Castalia
Food for the spirit
Dear Friends,
Physical starvation can be a real problem; there is also starvation of the spirit. This latter is the theme of a novel by George MacDonald, Adela Cathcart, which I am reading with a great sense of recognition.
Adela’s case is well described by the young Dr. Armstrong:
“It is as if, without any disease, life were gradually withdrawn itself—ebbing back as it were to its source…”
He suspects “the cause of her illness is… a spiritual one. She has evidently a strong mental constitution; and this strong frame, so to speak, has been fed upon slops; and an atrophy is the consequence.”
Many women “…go into a consumption just from discontent—the righteous discontent of a soul which is meant to sit at the Father’s table, and so cannot content itself with the husks which the swine eat. The theological nourishment which is offered them is generally no better than husks. They cannot live upon it, and so die and go home to their Father. And without good spiritual food to keep the spiritual senses healthy and true, they cannot see the things about them as they really are. They cannot find interest in them, because they cannot find their own place amongst them.”
One thing in particular has confirmed his suspicion:
he has “looked over her music on purpose…and not found “…one song that rose above the level of the drawing-room, or one piece of music that had any deep feeling or any thought in it…”
Music as a Path:
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