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