George MacDonald. An Antology (edited by C.S.Lewis) -
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does God want me to do?", not "What will God do if I do so and so?"
[ 30 ] The Knowledge of God
To say Thou art God, without knowing what the Thou means-of
what use is
it? God is a name only, except we know God.
[ 31] The Passion
It is with the holiest fear that we should approach the terrible fact
of the sufferings of Our Lord. Let no one think that these were less because
He was more. The more delicate the nature, the more alive to all that is
lovely and true, lawful and right, the more does it feel the antagonism of
pain, the inroad of death upon life; the more dreadful is that breach of the
harmony of things whose sound is torture.
[ 32 ] Eli, Eli
He could not see, could not feel Him near; and yet it is "My God" that
He cries. Thus the Will of Jesus, in the very moment when His faith seems
about to yield is finally triumphant. It has no feeling now to support
it,
no beatific vision to absorb it. It stands naked in His soul and tortured,
as He stood naked and scourged before Pilate. Pure and simple and surrounded
by fire, it declares for God.
[ 33 ] The Same
Without this last trial of all, the temptations of our Master had not
been so full as the human cup could hold; there would have been one region
through which we had to pass wherein we might call aloud upon our
Captain-Brother, and there would be no voice or hearing: He had avoided the
fatal spot!
[ 34 ] Vicarious Desolation
This is the Faith of the Son of God. God withdrew, as it were, that the
perfect Will of the Son might arise and go forth to find the Will of the
Father. It is possible that even then He thought of the lost sheep who could
not believe that God was their Father; and for them, too, in all their loss