"...she (did not have) the opportunity of making acquaintance with any who believed and lived like her father in any of the churches in her town. But she had her Bible, and when that troubled her, as it did sometimes, she had God himself to cry to for such wisdom as she could receive. And one of the things she learned was that nowhere in the Bible was she called on to believe in the Bible but in the living God in whom is no darkness, and who alone can give light to understand his own intent. All her troubles she carried to him..."
And in a letter to an unidentified woman who accused MacDonald of not have any of the "old faith left", he wrote the following about scripture:
"...Do not suppose that I believe in Jesus because it is said so-and-so in a book. I believe in him because he is himself. The vision of him in that book and his own living power in me have enabled me to understand him, to look him in the face, as it were, and accept him as my Master and Saviour... The Bible is to me the most precious thing in the world, because it tells me his story and what good men thought about him who knew him and accepted him. But the common theory of the inspiration of the words, instead of the breathing of God's truth into the hearts and souls of those who wrote it, and who then did their best with it, is degrading and evil; and they who hold it are in danger of worshipping the letter instead of living in the Spirit, of being idolaters of the Bible instead of disciples of Jesus...It is Jesus who is the Revelation of God, not the Bible; that is but a means to a mighty eternal end. The book is indeed sent us by God, but it nowhere claims to be his very word...Jesus alone is the Word of God.
MacDonald understood God's intended purpose in scripture to be a means to Jesus, not to be an end in itself and so was able to appreciate it more fully.
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