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The Seaboard Parish Volume 3 by George MacDonald
page 92 of 188 (48%)
in man, passes from him with the years. It was not his all the time; it was
but lent him, and had nothing to do with his inward force. A bodily feeble
man may put forth a mighty life-strength in effort, and show nothing to the
eyes of his neighbour; while the strong man gains endless admiration for
what he could hardly help. But the effort of the one remains, for it was
his own; the strength of the other passes from him, for it was never his
own. So with beauty, which the commonest woman acknowledges never to have
been hers in seeking to restore it by deception. So, likewise, in a great
measure with intellect."

"But if you take away intellect as well, what do you leave a man that can
in any way be called his own?"

"Certainly his intellect is not his own. One thing only is his own--to will
the truth. This, too, is as much God's gift as everything else: I ought to
say is more God's gift than anything else, for he gives it to be the man's
own more than anything else can be. And when he wills the truth, he has
God himself. Man _can_ possess God: all other things follow as necessary
results. What poor creatures we should have been if God had not made us to
do something--to look heavenwards--to lift up the hands that hang down, and
strengthen the feeble knees! Something like this was in the mind of the
prophet Jeremiah when he said, 'Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man
glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not
the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this,
that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise
loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth: for in these
things I delight, saith the Lord.' My own conviction is, that a vague sense
of a far higher life in ourselves than we yet know anything about is at the
root of all our false efforts to be able to think something of ourselves.
We cannot commend ourselves, and therefore we set about priding ourselves.
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