From My Treasures

Treasure up in your mind continually the words of life. I love the treasures that are His words and those who use them to add to my treasure chest. These are some of my many treasures. They were written by George MacDonald, who understood that in God and Christ are hidden all treasures. MacDonald's writings greatly influenced C.S. Lewis, and have been a blessing in my life. 

The men of Nazareth could have believed in Jesus as their savior from the Romans; as their savior from their sins they could not believe in him, for they loved their sins.

They did not hear the prophet while they read the prophet!

His mighty works were not meant for such as they--to convince them of what they were incapable of understanding....

We want to be a free people, manage our own affairs, live in plenty, and do as we please.  Liberty alone can never cure the woes of which you speak.  We do not need to be better; we are well enough.  Give us riches and honor, and keep us content with ourselves, that we may be satisfied with our own likeness.

The design of God is other and better than the expectation of men.

He who delights in contemplating whereto he has attained is not merely sliding back; he is already in the dirt of self-satisfaction.  The gate of the kingdom is closed, and he outside.

Two men are walking abroad together; to the one, the world yields thought after thought of delight; he sees heaven and earth embrace one another; he feels an indescribable presence over and in them; his joy will afterward, in the solitude of his chamber, break forth in song;--to the other, oppressed with the thought of his poverty, or ruminating how to make much into more, the glory of the Lord is but a warm summer day; it enters in at no window of his soul; it offers him no gift; for, in the very temple of God, he looks for no God in it.

None but the pure in heart see God; only the growing-pure hope to see him.

God made man, and woke in him the hunger for righteousness; the Lord came to enlarge and rouse this hunger.  The first and lasting effect of his words must be to make the hungering and thirsting long yet more.

As soon as even service is done for the honor and not for the service-sake, the doer is at that moment outside the kingdom.

He is against sin; in so far as, and while, they and sin are one, he is against them--against their desires, their sins, their fears, and their hopes; and thus he is altogether and always for them.

It is the law of God that all that is destructible shall be destroyed.

I doubt that if a man can ask anything from God that it is bad.

The Lord knows what we need; we know only what we want.

Such questions spring from the passion for the fruit of the tree of knowledge, not the fruit of the tree of life.

Men would understand:  they do not care to obey--understand where it is impossible to understand except by obeying.

Our whole life, to be life at all, must be a growth in understanding.  What I cry out upon is the misunderstanding that comes from man's endeavor to understand while not obeying.

It is not obedience alone that our Lord will have, but obedience to the truth.

Multitudes will not even approach the appalling task, the labor and pain of being.

We are so ready to get upon some path that seems to run parallel with the narrow way, and then take no thought of its divergence!  What is there for us when we discover that we are out of the way, but to bethink ourselves and turn?

God knows good and evil, and, blessed be his name, chooses good.

The words of the Lord are the seed sown by the sower.  Into our hearts they must fall that they may grow.

The design of God is other and better than the expectation of men.

He will carry us in his arms till we are able to walk; he will carry us in his arms when we are weary with walking; he will not carry us if we will not walk.

The man who is proud of anything he thinks he has reached, has not reached it.  He is but proud of himself, and imagining a cause for his pride.

He would not choose to be less than his neighbor; he would choose his neighbor to be greater than he.  He can imagine no bliss, no good in being greater than some one else.  The thought of standing higher in the favor of God than his brother, would make him miserable.

So good a medicine is sorrow, so powerful to slay the moths that infest and devour the human heart, that the Lord is glad to see a man weep.

To  mourn is not to fight with evil; it is only to miss that which is good.

Is it not of the very essence of the (Gospel) hope, that we should be changed from bad to all good

The thought of righteousness will vanish in the fact of righteousness.

To be made greater than one's fellows is the offered reward of hell, and involves no greatness; to be made greater than one's self, is the divine reward, and involves a real greatness.  The reward is righteousness.

Every disciple of the Lord must be a preacher of righteousness.

To let our light shine, we must take care that we have no respect for riches.  To treat the poor man with less attention or cordiality than the rich, is to show ourselves the servants of Mammon.  In like manner we must lay no value on the praise of men, or in any way seek it. We must honor no man because of intellect, fame or success.

The man to whom business is one thing and religion another, is not a disciple.  The most futile of all human endeavors is, to serve God and Mammon.  But let us waste no strength in despising such men; let us rather turn the light upon ourselves:  are we not in some way denying him?  Is our light bearing witness?

Whatever makes her heart glad, she will have her neighbor share. (Annie)

But if our heart shine out, and none of our darkness, shall we not be in utmost danger of hypocrisy?  

If any one, hearing the injunction to let his light shine, makes himself shine instead, it is because the light is not in him!

You who have light, show yourselves the sons and daughters of Light, of God, of Hope--the heirs of a great completeness.  Freely let your light shine.  Only take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of men.  Let your light out freely that men may see it, but not that men may see you.

If I do anything, not because it has to be done, not because God would have it so, not that I may do right, not because it is honest, not that I love the thing, not that I may be true to my Lord, not that the truth may be recognized as truth and as his, but that I may be seen as the doer, that I may be praised of men, that I may gain repute or fame; be the thing itself ever so good, that I look to men for my reward, for there is none for me with the Father.

If I do it that I may be seen shining, that the light may be noted as emanating from me and not from Him, then am I of those that seek glory of men, and worship Satan; the light that through me may possibly illuminate others, will, in me and for me, be darkness.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus reminds His disciples that they cannot seek happiness the way the world does.  True joy is not found in self ambition, excuses, or self justification.  An enviable state of blessedness comes to those who mourn over their own sin.  "These are the ones I look on with favor:  those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word" (Isaiah 66:22). The kind of mourning that leads to repentance is truly blessed (2 Cor 7:10 "Godly Sorrow").

For hell is God's and not the devil's.  Hell is on the side of God and man, to free the child of God from the corruption of death.  Not one soul will ever be redeemed from hell  but by being saved from his sins, from the evil in him.  If hell be needful to save him, hell will blaze., and the worm writhe and bite, until he takes refuge in the will of the Father.

There is another misapprehension of the words of the messengers of the good tidings--that they threaten us with punishment because of the sins we have committed, whereas their message is of forgiveness and not of vengeance; of deliverance, not of evil to come.  

The sin he dwells in, the sin he will not come out, is the sole ruin of a man.  His present, his live sins--those pervading his thoughts and ruling his conduct; the sins he keeps doing, and will not give up; the sins he is called to abandon, and clings to; the same sins which are the cause of his misery, though he may not know it--these are they for which he is even now condemned.

The highest in man is neither his intellect nor his imagination nor his reason; all are inferior to his will.

The Lord cannot save a man from his sins while he holds to his sins.  

They will not accept, that is, act upon, their highest privilege, that of obeying the Son of God.  It is on them that do his will, that the day dawns; to them the day star arises in their hearts.  Obedience is the soul of knowledge.  By obedience, I intend no kind of obedience to man, or submission to authority claimed by man or community of men.  I mean obedience to the will of the Father.

The Greek word then, of which the word repentance....is made up of two words, the conjoint meaning of which is, a change of mind or thought.  There is in it no intent of, or hint at sorrow or shame, or any other of the mental conditions that, not infrequently accompanying repentance, have been taken for essential parts of it, sometimes for it very essence.

The word (Greek: eis) rather unto than for; that the word (Greek:  aphesis), translated remission, means, fundamentally, a sending away, a dismissal; and that the writer seems to use the added phrase to make certain what he means by repentance; a repentance, namely, that reaches to the sending away, or abjurement of sins.  I do not think a change of mind unto the remission or pardon of sin would be nearly so logical a phrase as a change of mind unto the dismission of sinning.  The message of John (the Baptist) to his countrymen, was then, and is yet, the one message to the world:  "Send away your sins, for the kingdom of heaven is near."

We need fresh repentance every day--how many times a day, God only knows.  We are so ready to get upon some path that seems to run parallel with the narrow way, and then take no note of its divergence!  What is there for us when we discover that we are out of the way, but to bethink ourselves and turn?

God knows good and evil, and, blessed be his name, chooses good.

To love righteousness is to make it grow.

Give us riches and honour, and keep us content with ourselves, that we may be satisfied with our own 

As to his being the Messiah, that was mere absurdity: did they not all know his father, the carpenter?  His mighty works were not meant for such as they--to convince them of what they were incapable of understanding.  His mighty works were to rouse the love, and strengthen the faith of the meek and lowly in heart, of such as were ready to come to the light. 

Thou are but the well-known carpenter's son, and dost thou teach?

It is a small thing to a man whether or not his neighbor be merciful to him; it is life or death to him whether or not he be merciful to his neighbor.