Old Forgotten Flowers: George Macdonald as Mystic

Abstract

Abstract This article offers a reading of George MacDonald as a ‘mystic’. According to MacDonald himself, a ‘mystic’ is one who ‘sees one thing everywhere and all things the same’. I seek to show how MacDonald’s understanding of the mutual interplay of unity and difference not only establishes MacDonald’s mystical credentials, but provides weighty material for the creative development of metaphysical and theological concepts today.