George MacDonald. An Antology (edited by C.S.Lewis) -
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one's neighbor; and here there is no possibility of comparison with one's
neighbor: no one knows what the white stone contains except the man who
receives it.... Relative worth is not only unknown -to the children of the
Kingdom it is unknowable.
[ 23 ] Caverns and Films
If God sees that heart corroded with the rust of cares, riddled into
caverns and films by the worms of ambition and greed, then your heart is as
God sees it, for God sees things as they are. And one day you will be
compelled to see, nay, to feel your heart as God sees it.
[ 21 ] The End
"God has cared to make me for Himself," says the victor with the white
stone, "And has called me that which I like best."
[ 22 ] Moth and Rust
What is with the treasure must fare as the treasure. . .. The heart
which haunts the treasure house where the moth and rust corrupt, will be
exposed to the same ravages as the treasure.... Many a man, many a woman,
fair and flourishing to see, is going about with a rusty moth-eaten heart
within that form of strength or beauty. "But this is only a figure." True.
But is the reality intended, less or more than the figure?
[ 24 ] Various Kinds of Moth
Nor does the lesson apply to those only who worship Mammon. ... 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 intellect, by power, by art, by genius of any
kind, and so would gather golden opinions to be treasured in a storehouse of
earth. Nor to such only, but surely to those as well whose pleasures are of
a more evidently transitory nature still, such as the pleasures of the