 Chapter 7 of Unspoken Sermons, Series 2 This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by David Baldwin. Unspoken Sermons by George MacDonald Abba Father The Spirit of Adoption, whereby we cry Abba Father Romans Chapter 8, Verse 15 The hardest, gladdest thing in the world is to cry Father from a full heart. I would help whom I may decal thus upon the Father. There are things in all forms of the systematic teaching of Christianity to check this outgoing of the heart with some to render it simply impossible. The more delicate to the affections, the less easy to satisfy. The readier are they to be damned and discouraged, yea, quite blown aside. The suspicion of a cold reception is enough to paralyze them. Such a cold wind blowing it to the very gate of heaven. Thank God, outside the gate, is the so-called doctrine of adoption. When a heart hears and believes or hath believes that it is not the child of God by origin from the first of its being, but may possibly be adopted into his family, its love sinks at once in a cold faint. Where is its own Father, and who is this that would adopt it? To myself in the morning of childhood the evil doctrine was amiss through which the light came struggling, a cloud-fantom of repellent mean requiring matureer thought and truer knowledge to dissipate it. But it requires neither much knowledge nor much insight to stand up against its hideousness, its needs but love that will not be denied, and courage to question the phantom. A devout and honest skepticism on God's side, not to be put down by anything called authority, is absolutely necessary to him who would know the liberty wherewith Christ maketh free. Whatever any company of good men thinks or believes is to be approached with respect. But nothing claimed or taught, be the claimers or the teachers who they may, must come between the soul and the spirit of the Father who is himself the teacher of his children. Nay, to accept authority may be to refuse the very thing the authority would teach. It may remain altogether misunderstood just for lack of that natural process of doubt and inquiry which we were intended to go through by him who would have us understand. As no scripture is of private interpretation so is there no feeling in human heart which exists in that heart alone which is not in some form or degree in every heart. And hence I conclude that many must have grown like myself under the supposed authority of this doctrine. The refusal to look up to God as our Father is the one central wrong in the whole human affair, the inability, the one central misery. Whatever serves to clear any difficulty from the way of the recognition of the Father will more or less undermine every difficulty in life. Is God then not my Father? cries the heart of the child that I need to be adopted by him. Adoption? That can never satisfy me. Who is my Father? Am I not His to begin with? Is God not my very own Father? Is He my Father only in a sort or fashion by a legal contrivance? Truly much love may lie in adoption but if I accept it from any one I allow myself the child of another. The adoption of God would indeed be a blessed thing if another than He had given me being but if He gave me being then it means no reception but a repudiation. O Father, am I not your child? No, but He will adopt you. He will not acknowledge you His child but He will call you His child and be a Father to you. Alas! cries the child. If He be not my Father He cannot become my Father. A Father is a Father from the beginning. A primary relation cannot be super-induced. The consequence might be small where earthly fatherhood was concerned but the very origin of my being. Alas! If He be only a maker and not a Father then am I only a machine and not a child, not a man? It is false to say I was created in His image. It evils nothing to answer that we lost our birthright by the fall. I do not care to argue that I did not fall when Adam fell for I have fallen many a time and there is a shadow on my soul which I or another may call a curse. I cannot get rid of a something which is intrudes between my heart and the blue of every sky. But it evils nothing either for my heart or their argument to say I have fallen and been cast out. Can any repudiation, even that of God undo the facts of an existent origin? Nor is it merely that He made me. By whose power do I go on living? When He cast me out, as you say, did I then begin to draw my being from myself or from the devil? In whom do I live and move and have my being? It cannot be that I am not the creature of God. But creation is not fatherhood. Creation in the image of God is. And if I am not in the image of God how can the word of God be of any meaning to me? He called them gods to whom the word of God came, says the master himself. To be fit to receive His word implies being of His kind. No matter how His image may have been defaced in me, the thing defaced is His image, remains His defaced image, an image yet that can hear His word. What makes me evil and miserable is that the thing spoiled in me is the image of the perfect. Nothing can be evil but in virtue of a good hypothesis. No? No. Nothing can make it that I am not the child of God. If one say, Look at the animals. God made them. You do not call them the children of God? I answer. But I am to blame. They are not to blame. I cling fast to my blame. It is the seal of my childhood. I have nothing to argue from in the animals, for I do not understand them. Two things only I am sure of. That God is to them a faithful creator. And that the sooner I put in force my claim to be a child of God, the better for them. For they too are fallen, though without blame. But you are evil. How can you be a child of the good? Just as many an evil son is the child of a good parent. But in him you call a good parent, they're yet lay evil. And that accounts for the child being evil. I cannot explain. God let me be born through evil channels. But in whatever manner I may have become an unworthy child, I cannot thereby have ceased to be a child of God. His child in the way that a child must ever be the child of the man of whom he comes. Is it not proof, this complaint of my heart at the word, adoption, is it not the spirit of the child crying out, Abba, father? Yes, but that is the spirit of adoption. The text says so. Away with your adoption. I could not even be adopted if I were not such as the adoption could reach, that is, of the nature of God. Much as he may love him, can a man adopt a dog? I must be of a nature for the word of God to come to. Thank you, yea, so far of the divine nature of the image of God. Hardly do I grant that, had I been left to myself, had God dropped me, held no communication with me, I could never have thus cried, never have cared when they told me I was not a child of God. But he has never repudiated me and does not now desire to adopt me. Pray, why should it grieve me to be told I am not a child of God if you say because you have learned to love him? I answer adoption would satisfy the love of one who was not but would be a child. For me I cannot do without a father nor can any adoption give me one. But what is the good of all you say if the child is such that the father cannot take him to his heart? Ah, indeed I grant you nothing so long as the child does not desire to be taken to the father's heart. But the moment he does then it is everything to the child's heart that he should be indeed the child of him after whom his heart is thirsting. However bad I may be I am the child of God and therein lies my blame. Ah, I would not lose my blame. In my blame lies my hope. It is the pledge of what I am and what I am not. The pledge of what I am meant to be what I shall one day be the child of God in spirit and in truth. Then you dare to say the apostle is wrong in what he so plainly teaches? By no means. What I do say is that our English presentation of his teaching is in this point very misleading. It is not for me to judge the learned and good men who have revised the translation of the New Testament with so much gain to everyone whose love of truth is greater than his loving prejudice for accustomed form. I can only say I wonder what may have been their reasons for retaining this word adoption. In the New Testament the word is only used by the apostle Paul. Liddell and Scott give the meaning adoption as a son which is a mere submission to popular theology. They give no reference except to the New Testament. The relation of the word chuyothesia to the form phytos which means taken or rather placed as one's child is, I presume, the sole ground for the so translating of it. Use its plentiful and invariable could not justify that translation here in the face of what Saint Paul elsewhere shows he means by the word. The Greek word might be variously meant though I can find no use of it earlier than Saint Paul. The English can mean but one thing and that is not what Saint Paul means. The spirit of adoption Luther translates the spirit of a child. Adoption he translates kinshaft or childship of two things I am sure. First that by chuyothesia Saint Paul did not intend adoption and second that if the revisors had gone through what I have gone through because of the word they had felt it come between God and their hearts as I have felt it they could not have allowed it to remain in their version. Once more I say the word used by Saint Paul does not imply that God adopts children that are not his own but rather that a second time he fathers his own that a second time they are born this time from above that he will make himself tinfold ye infinitely their father. He will have them back into the very bosom whence they issued. Issued that they might learn they could live nowhere else he will have them one with himself. It was for the sake of that in his son he died for them. Let us look at the passage where he Saint Paul reveals his use of the word. It is in another of his epistles that to the Galatians chapter four verses one through seven. But I say that so long as the father is a child he differeth nothing from a bond-servant though he is Lord of all but is under guardians and stewards until the term appointed of the father. So we also when we were children were held in bondage under the rudiments of the world but when the fullness of the time came God sent forth his son born of a woman born under the law that he might redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons and because your sons God sent forth the spirit of his son into our hearts crying Abba father so that thou art no longer a bond-servant but a son and if a son then an heir through God. How could the revisors choose this last reading an heir through God and keep the word adoption? From the passage it is as plain that Paul can make it that by the word translated adoption he means the raising of a father's own child from the condition of tutelage and subjection to others a state which he says is no better than that of a slave to the position and right of a son. None but a child could become a son the idea is a spiritual coming of age only when the child is a man is he really and fully a son The thing holds in the earthly relation how many children of good parents good children in the main too never know those parents never feel towards them as children might until grown up they have left the house until perhaps they are parents themselves or are parted from them by death to be a child is not necessarily to be a son or daughter the child ship is the lower condition of the upward process towards the sonship the soil out of which the true sonship shall grow the former without which the latter were impossible God can no more than an earthly parent to be content to have only children he must have sons and daughters children of his soul of his spirit of his love not merely in the sense that he loves them or even that they love him but in the sense that they love like him love as he loves for this he does not adopt them he dies to give them himself thereby to raise his own to his heart he gives them a birth from above they are born again out of himself and into himself for he is the one and the all his children are not his real true sons and daughters until they think like him feel with him judges he judges are at home with him and without fear before him because he and they mean the same thing love the same thing seek the same ends for this are we created it is the one end of our being and includes all other ends whatever it can only come of unbelief and not faith to make men believe that God has cast them off repudiated them said they are not never were his children and he all the time spending himself to make us the children he designed for ordained children who would take him for their father he is our father all the time for he is true but until we respond with the truth of children he cannot let all the father out to us there is no place for the dove of his tenderness to a light he is our father but we are not his children because we are his children we must become his sons and daughters nothing will satisfy him or do for us but that we be one with our father what else could serve how else should life ever be a good because we are the sons of God we must become the sons of God there may be among my readers alas for such to whom the word father brings no cheer no dawn in whose heart it rouses no tremble of even a vanished emotion it is hardly likely to be their fault for though as children we seldom love up to the mark of reason though we often offend and although the conduct of some children is inexplicable to the parent who loves them yet if the parent has been but ordinarily kind even the son who has grown up a worthless man will now and then feel in his better moments some dim reflex of childship some faintly pleasant semblance of the father around whose neck his arms had sometimes clung in my own childhood and boyhood my father was the refuge from all the ills of life even sharp pain itself therefore I say to son or daughter who has no pleasure in the name father you must interpret the word by all that you have missed in life every time a man might have been to you a refuge from the wind a covert from the tempest a weary land that was a time when a father might have been a father indeed happy you are yet if you have found man or woman such a refuge so far have you known a shadow of the perfect seen the back of the only man the perfect son of the perfect father all that human tenderness can give or desire in the nearness and readiness of love all and infinitely more must be true of the perfect father of the maker of fatherhood the father of all the fathers of the earth especially the father of those who have specially shown a father heart this father would make to himself sons and daughters indeed that is such sons and daughters as shall be his sons and daughters not merely by having come from his heart but having returned thither children in virtue of being such as whence they came he will have them share in his being in nature strong wherein he cares for strength tender and gracious as he is tender and gracious angry where and as he is angry even in the small matter of power he will have them able to do whatever his son jesus could on the earth whose was the life of the perfect man whose works were those of perfected humanity everything must at length be subject to man as it was to the man when god can do what he will with the man the man may do what he will with the world he may walk on the sea like his lord the deadliest thing will not be able to hurt him he that believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also and greater than thee shall he do god whose pleasure brought man into being stands away as it were and hand breath off to give room for the newly made to live he has made us but we have to be all things were made through the word but that which was made in the word was life and that life is the light of men they who live by this light that is live as jesus lived by obedience namely to the father have a share in their own making the light becomes life in them they are in their lower way alive with the life that was first born in jesus and through him has been born in them by obedience they become one with the god head as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of god he does not make them the sons of god but he gives them the power to become the sons of god in choosing and obeying and becomes the true son of the father of lights it is enough to read with understanding the passage i have quoted from his epistle to the Galatians to see that the word adoption does not in the least fit saint paul's idea or suit the things he says while we but obey the law god has laid upon us without knowing the heart of the father wins comes the law we are but slaves not necessarily ignoble slaves yet slaves but when we come to think with him when the mind of the son is as the mind of the father the action of the son the same is that of the father then is the son of the father then are we the sons of god and in both passages this and that which from his epistle to the romans i have placed at the head of the sermon we find the same phrase abba father showing if proof that he uses the word the same sense in both nothing can well be plainer that needs consideration at all than what that sense is let us glance at the other passages in which he uses the same word as he alone of the writers of the new testament does use it so for he may have made it for himself one of them is in the same 8th chapter of the epistle to the romans this i will keep to the last another is in the following chapter the 4th verse of the 9th chapter in it he speaks of the huijath asia literally the sun placing that is the placing of sons in the true place of sons as belonging to the jews on this i have but to remark that whose is the huijath asia cannot mean that they had already received it or that it belonged to the jews more than to the gentiles it can only mean that as the elder brother nation they had a foremost claim to it and would naturally first receive it but in their best men they had always been nearest to it it must be wrought out first and such as had received the preparation necessary those were the jews of the jews was the sun bringing the huijath asia the sonship to all therefore theirs was the huijath asia just as theirs was the gospel it was to the jew first then to the gentile though many a gentile would have it before many a jew those and only those who out of a true heart cry abba father be they of what paltry little so called church other than the body of christ they may or of no other at all are the sons and daughters of god saint paul uses the word also in his epistle to the aphesians the first chapter the fifth verse having predestined us unto the adoption of children by jesus christ to himself says the authorised version ordained us unto adoption as sons through jesus christ unto himself says the revised and i see little to choose between them neither gives the meaning of saint paul if there is anything to be gained by the addition of the words of children in the one case and as sons in the other to translate the word for which adoption alone is made to serve in the other passages the advantage is to the minus side to that of the wrong interpretation children we were true sons we could never be saved through the son he brothers us he takes us to the knees of the father beholding whose face we grow sons indeed never could we have known the heart of the father never felt it possible to love him as sons but for him who cast himself into the gulf that yawned between us in and through him we were given to the sonship sonship even had we never send never could we reach without him we should have been little children loving the father indeed but children far from the sonhood that understands and adores for as many as are led by the spirit of god these are the sons of god if any man hath not the spirit of christ he is none of his yea if we have not each other's spirits we do not belong to each other there is no unity but having the same spirit there is but one spirit that of truth it remains to note yet another passage that never in anything he wrote was at saint paul's intention to contribute towards a system of theology it were easy to show one sign of the fact is that he does not hesitate to use this word he has perhaps himself made indifferent and apparently opposing though by no means contradictory census his meanings always vivify each other his ideas are so large that they tax his utterance and make him strain the use of words but there is no danger to the honest heart which alone he regards of misunderstanding them though the ignorant and instead fast rest them yet at one time he speaks of the sonship as being the possession of the israelite as his who has learned to cry abba, father and here in the passage I have now last to consider that from the 18th to the 25th verse of the same 8th chapter of his epistle to the romans he speaks of the hujjhathasya as yet to come and as if it had to do not with our spiritual but our bodily condition this use of the word however though not the same use as we find anywhere else is nevertheless entirely consistent with his other uses of it the 23rd verse says and not only so but ourselves also which have the first fruit of the spirit even we ourselves grown within ourselves waiting for the adoption the redemption of our body it is no wise difficult to discern that the ideas in this and the main use are necessarily associated and more than consistent the putting of a son in his true his foreordained place has outward relations as well as inward reality the outward depends on the inward arises from it and reveals it when the child whose condition under tutors has passed away took his position as a son he would naturally change his dress and modes of life when God's children cease to be slaves doing right from law and duty and become his sons doing right from the essential love of God and their neighbor they too must change the garments of slavery for the robes of liberty lay aside the body of this death and appear in bodies like that of Christ with whom they inherit of the father but many children who have learned to cry Abba father are yet far from the liberty of the sons of God sons they are and no longer children yet they grown as being still in bondage plainly the apostle has no thought of working out an idea with burning heart he is writing a letter he gives nevertheless lines plentiful sufficient for us to work out his idea and this is how it takes clear shape we are the sons of God the moment we lift our hearts seeking to be sons the moment we begin to cry father but as the world must be redeemed in a few men to begin with so the soul is redeemed in a few of its thoughts and wants and ways to begin with it takes a long time to finish the new creation of this redemption shall it have taken millions of years to bring the world up to the point where a few of its inhabitants shall desire God and shall the creature of this new birth be perfected in a day the divine process may indeed now go on with tenfold rapidity for the new factor of man's fellow working for the sake of which the whole previous array of means and forces existed is now developed but its end is yet far below the horizon of man's vision the apostle speaks at one time of the thing as to come at another time as done when it is what commenced our ways of thought are such a man's heart may leap for joy the moment when amidst the sea waves a strong hand has laid hold of the hair of his head he may cry aloud I am saved and he may be safe but he is not saved this is far from a salvation to suffice so are we sons when we begin to cry father but we are far from perfected sons so long as there is in us the least taint of distrust the least lingering of hate or fear we have not received the sonship we have not such life in us as raised the body of Jesus we have not attained to the resurrection of the dead by which word in his epistle to the philippians chapter 3 verse 11 Paul means, I think, the same thing as here he means by the sonship which he puts in opposition with the redemption of the body until our outward condition is that of sons' royal, sons' divine so long as the garments of our souls, these mortal bodies are mean, torn and dragged and stained so long as we groan under sickness and weakness and weariness old age, forgetfulness and all heavy things so long as we have not yet received the sonship in full we are but getting ready one day to creep from our chrysalids and spread the great heaven storming wings of the psyches of God we groan being burdened we groan waiting for the sonship to wit the redemption of the body the uplifting of the body to be a fit house and revelation of the indwelling spirit nay like that of Christ a fit temple and revelation of the deeper and dwelling God for we shall always need bodies to manifest and reveal us to each other bodies then that fit the soul with absolute truth of presentment and revelation hence the revealing of the sons of God spoken of in Romans chapter 8 verse 19 is the same thing as the redemption of the body the body is redeemed when it is made fit for the sons of God then it is a revelation of them, the thing it was meant for and always more or less imperfectly was such it shall be when the truth is strong enough in the sons of God to make it such for it is the soul that makes the body when we are the sons of God in heart and soul then shall we be the sons of God in body too we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is I care little to speculate of the kind of this body only I will say as needful to be believed concerning it first that it will be a body to show the same self as before but second a body to show the being truly without the defects that is and imperfections of the former bodily revelation even through their corporeal presence shall we then know our own infinitely better and finding them endlessly more delight than before these things we must believe or distrust the father of our spirits till this redemption of the body arrives the is not wrought out is only upon the way nor can it come but by our working out the salvation he is working in us this redemption of the body its deliverance from all that is amiss, awry, unfinished weak, worn out all that prevents the revelation of the sons of God is called the apostle not certainly the adoption but the huyathasia the sonship in full manifestation it is the slave yet left in the sons and daughters of God that has betrayed them into even permitting the word adoption to mislead them to see how the whole utterance hangs together read from Romans chapter 8 verses 18 through 25 especially noticing the 19th verse for the earnest expectation of the creation for the revealing the outshining of the sons of God when the sons of God show as they are taking with the character the appearance in the place that belong to their sonship when the sons of God sit with the son of God on the throne of their father then shall they be in potency of fact the lords of the lower creation the bestowers of liberty and peace upon it then shall the creation subjected to vanity for their sakes in their freedom its gladness in their sonship the animals will glory to serve them will joy to come to them for help let the heartless scoff the unjust despise the heart that cries father cries to the God of the sparrow and the oxen nor can hope go too far in hoping what the God will do for the creation that now groaneth and travaileth in pain because our higher birth is delayed shall not the judge of all the earth do right shall my heart be more compassionate than his if to any reader my interpretation be unsatisfactory I pray him not to spend his strength in disputing my faith but in making sure his own progress on the way to freedom and sonship only to the child of God is true judgment possible were it otherwise to prove this one or that right or wrong right opinion on questions the most momentous will deliver no man cure for any ill in me or about me there is none but to become the son of God I was born to be until such I am until Christ is born in me until I am revealed a son of God pain and trouble will endure and God grants they may call this presumption and I can only widen my assertion until you yourself are the son of God you were born to be you will never find life a good thing if I presume for myself I presume for you also but I do not presume thus have both Jesus Christ and his love slave Paul represented God as a father perfect in love grand in self-forgetfulness supreme in righteousness devoted to the lives he has uttered I will not believe less of the father than I can conceive of glory after the lines he has given me after the radiation of his glory in the face of his son he is the express image of the father by which we his imperfect images are to read and understand him imperfect we have yet perfection enough to spell towards the perfect it comes to this then after the grand theory of the apostle the world exist for our education it is the nursery of God's children served by troubled slaves troubled because the children are themselves slaves children but not good children beyond its own will or knowledge the whole creation works for the development of the children of God into the sons of God when at last the children have arisen and gone to their father when they are clothed in the best robe with a ring on their hands and shoes on their feet shining out at length in their natural their predestined sonship then shall the mountains and the hills break forth before them into singing and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands then shall the wolf dwell with the lamb and the leopard lie down with the kid and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them then shall the fables of a golden age which faith invented and unbelief through into the past unfold their essential reality and the tell of paradise prove itself a truth by becoming a fact then shall every ideal show itself a necessity aspiration although satisfied put forth yet longer wings and the hunger after righteousness know itself blessed then first shall we know what was in the shepherd's mind when he said I came that they may have life and may have it abundantly End of Chapter 7 Series 2 Chapter 8 of Unspoken Sermons Series 2 This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by David Baldwin Unspoken Sermons by George McDonald Life I came that they may have life and may have it abundantly St. John Chapter 10 Verse 10 In a word he came to supply all our lack from the root outward for what is it we need but more life what does the infant need but more life what does the bosom of his mother give him but life in abundance what does the old man need whose limbs are weak and whose pulse is low but more of the life which seems ebbing from him where we with feebleness he calls upon death but in reality it is life he wants it is but the encroaching death in him the desires death he longs for rest but death cannot rest death would be as much an end to rest as to weariness even weakness cannot rest it takes strength as well as weariness to rest how different is the weariness of the strong man after labor unduly prolonged from the weariness of the sick man who in the morning cries out would God it were evening and in the evening would God it were morning low sunk life imagines itself weary of life but it is death not life it is weary of never a cry went out from the opposite of life from any soul that knew what life is why does the poor worn out worn suicide seek death is it not in reality to escape from death from the death of homelessness and hunger and cold the death of failure disappointment and distraction the death of the exhaustion of passion the death of madness of a household he cannot rule the death of crime and fear of discovery he seeks the darkness because it seems a refuge from the death which possesses him he is a creature possessed by death and his life is but a dream full of horrible phantasms more life is the unconscious prayer of all creation groaning and trevailing for the redemption of its lord the son who is not yet a son is not the dumb cry to be read in the faces of some of the animals in the look of some of the flowers and in many an aspect of what we call nature all things are possible with God but all things are not easy it is easy for him to be for there he has to do with his own perfect will it is not easy for him to create that is after the grand fashion which alone will satisfy his glorious heart and will the fashion in which he is now creating us the very nature of being that is God it must be hard and divine history shows how hard to create that which shall be not himself yet like himself the problem is so far to separate from himself that which must yet on him be ever and always and utterly dependent that it shall have the existence of an individual and be able to turn and regard him choose him and say please and go to my father and so develop in itself the highest divine of which it is capable the will for the good against the evil the will to be one with the life once it has come and in which it still is the will to close the round of its procession in its return so working the perfection of reunion to shape in its own life the ring of eternity to live immediately consciously and active willingly from its source from its own very life to restore to the beginning the end that comes of that beginning to be the thing the maker thought of when he willed ere he began to work its being I imagine the difficulty of doing this thing of effecting this creation this separation from himself such that will and the creature shall be possible I imagine I say this creation so great that for it God must begin inconceivably far back in the infinitesimal regions of beginnings not to say before anything in the least resembling man but eternal miles beyond the last farthest discovery and protoplasm to set a motion that division from himself which in its grand result should be individuality consciousness choice and conscious choice choice at last pure being the choice of the right the true the divinely harmonious hence the final end of separation is not individuality that is but a means to it the final end is oneness an impossibility without it for there can be no unity no delight of love no harmony no good in being but one two at least are needed for oneness and the greater the number of individuals the greater the lovelier the richer the diviner is the possible unity God is life and the will-source of life in the outflowing of that life I know him and when I am told that he is love I see that if he were not love he would not could not create I know nothing deeper in him than love nor believe there is in him anything deeper than love nay, that there can be anything deeper than love the being of God is love therefore creation I imagine that from all eternity he has been creating as he saw it was not good for man to be alone he has never been alone himself from all eternity the father has had the son and the never begun existence of that son I imagine an easy outgoing of the father's nature while to make other beings beings like us I imagine the labor of a God and eternal labor speaking after our poor human fashions of thought the only fashions possible to us I imagine that God has never been contented to be alone even with the son of his love the prime and perfect idea of humanity but that he has from the first willed and labored to give existence to other creatures who should be blessed with his blessedness creatures whom he is now and always has been developing into lightness with that son a lightness for long to be distant and small but a lightness to be forever growing perhaps never one of them yet though unspeakably blessed has had even an approximate idea of the blessedness in store for him let no soul think that to say God undertook a hard labor in willing that many sons and daughters should be sharers of the divine nature is to abate his glory the greater the difficulty the greater is the glory of him who does the thing he has undertaken without shadow of compromise with no half success the triumph of absolute satisfaction to innumerable radiant souls he knew what it would cost not energy of will alone or merely that utterance and separation from himself which is but the first of creation though that may well itself be pain but sore suffering as we cannot imagine and could only be gods and the bringing out call it birth or development of the god life in the individual soul a suffering still renewed a labor thwarted ever by that soul itself compelling him to take still at the cost of suffering the not absolutely best only the best possible means left him by the resistance of his creature man finds it hard to get what he wants because he does not want the best God finds it hard to give because he would give the best and man will not take it what Jesus did was what the father is always doing the suffering he endured was that of the father from the foundation of the world reaching its climax in the person of his son God provides the sacrifice the sacrifice is himself he is always and has ever been sacrificing himself to and for his creatures it lies in the very essence of his creation of them the worst heresy next to that of dividing religion and righteousness is to divide the father from the son in thought or feeling or action or intent to represent the son as doing that which the father does not himself do Jesus did nothing but what the father did he does if Jesus suffered for men it was because his father suffers for men only he came close to men through his body and their senses that he might bring their spirits close to his father and their father so giving them life and losing what could be lost of his own he is God our savior it is because God is our savior that Jesus the God and father of Jesus Christ could never possibly be satisfied with less than giving himself to his own the unbeliever may easily imagine a better God than the common theology of the country offers him but not the lovingest heart that ever beat can reflect the length and breadth and depth and height of that love of God which shows itself in his son and of one mind with himself the whole history is a divine agony to give divine life to creatures the outcome of that agony the victory of that creative and again creative energy will be radiant life where of joy unspeakable is the flower every child will look in the eyes of the father in the eyes of the father will receive the child with an infinite embrace the life the Lord came to give us is a life exceeding that of the highest undivine man by far more than the life of that man exceeds the life of the animal the least human more and more of it is for each who will receive it and to eternity the father has given to the son to have life in himself that life is our light we know life only as light it is the life in us that makes us see all the growth of the Christian is the more and more life he is receiving at first his religion may be hardly distinguishable from the mere prudent desire to save a soul but at last he loses that very soul in the glory of love and so saves it self becomes the cloud on which the white light of God divides into harmonies unspeakable in the midst of life we are in death said one it is more true that in the midst of death we are in life life is the only reality what men call death is but a shadow a word for that which cannot be a negation only the very idea of itself to that which it would deny but for life there could be no death if God were not there would not even be nothing not even nothingness preceded life nothingness owes its very idea to existence one form of the question between matter and spirit is which was first and cause the other things or thoughts whether things without thought cause thought or thought without things caused things to those who cannot doubt that thought was first causally preceding the earliest material show it is easily playing that death can be the cure for nothing that the cure for everything must be life that the ills which come with existence are from its imperfection not of itself that what we need is more of it we who are have nothing to do with death our relations are alone with life the thing that can mourn can mourn only from lack it cannot mourn because of being but because of not enough being we are vessels of life not yet full of the wine of life where the wine does not reach there the clay cracks and aches and is distressed who would therefore pour out the wine that is there instead of filling to the brim with more wine all the being must partake of the essential being life must be assistant upheld comforted every part with life life is the law the food the necessity of life life is everything many doubtless mistake the joy of life for life itself and longing after the joy languish with the thirst at once poor and inextinguishable but even that thirst points to the one spring these love self not life and self is but the shadow of life when it is taken for life itself and set as the man's center it becomes alive death in the man a devil he worships as his god the worm of the death eternal he clasps to his bosom as his one joy the soul compact of harmonies has more life a larger being than the soul consumed of cares the sage is a larger life than the clown the poet is more alive than the man whose life flows out that money may come in the man who loves his fellow is infinitely more alive than he whose endeavor is to exalt himself above him the man who strives to be better than he who longs for the praise of many but the man to whom god is all in all who fills his life roots hid with christ and god who knows himself the inheritor of all wealth and worlds and ages yea of power essential and in itself that man has begun to be alive indeed let us in all the troubles of life remember that our one lack is life that what we need is more life more of the life making presence in us making us more and more largely alive when most oppressed when most weary of life as our unbelief would phrase it let us rethink ourselves that it is in truth the inroad and presence of death we are weary of when most inclined to sleep let us rouse ourselves to live of all things let us avoid the false refuge of a weary collapse a hopeless yielding to things as they are it is the life in us that is discontented we need more of what is discontented not more of the cause of its discontent discontent I repeat is the life in us that has not enough of itself not enough to itself so calls for more he has the victory who in the midst of pain and weakness cries out not for death not for the repose of forgetfulness but for strength to fight for more power more consciousness of being more God in him who when sourced wounded says with Sir Andrew Barton in the old ballad Sir Andrew Barton I am hurt but I am not slain I'll lay me down and bleed a while and then I'll rise and fight again and that was no silly notion of playing the hero what have creatures like us to do with heroism who are not yet barely honest but because so to fight is the truth and the only way if in the extreme exhaustion there should come to us as to Elijah when he slept in the desert an angel derouses and show us the waiting bread and water how would we carry ourselves would we in faint unwillingness to rise and eat answer lo I am weary unto death the battle is gone for me it is lost or unworth gaining the world is too much for me forces will not heed me they have warned me out I have wrought no salvation even for my own and never should work any were I to live forever it is enough let me now return whence I came let me be gathered to my fathers and be at rest I should be loathed to think that if the enemy in recognizable shape came roaring upon us we would not like the Red Cross Knight stagger heavy sword and nervous arm to meet him but in the feebleness of foiled effort it wants yet more faith to rise and partake of the food that shall bring back more effort more travail more weariness the true man trusts in a strength which is not his and which he does not feel and always desire believes in a power that seems far from him which is yet at the root of his fatigue itself and his need of rest rest as far from death as his labor to trust in the strength of God in our weakness to say I am weak so let me be God is strong to seek from him who is our life as the natural simple cure for all that is amiss with us power to do and be and live even when we are weary this is the victory that over cometh the world to believe in God our strength in the face of all seeming denial to believe in him out of the heart of weakness and unbelief in spite of numbness and weariness and lethargy to believe in the wide awake reel through all the stupefying innervating distorting dream to will to wake the very being seems a thirst for a godless repose these are the broken steps up to the high fields where repose is but a form of strength strength but a form of joy joy but a form of love I am weak says the true soul but not so weak that I would not be strong not so sleepy that I would not see the sunrise not so lame but that I would walk thanks be to him who perfects strength and weakness and gives to his beloved while they sleep if we will but let our god and father work his will with us there can be no limit to his enlargement of our existence to the flood of life with which he will overflow our consciousness we have no conception of what life might be of how vast the consciousness of which we could be made capable many can recall some moment in which life seemed richer and fuller than ever before to some such moments arrive mostly in dreams shall soul awake or asleep enfold a bliss greater than its life the living god can seal perpetuate enlarge can the human twilight of a dream be capable of generating or holding a fuller life than the morning of divine activity surely god could at any moment give to a soul by word to that soul by breathing afresh into the secret caves of its being a sense of life before which the most exultant ecstasy of earthly triumph would pale to ashes if ever sunlets sell crowded sea under blue heaven flecked with wind chaste white filled your soul as with a new gift of life think what sense of existence must be yours if he whose thought has but fringed its garment with the outburst of such a show take his abode with you and while thinking the gladness of god inside your being lets you know and feel that he is carrying you as a father in his bosom I have been speaking as if life in the consciousness of it were one but the consciousness of life is not life it is only the outcome of life the real life is that which is of and by itself is life because it wills itself which is in the active not the passive sense this can only be god but in us there ought to be a life correspondent to the life that is gods in us also must be the life that wills itself a life in so far resembling the self-existent life and partaking of its image that it has a share in its own being there is an original act possible to the man which must initiate the reality of his existence he must live in and by willing to live a tree lives I hardly doubt it has some vague consciousness known by but not to itself only to the god who made it I trust that life in its lowest forms is on the way to thought and blessedness is in the process of that separation so to speak from god in which consists the creation of living souls but the life of these lower forms is not life in the high sense in the sense of which the word is eternal true life knows and rules itself the eternal life is life come awake the life of the most exalted of the animals is not such whatever it may become and however I may refuse to believe their fate and being fixed as we see them but as little as any man or woman would be inclined to call the existence of the dog looking strange lack out of his wistful eyes and existence to be satisfied with his life and end sufficient in itself as little could I looking on the human pleasure the human refinement the common human endeavor around me consent to regard them as worthy the name of life what in them is true dwells amidst an unchallenged corruption demanding repentance and labor and prayer for its destruction the condition of most men and women seems to me a life and death an abode and unwided sepulchres a possession of withering forms by spirits that slumber and babble in their dreams that they do not feel it so is nothing the sow wallowing in the mire might rightly assert at her way of being clean but theirs is not the life of the God-born the day must come when they will hide their faces as the good man yet fills at the memory of the time when he lived like them there is nothing for man worthy to be called life but the life eternal God's life that is after his degree shared by the man made to be eternal also for he is in the image of God intended to partake of the life of the most high to be alive as he is alive of this life the outcome and the light is righteousness love, grace, truth but the life itself is a thing that will not be defined even as God will not be defined it is a power the formless cause of form it has no limits whereby to be defined it shows itself to the soul that is hungering and thirsting after righteousness but that soul cannot show it to another save in the shining of its own light the ignorant soul understands by this life eternal only an endless elongation of consciousness what God means by it is a being like his own a being beyond the attack of decay or death a being so essential that it has no relation whatever to nothingness a something which is and can never go to that which is not for with that it never had to do but came out of the heart of life the heart of God the fountain of being an existence partaking of the divine nature and having nothing in common any more than the eternal himself with what can pass or cease God owes his being to no one and his child has no lord but his father this life this eternal life consists for man in absolute oneness with God in all divine modes of being oneness with every phase of right and harmony it consists and a love as deep as it is universal as conscious as it is unspeakable a love that can no more be reasoned about than life itself a love whose presence is its all suffering proof and justification he who has it not cannot believe in it how should death believe in life though all the birds of God are singing jubilant over the empty tomb the delight of such a being the splendor of a consciousness rushing from the wide open doors of the fountain of existence the ecstasy of the spiritual sense into which the surge of life essential immortal and create flows in silent fullness from the heart of hearts what may it what must it not be in the great day of God and the individual soul what then is our practical relation to the life original what have we to do towards the attaining to the resurrection from the dead if we did not make could not have made ourselves how can we now we are made do anything at the unknown of our being what relation of conscious unity can be betwixt the self-existent God and beings who live at the will of another beings who could not refuse to be cannot even cease to be but must at the will of that other go on living weary of what is not life able to assert the relation to life only by refusing to be content with what is not life the self-existent God is that other by whose will we live so the links of the unity must already exist and can but require to be brought together for the link in our being wherewith to close the circle of immortal oneness with the father we must of course search the deepest of man's nature there only in all assurance can it be found and there we do find it for the will is the deepest the strongest the divinest thing in man so I presume is it in God for such we find it in Jesus Christ here and here only in the relation of the two wills God's and his own can a man come into vital contact on the eternal idea and no one side of unity of complete dependence but in willed harmony of dual oneness with the all in all when a man can and does entirely say not my will but thine be done when he so wills the will of God as to do it then is he one with God one as a true son with a true father when a man wills that his being be conformed to the being of the origin which is the life in his life causing and bearing his life therefore absolutely and only of its kind one with it more and deeper than words or figures can say to the life which is itself only more of itself and more than itself causing itself when the man thus accepts his own causing life and sets himself to live the will of that causing life eager after the privileges of his origin thus receiving God he becomes in the act a partaker of the divine nature a true son of the living God and an heir of all he possesses by the obedience of a son he receives into himself the very life of the father obedience is the joining of the links of the eternal round this is but the other side of the creative will will is God's will obedience is man's will the two make one the root life knowing well the thousand troubles it would bring upon him has created and goes on creating other lives that though incapable of self being they may by willed obedience in the bliss of his essential self ordained being if we do the will of God eternal life is ours no mere continuity of existence for that in itself is worthless as hell but a being that is one with the essential life and so within his reach to fill with the abundant and endless outgoings of his love our souls shall be vessels ever growing and ever as they grow filled with the more and more life proceeding from the father and the son from God the ordaining and God the obedience what the delight of the being what the abundance of the life he came that we might have we can never know until we have it but even now to the holy fancy it may sometimes seem to glorious to support we must die of very life of more being than we could bear to awake to a yet higher life and be filled with a wine which our souls were here to for two weeks to hold to be for one moment aware of such pure simple love towards but one of my fellows as I trust I shall one day have towards each must of itself bring a sense of life such as the utmost effort of my imagination can but feebly shadow now a mighty glory of consciousness not to be always present indeed for my love and not my glory in that love is my life there would be even in that one love in the simple purity of a single affection such as we were created to generate and intended to cherish towards all an expansion of life inexpressible unutterable for we are made for love not for self our neighbor is our refuge self is our demon foe every man is the image of God to every man and in proportion as we love him we shall know the sacred fact the precious thing to human soul is and one day shall be known to be every human soul and if it be so between man and man how will it not be betwixt the man and his maker between the child and his eternal father between the created and the creating life must not the glory of existence be endlessly redoubled in the infinite love of the creature for all love is infinite to the infinite God the great one life then whom is no other only shadows lovely shadows of him reader to whom my word seem those of inflation and foolish excitement it can be nothing to thee to be told that I seem to myself to speak only the words of truth and soberness but what if the cause why they seem other to thy mind be not merely that thou art not hold but thy being no wise after harmony that thou art not of the truth that thou has not yet begun to live how should the reveler issuing warn and wasted from the haunts where the violent sees joy by force to find her perish in their arms how should such a reveler break forth and sing with the sons of the morning when the ocean of light burst from the fountain of the east canst thou with thy mind full of petty cares or still more petty ambitions understand the groaning and travailing of the creation it may indeed be that thou art honestly desiring of saving thy own wretched soul but as yet thou canst know but little of thy need of him who is the first and the last and the living one nine of unspoken sermons series two this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by David Baldwin unspoken sermons by George McDonald the fear of God and when I saw him I fell at his knees as one dead and he laid his right hand upon me saying fear not I am the first and the last and the living one Revelation chapter one verses seventeen and eighteen it is not alone the first beginnings of religion that are full of fear so long as love is imperfect there is room for torment that love only which fills the heart and nothing but love can fill any heart is able to cast out fear leaving no room for its presence what we find in the beginnings of religion will hold in varying degree until the religion that is the love be perfected the thing that is unknown yet known to be will always be more or less formidable when it is known as immeasurably greater than we and as having claims and making demands upon us the more vaguely these are apprehended the more room is there for anxiety and when the conscience is not clear this anxiety may well mount to terror according to the nature of the mind which occupies itself with the idea of the supreme whether regarded as maker or ruler will be the kind and degree of the terror to this terror need to belong no exalted ideas of God those fear him most who most imagine him like their own evil selves only beyond them in power easily able to work his arbitrary will with them that they hold him but a little higher than themselves tends no wise to unity with him who so far apart is those on the same level of hate and distrust power without love dependence where is no righteousness make a worship without devotion a loathliness of servile flattery neither where the notion of God is better but the consciousness troubled will his goodness do much to exclude apprehension the same consciousness of evil and of offense which gave rise to the bloody sacrifice is still at work in the minds of most who call themselves Christians naturally the first emotion of man towards the being he calls God but of whom he knows so little is fear where it is possible that fear should exist it is well it should exist cause continual uneasiness and be cast out by nothing less than love in him who does not know God and must be anything but satisfied with himself fear towards God is as reasonable as it is natural and serves powerfully towards the development of his true humanity neither the savage nor the self-sufficient sage is rightly human it matters nothing whether we regard the one or the other as degenerate or as undeveloped neither I say is human the humanity is there but has to be born in each and for this birth everything natural must do its part fear is natural and has a part to perform nothing but itself could perform in the birth of the true humanity until love which is the truth towards God is able to cast out fear it is well that fear should hold it is a bond however poor between that which is and that which creates a bond that must be broken but a bond that can be broken only by the tightening of an infinitely closer bond verily God must be terrible to those that are far from him for they fear he will do yea he is doing with them what they do not cannot desire and can ill endure such as many men are such as all without God would become they must prefer a devil because of his supreme selfishness to a God who will die for his creatures and insist upon giving himself to them insist upon their being unselfish and blessed like himself that which is the power and worth of life they must be or die and the vague consciousness of this makes them afraid they love their poor existence as it is God loves it as it must be and they fear him the false notions of low undeveloped nature both with regard to what is good and what the power requires of them are such that they cannot but fear and devotion is lost in the sacrifices of ingratiation God takes them where they are except whatever they honestly offer and so helps them to outgrow themselves preparing them to offer the true offering and to know him they ignorantly worship he will not abolish their fear except with the truth of his own being till they apprehend that and in order that they may come to apprehend it he receives their sacrifices of blood the invention of their sore need only influencing for the time the modes of them he will destroy the lie that is not all a lie only by the truth although he loves them utterly he does not tell them there is nothing in him to make them afraid that would be to drive them from him forever while they are such as they are there is much in him that cannot but affright them they ought they do well to fear him it is while they remain what they are the only true relation between them to remove that fear from their hearts save by letting them know his love with its purifying fire a love which for ages it may be they cannot know would be to give them up utterly to the power of evil persuade men that fear is a vile thing that it is an insult to god that he will none of it while yet they are in love with their own will and slaves to every movement of their passionate impulse and what will the consequence be that they will insult god as a discarded idol a superstition of falsehood as a thing under whose evil influence they have too long grown a thing to be cast out and spit upon after that how much will they learn of him nor would it be long ere the old fear would return with this difference perhaps that instead of trembling before alive energy they would tremble before powers which formerly they regarded as inanimate and have now endowed with souls after the imagination of their fears then would spiritual chaos with all its monsters become again god being what he is a god who loves righteousness a god who rather than do an unfair thing would lay down his god head and assert himself in ceasing to be a god who that his creatures might not die of ignorance died as much as a god could die and that is divinely more than man can die to give him himself such a god I say may well look fearful from afar to the creature who recognizes in himself no imperative good who fears only suffering and has no aspiration only wretched ambition but in proportion as such a creature comes nearer grows towards him in and for whose lightness he was begun in proportion that is the right begins to disclose itself to him in proportion as he becomes capable of the idea that his kind belongs to him as he could never belong to himself approaches the capacity of seeing and understanding that his individuality can be perfected only in the love of his neighbor and that his being can find its end only and oneness with the source from which it came in proportion I do not say as he sees these things but as he nears the possibility of seeing them will the terror at the god of his life abate though far indeed from surmising the bliss that awaits him he is drawing more nigh to the goal of his nature the central secret joy of sonship to a god who loves righteousness and hates iniquity does nothing he would not permit in his creature demands nothing of his creature he would not do himself the fire of god which is his essential being his love his creative power is a fire unlike its earthly symbol in this that it is only at a distance it burns that the further from him it burns the worse and that when we turn and begin to approach him the burning begins to change to comfort which comfort will grow to such bliss that the heart at length cries out with a gladness that other gladness can reach whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee the glory of being the essence of life and its joy shining upon the corrupt and deathly must needs like the sun consume the dead and send corruption down to the dust that which it burns in the soul is not of the soul yea is at utter variance with it yet so close to the soul is the foul fungus growth sprung from it and subsisting upon it that the burning of it is felt through every spiritual nerve when the evil parasites are consumed away that is when the man yields his self and all that self's low world and returns to his lord and god then that which before he was aware of only as burning comfort strength and eternal ever growing life in him for now he lives and life cannot hurt life it can only hurt death which needs an ought to be destroyed god is life essential eternal and death cannot live in his sight for death is corruption and has no existence in itself living only in the decay of the things of life if then any child of the father finds that he is afraid before him that the thought of god is a discomfort to him or even a terror let him make haste let him not linger to put on any garment but rush at once in his nakedness a true child for shelter from his own evil and god's terror into the salvation of the father's arms the home whence he was sent that he might learn that it was a home what father being evil would it not when to see the child with whom he was vexed running to his embrace how much more will not the father of our spirits who seeks nothing but his children themselves receive him with open arms self accepted as the law of self is the one demon enemy of life god is the only saviour from it and from all that is not god for god is life and all that is not god is death life is the destruction of death of all the kills of all that is of death's kind when john saw the glory of the son of man he fell at his feet as one dead in what way john saw him whether in what we vaguely call a vision or in as human a way as when he leaned back on his bosom and looked up in his face i do not now care to ask it would take all glorious shapes of humanity to reveal jesus and he knew the right way to show himself to john it seems to me that such words as were spoken can have come from the mouth of no mere vision can have been allowed to enter no merely tranced ear that the mouth of the very lord himself spoke them and that none but the living present jesus could have spoken or maybe supposed to speak them while plainly john received and felt them as a message he had to give again there are also strangely as the whole may affect us various points in his description of the lord's appearance which commend themselves even to our ignorance by their grandeur and fitness why then was john overcome with terror we recall the fact that something akin to terror overwhelmed to the minds of the three disciples who saw his glory on the mount but since then john had leaned on the bosom of his lord had followed him to the judgment seat and had not denied his name had borne witness to his resurrection and suffered for his sake and was now in the isle that is called patmos for the word of god the testimony of jesus why i say was he why should he be afraid no glory even of god should breed terror when a child of god is afraid it is a sign that the word father is not yet freely fashioned by the child's spiritual mouth the glory can breed terror only in him who is capable of being terrified by it while he is such it is well the terror should be bred and maintained until the man seek refuge from it in the only place where it is not in the bosom of the glory there is one point not distinguishable in the greek whether it is meant one liken to the son of man or one liken to a son of man the authorized version has the former the revised prefers the latter i incline to the former and think that john saw him like the man he had known so well and that it was the too much glory dimming his vision that made him unsure not any perceived unlikeness mingling with the likeness nothing blind so much as light and their very glory might well render him unable to distinguish plainly the familiar features of the son of man but the appearance of the son of man was not intended to breed terror in the son of man to whom he came why then was john afraid why did the servant of the lord fall at his feet as one dead joy to us that he did for the words that follow surely no phantasmic outcome of uncertain vision or blinding terror they bear best sign of their source ever given to his ears they must be from the heart of our great brother the one man christ jesus divinely human it was still and only the imperfection of the disciple unfinished in faith so unfinished in everything a man needs that was the cause of his terror this is surely implied in the words the lord said to him when he fell the thing that made john afraid and speaks of as the thing that ought to have taken from him all fear for the glory that he saw the head and hair pouring from it such a radiance of light that they were white as white wool snow white as his garments on mount hermon in the midst of the radiance his eyes like a flame of fire and his countenance as the sun shineth in his strength the darker glow of the feet yet to so fine brass burning in a furnace in memory of the twilight of his humiliation touching the earth took a humbler glory than his head high in the imperian of undisturbed perfection the girdle under his breast golden between the snow and the brass what were they all but the effulgence of his glory who himself was the effulgence of the fathers the poor expression of the unutterable verity which was itself the reason why john ought not to be afraid he laid his right hand upon me saying unto me fear not I am the first and the last and the living one endless must be our terror until we come heart to heart with the fire core of the universe the first and the last and the living one but oh the joy to be told by power himself the first and the last living one told what we can indeed then see must be true but which we are so slow to believe that the cure for trembling is the presence of power that fear cannot stand before strength that the visible god is the destruction of death that the one and only safety in the universe is the perfect nearness of the living one god is being death is nowhere what a thing to be taught by the very mouth of him who knows he told his servant paul that strength is made perfect and weakness here he instructs his servant john that the thing to be afraid of is weakness not strength all appearances of strength such as rightly moved terror are but false appearances the true strong is the one even as the true good is the one the living one has the power of life the evil one but the power of death whose very nature is a self necessity for being destroyed but the glory of the mildest show of the living one is such that even the dearest of his apostles the best of the children of men is cowed at the sight he has not yet learned that glory itself is a part of his inheritance yea is of the natural condition of his being that there is nothing in the man made in the image of god alien from the most glorious of heavenly shows he has not learned this yet and pauls is dead before it when low is of him that was and is and is forever more telling him not to be afraid for the very reason the one only reason that he is the first and the last the living one for what shall be the joy the peace the completion of him that lives but closest contact with his life a contact close as air he issued from that life in his mind in as much as it is now willed on both sides he who has had a beginning needs the indwelling power of that beginning to make his being complete not merely complete to his consciousness but complete in itself justified rounded ended where it began with an endless ending then it is complete even as gods is complete with a self-existent blossoming in the air of that world wherein it is rooted wherein it lives and grows far indeed from trembling because he on whose bosom he had leaned when the light of his love was all but shut in now stands with the glory of that love streaming forth John Boynerges ought to have felt the more joyful and safe as the strength of the living one was more manifested it was never because Jesus was clothed in the weakness of the flesh that he was fit to be trusted but because he was strong with the strength able to take the weakness of the flesh for the garment wherein it could best work its work that strength was now shining out with its own light so lately pent within the revealing veil had John been as close in spirit to the son of man as he had been in bodily presence he would have indeed fallen at his feet but not as one dead as one too full of joy to stand before the life which was feeding his he would have fallen but not to lie there senseless with awe before the most holy he would have fallen to embrace and kiss the feet of him who had now a second time as with a resurrection from above a risen before him and yet heavenly or plentitude of glory it is the man of evil the man of self-seeking design not he who would feign do right not he who even at his worst time would at once submit to the word of the master who is reasonably afraid of power when God is no longer the ruler of the world and there is a stronger than he when there is might inherent in evil and making energy in that whose nature is destruction then will be the time to stand in dread of power but even then the bad man would have no security against the chance of crossing some scheme of the lawless moment where disintegration is the sole unity of plan and being ground up and destroyed for some no idea of the power of darkness and then would be the time for the good no not to tremble but to resolve with the lord of life to endure all to let every billow of evil dash and break upon him with the smallest ill till the whitest lie for God knowing that any territory so gained could belong to no kingdom of heaven could be but a province of the kingdom of darkness if there were two powers one of evil the other of good as men have not unnaturally in ignorance imagined his sense of duty would reveal the being born of the good power while he born of the evil could have no choice but good only can create and if evil were ever so much the stronger the duty of men would remain the same to hold by the living one and defy power to do its worst like Prometheus on his rock defying jove and forever dying thus forever foiling the evil for evil can destroy only itself and its own it could destroy no enemy could at worst but cause a succession of deaths from each of which the defiant soul would rise to loftier defiance to more victorious endurance until at length it laughed evil in the face and the demon god shrunk withered before it in those then who believe that good is the one power and that evil exist only because for a time it subserves cannot help subserving the good what place can there be for fear the strong and the good are one and if our hope coincides with that of god if it is rooted in his will what should we do but rejoice in the effulgent glory of the first and the last the first and the last is the enclosing defense of the castle of our being the master is before and behind he began he will see that it be endless he garrisons the place he is the living the life making one the reason then for not fearing before god is that he is all glorious all perfect our being needs the all glorious all perfect god the children can do with nothing less than the father they need the imponent one beyond all wherein the poor intellect can describe order beyond all that the rich imagination beyond all that hungriest heart could long fullest heart think for beyond all these as the heavens are higher than the earth rise the thought the creation the love of the god who is in christ his god and our god his father and our father ages before the birth of jesus while or at least where yet even moses and his law were unknown the suffering heart of humanity he saw and was persuaded that nowhere else lay its peace than with the first the last the living one that thou wouldest hide me in the grave and remember me thou shalt call and i will answer thee thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands end of chapter 9 series 2