Do you think you love your children better than He who made them? Is not your love what it is because He put it into your heart first? Have you not often been cross with them? Sometimes unjust to them? Whence came the returning love that rose from unknown depths in your being, and swept away the anger and the injustice? You did not create that love. Probably you were not good enough to send for it by prayer. But it came. God sent it. He makes you love your children.
George MacDonaldThe ideal is the only absolute real; and it must become the real in the individual life as well, however impossible they may count it who never tried it.
George MacDonaldCome, then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy.
George MacDonaldIt is the heart that is not sure of its God that is afraid to laugh in His presence.
George MacDonaldRight gladly would He free them from their misery, but He knows only one way: He will teach them to be like himself, meek and lowly, bearing with gladness the yoke of His Father's will. This in the one, the only right, the only possible way of freeing them from their sin, the cause of their unrest.
George MacDonald