George MacDonald. An Antology (edited by C.S.Lewis) -
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It is no part of my aim to produce a critical text of MacDonald. Apart
from my unconscious errors in transcription, I have "tampered" in two ways.
The whole difficulty of making extracts is to leave the sense perfectly
clear while not retaining anything you do not want. In attempting to do so,
I have sometimes interpolated a word (always enclosed in brackets) and
sometimes altered the punctuation. I have also introduced a capital H for
pronouns that refer to God, which the printer, in some of my originals, did
not employ; not because I consider this typographical reverence of much
importance, but because, in a language where pronouns are so easily confused
as they are in English, it seems foolish to reject such an aid to clarity.
- C. S. lewis
GEORGE MACDONALD
AN ANTHOLOGY
[ 1 ] Dryness
That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth
of his feelings and desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the
weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and
say to Him, "Thou art my refuge."*
* The source of this quotation and of the subsequent quotations will be
found in "Sources,"
[ 2 ] Inexorable Love
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 love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness
of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot
love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may
love more; it strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected-not
in itself, but in the object. . . . Therefore all that is not beautiful in
the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be