What If Adam and Eve Were Still Alive? “...there is no harm in being afraid. The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his face and he will run away.” - George MacDonald, Lilith Lilith by minister George MacDonald is a fantasy novel centered around a different reality where Adam and Eve are still part of the world. Lilith, Adam’s first wife and unworthy mother, also dwells in this imaginary kingdom. Following a raven, Mr. Vane enters this twisted reality and tries to set things right ignoring Adam’s advice: sleeping along with the dreamers before actually helping them.
Lilith is a fantasy novel by Scottish writer George MacDonald, first published in 1895. It was reprinted in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fifth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in September 1969
Two volumes in one. A fantasy novel for adults, Lilith is the story of the aptly named Mr. Vane, his magical house, and the journeys into another world into which it leads him. Encountering one mystery after another, he explores the mystery of humanity's fall from grace--and of their redemption. Instructed into the ways of seeing the deeper realities of this world--seeing, in a sense, by the light of the spirit--the reader senses that MacDonald writes from his own deep experience of radiance, from a bliss so profound that death's darkness itself is utterly eclipsed in its light. "I was dead, and right content," the narrator says in the penultimate chapter of Phantastes. C.S. Lewis said that upon reading this astonishing 19th-century fairy tale he "had crossed a great frontier," and numerous others both before and since have felt similarly. In MacDonald's fairy tales, both those for children and (like this one) those for adults, the "fairy land" clearly represents the spiritual world, or our own world revealed in all of its depth and meaning. At times almost forthrightly allegorical, at other times richly dreamlike (and indeed having a close connection to the symbolic world of dreams), this story of a young man who finds himself on a long journey through a land of fantasy is more truly the story of the spiritual quest that is at the core of his life's work, a quest that must end with the ultimate surrender of the self. The glory of MacDonald's work is that this surrender is both hard won (or lost!) and yet rippling with joy when at last experienced. As the narrator says of a heavenly woman in this tale, "She knew something too good to be told." One senses the same of the author himself. Both Lilith and Phantastes, meant to be read together, are included in this comprehensive volume.
"George MacDonald's Lilith (1895) is among the most popular and profound fantasy novels of the Romantic era. This is the first book-length study of this important literary work. The selections function in working dialogue with one another, driven by the central idea of liminality in fantasy literature, and bring to light new scholarship on Lilith"--Provided by publisher.
George MacDonald wrote fairy tales for both children and adults to demonstrate the essential role of the imagination in apprehending spiritual truths. He explained: ". . . undefined, yet vivid visions of something beyond, something which eye has not seen nor ear heard, have far more influence than any logical sequences whereby the same things may be demonstrated to the intellect." Rolland Hein undertakes to show how MacDonald's tales contain such visions, helping readers to experience for themselves glimpses of "something beyond" and catch exciting insights into eternal truths.
The story of a boy’s spiritual transformation in the shadow of the Scottish Highlands—from the 19th-century author of David Elginbrod. In George MacDonald’s most well-known novel, published in 1868, the quest of young Robert Falconer for his father becomes a parallel quest to break free from the oppressive Calvinist theology of his grandmother. As he struggles to come to terms with the strict orthodoxy prevalent in Scotland for two centuries, the doctrine of hell looms as the great stumbling block in Robert’s mind. His lifelong search reveals to Robert the groundbreaking truth that hell is remedial not punitive, designed to produce ultimate repentance not everlasting punishment. This highly autobiographical work offers a rare glimpse into MacDonald’s own youthful quandaries, and a window into the development of his faith, which would turn generations toward the Fatherhood of a loving God. After the book’s publication, as a result of the bold themes running through the narrative, MacDonald came to be considered a “universalist” and “heretic” in some circles—grievous mischaracterizations that persist to this day. This new edition by MacDonald biographer Michael Phillips streamlines the occasionally ponderous Victorian narrative style and updates the thick Doric brogue into readable English.
Lewis offers 365 selections from MacDonald's work, ranging from "Inexorable Love" to "The Torment of Death". These wise words will instruct, uplift and provide indispensable help toward the very acceptance of Christian faith.
