Thomas Wingfold Curate

by George MacDonald

“Therefore surely is such a man nearer to the gate of the kingdom than he against whom the world has never wagged a tongue, who has never even sinned against a social custom, and has as easy a conscience as the day he was born, but who knows so little of himself that, while he thinks he is good enough, he carries within him the capacity and possibility of every cardinal sin, waiting only the special and fitting temptation which, like the match to the charged mine, shall set all in a roar!

There are men who will never see what they are capable or in danger of until they have committed some fearful wrong.

Think not about thy sin so as to make it either less or greater in thine own eyes. Bring it to Jesus, and let him show thee how vile a thing it is. And leave it to him

let it be Christ that excuseth thee, he will do it to more purpose than thou, and will not wrong thy soul by excusing thee a hair too much, or thy heart by excusing thee a hair too little.

“Until we love our brother, yes, until we love our enemy, who is yet our brother, we contain within ourselves the undeveloped germ of murder.

“We are very ready to draw in our minds a distinction between respectable sins—human imperfections we call them, perhaps—and disreputable vices, such as theft and murder. But there is no such distinction in fact. Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom.

at the root of all human bliss lies repentance.

“He will not speak to you one word of reproach, except indeed you should try to justify yourselves by accusing your neighbour.

Happily, both for himself and others, the curate was not one of those who cripple the truth by trying to worry about every scruple and judgment of their listeners. To try to explain truth to one who does not love it is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation.

“Well, all I will say about Bascombe is that if he were not conceited, he would be honest. And if he were as honest as he believes himself, he would not be so ready to judge everyone dishonest who does not agree with him.”

Would that all our pulpits were in the power of similar men, who by suffering know the human, and by obedience the divine heart!

Elsewhere he felt, with regard to Helen, like a transport ship filled with troops, which had to go sailing around the shores of an invaded ally, frustrated in search for a landing.

while his intellect was hanging about the door, asking questions, and uneasily shifting hither and thither in its perplexities, the spirit of the Master had passed by it unrecognized and entered into the chamber of his heart.

Was a man never to be carried beyond himself and the regions of his knowledge?

he began to see the working of his doubts on the growth of his heart and soul—preventing it from becoming faith in an idea of God instead of in the living God.

nothing is so deadening to the divine as a habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things.

What was the main object of the miracles?”

I would rather die believing as Jesus believed than live forever believing as those that deny him.

It was altogether a time of great struggle with Wingfold. He seemed to be assailed in every direction. And yet he held on.

every individuality, he argued, has a peculiar flavour to every other, and only Jesus is the pure simple humanity that every one can love.

He came down like rain upon the mown grass, like showers that water the earth. No woman, no man surely ever saw him as he was and did not worship him!”

I don’t think I shall ever complain. That would be to take myself out of his hands, and I have no hope anywhere else.

Nothing is so ruinous to progress in which effort is needed, as satisfaction with apparent achievement. It always stops momentum.

So true in all aspects of life!

He was gradually learning that his faith must be an absolute one, claiming from God everything the love of a perfect Father could give,

He learned that he could keep no simplest law in its loveliness until he was possessed of the same spirit whence that law sprung, that the one thing in which he might imitate the free creative will of God was to will the presence and power of that will which gave birth to his.

he doesn’t limit his goodness to us by our knowledge of him.

I doubt if anything makes one so unforgiving as guilt unrepented of.”

There are thousands who would forget God if they could but be assured of a tolerable state of things beyond the grave.

Their assurance of immortality has not come from a knowledge of him, and thus it is worse than worthless.

if I obey him not, I shall not only deserve to perish, but in that very refusal I would draw ruin upon my own head.

while you are not a Christian who obeys the word of the Master, doing the things he says, you are of those Christians—if you would still be called by the name—to whom he will say, I never knew you. Go forth into the outer darkness.

That day the New Testament had been the book of the church—this day it was a fountain of living waters to the man Thomas Wingfold.

Now a new trouble had come, but that also was a form of life—he would rather love and suffer and love still, than return to the poverty of not knowing Helen Lingard. Yet a thousand times rather would he forget Helen Lingard than lose from his heart one word of the Master, whose love was the root and only pledge and security of love.

“I can teach you nothing. I can but show you where I found what has changed my life from a bleak November to a sunny June—with its thunderstorms no doubt—but still June beside November.

his heart was all a thanksgiving—not for any perfected gift, but for many a lovely hope.