Donal Grant: Chapters 37 - 45

 Donal and Actura finally descend into the hidden room and find on a bed a decayed corpse.  Donal tells her that “this house is like every human soul. . . . “ He was certain Actura would never be quite herself “until the daylight entered the chapel and all the hidden places of the house were open to the air of God’s world.” (Chapter 43).   The wrongs of a person’s past lie dead within the consciousness and must be dealt with.  So with us all.  All our consciousness should be open to God, but we should not let anything in our past of which we are ashamed bother us.   We are forgiven.


The text increasingly focuses upon  Morwen’s inner state, and in so doing GMD is describing that of the deeply depraved human being. When Lord Morven summons Donal for a talk on free will he begins to reveal some of the agonies of his own consciousness.  In their conversation GMD reveals his own view about one of the most teasing of theological questions: how free is the human will?  He strongly emphasizes to Morven that the answer lies not in the realm of the intellect but of the moral.  Doing what one knows to be one’s duty is the only door to freedom; to resist is to be captivated by Satan and enslaved to sin.  GMD summarizes:


For whether by stimulants or narcotics, whether by ambition or striving to be rich or studying to excel, we endeavour to lead another life than that which God meant for us when he made us–namely a life of truth, obedience, humility, and love, we shall find that we have lived in vain.


Other fine passages occur in Chapter 42 when Donal remarks on the nature of death for the Christian.  GMD’s thinking is excellent, thoroughly biblical.


WHAT ARE YOUR REACTIONS TO THE TEXT?  DO YOU FEEL THE METAPHOR GMG IS WORKING WITH IS INSIGHTFUL?


Comments

Tim M said…
Yes to live in concert with God's will for our lives is certainly important. I liked his explanation to Davie:

"So it is, but not the sun alone. The earth is like a man: the great glowing fire is God in the heart of the earth, and the great sun is God in the sky, keeping it warm on the other side. Our gladness and pleasure, our trouble when we do wrong, our love for all about us, that is God inside us; and the beautiful things and lovable people, and all the lessons of life in history and poetry, in the Bible, and in whatever comes to us, is God outside of us. Every life is between two great fires of the love of God. So long as we do not give ourselves up heartily to him, we fear his fire will burn us. And burn us it does when we go against its flames and not with them, refusing to burn with the fire with which God is always burning. When we try to put it out, or oppose it, or get away from it, then indeed it burns!"

God's love is all around us and within us but not all of us see it and are warmed by it. Some oppose it and are burned. Tho He is a consuming fire and we should fear it as Moses did the burning bush, yet in Christ we have the confidence that we can approach that fire and be warmed because He has paid the penalty.

I enjoyed their talk of leaves and seeds. The seeds are indeed the children of the tree and yet it does nothing to begin to grow. There is no obedience of the seed that makes one a tree and the other doesn't. But it is the will of the Father that causes one to grow.

And then in the discussion of adoption we see again how we are given the right to sonship as those already created to be His children when we acknowledge Jesus as the Christ and seek to live in communion with our Lord.

February 21, 2022 at 6:46 AM
Rolland Hein said…
Thanks for calling our attention to these fine passages, Tim. They are indeed very insightful and stimulating. This is why one reads GMD. I know of no other author whose thoughts penetrate so deeply into the realities of true experience with God.
February 21, 2022 at 8:17 AM
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