Few writers have convinced so many readers that God looks more like a good father than a distant judge. George MacDonald was one of them, and his own life of trials gave weight to every word he wrote on the subject.
He was born on December 10, 1824, in Huntly, Scotland, into a Presbyterian farming family. He graduated in chemistry and physics from the University of Aberdeen in 1845 and moved to London, where he studied theology at Highbury College to become a Congregationalist pastor.
In 1850 he took up the pastorate of the Congregational church in Arundel, but his sermons on God’s universal love and the possibility of repentance beyond death unsettled the deacons. Accused of heresy and with his salary cut in half, he resigned the post in 1853.
From then on he lived by writing, teaching and lecturing, struggling to support the eleven children he had with Louisa Powell. Tuberculosis, an illness that afflicted him throughout his life, claimed four of the couple’s children, marking the family with years of grief and poverty.
Even so, he produced a vast body of work: fantasy novels for adults such as Phantastes and Lilith, children’s tales such as The Princess and the Goblin, and three series of Unspoken Sermons, in which he set out his central conviction, that God is, above all, Father.
He was also a literary mentor to Lewis Carroll: he read the manuscript of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to his own children, and seeing their delight, urged his friend to publish it.
Decades later, the young C.S. Lewis read Phantastes and described the effect as the baptism of his imagination, a decisive step toward the Christian faith he would embrace years afterward. In 1877, he received a pension from the British Crown in recognition of his literary work.
He died on September 18, 1905, in Ashtead, England. His insistence that fatherhood is the deepest trait of God’s character continues to shape authors, pastors and readers seeking a faith that is less fearful and more confident in the heavenly Father.