George MacDonald

Feast of Matthias the Apostle There is more hid in Christ than we shall ever learn, here or there read more

Feast of Matthias the Apostle There is more hid in Christ than we shall ever learn, here or there either; but they that begin first to inquire will soonest be gladdened with revelation; and with them He will be best pleased, for the slowness of His disciples troubled Him of old. To say that we must wait for the other world, to know the mind of Him who came to this world to give Himself to us, seems to me the foolishness of a worldly and lazy spirit. The Son of God is the teacher of men, giving to them of His Spirit -- that Spirit which manifests the deep things of God, being to a man the mind of Christ. The great heresy of the Church of the present day is unbelief in this Spirit.

The Gospels contain what the Apostles preached -- the Epistles, what they wrote after the preaching. And until we understand read more

The Gospels contain what the Apostles preached -- the Epistles, what they wrote after the preaching. And until we understand the Gospel, the good news about our brother-king -- until we understand Him, until we have His Spirit, promised so freely to them that ask it -- all the Epistles, the words of men who were full of Him, and wrote out of that fullness, who loved Him so utterly that by that very love they were lifted into the air of pure reason and right, and would die for Him, without two thoughts about it, in the very simplicity of no choice -- the Letters, I say, of such men are to us a sealed book. Until we love the Lord so as to do what He tells us, we have no right to an opinion about what one of those men meant; for all they wrote is about things beyond us. The simplest woman who tries not to judge her neighbor, or not to be anxious for the morrow, will better know what is best to know, than the best-read bishop without that one simple outgoing of his highest nature in the effort to do the will of Him who thus spoke.

Do you so love the truth and the right that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to, the idea read more

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 humbled?... Are you willing to be made glad that you were wrong when you thought others were wrong?... 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 that 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.

The pure eye for the true vision of another's claims can only go with the loving heart. The man who read more

The pure eye for the true vision of another's claims can only go with the loving heart. The man who hates can hardly be delicate in doing Justice, say to his neighbor's love, to his neighbor's predilections and peculiarities. It is hard enough to be just to our friends; and how shall our enemies fare with us?

Feast of Alban, first Martyr of Britain, c.209 Continuing a short series on authenticity: There is one growing read more

Feast of Alban, first Martyr of Britain, c.209 Continuing a short series on authenticity: There is one growing persuasion of the present age which I hope this book may somewhat serve to stem -- not by any argument, but by... a healthy up stirring ... of the imagination and the conscience. In these days, when men are so gladly hearing afresh that "in Him there is no darkness at all"; that God, therefore could not have created any man if He knew that he must live in torture to all eternity; and that His hatred to evil cannot be expressed by injustice, itself the one essence of evil, -- for certainly it would be nothing less than injustice to punish infinitely what was finitely committed, no sinner being capable of understanding the abstract enormity of what he does, -- in these days has a arisen another falsehood, less, yet very perilous: thousands of half-thinkers imagine that, since it is declared with such authority that hell is not everlasting, there is then no hell at all. To such folly, I, for one, have never given enticement or shelter. I see no hope for many, no way for the divine love to reach them, save through a very ghastly hell. Men have got to repent; there is no other escape for them, and no escape from that.