George MacDonald (1824 – 1905), the Scottish Victorian writer, started out in his career as a clergyman. He spent only a short few years in the pulpit before he left the religiosity of it all and turned to writing. He wrote a number of novels and many short stories, but poured himself into his poetry, sermons, essays, and theological treatises. C.S. Lewis described MacDonald as his “master” in written works, and said of him, “I know hardly of any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself.”

The following excerpt on the nature of the life of God in the soul of a true disciple of Christ is taken from his book, “Your Life in Christ.”

“When he hears of what is called “eternal life,” the ignorant soul thinks of it only in the sense of duration, as an endless elongation of consciousness. What God means by it, however, is to live as a being like His own, a being beyond the attack of decay or death, a being so essential that it has no relation whatever to nothingness. By life, God means that which is, and can never to that which is not, for with that it never had to do, but came out of the heart of Life, the heart of God, the fountain of being. By life, God means an existence that partakes of the divine nature, and that has nothing in common, any more than the Eternal Himself, with what can pass or cease. God owes His being to no one, and His child has no lord but His Father.

This life, this eternal life, consists for man in absolute oneness with God and all divine modes of being, oneness in every phase of right and harmony. It consists in a love as deep as it is universal, as conscious as it is unspeakable. It consists of a love that can no more be reasoned about than life itself – a life whose presence is its all-sufficient proof and justification, whose absence is an annihilating defect. He who does not have it cannot believe in it. How can death believe in life, though all the birds of God are singing jubilant over the empty tomb! The delight of such a being, the splendour of a consciousness rushing from the wide-open doors of the fountain of existence, the ecstasy of the spiritual sense into which the surge of life essential, immortal, increate, flows in silent fullness from the heart of hearts – what may it, what must it not be, in the great day of God and the individual soul.“

Few writers have capture the essence of our new life in Christ, our “born from above” life of the indwelling Spirit of Christ in us as has MacDonald here. What he describes here is the way, the truth, and the life – the Christ life in us.

Banner image via author, Pyramid Lake, Selkirk Mountains, Northern Idaho. MacDonald image in the public domain.