How aptly now these quotes have come to me

I picked up an anthology of George MacDonald's writings at the library a week ago. I was interested in him because CS Lewis liked him, and in fact it was Lewis who compiled the anthology I'm reading. Anyway, it consists of quotes from various sermons, and they are almost all insightful, and some even heart-rending and convicting. I thought I'd share a few, because my toes were stepped on last night, and I was inspired nonetheless.

In the higher aspect of this first temptation, arising from the fact that a man cannot feel the things he believes except under certain conditions of physical well-being dependent upon food, the answer is the same: A man does not live by his feelings any more than by bread.

from The Temptation in the Wilderness

And when he can no longer feel the truth, he shall not therefore die. He lives because God is true; and he is able to know that he lives because he knows, having once understood the word, that God is truth. He believes in the God of former vision, lives by that word therefore, when all is dark and there is no vision.

from The Temptation in the Wilderness

It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart's choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated.

from It shall not be forgiven

That which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which is immortal in God shall remain in man. The death that is in them shall be consumed. It is the law of Nature--that is, the law of God--that all that is destructible shall be destroyed.

from The Consuming Fire

(Revelation 2:17)
The giving of the white stone with the new name is the communication of what God thinks about the man to the man. It is the divine judgment, the solemn holy doom of the righteous man, the "Come, thou blessed," spoken to the individual...the true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the man's own symbol--his soul's picture, in a word--the sign which belongs to him and to no one else. Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone.

from The New Name

It is with the holiest fear that we should approach the terrible fact of the sufferings of Our Lord. Let no one think that these were less because He was more. The more delicate the nature, the more alive to all that is lovely and true, lauwful and right, the more does it feel the antagonism of pain, the inroad of death upon life; the more dreadful is that breach of the harmony of things whose sound is torture.

from The Eloi

The highest condition of the human will is in sight...I say not the highest condition of the Human Being; that surely lies in the Beatific Vision, in the sight of God. But the highest condition of the Human Will, as distinct, not as separated from God, is when, not seeing God, not seeming to itself to grasp Him at all, it yet holds Him fast.

from The Eloi

A man must not choose his neighbour: he must take the neighbour that God sends him.... The neighbour is just the man who is next to you at the moment, the man with whom any business has brought you into contact.

from Love Thy Neighbour

"I cannot be perfect; it is hopeless; and He does not expect it." It would be more honest if he said, "I do not want to be perfect: I am content to be saved."

from The Hardness of the Way

(Mark 10)
Does this comfort you? then alas for you!...Your relief is to know that the Lord has no need of you--does not require you to part with your money, does not offer you Himself instead. You do not indeed sell Him for thirty pieces of silver, but you are glad not to buy Him with all that you have.

from The Hardness of the Way

Because we easily imagine ourselves in want, we imagine God ready to forsake us.

from The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity

When I trouble myself over a trifle, even a trifle confessed--the loss of some little article, say--spurring my memory, and hunting the house, not from immediate need, but from dislike of loss; when a book has been borrowed of me and not returned, and I have forgotten the borrower, and fret over the missing volume...is it not time I lost a few things when I care for them so unreasonably? This losing of things is of the mercy of God: it comes to teach us to let them go.

from The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity

"But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?" I answer, What if He knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need--the need of Himself? ...So begins a communion, a talking with God, a coming-to-one with Him, which is the sole end of prayer, yea, of existence itself in its infinite phases. We must ask that we may receive: but that we should receive what we ask in respect of our lower needs, is not God's end in making us pray, for He could give us everything without that: to bring His child to his knee, God withholds that man may ask.

from The Word of Jesus on Prayer

Why should the good of anyone depend on the prayer of another? I can only answer with the return question, "Why should my love be powerless to help another?"

from Man's Difficulty concerning Prayer

He who seeks the Father more than anything He can give, is likely to have what he asks, for he is not likely to ask amiss.

from Man's Difficulty concerning Prayer

Even such as ask amiss may sometimes have their prayers answered. The Father will never give the child a stone that asks for bread; but I am not sure that He will never give the child a stone that asks for a stone. If the Father say, "My child, that is a stone; it is no bread," and the child answer, "I am sure it is bread; I want it," may it not be well that he should try his 'bread'?

from Man's Difficulty concerning Prayer