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George MacDonald

December 10, 1824 - September 18, 1905

The Master Myth-Maker

by Rit Nosotro First Published:: 2003

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By the world's standards he lived in poverty for much of his life, but George MacDonald saw his wealth elsewhere. "We are rich or poor," he once wrote, "according to what we are, not what we have."¹ By his own standards MacDonald must have been one of the wealthiest men in England. Not to overshadow but to illuminate his name with those of his literary friends and debtors, George MacDonald claimed an astonishing sphere of acquaintance and influence among the authors of his era. He befriended Lewis Carrol (Charles Dodgson) and John Ruskin. And among his acquaintances he numbered Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, William Makepeace Thackeray, George Henry Lewes, and others. Yet, ironically, he now lives most in the praise of someone he never met: C.S. Lewis. A poor, unorthodox, Scottish-minister-turned-author, Macdonald was a devout Christian whose faith influenced his writing and, through his writing, thousands of readers.

Life
Born on December 10, 1824 in Scotland, George MacDonald Jr. was the son of a farmer and one of nine children. An excellent relationship with his father, George MacDonald Sr., paved the way for a unique understanding of God's fatherhood, just as young MacDonald's enjoyment of German Romanticist authors prepared him for the fantasy writing of his later life.² He took his M.A. at King's College in Aberdeen in 1845 and later ventured to England, first working as a tutor and then studying theology at Highbury College. Suggestions of heresy accompanied by a severe pay cut eventually forced MacDonald to resign from his three-year career in the Congregational Church. In 1852, during his time as a pastor, MacDonald married Louisa Powell (1822-1902). He and his wife would have eleven children, several of whom would die from tuberculosis, which MacDonald called "the family attendant." MacDonald tutored and wrote to support his family; sometimes friends supplemented this income, and the family also put on plays to earn extra money. In 1860 MacDonald converted to the Church of England, and from 1872-1873 he lectured successfully in the United States. A pension from Queen Victoria allowed him to live more comfortably in his declining years, much of which he spent in Italy both by preference and necessity for his health. MacDonald suffered near the end of his life with an unknown, painful skin disease until a probable stroke cured his skin and left him mute around 1900. On September 18, 1905, at the age of 81, George MacDonald died in England, surrounded by his family.

Writing
Over the course of his life, MacDonald wrote over thirty novels, in addition to some poetry, theological works, fairy tales, and adult fantasies. He published his first original work in 1855, at the age of 31, and continued to publish every few years until 1897. But MacDonald did not reach real popularity until his 1862 publishing of David Elginbrod, one of many didactic novels he wrote. Despite his current relative obscurity, MacDonald's fairy tales now compose a critical part in many children's libraries, beloved for their simple, wondrous tone and moral truth. And his fantasies, (primarily Phantastes and Lilith) are critically acclaimed, powerful allegories to this day. C.S. Lewis summed up MacDonald's writing as valuable for its content rather than its quality. "If we define literature as an art whose medium is words, then certainly MacDonald has no place in its first rank-perhaps not even in its second. . . . The texture of his writing as a whole is undistinguished, at times fumbling. . . . But this does not quite dispose of him even for the literary critic. What he does best is fantasy-fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and the mythopoeic. And this, in my opinion, he does better than any man."³

Religion
MacDonald had a rocky religious journey and held some quite unorthodox beliefs in the eyes of the church. He grew up in the strongly Calvinistic Congregational Church in Scotland and pursued ordination at his family's wishes. Nonetheless, he seriously disagreed with the church on the topics of predestination and Hell. To MacDonald, the idea of a loving God seemed irreconcilable with a literal, permanent Hell. He denied that the universe itself is sufficient evidence for humanity to know of God, thus rejecting the argument that nature alone is enough to condemn us for our rebellion.⁴ Instead, MacDonald thought either Hell does not exist literally as the Bible describes it, or no sinners will ultimately remain there.⁵ He also held Jesus literally died to save us "from our sins" in the sense that his death did not pay the penalty due to a just God (for God, in MacDonald's view, does not punish except to teach and improve), but wiped out (or began to wipe out) evil in our world.⁶ "I believe," MacDonald wrote, "that [Jesus] died to deliver me from all meanness, all pretence, all falseness, all unfairness, all poverty of spirit, all cowardice, all fear, all anxiety, all forms of self-love, all trust or hope in possession."⁷ These beliefs led eventually to accusations of heresy and MacDonald's withdrawal from the pastorate. He later joined the Church of England but probably retained his reservations concerning a literal Hell until the end of his life.

Impact
For an author now largely obscure, MacDonald has had a profound influence on some of the most important writers of the last century. In Surprised By Joy C.S. Lewis points to Phantastes as the book that baptized his imagination and showed him the quality of holiness in literature. Lewis even used MacDonald as his guide in The Great Divorce. Indeed, MacDonald and Lewis's books share a certain headlong delight in the story and an emphasis on imagination, description, and wonder. Even theologically we see traces of MacDonald's influence on Lewis. MacDonald writes in Weighed and Wanting that "the only way to learn the rules of anything practical is to begin to do the thing. . . . The sole way to deal with the profoundest mystery . . . is to begin to do some duty revealed by ^it."⁸ Later, he observes "love is not a feeling to be called up at will in the heart, but the reward . . . of an active exercise of the privileges of a neighbor."⁹ And in these remarks we see the possible seeds of Lewis's idea that "very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already."¹⁰ Lewis and MacDonald also shared the idea that God's love is not that of a doting grandfather, but of a demanding father. Finally, both approached evil as something infinitely weaker and poorer than goodness. "Sorrows," MacDonald wrote, "are sickly things and die, while the joys are strong divine children and shall live forever."¹¹ As far as any doubt of Hell or of the need to appease God's justice, however, Lewis shows no signs of unorthodoxy. MacDonald influenced other writers as well, including G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton spoke at the centenary celebration of MacDonald's birth, reputedly considered him one of the greatest men of the 19th century, and praised MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin as a "book that [had] made a difference to [his] whole existence."¹² And from this influence on the existence of Chesterton, Lewis, and his other literary friends, MacDonald now gathers most of his fame.

This literary and spiritual impact on other authors places George MacDonald squarely in the stream of literary history. Influenced himself by the German Romantic fantasies of Novalis and James Hogg, MacDonald took the strongest elements of Romantic fantasy (love of strangeness, wonder, otherworldliness, yearning), incorporated them into his writing, and yet made his fantasy worlds feel like our true home. Thus his biblical faith in an ultimate, good reality for which every human soul was created spilled over into MacDonald's writing and marked it with the quality Lewis termed "Holiness." Both Novalis and MacDonald portrayed a search for the ideal in their writing, but only MacDonald could lend his stories hope and purpose, because he had truly found the ideal: God. MacDonald took German Romanticism, purified it through the light of Christianity and handed it down to C.S. Lewis, where it became part of the unique voice that entrances Lewis's thousands of readers.

Endnotes:
¹ MacDonald, George. "David Elginbrod." (Boston: Loring, Publisher, unknown), 199.

² Lewis, C.S., "George MacDonald, An Anthology". (Unknown: Geoffrey Bles, 1947), Introduction.

³ Lewis, "Anthology," Introduction.

⁴ MacDonald, George. "England's Antiphon". (New York: MacMillan and Co., 1890), 279.

⁵ Charles Seper. George MacDonald Informational Web, The. Unknown (September 18, 2008)

⁶ Unknown. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Unknown

⁷ MacDonald, George. "Unspoken Sermons (Series Three)". (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1891), 153-54.

⁸ MacDonald, George. "Weighed and Wanting". (Boston: D. Lothrop Co., 1893), 129.

⁹ MacDonald, George. "Guild Court". (Philadelphia: David McKay, Publisher, unknown), 174.

¹⁰ Lewis, C.S. "Mere Christianity". (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1960), 161

¹¹ MacDonald, George. "Mary Marston". (New York: George Routledge and Sons, Limited, unknown), 454.

¹² Charles Seper. George MacDonald Informational Web, The. Unknown (September 18, 2008)

Bibliography
Lewis, C.S. George MacDonald, An Anthology. Uknown: Geoffrey Bles, 1947

Charles Seper. George MacDonald Informational Web, The. Unknown (September 18, 2008)

Unknown. Taylor University. Taylor University. Unknown (September 18, 2008)