David Jack > David's Quotes

“I should not be surprised," said Mr. Graham, "that the day should come when men will refuse to believe in God simply on the ground of the apparent injustice of things. They would argue that there might be either an omnipotent being who did not care, or a good being who could not help, but that there could not be a being both all good and omnipotent or else he would never have suffered things to be as they are.”
― George MacDonald, The Fisherman's Lady

“Ah! Gentle, gracious Dove,
And art thou grieved in me,
That sinners should restrain thy love,
And say, “It is not free:
It is not free for all:
The most, thou passest by,
And mockest with a fruitless call
Whom thou hast doomed to die.”

They think thee not sincere
In giving each his day,
“ Thou only draw’st the sinner near
To cast him quite away,
To aggravate his sin,
His sure damnation seal:
Thou show’st him heaven, and say’st, go in
And thrusts him into hell.”

O HORRIBLE DECREE
Worthy of whence it came!
Forgive their hellish blasphemy
Who charge it on the Lamb:
Whose pity him inclined
To leave his throne above,
The friend, and Saviour of mankind,
The God of grace, and love.

O gracious, loving Lord,
I feel thy bowels yearn;
For those who slight the gospel word
I share in thy concern:
How art thou grieved to be
By ransomed worms withstood!
How dost thou bleed afresh to see
Them trample on thy blood!

To limit thee they dare,
Blaspheme thee to thy face,
Deny their fellow-worms a share
In thy redeeming grace:
All for their own they take,
Thy righteousness engross,
Of none effect to most they make
The merits of thy cross.

Sinners, abhor the fiend:
His other gospel hear—
“The God of truth did not intend
The thing his words declare,
He offers grace to all,
Which most cannot embrace,
Mocked with an ineffectual call
And insufficient grace.

“The righteous God consigned
Them over to their doom,
And sent the Saviour of mankind
To damn them from the womb;
To damn for falling short,
“Of what they could not do,
For not believing the report
Of that which was not true.

“The God of love passed by
The most of those that fell,
Ordained poor reprobates to die,
And forced them into hell.”
“He did not do the deed”
(Some have more mildly raved)
“He did not damn them—but decreed
They never should be saved.

“He did not them bereave
Of life, or stop their breath,
His grace he only would not give,
And starved their souls to death.”
Satanic sophistry!
But still, all-gracious God,
They charge the sinner’s death on thee,
Who bought’st him with thy blood.

They think with shrieks and cries
To please the Lord of hosts,
And offer thee, in sacrifice
Millions of slaughtered ghosts:
With newborn babes they fill
The dire infernal shade,
“For such,” they say, “was thy great will,
Before the world was made.”

How long, O God, how long
Shall Satan’s rage proceed!
Wilt thou not soon avenge the wrong,
And crush the serpent’s head?
Surely thou shalt at last
Bruise him beneath our feet:
The devil and his doctrine cast
Into the burning pit.

Arise, O God, arise,
Thy glorious truth maintain,
Hold forth the bloody sacrifice,
For every sinner slain!
Defend thy mercy’s cause,
Thy grace divinely free,
Lift up the standard of thy cross,
Draw all men unto thee.

O vindicate thy grace,
Which every soul may prove,
Us in thy arms of love embrace,
Of everlasting love.
Give the pure gospel word,
Thy preachers multiply,
Let all confess their common Lord,
And dare for him to die.

My life I here present,
My heart’s last drop of blood,
O let it all be freely spent
In proof that thou art good,
Art good to all that breathe,
Who all may pardon have:
Thou willest not the sinner’s death,
But all the world wouldst save.

O take me at my word,
But arm me with thy power,
Then call me forth to suffer, Lord,
To meet the fiery hour:
In death will I proclaim
That all may hear thy call,
And clap my hands amidst the flame,
And shout,—HE DIED FOR ALL”
― Charles Wesley

“People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”
― Samuel Johnson

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“This is in the very nature of things: obedience alone places a man in the position in which he can see so as to judge that which is above him.”
― George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts : Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare

“Humility is essential greatness, the inside of grandeur.”
― George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts : Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare

“Love me, beloved; Hades and Death
Shall vanish away like a frosty breath;
These hands, that now are at home in thine,
Shall clasp thee again, if thou art still mine;
And thou shalt be mine, my spirit's bride,
In the ceaseless flow of eternity's tide,
If the truest love thy heart can know
Meet the truest love that from mine can flow.
Pray God, beloved, for thee and me,
That our sourls may be wedded eternally.”
― George MacDonald, The Diary of an Old Soul

“With every morn my life afresh must break
The crust of self, gathered about me fresh;
That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake
The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh
The spider-devils spin out of the flesh-
Eager to net the soul before it wake,
That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake.
George MacDonald”
― George MacDonald

“It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over over any soul be loved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. ”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“. . . he would perhaps have known that to try too hard to make people good, is one way to make them worse; that the only way to make them good is to be good -- remembering well the beam and the mote; that the time for speaking comes rarely, the time for being never departs.”
― George MacDonald, Sir Gibbie

“To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.”
― George MacDonald

“Those who are content with what they are, have the less concern about what they seem.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“The beauty of love is, that it does not take care of itself, but of the person loved.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“The minister was an honest man so far as he knew himself and honesty, and did not relish this form of submission. But he did not ask himself where was the difference between accepting the word of man and accepting man's explanation of the word of God!”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“Come then, let us do something!” said Davie.

“Come away,” rejoined Donal. “What shall we do first?”

“I don't know: you must tell me, sir.”

“What would you like best to do—I mean if you might do what you pleased?”

Davie thought a little, then said:

“I should like to write a book.”

“What kind of a book?”

“A beautiful story.”

“Isn’t it just as well to read such a book? Why should you want to write one?”

“Because then I should have it go just as I wanted it! I am always—almost always—disappointed with the thing that comes next. But if I wrote it myself, then I shouldn’t get tired of it; it would be what pleased me, and not what pleased somebody else.”

“Well,” said Donal, after thinking for a moment, “suppose you begin to write a book!”

“Oh, that will be fun!—much better than learning verbs and nouns!”

“But the verbs and nouns are just the things that go to make a story—with not a few adjectives and adverbs, and a host of conjunctions; and, if it be a very moving story, a good many interjections! These all you have got to put together with good choice, or the story will not be one you would care to read.—Perhaps you had better not begin till I see whether you know enough about those verbs and nouns to do the thing decently.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant George MacDonald

“does my Anerew's hert guid to hae a crack wi' ane 'at kens something o' what the Maister wad be at. Mony ane 'll ca' him Lord, but feow 'ill tak the trible to ken what he wad hae o' them.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“And as to death, the fact is we know next to nothing about it. “Do we not!” say the faithless indignantly. “Do we not know the misery of it, the tears, and the sinking of the heart and the desolation!” Yes; you know those; but those are your things, not those of death. About death you know nothing. God has never told us anything about it but that the dead are alive to him, and that one day, they will be again to us.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“A library can’t be made all at once, any more than a house, or a nation, or a great tree: they must all take time to grow, and so must a library...Folk must make acquaintance among books as they would among living folk.”
― George MacDonald, Malcolm

“No man can lie FOR God, however he may try it, for God is lovelier than all the imaginations of all his creatures can think.”
― George MacDonald

“God lets men have their playthings, like the children they are, that they may learn to distinguish them from true possessions. If they are not learning that, he takes them from them, and tries the other way: for lack of them and its misery, they will perhaps seek the true!”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“The birds in the trees were singing
A song as old as the world,
Of love and green leaves and sunshine,
And winter folded and furled.

They sang that never was sadness
But it melted and passed away;
They sang that never was darkness
But in came the conquering day.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“Ourselves our centre instead of God, is the source of all wrong and all misery.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“Love is as lovely in the old as in the young–lovelier when in them, as often, more sympathetic and unselfish, that is true.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“if Donal was in any danger of loving the things of this world, it was in the shape of books–books he had a strong inclination to accumulate and hoard.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“Every pain and every fear, yes, every doubt is a cry after God. What mother refuses to go to her child because he is only crying, not calling her by name!”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“When we have no summer without, we must supply it from within. Those must have comfort in themselves who are sent to comfort others.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“There are some who, if you propose to examine into anything, immediately set you down as an unbeliever in that thing. A man who wants to find out what the Bible really means, is, by those who do not believe in it a tenth part as much as he, set down as an unbeliever in the Bible; whereas it is a proof of the very strongest probability to the contrary.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“I love you,” he said, “and love you to all eternity! I have love enough to live upon now, if you should die this night, and God will that, like the Apostle John, I tarry till he come. God, thou art too good to me! It is more than my heart will hold! Thou art a God indeed who makest men and women, and givest them to each other, and art not one moment jealous of the love wherewith they love each other!”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“You must not forget what you have been teaching me all this time–that the will of our God, the perfect God, is all in all! He is not a God far off: oh, Donal, to know that is enough to have lived for if one never learned anything more in all her life! You have taught me that, and I love you–love you next to God and his Christ, with a true heart fervently.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant