[ 85 ] Difficulties Everything difficult indicates something more than our theory of life yet embraces, checks some tendency to abandon the straight path, leaving open only the way ahead. But there is a reality of being in which all things are easy and plain-oneness, that is, with the Lord of Life; to pray for this is the first thing; and to the point of this prayer every difficulty hedges and directs us. George MacDonald
[ 70 ] The Utility of Death Wherein then lies the service of Death? ... In this: it is not the fetters that gall, but the fetters that soothe, which eat into the soul. In this way is the loss of things ... a motioning, hardly toward, yet in favor of, deliverance. It may seem to a man the first of his slavery when it is in truth the beginning of his freedom. Never soul was set free without being made to feel its slavery.