Thomas Wingfold Curate

by George MacDonald

Now thinking, especially to one who tries it for the first time, is seldom a comfortable operation,

Like most, Helen supposed she could think because many thoughts of other people had passed through her,

Her acceptance or rejection of what she might have called ideas, never more than lukewarm, depended solely upon what was vaguely regarded as the proper opinion to hold upon things in general.

The only thing not quite satisfactory about him was his manufactured, well-bred, dignified, clerical and professional tone in speaking. I wonder how many speak with the voices that really belong to them.

Did you never notice how these Christian people, who profess to believe that their great man has conquered death, and all that rubbish—did you never observe the way they talk about death, or the eternity they say they expect beyond it? In their hearts they have no hope, and in their minds they have no courage to face the facts of existence. They haven’t the pluck of the old fellows who looked death in the face without dismay.

Indeed, had he not sometimes despised himself for earning his bread by work which any pious old woman could do better than he?

while he would have been perfectly justified, they said, in asserting that he saw no truth in the things he denied, was he justified in concluding that his not seeing a thing was proof of its nonexistence?

If he was armed in honesty, the rivets were of self-satisfaction.

Where in a community of general ignorance shall we begin to blame?

no one’s theory concerning death is of much weight in his youth while life feels interminable.

I would have him read much—not with his sermon in his thoughts, but with his people in his heart.

The office of preaching is meant first of all to wake them up, next to make them hungry, and finally to give them food for that hunger.

My uncle says things sometimes fit to make a Pharisee’s hair stand on end, but somehow they make my heart burn inside me.

I may well ask you again—How am I to know that there is a God?” “It is a more pertinent question to ask,” returned Polwarth,—“If there be a God, how am I to find him?

I am the most ignorant person I know. You would be astonished to discover all that I don’t know. But I do know what is really worth knowing. Yet I get not a crumb more than my daily bread by it—I mean the bread by which the inner man lives.

Scorn and pain mingled with great hopes are a grand prescription for weaning the heart from the ambitions of this world.

Many things which in theory I condemned, and despised in others, I found also resided in me. I discovered with horror that I was envious and revengeful and conceited. I discovered that I looked down on people whom I thought less clever than myself. All at once one day, with a sickening conviction it came upon me, What a contemptible little wretch I am!

But I know no other way of knowing that there is a God but that which reveals what he is—the only idea that could be God—shows him in his own self-proving existence

how am I to know that I have not merely talked myself into the believing of what I would like to be true?” “Leave that question until you know what that really is which you want to believe.

Your business is to acquaint yourself with the man Jesus. He will be to you the one to reveal the Father. Take your New Testament as if you had never seen it before, and read to find out.

On one occasion when Wingfold had asked him whether he saw the meaning of a certain saying of our Lord, Polwarth answered: “I think I do. But whether I could at present make you see it I cannot tell. I suspect it is one of those concerning which I have already said that you have to understand Jesus better before you can understand it.

The question for you is not: Are the miracles true? but, Was Jesus true? Again I say, you must find him—the man himself. When you have found him, I may perhaps be able to discuss with you in more depth the question about how one can believe in such improbable things as the miracles.”

I have not once in my life done a single thing because he told me.

‘Have I today done a single thing he has said to me? When was the last time I did something I heard from him? Did I ever in all my life do one thing because he said to me, Do this?’ And the answer was, No, never.

faith and obedience are one and the same spirit, passing as it were from room to room in the same heart. What in the heart we call faith, in the will we call obedience.

the mockery it would be of any man to call him the wisest, the best, the kindest, and the dearest of men, yet never heed either the smallest request or the most urgent entreaty he made.

To be content is not to be satisfied. No one ought to be satisfied with the imperfect. It is God’s will that we should contentedly bear what he gives us. But at the same time we can look forward with hope to the redemption of the body.”

It is the man Christ Jesus we have to know, and the Bible we must use to that end—not for theory or dogma.

‘Son of man, the Word of God lives and abides forever, not in the volume of the book, but in the heart of the man that in love obeys him.’ And then I awoke weeping, but with the lesson of my dream.”

“Why should I, George?” returned his aunt. “Has he not been abusing us all at a most ignorant and furious rate?”

“I am beginning to suspect,” said the curate after a pause, “that the common transactions of life are the most sacred channels for the spread of the heavenly leaven. There was ten times more of the divine in selling her that material in the name of God as you did than there would have been in taking her into your pew and singing out of the same hymnbook with her.”

“Either there is a God, and that God is perfect truth and loveliness, or else all poetry and art is but an unsown, unplanted, rootless flower crowning a somewhat symmetrical heap of stones. The man who sees no beauty in its petals, finds no perfume in its breath may well accord it the parentage of the stones. The man whose heart swells in looking at it will be ready to think it has roots that reach below them.”

“No,” he said at length, “my business is not to prove to any other man that there is a God, but to find him for myself. If I should find him, then there will be time enough to think of showing him to others.”

If he had never committed any crime, he had yet done enough wrong to understand the misery of shame and dishonour. How much more miserable must those be who had committed some terrible deed?

the words rose in his mind, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” His heart filled. He pondered over them. When he got home he sought and found them in the book.—Did a man ever really utter them? If a man did, either he was the most presumptuous of mortals, or he could do what he said. If he could, then to have seen and distrusted that man, Wingfold felt, would have been to destroy in himself the very faculty to believe and trust for ever after.

“I wouldn’t have a word to say to a God that didn’t cut a man in pieces for such a deed!

All I can do for you now is only to be near you, and talk to you, and pray to God for you, so that together we may wait for what light may come.

“For the greatest fool and rascal in creation there is yet a worse condition, and that is not to know it, but to think oneself a respectable man.

I have come to see—at least, I think I have—that except a man has God dwelling in him, he may be, or may become, capable of any crime within the compass of human nature.”

Perhaps your shame is the hand of love washing the defilement from you. Let us keep our shame, and be made clean from the filth.”

What do you mean by defilement? Isn’t the deed the defilement?” “Is it not rather to have that within you that makes you capable of doing it?

Shame is not defilement, though pride persuades men that it is. On the contrary, the man who is honestly ashamed has begun to be clean.”

It is rest you want, my poor boy—not deliverance from danger or shame, but rest—such peace of mind as you had when you were a child.

Then indeed, and then only, will he do no wrong, think no wrong, and love perfectly. Then will he hardly think of praying, because God dwells in every thought. Then he will forgive and endure, and pour out his soul for the beloved who yet grope along their way in doubt. Then every man will be dear and precious to him,

Here men give freely to whoever asks of him without thought of return, because all his own needs will likewise be supplied by others. By giving, each also receives.

They were washing its sores with pain-killing medicines instead of laying them open with the knife of honesty, that they might be cleansed and healed.

But let the man who ventures take heed. Unless he is able to counsel a woman to do the hardest thing that bears the name of duty, let him not dare give advice even if she asks for it.

The curate walked hurriedly home. Righteous as his anger was, it had ruffled the mirror of his soul till it could no longer reflect heavenly things.

the more he had lost of worthiness in his own eyes the more he had gained in worth.

some of the purest of men have counted themselves the greatest sinners!