Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.MacDonald, George
Religion
Unspoken Sermons, Series I., II., and III.
MacDonald, George
Sermons, English -- 19th century
Regard that word _changed_. The whole matter lies in that. Changed from
what? From what God had made it. Changed into what? Into what he did
not make it. Why changed? Because the Son was hungry, and the Father
would not feed him with food convenient for him! The Father did not
give him a stone when he asked for bread. It was Satan that brought the
stone and told him to provide for himself. The Father said, That is a
stone. The Son would not say, That is a loaf. No one creative _fiat_
shall contradict another. The Father and the Son are of one mind. The
Lord could hunger, could starve, but would not change into another
thing what his Father had made one thing. [Footnote: There was no such
change in the feeding of the multitudes. The fish and the bread were
fish and bread before. I think this is significant as regards the true
nature of a miracle, and its relation to the ordinary ways of God.
There was in these miracles, and I think in all, only a hastening of
appearances; the doing of that in a day, which may ordinarily take a
thousand years, for with God time is not what it is with us. He makes
it. And the hastening of a process does not interfere in the least with
cause and effect in the process, nor does it render the process one
whit more miraculous. In deed, the wonder of the growing corn is to me
greater than the wonder of feeding the thousands. It is easier to
understand the creative power going forth at once--immediately--than
through the countless, the lovely, the seemingly forsaken wonders of
the corn-field. To the merely scientific man all this is pure nonsense,
or at best belongs to the region of the fancy. The time will come, I
think, when he will see that there is more in it, namely, a higher
reason, a loftier science, how incorrectly soever herein indicated.]
If we regard the answer he gave the devil, we shall see the root of the
matter at once: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Yea even by the word which
made that stone that stone. Everything is all right. It is life indeed
for him to leave that a stone, which the Father had made a stone. It
would be death to him to alter one word that He had spoken.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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