God Means by "Good"
"They are good"; that is, "They are what I mean."
[ 252 ] All Things from God
All things are God's, not as being in His power-that of course-but as
coming from Him. The darkness itself becomes light around Him when we think
that verily He hath created the darkness, for there could have been no
darkness but for the light.
[ 253 ] Absolute Being
There is no word to represent that which is not God, no word for the
where without God in it; for it is not, could not be.
[ 254 ] Beasts
The ways of God go down into microscopic depths as well as up to
telescopic heights. ... So with mind; the ways of God go into the depths yet
unrevealed to us: He knows His horses and dogs as we cannot know them,
because we are not yet pure sons of God. When through our sonship, as Paul
teaches, the redemption of these lower brothers and sisters shall have come,
then we shall understand each other better. But now the Lord of Life has to
look on at the willful torture of multitudes of His creatures. It must be
that offenses come, but woe unto that man by whom they come! The Lord may
seem not to heed, but He sees and knows.
[ 255 ] Diversity of Souls
Every one of us is something that the other is not, and therefore knows
something-it may be without knowing that he knows it-which no one else
knows: and ... it is everyone's business, as one of the kingdom of light and
inheritor in it all, to give his portion to the rest.
[ 256 ] The Disillusioned
Loving but the body of Truth, even here they come to call it a lie, and
break out in maudlin moaning over the illusions of life.
[ 257 ] Evil
What springs from myself and not from God is evil: It is a perversion
of something of God's. Whatever is not of faith is sin; it is a stream cut
off-a stream that cuts itself off from its source and thinks to run on
without it.
[ 258 ] The Loss of the Shadow
I learned that it was not myself but only my shadow that I had lost. I
learned that it is better ... for a proud man to fall and be humbled than to
hold up his head in pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will
be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of
his work, is sure of his manhood.
[ 259 ] Love
It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the
soul of another.
[ 260 ] From Spring to Summer
The birds grew silent, because their history kid hold on them,
compelling them to turn their words into deeds, and keep eggs warm, and hunt
for worms.
[ 261 ] The Door into Life
But the door into life generally opens behind us, and a hand is put
forth which draws us in backwards. The sole wisdom for man or boy who is
haunted with the hovering of unseen wings, with the scent of unseen roses,
and the subtle enticements of "melodies unheard," is work. If he follow any
of those, they will vanish. But if he work, they will come unsought.
[ 262 ] A Lonely Religion
There is one kind of religion in which the more devoted a man is, the
fewer proselytes he makes: the worship of himself.
[ 263 ] Love
Love makes everything lovely: hate concentrates itself on the one thing
hated.
[ 264 ] A False Method
It is not by driving away our brother that we can be alone with God.
[ 265 ] Assimilation
All wickedness tends to destroy individuality and declining natures
assimilate as they sink.
[ 266 ] Looking
"But ye was luikin' for somebody, auntie."-"Na. I was only jist
luikin'." ... It is this formless idea of something at hand that keeps men
and women striving to tear from the bosom of the world the secret of their
own hopes. How little they know that what they look for in reality is their
God!
[ 267 ] Progress
To tell the truth, I feel a good deal younger. For then I only knew
that a man had to take up his cross; whereas now I know that a man has to
follow Him.
[ 268 ] Providence
People talk about special providences. I believe in the providences,
but not in the specialty. . . . The so-called special providences are no
exception to the rule-they are common to all men at all moments.
[ 269 ] Ordinariness
That which is best He gives most plentifully, as is reason with Him.
Hence the quiet fullness of ordinary nature; hence the Spirit to them that
ask it.
[ 270 ] Forgiveness
I prayed to God that He would make me . . . into a rock which swallowed
up the waves of wrong in its great caverns and never threw them back to
swell the commotion of the angry sea whence they came. Ah, what it would be
actually to annihilate wrong in this way-to be able to say, "It shall not be
wrong against me, so utterly do I forgive it!" . . . But the painful fact
will show itself, not less curious than painful, that it is more difficult
to forgive small wrongs than great ones. Perhaps, however, the forgiveness
of the great wrongs is not so true as it seems. For do we not think it a
fine thing to forgive such wrongs and so do it rather for our own sakes than
for the sake of the wrongdoer? It is dreadful not to be good, and to have
bad ways inside one.
[ 271 ] Visitors
By all means tell people, when you are busy about something that must
be done, that you cannot spare the time for them except they want of you
something of yet more pressing necessity; but tell them, and do not get rid
of them by the use of the instrument commonly called the cold shoulder. It
is a wicked instrument.
[ 272 ] Prose
My own conviction is that the poetry is far the deepest in us and that
the prose is only broken-down poetry; and likewise that to this our lives
correspond. ... As you will hear some peopl...
