CHRISTMAS DAY, 1850

Beautiful stories wed with lovely daysLike words and music:-what shall be the taleOf love and nobleness that might availTo express in action what thissweetness says-The sweetness of a day of airs and raysThat are strange glories on the winter pale?Alas, O beauty, all my fancies fail!I cannot tell a story in thy praise!Thou hast, thou …

Fair Hope

“My harvest withers. Health, my means to live—All things seem rushing straight into the dark.But the dark still is God. I would not giveThe smallest silver-piece to turn the rushBackward or sideways. Am I not a sparkOf him who is the light?—Fair hope doth flushMy east.—Divine success—Oh, hush and hark!”— George MacDonald, The Diary of …

The Fisherman’s Song

“The stars are steady abune; I' the water they flichter an' flee; But steady aye luikin' doon, They ken themsel's i' the sea. A' licht, an' clear, an' free, God, thou shinest abune; Yet luik, an' see thysel' in me, God, whan thou luikest doon.” “There was an auld fisher – he sat by the …

A Better and Holier Mystery

“And now came a scattering of rubies and topazes over the slow waves, as the sun reached the edge of the horizon, and shone with a glory of blinding red along the heaving level of green, dashed with the foam of their flight. Could such a descent as this be intended for a type of …

Neither More Nor Less than Life

“But one thing was plain even to this seraphic dragon that dwelt sleepless in him, and there was eternal content in the thought, that such a woman, once started on the right way, would soon leave fault and weakness behind her, and become as one of the grand women of old, whose religion was simply …

The Carpenter

O Lord, at Joseph's humble benchThy hands did handle saw and plane;Thy hammer nails did drive and clench,Avoiding knot and humouring grain. That thou didst seem, thou wast indeed,In sport thy tools thou didst not use;Nor, helping hind's or fisher's need,The labourer's hire, too nice, refuse. Lord, might I be but as a saw,A plane, …

True Sons and Daughters

“When a man can and does entirely say, 'Not my will, but thine be done'--when he so wills the will of God as to do it, then is he one with God--one, as a true son with a true father. When a man wills that his being be conformed to the being of his origin, …

Whither He Goes

"On either hand we behold a birth, of which, as of the moon, we see but half. We are outside the one, waiting for a life from the unknown; we are inside the other, watching the departure of a spirit from the womb of the world into the unknown. To the region whither he goes, …

The Way

“She was one of those who feel the need of some help to live--some upholding that is not of themselves, but who, through the stupidity of teachers unconsciously false,--men so unfit that they do not know they are unfit, direct their efforts, first towards having correct notions, then to work up the feelings that belong …

You Are a Soul

The British Friend, one of the two main British Quaker periodicals at the end of the 19th century, published a piece in 1892 on excessive mourning at funerals - “Never tell a child,” said George Macdonald, ‘you have a soul. Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.’ As we learn to think …