Paul Faber: Surgeon. Chapters 24 29

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One way to view this novel is to see it as a profound study in the centrality of love to life.  The first and second commandments affirm that the most important thing in life is to learn how properly to love God and others, and this may be seen as MacDonald’s primary purpose in writing this novel.  He gives his readers profound meditations on the nature of God’s love, and he proceeds to depict a variety of love relationships:  Wingfold  and Helen, Drake and his daughter, Faber and Juliet 

All love relationships in this life are imperfect; the essence of heaven is that of perfect love, in which the redeemed community are perfectly bound together in love with God and with each other.  Scripture depicts it as marriage between Christ and his church.  

The relationship between Drake and his daughter, strong as it is, illustrates some severe shortcomings.  Dorothy’s love for her father is admirable but inadequate because of her uncertainty as to the existence of a heavenly Father and her relationship to him.  Drake’s love is flawed by his malfunctioning conscience and his obsession with his self.    
After the chapter in which we consider their relationship, we continue to follow Juliet’s inner turmoil as she is becoming closer to accept Faber’s love.  Faber persistently continues wooing her, and she cannot doubt the thoroughness of his love for her.  Happening to be on the street passing by Faber’s office, she also sees an instance of his rage as he angrily dismisses an apprentice who apparently had mercilessly cut into a dog.    

Still, she wrestles with her indecision, and a reader cannot but wonder why it is she is so hesitant.  Something is evidently bothering her conscience.  The interchange between Wingfold and Faber on the functioning of conscience is a clue to that fact.
 
Drake consults Wingfold as to how he should be a good steward of the money that has unexpectedly come to him, and Wingfold counsels that he should use it to right injustices.  Drake decides to buy a property with his money and use it in the service of Christ.  He is visited by a delegation from his former church, who now want him to return to them and use his money to build them a new chapel, feeling that a handsome building is all that was lacking to get a crowd of attendees.  Drake unflinchingly rebukes them.  He does however resume his pastoral office there, but with a continued fellowship with Wingfold, as they find themselves working towards the same ends.  

When Drake’s sermon, however, continues to misrepresent God wrongly, his daughter passionately rebukes him (as she has come through hearing Wingfold preach to  more correct concepts concerning God’s character), and Drake begins to perceive the shortcomings of the theology he has been committed to.

MacDonald writes: “I doubt if wickedness does half as much harm as sectarianism, whether it be the sectarianism of the church or of dissent, the sectarianism whose virtue is condescension, or the sectarianism whose vice is pride.”

WHAT MORE PRECISELY ARE THE HARMS THAT SECTARIANISM EFFECTS, BOTH UPON INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIANS AND UPON THE CULTURE AS A WHOLE?

ANY THOUGHTS ON THIS WEEK’S READING?   PLEASE SHARE THEM.

Comments

Dan J said…
This is simultaneously a period piece set in Victorian England by a 19th century English writer and a timeless piece of literature because human spirituality and Christianity has the same perennial mysteries throughout history. To me GMD uses Christian thoughts as the anchor of this storyline. The characters develop in their relationship, and in their spirituality.
Sectarianism and other sins spread by the Christian hurts the Christian faith perhaps more than persecutions by non-Christians. My faith in the goodness of Christianity is not shaken by bad non-Christians acting even violently to Christians and Christian churches and artifacts. I know that the malevolent non-Christian cannot make any statement except for hatred towards Christianity. The malevolent Christian especially malevolent Christian leaders in comparison exhibits contempt for the Christian precepts along with the Faith those Christians profess to uphold. Sectarianism makes the Christian look oafish and therefore implies the Church itself is just an oafish institution.
July 17, 2020 at 3:29 PM
Rolland Hein said…
You describe GMD's work well. He experienced himself the cruelty of sectarian bias in his early career and sees its attitudes firmly condemned in the Scriptures. Sectarian attitudes are the bane of Church history, and indeed a reason why many reject the Gospel
July 23, 2020 at 7:14 AM
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