"C.S.Lewis "George MacDonald. An Antology" (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

will go on burning within us after all that is foreign to it has yielded to
its force, no longer with pain and consuming, but as the highest
consciousness of life, the presence of God.

[ 4 ] The Beginning of Wisdom
How should the Hebrews be other than terrified at that which was
opposed to all they knew of themselves, beings judging it good to honor a
golden calf? Such as they were, they did well to be afraid. ... Fear is
nobler than sensuality. Fear is better than no God, better than a god made
with hands. ... The worship of fear is true, although very low: and though
not acceptable to God in itself, for only the worship of spirit and of truth
is acceptable to Him, yet even in his sight it is precious. For He regards
men not as they are merely, but as they shall be; not as they shall be
merely, but as they are now growing, or capable of growing, toward that
image after which He made them that they might grow to it. Therefore a
thousand stages, each in itself all but valueless, are of inestimable worth
as the necessary and connected gradations of an infinite progress. A
condition which of declension would indicate a devil, may of growth indicate
a saint.

[ 5 ] The Unawakened
Can it be any comfort to them to be told that God loves them so that He
will burn them clean? . . . They do not want to be clean, and they cannot
bear to be tortured.

[ 6 ] Sinai
And is not God ready to do unto them even as they fear, though with
another feeling and a different end from any which they are capable of
supposing? He is against sin: insofar as, and while, they and sin are one,
He is against them-against their desires, their aims, their fears, and their
hopes; and thus He is altogether and always for them. That thunder and
lightning and tempest, that blackness torn with the sound of a trumpet, that
visible horror billowed with the voice of words, was all but a faint image
... of what God thinks and feels against vileness and selfishness, of the
unrest of unassuageable repulsion with which He regards such conditions.

[ 7 ] No
When we say that God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is
groundless? No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more.
. . . The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves
God made shall appear.

[ 8 ] The Law of Nature
For that which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which is immortal in
God shall remain in man. The death that is in them shall be consumed. It is
the law of Nature- that is, the law of God-that all that is destructible
shall be destroyed.

[ 9 ] Escape Is Hopeless
The man whose deeds are evil, fears the burning. But the burning will