Thomas Wingfold. Chapters 64 - 80

We have one more session and we will have completed this novel.  We’ll take a short break and then turn to another work.  If you have any suggestions as to what you would like us to read next, please let me know.  My email address is rolland.hein@wheaton.edu.  Possibilities that come quickly to mind are:  GMD’s novel Paul Faber: Surgeon, which is a fine sequel to our novel; any of the works of Lewis, or any of the works of Charles Williams, or whatever.  I would enjoy hearing f rom you.

Early in our reading for this session, Wingfold visits Helen and they have a tense interchange.  Nevertheless, when Wingfold has left and Helen is alone, “she began to know in heart that the curate was right.”  Just as it is listening to his conscience that has brought peace to Leopold, so our hope for Helen’s peace of heart lies in her listening to her conscience and obeying it.

As Wingfold leaves, he is so filled with righteous anger he “could no longer reflect heavenly things.”   But, we are told in a profound and moving passage in the chapter entitled “A Review,” as he is seated on a stone and contemplates his natural surroundings, “earth and air had grown full of hints and sparkles and vital motions, as if between them and his soul and abiding community of fundamental existence had manifested itself,” and he feels as though Christ is speaking to him through nature. 

IS MACDONALD BEING UNREALISTICALLY ROMANTIC IN THIS PASSAGE, OR IS IT A CONVINCING PORTRAYAL OF THE MANNER IN WHICH GOD MAY SPEAK TO US THROUGH NATURE?  HAVE YOU HAD ANY SIMILAR EXPERIENCE?

When Wingfold brings a powerful sermon on the need for repentance and the beauty of its effects, people as usual react according to their various sets of mind.

Meanwhile, Bascombe, instead of attending church, visited the local magistrate, represented Leopold to him as one possessed of brain fever with an obsession to confess a murder, and asked the magistrate if he would go along with the farce, receive Leopold’s confession, and urge him to return home.  This they did, and Leopold, having confessed to the magistrate, is much relieved. 

After a period during which Wingfold does not see him, Leopold sets out for the parsonage, falls ill in the graveyard, and is discovered by Helen and Wingfold as they searched for him.  Dr. Faber is summoned, and after ministering to Leopold, he and Wingfold fall into an extended conversation as to whether God exists. 

Faber insists that a good God could not possibly allow the cruel suffering of innocent people, such as he encounters in his practice. Wingfold’s response, which is at the heart of GMD’s apologetic for the truth of Christianity, is as fine an answer to this type of objection as is possible to come by, and Faber, silent for a moment, replies: “Your theory has but one fault: it is too good to be true.” GMD posed this same objection elsewhere in his writings, and was fond of responding:  “It’s so good it has to be true.”

ARE YOU IMPRESSED WITH THIS APOLOGETIC?  WHAT MAKES IT ESPECIALLY CONVINCING?

One of the interests of his novel, and a great deal of its true value, is the careful way in which the inner struggles of quite different characters are so carefully and honestly presented.  GMD is determined to delineate faithfully the inner questioning that often characterizes earnest Christians as they progress in their separate spiritual odysseys.

Thus we have a detailed account of  Wingfold’s  inner questioning. In his honesty he asks himself whether he is not representing himself from the pulpit as more certain of what he was preaching than in fact he was.  But, enthralled with the glory of the Christian vision, he expresses his determination to Polwarth: “Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not . . . . . I would rather die for evermore believing as Jesus believed, than live for evermore believing as those that deny him.” And Helen’s inner turmoil is also carefully given as she struggles with her love of her brother on the one hand and the  prickings of her conscience on the other: Was she in truth acting as a Satan to him?  Our attention is next focused on the draper, who is plagued by the issue of whether or not we will live forever, and Polwarth responds that it is not of first importance whether we do or not; if a person is in possession of true life, he will not even pose the issue.  Then Polwarth shares with him the tale of the wandering Jew.

The tale was written by his mad brother, who saw himself in the form of the Wandering Jew.   The jew was a servant in the house of Caiaphas, and as he saw Christ toiling under the weight of his cross on his way to Calvary, he jeered at him. Later he approaches Christ on the cross and feels his piercing eyes fixed upon him.  Ever afterwards he is haunted by that look.  In the agony of his wanderings he longs for death, which does not come.  Finally, he meets a little girl who pledges herself to help and serve him.  But the specter of Death haunts him, and his relief soon turns to agony and despair at the thought of losing her.  At the end of the tale she is engulfed with fire and becomes but a cinder.  Nevertheless, he then rejoices that the image in his heart cannot be destroyed, and the tale ends with the Jew hoping that at last he will yet be forgiven by the Crucified One.

MacDonald is fond of inserting such tales in his novels; few. however, are as long as this.  It does not strike me as being one of his better ones, but there may be a relevance that I’m not seeing.

What are your thoughts?  We’d like you to share them.