Paul Faber: Surgeon. Chapters 30 - 40 .

There is considerable rhetoric in our reading for this week, contained in the conversations between Wingfold and Faber, and in Wingfold’s sermonizing. MacDonald fills his novels with his own convictions as to the nature of Christian truth and prescriptions for Christian living, but I don’t think any are as replete in these regards as this novel.  In all the authors I have read, I have not encountered any whose insights seem so penetratingly true (and I have greatly profited from the works of so many).  It is why I keep returning to his works.  Below is a sampling of quotations that strike me:

“Truth is a very different thing from fact; it is the loving contact of the soul with spiritual fact, vital and potent . . . . Truth in the inward parts is a power, not an opinion. . . . Peace is for those who do the truth, not those who opine it.”  

“But love is the first comforter, and where love and truth speak, the love will be felt where the truth is never perceived.  Love indeed is the highest in all truth; and the pressure of a hand, a kiss, the caress of a child, will do more to save sometimes than the wisest argument, even rightly understood.  Love alone is wisdom, love alone is power; and where love seems to fail it is where self has stepped between and dulled the potency of its rays.”

Near the beginning of Chapter XXIX, MacDonald gives his conviction concerning the final destiny of all peoples, a conviction that finds moving expression at the conclusion of his final fantasy Lilith, which he will be writing some 15 years later.  At the heart of the paragraph he writes concerning rebellious individuals: 

“If they say, ‘We choose to be destroyed,’  He, as their Maker, has a choice in the matter too, is He not free to say, ‘You can not even slay yourselves, and I choose that you shall know the death of living without Me; you shall learn to choose to live indeed, I choose that you shall know what I know to be good?’”

The entire paragraph makes a moving statement, and is in harmony with such Biblical passages as Isa. 45:22 - 25.

  

In Chapter XXXII of this week’s reading, Mr. Drake and Dorothy have an extended conversation initiated by Dorothy asking her father very directly if he were sure of the existence of God, and he, being utterly honest, confessed he was not as sure of God as he was sure of her standing before him.  Their conversation underscores another of MacDonald’s insistencies, that the current widespread concept of God, fed by rational theologies, misrepresented him; that one must concentrate on the life and teachings of Christ in the Gospels, and nowhere else, and give oneself to him, in order to truly come into a more accurate view of the nature of God and the certainty of his existence.

Juliet’s main problem is that she chooses to make Faber her god: he, she decides, is better than “the God of the Wingfolds and Drakes,” and they marry. But instead of her being happy, it is evident to the Wingfolds and to Dorothy that she is unhappy, as though she were concealing something.  After much agonizing, and after extracting a promise from Faber that he would forgive her any wrong, she confesses to him that she had had sexual intercourse with another man prior to their marriage.  In his outrage she pleads with him to whip her and forgive, but his sense of honor and pride has received a staggering blow, and he leaves her.

Utterly crushed and forsaken, Juliet leaves the house and makes toward a pond, intent on drowning herself.  Dorothy finds her on the very edge, retrieves her and lovingly ministers to her.  At Dorothy’s insistence, Juliet confesses her past error to her, and finds in her the sympathy of a true friend.  Dorothy hides Juliet in their old house, and in lovingly ministering to her she comes into a much more satisfying relation to the truth of God than any intellectual grasp would provide. 

As Faber, in a frenzy of indignation, wildly rides he knows not where, his horse steps into a whole, breaks his leg and must be destroyed.  Seriously injured, Faber has an extended period of convalescence in another physician’s home, decides he will henceforth treat Juliet with utter coldness and formality, keeping her at a distance, as it were.  After an extended period of convalescence, he resumes his work, but he is “a pale, haggard, worn, enfeebled man.”  In his atheistic view of life, there is nothing that will comfort him.

In all these chapters, MacDonald is absorbed in tracing step by step the slow spiritual development in Faber, Juliet, and Dorothy.  All need a right relation to God as a true father, and the process by which this comes about in each is very slow and involves much suffering.  Of Juliet we read:

When her heart was a little freer from grief and the agony of loss, she would love Dorothy; but God must wait with his own patience–wait long for the child of His love to learn that her very sorrow came of His dearest affection.  Who wants such affection as that? Says the unloving.  No one, I answer; but every one who comes to know it, glorifies it as the only love that ever could satisfy his being. (Chapter XXXVIII)

The suffering of each one comes from their own life’s experiences, is sent at the behest of God, and is motivated by His love and infinite patience.   MacDonald writes:  “So sure am I that many things which illness has led me to see are true, that I would endlessly rather  never be well than lose sight of them.”  His convictions arise from his own experience.

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