Donal Grant: Chapters 1 - 7
As the story opens, we see Donal walking across Scotland towards an unknown destiny, which turns out to be living in a large castle where he is to be a tutor to a young boy. His early life has been given in the novel Sir Gibbie, where he is seen growing up as a shepherd boy, spending his days tending sheep and cattle and delighting in his rural environment. As a young man he went to college, got his degree, and is now facing life as a young adult.
Thus oriented to life, Donal displays convincingly throughout the novel ideal Christian attitudes, and in the first chapter GMD describes that utter reliance upon God which produces inner peace in all the outer circumstances of life. Donal accepts negative circumstances without complaint and expectantly awaits what may happen next. Many passages are memorable, such as:
“He had no certain goal, though he knew his direction and was in no haste. He had confidence in God and in his own powers as the gift of God, and knew that wherever he went hee need not be hungry long, even should the little money in his pocket be spent. It is better to trust in work than in money. God never buys anything, and is forever at work.”
His life, together with all that may happen next is entirely in God’s hands.
DO SOME STATEMENTS STRIKE YOU AS BEING EXTREMELY APT EXPRESSIONS OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH? PLEASE SHARE YOUR REACTIONS.
In his walk Donal meets a local clergy man who epitomizes the Christian theology that GMD depicts and opposes in all his novels:
The minister, however, was a man of not merely dry or stale, but of deadly doctrines. He would have a man love Christ for protecting him from God, not for leading him to God in whom alone is bliss, out of whom all is darkness and misery. He imagined justice and love dwelling in eternal opposition in the bosom of eternal unity. He knew next to nothing about God, and hideously misrepresented him. If God were such as he showed him, it would be the worst possible misfortune to have been created.
GMD saw such thinking as wide spread in his day, and it is quite alive today in various versions. It is easy to except some affects of such thinking unconsciously, and much of the value of GMD’s writings is to expose such errors and to present a true Biblical depiction of God as loving Father.
Donal finds a place to stay with a kindly cobbler and his wife whose genuine and sincere attitudes bespeak a true Christian faith applied to life.. In them GMD furthers his primary purpose in writing novels.
Through a series of encounters Donal finds a tutorship in a huge old castle domineered by a crusty old earl and is happily situated as a tutor to Davie, a promising pupil8. The labyrinthine halls and stairs of the old castle, together with its breath-taking heights, present a challenging mystery, one that is central to the plot as it unfolds.
Comments
"To have what we want is riches , but to be able to do without is power." We seem to miss this in our day.
"He might yet be many a time sad, but to lament would be to act as if he were wronged— would be at best weak and foolish!" Sad and lament are not the same ... Quite an insight.
"We often think we believe what we are only presenting to our imaginations. The least thing can overthrow that kind of faith. The imagination is an endless help towards faith, but it is no more faith than a dream of food will make us strong for the next day's work. To know God as the beginning and end, the root and cause, the giver, the enabler, the love and joy and perfect good, the present one existence in all things and degrees and conditions, is life; and faith, in its simplest, truest, mightiest form is—to do his will." How difficult sometimes for us to tell the source of our faith. Is it truly from our heart of doing God's will or based solely on head knowledge without the heart of love for our savior?
I was struck by Donal's simple interest in bringing Christ to every conversation. I find that hard to do in my own life out of fear of appearng overly religious ... And one can be overly religious ... But can't be overly righteous. Maybe that's the heart of that last quote. Where is our heart?