world events

Every so often, I depart from the religious theme of the blog for something in the world. This citation from Winston Churchill in volume 1 of his work "The World Crisis", which looks at the conflict we call World War I, seems eerily prophetic in speaking to our battle against Islamofascism in the 21st century after the end of the Cold War.

The growth of the great antagonisms abroad was accompanied by the progressive aggravation of party strife at home. The scale on which events have shaped themselves, has dwarfed the episodes of the Victorian Era. Its small wars between great nations, its earnest disputes about superficial issues, the high, keen intellectualism of its personages, the sober, frugal, narrow limitations of their action, belong to a vanquished period. The smooth river with its eddies and ripples along which we then sailed, seems inconceivably remote from the cataract down which we have been hurled and the rapids in whose turbulence we are now struggling.

Walk by the Light

"Don't you know that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord?"
"But so many follow their own fancies--that you must allow, Laird! And what comes of your candle then?"
"The fact that such men never look where the light falls, but always in some other direction, doesn't mean the light's not there just the same. They just don't care to walk by it. But them that order their ways by what light they have, there's no fear of them. Even should they stumble, they shall not fall."

--George MacDonald, The Laird's Inheritance, orginally published as Warlock O' Glenwarlock

Why the World Does Not Believe

Many who from Sunday to Sunday, read the poems of a certain king brought up a shepherd lad, never stop to bring the truths of those poems into their daily lives. They read, "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for thou, Lord only makest me to dwell in safety." Yet these readers never think that such a feeling ought to rule in their own hearts in consequence. Therefore, such might consider it preposterous that Cosmo should have such a feeling of absolute trust in God as he did. Such men and women build stone houses, but never a spiritual rest. And they may never believe it before they begin to do it.

I can hardly wonder that so many reject Christianity when they see so many would-be champions of it holding their beliefs at arm's length--in their Bibles, in their theories, in their churches, in their clergymen, in their prayer books, in the last devotional page they have read--all things separate from from their real selves--rather than in their hearts on their beds in the stillness.

--George MacDonald, The Laird's Inheritance, originally published as Warlock O' Glenwarlock

Body & soul

The material part of us ought to keep growing gradually thinner, to let the soul out when its time comes, and the soul ought to keep growing bigger and stronger every day until it finally bursts the body as a growing nut does its shell. If instead the body grows thicker and thicker, lessening the room within, it squeezes the life out of the soul, and when such a man's body dies, his soul is found a shriveled thing, too poor to be a comfort to itself or to anybody else.

--George MacDonald, The Laird's Inheritance