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

[ 15 ] The White Stone (Revelations 2:17)
The giving of the white stone with the new name is the communication of
what God thinks about the man to the man. It is the divine judgment, the
solemn holy doom of the righteous man, the "Come, thou blessed," spoken to
the individual. . . . The true name is one which expresses the character,
the nature, the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the man's own
symbol -his soul's picture, in a word-the sign which belongs to him and to
no one else. Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone. For no one
but God sees what the man is. ... It is only when the man has become his
name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it, for then first can
he understand what his name signifies. It is the blossom, the perfection,
the completeness, that determines the name: and God foresees that from the
first because He made it so: but the tree of the soul, before its blossom
comes, cannot understand what blossom it is to bear and could not know what
the word meant, which, in representing its own unarrived completeness, named
itself. Such a name cannot be given until the man is the name. God's name
for a man must be the expression of His own idea of the man, that being whom
He had in His thought when he began to make the child, and whom He kept in
His thought through the long process of creation that went to realize the
idea. To tell the name is to seal the success-to say "In thee also I am well
pleased."

[ 16 ] Personality
The name is one "which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." Not
only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his
peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own
fashion, and that of no one else. Hence he can worship God as no man else
can worship Him.

[ 17 ] The Secret In Man
For each, God has a different response. With every man He has a
secret-the secret of a new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an
inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter. I say not it
is the innermost chamber.

[ 18 ] The Secrets in God
There is a chamber also (O God, humble and accept my speech)-a chamber
in God Himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the
peculiar man-out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and
strength for his brethren. This is that for which he was made-to reveal the
secret things of the Father.

[ 19 ] No Massing
There is no massing of men with God. When he speaks of gathered men, it
is as a spiritual body, not as a mass.

[ 2O ] No Comparing
Here there is no room for ambition. Ambition is the desire to be above
one's neighbor; and here there is no possibility of comparison with one's