“Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy; for thou renderest to every man according to his work.
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I believe that there is nothing good for me or for any man but God, and more and more of God, and that alone through knowing Christ can we come nigh to him. I believe that no man is ever condemned for any sin except one—that he will not leave his sins and come out of them, and be the child of him who is his father. That justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing; without justice to the full there can be no mercy, and without mercy to the full there can be no justice; that such is the mercy of God that he will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the Son, and the many brethren—rush inside the center of the life-giving fire whose outer circles burn. I believe that no hell will be lacking which would help the just mercy of God to redeem his children.
To him who obeys, and thus opens the doors of his heart, God gives the spirit of his son, the spirit of himself, to be in him, and lead him to the understanding of all truth; the true disciple shall thus always know what he ought to do, though not necessarily what another ought to do. The spirit enlightens by teaching righteousness. No teacher should strive to make men think as he thinks, but to lead them to the living Truth, the Master himself, who will make them in themselves know what is true by the very seeing of it. To be the disciple of Christ is the end of being; to persuade men to be his disciples is the end of teaching.
Commentary
by Leah Morency
MacDonald speaks clear and bright: "I believe that there is nothing good for me or for any man but God, and more and more of God, and that alone through knowing Christ can we come nigh to him. "
Come nigh to him, our father from whom we are fashioned from and of. Completeness and life envelope and spring forth in our coming nigh to him. Him, who is Love.
My thought is this, 1 Corinthians 13 teaches us of him; looking back on Justice, cutting through the fog of dogma and doctrines, God speaks for himself... His relationship to us when placed in his defining expression of character reads as follows:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not my Father, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not my Father, I am nothing.
If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not my Father, I gain nothing.
Father is patient and kind; Father does not envy or boast; He is not arrogant or rude, He does not insist on his own way, He is not irritable or resentful, He does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Father bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. The Father never ends."
We could place "God" in stead; "Father" is our relationship and is helpful to see. The purpose of all of this is to be disciples of Christ. MacDonald's conclusion in this excerpt then, is our calling.
"No teacher should strive to make men think as he thinks but to lead them to the Living Truth, the Master himself, who will make them in themselves know what is true by the very seeing of it."