Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.MacDonald, George
Religion
Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.
MacDonald, George
Sermons, English -- 19th century
Let us read the text again: 'All things were made _through_ him, and
without him was made not one thing. That which was made _in_ him was
life.' You begin to see it? The power by which he created the worlds
was given him by his father; he had in himself a greater power than
that by which he made the worlds. There was something made, not
_through_ but _in_ him; something brought into being by himself. Here
he creates in his grand way, in himself, as did the Father. 'That which
was made _in_ him was _life_'
What does this mean? What is the _life_ the apostle intends? Many forms
of life have come to being through the Son, but those were results, not
forms of the life that was brought to existence _in_ him. He could not
have been employed by the Father in creating, save in virtue of the
life that was _in_ him.
As to what the life of God is to himself, we can only know that we
cannot know it--even that not being absolute ignorance, for no one can
see that, from its very nature, he cannot understand a thing without
therein approaching that thing in a most genuine manner. As to what the
life of God is in relation to us, we know that it is the causing life
of everything that we call life--of everything that is; and in knowing
this, we know something of that life, by the very forms of its force.
But the one interminable mystery, for I presume the two make but one
mystery--a mystery that must be a mystery to us for ever, not because
God will not explain it, but because God himself could not make us
understand it--is first, how he can be self-existent, and next, how he
can make other beings exist: self-existence and creation no man will
ever understand. Again, regarding the matter from the side of the
creature--the cause of his being is antecedent to that being; he can
therefore have no knowledge of his own creation; neither could he
understand that which he can do nothing like. If we could make
ourselves, we should understand our creation, but to do that we must be
God. And of all ideas this--that, with the self-dissatisfied,
painfully circumscribed consciousness I possess, I could in any way
have caused myself, is the most dismal and hopeless. Nevertheless, if I
be a child of God, I must be _like_ him, like him even in the matter of
this creative energy. There must be something in me that corresponds in
its childish way to the eternal might in him. But I am forestalling.
The question now is: What was that life, the thing made _in_ the
Son--made by him inside himself, not outside him--made not _through_
but _in him_--the life that was his own, as God's is his own?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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