Dr. Joyce McPherson joins David to tell the story of George MacDonald, drawing from her biography called “Spiritual Sight: The Story of George MacDonald“.
S7E32: “MacDonald Month: George’s Story”, After Hours with Joyce McPherson (Download)
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Show Notes
Introduction
Quote-of-the-week
That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptised; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer. I had not the faintest notion what I had let myself in for by buying Phantastes.
C. S. Lewis
Biographical Information
Joyce McPherson teaches English at Covenant College and has written biographies for young people, including biographies of Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, Albrecht Durer, C.S. Lewis, Johann Sebastian Bach, and George MacDonald. She is the author of some light fantasy for children as well as abridged Shakespeare plays for youth theatre. She is the mother of nine children. In her spare time she enjoys reading history and directing Shakespeare plays. And, rather crucially for this episode, she is also the author of “Spiritual Sight: The Story of George MacDonald”.
Chit-Chat
…
Toast
- David was enjoying a cup of tea.
- Dr. McPherson was also sipping a mug of tea.
Discussion
01. “Background”
Q. Could you tell us a little more about yourself, and how you got into writing biographies?
- Dr. McPherson describes herself as a translator of research into story form for children, like in her novel “A Piece of the Mountain:The Story of Blaise Pascal”.
- David knew relatively little about MacDonald, besides what Lewis wrote in his book “George MacDonald: An Anthology”.
02. “Spiritual Sight”
Q. How did you get into MacDonald?
I dare not say that he is never in error; but to speak plainly I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continuously close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself. Hence his Christ-like union of tenderness and severity. Nowhere else outside the New Testament have I found terror and comfort so intertwined.
In making this collection I was discharging a debt of justice. I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him. But it has not seemed to me that those who have received my books kindly take even now sufficient notice of the affiliation. Honesty drives me to emphasize it.
C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology, Preface
- Like MacDonald, Lewis’ characters displayed interior dispositions of nobility, not merely earned from their worldly position. Many C. S. Lewis fans will appreciate George MacDonald’s quotes. One comes from “The Elect Lady”…
The Lord of the promise is the Lord of all true parables and all good fairy tales.
George MacDonald, The Elect Lady
- Another comes from his “Unspoken Sermons”…
If we will but let our God and Father work His will with us, there can be no limit to His enlargement of our existence…
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons
- Dr. Kirsten Jeffrey Johnson helped Dr. McPherson reconcile contradictions she was running across. Dr. Johnson appeared on the show in season five to discuss his fairytale “Phantastes”. You can listen to the conversation here.
03. “Context”
Q. What was the world that George MacDonald lived in?
- MacDonald lived in the Victorian Era. He wrote for both children and adults, across all genres, although his children’s fairytales are among his most famous works. Some of these tales include “The Princess and the Goblin”, “At the Back of the North Wind”, and “The Golden Key”.
- Something that struck Dr. McPherson was the meaningful comments he made in the middle of his stories…
How little they know what they look for in reality is their God! This is that for which their heart and their flesh cry out.
George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen
All the troubles come to drive us into that refuge—the secret place of the Most High where alone we can be safe.
George MacDonald, Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood
I for one can really testify to a book that has made a difference to my whole existence, which helped me to see things in a certain way from the start…[MacDonald] could give the real sense that everyone had the end of an elfin thread that must at last lead them into Paradise.
G. K. Chesterton, on The Princess and the Goblin
04. “MacDonald’s Story”
Q. Let’s do story time! Could you tell us George MacDonald’s life story?
- George MacDonald was born in 1824 in Huntly, Scotland. His mother died when he was at the tender age of seven, and he grew up very close to his encouraging father, who was a deacon at the Missionar Kirk, a missionary-focused church. Contrary to popular belief, MacDonald did not hate church as a child; in fact, his pastor, Reverend John Hill recruited him to teach at his Sabbath School.
I like to hear a boy loving his minister’s preaching. What little I have succeeded in doing in the world, I largely owe to the stimulus given me in boyhood days by my minister, the Rev. John Hill. He was a man of God.
George MacDonald
- MacDonald’s Scottish heritage played a key role in his life and writing. His grandfather was called the Blind Piper of Portsoy. After the Highlanders lost the Battle of Culloden in 1745, William MacDonald had hidden among the coastal caves. Due to his station as the piper of his regiment, there was a reward for his capture or death. When the battle was lost, they lost the privilege of wearing kilts, bearing the claymore and shield, or playing the bagpipes. The Scots were proud of their ancestry, and passed their history on through following generations. MacDonald’s cultural and ancestral pride comes through in many of his novels. In addition, during visits to Portsoy, George developed a love of coastal exploration and boating, which came through in his novels.
- George went to Kings College on a scholarship at age fifteen. Though higher education had been easy to come by in Scotland, it was beginning to diminish, something that troubled MacDonald greatly. Initially, he pursued the medical field, earning a degree in chemistry and physics. His writings disclose his belief that science leads directly to God…
What idea could we have of God without the sky?…revelation about more than water, namely about the God who made oxygen and hydrogen.
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons
- Here is another quote from “What’s Mine’s Mine”, C. S. Lewis’ favourite realistic fiction novel by MacDonald:
It is when we are most aware of the factitude of things that we are most aware of our need of God, and most able to trust in Him. …it rouses the soul to the yet more real.
George MacDonald, What’s Mine’s Mine
- MacDonald experienced a spiritual conversion in college, leading him to pursue pastoral studies at Highbury Theological College. This is an important story for people experiencing doubt, as MacDonald himself did in his youth. He considered doubt to be healthy:
For a man may be haunted with doubts, and only grow thereby in faith. Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to the honest.
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons
- He also wrote of how he overcame his spiritual struggles in a letter to his father:
One of my greatest difficulties in considering to think of religion was that I thought I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and my love for the things God had made. But I find that the happiness springing from all things not in themselves sinful is much increased by religion. God is the God of the beautiful, Religion the love of the Beautiful, & Heaven the House of the Beautiful—nature is tenfold brighter in the sun of righteousness, and my love of nature is more intense since I became a Christian.
George MacDonald, Letter to his father
- George’s letters with his father hold a lot of humour and wisdom. When George had left home, a famine ravaged the Highlands, people suspected that the MacDonald brothers were hoarding grain. One night a mob traveled to the farm, calling for George’s father. George’s father had a timber leg due to tuberculosis he contracted when he was twenty-four, and every night he would take it off. His new wife had recently given birth. He attached his leg, and told the mob to meet him in town out of respect for the health of his wife. Upon arrival, he found a bonfire, with the crowd about to burn him in effigy. He joked, “Bide a wee, lads. You fastened the timber leg to the wrong hip.” The crowd started laughing, and he brought them back to the farm to show them that his meal tub was as empty as theirs.
- George dedicated his second book to his Father with these words:
To My Father
George MacDonald
Thou hast been faithful to my highest need;
And I, thy debtor, ever, evermore,
Shall never feel the grateful burden sore.
Yet most I thank thee, not for any deed,
But for the sense thy living self did breed
Of fatherhood still at the great world’s core.
- George was only a minister for a few years. He had an idea to teach the humanities from a spiritual viewpoint, which led him to lecture and teach, writing over 30 books in the process.
- He wrote in the section of “Unspoken Sermons” entitled “Justice:”
I believe that to be the disciple of Christ is the end of being; that to persuade men to be his disciples is the end of teaching.
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, Justice
- Here’s another quote from the Unspoken Sermons:
Christ is the way out, and the way in: the way from slavery, conscious or unconscious, into liberty; the way from the unhomeliness of things to the home we desire but do not know.
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons
- George became Professor of English Literature at Bedford College in London from 1859 to 1867. It was the first British institution to offer higher education to women. A lecture series called England’s Antiphon was published, a literary history of Christian poetry in the English language.
When we read rejoicingly the true song-speech of one of our singing brethren, we hold song-worship with him and with all who have thus at any time shared in his feelings, even if he has passed centuries ago into the ‘high countries’ of song.
George MacDonald
- MacDonald had a great hope for Christian unity one day.
I want to throw my small pebble at the head of the great Sabbath-breaker, Schism.
George MacDonald
- MacDonald’s philosophy of living for the Lord comes out in his writings. Here are a couple quotes:
It is only in Him that the soul has room. In knowing Him is life and its gladness. The secret of your own heart you can never know; but you can know Him who knows its secret.
George MacDonald
Never could we have known the heart of the Father, never felt it possible to love Him as sons, but for Him who cast Himself into the gulf that yawned between us.
George MacDonald
In every heart there is a consciousness of some duty or other required of it; that is the will of God. He who would be saved must get up and do that will—if it be but to sweep a room or make an apology, or pay a debt.
George MacDonald, Letter from 1866
- Here is another quote from his novel “David Elginbrod”, reminiscent of “Mere Christianity” and the concept of heavenly and hellish creatures…
I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of.
George MacDonald
- George married and had a large family of 11 children. George married Louisa Powell and they had 11 children. They were very hospitable, and loved to host. Their house was designed with the intention to perform for others and entertain through parties and even theatrical performances, including Shakespeare and a Dickens story;.
- All the family members had this idea. George talks about this in his novel “Sir Gibbie”:
There is no forgetting of ourselves but in the finding of our deeper, our true self—God’s idea of us when he devised us—And that self no man can find for himself…“but as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God.”
George MacDonald, Sir Gibbie
- MacDonald often saw themselves in his characters. Here is another quote from “Thomas Wingfield, Curate”:
Those who gain no experience are those who shirk the King’s highway for fear of encountering the Duty seated by the roadside.
George MacDonald, Thomas Wingfield, Curate
The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self.
George MacDonald, Thomas Wingfield, Curate
05. “Jack and George”
Q. From your research, can you tell us more about the connections between George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis?
- One of the most significant connections is the shared perspective George and Jack had on fantasy. Lewis’ approach and his legacy was inspired by MacDonald’s fairytales. They used stories and imagination in order to lead their readers to deeper truths.
For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
- George MacDonald shared this perspective through the mouth of the great-great-grandmother Irene in “The Princess and the Goblin”:
“Seeing is not believing–it is only seeing.”
George MacDonald, Irene, The Princess and the Goblin
- Here are some additional quotes that remind the reader of Lewis:
He that is made in the image of God must know Him or be desolate.
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons
A man is in bondage to whatever he cannot part with that is less than himself.
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons
- Likewise, Lewis wrote thus in “The Great Divorce”…
If we insist on keeping Hell…we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
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. As an author, I hope that his story will inspire another generation of creative minds and help us think of the reality of Christ that exists beyond our earthly vision.
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons
06. “Further Reading”
Q. Let’s say someone’s picked up a copy of your book, “Spiritual Sight: The Story of George MacDonald”, and they finished the closing page. What would you say is the next book, either from or about MacDonald, that they should read?
- Dr. McPherson recommended “The Princess and the Goblin” to everyone, child or adult. Another great place to start would be “The Golden Key”.
- Word on Fire recently reprinted “The Light Princess” and “The Golden Key”. David interviewed Haley Stewart, editor for the Word on Fire Spark Imprint, about this very project.
