Geo MacDonald: Light Is More Important than Knowledge and Opinions

The following is taken from some of MacDonald's sermons and essays:

"The man who holds his opinions the most honestly ought to see the most plainly that his opinion must change...If we held opinions aright, we should know that nothing in them that is good can ever be lost...It is only as they help us toward God that our opinions are worth a straw. And every necessary change in them must be to more truth, to greater uplifting power...My opinions, just as my life, as my love, I leave in the hands of him from whom all came.

"Why then is there such dislike to the very idea of change of our ideas...? It may be objected that no man will hold his opinions with the needed earnestness who can entertain the idea of having to change them. But the very objection speaks powerfully against such an overvaluing of opinion...

"Let us...beware lest our opinions come between us and our God, between us and our neighbor, between us and our better selves...The one security is to walk according to the truth which they contain. And if men seem to be unreasonable, opposers of that which to us is plainly true, let us remember that we are not here to convince men, but to let our light shine.

"Knowledge is not necessarily light. And it is light, not knowledge, that we have to spread. The best thing we can do that men may receive truth, is to be ourselves true...

"Above all, let us be humble before the God of truth, faithfully desiring of him that truth in the inward parts which alone can enable us to walk according to that which we have attained..."