Robert Falconer

Name: Robert Falconer
Author: MacDonald, George

MacDonald, George

Christian fiction; Scotland -- Fiction

'Nowhere.'

'What are your rules, then?'

'We have none.'

'What makes you a church?'

'Divine Service.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'The sort of thing you have seen to-night.'

'What is your creed?'

'Christ Jesus.'

'But what do you believe about him?'

'What we can. We count any belief in him--the smallest--better than any
belief about him--the greatest--or about anything else besides. But we
exclude no one.'

'How do you manage without?'

'By admitting no one.'

'I cannot understand you.'

'Well, then: we are an undefined company of people, who have grown
into human relations with each other naturally, through one attractive
force--love for human beings, regarding them as human beings only in
virtue of the divine in them.'

'But you must have some rules,' I insisted.

'None whatever. They would cause us only trouble. We have nothing
to take us from our work. Those that are most in earnest, draw most
together; those that are on the outskirts have only to do nothing, and
they are free of us. But we do sometimes ask people to help us--not with
money.'

'But who are the we?'

'Why you, if you will do anything, and I and Miss St. John and twenty
others--and a great many more I don't know, for every one is a centre to
others. It is our work that binds us together.'

'Then when that stops you drop to pieces.'

'Yes, thank God. We shall then die. There will be no corporate
body--which means a bodied body, or an unsouled body, left behind to
simulate life, and corrupt, and work no end of disease. We go to ashes
at once, and leave no corpse for a ghoul to inhabit and make a vampire
of. When our spirit is dead, our body is vanished.'

'Then you won't last long.'

'Then we oughtn't to last long.'

'But the work of the world could not go on so.'

'We are not the life of the world. God is. And when we fail, he can and
will send out more and better labourers into his harvest-field. It is a
divine accident by which we are thus associated.'

'But surely the church must be otherwise constituted.'

'My dear sir, you forget: I said we were a church, not the church.'

'Do you belong to the Church of England?'

'Yes, some of us. Why should we not? In as much as she has faithfully
preserved the holy records and traditions, our obligations to her are
infinite. And to leave her would be to quarrel, and start a thousand
vermiculate questions, as Lord Bacon calls them, for which life is too
serious in my eyes. I have no time for that.'

'Then you count the Church of England the Church?'

'Of England, yes; of the universe, no: that is constituted just like
ours, with the living working Lord for the heart of it.'

'Will you take me for a member?'

'No.'

'Will you not, if--?'

'You may make yourself one if you will. I will not speak a word to
gain you. I have shown you work. Do something, and you are of Christ's
Church.'

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

Robert FalconerMacDonald, George

General

Robert Falconer

MacDonald, George

Christian fiction; Scotland -- Fiction

'Nowhere.'

'What are your rules, then?'

'We have none.'

'What makes you a church?'

'Divine Service.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'The sort of thing you have seen to-night.'

'What is your creed?'

'Christ Jesus.'

'But what do you believe about him?'

'What we can. We count any belief in him--the smallest--better than any
belief about him--the greatest--or about anything else besides. But we
exclude no one.'

'How do you manage without?'

'By admitting no one.'

'I cannot understand you.'

'Well, then: we are an undefined company of people, who have grown
into human relations with each other naturally, through one attractive
force--love for human beings, regarding them as human beings only in
virtue of the divine in them.'

'But you must have some rules,' I insisted.

'None whatever. They would cause us only trouble. We have nothing
to take us from our work. Those that are most in earnest, draw most
together; those that are on the outskirts have only to do nothing, and
they are free of us. But we do sometimes ask people to help us--not with
money.'

'But who are the we?'

'Why you, if you will do anything, and I and Miss St. John and twenty
others--and a great many more I don't know, for every one is a centre to
others. It is our work that binds us together.'

'Then when that stops you drop to pieces.'

'Yes, thank God. We shall then die. There will be no corporate
body--which means a bodied body, or an unsouled body, left behind to
simulate life, and corrupt, and work no end of disease. We go to ashes
at once, and leave no corpse for a ghoul to inhabit and make a vampire
of. When our spirit is dead, our body is vanished.'

'Then you won't last long.'

'Then we oughtn't to last long.'

'But the work of the world could not go on so.'

'We are not the life of the world. God is. And when we fail, he can and
will send out more and better labourers into his harvest-field. It is a
divine accident by which we are thus associated.'

'But surely the church must be otherwise constituted.'

'My dear sir, you forget: I said we were a church, not the church.'

'Do you belong to the Church of England?'

'Yes, some of us. Why should we not? In as much as she has faithfully
preserved the holy records and traditions, our obligations to her are
infinite. And to leave her would be to quarrel, and start a thousand
vermiculate questions, as Lord Bacon calls them, for which life is too
serious in my eyes. I have no time for that.'

'Then you count the Church of England the Church?'

'Of England, yes; of the universe, no: that is constituted just like
ours, with the living working Lord for the heart of it.'

'Will you take me for a member?'

'No.'

'Will you not, if--?'

'You may make yourself one if you will. I will not speak a word to
gain you. I have shown you work. Do something, and you are of Christ's
Church.'

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Robert Falconer

Robert Falconer

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