Half-Hearted Creatures

February 13, 2020 Guest User

In this example we consider what is probably the most famous passage from Lewis's best-known essay, The Weight of Glory. Ironically, its counterpart is taken from a source which, even considering the general neglect of MacDonald's novels, is one of the Scotsman's obscurer works. The similarity of the quotes is striking, however; and in one of those amusingly serendipitous touches, even the titles of essay and novel resemble each other-helping to lodge the comparison in our minds.

One thing she heard him tell them was, that they were like orphan children, hungry in the street, raking the gutter for what they could get, while behind them stood a grand, beautiful house to which they never so much as lifted up their eyes—and there their father lived! There he sat in a beautiful room, waiting, waiting, waiting for any one of them all who would but turn round, run in, and up the stairs to him . . . And I know the kind of thing you do care for—low, dirty things: you are like a child, if such there could be, that preferred mud and the gutter to all the beautiful toys in the shop at the corner of Middle Row. But though these things are not the things you want, they are the things you need; and the time is coming when you will say, 'Ah me! what a fool I was not to look at the precious things, and see how precious they were, and put out my hand for them when they were offered me!'

George MacDonald, Weighed and Wanting, Chapter XLVIII, Mr. Christopher

One of the great heroines of Victorian fiction, Hester Raymount, is at the heart of George MacDonald's little-known masterpiece, Weighed and Wanting. She is modeled in part on the author's friend, the great English social reformer Octavia Hill, who worked tirelessly to improve the lives of the poor of London. As Michael Phillips has written, "[MacDonald} gives us here a vision of ministry to the poor, suffering, diseased, and dying--a ministry imbued with the power of eternal Fatherhood." Above all, this captivating story is about personal transformation, about the journey each of us must--and will!--one day take to the loving heart of God.