From Unspoken Sermons, by George MacDonald
Each of us is a distinct flower or tree in the spiritual garden of God,—precious, each for his own sake, in the eyes of him who is even now making us,—each of us watered and shone upon and filled with life, for the sake of his flower, his completed being, which will blossom out of him at last to the glory and pleasure of the great gardener.
So long as there is in us the least taint of distrust, the least lingering of hate or fear, we have not received the sonship.
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.
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.
He is utterly true and good to us, nor shall anything withstand his will.
The law comes to make us long for the needful grace,—that is, for the divine condition, in which love is all.
When we are least worthy, then, most tempted, hardest, unkindest, let us yet commend our spirits into his hands.
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.
God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands away As it were, an handbreath off, to give Room for the newly-made to live. He has made us, but we have to be.
Let us then dare something. Let us not always be unbelieving children.
What should I think of my child, if I found that he limited his faith in me and hope from me to the few promises he had heard me utter!
His life is not in knowing that he lives, but in loving all forms of life.
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.
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.
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’!
The Self is God’s making—only it must be the ‘slave of Christ,’ that the Son may make it also the free son of the same Father; it must receive all from him—not as from nowhere; as well as the deeper soul, it must follow him, not its own desires.
These things cannot be loved. The best man hates them most; the worst man cannot love them.
It is easy in pain, so long as it does not pass certain undefinable bounds, to hope in God for deliverance, or pray for strength to endure.
But that we should receive what we ask in respect of our lower needs, is not God’s end in making us pray, for he could give us everything without that: to bring his child to his knee, God withholds that man may ask.
Our mirroring of Christ, then, is one with the presence of his spirit in us.
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