By George MacDonald
He who would thus live must, as a mirror draws into its bosom an outward glory, receive into his ‘heart of heart’ the inward glory of Jesus Christ, the Truth.
Now I grow old, and the soft-gathered years Have calmed, yea dulled the heart’s swift fluttering beat; But a quiet hope that keeps its household seat Is better than recurrent glories fleet.
He is utterly true and good to us, nor shall anything withstand his will.
Faith is that which, knowing the Lord’s will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stands and waits, content in ignorance as in knowledge, because God wills; neither pressing into the hidden future, nor careless of the knowledge which opens the path of action.
When he finds the mountain he has so long been climbing show suddenly a distant peak, radiant in eternal whiteness, and all but lost in heavenly places, a peak whose glory-crowned apex it seems as if no human foot could ever reach—then is there hope for him.
One flash of truth towards me would destroy my enmity at once.
I care not to be told that one may pass at once into all possible sweetness of assurance; it is not assurance I desire, but the thing itself; not the certainty of eternal life, but eternal life.
He is made for the All, for God, who is the All, is his life.
Every uplifting of the heart is a looking up to The Father.
Not, Lord, because I have done well or ill; Not that my mind looks up to thee clear-eyed; Not that it struggles in fast cerements tied; Not that I need thee daily sorer still; Not that I wretched, wander from thy will; Not now for any cause to thee I cry, But this, that thou art thou, and here am I.
The true man trusts in a strength which is not his, and which he does not feel, does not even always desire; believes in a power that seems far from him, which is yet at the root of his fatigue itself and his need of rest—rest as far from death as is labour.
But now the Spirit and I are one in this—My hunger now is after righteousness; My spirit hopes in God to set me free From the low self loathed of the higher me.
He is condemned for not coming out of the darkness, for not coming to the light, the living God, who sent the light, his son, into the world to guide him home.
The faith that limits itself to the promises of God, seems to me to partake of the paltry character of such a faith in my child—good enough for a Pagan, but for a Christian a miserable and wretched faith.
Demands unknown before are continually being made upon the Christian: it is the ever fresh rousing and calling, asking and sending of the Spirit that worketh in the children of obedience.
So are we sons when we begin to cry Father, but we are far from perfected sons.
To be free you must be that which you have to be, that which you are created.
The idea, you see, is not the reflection, the radiating of the light of Christ on others, though that were a figure lawful enough; but the taking into, and having in us, him working to the changing of us.
One hearty confession of wrong, and our enmity passes away; from each comes forth the brother who was inside the enemy all the time.
How the earthly father would love a child who would creep into his room with angry, troubled face, and sit down at his feet, saying when asked what he wanted: ‘I feel so naughty, papa, and I want to get good’!
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