MacDonald (as selected by Lewis)

Faith & Science Conversation
, , ,
1520

(328) Competition

At this time neither Gibbie nor Donal strove against his creation—what the wise of this world call their fate. In truth Gibbie never did; and for Donal, the process was at present in a stage much too agreeable to rouse any inclination to resist. He enjoyed his new phase of life immensely. If he did not distinguish himself as a scholar, it was not because he neglected his work, but because he was at the same time doing that by which alone the water could ever rise in the well he was digging: he was himself growing. Far too eager after knowledge to indulge in emulation, he gained no prizes: what had he to do with how much or how little those around him could eat as compared with himself? No work noble or lastingly good can come of emulation any more than of greed: I think the motives are spiritually the same. To excite it is worthy only of the commonplace vulgar schoolmaster, whose ambition is to show what fine scholars he can turn out, that he may get the more pupils. Emulation is the devil-shadow of aspiration. The set of the current in the schools is at present towards a boundless swamp, but the wise among the scholars see it, and wisdom is the tortoise which shall win the race. In the mean time how many, with the legs and the brain of the hare, will think they are gaining it, while they are losing things whose loss will make any prize unprized! The result of Donal’s work appeared but very partially in his examinations, which were honest and honourable to him; it was hidden in his thoughts, his aspirations, his growth, and his verse—all which may be seen should I one day tell Donal’s story. For Gibbie, the minister had not been long teaching him, before he began to desire to make a scholar of him. Partly from being compelled to spend some labour upon it, the boy was gradually developing an unusual facility in expression. His teacher, compact of conventionalities, would have modelled the result upon some writer imagined by him a master of style; but the hurtful folly never got any hold of Gibbie: all he ever cared about was to say what he meant, and avoid saying something else; to know when he had not said what he meant, and to set the words right. It resulted that, when people did not understand what he meant, the cause generally lay with them not with him; and that, if they sometimes smiled over his mode, it was because it lay closer to nature than theirs: they would have found it a hard task to improve it.

As found in MacDonald’s “Sir Gibbie”

Being a teacher myself, my initial response to GM here - even looking beyond the edges of the tiny portion selected by Lewis - is to reflectively, and reflexively think … “Ouch!” And setting aside for the moment whatever quality of teacher I may presume myself or hope myself to be … couldn’t it at least be said of any teacher attempting to be, themselves attuned to the leading of the Spirit - shouldn’t it be said of them that “it is enough for the disciple to be like his master, and the student like his teacher?” At least in the most important core philosophies of life. Obviously today, any good teacher will hope their own students eventually far surpass them, even, in a multitude of ways - which should themselves be the well-spring bubbling up from any such worthy core.

So given how GM has written here, I’m sure he would (for any teacher, save Jesus himself) carefully circumscribe the above exhortation to mean - “like his master in his humility of recognizing his own utter dependence on the greater - that is Christ.” And that any more tightly-specified imitation beyond this begins to reflect only the non-Christlike vanity of the teacher. Or at least I hope that’s what he means. I think, by including the whole paragraph, I see a bit more what it was that GM was admiring, and in turn not admiring.

3 Likes
1521

I once sat across from a Dominionist (before I knew what that was) at a dinner honoring someone. I remember chuckling at things he was saying until at some point it struck me that he really meant what he was saying, that turning the U.S. into a modern copy of ancient Israel would bring people to Christ! That shocked me hard enough I can’t at all remember who the dinner was honoring and for what!

One of my professors in a grad-level course before I got to grad school made this point repeatedly, insisting that no criticism of a system of thought is relevant until the system’s internal consistency has been examined, which requires thoroughly understanding that system of thought.

[This, BTW, led me to earn the first “A” grade one philosophy professor ever handed out on a final exam: I demolished Plato’s Republic – and never cited any source but Plato himself in doing so – by demonstrating that the Republic is inconsistent with Plato’s foundational precepts. Earning that A drove the point home far more strongly than any of the explanations that other professor had given.]

2 Likes
1522

I must be missing something here: aren’t we admonished to emulate Paul and Christ?

1 Like
1523

That was my response to this too … Isn’t it enough that the servant should be like the master?

The only thing I can think of, reading beyond that initial bit, is that GM seems to have much lesser emulations in mind - e.g. The teacher starts showing off their intelligence to the class, and its that same quest of vanity that students pick up on and catch the same fever for themselves.

2 Likes
1524

(329) Method

In obedience to the suggestion of his wife, Mr. Sclater did what he could to show Sir Gilbert how mistaken he was in imagining he could fit his actions to the words of our Lord. Shocked as even he would probably have been at such a characterization of his attempt, it amounted practically to this: Do not waste your powers in the endeavour to keep the commandments of our Lord, for it cannot be done, and he knew it could not be done, and never meant it should be done. He pointed out to him, not altogether unfairly, the difficulties, and the causes of mistake, with regard to his words; but said nothing to reveal the spirit and the life of them. Showing more of them to be figures than at first appeared, he made out the meanings of them to be less, not more than the figures, his pictures to be greater than their subjects, his parables larger and more lovely than the truths they represented. In the whole of his lecture, through which ran from beginning to end a tone of reproof, there was not one flash of enthusiasm for our Lord, not a sign that, to his so-called minister, he was a refuge, or a delight—that he who is the joy of his Father’s heart, the essential bliss of the universe, was anything to the soul of his creature, who besides had taken upon him to preach his good news, more than a name to call himself by—that the story of the Son of God was to him anything better than the soap and water wherewith to blow theological bubbles with the tobacco-pipe of his speculative understanding. The tendency of it was simply to the quelling of all true effort after the knowing of him through obedience, the quenching of all devotion to the central good. Doubtless Gibbie, as well as many a wiser man, might now and then make a mistake in the embodiment of his obedience, but even where the action misses the command, it may yet be obedience to him who gave the command, and by obeying, one learns how to obey.

As found in MacDonald’s “Sir Gibbie”

2 Likes
1525

NT Wright mentioned that there are equal errors–to believe that one is all good, or all bad. It seems that often, we run into the “all bad” dictum, to the point that in some Protestant groups, in particular (where I’ve attended), that it’s pride and selfishness to try to be good. In contrast, it seems that hagiology (the study of the saints, not hags, as Father Brown in GK Chesterton quipped), would be a good way to work–and to delight in Christ’s model and love for others. I have a lot to learn there. And there is something likely to be said for both sides.

Thanks.

2 Likes
1526

(330) Prudence

I hardly know, however, where Gibbie blundered, except it was in failing to recognize the animals before whom he ought not to cast his pearls—in taking it for granted that, because his guardian was a minister, and his wife a minister’s wife, they must therefore be the disciples of the Jewish carpenter, the eternal Son of the Father of us all. Had he had more of the wisdom of the serpent, he would not have carried them the New Testament as an ending of strife, the words of the Lord as an enlightening law; he would perhaps have known that to try too hard to make people good, is one way to make them worse; that the only way to make them good is to be good—remembering well the beam and the mote; that the time for speaking comes rarely, the time for being never departs.

As found in MacDonald’s “Sir Gibbie”

2 Likes
1527

(331) How to Become a Dunce

He was to preach the next day—and for several Sundays following—at a certain large church in the city, at the time without a minister; and when they came upon him he was studying his sermon—I do not mean the truths he intended to press upon his audience—those he had mastered long ago—but his manuscript, studying it in the sense in which actors use the word, learning it, that is, by heart laboriously, that the words might come from his lips as much like an extemporaneous utterance as possible, consistently with not being mistaken for one, which, were it true as the Bible, would have no merit in the ears of those who counted themselves judges of the craft. The kind of thing suited Fergus, whose highest idea of life was seeming . Naturally capable, he had already made of himself rather a dull fellow; for when a man spends his energy on appearing to have, he is all the time destroying what he has, and therein the very means of becoming what he desires to seem. If he gains his end his success is his punishment.

As found in MacDonald’s “Sir Gibbie”

2 Likes