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George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. He was educated at Aberdeen University and after a short and stormy career as a minister at Arundel, where his unorthodox views led to his dismissal, he turned to fiction as a means of earning a living. He wrote over 50 books. Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, MacDonald inspired many authors, such George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister.
Thomas Wingfold, Curate
Either the whole frame of existence is a wretched, miserable unfitness, a chaos with dreams of a world, a chaos in which the higher is for ever subject to the lower, or it is an embodied idea growing towards perfection in him who is the one perfect creative Idea, the Father of lights, who suffers himself that he may bring his many sons into the glory which is his own glory.
How silly, thinks MacDonald, to reject the possibility of a divine Creator when we cannot rationally prove his non-existence. Why should any human being prematurely cut himself off from salvific union with God before he has sought this God with all of his heart and mind and being. Such were indeed an unworthy feeling to follow! Of all things let us have the truth—even of fact! But to deny what we cannot prove, not even casts into our ice-house a spadeful of snow.
What if the warm hope denied should be the truth after all? What if it was the truth in it that drew the soul towards it by its indwelling reality, and its relations with her being, even while she took blame for suffering herself to be enticed by a sweet deception? Alas indeed for men if the life and the truth are not one, but fight against each other! Surely it says something for the divine nature of him that denies the divine, when he yet cleaves to what he thinks the truth, although it denies the life, and blots the way to the better from every chart!
MacDonald disapproves of every form of self-deception. As the story draws near to conclusion, Bascombe finally proposes matrimony to Helen, still thinking that she remains his disciple. This wonderful passage deserves to be quoted in full:. I shall only take the better courage to speak my mind.
Thomas Wingfold, Curate - Christian Classics Ethereal Library
If you believed he was alive still, and I should find him again some day, there would be no reason why you should not speak of love even now; for where does anyone need love more than at the brink of the grave? But to come talking of love to me, with the same voice that has but just been teaching me that the grave is the end of all, and my brother gone down into it for ever—I tell you, cousin—I must say it—it seems to me hardly decent. For me at least—I will NOT be loved with the love that can calmly accept such a fate. And I will never love any man, believing that, if I outlive him, my love must thereafter be but a homeless torrent, falling ever into a bottomless abyss.
Why should I make of my heart a roaring furnace of regrets and self-accusations? The memory of my brother is for me enough. Let me keep what freedom is possible to me; let me rather live the life of a cold-blooded animal, and die in the ice that gathers about me. But before I sit down to await such an end, I shall know whether I am indeed compelled to believe as you do that there is no God, that Death is my lord and master, that he will take me as he has taken my brother and yet I shall never see him more.
No, cousin George, I need a God; and if there be none how did I come to need one? Yes, I know you think you can explain it all, but the way you account for it is just as miserable as what you would put in its place. I am not complete in myself like you. I am not able to live without a God. I will seek him until I find him, or drop into the abyss where all question and answer ceases. Then in the end I shall be no worse than you would have me at the beginning—no, it will be nothing so bad, for then I shall not know my misery as you would have me know it now.
If we are creatures of nothing, in spite of all the outcry of our souls against that fate, what mighty matter is it if, thus utterly befooled of Nature, we should also a little fool ourselves, by believing in a lovely hope that looks like a promise, and seems as if it ought to be true?
How can a devotion to the facts of her existence be required of one whose nature has been proved to her a lie? Helen had come awake at last! It would have suited George better had she remained a half-quickened statue, responsive only to himself, her not over-potent Pygmalion. He sat speechless—with his eyes fixed on her. If you need none, you are right to seek none, I dare say. But I need a God—oh, I cannot tell how I need him, if he be to be found! To the last I will go on seeking him, for if once I give in, and confess there is no God, I shall go mad—mad, and perhaps kill somebody like poor Poldie.
George, I have said my say. I would not have come into the garden but to say it.
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Helen then walks off. I will just note that anyone who wants to try having Thomas Wingfold, Curate read aloud to them by a variety of voices can do so at LibriVox.
Folks are discussing Thomas Wingfold, Curate. Thank you, Fr Aidan.
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I will seek that page out as I continue in my quest for God. I need God very much right now and always. Hi, I followed the link here from the Facebook page. I quite enjoyed it the first time. George MacDonald has been making an impact on my life since I was eight but more so this year as I have recently read Unspoken Sermons which I highly recommend.
It has revolutionized my faith and inspired me to be even more contemplative minded and believe in the love of God in a more expansive, more grander way than ever before. All three series can be accessed for free here: Gutenberg is a wonderful resource. I actually used to proof read for them in my early computing days. His Seaboard Parish series is very quiet and uneventful, with hardly even a plot to it.
But throughout the book MacDonald succeeds in making the commonplace feel magical. You can get a complete collection of his writings, fairy tales, fantasies, novels unabridged and Unspoken Sermons, etc. Many of his individual books are free. I have done this a couple times with pleasure! Lewis introduced me — been reading Mr.
Just re-read Phantastes — amazing how much more you see on re- reading something with such spiritual depth! Lilith is a strong favorite too.