As I was re-reading portions of George MacDonald’s novel Donal Grant I couldn’t help but wonder if he was trying to describe the thrust of his own work through the novel’s namesake. The effect Donal had on Lady Arctura is exactly what I experience when I spend time with the author himself, namely that being…

“… with him whose presence and words always gave her strength, who made the world look less mournful, and the will of God altogether beautiful; who taught her that the glory of the Father’s love lay in the inexorability of its demands, that it is of his deep mercy that no one can get out until he has paid the uttermost farthing.”

Maybe, as he describes elsewhere, it wasn’t his intent but that of another author’s. The Author.