Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.MacDonald, George
Religion
Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.
MacDonald, George
Sermons, English -- 19th century
'More life!' is the unconscious prayer of all creation, groaning and
travailing 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. In 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, 'I will arise 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 whence 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 in the creature
shall be possible--I imagine, I say, the difficulty of such 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-pushed
discovery in _protoplasm_--to set in 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
the 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, where there is
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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