George MacDonald

This week I have been at the Marion E. Wade Center in Wheaton, Illinois doing research for a new book I am writing on the top ten authors and books that influenced C. S. Lewis' vocational attitude and philosophy of life. #1 on that Top Ten list is George MacDonald (pictured above) and his book, Phantastes.

As part of my research I have been perusing all the MacDonald books from Lewis' library now part of the collection at the Wade. Here are some of my favorite MacDonald quotes, also favorites of Lewis, that I have come across in my research:

From The Miracles of Our Lord:

"God's greatest work has never been done in crowds, but in closets; and when it works out from thence, it is not upon crowds but upon individuals. A crowd is not a divine thing. It is not a body. Its atoms are not members one of another."

"The man who prays, in proportion to the purity of his prayer, becomes a spiritual power, a nerve from the divine brain, yea, perhaps a ganglion as we call it, whence power anew goes forth upon his fellows."

From Sir Gibbie:

"For the bliss of the animals lies in this, that, on their lower level, they shadow the bliss of those--few at any moment on the earth--who do not 'look before and after, and pine for what is not,' but live in the holy carelessness of the eternal now."

"But every honest cry, even if sent into the deaf ear of an idol, passes on to the ears of the unknown God, the heart of the unknown Father."

"...the time for speaking comes rarely, the time for being never departs."

From Thomas Wingfold Curate:

"... for nothing is so deadening to the divine as an habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things ..."

"He must give us every sort of opportunity for trusting him ... The one he now gives you, is this dulness that has come over you. Trust him through it, submitting to it and yet trusting against it, and you get the good of it."

"I would rather die for evermore believing as Jesus believed, than live for evermore believing as those that deny him."

From Unspoken Sermons:

"No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it--no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather!"

From What's Mine's Mine:

"God only can be ours perfectly; nothing called property can be ours at all."

"Complaint against God is far nearer to God than indifference about him."

"There is such a thing as sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected."

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Christmas Day Thought from Henri Nouwen

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Will Vaus

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