Choosing Our Own Destiny by Charles E. Bressler

Feature

Choosing Our Own Destiny

George MacDonald & C. S. Lewis on Rights, Duties, Heaven & Hell

In January of 1939 C. S. Lewis wrote to a friend that he had just finished one of George MacDonald’s later novels, What’s Mine’s Mine, first published in 1886, and called it the fourth greatest book he had ever read. Lewis asserted in several places in his writings that MacDonald was his literary master, and after reading this comment, I was struck with the similarity of the title to what I believed to be the theme of Lewis’s The Great Divorce, written just five years after he read MacDonald’s novel: giving up all of one’s rights and thereby saying to God, “Thy will be done,” as the only way to obtain Heaven.

The word “rights” appears at least twenty-five times in The Great Divorce and at least fifty times in What’s Mine’s Mine. Could there be a link between these two works?

THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:


Charles E. Bressler is a professor of English at Houghton College and has written several books, including Literary Criticism: Introduction to Theory and Practice (Pearson Education) and a forthcoming book entitled Of Welcome and Wonder, on the literary and spiritual influences of George MacDonald and G. K. Chesterton on C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and other Oxford Christians.

subscription options

Order
Print/Online
Subscription

Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!

Order
Online Only
Subscription

Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!

bulk subscriptions

Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.

Transactions will be processed on a secure server.


more on C. S. Lewis from the online archives

18.3—April 2005

Lions of Succession

on Being a Free Narnian & the Joy of Subordination by Donald T. Williams

33.2—March/April 2020

The Fairy Tale Wars

Lewis, Chesterton, et al. Against the Frauds, Experts & Revisionists by Vigen Guroian

26.1—Jan/Feb 2013

Lost & Found in the Cosmos

The Alternate & Alternative Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft & C. S. Lewis by C. R. Wiley


more from the online archives

27.2—March/April 2014

The Rights of Aphrodite

on C. S. Lewis & the New State Paganism by W. E. Knickerbocker

27.4—July/August 2014

The Things Freely Given

The Bible, Sacred Theology & the Mind of Christ by Patrick Henry Reardon

21.6—July/August 2008

The European Disunion

Benedict XVI on the Crisis of Faith & Reason by Samuel Gregg

calling all readers

Please Donate

"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand

"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor

Support Touchstone

00