PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.
MacDonald, George, 1824-1905 · 174,677 words · 216 reading sections
The Child In The Midst.
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Charlie Kirschner and Distributed Proofreaders [Greek: Epea Aptera] BY GEORGE MACDONALD SERIES I, II, III IN ONE VOLUME Comfort ye, comfort ye my people THE CHILD IN THE MIDST THE CONSUMING FIRE THE HIGHER FAITH IT SHALL NOT BE FORGIVEN THE NEW NAME THE HEART WITH THE TREASURE THE TE…
667 wordsSECTION 2The Child In The Midst.
The difficulty is this: Is it like the _Son of man_ to pick out the beautiful child, and leave the common child unnoticed? What thank would he have in that? Do not even the publicans as much as that? And do not our hearts revolt against the thought of it? Shall the mother's heart cleave closest to the deformed of her l…
917 wordsSECTION 3The Child In The Midst.
That this lesson did lie, not in the humanity, but in the childhood of the child, let me now show more fully. The disciples had been disputing who should be the greatest, and the Lord wanted to show them that such a dispute had nothing whatever to do with the way things went in his kingdom. Therefore, as a specimen of …
813 wordsSECTION 4The Child In The Midst.
But the argument as to the meaning of our Lord's words, _in my name_, is incomplete, until we follow our Lord's enunciation to its second and higher stage: "He that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me." It will be allowed that the connection between the first and second link of the chain will probably be the same …
798 wordsSECTION 5The Child In The Midst.
If there is in heaven a picture of that wonderful teaching, doubtless we shall see represented in it a dim childhood shining from the faces of all that group of disciples of which the centre is the Son of God with a child in his arms. The childhood, dim in the faces of the men, must be shining trustfully clear in the f…
813 wordsSECTION 6The Child In The Midst.
Let us dare, then, to climb the height of divine truth to which this utterance of our Lord would lead us. Does it not lead us up hither: that the devotion of God to his creatures is perfect? that he does not think about himself but about them? that he wants nothing for himself, but finds his blessedness in the outgoin…
698 wordsSECTION 7The Child In The Midst.
Therefore, with angels and with archangels, with the spirits of the just made perfect, with the little children of the kingdom, yea, with the Lord himself, and for all them that know him not, we praise and magnify and laud his name in itself, saying _Our Father_. We do not draw back for that we are unworthy, nor even f…
406 wordsSECTION 8The Consuming Fire.
_Our God is a consuming fire_.--HEBREWS xii. 29 Nothing is inexorable but love. Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy. For if at the voice of entreaty love conquers displeasure, it is love asserting itself, not love yielding its claims. It is not love…
1,034 wordsSECTION 9The Consuming Fire.
The symbol of _the consuming fire_ would seem to have been suggested to the writer by the fire that burned on the mountain of the old law. That fire was part of the revelation of God there made to the Israelites. Nor was it the first instance of such a revelation. The symbol of God's presence, before which Moses had to…
665 wordsSECTION 10The Consuming Fire.
Here was a nation at its lowest: could it receive anything but a partial revelation, a revelation of fear? How should the Hebrews be other than terrified at that which was opposed to all they knew of themselves, beings judging it good to honour a golden calf? Such as they were, they did well to be afraid. They were in …
709 wordsSECTION 11The Consuming Fire.
Even Moses, the man of God, was not ready to receive the revelation in store; not ready, although from love to his people he prayed that God would even blot him out of his book of life. If this means that he offered to give himself as a sacrifice _instead_ of them, it would show reason enough why he could not be glorif…
795 wordsSECTION 12The Consuming Fire.
For, when we say that God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of him is groundless? No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more. But there is something beyond their fear,--a divine fate which they cannot withstand, because it works along with the human individuality which the divine individuali…
777 wordsSECTION 13The Consuming Fire.
to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling? But with this divine difference: that the outer darkness is but the most dreadful form of the consuming fire--the fire without light--the darkness visible, the black flame. God hath withdrawn himself, but not lost his hold. His face…
316 wordsSECTION 14The Higher Faith.
_Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed._--JOHN xx. 29. The aspiring child is often checked by the dull disciple who has learned his lessons so imperfectly that he has never got beyond his school-books. Full of fragmentary…
672 wordsSECTION 15The Higher Faith.
Contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape. Didymus answers, "No doubt, what we know not now, we shall know hereafter." Certainly there may be things which the mere passing into another stage of existence will illuminate; but the questions that come here, must be inquired into here, and if not answered here, then…
656 wordsSECTION 16The Higher Faith.
And to whom shall a man, whom the blessed God has made, look for what he likes best, but to that blessed God? If we have been indeed enabled to see that God is our Father, as the Lord taught us, let us advance from that truth to understand that he is far more than father--that his nearness to us is beyond the embodimen…
750 wordsSECTION 17The Higher Faith.
Our God, we will trust thee. Shall we not find thee equal to our faith? One day, we shall laugh ourselves to scorn that we looked for so little from thee; for thy giving will not be limited by our hoping. O thou of little faith! "in everything,"--I am quoting your own Bible; nay, more, I am quoting a divine soul that …
665 wordsSECTION 18The Higher Faith.
Ah Lord! be thou in all our being; as not in the Sundays of our time alone, so not in the chambers of our hearts alone. We dare not think that thou canst not, carest not; that some things are not for thy beholding, some questions not to be asked of thee. For are we not all thine--utterly thine? That which a man speaks …
269 wordsSECTION 19It Shall Not Be Forgiven.
_And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven.--LUKE xi. 18. Whatever belonging to the region of thought and feeling is uttered in words, is of necessity uttered imperfectly. For thought and feeling are…
946 wordsSECTION 20It Shall Not Be Forgiven.
Words for their full meaning depend upon their source, the person who speaks them. An utterance may even seem commonplace, till you are told that thus spoke one whom you know to be always thinking, always feeling, always acting. Recognizing the mind whence the words proceed, you know the scale by which they are to be u…
663 wordsSECTION 21It Shall Not Be Forgiven.
A third will say: "I suppose I must forgive him; for if I do not forgive him, God will not forgive me." This man is a _little_ nearer the truth, inasmuch as a ground of sympathy, though only that of common sin, is recognized as between the offender and himself. One more will say: "He has wronged me grievously. It is …
887 wordsSECTION 22It Shall Not Be Forgiven.
God is forgiving us every day--sending from between him and us our sins and their fogs and darkness. Witness the shining of his sun and the falling of his rain, the filling of their hearts with food and gladness, that he loves them that love him not. When some sin that we have committed has clouded all our horizon, and…
1,245 wordsSECTION 23It Shall Not Be Forgiven.
No one, however, supposes for a moment that a man who has once refused to forgive his brother, shall therefore be condemned to endless unforgiveness and unforgivingness. What is meant is, that while a man continues in such a mood, God cannot be with him as his friend; not that he will not be his friend, but the friends…
1,009 wordsSECTION 24It Shall Not Be Forgiven.
As far removed from God and light of heaven, As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole. For this there could be no such excuse made as that even a little light might work beside it; for there light could find no entrance and no room; light was just what such a mind was set against, almost because it was what it wa…
1,017 wordsSECTION 25It Shall Not Be Forgiven.
Look for a moment at the clause preceding my text: "He that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God." What does it mean? Does it mean--"Ah! you are mine, but not of my sort. You denied me. Away to the outer darkness"? Not so. "It shall be forgiven to him that speaketh against the Son of man;" for…
448 wordsSECTION 26The New Name.
_To him that overcometh, I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.-- REV. ii. 17._ Whether the Book of the Revelation be written by the same man who wrote the Gospel according to St John or not, there is, at least, one element common to the two--t…
912 wordsSECTION 27The New Name.
I say, in brief, the giving of the white stone with the new name is the communication of what God thinks about the man to the man. It is the divine judgment, the solemn holy doom of the righteous man, the "Come, thou blessed," spoken to the individual. In order to see this, we must first understand what is the idea of…
1,006 wordsSECTION 28The New Name.
But I leave this, because that which follows embraces and intensifies this individuality of relation in a fuller development of the truth. For the name is one "which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God. He …
711 wordsSECTION 29The New Name.
"But is there not the worst of all dangers involved in such teaching-- the danger of spiritual pride?" If there be, are we to refuse the spirit for fear of the pride? Or is there any other deliverance from pride except the spirit? Pride springs from supposed success in the high aim: with attainment itself comes humilit…
655 wordsSECTION 30The Heart With The Treasure.
_Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be al…
851 wordsSECTION 31The Heart With The Treasure.
Nor does the lesson apply to those only who worship Mammon, who give their lives, their best energies to the accumulation of wealth: it applies to those equally who in any way worship the transitory; who seek the praise of men more than the praise of God; who would make a show in the world by wealth, by taste, by intel…
374 wordsSECTION 32The Temptation In The Wilderness.
_Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. And when the tempter came to him, he said, if thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, …
656 wordsSECTION 33The Temptation In The Wilderness.
There is no attempt made to convey to us even the substance of the battle of those forty days. Such a conflict of spirit as for forty days absorbed all the human necessities of _The Man_ in the cares of the Godhead could not be rendered into forms intelligible to us, or rather, could not be in itself intelligible to us…
852 wordsSECTION 34The Temptation In The Wilderness.
And now arises the question upon the right answer to which depends the whole elucidation of the story: _How could the Son of God be tempted_? If any one say that he was not moved by those temptations, he must be told that then they were no temptations to him, and he was not tempted; nor was his victory of more signifi…
958 wordsSECTION 35The Temptation In The Wilderness.
And in nothing was he to be beyond his brethren, save in faith. No refuge for him, any more than for them, save in the love and care of the Father. Other refuge, let it be miraculous power or what you will, would be but hell to him. God is refuge. God is life. "Was he not to eat when it came in his way? And did not the…
677 wordsSECTION 36The Temptation In The Wilderness.
For I have been speaking of the consciousness of existence, and not of that higher spiritual life on which all other life depends. That of course can for no one moment exist save from the heart of God. When a man tries to live by bread and not by the word that comes out of that heart of God, he may think he lives, but …
683 wordsSECTION 37The Temptation In The Wilderness.
If, by any will of God--that is, any truth in him--we live, we live by it tenfold when that will has become a word to us. When we receive it, his will becomes our will, and so we live by God. But the word of God once understood, a man must live by the faith of what God is, and not by his own feelings even in regard to …
1,096 wordsSECTION 38The Temptation In The Wilderness.
And thus I am naturally brought to consider more fully how this should be a real temptation to the Son of Man. It would be good to confound his adversaries; to force conviction upon them that he was the God-supported messenger he declared himself. Why should he have Adversaries a moment longer to interfere between him …
888 wordsSECTION 39The Temptation In The Wilderness.
But let us not forget that the whole is a faint parable--faint I mean in relation to the grandeur of the reality, as the ring and the shoes are poor types (yet how dear!) of the absolute love of the Father to his prodigal children. We shall now look at the third temptation. The first was to help himself in his need; t…
1,284 wordsSECTION 40The Eloi.
"Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." It was when Peter would have withstood him as he set his face steadfastly to meet this death at Jerusalem, that he gave him the same kind of answer that he now gave to Satan, calling him Satan too. "Then th…
812 wordsSECTION 41The Eloi.
Thus the Will of Jesus, in the very moment when his faith seems about to yield, is finally triumphant. It has no _feeling_ now to support it, no beatific vision to absorb it. It stands naked in his soul and tortured, as he stood naked and scourged before Pilate. Pure and simple and surrounded by fire, it declares for G…
681 wordsSECTION 42The Eloi.
This is the Faith of the Son of God. God withdrew, as it were, that the perfect Will of the Son might arise and go forth to find the Will of the Father. Is it possible that even then he thought of the lost sheep who could not believe that God was their Father; and for them, too, in all their loss and blindness and unl…
677 wordsSECTION 43The Eloi.
And how in such a condition do we generally act? Do we not sit mourning over the loss of our feelings? or worse, make frantic efforts to rouse them? or, ten times worse, relapse into a state of temporary atheism, and yield to the pressing temptation? or, being heartless, consent to remain careless, conscious of evil th…
824 wordsSECTION 44The Eloi.
Troubled soul, thou art not bound to feel, but thou art bound to arise. God loves thee whether thou feelest or not. Thou canst not love when thou wilt, but thou art bound to fight the hatred in thee to the last. Try not to feel good when thou art not good, but cry to Him who is good. He changes not because thou changes…
485 wordsSECTION 45The Hands Of The Father.
"_Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit_."--St Luke xxiii. 46. Neither St Matthew nor St Mark tells us of any words uttered by our Lord after the _Eloi_. They both, along with St Luke, tell us of a cry with a loud voice, and the giving up of the ghost; between which cry and the giving up, St Luke records the words…
695 wordsSECTION 46The Hands Of The Father.
I do not seek to point out this commending of our spirits to the Father as a duty: that is to turn the highest privilege we possess into a burden grievous to be borne. But I want to shew that it is the simplest blessedest thing in the human world. For the Human Being may say thus with himself: "Am I going to sleep--to…
756 wordsSECTION 47The Hands Of The Father.
Nor is there anything we can ask for ourselves that we may not ask for another. We may commend any brother, any sister, to the common fatherhood. And there will be moments when, filled with that spirit which is the Lord, nothing will ease our hearts of their love but the commending of all men, all our brothers, all our…
262 wordsSECTION 48Love Thy Neighbour
_Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself._--ST MATTHEW xxii. 39. The original here quoted by our Lord is to be found in the words of God to Moses, (_Leviticus_ xix. 18:) _"Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord"_ Our Lo…
798 wordsSECTION 49Love Thy Neighbour
Though the fulfilling of the law is the practical form love will take, and the neglect of it is the conviction of lovelessness; though it is the mode in which a man's _will_ must begin at once to be love to his neighbour, yet, that our Lord meant by the love of our neighbour; not the fulfilling of the law towards him, …
695 wordsSECTION 50Love Thy Neighbour
It _is_ possible to love our neighbour as ourselves. Our Lord _never_ spoke hyperbolically, although, indeed, that is the supposition on which many unconsciously interpret his words, in order to be able to persuade themselves that they believe them. We may see that it is possible before we attain to it; for our percept…
716 wordsSECTION 51Love Thy Neighbour
Let me represent in the form of a conversation what might pass in the man's mind on the opposing sides of the question.--"Why should I love my neighbour?" "He is the same as I, and therefore I ought to love him." "Why? I am I. He is he." "He has the same thoughts, feelings, hopes, sorrows, joys, as I." "Yes; but wh…
775 wordsSECTION 52Love Thy Neighbour
With those who recognize no authority as the ground of tentative action, a doubt, a suspicion of truth ought to be ground enough for putting it to the test. The whole system of divine education as regards the relation of man and man, has for its end that a man should love his neighbour as himself. It is not a lesson t…
1,177 wordsSECTION 53Love Thy Neighbour
Thus will love spread and spread in wider and stronger pulses till the whole human race will be to the man sacredly lovely. Drink-debased, vice-defeatured, pride-puffed, wealth-bollen, vanity-smeared, they will yet be brothers, yet be sisters, yet be God-born neighbours. Any rough-hewn semblance of humanity will at len…
707 wordsSECTION 54Love Thy Neighbour
But it is a wild question. God is, and shall be, All in all. Father of our brothers and sisters! thou wilt not be less glorious than we, taught of Christ, are able to think thee. When thou goest into the wilderness to seek, thou wilt not come home until thou hast found. It is because we hope not for them in thee, not k…
521 wordsSECTION 55Love Thine Enemy.
_Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for…
722 wordsSECTION 56Love Thine Enemy.
But how can we love a man or a woman who is cruel and unjust to us?-- who sears with contempt, or cuts off with wrong every tendril we would put forth to embrace?--who is mean, unlovely, carping, uncertain, self-righteous, self-seeking, and self-admiring?--who can even sneer, the most inhuman of human faults, far worse…
686 wordsSECTION 57Love Thine Enemy.
But those who will not acknowledge the claim of love, may yet acknowledge the claim of justice. There are who would shrink with horror from the idea of doing injustice to those, from the idea of loving whom they would shrink with equal horror. But if it is impossible, as I believe, without love to be just, much more ca…
706 wordsSECTION 58Love Thine Enemy.
But again I must ask, What if _we_ are in the wrong and do the wrong, and hate because we have injured? What then? Why, then, let us cry to God as from the throat of hell; struggle, as under the weight of a spiritual incubus; cry, as knowing the vile disease that cleaveth fast unto us; cry, as possessed of an evil spir…
573 wordsSECTION 59The God Of The Living.
_He is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him_.--ST LUKE xx. 38. It is a recurring cause of perplexity in our Lord's teaching, that he is too simple for us; that while we are questioning with ourselves about the design of Solomon's earring upon some gold-plated door of the temple, he is speaki…
827 wordsSECTION 60The God Of The Living.
"But if they live to God, they are aware of God. And if they are aware of God, they are conscious of their own being: Whence then the necessity of a resurrection?" For their relation to others of God's children in mutual revelation; and for fresh revelation of God to all.--But let us inquire what is meant by the resur…
683 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.