George MacDonald. An Antology (edited by C.S.Lewis) -
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it. You have had great provocation and are justified in your hate"? No doubt
God takes what wrong there is, and what provocation there is, into the
account: but the more provocation, the more excuse that can be urged for the
hate, the more reason, if possible, that the hater should be delivered from
the hell of his hate. . . . The man would think, not that God loved the
sinner, but that he forgave the sin, which God never does [i.e. What is
usually called "forgiving the sin" means forgiving the sinner and destroying
the sin]. Every sin meets with its due fate-inexorable expulsion from
the
paradise of God's Humanity. He loves the sinner so much that He cannot
forgive him in any other way than by banishing from his bosom the demon that
possesses him.
[ 14 ] Truth is Truth
Truth is truth, whether from the lips of Jesus or Balaam.
[ 15 ] The White Stone (Revelations 2:17)
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. . . . The true name is one which expresses the character,
the nature, the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the man's
own
symbol -his soul's picture, in a word-the sign which belongs to him and to
no one else. Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone. For no one
but God sees what the man is. ... It is only when the man has become his
name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it, for then first can
he understand what his name signifies. It is the blossom, the perfection,
the completeness, that determines the name: and God foresees that from the
first because He made it so: but the tree of the soul, before its blossom